by Ivan Klíma
The roses are a hybrid tea called Bettina. I grew them on account of their name and they used to love her. Whenever she walked among them they would bow their heads to her. Once more, please accept my thanks.
Respectfully yours,
Břetislav Houdek
Dear Dan
The first thing Samuel did when he came back from the mental hospital was to lay into me verbally: I didn’t have enough fresh bread at home and water had been splashed in the bathroom (Saša had taken a shower in the morning). I was told that life with me is quite simply unbearable because I constantly force him to concern himself with crap. I’m not sure whether the crap is supposed to be me or whether he meant it figuratively, but quite simply I drag him down with banalities. I had, of course, scrubbed the place from top to bottom and done the shopping as if expecting a visit from the President himself. This was his response to my efforts, and at moments like that something inside me rebels and I cease wanting to live.
I have to admit that after Samuel’s scene I took myself off and visited my tarot reader. And she read it all: suffering and illness in the family, but what was most important of all was the location of the king of hearts which led my card reader to utter: You have a big love on the way. Not on the way, I said, it’s here already!
I’m happy. I’ve met you. You are the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. In a lasting sense too, I believe. And that’s coming from someone who every minute of her life thinks about finite things. The joy you bring me is pure; it is unsullied by doubt, lack of trust or fear – or, you may be surprised to hear, by pangs of conscience.
When I fell in love with my husband, I believed there would never again be anyone who would mean more to me. I valued the fact that something like that had happened to me. In the end it all came to naught. How naive it is to think that something is going to last, that it will be the same at the end as at the beginning. Is it a failure? Is it a defeat? I still believe that love outlives everything and it can last. I know that as long as I live I shall love, as long as I breathe my heart will yearn for deep, complete feeling.
I write about my heart – what sort of an animal is it?
My love, I want to deserve you and I don’t know how. I have the feeling I do nothing for you. I just am, and in addition, I complain all the time. I serve a husband who destroys me and whom I fear, and do nothing for you whom I love and who are kind to me. I’m afraid of losing you if I do nothing for you. I just keep asking you all the time: Keep me for a little while longer, for as long as destiny or your God allows, for as long as we’re happy that we have each other, for as long as the miracle lasts. We won’t be hurting anyone that way, will we? We’ll just have a little extra …
(A day later. I had to stop writing yesterday. Sam wanted me to discuss his state of health with him.)
I have something to boast to you about. Now that I myself decide what I do, I took the opportunity to design an interior for a rich Czech American who has come back here to do business. Complete décor for seven rooms. I asked him today whether he liked real wood and he said: Sure! I sometimes work with a little firm in a village that is not very far from Prague, and they are capable of making furniture according to my design from any wood that is available. A miracle! So I thought about you, and the fact you like wood too and that your grandfather worked with it. You carve it and I venerate it at least. I love wood, in fact: its smell, its colour, its grain. I just don’t understand how anyone can put a piece of plastic, tubing or chipwood in their home. For that American’s living room I designed some bird-armchairs, a bit like herons standing on one leg with their long necks. I like storks, herons and flamingos (I’ll show you the designs when I see you). I was so het up about doing something decent that I enjoy doing, that I couldn’t get to sleep. Now it’s two in the morning and I’m thinking about you. You’re the most loving person on earth, someone from another – a better – world. (Maybe it’s because in your world Jesus reigns instead of male selfishness.) You even managed to write an understanding letter about my husband. It is against your nature, as it is against mine, to harm somebody, to do anything artful or malevolent.
But I still think I deserve you and at this moment it is the peak of my self-confidence, because to deserve it is necessary to be pure, kind and good-hearted.
When we were sitting in Veltrusy Park recently I was calmly and serenely happy in a trusting and devoted way. The heavens opened up for me. There was only now. There was only you. The poisons that contaminate my soul had drifted away. And the poisons that you smelt in the air are nothing compared to the poisons that infest the soul.
What I feel for you is a trust that is so complete that it might be something like faith. It seems to me that someone who believes in God feels something akin to what I feel for you. So through you I have come to understand what is felt by someone who believes intrinsically, i.e. something I have never really experienced. Don’t protest! I’m not comparing you to God Almighty, it’s just that human beings, including Jesus Christ, were always closer to me than some abstract God. I believe you. You are my security. With you I don’t even fear death. You’ve turned me into a queen, i.e. a relatively self-aware person, who would otherwise have a tendency to fall into the depths of doubt about herself. Forgive me all my weaknesses and inadequacies, all my omissions, and ascribe them not to the selfishness of my soul but to the extreme weight of the burden I have rashly accepted as my fate. I don’t want one day to regret not having done everything I could for you. Oh, God! What am I to do? I love you. I love you.
Bára
Dear Dan, my unholy brother,
Well, your recent letter about you falling in love knocked me sideways, I must say. As your sister I ought to have understanding for you, but as a married woman I ought, on the contrary, to be cross. Since I am both, I understand you, but I don’t share your enthusiasm for your new feelings.
Not at all because it is inappropriate for a man of your calling – to hell with the calling and the good Lord has better things to do than worry about your philandering. But to two-time your wife, who trusts you and stood by you even in the bad times, giving you two children and also caring for Eva, is simply disgusting. I’m surprised at you and I don’t know this person you describe.
No doubt like all unfaithful husbands you have plenty of good excuses for your behaviour: the other woman is more interesting, younger, she understands you better and is on the same wavelength, she attracts you and adores you (that’s something you men are suckers for). You experience something unique and incomparable with her and moreover she needs you because, like you, she fails to find understanding at home. But surely you’re not too infatuated to see that it’s a bit hackneyed.
You say you don’t expect any advice, so I’ll refrain from telling you off like an older sister – it would make no sense anyway. Perhaps you’re not entirely to blame. You’ve inherited Dad’s inconstancy and even though you tried to escape it through your vocation, it caught up with you anyway.
Of course I wish for you to enjoy the few years remaining to you on this earthly roundabout as much as you can. It’s up to you to decide what is best for your happiness or for you to feel good, and I just hope that your God preserves your mental balance.
With kisses and a tweak of the ear,
Love, Rút
Dear Bára,
You write that you’re afraid of losing me because you do nothing for me. But I expect no service from you. After all, the only way you can bind another person to you is by love. All other bonds can be broken, and most of all they feel like chains. In most cases, people want everything from their partners, but as the proverb wisely puts it: He who wants everything usually has nothing. People have only the right to want things from themselves. Except that people expect things anyway. They expect caresses, kind words, understanding and companionship. They even hope that they won’t be forsaken.
People read about the history of the universe over billions of years and most of t
he time they can’t even cope with their own allotted span. I look forward to time with you: it is a time of fullness. I love you and trust you.
Love, Dan
Chapter Seven
1
The candles are burning on the Christmas Tree. Under the pine-tree, as each year, there stands a crib that Daniel started to carve when Eva was still small and he only completed a few years ago. When dinner is over Daniel fetches his guitar, Marek brings his violin, Magda plays the flute and they sing a carol:
The Son of God to us is born
To sinners all upon this morn
Welcome, Lord, Welcome!
By now Magda can’t wait for the presents, of which there are more than usual beneath the tree, and she starts to raise the tempo so much that Daniel suggests she put down her flute.
Being country born and bred, Hana adores Christmas customs: so they pour molten lead and float little boats made out of walnut shells with candles inside. In the past the table would be laden down with cookies and fruit, but there would be few presents: there was little money left over to buy them. But even if they could have afforded more, Daniel took pains to ensure that the joy of the gifts did not overshadow the joy of the message: that by divine dispensation, the curse of sin had been abolished, along with punishment for it. But now he needed to do something to make up for distancing himself from his family, besides which they suddenly had money to spare.
‘Daddy, I’d like to unwrap the presents now!’
‘Hang on for a little while longer, Magda!’
Hana was in the middle of making cookies when, a few days earlier, he went to ask her what she would like for Christmas, and she replied that she didn’t need anything but they could give something to Máša.
What a suggestion!
‘But she’s abandoned,’ his wife explained, ‘she has nobody. Last week she called in to see me and wept. She’s lost her husband and her children. Do you realize how awful that must be for her?’
‘Nothing we can give her is going to cure her loneliness.’
‘But she’ll feel that we are fond of her and thinking about her.’
‘Fine.’
‘She goes around in such a threadbare coat.’
‘If you think so, then you – we – can buy her a coat. But I want to buy you something too.’
‘But I don’t need anything. I’ve got you.’
To conceal his embarrassment, he picked up a tray of filled cookie-moulds and carried it over to the oven. On the way, he skidded on some spilt oil that had been badly wiped up and just managed to catch the edge of the cooker to prevent himself from falling, but all the metal moulds in the shape of stars, pine-cones and hearts tipped on to the floor with a crash.
Everything was falling to pieces, and even the things that still held together, only held together illusorily.
He didn’t buy Máša a coat but took her some money. He noticed that she had a bruise under her eye. Her ex-husband had punched her when she came to collect the children for the weekend. At least that is something Daniel would never do. A reassuring thought that all around him there were people harming each other who had fallen even lower than he.
‘Money won’t help me, Reverend, I have lost the will to live,’ she said.
‘Whatever are you saying, Máša?’
‘Every night I think of jumping off somewhere, from a rock or some bridge, and never waking up again.’
‘Stop tormenting yourself over someone who did not deserve your love.’
‘And what about the children?’
‘You have to get the children back. You’ve lodged an appeal, haven’t you?’
‘I won’t get them back. I know he won’t give in. He has money and knows people, and he wants to destroy me! What have I got?’
‘You have truth on your side.’
‘No one gives a damn about that, Reverend. Money is the most important thing, not truth.’ Máša spoke in a tearful whine, which aroused his aversion rather than his sympathy. As if she were blaming not only her ex-husband but him too.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘You could have a use for the money. You mustn’t give up. We will all be on your side and help you.’ He left the money in an envelope on the little table in the hall and fled.
A time of joy and mirth
has now come to the Earth
for God eternal,
is born of a virgin.
There in Bethlehem town
upon the straw she laid him down …
He lays aside the guitar. Magda can at last distribute the presents.
Daniel looks on in silence. He has been striving the whole evening, since morning, in fact, to revive within himself a festive spirit. But it is beyond him. Instead, he feels a growing sense of uncertainty and shame. He preached about the birth of the Saviour even though he has growing doubts whether the birth occurred in the manner described. And now he is sitting here pretending to be in the same loving relationship with them all as at any other Christmas.
In previous years his mother would still have been here with them at Christmas. The sudden feeling of loss grips his throat. He has lost his mother, as well as the purity of a life unfolding in truth. His mother departed and a woman arrived offering him love or passion or maybe passionate love. He received her and gave up truthfulness and honesty.
Magda revels in her new skates and Marek can hardly believe that they have bought him a real astronomical telescope. (Dad, it must have cost a packet!) Hana went to try on her new skirt. He fobbed Eva off with a CD-player. He should have given her his mother’s old flat, of course, but he needed it for himself.
He had met Bára there the previous week. He had thought long and hard about what might give her pleasure. Their lives tended to impinge on each other outside the world of material things so he didn’t know what she needed, had never looked in her wardrobe, and he had spent such a short time in her flat and in such a state of mind that he had scarcely taken in the individual items. Then he remembered that she had once daydreamed about Barcelona and its warm, bright winters, and about Gaudf. He went to a travel agency and paid for two excursions to Catalonia, leaving the departure date open for the time being. It crossed his mind that it would be wonderful if he could accompany Bára on such a trip, if it were actually to take place, but then he shrank back from his own idea: he would offer the second place to Bára’s older son, of course.
Magda hands her father her own gift: she has knitted him a stripy winter hat. (Do you like it, Dad? It’s fantastic – I didn’t know you were so handy.) From Hana a shirt and a set of gouges, from Eva a book about Plato and Augustine, and from Marek a photo album.
When they were still in the highlands they used to receive gifts from every member of the congregation. The older members brought them food, the younger ones drew them pictures or made little figures out of dough, or plasticine, or even conkers.
A gift may be an expression of love, respect or sympathy, or a ransom for insufficient love, respect or sympathy.
Hana reappears in her new skirt, he pours everyone a glass of wine – even Magda gets a few drops – and they all drink a toast: To love, as is appropriate on a day recalling the Saviour’s birth.
When Bára opened the envelope with the tickets for her forthcoming trip, she looked puzzled, and then she said: ‘You’re out of your mind! Do you really suppose that Musil will let me go to Spain just like that?’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’
‘On my own?’
‘With Saša.’
‘He can’t stand my son.’
‘Maybe he’s open to persuasion.’
‘And how am I to explain to him that I want to travel with Saša and not with him?’
‘He says he’s ill, anyway.’
‘No, he’d never let me go anywhere that was nice, with Saša and without him.’
Marek opens the window slightly and gazes up at the sky, which, as usual at this time of year, is starless. Eva says: ‘What do you think people in pr
ison are doing now?’
*
‘And anyway I can’t accept it from you,’ Bára said. ‘What possessed you to send Saša to the seaside when his own father never sent him there? At least if you were going with me.’ She thrust the envelope back at him, but he refused to take it. Then they made love and Bára suddenly burst into tears: ‘Nobody was ever kind to me the way you are. Why are you always leaving me? Why do you leave me at the mercy of a guy who tortures me?’
Hana sits down next to him. ‘I really like it when we’re all together like this at home and we’re all in a festive mood.’ Quite exceptionally, she kisses him in front of the children.
This is his home: a good home. Why is he leaving it?
When he prays that evening, Daniel asks God for strength and help. He wants to step out of the circle in which he now moves. He wants to put an end to the deception and live in the truth. He has prayed for this on several occasions in the past, but today he feels a vague kind of hope that he’ll really manage to step out of the circle without harming anyone in the process.
When one prays one becomes a believer. One expects neither reward nor profit, nor even an answer; simply a sign that one has been heard. A sign which, even if it came, one could never be entirely sure of.
It is gone midnight when they go to bed. Hana snuggles up to him as usual. Then she asks him if he still loves her and Daniel says yes. Exhausted by the Christmas celebration, Hana quickly falls asleep, while Daniel stares into the darkness and silently asks her for forgiveness and also for help: stay with me and don’t let me fall. Then he can hear Bára’s voice begging him: Don’t forsake me! and he feels a heart pang. Anxiety and love and despair.
2
Diary excerpts
Marek is happy. He has his cloudless sky at last and he and Alois were gazing at the stars until midnight, until I drove them out of the attic. Marek enlightened me about galaxies. There are infra-red galaxies and X-ray galaxies. Moreover, galaxies cluster. Our galaxy belongs to a group of over twenty such clusters and those clusters measure three million light years. The clusters then form nests, and these can contain several thousand galaxies, which span as much as fifteen million light years. Supergalaxies, however, contain millions of galaxies and apparently light takes half a billion years to get from one to the other. The universe is composed of supergalaxies, but between them stretches empty space measuring hundreds of millions of light years.