The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  They turned into a field and the path continued uphill. The day was unusually mild for January, only the tops of the distant hills were covered in snow.

  A horse and cart suddenly appeared on the low ridge which they were approaching. It stopped. The person driving it was not to be seen and the motionless horse looked like a statue at that distance.

  ‘When I was still in the highlands,’ Martin recalled, ‘there was only one private farmer left in Herálec. He had a horse – it must have been over twenty years old, but it still outlived his master. That man, before he died, asked to be drawn to the cemetery by his horse, not taken in some car belonging to the undertaker. The trouble was it turned out there was no funeral vehicle to be found anywhere that a horse could be hitched up to. So in the end we covered a dray in black muslin, decorated it with flowers and loaded the coffin on to it.’

  ‘What brought that to mind now?’

  ‘Maybe it was because of that horse standing in front of us. Or perhaps because we happened to be talking about tradition. That fellow wanted to preserve a tradition.’

  ‘Well, people like that are a dwindling band.’

  They walked on in silence for a while and then Daniel made up his mind to ask the favour he had been planning to ask for a long time: he needed someone to stand in for him for a while at work.

  ‘And what would you be doing? Are you going off somewhere?’

  ‘I’ve been offered an exhibition of my carvings,’ he explained. ‘I’d like to rid myself of all duties for a while at least.’

  ‘You could ask Marie, she might be only too happy to do it!’ Then the thought struck him: ‘Those carvings aren’t the main reason, though, are they?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel conceded.

  ‘Something personal?’

  He hesitated a moment. Martin was his best friend, the only real friend he had, in fact. They had never had any reason to conceal anything that went on in their lives. But now he remained silent about something that had transformed him more than anything else in the past. He felt an almost compelling urge to confide in him.

  When Bára first came into his life, the only thing he had been conscious of was deceiving his wife, but as time went by he had become increasingly aware that the deception had spread to everyone he associated with. What is left for someone who conceals the most important thing in his life? Just words, empty words, a smokescreen that he erects around his own deeds. Martin might conceivably understand his feelings, but he could not condone his behaviour, his deception. He would tell him what he knew already: Go and do not sin again! But he knew he did not have the strength to do it. No one would help him out of the trap he was in. Besides he felt ashamed in front of his friend, and the shame was stronger than the need to confide in him. ‘What isn’t personal?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘We’re also preparing to build a diaconal centre in the manse,’ he said as an excuse. ‘It’s Hana’s idea, she’s had enough of working at the hospital.’

  When they got back, there was a message at reception for Daniel to call home. He became alarmed. Hana usually didn’t phone. Anything could have happened: to her, to the children; she could even have found out about Bára. He ought to be prepared with some explanation if that was the case.

  Even over the phone he could tell Hana was upset.

  ‘Sorry I’m disturbing you.’

  ‘There’s no reason to be sorry.’ If she was apologizing, then he wasn’t the reason for the call. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Eva. I thought you ought to hear about it as soon as possible.’

  ‘Has something happened to her?’

  ‘No, nothing that you might think. Dan, I’ve had a long talk with her and she knows I’m calling you. She herself told me to call you.’

  ‘All right. So what’s happened then?’

  ‘She’s expecting a baby!’

  ‘She can’t be … Who with?’

  ‘Petr, of course.’

  ‘No …’ Then he said, ‘I’ll come home as soon as I possibly can.’

  ‘You don’t really have to, if you still have things to do there. We just wanted you to know. And don’t be cross with her. There’d be no point now.’

  4

  Bára

  The plane lands at Barcelona airport shortly after midday. Bára is somewhat ill at ease because it is years since she has travelled on her own, whereas Saša is a pilot’s son and acts as if it was the most normal thing in the world for him to move about an unknown airport. Admittedly, his eyes are red and he sneezes from time to time, but he manages to retrieve his own and Bára’s luggage and to find the stop for the airport bus that is to take them to Catalan Square. From there, according to the map, it is only a short walk to the hotel booked for them by the travel agency.

  The hotel is luxurious. A doorman in purple livery and a red top-hat stands in front of the glass-panelled doors. The front hall is all marble. They smile at Bára from the reception; all they want is her signature and then they issue her with a key. Saša rebuffs the porter who is making for their luggage and he takes his mother up in the lift to the sixth floor.

  ‘Here we are, dear Bára,’ he says to her when he has opened the door, ‘I know I’m not the one you’d prefer to be here with.’

  ‘Now, now, darling,’ Bára says, stopping his mouth, ‘I may have taken you away from your father, but I’ve never rejected you.’

  ‘That’s true,’ her son admits. ‘Shall we unpack?’

  ‘No,’ Bára decides. ‘We’ve come to see Gaudí, haven’t we, not to hang up our clothes.’ And she remembers how at home about a month earlier she first cautiously mentioned the possibility of their all going together to see Gaudí’s buildings. Samuel snapped back that he hadn’t the slightest desire to travel anywhere; as far as he was concerned, Gaudí’s work was more a farewell to the old era than the starting-point of the new one. Then he made a scene about Bára wanting to run away from the jobs she had in hand and enticing her son to idleness, as if he wasn’t indolent enough already and good for nothing. She pointed out that she also had the right to a few days’ leave and it would do Saša good to get away before his allergy came on.

  Samuel generously conceded that he couldn’t stop her from going but he wasn’t going to pay her son’s fare (he always referred to Saša as ‘your son’).

  She felt like saying that he wasn’t going to pay her fare either, but simply commented that she earned enough money to afford to treat her son to a seaside holiday, particularly since it was what the doctors had recommended for him. Samuel did not agree, of course, and it sickened her to argue about money. But Samuel was outraged at the very fact that it had crossed her mind and launched into a monologue about a spoilt mother spoiling her son too. He concluded by offering her a divorce or his own death. He wouldn’t be in her way any more and she wouldn’t have to put up with sickening rows over money.

  Bára said no more, but when she went to bed that evening she wept over the hopelessness of their marriage and her entire future.

  She can feel the tears coming to her eyes once again, but they are not tears of despair. Instead, she feels like weeping because for the first time in many months, or years even, she feels free from the husband who has become her torment. For the first time in her life she is alone like this for a whole week with her son to whom she so often feared showing affection in front of his stepfather.

  They leave the hotel. There is a clear blue sky and a tepid wind is blowing in from the sea. Gone is the suffocating blanket of cloud that hangs over Prague in February. Even Saša is able to breathe without difficulty. A short way from the hotel, as she discovers from the town plan, stands Gaudí’s Casa Mila, nicknamed the stone quarry on account of its colour, asymmetry and massiveness.

  Bára knows the building from photographs, of course, and knows almost everything that has been written about it, but now, standing in front of it, she is overwhelmed by the unfettered gen
ius while feeling somehow overcome by her own ordinariness and insignificance.

  They are fortunate to find that a group of tourists, or rather interested professionals, is just making its way into the building and they manage to tag along behind and see the round courtyard and climb the staircase between the countless pillars. Everything here is unusual, from the lattice work to the windows, not to mention the enormous lamps, and when they climb right up to the roof, they find themselves in a bizarre realm of chimneys, each one of which could be a sculpture by Henry Moore or Miró. Between the chimneys she can see the sky and the towering mountains in the distance. As always when she finds herself somewhere high up, Bára gets an attack of dizziness, but on this occasion it is caused not by the height but by the beauty of the scene. She finds it stunning. She puts her arm around her son’s shoulders and kisses him, before thrusting the camera into his hands and requesting him to take a photo of her beneath a chimney resembling a giant in armour.

  When they leave the roof Saša praises it as ‘really something’ and Bára bursts into tears for the second time today. She weeps because she is happy and also because it never occurred to her husband, whom she has loyally served for fifteen years, that he might grant any of her wishes or do something to please her, which would earn him no more than her love and gratitude. It had taken that pastor for whom she was able to do nothing but show love and gratitude. But what is showing him love when she scarcely has any time left for him? What sort of nonsense is it that she spends her time with someone who torments her and doesn’t have time for someone who is kind and considerate to her?

  They leave Gaudí’s building on their own, but Bára’s impatient thirst is not yet slaked. She is anxious that what she doesn’t manage to see today she never will. After all, she might not live to see tomorrow or some bad news might arrive from home and she’ll be obliged to return immediately.

  So they take a taxi, and since Saša prefers the countryside to the city, they drive to the Parque Güell. They walk past the fairy-tale porter’s lodge and then go up the steps guarded by the terrifying Python, before hurrying through the avenue of palm trees and sitting down on a stone seat covered in crazy ornaments.

  Bára asks her son whether he isn’t bored and promises him she’ll take him to a disco tomorrow and also to a football or tennis match, or a bullfight, if anything of the kind is held at this time of year. Or they can go on an excursion somewhere, maybe to the mountains, that seem so close from here. Saša tells her he is totally happy here and then he remembers his stepfather who is sitting home swallowing tablets instead of sitting here and having a good time. But it’s just as well, because if he were here, they wouldn’t be having a good time.

  We have to call him anyway, Bára realizes, and feels a cold blast of air from her distant home; in a few days’ time she will return to her trap and Samuel will never forget that she opposed him and left without him, and actually took her son with her, even though he had expressly forbidden it. She knows that she has rebelled and will have to pay for it, though it is not yet clear to her in what manner.

  They drive down to the sea and watch the cargo ships in the distance and the enormous cranes. Green buoys rock back and forth beyond the harbour. Bára makes out two seagulls sitting on one of them. Their positions are so perfectly symmetrical and they are so still that Bára is no longer sure whether they are real or carved. She gazes at them steadily while Saša inhales the sea air which is free of the swirling pollen that suffocates him at home. At least a quarter of an hour passes and the gulls are still motionless. Perfect symmetry, Bára realizes, and in her mind she confides it to Daniel. Like the perfect order that Samuel dreams of, it means the end of life and it’s even the death of art since it precludes shifts or movement and rules out surprise. And yet art has always sought symmetry: in drawing, in verse, in music, in building, in ornament. It seeks paradise but falls prey to the urge for death. Wasn’t that like religion? It seeks to confine life and love within an order, by means of regulations and proscriptions. It makes it a sin to break them and therefore banishes any freedom and movement from life. Happily, from time to time, some wayward soul is born, some Gaudí, who questions the prevailing order and symmetry, in order to rescue life.

  Finally, in obedience to the same law of life, the gulls move and both fly off together and soar above the waves.

  As Bára and her son make their way back, their route takes them through a market where exotic birds are being sold. Saša enthuses over the rich colours of the Amazonian parrots, as well as the toucan and the cockatoo’s golden coronet. They could buy one of them and take it home. His stepfather could get himself a coronet too, so everyone could see he’s the chief. And Aleš would be sure to love a parrot.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Bára tells him. ‘We’ll bring home a parrot and it’ll split on me when it overhears me telling someone on the phone that I love him.’

  Before they go for their dinner, Bára calls Sam from the hotel. As soon as she picks up the receiver it emits a long and, to her ears, plaintive tone, but she finds precise instructions alongside the telephone and she manages to dial the Prague number.

  Samuel answers, which means he’s alive and has survived her rebellion. Bára informs him that they have arrived safely and that it is lovely there. It’s a pity he didn’t come, she tells him, the Gaudí is unforgettable and Saša feels better.

  Samuel remains silent, so she asks him how he is, but he continues to say nothing. The telephone is dead, maybe they have been cut off or Samuel has hung up.

  So Bára calls again, but this time nobody answers the phone at the other end. Samuel refuses to talk to a wife who has disobeyed him.

  It is humiliating. Bára feels as if she has proffered her hand to someone who has refused to shake it and she is aware of her blind submissiveness. She called Samuel instead of calling Daniel and telling him she loves him. So she dials another number. The telephone rings for a long time and then at last a girl’s voice answers at the other end. Bára asks Magda if her daddy is at home.

  ‘He’s leading a Bible study class,’ and Magda wants to know if she is to give Daddy a message.

  It is evening and they go out once more into the street. They find a restaurant offering Catalan food and wines at reasonable prices. The waiter chooses them a table by the window. It is a table for five but there are no places taken so far. In her newly learnt Spanish, Bára orders three kinds of fish for herself and rabbit in an olive sauce with rice for Saša. She orders herself some red wine and orange juice for Saša who refuses wine.

  Saša tries to entertain his mother by reading out suggestions for excursions to her from the guidebook: gothic bridges and castles, a Roman fortress, poetically foreign-sounding names like Sant Pol de Mar, Castelló d’Empúries, Torroela de Montgrí, Vendrell – Casals’ birthplace. And the Pyrenees are not far away either.

  ‘Listen, darling,’ Bára interrupts him, ‘we’re only here for six days and we can’t see everything, and I’m not going mountain-climbing – you know I’ve ruined my lungs with smoking.’

  Saša leafs through the phrase book for a moment and then announces ‘Pues yo me he quedado con algo de hambre. Pediré algo más.’ Bára asks him if an ice-cream sundae would suffice and she realizes with emotion that this is the first time she has been with her son acting as a chaperone and companion, that for the first and maybe last time she is sharing something special with him alone. She would like to hug him, her little boy, and say: Forgive me, I’ve bungled so many things in my life, but she simply says: ‘Have a giant sundae or whatever you fancy.’

  Before bringing the ice-cream and another glass of wine for Bára, the waiter grumbles that the place is very full this evening and asks politely if he may sit a customer at their table.

  Bára agrees – they’ll be leaving shortly anyway – so the waiter brings the customer over. It’s a man, although he looks more like a black-haired demon, if one accepts that demons can be as handsome in their fallen state as th
e angels they once were. The man has a large devilish nose, long, dark Arabic hair, a high forehead like Bára’s, eyes even darker than hers and broad kissable lips. He is dressed entirely in black apart from his snow-white shirt. He bows and excuses himself in Spanish, telling her his name, the only bit of which Bára manages to understand is the Christian name, which she takes to be Anselmo, although she can’t be sure. So Bára introduces herself too and she admits that Saša is her son.

  Saša eyes the fellow with distrust and obvious displeasure. He wants to be alone with his mother and so he tells her he needn’t wait for the ice-cream. But Bára has already ordered it and she doesn’t feel they need to rush off anywhere. It’s nice here, after all.

  On hearing this strange tongue, the demon Anselmo asks in English where they are from and Bára tells him, ‘From Prague.’

  ‘Oh, Praga, Praga,’ the man says. He was in Prague five years ago and saw the paintings from Picasso’s classical period in the gallery there. Does she like Picasso?

  Bára says she has had little opportunity to see the originals of his pictures.

  So she must not miss the opportunity to see a collection of paintings by the young Picasso, because without that it is impossible to understand his genius. A man who at the age of fourteen had mastered technique to the extent of painting like Leonardo or Van Dyck could not help overthrowing the old forms and conventions and going on looking for newer and newer forms of expression.

  Bára replies that they would be sure to visit the museum as they were here for another six days.