by Ivan Klíma
A feeling of regret and sympathy for Daniel starts to grow in Hana and she might even be ready to forgive him. God forgives our sins, so we humans should be ready all the more to forgive others. But at the same time she can feel a growing anger towards the other woman who wanted to usurp Daniel for herself, ignoring the fact he had a wife and children, heedless of the fact that he was actually suffering, not caring that she was driving him to despair and hounding him to his death.
Hana feels a need to do something, to change something straight away, to find the other woman and tell her what she thinks of her, tell her she’s a murderer, a mean, selfish and self-seeking murderess.
Only she doesn’t know who the woman is or where to look for her. She had only managed to make out that her mother lives somewhere in the Small Quarter and that she herself lives in some sumptuous villa, apparently in Hanspaulka. Women like that tend to be spoilt, and think they have to possess everything they take a fancy to, from clothes and perfumes to a man they find attractive.
Daniel knows her name, of course, and knows where to find her, except that she can’t ask Daniel anything, not now at least. It would agitate him so much, he might die. Although it might be a relief for him to rid himself of the burden of deception.
I have to think of a way, it strikes Hana, to indicate to him that the worst thing for him in his situation is to suffer mentally, to torment himself over the things he has done and the way he has lived.
Hana cannot stay any longer in this confined space with this black notebook, tempting her to open it once more and read it through properly, except that she is terrified to open it again and read the terrible testimony that Daniel has penned in the confusion of his heart.
If only she had someone she could confide in, but she knows that she has no one like that in the world; the only person she was close to has let her down.
Hana wipes her eyes and goes to the bathroom where she rinses her face with cold water. Then she tells the joiner that she couldn’t find the plans but will ask her husband about them at the hospital.
Then she hugs Magda and says, ‘Oh, my poor little girl!’ And before Magda has a chance to ask why she is supposed to be poor, she leaves the flat and rushes back to the hospital.
5
Daniel had been moved on to the general ward.
He was no longer tormented by physical pain, but only aware of the void into which he would sink again and again. On several occasions, mostly at night, he wept for pity.
Everyone here was kind to him and called him Reverend. ‘Should you need anything, Reverend,’ the fellow in the next bed offered almost as soon as they had brought him in, ‘you have only to say. I can already walk about normally.’ He had obviously been informed in advance.
Daniel needed nothing. He wanted to call Bára and tell her what had happened to him; explain why he hadn’t kept their date and why it was unlikely he would ever keep a date again. But nobody could make that call for him. He actually had a telephone at his bedside and all he needed to do was lift the receiver, but the mere thought of doing so set his heart thumping so rapidly that he felt a pain in his chest.
After lunch, Marek and Magda visited him. Magda had cut some daffodils from the garden for him. While she was sticking them in a vase she asked how he was and whether he still had a pain. She made do with a single-word reply and without prompting announced that she had got three As, although, because of a fatal oversight, she got an E for maths. ‘I’m going to be an actress, anyway,’ she consoled herself and him.
‘What will you act in?’
‘I don’t know – something to make people laugh. And to become famous.’
‘Magda,’ Marek rebuked her, ‘Dad’s feeling rotten and you just talk drivel.’
Apparently they had said nothing to Magda about his actual condition, so she had no inhibitions about gossiping like that, whereas Marek wore a serious expression. ‘I really regret not going to church for your sermons a few times, but now I’ve been praying for you and I’ll start going to church again,’ he declared in a previously prepared apology and statement of intent.
He was touched by his children. He felt regret, even shame. ‘That’s nice of you. But only do what you are convinced is right.’ He stopped short and then he added, ‘If you have sufficient strength and determination.’
‘Exactly,’ said Marek, ‘that’s my concern.’ He also brought an important message from Alois: they were postponing the wedding until Daniel returned. ‘Because he wants you to marry them, and nobody else.’
‘That’s nice to hear, but tell him I don’t know when I’ll be coming back. Tell him it doesn’t matter who blesses them, it means the same thing. And it’s chiefly up to them if they are to be happy together.’
‘They will be,’ Marek promised on their behalf. Not a word was uttered about stars or the universe. What do his children believe in, in fact? What will become of them, how will they live? Would he ever find out, even if his heart did get better? One never finds out the important things.
‘We’ll help you,’ Marek said finally, as he was saying goodbye.
‘What with?’
‘Everything, of course.’
When it came to the fundamental issue one had to help oneself. What was the fundamental issue? How one lived, of course.
‘You have nice children, Reverend,’ his neighbour said after Marek and Magda had left. ‘And well-behaved too, I expect.’
‘Yes.’ And once more he was seized with regret.
‘You’ll have to get back to them soon. But what is one supposed to do for one’s health? I thought to myself that as soon as I’m able to get about a bit I’ll make a trip to Częstochowa or Medjugorie, or even to Lourdes. What do you say, Reverend? Do you think Our Lady will help with heart trouble too?’
‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘You’d do just as well to visit some healer in Smíchov or Košíře.’
‘Don’t you believe in her miraculous power, then?’
‘No one will save us from death here on earth. Even Lazarus, who Jesus might actually have raised from the dead, died once more. Maybe the very next day. Or the year after.’
‘I heard one priest saying how some famous scientists in America had measured the power hidden in the human brain when it’s dying,’ his neighbour said. ‘In the case of a believer, that power is five hundred degrees positive and twenty-five times stronger than one of the most powerful radio stations in America.’
Daniel turned his back on the man. What made everyone want to talk to a clergyman about metaphysical problems? Why did they have to reel off to him all the obscurantist nonsense they’d ever heard? Would they even come and bother him when he was on his deathbed?
‘In the case of an unbeliever,’ his neighbour went on to say, ‘the power was five hundred degrees negative.’
‘Please don’t tell me any more,’ Daniel requested him. ‘I’m a Protestant minister and my father was a doctor. I don’t believe in such nonsense.’
The man relapsed into an aggrieved silence.
When Daniel first came round in the intensive care unit a week earlier, his wife was sitting facing him and stroking his hand. At the time, the pain permeated his entire body. Then it gradually receded and he could distinctly hear a familiar melody and a huge mixed choir singing faultlessly the old Calvinist hymn:
How beauteous is the blue sky,
It wondrously doth bless.
This gift to man from God on high
Is so hard to express.
How often, though, the light of dawn
Is hid by evening’s fear.
Man wakes perplex’d and all forlorn
And trust doth disappear.
Tears started to flow from him and fear concealed the light. He didn’t know what he feared more, death or life. He closed his eyes and whispered to Hana, ‘Am I dying?’
‘Don’t worry, everything will be all right.’
After that he no longer heard a coherent melody, just a weary, monotonous
drumming.
Ever since then, Daniel had pondered on his life. The drugs that they introduced into his bloodstream filled his mind with disconnected images. They were mostly images from his own life: long-forgotten fragmentary memories and phrases were washed up and then dissolved. Faces the way they looked long ago. His mother lighting a candle before a storm, her face still unwrinkled; the high forehead, the Byzantine nose, and the halo of hair around her head. Father returning from prison emaciated, his eyes lost in the depths of their sockets. Who is this man picking him up? I’m frightened of him, he’s a stranger. His sister, whose pigtail always tempted him to pull it, waits for him at some station, or maybe it isn’t his sister; can it be Jitka? Jitka laid out in the closet. Jitka-no-longer, just her body. May I lift the sheet? No, don’t, Reverend, the image will only haunt you afterwards. I want to see her once more. It would be better to remember her alive. The cold touch of her cheek on his lips. Hana in a long white dress with a posy of white roses. Dan, I trust you, you’ll never let me down. Nor you me, I’m sure. Children running in the garden of the country manse. A dog barking: come to think of it, what was its name? Daniel just cannot remember, as if it mattered at all that the bitch was called Diana. Don’t cry, my little Eva. But my ear aches. Mum will give you something warm to put around it. It’s a boy. Reverend, if you’ll wait there we’ll bring him to show you. Marek Vedra, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Magda, whatever possessed you to throw spiders at people? And suddenly that unexpected woman: Don’t forsake me! Darling, don’t be cross with me for pouring out my unhappy soul to you in such a miserable way. I miss you. I just want to tell you that I’m happy that you’re alive and thinking about me.
The pain near his heart again. Maybe he should call the nurse.
Don’t think about anything that might upset you!
Augustine was the first one to talk about the heart as the site of love. A father of the church, Bishop of Hippo. During his life he had several quite worldly loves and he wasn’t too worried about being unfaithful to his betrothed. For him love was the highest attribute, the true form of God. Love of God is simply a reflection of our capacity to love man.
Mount Durmitor. Dannie, would you dare tackle that chimney?
If you’ll anchor me!
Lord Jesus, be with all those who are suffering and ill, and also with all those who in these moments are dying. Be with my wife and don’t forsake her; look down on her in your love. Do not forsake me!
I am sated with you. You fill me with love. You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me in my life. I share everything with you, Dan. Sorrow, pain and even this anxiety. I’ve fallen in love lots of times, Daddy. I wish you a life of love, and that you should dwell in mercy, understanding, freedom and kindness.
Daniel lifted the receiver and started to dial Bára’s number. If her husband answers, he’ll replace the receiver. If she takes the phone, he’ll simply tell her he’s in hospital and still alive.
For a moment, he had the impression he had stopped breathing.
There was a ringing tone. He waited. The ringing tone continued; he realized his hand was shaking.
Apparently there was no one at the other end. Should he take it as an omen?
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ his neighbour chips in. ‘The telephone costs you three times as much these days and you don’t get through anyway.’
Daniel hung up.
‘Even if you are a Protestant,’ his neighbour returned to his favourite topic, ‘I don’t see how you can reject the Virgin Mary. We should all work with her for the salvation of the world.’
We can’t work for the salvation of the world unless we work first of all for the salvation of ourselves. Who will help us, seeing that the mother of Christ and her son have long ago rotted in their graves? Will we manage it without the help of someone above us? The starry heaven above us and the moral law within us.
Fortunately, the door opened with a creak. It wasn’t Hana but quite a young nurse. ‘How are you feeling, Reverend?’
‘Not too bad, thanks!’
‘In a few more days you’ll be out running …’ She stopped short; she was probably about to say: running after the girls, but such encouragement seemed out of place for a clergyman. Clergymen don’t run after girls. They try to live according to God’s commandments as best they can. And they pray to Almighty God, as long as their faith remains. And when they don’t live according to the commandments and their faith dwindles, so that all that remains are empty words? Then they can run after the girls, but they try to conceal them from the rest of the world. When they succeed, they don’t conceal them from their consciences, or their hearts. Then their hearts fail.
Daniel pondered on what had happened to his life. The other woman was now very remote and seemed to him like a dream, as if from another life. It was odd, almost incredible, that just a few days ago they had lain in each others’ arms and made love. Had it been bad or just human, the way he had behaved?
One succumbs to a longing for love, for new companionship, for feelings that seem stronger than all other feelings. These then overwhelm the sense of duty and promise of fidelity, putting at risk everything: family, reputation, honour, and in the end, one’s life too. But now, as he lay here with only a remote possibility of seeing the other woman, and the illness widening the gulf between them, not only in space but also in time, Daniel was overcome with shame and regret for what he had dissipated, and above all that he had deceived his nearest and dearest. Hana showed him love even though he had betrayed her and that made him feel ashamed. He didn’t know whether he would live or how he would live, he only knew that he oughtn’t to go on living the way he had been: in deceit and duplicity.
6
Matou
Matouš leaves the courthouse. Even though he feels that the woman judge who has just released him fairly willingly from the shackles of marriage has removed his life’s heaviest burden from him, he is overcome by nostalgia. He stops outside the front entrance. Although he won’t admit it, he is waiting for Klára.
Finally Klára appears and notices him. She seems to hesitate for a moment, wondering whether to walk past him disdainfully as if he was of less interest than the window display of some boutique, but then she stops and says: ‘Ciao then, you poor old devil. Enjoy yourself!’
She then permits Matouš to light her cigarette before walking away on high heels towards a Honda car in which some foreign devil is waiting for her. She climbs into the seat next to him and then drives out of Matouš’s life, probably for good.
Matouš should feel relieved and light-headed at the prospect of a future of calm stretching out before him as well as the fulfilment of his destiny, but instead his legs become heavy.
He walks home, takes off his coat and stretches out on the bed. He lies there for a long time, several hours, gazing up at the ceiling and slowly drags himself through the thicket of hopeless contemplations. On the bedside table there is a jug of wine from the previous day, along with a loaf of bread going stale and a bowl of boiled rice with peanuts. There is no knife to hand so he simply breaks off lumps of bread and slowly chews them. There is also a pile of books by the bed. From time to time he picks up the topmost one and leafs through it for a while before tossing it to one side.
The ceiling is covered in cracks and the dirty threads of cobwebs which flutter in the draught that wafts into the room along with the screech of tram wheels and the din of lorries.
Faces flicker across the greyish surface of the ceiling. Some of them are savage and long forgotten, others are familiar: they are alive, more alive than all the faces of actors and non-actors that move across the television or cinema screens. Women whom he trusted or on whom he even showered love, while knowing they would leave him in the end, scowl and leer at him. He tries to ignore them and to ignore Klára who wantonly tumbles into bed with unknown men.
His thoughts turn to the nurse whom he now takes the liberty of calli
ng Hana. He has already been twice to the church and listened to the confused litanies of her husband, whose aura has already totally disappeared, or possibly Matouš has not been able to concentrate enough to make it out. The time that Matouš was invited to lunch by the minister’s wife, he actually had a conversation with the minister. He had felt an unconscious need to take issue with that follower of the resurrected Christ. Did the minister know that the Chinese, the world’s most populated nation, had managed to get by without believing in a god and yet the people did not live any less morally than in those places where they acknowledged a god or gods? The minister was aware of this. In the East, he said, there was less individualism and people were more obedient to an order that had been established over centuries.
Did that mean that concepts of a god or gods and an immortal soul were simply products of our individualism, of our reluctance to countenance the extinction of our own selves?
The minister said that was not what he had in mind, although anxiety about the extinction of the self certainly played a role in our notions of God.
The minister was either incredibly conciliatory or was consumed with doubts of some kind. Either about himself or about God.
Matouš has only spoken to the minister’s wife a couple of times since he promised her his poems, and he still hasn’t taken them to her. He has been waiting for some more suitable moment: he has the feeling that his poems ought to crown his acquaintance with that woman, rather than be an opening gambit.