The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  But on one occasion, when he was feeling particularly bad and Hana brought him his medicine for the second time, he had recited to her some of his poems and told her that she had been the inspiration for them.

  Surely not – she replied in astonishment – how could I have?

  Just by being you, he told her. There is something mysterious about you, something oriental and mystical.

  That’s all in your imagination, she commented.

  No. My whole life was meaningless until I met you.

  You sound delirious, she laughed in embarrassment, and even touched his forehead to see if he had a fever, but she took her hand away before he had time to press it to his forehead.

  Now Matouš thinks about that good woman with particular intensity. He thinks about her not only because his solitariness was officially confirmed today, but also because he has an odd premonition that something bad has befallen Hana and that she might perhaps welcome Matouš’s attention.

  He ought to phone her and offer his help should she require it, but at this moment he lacks the will to do anything.

  He who does, loses. All we hold we lose in the end.

  Matouš falls asleep.

  When he wakes up he can hear the boom of the ocean waves and the murmur of the crowd as they watch condemned prisoners being driven away to execution. Curiosity and indifference in the ant heap. Blazing fires.

  Then his mother’s voice intrudes upon him: Mattie, why aren’t you eating? Stop complaining, Mattie, and pull yourself together, everything’s going to be all right again. The touch of his mother’s hand stroking his hair.

  Matouš realizes that it is a long time since he visited either his mother’s or his father’s grave. That’s bad. It is one’s duty to pay respect to those who gave one life, and his mother was the only good woman he had met in his life. Then Matouš’s thoughts stray once more to another woman, to Nurse Hana, and he realizes that he misses her; he misses her voice and her smile, he misses a mother’s love.

  At last he gets up, opens the refrigerator and finds in it a piece of dry salami and gobbles it down. Then he opens a can of goulash and with his fingers he fishes out pieces of meat from the unpleasantly smelling sauce before throwing the can into the pedal bin which emits a swarm of flies the moment he opens the lid.

  He takes a shower and puts on a clean shirt.

  For weeks now his poems have lain waiting on the table in a black binder. He has chosen almost two hundred of them, precisely one hundred and eighty-seven of them, in fact: the ones he feels sure are successful. He resists the temptation to open the binder and read at least the best ones once more – he knows them by heart anyway.

  He lifts the receiver and hesitates for a moment before dialling the number of the manse. Luckily enough, the minister’s wife answers the telephone.

  He announces himself, but apparently she cannot recall his name, as she says: ‘I expect you want to speak to my husband. I’m afraid he’s in hospital.’

  The nurse’s voice is unusually sad.

  ‘Anything serious?’ he asks.

  ‘A heart attack.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry to hear it, Hana. And how is he?’

  ‘Thank you. I think he has got over the worst of it.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Nurse Hana is wrong, because she believes in some medical gadgetry and doesn’t realize that her husband’s life force is fading. She doesn’t realize she will come into his wealth. It is unlikely she gives it a thought. He therefore says once more, ‘I really am glad to hear it, you must have been very worried.’

  ‘I expect you’re calling about your poems,’ the minister’s wife recalls. ‘You promised me them ages ago.’

  ‘Only partly. I just had the feeling all of a sudden that something had happened to you, that something was troubling you and I ought to give you a ring.’

  ‘Troubling me? Oh, yes, there’s always something troubling one.’ The minister’s wife remains silent for a moment and he says: ‘Everything will be all right again, you’ll see.’

  ‘Nothing will ever be the way it used to be,’ says the minister’s wife and Matouš makes out a quiet sob. Then that good woman forces herself to turn her thoughts from her own distress and ask him what his poems are about.

  He says that it is impossible to say in a few words. They are attempts at capturing his moods, but he wouldn’t like to bother her with them now, not unless his poems might bring her a little comfort.

  Yes, that’s something she would need at this moment. From the tone of her voice Matouš recognizes that Hana’s thoughts are divorced from her words. None the less he tells her that poetry is there to console. Like music. Or meditation. Or prayer.

  ‘If you like, and if you happen to be passing, you’re welcome to drop by with them,’ the minister’s wife decides all of a sudden.

  ‘Right away?’

  ‘If you like. I have to visit my husband this afternoon.’

  ‘Thank you, matron. I’ll come in time to spend a little while with you. After all, you visited me when I was feeling low.’

  Matouš is suddenly full of energy. He puts on his most expensive, pure silk tie – a golden Chinese dragon against a blue background – and carefully combs his thinning and already grizzled hair. Then he puts into his briefcase the black binder containing the one hundred and eighty-seven poems that will perhaps, be published after all, just as he might eventually hope to receive some love or at least understanding. At the kiosk by the tram stop he buys three white carnations.

  The minister’s wife opens the door and thanks him for the flowers before inviting him in. She is pale and her eyes are red, either from lack of sleep or crying. If Matouš were to be taken to the hospital, or if he actually died there, who would weep for him?

  Matouš asks after her husband’s health once again. Hana is making coffee and in the process she gives him some of the details in a succinct and matter-of-fact way. Her husband is getting better; if things continue the way they have gone so far, he could be home in two weeks. He is being well looked after in the hospital and he is even in a side ward now, with a bedside telephone.

  Matouš has the impression that her description of her husband is all a bit too professional, as if the sorrow in her face was related to something other than her husband’s illness.

  ‘So there’s no point in upsetting yourself, Hana,’ he says. ‘In any case, you won’t change fate by upsetting yourself.’

  ‘Don’t you think so? There are things I can’t tell you, anyway.’ The minister’s wife pours the coffee into pink cups.

  ‘All the more reason not to upset yourself,’ Matouš repeats. ‘We have to take life as it comes and realize that everything will pass away one day: pain and joy, and in the end ourselves too. Because what are we compared to the sky and the stars? Or even to a tree? At least within trees there is peace, whereas we just wriggle around in the throes of passion, rage, longing and betrayal.’

  The matron sips her coffee. She looks away from him. Then she says: ‘You’re not like I thought you were.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You’re more serious.’

  ‘We all have several faces. And we generally conceal the real one from other people.’

  ‘I always thought there were people who didn’t conceal anything.’

  ‘And don’t you think so any more?’

  ‘I’ve never concealed anything,’ she says, avoiding an answer.

  ‘Everyone conceals something,’ Matouš objects, ‘we all have some secret or other.’

  ‘All right. I’ve never done anything I would have to conceal.’

  Matouš is now convinced that the source of her distress is not merely her husband’s illness. Some duplicity or other has shaken her faith in human goodness. ‘I’m sure that you would be incapable of harming anyone,’ he says. ‘I have never deceived anyone either.’

  He looks at the woman opposite; there is still sorrow in her face, but also kindness. All
of a sudden it is as if he was transported back whole decades: his mother is waiting for him with his lunch and asking how things were in school and he is starting to speak, complaining about his fellow pupils for mocking him or even beating him up. Matouš starts to take the minister’s wife into his confidence. He doesn’t speak about his travels, or about his real or imagined experiences in foreign parts, he speaks about himself, how he was deceived by women he loved, and most of all by the latest one, whom he took into his home and whom he divorced only yesterday.

  Matouš starts to lament over his own goodness of heart and the ingratitude that has been his reward. He also talks about everything he had wanted to achieve in his life, but how he had managed almost none of it, because the world is not well disposed towards people like him, people who don’t elbow their way through life, who lack both influence and property. The world is not wise – it respects strength, not decency and honesty. It’s not interested in real values. People want to have a good time and live it up, regardless of what they destroy in the process.

  The matron listens to him, the same way his mother used to. He has the feeling she agrees with him; subconsciously, Matouš is expecting this nice little lady, this good woman, to rise and come over to him, stroke his hair and say: Stop complaining, Mattie, and pull yourself together, everything’s going to be all right again!

  ‘You’re not part of that world either,’ Matouš goes on to say. ‘That’s why you are in low spirits. People like us ought to get together and live in mutual trust, so as to bear our burden more easily.’

  Hana makes no response to his challenge, to his declaration. She looks at her watch and says, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to dash to the hospital to see my husband.’

  Matouš is taken aback. He starts to apologize for holding her up and heaping his own troubles on her when she has plenty of her own.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it. People often used to come to me like this; I am a minister’s wife after all.’

  Matouš suddenly collapses inside and can scarcely find the strength to get up. He doesn’t even offer to accompany Hana to the hospital or take her there by taxi, seeing that he has delayed her.

  No sooner does he reach the street than he realizes he has forgotten to give Hana his poems. Now he is unlikely ever to show them to her. In fact he is unlikely to show them to anyone at all. His poems will remain hidden like many other people’s verses and, like many other people, he will end his days in loneliness.

  7

  Two days after Daniel was first permitted visitors, Eva appeared in his ward. The dress she was wearing was new to Daniel; it was loose fitting to conceal her condition. ‘Hi, Dad, how are you?’

  ‘It’s getting better every day, thanks. And how about you?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, is there?’ She leans over to kiss him. ‘Well, maybe there is, but at least my life’s not at stake.’

  ‘Life is always at stake.’

  ‘I’ve brought you some peaches.’ She took out a large paper bag. ‘I know what you mean.’ She drags one of the free chairs over to his bedside. ‘I wanted to come yesterday with Marek, but I had two full days at college. And I couldn’t manage it before.’

  ‘Don’t apologize, I’m glad you’re here now.’

  ‘Daddy, I’ve been thinking about you all that time. An awful lot. And apart from that, I was wanting to tell you something. I haven’t told you. Shall I wash you a peach?’

  ‘No thanks. I’d sooner hear what you were wanting to tell me.’

  ‘Right away?’

  ‘It’s best not to put things off.’

  ‘OK. I didn’t tell you that when I discovered what had happened to me with Petr, I felt I just couldn’t leave it like that and I went to the doctor to see about a termination. The waiting-room was full of women and they were almost all talking about the same thing. It made me feel dreadful. I recalled a Scottish ballad about a mother who stabs her baby through the heart and then she meets it and it blames her for laying it in the grave instead of in its cradle. And I also realized that the doctor had known Grandad and most likely knows you too, and that as soon as he saw me he’d say to himself: a fat lot she’s achieved. Or he’ll ask: What does your dad have to say about it?’

  ‘What I’d have to say is hardly the most important thing.’

  ‘I know. I’m just telling you what I felt. I knew you’d be terribly disappointed in me when you discovered what had happened, but there in that waiting-room it occurred to me that you’d have been even sorrier to hear that I had had it killed, that you’d tell me my mother would never have done such a thing. So I got up and left.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Eva. But why do you keep talking about what I’d think or say? It was a question of you and your child!’

  ‘I simply wanted to tell you that I was thinking about you even at that moment. Because I blame myself, Daddy, that I might have been the cause of what went wrong with your heart!’

  ‘I could just as easily blame myself for being the cause of you and Petr going out together.’

  ‘Exactly. I know you expected something else from me. That I disappointed you.’

  ‘No. If anyone disappointed me, it was myself. Remember, you must live in such a way so as not to disappoint yourself.’

  ‘I know, Daddy. But you always wanted me not to be like me but like Mummy.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You saw her in me, Daddy. But I couldn’t be her because I was me.’

  ‘That’s perfectly in order. I’m fully aware of that.’

  ‘But you used to compare me with her more and more. And I couldn’t help but lose every time, because no one can be as good as someone who is already dead, that you only remember the beautiful things about.’

  ‘I must say that never occurred to me. I didn’t realize. If that’s the way you felt, I’m really sorry.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about everything. Ever since they brought you here and we’ve been worrying about you so much. Daddy, when I told you and also wrote to you that I might marry Petr straight away, that was the reason. I wanted to demonstrate that I was someone else. That I wasn’t like Mum, that I was me. But at the same time I knew you were right, and that I ought to wait, that there was a chance I would be making up for a stupidity by committing an even worse one.’

  ‘It’s good you realized.’

  ‘I’m not going to marry Petr. Not for the time being anyway. Not until I can be sure he’ll change.’

  ‘And you’re doing it on your own account, not mine?’

  ‘On my own account.’

  ‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t want you to be blackmailed by my illness.’ He reached out to his daughter and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m glad. Glad that you’ve taken that decision and glad you told me those things.’

  ‘I’d like to help you get better.’

  There was a knock at the door. Then Bára entered with a big bunch of roses. ‘I’ve just brought you a few roses, Reverend. I don’t want to disturb you.’

  His heart gave a painful jolt.

  ‘You can stay if you like,’ Eva said. ‘Dad will be glad of a visit, and I was going anyway.’

  ‘Your daughter looks very well on it,’ Bára said when they were on their own. ‘You’re not cross with me for coming?’

  He took the bunch of roses from her and placed them in the vase on his bedside table.

  ‘I just wanted to come and say hello. To see you and ask how you were. Please don’t be cross with me, I couldn’t bear not being able to see you.’

  ‘For the last time?’

  ‘For the last time, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘I wanted to see for myself that you were getting better.’

  ‘I’m feeling better. I am already up on my feet and I took a walk in the corridor yesterday. Today I’m allowed out into the garden. We could go out there together if you like. Thanks for the beautiful rose
s and for coming.’ He took an envelope out of his bedside table and put it in his dressing-gown pocket. Even though they were now alone, it was better not to stay here.

  ‘I’m not going to take up your time, Dan,’ she said when they came out into the corridor. ‘I really did just want to see you.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘At church, of course. From Ivana.’

  They walked down the steps. Behind the building there were a number of benches on which the sun was now shining. They sat down. ‘What have you gone and done to me, Dan?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I once read that shortly before his death Kafka wrote: My brain and my lungs have ganged up on me behind my back. It looks as if my heart and brain have ganged up behind my back.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘No, on me.’

  ‘The sun doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘Does it bother you that we can be seen here?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything was bothering me.’

  ‘I’ve been missing you, Dan. Awfully. And I was so afraid for you, from the moment you didn’t come that Monday.’

  ‘It’s the first time I didn’t turn up when I promised. I thought about it when I came round, how you must have waited in vain.’

  ‘Dan, that wasn’t important, was it? Nothing was important but your life and ever since Ivana gave me the news I’ve thought about nothing else.’

  He had the impression Bára was holding back tears. ‘I didn’t want to burden you with extra worries on top of all the ones you had already. I never wanted that.’

  ‘You’re hardly going to apologize, are you?’

  ‘Any change at home?’ he asked.

  ‘None. Saša sends his regards. He says he’s thinking about you and hoping you get better. Apart from that, the place is as cold and silent as a freezer. The only warmth I ever got was with you. And when you didn’t turn up I knew something had happened. Something really bad, otherwise you wouldn’t have abandoned me without saying a word.’