Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

The evenings were long northern evenings. When we’d eaten we went back down to the.beach, which by then was deserted. She sat down cross-legged on a rock, gazing at the seemingly cooling sun, while I looked at the dark surface of the water, noticing the menacing cordon of ships on the distant horizon, a cordon designed to block even here the freest and most unfettered area of water, and I also looked at her sitting there statue-like, perceiving how in the silence of the sea, in this marine solitude, she was receding, changing into an unfamiliar being that lived in inaccessible regions, and I couldn’t decide if I was feeling sadness or relief.

We also borrowed bikes and set out early in the morning, not along the road but along sandy paths, along the footpaths which intertwined on the narrow ridge which rises above the sea.

The waves roar and the wind howls, we stop to embrace, to sit down and look across to the distant shores. Then we continue in a westerly direction and our bikes sink so deep into the sand that we have to carry them. Before us lies a dark green expanse of heather, we turn into it; the soil here is black, our path is blocked by an ever thicker tangle of roots, the air is full of whining mosquitoes, our little path has almost disappeared, we don’t know where we are, whether to turn back or go on, path or no path. Our bikes are useless now, we wheel them along, I try to discover the way ahead while she sees the shapes of spirits in the twisting branches and hears the whispering of the dead in the sighing of the wind, the last breaths of suicides and the vain shouts of the drowning, there is a wizard crouching in the undergrowth whose body lacks a soul, and over the treetops the carrion crows circle, soundless and dark. We circumvent pools from which gas bubbles rise up and eventually reach the road. Now she is riding in front of me, her hair, which would be almost grey by now if she didn’t give it a blonde rinse, shines around her head. We are approaching Bad Müritz, where half a century ago our fellow countryman, the unsuccessful lover Franz Kafka, was preparing for his fall into the black pit, where his brittle soul concurred with his sick lungs that they would give up the exhausting struggle.

We are riding through the streets from which they haven’t yet driven out the fin de siècle spirit as they have done so thoroughly from our native city, thirstily we drink beer at a pavement stall, hungrily we sit down at a battered table in a shabby café. We sit opposite each other, far from our near and dear ones, in a strange café in a strange town, we eat cakes, we are silent, we look at one another, and I can see in her eyes a devotion I didn’t believe I’d ever find anywhere, I can feel it invading me deeply, pervading me, settling into every cell of my body. I don’t know how or when I’ll end my struggle, but at that moment my soul is still capable of rising up, of making one last flight to where it belongs, to the place of its longings, to the regions of blissful paralysis from the proximity of a loved being; after that it will fly out to this battered and by now deserted little table, for a last time briefly smile with sudden relief, and then accept its fate.

Later we stand in the cathedral of Güstrow before Barlach’s rising angel. I can see my lover going rigid, rising up to those exalted shapes, moving away from me into heights which I cannot conceive, which my vision cannot reach, where only angels and perhaps the souls of great artists reside. I move away, unnoticed, and sit down in a pew in a corner of the cathedral and wait for her to come back to me.

Nach der Rede des Führers am Tage der Deutschen Kunst in München haben die zuständigen Stellen nunmehr beschlossen, das von dem Bildhauer Ernst Barlach im Jahre 1926 geschaffene Ehrenmal für die Gefallenen des Weltkriegs aus dem Dom in Güstrow entfernen zu lassen. Die Abnahme wird in den nächsten Tagen erfolgen. Das Ehrenmal soll einen schwebenden Engel darstellen und war schon seit langem ein Gegenstand heftigster Angriffe .

(Following the Führer’s speech on the Day of German Art in Munich the appropriate authorities have now decided to remove from the cathedral in Güstrow the memorial created by the sculptor Ernst Barlach in 1926 for the fallen of the World War. The removal will take place during the next few days. The memorial, designed to represent a hovering angel, has long been the object of fierce attacks.)

When eventually she returns to me she has tears in her eyes.

Do you think you could manage an angel like that?

I don’t know. I’m probably not sufficiently obsessed — by stone or by wood.

I don’t ask her what she is possessed by, I know. But I also suspect that there is a burning ambition in her, at the price of exhaustion if need be, to ensure that those who view her work go rigid.

The next day she walks down to the edge of the beach, where the sand has soaked up the seawater, and her fingers, used to creating shapes out of shapeless matter, there create a sand relief of a creature resembling a winged centaur rather than an angel. That creature has my features, except that perhaps it smiles more in all directions. Small groups of sunbathers gather around her and with admiration watch her work taking shape, but she pretends not to notice them, she only wants to know if I like her sand sculpture.

I like it and it’s like me, I answer, in order to amuse her with my pun. My only regret is that this strange creature with my face will not survive the next tide.

What does it matter? Tomorrow, if we feel like it, we’ll make something different. At least we aren’t burdening the world with another creation. This is something we are both aware of: that the world is groaning, choking with a multitude of creations, that it is buried by objects and strangled by ideas which all pretend to be necessary, useful or beautiful and therefore lay claim to perpetual endurance.

We don’t need either objects or creations, she says lovingly, for us it is enough to have one another.

We are together while the day ascends, while the night descends, we are so totally together that it saps our strength, that the fire consumes us, that the heat consumes her till I am alarmed: suppose we are buried in ashes from which we won’t rise again?

I have never been as close to anyone, I have never known a person capable of being so close to me, capable of such passion, of such intensity.

Maybe both of us have been gathering strength all our lives for just this moment, for just this meeting, maybe we have gravitated here in our dreams, to this small room, to this coastal spot, where water, sand and sky blend into each other, where time trickles softly and cleanly, this is where unconsciously we have wanted to come at moments of loneliness. And when our bodies are finally exhausted, when only a few last breaths are left of the northern summer’s night, when I am about to climb down to my bunk, she begs me not to go yet, to stay with her at least here, and so I persevere in immobility, even though I now long to be alone, so many days of absolute proximity have exhausted me and I am longing for a moment of isolation; in the midst of a strange world into which I was snatched I now long for the undemanding routine of home. But have I got a home left? After all, I’m breaking it up myself. My daughter has left, she is a mother now, and my son is leaving very soon. And as for my wife, even if she smiles at me, where is she really at home? What is left of our love?

My yearning is growing within me, a nonsensical regret because it is backward-facing, a regret that my life, against which I want to rebel just now, is running away.

The other woman is lying by my side. She’s asleep. Her breath has gone quieter, her spirit has calmed down. I try to make out her features, I bend down over her, I do not kiss her, I just look at her, at a remote creature whom, despite everything, I have not managed to absorb fully into myself, to accept fully. I climb quietly down and lie on the lower bunk, I gaze into the blackness before me. Outside a tomcat is noisily complaining and the wind is driving a thunderstorm before it. I get up and open the window wide, on the dark sky a soundless flash of lightning now and then lights up the huge plane tree in the garden.