Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

From that article I read him just a few introductory sentences on communism, which had become the highest form of freedom of the individual and the human race, and in consequence provided the writer with an unprecedented scope, whereas in the USA, that bastion of unfreedom, the greatest artists, such as Charlie Chaplin, had to escape.

My visitor smiled. He considers it more acceptable to have to listen, voluntarily and for no pay, to jerkish babbling than to destroy and pollute the landscape for good pay, to mine the ore from which others would produce an explosive device capable of turning everything into flames.

What stands at the beginning and what at the end? The word or fire, babbling or explosion?

Speaking of explosions, my visitor was reminded that in his little town some unknown persons recently blew up the monument of the ‘workers’ president’. The president had died more than thirty years ago, my visitor does not remember him. All he knows about him is that he brought upon us all that ‘highest form of freedom of the individual and the human race’, and also that, in its name, he had masses of innocent people liquidated, including his own friends and comrades. My visitor wanted to hear how I felt about the destruction of monuments. It is my impression that people don’t take any notice of monuments, especially the new ones, or if they do there is nothing about those statues that could impress them. After all, what appeal can one expect of shaft-boots, overcoats, trousers and briefcases, with on the top, accounting for less than one-sixth of the whole, a face behind which we detect neither spirit nor soul? What I mind about the monuments of officially proclaimed giants is that they are ugly and mean, in other words that they disfigure their surroundings. But then it would be difficult to imagine different ones, considering whom they have to represent and given the abilities of the artists from whom these statues are commissioned for a fat fee. Besides, there are so many things disfiguring this world! If we were to destroy them all, where should we stop? To destroy is easier than to create, and that is why so many people are ready to demonstrate against what they reject. But what would they say if one asked them what they wanted instead?

The young man nodded. He hoped his studies would help him find what to aim for himself. He apologised briefly for having kept me up so late and vanished into the night.

The Buddhists have their own vision of the apocalypse. Once all our good deeds, love or renunciation no longer offset our crimes, the equilibrium between good and evil in the universe is upset. Then snakes, crocodiles, dragons and many-headed monsters will emerge from all the openings in the earth and from the waters, breathing fire and devouring mankind. This will restore the disturbed equilibrium, and harmony of silence and nothingness will reign once more.

Night and silence and nothingness. In the sleeping city distant people and near ones, friends and strangers are all swallowed up by darkness. Where in all this darkness have we lost our God?

The questioning intellect normally penetrates into the depths of the individual, the world and the universe until it encounters the boundary beyond which mystery begins. There it either stops or else rushes on, failing to realise, or reluctant to realise, that it calls out its questions into the void.

In his questioning Kafka stopped at the very first step, at himself, because even here he’d entered an impenetrable depth. In a world in which the intellect predominates more and more, the intellect which believes that it knows everything about the world and even more about itself, Kafka rediscovered the mysterious.

Unexpectedly the telephone rang. I ran out to the hall, lifted the receiver and identified myself, but there was silence at the other end. It was listening to me, silently. I replaced the receiver and lifted it again. The silence had gone, the dialling tone was buzzing.

That was you?

You aren’t angry, are you, darling? Were you asleep? I’m here on my own. I was lying in bed, reading, and suddenly I thought this was nonsense: to lie here and read about another person’s life. I’m sad. Aren’t you?

Just now?

Just now… And altogether. I do something and then it hits me: why am I doing it, and for whom? Now I’m lying here, everything is quiet, but why should I be lying here? I don’t need any rest when tomorrow I won’t be alive anyway. You assured me that you were happy when you were with me, that you’d never experienced anything so complete. Was that a lie then?

Surely you’d have known if I’d told you a lie at that moment.

So why don’t you come? Tell me what has changed, in what way have I changed that you don’t even ring me? What wrong did I do to you?

You didn’t do me any wrong, but we just couldn’t go on. Neither me nor you. It was impossible to carry on that divided life.

And like this one can live? Don’t tell me you’re living. Tell me, you really believe you’re living?

Surely living doesn’t only mean making love.

It doesn’t? I always thought it meant just that to you. So what, in your opinion, does have any meaning? Eating and sleeping? To botch up some important work, some great piece of art?

What I am trying to say is that one can’t indulge in love at any price. Like at the expense of others.

You think that’s what we were doing?

You don’t think so?

You are asking me? You who were always ready to sacrifice me? As if I wasn’t a human being at all, as if only she was one. Why don’t you say something? You’re angry now. Wait, wait a moment, surely you admit that you’ve always decided against me.

I didn’t decide against you, I wasn’t free to decide for you.

That didn’t worry you in some respects.

It worried me precisely in the respect you’re talking about.

You’re making excuses, you’ve always only made excuses. You know very well that you never gave me a chance.

A chance of what? Weren’t we together enough?

You were never only with me. Not even a week. Not even a day! You were never with me except secretly. Even by the sea…

Don’t cry!

And I believed you. I thought you loved me and would find some way for us to remain together. At least for a time.

I did love you. But there was no way round. Surely people aren’t things which you can move to another place when they seem to have served their purpose. I could only either remain here or join you.

You’re so noble about other people. But you calmly moved me as far away as possible when I’d served my purpose. Wait, wait, tell me one more thing: are you happy at least? Don’t you regret anything? Why aren’t you saying anything? If you’ve no regrets about me don’t you at least have any about yourself?

You think I should have regrets about myself?

Surely it’s sad if a person has loved somebody and then loses him.

I know, but a person can lose something worse.

What is there that’s worse for a person to lose?

Perhaps his soul.

Your soul? You lost your soul with me? You shouldn’t have said that! What do you know about the soul? You’re just a pack of excuses!

The morning rises from the autumnal mists and the sky slowly turns blue. On the far bank of the river, ever since dawn, there has been a rapid procession of cars escaping for the weekend from the polluted city. Over breakfast I’d read a poem in the paper by the leading author writing in jerkish:

Chain of Hands

Who knows who knows

where beauty is born

where happiness seeks us

why love trusts us

People people

maybe that day is dawning

when children may play

everywhere is white peace