Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

She came over to me almost instantaneously. Unfamiliar, almost strange in a long poppy-crimson dress. Even her features seemed strange to me, the little lines which I’d so often touched with my lips were skilfully covered by a layer of cream and powder. She kissed me, as no doubt she’d kissed other guests as well, and whispered that she loved me. Then she asked me if I wanted to meet her husband. She declared herself as belonging to me in front of everybody — ‘My lover’ — and I suddenly wasn’t sure whether I was pleased about it or not.

After all, why shouldn’t I shake hands with you? her husband said to me and gave me a slightly injured smile. Although I’m not exactly short, he was a head taller than me, and also ten years younger. At first glance he was one of those men women run after of their own accord. He said that Daria had worked pretty hard these past few weeks, they’d scarcely seen her at home, and he shrugged as if to say: And on top of everything there’s you and that’s really a bit much. But instead he said he’d read my new stories, and this would have been the right moment for me to shrug but he gave me his injured smile again and walked away. I hung about near the door but lacked the courage to make a getaway. I had a feeling that they were all furtively watching me, for the moment I had become one of the exhibits. I might have a little card by my feet: Banned but active in another field. Or: The lover presented. Or simply: That’s him!

In the last room Daria’s sister, whom I had likewise never seen before, was setting out canapés from cartons on a little table and pouring wine into paper cups. I took a canapé but I declined the wine because I was driving back that evening.

An elderly man whom I knew from somewhere took a drink and said that it was years since he’d seen anything so free and so liberating. He was looking at the sister but I was sure he was talking to me.

That’s what she’s like, her sister agreed. When she was small she’d run away from home and play truant from school.

Her husband was approaching and I beat a hasty retreat. I was unable not to take notice of him, even though, to my own surprise, I looked upon him without jealousy, as if it were no concern of mine that she lay down by his side night after night. I only felt a little embarrassment, shame and perhaps even guilt. That man had never wronged me, whereas I had for several years now secretly and insidiously worked my way into his life.

She guessed my mood and hurried over to comfort me. Her husband was leaving now, he’d be taking the rest of her family with him, the whole circus would be over in a little while, there’d only be a few friends left whom she hadn’t seen for years and whom she’d like to invite for a glass of wine, also the representatives of the gallery, they’d promised to buy one or two of her things, but that too would soon be over and then there’d be just the two of us.

I asked if there was anything I could do, but there wasn’t, her sister had already gone to reserve two tables. I would have liked to tell her how pleased I was that the exhibition had been a success but I was somehow paralysed and she’d run off before I could pull myself together.

Her husband was still not leaving, maybe he needed to demonstrate his satisfaction. I could hear his loud, good-natured, jolly laugh. He might stroll over at any moment, slap me on the back and tell me that in spite of my gaucherie I seemed quite amusing, he’d expected worse. Indeed, he felt some sympathy with me. On top of all my problems I’d landed myself with his wife! Perhaps we should finally settle this business.

I thought I was choking in that close and stuffy space.

Outside I was surprised by the bright lights. I didn’t know the small town; although we’d spent a lot of time here during the past few days we’d had no time for a walk. Now I chose a narrow street which ran steeply downhill. Somewhere in the neighbourhood there was obviously a fair: the wind carried snatches of roundabout music to me and I was meeting children with coloured balloons, hooters and large puffs of candy-floss.

I used to love fairs, the sideshows of conjurers, fire-eaters and tightrope walkers, but I couldn’t recall when I’d last been to one. Over the last few years I’d neglected all my interests except one, all my friends, all my near and dear ones, everybody except one. Most of all I’d neglected my work.

I wasn’t satisfied with the way I was spending my life, but I couldn’t blame anyone for it except myself. I’d come to the end of the little street and below me lay a wide open space. Above the merry-go-round shone a wreath of deceptive but alluring lights and the circus tent was decorated with red and blue pennants. Gigantic white swans made a pretence of noble flight.

For a moment I stopped at my slightly elevated vantage point and watched the crowd milling below me. I longed to mix with it, not to have to worry about anybody, not to think of anything, of my guilt or my lies, even of my love, not to step into anyone else’s life, not to belong to anyone, to move freely and unrecognised in the crowd, to catch snatches of conversation and human faces, to dream up incidents which I would shape according to my will, to have before me something other than perpetual escapes and guilty returns.

My wife maintains that I am unable to forget my wartime experiences. They, she says, are preventing me from getting close to another person: I know I would suffer when I lost that person too, but I cannot believe that I would not lose them. I remain alone, even though I am seemingly by her side. Clearly I would remain alone by anybody’s side.

I ought to be getting back, I wouldn’t like to spoil my lover’s day of success with my moodiness. But I went on to a shooting gallery and asked the dolled-up beauty there for an air rifle. I scored enough to win a little bear on an elastic string and a parrot made of colourful rags and feathers. As I accepted my fairground trophies it struck me that they were more appropriate to me than those fantastic sculptures which I’d just left behind.

One of the rubbish searchers had just caught a red flag with his hook. With a great effort he extricated it from underneath the mass of ashes and other filth, rolled it round his pole, and when he’d got it out eventually waved his wife over and together they unrolled the rag. When they’d opened it out in the wind we could see that it was really a red flag which was now flying above the mountain of garbage.

The Khmer Rouge did not fill the void in their souls with objects or with the money they so despised. They understood that the void in the soul cannot be filled even by all the objects in the world, and that was why they tried to fill that void by human sacrifices. But the emptiness of the soul cannot be filled by anything, not even if the whole of mankind were driven to the sacrificial block: the emptiness would continue, terrifying and insatiable.

Everything on earth is gradually transformed into rubbish, into refuse, which must then, in one way or another, be removed from the earth — except that nothing can be removed from it. Some time ago our jerkish newspapers reported that some Czech inventor had invented a machine for the destruction of old — that is, useless — banknotes, securities and secret documents. Abroad, the article claimed, banknotes were destroyed in crushing mills the height of a two-storey building. The compressed waste mass, however, was so dense that each kilogram of it had to be doused with half a litre of petrol before it would burn; in contrast, the Czech invention did not exceed the dimensions of a medium-sized machine tool. This splendid machine, quite possibly the invention of none other than our captain, produced a shredded mass which could then be fed by pipes into the boiler of a central heating system: thus not only was petrol saved but also a lot of precious hard coal.