Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

‘God, he stank like a perfume counter,’ Mrs Venus said the moment Franta had driven off in the direction of the Pankrác prison. ‘Must have done a chemist’s somewhere. And a tobacconist’s too,’ she added, remembering the golden pack.

‘I don’t like it!’ The foreman was staring after the vanished garbage truck as if expecting some message from that direction.

I wanted to know what he didn’t like, but he didn’t like anything: neither the cigarette, nor the kerchief, nor the unexpected visit.

‘Did he say anything to you?’ I wanted to know.

‘What can he say? D’you think he can talk?’ The foreman retrieved his shovel from the recess. ‘That shit’s getting ready for some hanky-panky. We’d better not go anywhere, we’ll have our beer on the hoof!’

The youngster set out to get some beer from the supermarket and I joined him, I said I’d get a snack for myself. Mrs Venus asked us to get her her favourite cigarettes, while the captain wanted a box of matches.

‘I’m somehow half-croaked,’ the youngster was all hunched up as if shaken by the shivers. ‘But last night, have you heard?’

There’d been a real New Orleans band performing in Prague, hardly anyone knew about it, it wasn’t a public performance, but he’d managed to get in. ‘You should have heard them! The pianist they had, a real second Scott Joplin, and the stuff they played! At the end they asked us if we’d like to jam with them. Think of it, them and us!’ The youngster’s cheeks were flushed with excitement. He stopped at the entrance to the supermarket and demonstrated how one of his friends had strummed on a dolly-board. ‘I couldn’t stop myself and tried to blow a little, but I had a sick turn. Surely this must stop some time, don’t you think?’

I said I was sure it would, he just had to be patient.

‘I can join the boys whenever I like,’ he said. ‘We were a happy crew. You saw for yourself how they let me play the solo in the Gershwin.’

‘You played superbly.’

‘You really can’t play it otherwise. I imagine that when he composed it he was thinking of something noble, something…’ he was vainly searching for a word which would describe the blissful state of a spirit creating.

Our daughter told my wife and me about a dream she’d had. She was walking in the forest with her husband when they heard strange soft music. They stepped out onto a clearing and there they saw a tall naked Negro blowing a golden trumpet. The trumpet was so bright it illuminated the whole clearing, filled it with so much light that objects were losing their shadows. Suddenly from all sides brilliantly coloured birds came flying in, perhaps they were humming birds, also parrots and birds of paradise, she’d never seen such birds in the flesh. But her husband noticed that there was a swing hanging between some branches. He sat her on it and then disappeared somewhere. But the swing began to swing on its own accord, the music was still there, a kind of music she’d never heard before. She looked about, trying to discover where it came from, but couldn’t see a single musician. It was then that she realised that the music was coming straight out of the ground, that the stones were humming and the trees singing like some gigantic violin. In the clearing stood some naked people, among whom she also recognised us, and on the shoulders, the heads and the extended fingers of everyone those magnificent brightly coloured birds were perching. She was naked too, but she didn’t feel ashamed because she was still quite small. At that moment one of the coloured birds approached and sat on her hand. Its plumage had colours she’d never seen before. She was also aware of a delicious perfume she’d never smelled before, and it was then she understood that she was in paradise.

‘And what seemed to you most beautiful in that dream?’ my wife wanted to know.

Our daughter thought for a moment and then said: ‘That I was a little girl again.’

Daria attributed my loneliness and reluctance to attach myself to anyone to the stars. I am a saturnian person, my Saturn is in fact retrograde and capricornian, there was a smell of bones coming straight out of it. Love alone could liberate me from my loneliness: real love, embracing my whole being. That was the kind of love she was offering me, to save me. She offered me her proximity, such sharing that I became alarmed. Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of. We are afraid we might lose the person we love. To avoid losing that person we drive him or her away.

She wanted us, at least once in a while, to be together for a few days. At least some movement, some change to that immobility, she lamented. But I resisted so I shouldn’t have to invent more lies at home — surely we’d been together recently.

That I had the nerve to hold that against her! That single night? And you’re with her — she meant my wife — all the time! You’re acting the model husband! The hypocrisy of it! What kind of life are you leading? It’s all so miserable and vile!

I couldn’t think of an excuse. I tried to placate her with presents.

I don’t want you to buy me. I want you to love me!

I do love her, but I can’t go on like this. I’d like to find some conciliation — with her and with all those I am fond of, but I can’t muster the courage to reveal the truth to all of them. And she keeps urging me more and more often: When will you finally make up your mind? Have you no pity at all?

For whom?

For yourself. For me! How can you treat me like this? She cries.

Her husband has gone away. She has remained behind for a week, entirely on her own. One day she’ll be entirely alone with only her stones, they are more merciful than me. What kind of life had I made for her? she cries. Well then, so lie for my sake if you can’t speak the truth for my sake!

At home I say that I’m off to visit a friend whose daughter is getting married.

A good idea, my wife says, you’re always at home on your own, at least it’ll make a change for you. And she begins to wonder what present I should take along for my friend’s daughter. And she’ll bake me a guggelhupf cake for the journey.

But there’ll be plenty of food at the wedding! And we kiss goodbye. It’s shameful. How can I treat her like this!

We arrived at a chalet in the foothills. In the small wood-panelled hall tropical plants are growing and lianas climbing, even though spring has not yet come outside, a black terrier is lying lazily and devotedly by the feet of the woman guarding the door. I stiffen as I show her my identity card, which proves me guilty, but the receptionist cares little about other people’s infidelities, she has her own worries and my lover inspires confidence in her. Indeed the two women chat together as if they’d known one another for years, while the terrier on the floor regards me without interest as I wait in this strange hall like a faithful unfaithful dog.

Our room looks out on the lake. For a while we gaze at the deserted water, then we embrace. She wants to know if I like it here, if I’m glad to be here with her. I assure her that I do and that I am. At our moments of ecstasy we whisper to each other, as we have done for years, that we love one another.

Before supper we set out for a walk. We stroll round the lake and continue through the woods until we find ourselves on a wide piece of flat ground in the midst of which, as in a dream, stands an extensive wooden construction: a pattern of roofs, turrets, silos and metal hoppers. Probably a stone-crushing mill or a building for the shredding of old banknotes, securities and secret documents, all brought here by the lorries which are now parked in the deserted yard. We don’t see a living soul anywhere, only a few rooks cawing from beneath a tall wooden tower. For a while we stand waiting, in case a face appears in one of the windows, or somebody yells at us to get out of here. She is also anxiously looking about in case some vision appears from somewhere in the darkness, but nothing happens, except for the wind making a half-open door creak now and then. We step through that door. In the vestibule, where everything is covered with a layer of grey dust, towers the metallic bulk of some machinery. The huge motionless wheels glisten greasily in the twilight. We climb some rusting iron stairs, up to a boarded platform above the machinery. Through a narrow window we can see the woods and beyond them part of the lake, now darkening in the fading light. Across the sky float drink-sodden faces with reddish noses. Through the cracks in the walls or in the roof rustles the wind. Do you still love me at all? she asks. She picks up some old sacks and rags. She takes off her coat and her soft leather skirt and lays them down on the blackened boards, we make love on the platform of the abandoned mill.