Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

The dusk is obliterating her features. I see her now as I saw her when we first met. I feel as though I were returning to those days, or rather as though I was outside any definite time. With her I am outside anything, and that emptiness bewitches me. I am tossed by the waves, I rise up in my net so high that I can see absolutely nothing from it.

The floorboards are creaking, the wind is rattling some loose corrugated iron, grains of dust are swirling in the air, but these sounds merely heighten the silence in here, the absolute isolation. I say tender words to her and she replies to me. Then we just lie by each other in the darkness. I am conscious of the familiar scent of her body and the smell of stone and timber, and suddenly it hits me that I know this enclosure, that I’ve been here before. I feel the icy touch of fear, even though I have probably only been reminded of the wooden huts in the fortress ghetto of my childhood, or perhaps of the wooden floors of the barracks to which I was forcibly confined, and where death reigned. At just this moment I have to think of death!

My uneasiness won’t go, we make love again, I clutch her to myself in the darkness of this seclusion, in my own ecstasy, I press myself to her, grateful that she is here with me, that she has climbed up with me to this spot which is more suggestive of some elevated hell, where the bones of sinners are ground to dust, than a place intended for love-making.

Out of the blue she asks: Do you also make love with your wife?

Her question snatches me back into the present.

I don’t want you to sleep with another woman, I want you to be with me alone! She draws away from me. Do you hear what I’m saying?

I hear her. What am I to say? How can I chase away her question, how can I chase her away, she who’s lying next to me, when she wants nothing but that I accept the consequences of the fact that I am embracing her, that I’ve been embracing her for quite a few years now, that I call her to me and that I hasten to her whenever she calls. The meanness of my situation and my behaviour overwhelms me and stifles all the words within me.

She pushes me away, gets up hurriedly, dusts down her skirt and dresses. For a while she rummages in her bag, then strikes a match and runs down the creaking stairs. Tell me, who do you think you are? she asks when we are back in our room. You think I have to take everything from you, you think I couldn’t find another man like you? Maybe she really couldn’t find another man who’d treat her the way I do, she adds, who’d treat her like a slut from the streets.

I never ask her how she lives with her husband, but now I say that, after all, she isn’t living on her own either.

What did I mean by that? The fact that she had a husband suited me very well. If she were on her own I’d have dumped her long ago, I’d be afraid for my splendid marriage.

A few weeks ago we were at the cinema together. In the interval she noticed that in the row in front of us sat her husband with a strange woman. From that moment onwards I could see that she couldn’t keep her eyes on the screen. When the film was over she kissed me hurriedly, I mustn’t mind her leaving me now, and she ran off after those two. The following day we met as usual. Her eyes were swollen from crying and from lack of sleep. Her husband, she explained to me, had consistently denied the existence of that woman, now at last she’d caught him. They’d been awake all night, she said things to him he’d probably never forget, she’d reminded him of what he’d be without her. In the end she’d given him a choice: either he stayed with her alone, or else he could pack his things and leave. He had to promise to stay with her.

I was afraid she might have had to make a similar promise. But she had not accepted any talk about herself and me: that was totally different. After all, she’d never denied or concealed my existence.

I am disgusting, she now screams at me, first I get her into such a humiliating and shaming situation, she’d never thought this kind of thing could happen to her, and now I have the effrontery to reproach her with it.

She starts to sob.

How long have I now been listening to her passionate accusations which seem to her flawless? I am the only guilty party and I have no hope of defending myself.

She changes her clothes and attends to her eyes. She’ll have a drink somewhere but she doesn’t want me to come with her.

She wants me to persuade her to stay with me or to let me go with her. She loves me, she merely demands that I should decide for her, she is afraid that otherwise she might lose me. In order not to lose me she’s going out. She slams the door behind her.

On the other bed, near enough for me to touch it, lies her open suitcase. Immediately next to it lies her leather skirt, the stone dust is still clinging to it.

The Garden of Eden, as a learned rabbi described it two thousand years ago, has two gates adorned with rubies. At each of them stand sixty thousand comforters. The joyful features of each one of them shines like the light in the firmament. When a just and faithful person approaches they will take off his clothes, in which he’d risen from the grave, and clothe him in eight robes of clouds of glory, on his head they will place two crowns, one of precious stones and pearls, the other of gold from Parvaim, into his hands they will place eight twigs of myrtle, and they will say to him: Go forth and eat your nourishment: in joy!

Each person, according to the honour he deserves, has his chamber, from which flow four springs: one of milk, one of wine, one of balsam, and one of honey. Sixty angels hover over each just and faithful person. They repeat to him: Go forth and eat honey in joy, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto honey, and drink wine, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto wine.

For the just there is no more night, night-time is transformed for them into three periods of wakefulness. During the first the just becomes a child and enters among children and delights with them in childish games. In the second he becomes a young man, he enters among young men and delights in their games. In the third he becomes an old man, he enters among old men and delights in their games. In the midst of the Garden of Eden grows the Tree of Life, its branches reach out over the whole garden and provide five hundred thousand kinds of fruit — all different in appearance and taste.

The just and faithful are divided into seven classes and in their midst the Holy Everlasting, blessed be his name, explains to them the Writ, where it is said: I shall choose from all the land the faithful, so they can dwell with me.

When I awoke in the morning I realised that I was alone in the room. Her skirt and suitcase had disappeared. It was odd I didn’t wake up when she packed her things, I am a rather light sleeper.

I went down to the hall where the talkative receptionist was watering the plants.

The lady had been in a hurry to catch the morning train, she told me. She asked how long I intended to stay. But I had no reason to stay on at all. I went back up to my room and began to pack my things. I realised that my predominating sensation was relief.

We have been expelled from paradise, but paradise was not destroyed, Kafka wrote. And he added: In a sense, the expulsion from paradise was a blessing, because if we hadn’t been driven out paradise itself would have had to be destroyed.

The vision of paradise persists within us, and with it also the vision of togetherness. For in paradise there is no such thing as isolation, man lives there in the company of angels and in the proximity of God. In paradise we shall be ranged in a higher and eternal order, which eludes us on earth, where we are cast, where we are outcast.