Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

I’m sorry you were ill.

No need for you to grieve. I was very ill, but you’re probably worse if you’ve taken up good deeds. What are you trying to make yourself believe about yourself? Doesn’t it seem a little cheap to lie your way out of everything?

I’m not lying my way out of anything. You can’t simply judge me from your own viewpoint.

So how am I to judge you? Do you remember sometimes what you used to say to me when we were together? I thought it also meant something to you, something real, something one can’t just walk away from. And now you’re trying to exchange me for a few good deeds! Why don’t you say something? Hasn’t it occurred to you at all that you’ve betrayed me?

Kafka endeavoured to be honest in his writing, in his profession and in his love. At the same time he realised, or at least suspected, that a person who wants to live honestly chooses torture and renunciation, a monastic life devoted to a single God, and sacrifices everything for it. He could not, at the same time, be an honest writer and an honest lover, let alone husband, even though he longed to be both. For a very brief instant he was deluded into believing that he could manage both, and that was when he wrote most of his works. Every time, however, he saw through the illusion, he froze up, and stopped motionless in torment. He’d then either lay his manuscript aside and never return to it, or sever all his ties and ask his lovers to leave him.

Only fools — with whom our revolutionary and non-monastic age abounds — believe they can combine anything with anything else, have a little of everything, take a small step back and still create something, experience something complete. These fools reassure each other, they even reward each other with decorations which are just as dishonest as they are themselves.

I too have behaved foolishly in my life in order to relieve my own torture. I have been unable either to love honestly or to walk away or to devote myself entirely to my work. Perhaps I have wasted everything I’ve ever longed for in life, and on top of it I have betrayed the people I wanted to love.

At last the youngster appeared in the door. ‘Have you been waiting for me with that water all this time?’ He’d had an injection and the doctor had ordered two days’ rest. I offered to see him home, but he declined. If I didn’t mind, he’d like to sit down for a little while, after which we might rejoin the others.

‘When I was a little boy,’ he reminisced, ‘my grannie would sometimes wait for me at the school. She’d always take me to the fast-food buffet, the Dukla in Libeň, a little way beyond the Sokol gym if you know the neighbourhood. She’d have a beer and I’d get an ice-cream. And if she had another one, I got another one too, she was fair all right. And how she could play the accordion!’ The youngster sighed. I preferred not to ask what had happened to her, it seemed to me that everything connected with him would be touched by tragedy.

Outside, a fine rain had begun to fall. The youngster put on his orange vest but I, faithful to the vow I’d just taken, carried mine rolled up under my arm.

Everything in life tends towards an end, and anyone rebelling against that end merely acts foolishly. The only question is what the end actually means, what change it makes in a world from which nothing can disappear, not a speck of dust, not a single surge of compassion or tenderness, not a single act of hatred or betrayal.

I had to leave for the mountains, on doctor’s orders, and my lover also needed a break. Her work was tiring her out, she complained of being permanently exhausted. To work her material, often hammering into stone for hours on end, was enough to wear out even a strong man, but I knew that she had a different kind of weariness in mind. She reproaches me for her having to remain in the border region between love and betrayal, between meeting and partings, in a space which, she claims, I have set out for her and where strength is quickly consumed, exhausted by hopeless yearnings and pointless rebellion.

We could go somewhere together. I know that she wants to be with me completely just once in a while. I mention the possibility to her. She agrees, and a moment later I wonder if I really want that joint trip, if I wouldn’t have preferred to remain on my own. And suppose my wife offers to come with me? I am alarmed at the mere thought. What excuses, what lies would I invent? I am terrified like a habitual criminal who knows that he’s bound to be caught in the end.

But my wife suggests nothing of the kind, she doesn’t suspect me. She says a stay in the mountains will do me good. Everybody needs a change of scene from time to time. She’ll visit Dad for me, I’m not to worry about him, he’s doing well now anyway.

I know that my wife is immersed in her own world, which, as happens in work which brings one face to face with the sorrow and suffering produced by sick minds, is unlike the real world. In it no one wishes to hurt anyone else, evil appears in it only as suppressed, unawakened or misdirected good, and betrayal is as incomprehensible as murder.

Who does she see in me when she lies down by my side, when she nestles up against me and whispers that she feels good with me? What justifies her reasserted and ever newly betrayed trust? Or does she believe that one day I will, after all, prove myself worthy of that trust?

My lover observes my embarrassment: Do you actually want me to come with you?

I don’t answer quickly enough, I don’t say yes convincingly enough, my uncertainty can be read in my eyes, and she cries. She suspected that I’d be scared at the last moment, she knows me now, I’ve lost the notion of freedom, I no longer have any self-respect, I’ve become a slave to the mirage of my despicable marriage, I can no longer manage without my yoke and now I’m trying to impose it on her. What am I trying to do to her, how dare I treat her like this, humiliate her like this.

I try to placate her, but she’s crying more and more, she’s shaken by sobs, she can’t be comforted. This is the end, the absolute end, she’ll never go anywhere with me again, she never wants to see me again!

I am conscious of relief and, simultaneously, of regret.

Once more she looks up at me, her beautiful eyes, which always lured me into the depths, have turned bloodshot, as though the sun had just set in them. I kiss her swollen, now ugly, eyes, also her hands which have so often embraced me, which have so tenderly touched me: I don’t understand why she is crying, I do want her to come along with me, I’m begging her to.

She’ll think it over, I should phone her from there.

And here I am, alone, in the Lower Tatra. I walk through meadows fragrant with warmth. Above me, on the mountainsides, snow is still lying. At dinner I talk to an elderly doctor about yoga, he tells me about the remarkable properties of medicinal herbs. I walk along forest paths and enjoy the silence all round me, I recover in that solitude, even though I know it is short-lived, as is the relief I am feeling; the rack to which I have tied myself is waiting, it is within me.

I gaze at the distant peaks. Mist rises above the lowlands. I look back to where the waves roll, where the surf roars, washing away my likeness moulded in sand, she bathes in abandoned rock-pools, the soil is black, the path is barred by an ever thicker tangle of roots, carrion crows fly darkly over the tree-tops. I walk with her among the rocks until we find ourselves in the middle of a snow-covered expanse of flat ground, I embrace her: is it possible we love each other so much?

Nights descend, prison nights, nights as long as life, her face is above me, my wife is beside me, I am alone with my love, with my betrayal. She bends down to me at night, she calls me to herself, she calls me to herself forever: We’ll go away together, darling, we’ll be happy. And I actually set out towards her, I run through cold streets, streets deserted and devoid of people, empty in a way not even the deepest night could make them, I drag myuself through the streets of the dead ice-bound city and an uneasiness rises up in me, suddenly I hear a voice within me, from the very bottom of my being, asking: What have you done? Halfway I stop in my flight and return to where I’ve come from, to the side of my wife. I act this way night after night, until suddenly I realise that I don’t want to leave, that I no longer want to walk through this dead city, at least not for the moment. I say: For the moment, and eventually I am overcome by the relief of sleep.