Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

And she was such a fool that she had actually had qualms of conscience on the few occasions she had nostalgically recalled the lonely journalist who liked telling stories about China.

How is she now to behave towards a man who has deceived her, with whom she has children and who at this moment is balancing between life and death?

And suddenly it strikes her that Daniel's heart gave way precisely

because he was not equipped for a life of duplicity. After all, Daniel was almost childlike — neither disloyal, nor deceitful. He was defenceless, more than anything else, in a world in which everyone was out for himself. Anyone could pull the wool over his eyes with fine words. He had believed Petr and apparently he believed some unscrupulous tart who had muddled his head and then latched on to him the way such women know how, and Daniel was unable to shake her off; he wasn't able to abandon his home or abandon the other one and in his desperation he let himself be dragged along almost to his death.

A feeling of regret and sympathy for Daniel starts to grow in Hana and she might even be ready to forgive him. God forgives our sins, so we humans should be ready all the more to forgive others. But at the same time she can feel a growing anger towards the other woman who wanted to usurp Daniel for herself, ignoring the fact he had a wife and children, heedless of the fact that he was actually suffering, not caring that she was driving him to despair and hounding him to his death.

Hana feels a need to do something, to change something straight away, to find the other woman and tell her what she thinks of her, tell her she's a murderer, a mean, selfish and self-seeking murderess.

Only she doesn't know who the woman is or where to look for her. She had only managed to make out that her mother lives somewhere in the Small Quarter and that she herself lives in some sumptuous villa, apparently in Hanspaulka. Women like that tend to be spoilt, and think they have to possess everything they take a fancy to, from clothes and perfumes to a man they find attractive.

Daniel knows her name, of course, and knows where to find her, except that she can't ask Daniel anything, not now at least. It would agitate him so much, he might die. Although it might be a relief for him to rid himself of the burden of deception.

I have to think of a way, it strikes Hana, to indicate to him that the worst thing for him in his situation is to suffer mentally, to torment himself over the things he has done and the way he has lived.

Hana cannot stay any longer in this confined space with this black notebook, tempting her to open it once more and read it through properly, except that she is terrified to open it again and read the terrible testimony that Daniel has penned in the confusion of his heart.

If only she had someone she could confide in, but she knows that

she has no one like that in the world; the only person she was close to has let her down.

Hana wipes her eyes and goes to the bathroom where she rinses her face with cold water. Then she tells the joiner that she couldn't find the plans but will ask her husband about them at the hospital.

Then she hugs Magda and says, 'Oh, my poor little girl!' And before Magda has a chance to ask why she is supposed to be poor, she leaves the flat and rushes back to the hospital.

5

Daniel had been moved on to the general ward.

He was no longer tormented by physical pain, but only aware of the void into which he would sink again and again. On several occasions, mostly at night, he wept for pity.

Everyone here was kind to him and called him Reverend. 'Should you need anything, Reverend,' the fellow in the next bed offered almost as soon as they had brought him in, you have only to say. I can already walk about normally.' He had obviously been informed in advance.

Daniel needed nothing. He wanted to call Bára and tell her what had happened to him; explain why he hadn't kept their date and why it was unlikely he would ever keep a date again. But nobody could make that call for him. He actually had a telephone at his bedside and all he needed to do was lift the receiver, but the mere thought of doing so set his heart thumping so rapidly that he felt a pain in his chest.

After lunch, Marek and Magda visited him. Magda had cut some daffodils from the garden for him. While she was sticking them in a vase she asked how he was and whether he still had a pain. She made do with a single-word reply and without prompting announced that she had got three As, although, because of a fatal oversight, she got an E for maths. 'I'm going to be an actress, anyway,' she consoled herself and him.

'What will you act in?'

'I don't know — something to make people laugh. And to become famous.'

'Magda,' Marek rebuked her, 'Dad's feeling rotten and you just talk drivel.'

Apparently they had said nothing to Magda about his actual condition, so she had no inhibitions about gossiping like that, whereas Marek wore a serious expression. 'I really regret not going to church for your sermons a few times, but now I've been praying for you and I'll start going to church again,' he declared in a previously prepared apology and statement of intent.

He was touched by his children. He felt regret, even shame. 'That's nice of you. But only do what you are convinced is right.' He stopped short and then he added, 'If you have sufficient strength and determination.'

'Exacdy,' said Marek, 'that's my concern.' He also brought an important message from Alois: they were postponing the wedding until Daniel returned. 'Because he wants you to marry them, and nobody else.'

'That's nice to hear, but tell him I don't know when I'll be coming back. Tell him it doesn't matter who blesses them, it means the same thing. And it's chiefly up to them if they are to be happy together.'

'They will be,' Marek promised on their behalf. Not a word was uttered abput stars or the universe. What do his children believe in, in fact? What will become of them, how will they live? Would he ever find out, even if his heart did get better? One never finds out the important things.

'We'll help you,' Marek said finally, as he was saying goodbye.

'What with?'

'Everything, of course.'

When it came to the fundamental issue one had to help oneself. What was the fundamental issue? How one lived, of course.

'You have nice children, Reverend,' his neighbour said after Marek and Magda had left. And well-behaved too, I expect.'

'Yes.' And once more he was seized with regret.

'You'll have to get back to them soon. But what is one supposed to do for one's health? I thought to myself that as soon as I'm able to get about a bit I'll make a trip to Czestochowa or Medjugorie, or even to Lourdes. What do you say, Reverend? Do you think Our Lady will help with heart trouble too?'

'No,' said Daniel. 'You'd do just as well to visit some healer in Smíchov or Košíře.'

'Don't you believe in her miraculous power, then?'

'No one will save us from death here on earth. Even Lazarus, who Jesus might actually have raised from the dead, died once more. Maybe the very next day. Or the year after.'

'I heard one priest saying how some famous scientists in America had measured the power hidden in the human brain when it's dying,' his neighbour said. 'In the case of a believer, that power is five hundred degrees positive and twenty-five times stronger than one of the most powerful radio stations in America.'

Daniel turned his back on the man. What made everyone want to talk to a clergyman about metaphysical problems? Why did they have to reel off to him all the obscurantist nonsense they'd ever heard? Would they even come and bother him when he was on his deathbed?

'In the case of an unbeliever,' his neighbour went on to say, 'the power was five hundred degrees negative.'