Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

The voices of the people and the violin sounds of those days have been engulfed by silence. These days everything can be preserved but will be forgotten anyway, like the tracts of the Middle Ages. Only those who have become symbols of their times will escape oblivion. But even they won't survive. And besides, what memory preserves are only gross distortions of reality.

I felt nothing when I sold the house, but I think it meant a lot to Grandad An ordinary craftsman from a little village near Karlovy Vary, he had given his only son an education and left him a house in Prague. What will I leave my children?

From the memoirs of Colonel F. about an interrogation at the beginning of the fifties:

Once they drove me somewhere away from Dejvice. It might have been Ruzyně or somewhere else on the Prague outskirts. They staged a partisan trial' with me. They led me there as a 'spy with a bag over my head and my hands tied. . They put a noose around my neck and told me they'd hang me if I didn't confess. I didn't have anything to confess. They put a revolver to my temple. They'd shoot me if I didn't confess. I had nothing to confess. They fired, but it was only a signal pistol and I survived. It lasted several hours. I could hardly stand and was thirsty and probably had a fever. I asked them for water but they ignored my requests.

Dad almost never talked about what he went through when the Communists jailed him. He used to say it wasn't for the ears of women or children. But they used to jail women too, and they even executed one who was entirely innocent. Maybe Dad didn't want us to regard him as a hero or a victim. Maybe he found it painful to think back on it. And maybe he had other reasons.

Magda's class teacher called me in. Apparently Magda and her pal Zuzana had climbed up on to the window-sill during break and poured water on passers-by. She told me she would never have expected it of Magda as she'd always been such a quiet child and she suggested she ought to find another friend.

I asked Magda what sort of fun she thought it was to pour water over people. She said she hadn't poured water on anyone, that she'd only thrown spiders out of the window, and anyway they didn't fall on anyone as they got caught somewhere on the way down.

But you watched Zuzana tipping water on people.

She didn't tip it on people, just on some old woman who's always swearing at us for making a racket in the street.

And some old woman isn't a human being?

But Daddy, she only poured it from a tiny little tablet bottle.

And she started to giggle as she remembered.

I've realized that I've hardly been paying any attention to the children recently. And the times I'm with them I'm either talking, praying or telling them off. It's more of a routine. I don't share their troubles and joys any more the way I still managed to do when Eva was small. I've taken on too many responsibilities and I've also spent a lot of time with Mummy, but there's no point in looking for external reasons, when it's more likely to be as a result of something happening inside me.

If there ever was any flame burning inside me, and I believe there was, it's going out now. I ought to do something about myself and I definitely ought to pay greater attention to the children.

Not long ago I was reflecting on my capacity for intimacy. I'm incapable of taking even my nearest and dearest into my confidence and then all of a sudden I'm telling some strange woman about my

father. I'm telling her things I wouldn't even tell Hana. Did I talk about them out of gratitude for the lift? Or because she reminded me of Jitka?

There was a moment when I was going to say that Dad lived long enough for me to make Hana's acquaintance at his hospital, but I stopped myself. Out of fear of taking her into my confidence, or because I didn't want to mention my wife?

I feel a need to talk about Dad ever since I found his name on the list. I was astounded when I read his name and date of birth among those of informers. My immediate reaction was that it had to be a mistake. How many people who found their close relatives or friends on it thought the same? What do we know of the private distress even of those who are closest to us? I believe he never consciously did anything dishonourable, not in that respect, at least, but I'm not sure that the others share my conviction. I have this idée fixe that they all know about it, that they read the list, noticed his name and are now looking at me and waiting for some explanation. It's up to me to defend him. But what am I supposed to tell them, when I myself hadn't suspected anything at all?

I also found some members of my congregation on the list. They included Brother Kodet who always used to smile at me so affably — just as he still does.

When I'm home alone

I finish a prayer

and cold wafts from the windows

my stove is old

I open its door

and in the flames I see

those dear faces

I shall see here no more

my first wife Dad

and now Mum as well

I listen to their silence

until the fire goes out

and I'm left alone

in the cold again

Yesterday I shouted at Hana because she wanted me to take out the rubbish when I happened to be writing my sermon. What's the point of preaching about God's love when I'm incapable of showing kindness to those nearest to me? We talk together so seldom nowadays. Maybe it's tiredness or not having enough time. Or my inability to be intimate? We have nothing to conceal from each other, at least as regards our behaviour. But at the same time it's as if we avoid mentioning anything fundamental about our lives. As if we never manage to stumble our way to it.

It took me almost a year before I could bring myself to tell her about finding Dad's name on the list. Whenever I am overcome with doubts about what I'm doing or what I believe, I never mention it to Hana. Maybe things that are fundamental to me she doesn't find important. She wants the children to be healthy and she's always dashing from one doctor to another with Magda on account of her eyes. Marek used to suffer from tonsillitis a lot when he was small and she'd get up and see to him several times a night, and the same thing with Eva whenever she was ill. She'd no doubt get up on account of me if it weren't for the fact I'm rarely ill. She treated my mother as if she were her own, particularly over this past year when Mum had become infirm, helping me to care for her as much as she possibly could. She brings the children up impeccably, to be hard-working, polite, truthful, modest and say their prayers. The children are the most important thing in her life. And I'm the next maybe. She makes sure I've got clean clothes to put on, that I'm never hungry, that I have a healthy diet and that I feel contented. She knows I love music and suggests we go to concerts together, even though she always falls asleep. If she sees me studying some book, she'll ask me what it's about, in the same way that she asks me what we talked about on the ministers' course. When I start to tell her, she hears me out but I get the feeling that she's not taking it in, that she just grasps individual words and sentences. The substance of what I'm saying doesn't interest her, it doesn't concern her, or it concerns her only on account of me. She is pleased when I like something and is distressed when I am distressed, even though she may be unfamiliar with the causes — so I quickly change the subject to something more familiar to her.

Jitka and I were in love with each other, body and soul. I love Hana