Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

'I wouldn't manage that; Mummy must have been good.' Then she

added, 'It seems odd to me to be talking about her as my mum, seeing that I never saw her, that I don't recall seeing her.'

'But she can see you all the time.'

'Do you really think so?'

'Don't you?'

'I just can't imagine it: I can't imagine her seeing me without me seeing her.'

'I expect it's a different kind of seeing. It's beyond our imagination. But she's bound to be pleased with you.'

He looked towards one of the larches where the little blue tent stood. The blue had faded with time, the warmth had long ago evaporated from it and the canvas had gradually turned to tatters, like his memories. A lump came to his throat.

'No,' Eva blurted out, 'she can't be pleased if she sees everything. She's most likely weeping.'

"What makes you say such things?'

'Oh, nothing.' Eva resembled her mother in hair colour, figure and facial features. If he squinted slightly he could actually imagine it was his first wife standing there, untouched by time, that she had vaulted the abyss of years and just stepped out of the tent and was listening to the calm of the rocks. He ought to ask her what her 'Oh, nothing' concealed but he was strangely shy of his daughter.

'Shall I unpack the food?' she asked.

'OK.'

They sat down on a sun-warmed boulder and ate their bread.

'How did you and Mummy first meet?' she asked.

'It wasn't here. But it was on a climbing holiday. In the Tatras. I was already a vicar in Kamenice then. They used to call me "the climbing clergyman". Mummy was still studying at the Conservatoire. I found her very attractive.'

'But you waited a long time before you married.'

'We scarcely had time to see each other. She was studying in Prague and I was out in the Moravian Highlands. We used to meet a couple of times a month. We used to hitch-hike to get to see each other. We were poor.'

'If you'd got married, though, you could have been together earlier.'

'But Mummy had to finish her studies. But we spent longer together in the summer. When we first met, Mummy was just a bit older than you are now. She didn't say much, she sang beautifully, was

a marvellous pianist and was nearly always smiling. With her eyes more than with her lips.'

'Maybe she only smiled like that at you.'

'We were in love,' he said, 'from the moment we met. How about you,' it occurred to him, 'have you fallen in love yet?'

'You're not serious, Daddy?'

'Yes I am. It's occurred to me on several occasions, but I've not wanted to ask.'

'I've fallen in love lots of times.'

'Lots?'

'But they didn't know about it. Those boys.'

'Not one of them knew about it?'

'Maybe one of them. Or two.'

'And where were they from?'

'From my class, some of them, or I knew them from St Saviour's. And I went to the Pentecostals a couple of times.'

'You didn't tell me.'

'I was afraid you'd be cross. Petr and I went to their youth meeting the other day.'

'Petr went?'

'He was awfully interested in them, so I took him. He was really mad about them. He told them about a feeling he had had of something coming down on him, that he couldn't describe. It was at night. He woke up and saw a strange light coming straight at him. He couldn't explain it, and then he realized that it could be the Holy Ghost.'

'An experience like that and he didn't even mention it to me.'

You see, Dad, we think — he thinks,' she corrected herself, 'that you'd most likely start to talk him out of it.'

'I expect I would.' It struck him that Petr's experience of life had taught him how to speak in different situations in a way that gained him attention, recognition or even admiration.

'But something has really happened to him, Daddy. If only you could hear the way he talks about the way he used to live and how he has changed. Everyone listened to him with excitement. And at the end they asked him to say a prayer for everyone. And the way he prayed gave us all the shivers.'

'That's fine. So long as he prays sincerely, it's all right.'

'How else would he pray?'

'People can pray for all sorts of reasons, but I don't want to suspect him of anything.'

'He's interested in everything he's not experienced so far. He'd like to hear the Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses.'

'And you'd go with him?'

She shrugged. 'Surely there's nothing wrong with us wanting to know what other people believe, is there?'

'No, of course not.' Then he asked: 'Do you fancy Petr?'

She blushed and shook her head violently. 'It's not like that. I just find there's something special about him. He's completely different from the other boys.'

'That's for sure. Just think it over carefully, before falling in love with him.'

As if something like that could be thought over carefully.

6

Bára

Bára feels an unexpected flood of happiness. Samuel has gone off to Moravia for one of his business deals and is staying there overnight, so she has the whole evening free. She packed Samuel's overnight case, forgetting nothing, not even a single jar of tablets, and then accompanied her husband to the car. She hugged and kissed him, Samuel started the car and she finally waved him goodbye before going to phone her old college friend Helena and arranging to see her that evening. She takes Aleš over to her mother's, finishes a set design for a television adaptation of an Italian comedy — it's interesting how easy she finds the work when there's no one around clamouring for her attention.

Towards evening, she quickly gets dressed, putting on a white blouse and a long dark-green skirt — the colour goes well with her hair. She ties up her hair, which hangs halfway down her back, with a black ribbon, applies a bit of eye make-up, dons a straw hat, and sets off for town.

She is not due to meet Helena for another hour. She takes the bus

to Dejvice and then the metro to the Small Quarter. She walks along Wallenstein Street and across Wallenstein Square. Everywhere teems with tourists, but she doesn't notice them. She notes with satisfaction that several houses in Thomas Street have been recently done up: the city of her birth is donning new clothes.

Then she walks up Neruda Street and on up as far as the Castle, where she notices she is already out of breath — she ought to cut down on her smoking, it's an awful habit. She then leans on the low stone wall that forms the eastern side of Hradčany Square and gazes at the city below. She is overcome with a spirit of generosity: she forgives those who have disfigured the city with the prefabricated grey of human rabbit coops, she forgives her husband who contributed several degenerate architectural monstrosities towards the general devastation, and it occurs to her that the beauty of her city as it was built up layer by layer over the centuries cannot be banished; maybe only a nuclear catastrophe could destroy it.

When at last she turns away from this elevated spectacle, she notices to her surprise that the telephone booth on the square is empty. She is seized by a sudden longing for an amorous conversation. She has lived so long without real love and has really experienced so little of it in her life. She goes over to the phone booth. She remembers the number although she has only called it once — she was a long time making up her mind on that occasion.

The minister's wife answers the phone, of course. Bára could hang up without saying anything or she could say that she wanted to speak to the minister, but instead she asks, 'Is that the television centre?'

'No, this is a Protestant manse.'

'That's silly. I need the television centre.'

'I expect you dialled the wrong number.'

'But this is the one they gave me!' And she gives the number of the manse. She has to repeat it three times before the woman, whom she only knows from sight at the church, concludes, 'They must have given you the wrong number.'