Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

I conceded that parents often made mistakes as well. None the less one ought not forget that one of the fundamental principles on which society was founded reads: Honour your father and your mother, and that the Bible actually states: 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. ' (Exodus 21: 17)

Petr maintained that most criminals didn't feel guilty. On the contrary they regarded everyone around them as bad for not living up to their expectations. All of you, he said, turning to us, are too concerned about conscience and sin, but people don't give a toss about all that, apart from when someone steals something from them.

I agreed with him that our judgements of others are often categorical, while we tend to display much more indulgence when it comes to judging ourselves. Even so, murder was something that could never be condoned.

But that evening the thought occurred to me that the lad's action might actually have been prompted by desperation and a wounded or offended sense of justice. A wise son brings joy to his father, it says in Proverbs, but a foolish son brings grief to his mother. But what damage do an adulterous father or adulterous mother cause their son? And who nowadays will inform the son of a three-thousand-year-old law that says: Anyone who curses his father or mother deserves death?

The cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit that pervade the adult world burst with indignation over the cynicism of the children which they themselves helped bring into the world.

After service on Sunday I had a word with Marika. (She didn't bring her siblings, but she is a regular attender. I don't know whether she follows the sermon but as soon as she hears the harmonium she enters into the singing heart and soul.) She loves her older brother and is convinced he's innocent. He fell victim to the gajos' revenge. When I asked her what he had done, she said: nothing. They locked him up over a fight in the pub, although he hadn't even been in the pub the night the fight broke out. It strikes me as unlikely but I don't think she's lying; she just believes in her brother's innocence. I am alarmed that the concept of what is just or even moral is being dangerously transformed. I get the same feeling when I think about the Soukups. He's determined to get divorced. He has fallen in love with a woman in the firm where he

works. He has rejected the wife who loves him and serves him body and soul. He wants to deprive her of her children and she, in her despair, is incapable of defending herself. None the less, Brother Soukup considers himself a good Christian. He could have deceived his wife but he chose not to. He could have gone on living a life without love, but instead he gives preference to a life of love. How Christian it all is, and how weak and hypocritical at the same time.

Too many people run to Christ to fill their emptiness. When it doesn't work they start to fill it with something else — but the living Jesus, Jesus on the mountain, means nothing to them. The Ten Commandments? If He were to appear now and approach someone with the commandments, I doubt they'd follow Him. The Ten Commandments belong to another age. These days they call it a paradigm. We are seeking a new postmodern paradigm, we debate it in seminars. We argue about what is permitted these days and where the boundary is that must not be overstepped. We'll soon be asking whether any such boundary exists at all.

When she was on her way out, I told that architect woman she could stay longer if she liked. I don't know what made me say it. Well, actually I do. I find her presence thrilling in a strange kind of way. Even so, no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I took fright. What if she takes my words as an enticement? We sat for a further two hours almost. I think my behaviour was artificial. On the one hand I displayed an exaggerated interest in her life, asking her about her husband, even about the first one, as well as about her two sons, while on the other I was incapable of concentrating on her answers. I was thinking about those words she had spoken and which I had passed over in silence instead of categorically denying them: 'Maybe I'd like to know whether you'd be capable of loving me. ' I had looked at her and realized what a beautiful and interesting woman she was.

For a short while she talked to me about her work and about modern architecture: about vaulted cubism and functionalism. She said tourists in Prague only look at the old buildings and fail to realize all the gems of modern architecture that are strewn around the place.

I know that's her speciality; I've never set eyes on anything she has created, but she talked with such enthusiasm that she enthused me as well.

Then I drove her right to her house. When I got back, I was happy I had resisted a foolish temptation but at the same time I was aware of a familiar sense of longing. That was how I used to feel years before when I would part from Jitka and the world would feel empty without her. Another thing that excited me about this woman was that she had Jewish antecedents. I realize that this is inverted prejudice, but I have always had the feeling that those who belong to the people of the covenant — even when they are totally unaware of the commitments it entails — have inherited something special. Surely somewhere within the consciousness of the entire lineage there must lie hidden the revolutionary insight that we are all made in God's image and an offence against God is therefore an offence against man, and in turn an offence against man is an offence against God.

The things I brought back from Mum's included all sorts of old textbooks and other literature. To my astonishment I discovered among them a copy of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) published in 1946. Dad must have bought it with the intention of learning the history of the country whose army had just liberated us. For a short while I leafed through it, finding in the margins my father's notes — sometimes only exclamation or question marks, in other places expressions of horror such as 'dreadful' or amazement — 'surely not'.

On a couple of occasions I started to read some of the actual text and was astonished at the amount of lies, vulgarity, distortion and foul abuse. Dad had drawn wavy lines under them. The thought struck me: is it possible that people actually believed all this nonsense, all these fabrications and artful deceit, and that perhaps millions of people had believed it, even those who had lived through the events themselves, who had the opportunity to discover the truth and speak to eye-witnesses?

Fanaticism and the need to believe in an ideal blinker our vision. When can we be even halfway sure that what is proclaimed actually happened the way it is described, particularly when the news about it comes from people having blind allegiance to their faith?

The reliability of testimonies to past events is something that continues to fascinate me. Christ is the present and the future, we declare. But He is first and foremost the past. Whichever way I interpret

the Bible, I am dealing with events that happened and were recorded two thousand years ago. My gaze is therefore fixed on the past. Most people's gaze is fixed on some point in the distant future. No, that's an exaggeration. Most people gaze neither into the past nor the future, they explore neither truth nor lies, they gaze at the television.

When we were still in Kamenice, our local Secretary for Church Affairs was a fellow named Berger, a former PE teacher. Maybe they had chosen him for his physical fitness and sobriety, in view of the fact that the previous incumbent had fallen asleep in a ditch when he was in a drunken stupor and frozen to death. I was required to apply in person to the Secretary every time I wanted to organize an activity that in any way went beyond my regular services. Sometimes he would make a personal visit. He would take a seat in my office, Jitka would bring him a coffee and he would start to persuade me that everything I did was a waste of time, as in the space of two generations there wouldn't be a single Christian left in our country, apart from a few crazy old grandmothers. He knew the content of all of my sermons and would warn me against any political allusions. I used to assure him that I had no interest in politics. 'I know full well what you mean when you talk about the Jews being taken into captivity and yet they never stopped believing in a Messiah who would free them. ' When I objected that that was simply the way it was, he would say: 'Sometimes I really can't make up my mind whether you're a shrewd operator or just naive. '