Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

When Jitka died he came to the funeral. 'Death is terrible, Reverend, ' he said to me. 'You have my sympathy and I hope your faith helps ease your pain. '

A few days later I went to see him and mentioned that I desperately needed to return to Prague where my parents could help me take care of Eva who was six months old at the time.

He told me he understood my position and that it should be possible to arrange. I don't know whether it was really he who sorted it out but shortly afterwards the ban on my preaching in Prague was lifted for a while at least.

I'm writing about all and sundry in an effort to get that woman out of my mind to avoid writing how I have yearned for her, how I have an urge to meet her again. An urge for love or for sin?

There was this quote from Marti in a recent issue of The Protestant: 'Religion and eroticism — a wild, but inseparable, couple. Even though they fight like cats and dogs, call each other names and curse one another, the one cannot last long without the other. Where religion is dying, eroticism wastes away and becomes simply sex. Where eroticism is dying, religion shrivels up into abstract metaphysics (as was once the case) or into arid ethics (as it is now). '

I also recall what Balthazar the Cabalist says in Durrell's Justine: 'None of the great religions has done more than exclude, throw out a long range of prohibitions. But prohibitions create the desire they are intended to cure. We of this Cabal say: indulge but refine. We are enlisting everything in order to make man's wholeness match the wholeness of the universe — even pleasure, the destructive granulation of the mind in pleasure. '

Where is the boundary between freedom and licence, between responsibility and self-denial that no longer serve life but inertia? Inertia that is one of the signs of death!

I've written nothing for almost a month. Have I lost the courage to be intimate with my diary? Or have I found a different form of intimacy?

I definitely don't have the courage to contemplate the consequences of what has happened. A month ago, B. called and asked if I could spare her a moment. There was a note of urgency in her voice and it struck me she had had some misfortune or other. I told her that I would of course find time for her, and straight away if necessary. She then asked if we might meet in the Small Quarter as she happened to have some business there at that moment. She described to me a bistro halfway along Carmelite Street where we could meet.

I arrived there in under half an hour and when I sat down at one of the small tables I could not rid myself of a sense of something unbecoming. Fortunately the bistro was empty, with just a sickly melody wafting from some unseen loudspeaker.

She arrived a little late. She started to apologize in her usual overstated fashion and thank me for coming. I ordered wine for the

two of us and asked her if anything had happened to her.

She said she was suffering from depression, a feeling of anxiety that there was nothing permanent in this life, in her life, in people's lives, in the life of the Earth. Not even in the life of the universe, she added.

I pointed out that there was something permanent in life and the universe too.

'God, you mean, ' she said and straight away objected that she didn't want any false consolation, that shed sooner get drunk on wine than on some illusion. Then she spoke about her marriage. It was possible to put up with anything if one had a little support from one's partner. She maintained that she loved her husband but she had no support from him. On the contrary, she had to support him. 'You're different, 'she told me, 'you're strong, you don't foist your burden off on to other people, you help them with theirs. '

Just as on the previous occasion, there were moments when I couldn't concentrate on what she was saying but instead simply registered the melody and tonal colour of her voice, and her appearance. I was also distracted by her fingers that involuntarily drummed the rhythm of the obtrusive muzak.

As we emerged from the bistro it was already getting dark. I wanted to say goodbye, but she detained me, saying that her mother lived a short way from there. Her mother was away at a spa and she had the keys to the flat. She had to go and water the house-plants; perhaps I might like to accompany her.

I remained silent and she asked if remaining silent always meant just remaining silent in my case. I continued to remain silent.

Her mother's flat is in an old Small Quarter house: just one room with a view on to a narrow little courtyard. Old furniture dating back to some time at the beginning of the century, a brass menorah on the high bookcase. On the couch lay a black cushion with a Star of David embroidered on it in white. The room was full of vegetation with a cheese plant in one corner and a dragon arum in a large flowerpot, while fuchsias and pelargoniums blossomed on the window-sills.

She went into the bathroom and filled the watering can. She asked if I was cross with her for bringing me there. I told her I wouldn't have come if I hadn't wanted to. While she was watering the plants she spoke to me continuously about how I was a remarkable person, the most remarkable person she had ever met. She said she could sense the goodness of my heart and also my wisdom, that there were words

concealed in me that I didn't dare speak. I told her she was remarkable too and that I sensed in her a passionate longing for understanding, compassion and love. I repeated what I had already written to her: that she sought God, but projected her search on to people.

She said: 'I'm just looking for a good man, a living man. I've been looking for you. ' She came over to me and instead of backing away and making a quick departure, I took her in my arms.

It's strange how at that moment it struck me I'd first set eyes on her the day my mother died. Whose hand had thrust her into my destiny on that particular day?

Then we made love. I felt such ecstasy that I lost awareness of everything but her closeness and tenderness — and conceivably the long-forgotten tenderness that I used to feel with my first wife at such moments.

It was only when I had torn myself away from her that I was struck by the realization of what had just happened, of what I had done, and I was filled with horror and an overwhelming desire that it had all been just a dream from which I would awake into my usual innocence.

'Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. tLet no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God", for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full grown brings forth death. '

'Surely we have every right to, 'she said, sensing my mood. 'Surely there can't be anything wrong in love, can there?' As we said goodbye, she asked when we would see each other again.

Instead of saying never, instead of saying we couldn't see each other like that any more, I asked her if she really wanted to see me.

'And don't you want to see me?' she said in astonishment.

I couldn't find the strength to say that I didn't.

We met there again on four further occasions while her mother was at the spa. More than once I wanted to tell her that we couldn't continue with what had happened, but the moment I set eyes on her I was incapable of saying anything that might separate me from her for good. Whenever we made love she said: 'Love can't be a sin — you know that, don't you?'