Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

'What a Good Samaritan you are, Petr.' The world was full of deceit: big words and shameful deeds. He felt an unexpected pain in his chest and his breathing seemed to falter. 'You'd better go, you louse. I don't want to talk to you any more!'

Petr got up and wished him good-night, but he stopped in the doorway and turned towards Daniel. 'The room you mentioned — I don't suppose the offer stands any more, does it?'

'It still stands,' he replied, resisting the temptation to agree with him, 'even though I'd sooner see you a million miles away.'

'Thank you, Reverend.'

'It stands on condition, of course, that you don't turn the manse into an opium den.'

'You can count on me, Reverend. And I genuinely did talk Eva out of it.'

4

Hana

The journalist who is being discharged that Friday brings Hana a bunch of purple irises. 'Whatever possessed you? Besides, I won't get a chance to enjoy them,' she protests. 'I'm off on holiday next week.'

'So you can leave them at home, or give them to someone. Flowers are not for returning!'

So Hana thanks him, and all of a sudden she realizes who the journalist reminds her of: a pity she has no photo. Little Joe has already been dead for thirty-five years but he too was a trifle stunted just like this journalist and would also tell her enthusiastically about far-off lands and their inhabitants. And he once picked her the same purple flowers: in those days they were most likely stolen, as they didn't grow them in the garden at home.

Past times rise up in front of Hana's eyes: her first kiss, the people she would never see alive again. She puts the flowers in a vase, but she hasn't time to enjoy them. Before she can leave she has a vast number of duties to perform, including drawing up the rotas for several weeks ahead and doing an inventory of the linen and medicines. Every year, at the beginning of the school holidays, she takes the children off to her mother's, although in previous years she would only go for a few days, saving up her leave in order to spend some of it together with Daniel. She never did use it all up anyway, preferring to take payment in lieu. Times had been hard and every crown used to come in handy. This year, Daniel had persuaded her to take an extra four weeks unpaid leave; after all, they didn't need the money and she needed a rest.

However, it was he more than anyone who could do with a rest. He

seemed somehow changed to Hana these past few weeks: frail, taciturn and preoccupied. She put this down to his not yet having got over his mother's death, but maybe the work-load he has taken on himself is wearing him out: running his church, preaching every Sunday, travelling to visit prisoners, speaking on radio and television, writing newspaper articles, organizing special days for the congregation and on top of it all preparing for an exhibition of his carvings. It is a fact that he has had to wait till now to do all the things they wouldn't let him do before.

She'd love to help in some way, but doesn't know how. She can never think of anything to talk to him about without delaying him, something to please him or interest him even. She suggested to him that he should take a holiday and make the trip with them. He admitted that he would like to go but didn't have the time at the moment.

Maybe he really didn't have the time, or maybe it was just that he didn't relish the thought of travelling with her. Hana has the impression that he has been avoiding her recently. Maybe he's stopped loving her. Every love grows weary in time, that's something she knows all too well. Besides, Daniel never did love her the way he did his first wife. It's true he still washes the dishes or takes care of the shopping and urges her to buy herself new clothes. In the evening he sits and chats for a while with her and the children, but Hana senses that even at those moments his thoughts are partly elsewhere. Sometimes it seems to her that although she was definitely a support for Daniel in the bad old days, he no longer has any need of her now, or if he does then it is only to cook his dinner or massage his aching back.

The irises in the vase smell sweetly and she conjures up the day she returned from the maternity hospital with Marek. The whole manse was decked out in flowers. Daniel said to her that day: 'I'll never ever repay you for this.' But that was a long time ago now. Much water had flowed under the bridge since Marek was a little boy and they moved from one manse to another, since the days when Daniel used to be called in for interrogations, and he was under permanent threat of losing his permit to preach, so that they would be shunted off to goodness knows where. Since then the bad times had become the good times but what did it mean as far as her life was concerned? It is possible to feel better in bad times than in the good kind. Tyranny binds people together whereas freedom distracts them by holding out opportunities to them.

Maybe Daniel never had needed her, just a mother for Eva, and that was the reason he had taken her into his life. But his heart belonged to the one who had died. Hana recalls how, when she moved into the manse, she found traces of Jitka everywhere: her clothes in the wardrobes, two pairs of ladies' shoes by the front door, her photograph in a frame on Daniels desk and above the child's cot a paper dove whose wings flapped in the draught. 'Jitka was already in hospital when she made that,' Daniel had explained and was at a loss what to do with the clothes and shoes, as he could hardly throw away things that reminded him of the woman he had loved. So Hana had to live for a while with the effects of the departed and for the whole time with the memory of her. Daniel never spoke about Jitka and Eva called Hana 'Mummy'. In fact, until she was eight, she had not known that her real mother was no longer alive.

Now Eva was grown up and could cope without her; so could Daniel, in fact. Who needs you, when you are not even needed by your nearest and dearest? Probably nobody — and that's a difficult realization to live with.

It's almost two o'clock and Hana quickly writes out the most urgent instructions for the afternoon shift. Feed Mr Lagrin!

A week ago they had moved a Romany youth on to the ward. Skinheads had thrown him off the cliff at Šárka. He had survived the fall but had suffered multiple fractures and concussion. This morning they had taken him off artificial feeding on the grounds that he should be able to feed himself by now. When she went on to the ward she discovered he had not touched any of his food. She asked him why.

'I cannot hold the spoon.' And he showed her how his hands were shaking.

'But we would have fed you.'

'I did ask, but the sister she told me that on her wages she would not feed me.'

Later she asked in the nurses' station who had had the nerve to say such a thing, but naturally no one owned up. But even if the nurse had owned up she couldn't throw her out, as she'd never find a replacement.

Hana needs a holiday. She feels tired out. Not so much from work as from life in general. Her life admittedly has its regular routine but there is nothing in it that she really looks forward to. It doesn't offer any enticing prospects. And the heavenly kingdom that Daniel so

often talks about with such enthusiasm has never assumed any definite form in her mind and she has never imagined what might await her beyond its gates. She is almost ashamed of the fact and feels ordinary and down-to-earth compared to Daniel. Maybe she too would be capable of elevated thoughts and deeper contemplation about God and His plans, but how can you have elevated thoughts when two nurses this month have already handed in their notice. One of them she considered the best on the ward; now she has found a job as a hotel waitress.