Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

'Daddy, are we going to sing?' Magda wanted to know when he rejoined the others. 'Or perhaps we shouldn't after Granny's death?'

Now and again they would sing in the evening whenever there was time, or they would improvise a comedy which they made up themselves. It could be on a historical theme, or from their own everyday lives, or just some nonsense. He enjoyed thinking up absurd repartee and making crazy faces. The children liked it and it made them laugh.

A comedy was out of the question today, naturally. 'I'm sure Grandma wouldn't mind if we sang something. She enjoyed singing, after all.'

They went into the room where the piano was. He brought his guitar and Marek fetched his violin.

'Granny used to love "Sing the glad tidings!" ' Eva suggested.

'And "By the waters of Babylon",' Magda recalled.

When he was small his mother had sung him lullabies and taught him simple little prayers. His father had most likely scorned them but kept his opinion to himself. Sometimes his parents would go out together in the evening and he would stay at home with his sister, frightened to go to sleep in case a robber came in the night. Death might even creep in.

By the waters of Babylon we laid down and wept, and wept, for Thee, Sion we remember, we remember, we remember Thee, Sion.

At nine o'clock he said good-night to his children and went with Hana to the kitchen.

His wife ran water into the sink. 'Dan, you ought to go to bed, you look tired.'

'No. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway.'

'I know it's hard on you, but it was the best thing as far as she was concerned. She had nothing but suffering to look forward to.'

'Don't worry, I will be able to sleep again.'

'We've got this journalist on our ward by the name of Volek,' she said, apparently changing the subject. 'He has just had a stomach resection and reminds me of someone, though I can't remember who. From time to time he comes into the nurses' station and keeps everyone entertained.' Hana related to him how the man had travelled a good part of the globe, had lived in China and spent time in New Zealand. He had told the nurses about the Maoris, and their belief that everyone who came into contact with the dead, even if only assisting in a burial, was forbidden to associate with people and was treated as a total outcast. Such a person is not even allowed to touch food, and has to be fed or eat without hands like a beast.

'There are some savages who believe that the spirit of the dead person envies them remaining alive,' Daniel explained, 'and therefore wants to do them harm. Even the ancient Jews considered the dead unclean, and anyone touching a corpse was forbidden to touch food.'

'But even those savages believe that the soul survives the body.'

'According to them, everything has a soul. Trees and animals alike. They will often beg the soul of a hunted animal to forgive them for what they have done.'

'It was the funeral that brought it back to mind. Here the people shook each other by the hand, whereas there nobody would be allowed to touch you.'

'Here they share your pain and distress, there they share your anxiety.'

'I share everything with you, Dan. The sadness, the distress and that anxiety.' She came over for him to hug her.

'Now you're all I have!' and he realized his oppressive loneliness. He consoled others in a similar situation with the thought that they had Jesus, who remained with them always, and he added quickly, 'As my nearest and dearest, I mean.'

In his workshop he had an unfinished carving of a woman covering her breasts with her hands. He had not touched the figure for at least a month. If it was successful, he was intending to call it 'Dignity'.

He had first taken the knife, chisel and limewood block in his hands on his return from Gustrow where he had seen Barlach's statues. Perhaps it was neither wise nor useful, but generally, whenever he set eyes on some work of art that enchanted or astounded him, he would fall prey to the temptation to try his hand at it also. And so he had tried painting, composing, and had even written poetry at one time. He played not only the piano and harmonium but also the guitar. So eventually he attempted to produce a human form from a piece of wood. For someone who was self-taught, the work exceeded all his expectations. Having seen some of the carvings, a gallery owner had recently offered him an exhibition, and after hesitation, Daniel had accepted. In fact, the offer had inspired him to work with greater concentration and responsibility.

He mostly carved female figures, giving his creations such names as 'Love', 'Sorrow', 'Longing' or 'Motherhood', but again and again the faces of those carved figures resembled the face of his first wife as it remained fixed in his memory from moments of love-making, when she would seem utterly transformed and more beautiful. Maybe that was why no one but he was able to recognize her in those carved faces.

From the waist downwards the figure would be covered only by a slightly gathered piece of cloth. That was how his first wife used to come to him every night, with a towel tied around her waist and

covering her breasts with her arm. She never stopped being ashamed of her nakedness and always wanted to cuddle him in the dark or at least with the blinds down, and when she then spoke tender words to him she would whisper them as if fearing that someone else might hear her.

Perhaps she would have lost her shyness with the passage of years, but God had only granted them four years of life together — three years of health and one year of gradual dying which had been particularly cruel when the tumour painfully ate away her insides. So young, so kind, so considerate, so incapable of harming anyone. Why she of all people? But who has the right to judge God's will? Our earthly existence is no more than a blinking of His eye. The important thing is what comes after. Because what comes 'after' lasts for all eternity. All eternity close to Him — what meaning can any earthly delight have compared to that? Why then are we so attached to this earthly life? Is it because all that reaches us from over there is dogged silence? And the numbers of the doggedly silent swell all the time. It was curious how thinking about the death of his first wife, which had always dispirited him, seemed to take his mind off this fresh pain.

For a while he tried to make the shapes more precise but his hand shook and he felt too tired and unable to concentrate. Hana was right, he ought to go to bed.

At that moment he realized that light was still shining from another window on to the lawn outside.

Eva's small room was up in the attic.

He tapped on her door but entered too quickly and discovered his daughter trying to conceal a sheet of writing in the pages of a book.

'Who are you writing to?'

'No one in particular.'

And I'm not supposed to see it?'

'No, it's not like that.'

'It's ages since we've talked together.'

'I don't like wasting your time. And you've been preoccupied with Grandma.'

'Grandma will have no more need of me now, besides which you'd hardly be wasting my time.'

'Mum said you had a lot on your mind. And then there were the prisoners.'

'The prisoners are important but not so important that we can't find time for each other.'

'We all have so little time. Mummy, Marek, and me too. All of us are rushing somewhere or chasing something. I sometimes get the feeling things are odd round here.'

'Odd in what way?'

She said nothing. Then she drew from her book the sheet of paper she had tried to conceal from him when he came in and handed it to him. It was a poem:

Somewhere inside us holy delusions flower We snatch the blooms whose scent overpowers. Somewhere inside us are flowers as pure as snow In our dreams, at least, they are our pillow.