Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

You are a revelation for me, one that has grown from meeting to meeting. It has grown from nothing, by which I mean I never thought that someone like you could live among people. It would be bold of me to tell you who you nre, because I don't know you, but I fear that my boldness would only be the vanity of someone who never doubts her judgement. But I'll try anyway. You're kind, you're good-hearted and you're strong, even though you're a real man. You're generous. You don't hurt people. You place life above success, knowing that the only real success is to lead a good life. You think that it is your faith that guides you, but I think you're guided by your heart. I also think that you're not one to criticize or reprimand people over little things, what you want chiefly is for them to be kind and live in love, like you yourself. I agree with that, because love is the thing my heart demands, what my soul cries out for. I could be surrounded by the best people in the world but if my heart was cold nothing would happen. My need for love tomes from my fear that life has no meaning, that everything comes to an end, that nothing that I want to last ever lasts more than a few moments. It is a defence against the chilling universe. Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I can hear my heart suddenly start to thump wildly, because I abuse it even though I know it doesn't deserve it, that it's a good heart. You haven't abused yours, my darling, you've only refused to hear it. You've convinced it that a good life consists of being loyal to an old vow instead of to your own heart.

I'm thinking of you. After so many years of my life, I've started to like myself. That's a gift from you. I look at myself and tell myself I'm beautiful and desirable when someone like you can love me. When you can love me even when you try desperately not to. I can sense that, of course, my darling. I look at myself and know I'm a feeble, imperfect woman, that I'm impatient and selfish. Since you don't have me for your entire life there's no need for it to worry you.

But please keep me in your warm love for a few more days at least, no, a few more weeks, no, a few more months, please. Don't forsake me, even when I'm awful sometimes.

Love, Bára

My dear Hana,

Your long letter really cheered me up. I was moved and even shamed by your determination to go and lend your help in those places where people are murdering each other, misled by false prophets and criminal leaders.

I don't agree with your brother. However far away people may be, I think we must regard them as our neighbours, and therefore perceive their pain and suffering. The trouble is there are so many people. The people who suffer outnumber those who don't, and the weight of suffering, if it was all added together, would make a crater deeper than the deepest pit of the ocean, so it is too heavy for us to bear. I expect the most we can do is help in those places that we can see and reach.

But Magda is right to say she wouldn't let you go to a place where there is shooting. I don't think such places are made for children or their mothers — they should leave those places, not seek them out. And the children need you — even Eva, who I thought would be able to fend for herself by now. She does in fact, but in a way that terrifies me, and I firmly believe that your experience and wisdom will help us rescue her from that poisonous whirlpool before it drags her to the bottom.

Don't worry about having a peaceful time and a rest, you deserve both. You've done enough for others in your life and had enough of your own suffering.

And don't have any worries about me. I'm feeling fine and my work-load is somewhat less now, so I have a bit of time to do some reading and a spot of wood carving.

I'm thinking of you all and looking forward to seeing you.

Love, Dan

Hi Dad,

We're having a fantastic time and it's fantastic here, the people, I mean, because in other ways it's like in a sci-fi film, those cooling towers that stare down at you from high above. All that concrete. There's enough to build an entire enormous city. A dreadful concrete city, that is. We go to lectures and

have discussions in Czech and English and our meals here are cooked by Dutch vegetarians. They travel every summer to protest against nuclear power stations wherever they are being built. Except that they've almost stopped building them anywhere else, only here. Yesterday we projected on to the towers portraits of the politicians who dreamt up this place. It was stupendous. Now we're preparing a non-violent action. A blockade, in fact. Maybe we'll tie ourselves together and lie down in front of the gates. We're still discussing it. I like the fact that the people here are thinking about the future and are unwilling to let television pull the wool over their eyes. Eva has just gone off to the villages to persuade people to save energy and insulate their windows instead. I expect she won't be back till this evening.

Are Mum and Magda back yet? If they are, give them our love. And love to you too. We're both well.

Wouldn't you like to come and visit us? A few famous people have been here already, singers mostly. They share our views. You could talk to the people too and let them know you agree with us and that Jesus, if he only had the slightest idea about nuclear power stations, would be here with us too.

So write to us soon. And pay us a visit. You can sleep in our tent.

Marek

Dearest Bára,

Last night was unusually hot. I couldn't get to sleep, so I got dressed again and went out into the garden and looked at the stars. My son looks at them almost every evening whenever he's at home and then asks me questions to try and catch me out. You tried to do the same about the size of the universe. Yes, there are distances that are unimaginable and insuperable, but I was always more interested in the distances that separate people, distances that are infinitesimal compared to the universe but which often seem equally insuperable.

You write lovely things about me, I've told you not to more than once, and you write beautiful things about love. I agree with you, even though I am frightened of what has happened and is happening — between us. At the same time, I am grateful for what happened and is happening. I sense the possibility of a great love between us and through it the intimacy I have

yearned for, something I experienced or started to experience with my first wife, but which I only associated with her. I had stopped believing that I could ever experience anything similar ever again. Have I the right? Have we the right?

Even though I ask these questions, I am grateful to you for the short time you have been in my life. And that gratitude remains, though I shudder to say it. You write 'nothing that I want to last ever lasts more than a few moments'. It strikes me, on the contrary, that if people so desire there is no such thing as 'nothing ever', that it is something that only death can say, and not even death need say it precisely the way you feel it. But human folly is capable of anticipating death by entire decades. Often 'nothing ever' is something we create for ourselves, through our weakness, selfishness, or ignorance. Or our desperation.

What are we going to do?

I also want to let you know that you are a special, exceptional individual. You have a greater yearning for love and wholeness than I have ever encountered in another human being. I feel near despair because what there is between us can never be whole. Or can it? What would we have to abandon for it to be so? How many people would we have to hurt?

And so we lurch, you and I, between a yearning for completeness and the anxiety of 'never ever'. It's a very imperfect situation and therefore very human.

I feel an enormous love for you. I couldn't recant it at this moment, even if I tried.