Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

Love, Dan

Dear Reverend,

I apologize deeply to you for all the bad things I have done. I only told you all those things the time I got drunk because I was miserable, because I had to move out of my sister's. It's not true that I could be a dealer. It's just that I need to earn more money because that's the way things are nowadays. I am now searching for the truth. About life and about the Lord Jesus, because I've found out that everyone sees him differently. Such as the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Roman Catholics. The way they honour the Virgin

Mary, for instance. The other day one of their priests gave me a leaflet with a prayer by St Louis which actually states: it is thy privilege to hold absolute sway over angels, men and demons; it is thy privilege to dispose of all the gifts of God, just as thou wiliest. What do you say about that, Reverend? Isn't it almost blasphemy against the Lord? Or take the Pentecostals. They maintain that everything of any importance comes from the Holy Spirit and we have to believe in its power and not yield to Satan. That seems to me right, because the Holy Spirit was poured out on the apostles, after all. I'd also like to ask your forgiveness, Reverend, over Eva. I didn't mean her any harm. I just wanted to get her out of the clutches of those rotten speed dealers. Marijuana doesn't do you any harm. Reverend. But I ought to have talked to you first, and so I now beg you for forgiveness.

I prayed that you and the Lord God will forgive me.

Yours, Petr

Darling Dan,

I don't know what I'm to do with you. A double life destroys one, unless one totally abandons the need to be a complete whole. Forgive me. Forgive me for destroying you. But unless one gives up the need for love, I suppose there is nothing for it, in certain situations, but to lead a double life. In today's world, at least, and with our morality. One can fool the brain, but not the heart. The heart is a compass, you know that, don't you? You know how to read it. From the very beginning, from the first moment I heard you, I knew I could trust you, that I could place my head in your jaws and be sure that you would not harm me. Taking a chance with you is not just placing my head in your jaws, it's also needing completeness without an escape route. But I'm leaving myself an escape route anyway: the way home, back to my husband and my sons. Except that my home is also a place of peril. I'm constantly on my guard here and there is no loving embrace for me. Instead there is a man who demands my embrace while keeping his arms behind his back. Admittedly I try to accommodate him. I look cheerful and smile, but deep down inside me something that can never be renewed is being burnt away. There is something dead inside me, somethjng I can't bring back to life. My cheerfulness here is awfully superficial, I feel it and so does Sam who is always complaining about me. He distrusts me and suffocates me. I can't get closer to him and I can't

leave him. I am stuck here and I'm unhappy. The atmosphere here is not one of blissful ignorance that conceals everything. It is an awareness of ruin. It destroys me because I need joy for my life to have meaning. I don't want to live without joy and without love. I'd sooner not live at all. I don't want my life to be merely a succession of duties. I don't want to save the world with duties but with joy. I long to leave, to disappear, to turn my back on everything, free myself, dissolve, be no longer. I talk about myself as if I didn't think about the others. In my daily life I constantly have to think about others, I have no time to remember myself. It's thinking about you that has made me remember myself. When I'm with you I feel that I may think about myself too. You are someone who doesn't intimidate me, or blackmail me, threaten me or ridicule my craziness. You're someone who really loves me, not because I'm particularly worthy of love but because you're overflowing with it. I feel an enormous gratitude towards you. I have never really encountered anything like you.

And now I feel like crying because you're somewhere far away, all too far away. I don't have you near me as my salvation, my dearest of all men, my real man, the one I trust, the one who won't let me perish, to whom I can admit to being weak, incapable and pathetic and yet he won't reject me.

And now I lament that I have found the kind-hearted man I longed for and he is not for me, won't ever be for me. I know it. I have found that man and can thank God that he let me know you at all.

It surprises you that I write about God and you think I'm doing it to ingratiate myself with you. But I don't want to go against the Ten Commandments. I understand them and respect them — apart from the one about not coveting my neighbour's husband. I understand that life requires order and that morality is good so long as it is not hypocrisy.

I really have made a proper mess of my life, but at this moment I'm happy, so happy in fact, I could easily die. But I don't want to, I want to be with you for a long, long, long time — at least one whole night.

I love you so terribly much, that I can't see how to survive it. We return in three days time, will I see you?

Bára (with love)

Dear Marek and Eva,

I'm glad you like it at the camp. It's splendid that we now live in a society in which people can say freely what they don't agree with. That was something I could hardly do when I was your age, and certainly not freely. Thank you also for the invitation but I won't be coming. The thing is, I'm not sure who is in the right in this argument. I do believe that people ought to live more frugally, and indeed I preach about it often enough. I believe they should show greater consideration towards nature and life and weigh the consequences of their actions. But it's not easy to convince them. That's something I've discovered. Most people are more attracted to wealth than to frugal living. In that respect, people nowadays would seem to be worse than in centuries past because it's easier to get rich and anybody who would voluntarily live in poverty risks ridicule. That's why electricity will be produced. After all, you use it too and life without it is difficult to conceive now. And whether it is better to obtain electricity from coal, oil or nuclear fission is something I am unable to judge. I don't understand it, in the same way I don't understand mathematical sets, and don't know what to make of black holes or quasars. And Marek, I'd only ask you not to fall prey too easily to over-simplified judgements, but instead to weigh up the pros and cons. Now and in the future. Because the moment you stop making up your own mind you risk being taken advantage of. I was taken by your idea that the Lord Jesus would be with you if he were on earth. Jesus would certainly be on the side of those who managed to live frugally, and whose actions were governed by love and humility before the majesty of God. Even so, I don't think we should draw Him into our own all too mundane — or even political — disputes. Instead, Jesus should open the gate to what is above us, what lends meaning to our lives and its values, what transcends our brief lives. Because without that, all that remains is the cold universe full of the galaxies that you so often speak about. In such a universe it matters little how electricity is made or what from.

Best wishes to both of you.

Love, Dad

l

He was already asleep when the phone rang. 'It's me, Dan. You're not cross with me for calling so late?'

'I've no idea of the time. It must be midnight, isn't it?'

'I don't know either. I dashed out without my watch. I need to have a talk with you, but I don't suppose you'd be able to.'

'I'm alone at home. My wife is still in the country.'