Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

I had a talk with Marek about love and the beauty of the female body. I told him that the really beautiful woman is the one that you love. And suddenly I realized that all the while I was thinking of Bára, and I thought to myself, what right have I to preach to Marek?

Almost every night I wake up with an oppressive awareness of the lie I am living. I ought to give up preaching (not just to my children). How am I supposed to talk about morality, love and honour when the way I live denies them all?

Bára believes that white lies are merciful precisely to those whom we deceive. I won't leave my husband who hurls rulers at me, she told me, and you won't leave your wife, who looks after you, who brought up your daughter, bore you two more children and loves you. So everything will stay the way it is, I'm sure of it. So why cause them pain?

It's a philosophy I can't accept, but on the other hand I am unable — and too craven — to suggest anything else.

B. rang me this morning to say she's ill. She was with her husband at their country place at the weekend and it looks as if she slipped a disc when she was digging the flower bed. She managed the homeward journey, but this morning she was unable to get out of bed. Fortunately, her husband stayed in the country, as he wanted to do some drawing in peace. She told the boys to go to their grandmother's after school and now she's lying at home like an invalid.

I told her it was a pain I was familiar with and had some tablets I could bring her.

She doesn't want tablets, she hates tablets, but if I wanted to, if I were to find a moment and come over, I could find out where and how she lives.

I bought a bunch of roses and a small glass vase from Nový Bor.

'You're crazy 'she said when she opened the door. 'You mustn't go wasting time rushing around the shops. ' She was wearing some faded sweater and tattered jeans. I'm lying down,' she announced. 'You won't mind that I first invited you to our house on the very day I'm unable to stand upright?'

We walked (or in her case, limped) through a spacious lounge in which stood several flower pots containing miniature citrus trees as well as a fig tree that almost touched the ceiling.

I certainly have had little occasion to visit houses of that kind, and I was taken aback by the luxuriousness of the Finnish furniture and the emotional vacuity of the abstract paintings intended to embellish the white walls. She noticed and asked whether I disliked modern art. I replied that I found some works disconcerting and had the impression that some of their creators had no wish other than to be original, whereas I was always looking for some message.

You're a pastor, she said, you have to look for a message in everything. It's good enough for me if they make me happy or I enjoy the colours. Then she added that she accepted no responsibility for the furniture. Although she was an interior designer, the entire arrangement of the house, apart from her own room, had been Samuel's choice, as he couldn't bear to live in anything that was not organized according to his scheme of things.

Then we arrived at her own room. I was fascinated by an enormous desk that took up the entire length of one wall. The desk-top, which rested on a steel base, was made up of smallish square wooden blocks. 'That, 'she said, indicating the desk-top, 'was once a floor in an old villa. They were going to lay linoleum on top of it, the philistines, so I

bought it from them. They have linoleum on concrete and I have a splendid desk that even has a patina. '

The room also contained a divan and an armchair, by which stood a steel standard lamp whose base, I noticed, was formed from the three spikes of a garden fork. You see, she said, a lamp like that has to be in here, Samuel can't abide anything that's slightly off-beat. She lay down, groaned and asked me to cover her with the rug that was lying on the armchair. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, whether she was thirsty or hungry. She told me I wasn't here to wait on her; no one had ever waited on her. All she wanted was for me to sit down and be with her now. If you hadn't come, she said, I would be brooding on my powerlessness and death.

We chatted for a while like close friends who don't see each other often enough. I told her about Eva's drug-taking. She reassured me that it was commonplace nowadays and didn't mean anything. When she was eighteen she must have tried everything they forbade her, and in fact there was very little they did forbid her. She had felt such a need to set herself apart from the world she was forced to live in that in the end she had slashed her wrists.

The telephone on her bedside table rang several times and she talked to people I didn't know.

At one moment she asked me to pass her a large black folder from the desk. It contained her latest set designs and several interiors. It was her first chance to display her work to me. She showed me her design for the interior of a country manse — a Catholic one, naturally. She explained that she had tried to make use of the old furniture that remained in the house, simply adding a number of small armchairs that could be built according to photographs of Schinkel's armchairs from the beginning of the last century. I hadn't a clue who Schinkel was, but I didn't ask. I don't understand furniture, and the furniture we have at home simply assembled over the years as we acquired it. Some things we bought, some we inherited, some were given to us. I was always of the view that the objects didn't matter. They serve a purpose and they should not attract attention either by being in bad taste or enticingly unusual. But I realized she was waiting to hear what I'd say about her work, so I said I liked it, and also that I liked her desk and her idea for the lamp.

Then the phone rang once more and she suddenly changed and became wary. 'Is that you, my love? It's nice of you to call.' And she glanced at me in mute appeal.

I realized it was her husband calling and I crept out of the room. I drifted around the spacious house until I ended up in the kitchen. I located a saucepan and found ketchup and milk in the fridge. Salt, sugar, rice and flour were in containers on the shelves. It was gone noon and it occurred to me that I might make some soup while she was on the phone.

'Why are you so kind to me?' she asked when I brought the bowls. 'You are putting me to shame, for heavens sake. We could have easily had a sandwich. ' Then she said that her husband had called to say he'd finished his work and would be returning that same afternoon.

I was about to get up and leave.

'But it'll take Musil at least two hours to get here. ' Then she asked reproachfully, 'You would actually leave without making love to me?'

I had a dream. Two men were leading me down a long passage. At the end of the passage was a hole, so narrow that a cat could scarcely have squeezed through it. Nevertheless the men stopped in front of the hole: this way!

I stood nonplussed in front of the opening, until one of the men made it bigger with his heel while the other pushed me forward. I was falling through the opening. I don't know how long I was falling but at last I found myself in a dismal office where no one was sitting; there was just an enormous mastiff lying in front of the door.

'Take a seat, ' I was instructed by a voice from some unknown source. 'You realize why you're here?'

I sat down in the seat opposite the desk and said I didn't know. The mastiff raised its head and snarled.

'A lying pastor. '

'I don't know why I'm here, ' I repeated.