Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

Just dream a sweet dream Be awoken by no one Turn into a shade.

He won't even write it down, but with his last ounce of strength he forces himself to get up from the armchair, puts on a white shirt and the silk tie, he brought all the way back from Shanghai years ago, and sets out for the Hotel Evropa.

Klára is indeed sitting there. It is still early, so she is sitting on her own, slowly sipping from a glass containing wine or something purporting to be wine. Her long red nails glitter, her blouse pretends to be embroidered with gold, while from her ears dangle rings that are genuinely gold, like the rings he had given her.

He approaches her and asks if the other chair is free.

Only now does she notice him and gives him a startled look. Then she says, 'Yeah, for the time being. What are you doing here, for heaven's sake?'

'I'm the one who should be asking you that!' Matouš comments.

'You've no right to ask me anything!'

'You're still my wife.'

'That doesn't mean I can't sit where I like. I'm a free person, aren't I?'

'I hope you make a decent living, at least.'

'Don't be disgusting, Volek!'

'You've not shown up in a long while,' he says. 'You've still got

some things at my place and it's about time we went to court at last, so you can feel truly free.'

They argue for a while about their mutual relationship, each blaming the other for breach of faith. Klára maintains that the only reason she is sitting here is because he drove her to it, because of his lack of interest in her, his insensitivity and his meanness. 'Don't you understand you are impossible to live with?' she asks.

He asks her why, and she, whose brain was never disturbed by the slightest interesting or original thought, she, who was capable of listening to inane pop music from morning to night or gawping at even more inane television shows, she who has never once in her whole life read one decent book (and probably not even an indecent one either), says to Matouš, who has always prided himself on the breadth of his knowledge and his ability to entertain people: 'Because you're insuf-lerably boring!'

'Does that mean you have no intention of ever coming back?' he asks pointlessly.

'I couldn't give a toss about you.'

'Or my money?'

'With the money I get from you, I could hardly afford widow's weeds.'

Then a group of foreigners arrives in the dining room and Klára tells Matouš he had better clear off.

Matouš instantly suppresses a fit of helpless rage. Most of all he would like to hit her but it goes against the grain to hit a woman. Besides, here in the restaurant it would probably cause a scandal. So he gets up and whispers, 'Have a good time then, you dirty slut!' And he knocks over her wine glass with his elbow. Klára leaps up out of her chair just in time to stop the wine running into her lap and kicks Matouš in the shin with the imprecation, 'Fuck off, you impotent old bastard!' Matouš does not stop to hear the remaining curses. He limps away across the square as evening falls. He feels dreadful, and is aware of a great number of bizarre-looking individuals and dark faces that look even darker in the night. Whores, pimps, drug dealers and addicts stand around. One of the youngsters loitering in front of the arcade looks familiar, he has the impression that he noticed him at that church he visited not long ago to hear the husband of the motherly looking matron from the hospital. But he was probably mistaken, these people don't look much like churchgoers — unless they were

making a night-time foray. Matouš turns away in disgust. He no longer has the feeling of treading the familiar pavement of pink and slate-blue paving blocks, but is instead groping along a narrow jungle path and has even left his machete behind; maybe the fellow in front will hack a way through, but the fellow suddenly disappears underground and Matouš becomes entangled in some sort of creeper from which he can't extricate himself. He sits down on the ground to take a little rest, but then he is horrified to see, dropping down from the branch above him, a gold-coloured snake. The boiga drops on to his chest and strikes. The searing pain forces him to rise from the ground. He shakes off the snake; he ought to run away and get first aid or, instead, just lie down here on the ground and wait for death. To be born is to begin to die! Why resist?

Nevertheless he raises himself up and drags himself through the jungle burdened with pain and the weight of his own body.

Back home he takes a few tablets to ease the pain. The tablets make him drowsy but the pain remains and sleep refuses to come, even though the exhaustion which now seizes him is almost too much to bear.

The solitude in which he spends his life and the purposelessness of everything weigh on his chest and burn more than the snakebite. When he wakes up the next morning after a brief sleep he doesn't get up but goes on lying there in his bed, with linen that has not been changed in weeks. He stares up at the ceiling, listening to the din of the cars and trams outside the window, and it occurs to him that he will never again get up, never again write a single line. Besides, everything has already been written and everything wise has been said long ago, and anyone left striving for wisdom prefers to remain silent.

At midday he eats a piece of stale bread and goes back to bed. At last he falls asleep for a while and when he awakes he remembers his mother who has been dead for eight years and he bursts into tears and cannot tell whether from pain or hopelessness.

He writes:

Autumn approaches

The softness of the snow attends

missing tenderness.

It then occurs to him that in fact he should be feeling liberated: that frightful woman with whom he rashly encumbered his life, that

creature who hadn't the first idea about anything that enlivened the spirit, and was solely interested in the pleasures of the flesh, had finally disappeared from his life.

He brews himself a pot of very strong Malabar from Java, takes out the seven tangram dice of yellowing ivory and makes them into a figure carrying a cup of tea. Is it the figure of a man or a woman?

It is a woman, and her features come into focus before his eyes. Dark hair and dark eyes: that matron has something exotic about her, something brought from far, far away. He recalls the kindly smiles of the Chinese women who welcomed him into the humblest of shacks.

Matous is already drinking his fourth cup; his stomach pain is still there, but instead of dwelling on it he thinks that fate may have sent that foreign-looking yet motherly nurse his way. Alternatively, fate has sent him her way because her husband was coming to the end of his life's journey and the matron would be left on her own.

Matous once more dons the white shirt that he wore so briefly yes-lerday that he didn't have time to dirty it, then puts on a tie, and sets off for the hospital.

At the hospital, they examine him and give him a prescription for some new medicines, reassuring him that the findings are negative and it is just the scar that is hurting. They advise him not to overdo it and to avoid everything that might over-excite him.

Matous then glances into the room where the nursing officer sits. The pastor's wife is there, tidying something in the medicine cup-hoard. When she sees him she smiles and invites him in.

The surroundings are far from intimate. Moreover, the door is open and he hasn't the courage to close it behind him. Still, he sits down opposite her and when she asks him the reason for his visit, he tells her how yesterday he was overcome by pain and today by despair, but since then his hope has been renewed. 'Good fortune follows upon disaster, disaster lurks within good fortune,' he says, without betraying the source of his wisdom.