Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

He made her tea — a truly fragrant and interesting tea. They drank it from almost translucent little cups and he talked non-stop the whole time. Hana realized, incredulously, that this fellow, who must have travelled the whole world over and had no doubt met distinguished personalities on many occasions, felt even shyer than she did just then.

They drank tea and she was thinking that she ought to get up and go. At one moment, when he was showing her some Japanese engraving and moved up close to her, she was scared. What would she do if he tried to cuddle her, for instance?

But he didn't.

He read her a few poems which didn't mean a great deal to her. She merely sensed in them a sadness and a yearning to escape the daily routine into a better, unreal world, where love, purity of heart, friendship, calm and order reigned. But he didn't lend her the book he had told her about. He had to read the poems through once more himself, he explained, before daring to lend them to her.

Anyway, she stayed there longer than she ought to have done. But what was the harm in it? Daniel was often away from home until late at night. And she told him about her visit that very evening. Only she did not divulge to him that when the journalist looked at her she had felt an odd excitement, or more accurately a kind of satisfaction that the man felt disconcerted by her presence. Nor did she mention that he had asked her to address him informally, and she had not refused. She was used to informality with the members of the congregation. When at last she was leaving, she shook hands with him. His handshake was, as she had expected, soft and boyishly reticent. He asked her

if she would come again some time and she replied: 'Should you ever need tablets and were unable to come for them. .'

He would definitely be needing them, he had assured her, but she had made no response.

During her visit he had tried to persuade her once more that she ought to be doing something other than her present job.

Hana now writes out who did how many hours overtime on the ward. She had never before entertained the thought that there was no longer any need for her to stay here obliging nurses to wash out soiled linen as quickly as they could. Daniel had inherited a house and sold it for a lot of money. He had told her for how much, but she had preferred not to take it in. They definitely no longer depended on her earnings.

Maybe she could do social work within the church or even establish a Diakonia centre in their own building. There were guest rooms there; one was empty and Alois was still using the other, but it was high time that he found somewhere else to live.

Not long ago, when she and Daniel were on a trip to Northern Bohemia, she had seen a centre where the handicapped were producing pottery and had even built themselves a kiln. They could try a different activity, such as weaving, painting on glass — flowers on glass — that was something she could learn to do herself and then teach it to the handicapped.

As she contemplates her potential new vocation, it occurs to her that it could open up some new avenues for her, and that she should definitely talk to Daniel about it. It's unlikely he'd reject her idea. She actually picks up the phone and tries to call him, but Daniel is neither in his office nor the flat. Eva answers and tells her that Daniel has some meeting with the moderator, but she is glad Hana has called because Daddy had left her a message to say he wouldn't be coming to the concert at the Rudolfinum this evening as they had planned. If Hana wanted, Eva could go with her instead of Daniel — 'but only if you really want me to, Mummy'. Hana says she'll be pleased for her to come, of course, and then asks if Marek and Magda are home from school yet.

Magda is already home, Marek has a practical class in the afternoon. Suddenly Magda's voice comes down the line: 'Mummy, I've got some great news for you. I got an A for my essay on Hus.'

'That's good.'

'I knew what he said about truth. Seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, cleave to the truth, defend the truth and that.'

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

'But there's something you won't be pleased to hear.'

'What did you do?'

'I wrote "I done". I knew the right answer, but I just goofed because I was nervous.'

'OK, Magda. But I have to hang up now. The doctor's waiting for me.'

'Bye then, Mum. And come home soon.'

Hana goes about her work with a vague sense of disappointment and dejection that no longer has anything to do with what the director told them that morning. Something unpleasant has happened that she can't exactly put her finger on, or she is reluctant to contemplate. It clearly has something to do with her home and with Daniel. When did it last happen that Daniel gave anything precedence over a concert? Besides which, they were supposed to be playing Bach. And why hadn't he phoned her — why had he only left her a message? After all, he knows she is at the hospital all day.

It strikes her that there is something wrong with almost everyone these days — people are changing. She notices it all around her, at the hospital and in the congregation. Maybe Daniel is changing too. Now he has more work, more money and more freedom. After years of crouching in the shadows, he has come out into the light and it has blinded him.

Perhaps she's doing him an injustice. Maybe he simply had to rush off somewhere and couldn't get through to her on the phone. The hospital line is often engaged. Or maybe there was no one at the nurses' station.

Hana checks the medicines that a young lad on civilian military service has brought up from the pharmacy, but she ponders on the fact that Daniel has changed: he is less affable and definitely does not behave like someone who longs for her company. Sometimes she even gets the impression he's avoiding her and evading conversation about anything but the most mundane matters.

It occurs to Hana that every love tires in time. Perhaps their love has grown tired too, and the two of them remain together only for the children, and because it is right that people should stay together when they have promised to.

The medicines are in order. The young lad on civilian military service asks her if she has any jobs for him and she tells him she has nothing for the moment and that he may take a rest.

That evening Hana sits with Eva at the concert. They are playing Bach's violin concertos. On their way there Eva seemed to her pale and out of sorts and said virtually nothing. And now she is sitting here all slumped and Hana wonders if she has been taking drugs again, although it is possible she is just not feeling well.

Then she stops thinking about Eva and pays attention to the music. Hana doesn't have perfect pitch like Daniel or her step-daughter but when she listens to powerful music she falls into a strange trance in which pictures and live scenes pass in front of her eyes. She closes her eyes, so that Daniel often thinks she has gone to sleep, while on the contrary she is experiencing something so powerful that she is suffused with an ecstasy that she has never experienced even during love-making.

The dejection of the morning quickly leaves her and she screws up her eyes. While she is still aware of the violinists face, it is gradually transformed into the pimply face of the journalist who invited her to his home and served her tea and talked to her about a river that melts. He had said: You're an angel. You're completely different from other women. You're better. Those words now blend with the music and together they caress and fondle her until she quivers beneath their touch. Ther, she notices that the journalist's face is growing handsome; he is now wearing a Geneva gown with a white band, and the other members of the orchestra have donned gowns too and are no longer playing on the concert platform but on a beach by a pond. A big pond with lots of water — it may be the sea. Hana suddenly realizes that the conductor is now looking straight at her and giving her a sort of sign with his baton, inviting her to join him. At that moment she becomes aware of her heart thumping, like in the old days, like the time when Daniel first invited her for a date and she realized that she could love him. Something she thought would never happen to her again could actually happen. Maybe if she accepted that invitation… But at that moment something starts to surface from the water: a long, dark object — it's a coffin — and it rises higher and higher. Alongside it, four pale girlish faces also emerge, they are bridesmaids in dazzling white dresses from which the water gushes in streams; they are bearing the coffin. They pass in front of the orchestra and come to a