Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

halt in the open space just in front of Hana. They carefully put the box down on the sand.

The music is still playing. The violinist, whose face is no longer visible, steps over to the coffin and leans towards it, as if playing solely for the one who is inside. And the one inside can hear because the lid slowly rises and Hana beholds a female figure. Oh, how well she knows that face from the photographs as well as from Daniel's carvings, even though he imagines she has never noticed: it is his first wife. The face is as white as the bridesmaids' dresses, the wax-like ghastly face of the dead. But she is alive and approaching Hana with her hands stretched in front of her. Get back, you accursed creature, Hana whispers, you're the one who still steals his love from me, you always stole his love from me, and yet there's nothing for you here among the living. The white, accursed thing starts to stagger and then collapses lifelessly on the ground. At that moment Hana becomes aware of a painful sympathy for the poor creature; after all Jitka has a daughter here, whom she hasn't seen for eighteen years. It must be awful for a mother not to see her own daughter for eighteen years and not to be able to hold her even once. People are sorry for the orphan but don't spare a thought for the mother. Tears of pity gush from Hana's eyes over that wasted, unfulfilled maternal love.

The orchestra are coming to the end of the finale. The violinist has his own face back again and he and the conductor are bowing and shaking hands.

Hana glances at Eva; the girl is as white as that apparition a moment ago.

'Is there something wrong with you? They didn't play badly, surely?'

'It's nothing, Mummy.'

'Would you like to go home?'

'No, Mummy. It's just… I just need to pop out for a moment.'

After the concert Daniel is waiting for them on the steps. He wants to know how the concert was. Eva says it was lovely. It occurs to Hana that she ought to tell him about her vision, but suddenly it strikes her that it had been not just unreal, but also ungracious: it had been nasty to Daniel, in that she had thought tenderly about another man; nasty towards Jitka who is long dead and it is therefore unbecoming to be jealous of her. It shows Daniel in a good light that he didn't completely forget Jitka, that he tried to capture in his carvings the memory of that face which, after all, will never come alive again on this earth. In the

afterlife only God knows what face we will be endowed with, if any at all.

They walk side by side across the bridge, ahead of them the illuminated castle buildings, below them the water whose odour is indiscernible, smothered by the smell of the city. Hana notices that Daniel stoops slighdy as he walks, as if sagging beneath some load. She also notices that his shirt collar is badly turned down and the striped shirt he is wearing doesn't go with his checked jacket.

They are now walking along in silence. Hana realizes she could never leave Daniel, not so much on her own account as on his; Daniel is probably unaware of it, but without her he would be left like a child abandoned somewhere on an empty shore.

7

Three days before Bara's birthday, Daniel invited her to a restaurant for dinner. He brought her a letter he had written to her in a sort of trance, and also a gold ring with a small diamond. (He had never given a woman a ring before, not counting the wedding ring he had given Jitka.)

'You wrote me a letter?' she said. 'Should I read it? No, not now. When I'm with you I have to make the most of you and not be reading.' Then she opened the little box and for a moment she gazed at the ting. 'You're crazy, Dan, a thing like that. How am I to explain it at home?'

'Perhaps you could say it was a gift from your first husband.'

'From him of all people!'

'From your mother, then?'

'How could Mum afford it on her pension? You're crazy, I don't need a ring, do I, when I have your love?'

'Don't speak about it any more.'

She slipped the gold band on her finger and for a few seconds looked at it with delight. 'It's a perfect fit, it's obvious you know my hand off by heart.' She kissed him and then she recalled: 'I've invited my son Saša to come too, I hope you don't mind?'

Daniel was astounded. 'What did you tell him?'

'He knows about you anyway'

'You told him about me?'

'Ages ago. Mum too. They are my folks. And I don't want to keep anything from my folks. He likes you, even though he's never set eyes on you, because he knows you love me and you don't boss me about like his stepfather. I also thought you might put him straight about some things.'

'I'm supposed to start putting him straight about things, at our very first meeting?'

'No, I don't mean it like that. It will be enough for him to meet someone who knows what he lives for. While being a good person.'

'I'm not sure if I fulfil those requirements.'

'He'd so much like to have a father, because there has been no decent man in his life. I deprived him of his own father. Or his father deprived himself of me and the boy. It makes no difference, but he gave the boy nothing. And his stepfather never accepted him. He simply provided for him and let him know it. As far as he is concerned, Saša is a good-for-nothing wastrel. And it's possible that he, my little boy, is indeed growing up wild. Nothing appeals to him, work least of all. All he does is play basketball and tennis, or watch people shooting each other on television. He also enjoys fiddling around with all sorts of little mechanical gadgets and getting music out of them. You're not cross with me for inviting him without asking you first?'

'No, you did right.' It was the right thing to do in a wrong situation. If you loved someone you had to take them lock, stock and barrel, which meant their folks above all. 'I've not been faring too well with young people just lately.'

'In what respect?'

'In trying to persuade them about anything that I believe in. Not even my own children. Sometimes I get the impression that they're persuading me.'

'One's own children are the hardest to persuade. One's own husband and one's own children,' she added.

The lad was slim and almost as tall as Daniel. He seemed to have inherited his high forehead and hair colour from his mother, but otherwise he was quite unlike her. His eyes were light blue. 'They gave me a really silly name,' he said, introducing himself, 'after some Russian tsar or Pushkin. Mum adored Pushkin when she was young. Mind you, she still is young, but she was eighteen years younger then

and identified with Tatyana. She's still got the one about her on her bookshelf and she makes me read it:

'Such a heavenly gift,

To be strongwilled and wild,

Of mind so swift,

Passionate — but tender as a child. '

'Saša,' Bára cut him short, 'don't you think you've said quite enough to be going on with?'

'It's only because I'm shy,' the boy said and blushed. 'Thank you for the invitation. Mummy says such nice things about you that I wanted a chance to meet you. But I don't need to stay to dinner, I'm sure you have things to talk about.'

'We can all talk together,' Daniel suggested.

'Thank you. Musil doesn't talk to me; I get on his nerves the moment he claps eyes on me. And my dad only asks me how are things in school because he hasn't got any idea what to talk to me about when we see each other twice a month.'

The waiter brought them menus. 'I really am afraid I'm going to be in your way,' the boy apologized, 'and anyway I'm not used to going to such posh places.'

'Neither am I,' Daniel said quickly, 'and I don't intend to become used to it either.'

'Do you think I could have the lamb stuffed with chicken livers?'