Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

she had in love, in people, in God, in life in general. Oh my God, I realized, she's been through that once already!

She waited expectantly for what I would say, but I could not bring myself to say any of the things I had prepared. So I told her I had been thinking about the Soukups, and beginning to wonder whether divorce might not be better than living together when there is no love.

But it's up to individuals, she answered, whether they were capable of keeping their love.

I nodded and left quickly, because I was ashamed. Ashamed of my cowardice, my dishonesty and my faithlessness. Unless I find the courage to tell Hana everything there is nothing for it but to break it off with the other one. To put an end to our relationship. Or to myself?

We had a seminar up in Hejnice. It was also attended by several professors who were at the faculty in my time. The theme was predestination and the meaning of good works. It's an eternal theme about which, as with most themes, everything has been said that could be said. In the evening I went for a walk with Martin and his wife Marie, and we were joined by a few other friends. Martin spoke on his favourite topic, saying we oughtn't to lay such stress on the supernatural passages of the scriptures. 1 pointed out that the moment we abandoned them, we abandoned the divinity of Christ, and all that we would be left with would be the original Judaism or some mishmash of philosophical opinions several thousand years old.

Martin said: 'But he wasn't God, though. He wasn't even the Son of God in the sense we preach it. His mother and father were ordinary people. We all know that, don't we?' We all glanced at him in surprise, but amazingly enough nobody voiced any objection.

At the end of the youth meeting Marika talked about the mysterious forces that inexplicably manifest themselves in her surroundings.

She was on her own at home one day, for instance, and all of a sudden the doorbell rang, not just a little ring but ringing like mad. She rushed to the door and when she opened it there was no one there. And there wasn't even any movement on the staircase.

'Or I'm lying in bed, 'Marika went on, 'on my own at home again and all of a sudden the light comes on in my bedroom and when I go to switch it off I notice that the lights are on all over the flat. And yet they were all off when I went to bed. So I call out: Is anyone there? I switch them all off one by one and when I go back to bed they all come on again. '

'You're having us on,' Alois declared. 'Someone was home and you didn't know. '

'Do you mind?' Marika said, taking umbrage. 'Who could have been there? Mum had gone out, one of my brother's inside and the other one's in Ostrava. I was there all on my own, I can swear it on my mother's death!'

'No, don't do that, ' I said to her, 'save your oath for something really important. '

'And what is really important?' someone asked.

Only six months ago I would have replied: fidelity, for instance. Or honesty. Or decency. I didn't reply.

'Forgive me, I didn't intend to criticize you,' I said to Marika. 'I wanted to say that I believe you. There are things that happen that one just can't explain and they remain a mystery forever. The entire Bible message is one great big mystery, although I wouldn't want to compare it.'

When the young people were gone, I wondered whether I really did believe Marika, or whether I had said it because I wanted to defend her dignity in front of the others. I wasn't able to make up my mind, all I knew was that I would like to have believed her.

I dreamed that I was still quite young and attending the booksellers' training school, apparently quite unaware that I would one day become a preacher and on the contrary being interested most of all in the girls. I made a date with one of them who had just quarrelled with her boyfriend. When I arrived to meet her at her house I discovered I was wearing odd shoes. I tried to conceal the fact by hiding my right foot behind the left one. She invited me upstairs and I was relieved that I could change out of my shoes into the slippers that she had prepared for me. We did some petting and then went out again. We were already outside when I realized I was still wearing the slippers. She told me to

wait downstairs: she would bring me my shoes and we could leave the slippers in the letter box. Then I realized that she would now discover I was wearing odd shoes. I dashed up the stairs after her in order to explain somehow. But she only laughed and praised me for having each shoe a different colour. She told me it had cheered her up.

Each shoe different. The left foot from a different home than the right one. Making love in a strange flat and praise for something I'm trying to conceal.

3

Máša Soukupová was sitting opposite him and making an effort to speak coherently. Her husband had moved out and he wanted to take the children. He had hired a good lawyer and they were planning to prove in court that she was incapable of bringing up the children. And she had actually signed some paper when she was in a state of shock at learning that her husband wanted to leave her. It was possible that the paper said she agreed that he should take the children.

The sound of the piano could be heard from downstairs. In recent times, Eva really had played at least four hours a day, sometimes just improvising in a mournful and laboured fashion. Something was still bothering her. On a few occasions her eyes looked as if she had been crying. Whenever he asked her something he would get fragmentary replies, mostly just a single word.

'How do you like school?'

'OK.'

'Is there anything the matter?'

'No, I'm all right.'

He ought to have a proper talk with her, find half a day to talk to his own daughter before something irreparable happens. Instead he was sitting here with Mrs Soukupová, and even if this poor woman wasn't here, he would most likely be using any spare time to meet the woman he oughtn't to be seeing.

'But I took good care of them, Reverend. I didn't leave them for a moment. It must be two years since I last went to the cinema or the theatre, apart from the puppet theatre. And they depend on me. I'm

their mother after all! Surely they can't take them from me! Surely God couldn't allow it!'

God had already allowed other things. Sometimes when Daniel considered all the things He had allowed, he doubted whether He would display the slightest interest in what was happening to mankind and the world, let alone to any one individual. But he didn't say so. Nor did he say what not so long ago he would have said: that it was only a test, that the Lord had tested even Job, and when he stood the test, He blessed him more than ever before.

'You must fight to keep your children, Máša. And I'll ask Dr Wagner to represent you.'

'But how will we live?'

'You have to tell yourself that there are lots of people worse off than you, Máša. There are mothers whose children die. Others give birth to blind or crippled babies. And you've not been left entirely on your own. You have the Lord Jesus and all of us, your brothers and sisters, who support you.' He stopped short, sickened by his own words, his hypocrisy. It was as if he wasn't talking to her but to his own wife. Even though he had not abandoned Hana, had not moved away, not raken the children; instead he always returned to them and behaved affably as if he still dwelled with them in love and peace. Who was behaving worse, in fact, he or Mášas husband, who had made his choice? Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil.