Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

There was a time when he regarded her activity as a positive attribute, but now that he is continually tired, he finds Bara's craving for life, activity and constant change infuriating. What infuriates him, he realizes, is her youthfulness. She does not yet feel death at her back or understand how futile is the longing to touch everything, try everything and be part of everything.

He should have realized it when he married a woman so much younger than himself. Except that at the time he was still full of energy and Bara's submissiveness concealed her craving for life.

Of course she has no business to attend to. Why should she tell her mother? Anyway, the two of them stick together against him; all women stick together against the common enemy — men.

He then dials the number of Vondras flat. Vondra is home and immediately wants to know how he fared in his negotiations in Ostrava. 'Very well, excellent, in fact,' Samuel says, even though things didn't go at all well, but he isn't in the mood to talk about business matters.

Vondra says he is pleased to learn of Samuel's success and they say goodbye. For a moment Samuel has a feeling akin to relief. Then he realizes that Bára could have been lying there all the time in the arms of that playboy. What's more, she could be lying in the arms of thousands of other men he knows nothing about.

He switches on the television where they are just giving the weather forecast. He listens to it: a fine autumn day is expected, but it won't be fine for him. He doesn't feel like watching the news, but the room feels so inert and empty that he turns down the sound and just watches the pictures move.

Bára is still not home. There is nothing for it but to wait; time that drags on interminably because there's nothing else to do, nothing sensible to concentrate on. Occasionally, when he gets held up somewhere

in the evening, he tries at least to call her, but the phone always tends to be engaged and he can only conjecture who she might be talking to. Whenever he finally gets through and asks her, she says it was to a girlfriend or her mother, or that Saša was gossiping.

He knows that it could well be true, but is not necessarily so: Bára is deceitful. She manages to smile at him even when he can feel her iciness. The smile merely conceals her real intentions. But she's quite adroit and alert and never lets the cat out of the bag, never leaves any real clues. Her countless phone calls are innocence itself and she never leaves any love messages in her handbag.

And when he asks her to be home on time, Bára explains to him all the commitments she has and tells him he sometimes comes home late too. He ought to put a stop to her television appearances, at least. Those rehearsals or performances are just a pretext for her to go and see her cronies.

But if he tried to talk her out of anything Bára would start to wave her rights in front of his nose. He has noticed she has been reading feminist pamphlets lately. Although there was hardly any need for her to read them, she could write her own.

Some sort of actors' dressing-room appears on the screen. Samuel can imagine his own wife in it, and she's not alone, of course.

For God s sake, it's only too obvious to him that there is no keeping an eye on a woman: she can make love anywhere — on the floor, on a table, in an armchair, on a heap of straw, in a wood, in a meadow, standing up in a gateway, on a car seat or in some shed where building materials are stored.

When they were at that reception given by the English last week, he noticed that she was approached by men he didn't know at all. Where did they know her from? He registered the note of pleasure in her voice that they were interested in her. They addressed him with respect too. Indeed, many of the guests would have been honoured for him to spare them a moment, but his mind was elsewhere: he was watching Bára and feeling so hopelessly deserted and betrayed, that in the end he dragged her off home on the pretext that he wasn't feeling well. So she steered him to the car and insisted on driving even though she had drunk at least four glasses of wine. And when they got home she made him take some tablets as if she didn't know full well that his illness was simply caused by her.

At half-past eight Bára arrives at last. 'You're home already?' she says,

and in her voice feigned satisfaction is mixed with fear and disappointment. She comes to embrace him, but as she brings her face close to his, he detects the odour of wine and refuses to kiss her. 'Where have you been so long?'

Bára has a perfect alibi ready, of course. In the afternoon at the building department and in the evening she dropped by Ivana's because she had promised her some drops to prevent migraine. And she actually takes a brown medicine bottle out of her handbag: ten drops in a small bottle of water. Water to be added as the contents are used up.

Samuel doesn't listen to her. 'What about Aleš?'

'I'll phone Mum to bring him. Or should I go and pick him up in the car?'

'Why didn't you pick him up on the way?'

'I wanted to get home as soon as possible. In case you came in early and had to wait here on your own.'

'I did come in early and I did wait here on my own.'

'I'm sorry about that, I really am,' and she adopts an expression as if she really was sorry. 'How did you make out?'

For the second time he says it went well, excellently, in fact.

'I'm pleased. And most of all I'm pleased you're home.' She acts as if she really was pleased and waits for him to kiss her after all, but he would sooner give her a thrashing and get out of her where she really has been and how long she's been carrying that bottle around in her handbag as an excuse and what those drops are really to prevent, that's if the bottle contains drops for preventing anything. He turns on his heel and goes to his room.

Aren't you going to eat?' Bára calls after him.

'There isn't anything yet.'

'I'll make something straight away. But I'll just call Mum first and ask her to bring Aleš.'

'It's too late,' he says. 'Surely you don't want your mother dragging him home through the city in the dark?'

In his room he sits down at his enormous desk and switches on his computer, but he doesn't feel like working. It occurs to him that he will never again create anything decent or original anyway. He's getting on for sixty and there are other, younger and more ambitious fellows with much better opportunities than he ever had, with different backgrounds and happier homes, maybe. What he hasn't managed to achieve so far, he never will.

He can feel the despondency growing in him, as well as anger with Bára. He had asked her where she had been for so long and he had accepted her excuse, not letting on that he totally disapproves of her dumping their son on his grandmother instead of taking care of him, and there is no way he can agree to her wandering off God knows where, with God knows who the moment his back is turned.

At that moment, the door of the flat bangs: it is his stepson coming in. As usual, he mistakes the front hall for some woods and is whistling some mind-numbing pop song.

Samuel rushes out of his den and gives Saša a ticking-off.

Saša looks offended and says he has hardly done anything terrible. He didn't know his dear daddy was home, he was supposed to be away.

Samuel explains to him that one acts civilly at home even if one is on one's own.

His stepson asks him what is so uncivil about someone whistling to himself at home when he is on his own.

Samuel starts to yell that he's had enough of such rudeness and impertinence.

Bára peeps into the front hall and asks what he's annoyed about.

Samuel, his voice faltering with annoyance, informs her that he has reason enough to be annoyed. He has come home to an empty flat. One of the children has been dumped on his grandmother and the other is out mooching around somewhere, and its no surprise seeing that his mother sets such a splendid example.