Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

Daniel is waiting for her in front of the telephone booth where they met the time when she called him out at night. He has brought her roses: white roses with a red border. 'You're crazy,' she tells him and gets him to sit in the back seat. Luckily it's autumn and already dark, so no one will notice there's someone in the car. She drives him in the luxury jalopy right up to her house and asks him to stay in the car while she opens the entrance to the garage. She then drives him right into the garage where he is again told not to get out until she has closed all the doors: they can gain entry into the house direct from the garage. Only when they are inside at last does she kiss him. His lips are hot and moist.

Daniel puts his arms around her and hugs her to him. His body is alive and so is his soul: she must ask him what the soul is.

'Welcome,' Bára says when they enter the lounge, where one of the lemon trees is in blossom and filling the place with an overpowering scent. Oddly enough she feels it somewhat inappropriate that Daniel should spend the night with her; it is her and Samuel's home, after all.

It's sad, everything is so sad. All her life she has longed for love and whenever she thinks she has found it, she turns out to be mistaken. Is she mistaken now?

There are four enormous black armchairs in the lounge. She sits him in one of these and switches on just the small light above the drinks cabinet. She brings a bottle of wine and glasses and, for the second time today, goes to fill a vase with water. The bathroom is tiled with Italian tiles that fit together to form flower shapes. Samuel's

dressing-gown is hanging from a hook. In the corner, Samuel's slippers await his return. Especially warm slippers, because Samuel usually suffers from the cold. People with cold hearts tend to have cold feet too. Samuel s toothbrush is missing from its glass.

And Samuel is missing from the flat. For a split second she is gripped with anxiety that he will turn up out of the blue, see the roses, see Daniel and hurl himself at her and kill her — kill them both.

The water is already pouring over the edge of the vase and Bára thinks about how she used to love Samuel. All of a sudden, she conjures up past embraces, secret rendezvous, making love in borrowed flats, declarations of love and mutual reassurance. Will you ever leave me? Never. We'll never leave each other! He hasn't left her. Samuel has never gone back on his word.

Before going to join Daniel, Bára glimpses herself in the mirror. She looks tired. She can't ignore the wrinkles on her face. She is weary: she's old and worn out. A vampire has been sitting on her back for years: not a real vampire, they kill you, just a little vampire bat that has slowly sucked her blood and drained her strength. Bára unties the ribbon holding back her hair and lets it fall about her face, concealing it slightly. It's something she knows men like.

She arranges the roses and returns to Daniel. 'You're always bringing me flowers,' she says, 'I bet you could never be nasty to me.'

'Nobody could be nasty to you, could they?'

They drink to each other. Then Daniel asks how her husband is. Bára answers that he is better and says he'll be coming home next week.

Daniel says it's good news.

'You were afraid he'd die and you'd be lumbered with me?'

The question leaves Daniel flabbergasted, but before he has time to utter any rash assurances, Bára sidetracks her own question by saying she too is glad that Sam is better. It's just that it's impossible to envisage what their life will be like from now on. Samuel says he intends to stay at home, which means he'll want her to spend all her free time with him and she won't even have the tiny bit of freedom she managed to wrest for herself lately.

'The amount of freedom one has depends on how much one wants it.'

'I know but I'm not self-assertive enough,' Bára admits. 'I completely lack the will when it comes to my own needs.' Then she mentions

what the consultant told her today. Maybe he really does think that Bára has driven her husband to despair.

She observes Daniel and notices that he has become a trifle uneasy. His clerical conscience has no doubt taken fright at that prospect and his own involvement. 'Do you also believe I drove him to it?' She doesn't give him time to answer but shouts at him, 'You're like all the rest, you think it's the woman's place to put up with it all. And your commandments even give you a rod for her back.'

'But I broke them with you, just as you did with me.'

'Why do you think such vile things about me, then?'

'I don't!'

'Fifteen years I was faithful to him and scarcely glanced at any other men, but he used to bully me long before I knew you existed, before I knew that someone like you could actually exist.'

'I believe that you loved him.'

'First he courted me, then he started to educate me. After that he started to regard me as his servant, then as his enemy and now as some kind of monster that deceives him every moment of the day and night. He's got hold of a revolver— as protection against criminals, he says. But I'm the greatest criminal of all, aren't I! How am I supposed to put up with this to the end of my days?'

'I don't accuse you of anything.'

'But you do think I've hurt him.'

'People hurt each other when they live together without love.'

'I looked after him the whole of that time. You know yourself. I almost never had a moment left for you.'

'I know you to be someone who wouldn't want to hurt anyone else.'

'If you thought I would, I wouldn't be sitting here with you.' She stretches out her hand to him and he kisses it. Then Bára gets up to go and fix them something to eat, but first she takes a video-cassette out of a cupboard, puts it in the video-player and suggests that in the meantime he should watch a film in which she played one of her bit parts. She abandons him to coloured shadows of herself.

No sooner does she get to the kitchen than the phone rings. It is Vondra, her office colleague, asking her to have a look with him at a project from the National Savings Bank for the reconstruction of a building. It's a splendid contract worth several million. She tells him she'll take a look at it tomorrow.

And how's Samuel making out? What is she doing with herself? Isn't she feeling lonely all on her own with the nights closing in?

As if she were necessarily on her own just because her husband has swallowed some pills. Or because that young Casanova hasn't yet invited her for a glass of wine. She peeps into the lounge, where Daniel is dutifully watching the screen, but even though he has his back to her, Bára senses that he is not taking in anything that is happening on the screen. Daniel is still unsettled by her presence, he is still burdened by the awareness of committing something that conflicts with his faith and the commands he accepted long ago. Daniel is a big, superannuated child. He had definitely not had many women — probably only the two he had lawfully married — and had not been unfaithful to either of them.

Nevertheless he comes to her and is here now, which means that he loves her more than his principles and his vocation, more than peace of mind and a clear conscience. He loves her more than his wife, but he would still never leave his wife. He wouldn't even do it on her account. He is more likely to leave Bára. He'll leave her as soon as his infatuation passes and she will remain alone once more with a half-crazed Samuel who hates her and sucks her strength.

The phone rings once more. This time it is Samuel himself asking her if she is saving all the bills, as they will be needed for claiming tax relief. Bára reassures him that she is, even though she knows full well that at this moment Samuel has not the slightest interest in the bills. He merely wants to find out whether she's home. She asks Sam how he is and he snaps back, 'What makes you so interested all of a sudden?'