Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

Love, Bára

Dear Bára,

Last night, the moon was shining a day after full moon, and it was strangely veiled as if behind a luminous, translucent curtain. (The Manicheans apparently believed that the sun and moon go dark because they use a special veil in order not to see the cosmic battle.) Yesterday Magda said to me: It's amazing how fast the moon moves. It's moved a whole chunk in just a little while. I said: But it has to circle the earth in a single day. And her comment was: It moves terribly slowly then. I said: It's because it's a long way away. Things that are a long way away appear to move slowly even when they are flying at the speed of light.

You're a long way away. To be in the same town and yet so far from each other. When you're close, when we are together, time flies at the speed of light, because the distance is in fact still there and the imminence of parting weighs on the short moment of togetherness. When I can't see you, time drags by like a night on the rack. I wanted to tell you not to become downhearted. I can understand that you have death on your mind, but death is part of life. 'Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil,' for He is with me. I share your suffering and think of you constantly.

You write that sometimes you wake up in the morning and wonder whether there is any sense in living and that it helps you to think of those who

would be sad at losing you. It is undoubtedly important to know that there are people who love you so much that it would be extremely hard for them to live without you, but all the same, you ought to live because you yourself need to live, because you rejoice in the gift of life. And a woman like you certainly has no need to justify her existence in terms of how many people would miss her.

I'm not sure whether our love can be completely pure, but I do know that I love you.

Love, D.

P.S. You write that I am incomparable. I'm not. But you are! You're amazing, I've never known and couldn't even imagine a woman like you. It's as if you were a distillation of all creatures, as if you were a composition by Bach and Beethoven together.

Dearest love,

I'm sad again today. Why? Because I don't lead a virtuous life? Because you don't think I have a pure heart? Because there is always some new source of worry? After all, I could just as easily shout from the rooftops that I am happy because I've found you.

Or can I be happily sad?

I was with Sam today, as I am every day. At least they have managed to dispel some of his low spirits and he is in his usual form again, so that he is able — and eager — to domineer me. And in two days' time he'll be back home already, and that means he can domineer over me day and night. I drove home from the hospital in the dark with a whole line of cars coming in the opposite direction. It was Sunday evening and I said to myself the main thing is to get there and not think about what is going to happen.

I heard again for the umpteenth time that I am the cause of everything bad in his life. What he did was on account of me; apparently he was toying with the idea for at least a year. Twelve months ago I hadn't even met you, twelve months ago I was running around after him and trying to get at least a smile out of him, seeing that he no longer wanted the slightest physical contact with me. By then I simply served as a lightning conductor for him, always to hand, a dustbin to take all the refuse, a sewer for all the slops.

That's what it had been like for all the previous years, as a WOMAN, that was all I was good for and nothing else.

The trouble was that I started to find it too little, I emancipated myself, and that hadn't been agreed on. I liberated myself and there was nothing about it in the marriage contract. I'm a different person from the one he first knew, and that's not on, really. So either I have to be the way he wants me to be or it is necessary for one of us to disappear from the other's life. He wanted to leave for good but I stopped him. So today he offered me a divorce. Or was it separation? Since I already know something about the scenes from my own married life, and therefore know that I am required to serve as the one on whom all the depression, the anxiety and fear are poured out, I don't take it seriously. Were I to take it seriously, he really would try to take his own life. At the same time I'm happy to be of service if it lets him get it off his chest, but sometimes I give into the feeling that I'm human too. That I too have anxieties, I too would like to be weak and not have to play the strong man. I know that's how I can be when I'm with you. But you're a long way away. No, I'm not complaining. I even believe that your loving ubiquity will last precisely because I'm actually of no use to you, because I am not at home with you — by which I mean we don't have a home together. At home I was always there to be used, always ready and waiting, arranging everything and doing the necessary. I was as useful as the sewer that takes in everything.

There used to be a saying that a woman's skirts hide all sins. Except that instead of a skirt I am strapped into a bottomless dustbin. But the rubbish and the muck doesn't come out, it sticks to my body. Can't you smell it when I'm in your arms? Are you willing to hug me in spite of it?

I don't even know how many of the tablets he took. In fact, he could have put those bottles on the table empty. And the farewell note could have been part of the game, part of the blackmail he thought up in order to drag me to him and bind me hand and foot, because that's what he was after, not to give me my freedom.

I'm gradually coming to the realization that it was all dreamed up to ensnare me. Now I'll be systematically blackmailable, which means he'll blackmail me. I know I don't accept it, but I also know that I mustn't upset him, I mustn't say what I think or feel, seeing that I'm almost a murderer, even though I spent fifteen years believing that my life's number one task was to care for him at home and ensure a sense of security, sharing and

happiness. I don't understand why I let myself be manipulated, blackmailed and driven to tears. After all, I know I can take care of myself, that I don't have to ask anyone for anything. Inside me there are some toxins from my past that I can't remove. I used to be bewitched, spellbound. I wanted to serve body and soul, soul and body. I knew I was demeaning myself, trampling on my own dignity, so why has it lasted? I know that Sam is dependent on my love and care, and for my part I'm dependent on his whip.

So there I was driving along in the car and suddenly I felt like stepping on the accelerator and driving straight into a wall or a street lamp and putting an end to it all, but then I remembered you. You've told me so many times that you love me and have provided practical proof of it. That means that I am possibly a lovable person. And so I drove on with the thought that I must go on living. I would simply like to know: Why is it men are so weak? You aren't. Maybe it's because you have your faith, or quite simply you were born that way. So I can rely on you for a little while. Or on myself perhaps. Or on God, who you're persuading me exists and never forsakes one. Or maybe on some vital force that I can feel within me, which does not allow me to perish, but enables me to love. I'd also like to love the one who destroys me, who brings me down, takes my self-esteem and does not value me. I love him as a human being who is suffering, who will die and won't be here any more. 4But how am I to love him as a man, when he is so weak and dependent that he uses it to blackmail me, when he is so grudging and unloving? But loving someone as a human being is not the same as loving someone as a man. And I'm nothing when I don't have a man to love. When I love a man I know I'm alive. I love you and I'm not sure if I'll be good enough for you: not now when I'm getting over the shock, but in general. Sometimes I feel that I'm worn out and no one could want me any more and I don't deserve anyone. My darling, don't be cross with me for pouring out my sad heart to you and writing to you at sixes and sevens. Before I finish I want to tell you how I've taken you into my life as someone who is mine — who belongs to me more than one could expect after just six months. You are mine because I feel that you love me. Like my mother. For myself alone. I'm cuddling you, missing you, crying over you, loving you, believing you. You're the best man of my life. Really.