Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

It is interesting that even Bára has been to church from time to time over this past year. When she first ventured there, he suspected that it was simply a cover for some other tricks, but when he cautiously asked her how it had been at church, she recounted to him almost the entire

sermon with such fervour that he had joked at the time about her joining a convent in her old age. She had replied that after her marriages and her experiences with men in general it would come as a relief, but that she had been at a Protestant service and Protestants don't have convents.

Maybe she too was seeking a way out of emptiness. Maybe everything we do is only a search for a path that will lead us from emptiness and allow us to forget the nothingness we came from and to which we must return.

Had he not found it humiliating to show interest in something that interested her, he would have asked Bára then to take him with her to church some time.

While Bára and her son were away in Spain against his wishes, Samuel went to a church in the Old Town for the first time in many years, but he did not feel at ease in the midst of all that marble, all that baroque ostentation and the crowds of tourists. The preaching did not catch his imagination and the Mass seemed to him like a long-drawn-out production of a play that had long since ceased to mean anything to anybody.

And then, for some unknown reason, he remembered an experience he once had in Amsterdam when he had found his way unerringly to a hidden market, even though he had never heard of it before, at least not in this life. And then there was that odd feeling when he first set eyes on Bára. She seemed familiar to him, as if he had met her a long time ago. What if, in both cases, it was the projection of some experience from a life long past? What had he been? Why was he born on the first day of September, the very same day as one of the most famous baroque architects? He recalled how, during the trip to Brno, that young colleague of his had referred to some Indian sect that believes in reincarnation. Apparently death takes one of your bodies, but God or fate offers you a new one. The sect has members over here too, according to Vondra.

Why shouldn't he visit them, seeing that Bára can swan off around the world with her son?

He found the name of a sect that ran a vegetarian restaurant in the directory, and he also discovered where to go if he wanted to find out more.

On the Sunday before Bara's return, he set off to the far side of town where, amidst factory buildings and grey blocks of flats, there huddled

several small villas, one of which apparently housed the temple.

He hesitated for a moment outside the front entrance but then a young woman appeared wrapped in a pink sari and asked him if he was coming to visit them before inviting him in straight away.

He had to take off his shoes and then mount several steps to a prayer room of modest dimensions, at the far end of which stood a small altar with rather tacky and cheap-looking statues of some deity with several pairs of arms, as well as a whole lot of even more tasteless artificial flowers. The room was full of people, most of them young, who were sitting on the floor or on small cushions with their legs crossed beneath them. Most of the men had shaven heads and were dressed in white or pink flowing robes.

By one of the walls, hung with cheap garish prints, a priest or a guru or whatever he was sat enthroned behind a microphone, playing an exotic keyboard instrument and intoning a monotonous chant.

Samuel sat down on a small cushion at the very back of the room, and it took several moments for him to realize that this section was apparently reserved for women, but he didn't dare stand up and move forward for fear of disturbing the ceremony.

The priest/guru was still singing the selfsame melody and words, invoking Krishna over and over again, and the people in the room joined in his chant, some of them clapping their hands in rhythm, others beating on small drums or jingling cymbals.

The melody had an insidious effect and he had the feeling that some of the women around him were falling into a trance.

He would have happily surrendered to the melody and that invocation of an unknown force but his mind was not relaxed enough, and as the chanting of the monotonous melody continued he felt himself becoming increasingly alienated from the ceremony and this gathering, and his thoughts started to wander: from the arguably successful buildings of his early days to his unsuccessful marriages, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare, to the daughters whom he had abandoned, who called him Daddy but didn't love him; to the people he had helped by finding them jobs or passing on to them his knowledge free of charge — the only thing he had asked in return was a little professional integrity, without which buildings collapse and walls cave in, but even that had not gained him friends; there was no one on earth, not one single person, that he could say loved him. One travels through life, up hill

and down dale, and with the passing of the years one becomes more and more aware of the futility of all effort, self-deception and loving words.

Samuel thinks about his wife, the last one, who feigns love even though she feels nothing towards him any more, except hatred maybe, or fear of his anger. And suddenly it emerges, goodness knows from what depths: a name — Mary Ann. In his mind he calls his wife, Mary Ann, and it occurs to him that he has just found her real name. Admit that you hate me, that you want to destroy me!

At that moment, one of the shaven-headed youths steps up to the altar and draws the curtain; the guru finishes his chanting and starts his address with the assuring words that people are good and innocent, but they are misled, they are impatient, the dharma is in decline, the present age is Kali-yuga and gives rise to conflict, intolerance, rebellion and a longing for material happiness. People want to consume everything immediately and in this respect they resemble animals, and like them they easily fall into the trap set for them by Maya, the ruler of the material world. She leads people to neglect the Lord Krishna. It is necessary to raise the self above the body while focusing on the supreme personality, who is Krishna. He does not require us to give up everything, but simply wishes us to do everything we do with our minds on him. We can't help eating, sleeping or conceiving children: after all, we are a combination of body and spirit. But it is necessary for us to satisfy our needs like people, not animals. One has to be gosvami, in other words, someone in perfect control of one's senses and mind.

When the guru finishes they start to distribute metal plates of food smelling of exotic spices. Samuel is also served.

They all now eat their food in silence and what seems to him humility, and it strikes him that the place is run according to an order which they all observe. He doesn't yet understand its rules or its source, but is aware of its presence and imagines that if Mary Ann, his latest wife, were to find herself here she would flee the place like an evil spirit exorcized by bell, book and candle.

When he has finished eating, one of the young men comes and sits with him and starts to talk to him: he welcomes him and wishes to tell him something about Krishna, who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and about atma or the soul, the spark of life in the body, which goes on migrating from one body to the next until it achieves such a state of perfection that it may escape from the cycle of life and

death. Then it fuses with the cosmic soul and thereby attains its pure, true identity. If people live badly, serving only things and harming other people, their souls migrate into worse bodies, and can even enter the body of a dog, a cat or an ape.