Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

I know you're cross with me, as if I've betrayed something, and you refuse to accept that Petr and I could live in love. But I can't abandon him just because he's slipped up.

I thought you might have understanding for me in this, or that at least you wouldn't condemn me.

Something else I wanted to write to you about is the feeling I have that things have changed at home somehow. It started some time ago when we had so little time for each other, but now it's as if we're almost strangers. Since when? Could it be since the time you sold that house? We live differently. You'd say we think less about the spirit and more about material things.

But maybe it's not to do with that house, or any of you. Maybe it's just me. Maybe the fact I'm dissatisfied with myself gets projected on to you.

Daddy, the only thing I feel I could be a little bit pleased with myself over is precisely the fact that I didn't abandon Petr when he needed me. And after all I haven't abandoned the piano either. As soon as the baby is born and gets a bit bigger, I'll go back to playing again, God willing.

Please understand me and don't condemn me. I believe that Our Lord won't condemn me for the decision I've taken.

Forgive me for this letter too.

Love, Eva

Dear Dan,

I've received your letter about Eva. I can understand you're unhappy about what has happened, but now that something like that has happened, perhaps some good can come of it. That would be my view, anyway, because you can't see inside other people and what looks like a misfortune to one person can look like good fortune to another. Don't think these are just empty words, in my own experience that's the way things are generally.

I also read into your letter that you blame yourself for neglecting your daughter because of me as well, and that you're wondering whether you oughtn't to expel me from your life as soon as possible.

My darling, I can assure you that I will never be a burden for you. You're important to me only as a loving person not as a self-constraining one.

If you feel that our love is in some way an obstacle in your life and prevents you from fulfilling what you see as your duties, you just need to say: go away! And I'll disappear from your life and you won't hear of me again.

Your loving and understanding Bára

Dear Dan,

Marie and I have discussed what we spoke about in Zlín. If you really need someone to stand in for you, and providing you obtain the agreement of the Elders, Marie could take it on. (Our children are already big enough to do without her fussing over them.) So come to some agreement with Marie about how long you'd need her assistance, and whether it's only to be assistance or if you want to divest yourself of all responsibilities. I think that Marie would prefer the former. After all, it's ten years since she worked with a congregation and she is afraid that by now she might not cope with it all.

The way I understood it, what led you to request help were various matters connected with 'work'. None of us can avoid crises in our lives, nor moments when we are at a loss as to where to turn, when we question everything we do and the way we live. Dan, I've always been fond of you and respected you precisely because you never made any secret of your anxieties and misgivings, and yet you managed to live the way you have lived. I believe you'll manage to cope with things the way you have coped with them in the past. And may the Lord help you in this.

Yours, Martin

Dear Bára,

Don't go away, don't go away, don't go away!

Dan

l

Spring is only just beginning. It is raining and a cold wind is blowing; and there are reports of snow in the mountains.

An ex-minister and his daughter have been killed in an avalanche in the Tatras. The billboards display an advertisement of a crucified naked woman. A poll has shown that four-fifths of the country's citizens want euthanasia, and skinheads have been demonstrating for the return of capital punishment. Is a new multi-storey hotel to be built on the embankment and transform the panorama of Old Prague?

Daniel and Bára are sitting together in the bedsitter at Červený vrch and discussing events that are extraneous or at least have no direct bearing on themselves. Until very recently, their favourite topic of conversation was love, but now they each have their own worries and they try to mask them with talk. In a few days' time it will be a year since Daniel's mother died, a year since the day he first set eyes on the woman now sitting opposite him.

They both try not to think about the bad things or about the difficulties that they face in the world outside this incubator they have created for their meetings.

Daniel has brought Bára a bunch of roses and an art nouveau glass from which she is now sipping wine.

'Why this goblet?'

'Because you came to see me that time.'

'I came on my own account.'

'But you helped me.'

'How?'

Yes, how? 'To think more about life and stop being miserable and brooding on death!' he says.

'I came because I was miserable and was brooding on death. I found you attractive — ' she then says, ' — you preached about love and I felt you were searching for it like me.'

He kisses her for those words but finds himself unable to rejoice in her love as he did only a few weeks ago. Too much has collapsed around them. To get closer to her he has to struggle through the ruins.

Bára mentions that her friend Helena is getting a divorce.

'Why?'

'Her engineer is a drunkard and she couldn't stand being with him any more. And she has fallen in love.'

'Who with?'

'It's immaterial,' Bára says. 'She simply wishes to be with the one she loves.'

Her announcement contains an implicit reproach. 'Everyone's divorcing,' Bára adds.

'Do you think we should too?'

'Maybe we should, but we won't.'

They quickly finish off the bottle of wine — they have little time. Then they make love. Making love at least distances them for a moment from the world in which they move for the remainder of the day, for the remaining days, and they may quietly speak words of love.

Afterwards Bára bursts into tears.

'What's up, my love?'

But Bára shakes her head. She doesn't want to burden him with her concerns, she knows he has enough worries of his own.

'I don't have any worries when I'm with you.'

'I'm happy too when I'm with you. These are my only moments of happiness.'

'But you're crying.'

'I'm crying because I have so little time with you. Because I don't know what to do now. . Sweetheart, I'm so disheartened, so miserable and you won't protect me, all you do is lure me to you, and then you turn me out into the cold wind.'

Daniel says nothing. Then he asks if there has been any change at home.

Bára tells him that Sam mostly says nothing. He takes tablets and that calms him slightly. It looks as if he might have got over his

insane notion about the reincarnated murderess; Bára has locked the pistol in her own desk and he has not come looking for the weapon, even though he's sure to have noticed its disappearance. He hasn't apologized but behaves as if he could remember nothing of that mad scene when he wanted to shoot her. Perhaps he really can't. But he constantly makes it plain that Bára is his misfortune. She disrupts the order of his life, creates commotion and neglects her duties.

'He's sick,' Daniel says.

'Don't I know it. And he always will be.'

'Shouldn't he be in an institution?'

'I'm hardly going to send my husband to a loony bin, am I? I've seen the inside of one myself and I know what it means. Death would be better than that.'

'Do you want to leave him?'