Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

'Are you, a pastor, advising me to walk out on a sick man?'

'I'm not giving you any advice. I simply asked what you intend to do.'

'You ask me things instead of being with me and saving me. Tell me, why aren't you with me?'

Daniel remains silent. He knows that either he ought not to be lying at her side or he ought to be with her completely. He has gone too far in adopting her comforting, and seemingly comfortable, assertion that there is no such thing as either/or in life. In reality there are situations in which people simply find excuses because they can't make up their minds and such indecision destroys both them and those around them. He has known that since the outset, but he accepted this offer of escape from responsibility because it let him put off the decision, because it allowed him to rejoice in his new love without having to draw the conclusions which he feared.

'I know,' Bára says as usual, 'you can't be with me when I'm with Sam. And I can't abandon him because he's mentally ill. And it'll be like that till the end. Tell me, don't you think it's terrible that I'll have to put up with this torture for the rest of my life? Do you think it can be endured?'

Daniel says nothing.

'I always thought I could put up with anything because I'm strong, but these days it sometimes occurs to me that it will drive me round the bend. Tell me, will God take into account the fact that I stayed with a tormenting husband solely to nurse him?'

'No,' he says.

'Why?' she asks in surprise.

'God has other worries. And anyway you don't stay with your husband.'

Bára almost leaps up. 'That's rich coming from you! Why don't you tell me like he does that I torment him and am driving him into his grave!'

Daniel says nothing.

'You're like all the rest,' Bára yells at him. 'You teach and preach and prattle about love instead of doing something about it. For you, a woman is good for only one thing. Go away, go away, go away, I don't want you any more.' And she starts to sob.

Daniel puts his arms around her and holds her head in his hands, kissing her and telling her he loves her.

At that moment it strikes him that he has already overstepped the limit anyway. He has been treading a completely different path to those in his entire previous life. It's simply a matter of acknowledging it and stopping pretending to himself and to his nearest and dearest. Who is the pretence intended for most of all, who does he lie to most of all? He is too attached to this woman, he has steered his course by her for almost a year now and there is no turning back. He says, 'If you like, I'll stay with you.'

'How do you mean?'

'Exactly what I say.'

'You'll abandon your wife and children?'

He says nothing, but doesn't deny it.

'You're crazy,' she says. 'And what will I do with Sam? Am I supposed to kill him, or what? I told you I can't walk out on a sick man.'

'I'm not asking you to.' And he realizes that Bára will never leave her husband. She will stay with Samuel not because he is sick nor because she has a son by him, she'll stay with him because in a strange way she is bound to him: because of her long years of devotion, because of her fear of him and for him, and because of an unquenchable longing to win back his favour and his love. None of that will change, not even when she's in the arms of Daniel. It wouldn't even change if Samuel were to beat her or shoot at her.

'My poor dear love,' Bára says. 'I know I'm awful. I don't know what I want. No — I know I'd like to be with you, but I know it's

impossible. In the end I'll ruin everyone's lives, including yours. You were better off a year ago. You had no need to add my worries to your own.'

'That year of my life has meant more to me than you can ever imagine,' he says. 'In spite of all the worries.'

'So don't forsake me yet. Bear with me for a little while longer.'

She pulls him down into her abyss, into her dark pit, where the only light comes from her dark eyes. She hugs him, they hug each other and he promises her he'll never leave her.

Before they part they make a date for the following Monday as usual.

Everything is as it was, except that he has the added burden of a promise.

2

Diary excerpts

The house is fall of workmen. They are knocking down partition walls, pulling up floors, replacing window frames, making conduits for new wiring. In one of the rooms I pulled up the floor myself and cut out a hole for the cables.

'You don't want to be doing that, Reverend, ' the foreman told me. 'That's our job and they'll put it on your bill anyway. '

I told him I was doing it for enjoyment's sake not to save money.

In fact I was doing it to take my mind off things and to tire out my body. It's a relief just to have to think about keeping strictly to the plan when cutting a hole in a wall. And it's easier to get to sleep at night when your body's weary.

I observe Hana who is fall of vitality and looking forward to her new work. I realize that I love her. I'm capable of leaving her for a while, but I couldn't abandon her. I think about the other woman and realize that I am capable of being without her most of the time, but I couldn't abandon her either.

The awareness of my duplicity is a constant torment to me, but what if it is simply the human lot? Maybe we have confined our nature with

more commandments than we are able to fulfil and then we torment ourselves with feelings of guilt.

I was surprised to find Eva singing a lot just lately and playing happy tunes on the piano, such as Janacek's Nursery Rhymes. 'I'm playing to him, of course, 'she told me, indicating her tummy that is already swelling slightly.

We have the same conversation over and over again. She believes that as soon as Petr returns from prison he will begin a new life. Petr has promised her. He writes her long letters every week, she even reads out some sentences from them: a whole lot of beautiful phrases, promises and resolutions. Eva thinks Petr will feel responsibility for the child. After all, he suffered so much himself from not having a father and growing up without love.

Perhaps. What is more likely is that he will take fright at the responsibility and flee from it, either literally or metaphorically. She oughtn't to forget that drugs weren't his only escape, he also made several attempts at suicide.

She explains to me that he was unhappy. Nobody loved him.

We end up with me trying to persuade her not to marry him, but to wait and see how he'll behave after his release, when action will be needed, not words. Talking is easy, I told her, it's living that is terribly difficult sometimes.

But that goes for everyone, she objected.

I said nothing. It goes for me too, of course.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Alois announced to me that he would like to marry Marika. 'What would you say to it, Reverend?'

I told him it mainly depended on the two of them and I asked him whether they were having to get married. Alois assured me this was not the case, but that they loved each other.

If you love each other and think you're old enough, why not?

He told me the main reason he was asking me was whether it mattered. . for a moment he was lost for words, but then remembered what some of his mates from the building site had told him. He said they laughed at him for going with a gypsy girl and prophesied that they would have thieves for children.

I convinced him that was nonsense. That cheered him up.