Ivan Klima - The Ultimate Intimacy

grumbling or questioning that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. .

Thus he took leave of them as a good and conscientious shepherd who leaves the flock entrusted to him, in the knowledge that it stands aside from the crooked and perverse world just as he himself does.

Was such an exhortation, such a challenge, a sign of pride or simply of a yearning for a fairer world? Could anyone be denied that yearning?

Those who yearned to become the children of God, he declared, often looked upon those around them as pitiable wretches, who regarded their stomachs as their god, whose thoughts were earth-bound, who took pride in things they should be ashamed of. In other words, they regarded the rest as a crooked and perverse generation. And when we also look at the world around us, it appears to be going to ruin, and that the whole of life is being increasingly transformed into a dance around the golden calf. But let us not be haughty or proud, let our hearts not be hardened by our severe assessment of our neighbours. It is not our task to condemn them, it is our task to do our best with our lives and realize that each of us will go astray. Our lives cannot be without blemish, but there is hope for us in that the Lord Jesus Christ will not forsake us, that in Him we have a light that will shine in the darkness and lead us back out of it.

Daniel spoke and as in a mist he could make out familiar faces; he knew everyone gathered here, knew them by name, knew their life stories, their cares, their jobs, the names of their children.

Large flakes of spring snow swirled outside the window. Like that time a year ago. All of a sudden that critical day came back to him: that is if it were possible to designate a particular day as a turning point. His mother was dying and he was endeavouring to rekindle his faith, to rekindle it or to beg for its return, for the return of his belief in the immortality of the human spirit. And at the very moment, when his thoughts were taking a completely different direction, into these confines stepped a woman who was destined and willing to transform his life utterly.

His thoughts wandered to the past while his lips spoke of the importance of bringing light into the lives of others. Nothing in your life is more important than that. To be a light in the life of your neighbour means more than any wealth, more than any power.

He didn't say that for years he had striven for it, had tried to live that way, and perhaps he had indeed lived that way in spite of all his mistakes. Daniel felt a sudden pang of regret that something of importance in his life was coming to an end, something so important that it was as if his very life was ending. He struggled to control his voice, while at the same time he became aware of a real pain gripping his chest.

He had survived the time of oppression but not the time of freedom.

When the sermon ended, silence descended on the chapel. Had he announced that he was leaving his post for good, someone would most likely be rushing up with a bouquet and a speech of thanks, but he had kept his defection secret, so they all simply waited for him to introduce his replacement. He led her to his place and allowed her to say a prayer and the blessing.

He did not go out into the street; the weather outside was too inclement. So he and Marie said goodbye to the congregation in the passage. People shook him by the hand and wished him all the best, voicing the hope that the building work would soon be successfully completed and that he would also enjoy success with his carvings. Everyone wanted to know the date of the exhibition and he promised to let them know in good time.

He still had to go to his office where he and Marie received the money from todays collection from Brother Kodet. Here he handed over to Marie various keys, promising that he would, of course, still attend the next elders' meetings and the Bible study class. Then he went downstairs to his workshop.

A half-finished carving sat on the small workbench: a man astride a small donkey. Jesus entering Jerusalem. How many artists, both renowned and unknown, had portrayed that event, which may never have happened?

He took the gouges from their case and started to hone them on a small oilstone before sitting down to carve.

A few days earlier the gallery owner who had promised him the exhibition had visited him to ask how the preparations were coming along. He had also taken a look at the latest carvings and seemed to be delighted with them. He maintained that they were not just better from a technical point of view, they were also better in terms of expression, in the way that his figures, through each of their details,

expressed a turmoil of mind and emotion that was almost tumultuous.

The gallery owners praise had gratified him although he ought to have told him that the mental and emotional turmoil in the wood reflected a far more passionate and tumultuous agitation in his soul.

He had preached today for the last time. He had told no one, not even himself, but he knew that he would never again return to the pulpit. Was it because of the woman who had entered the chapel unexpectedly and uninvited?

No, he had brought it on himself; the woman simply stood at the end of a path he had embarked on a long time before she appeared. He had been guilty of deception before then, when he had concealed his doubts about the fundamentals, about the message he brought and about the Christ he proclaimed.

His only excuse was that he had deceived himself too. He wanted so much to believe in everything he preached, to believe that God assumed human form, that He suffered, that He died on the cross, that He descended into a vague and unimaginable hell and on the third day rose again from the dead. That He ascended into a heaven that was situated in a vague and unimaginable space, and there sat down at the right hand of His Father, God Almighty, where He will remain until the day He returns to earth to judge the living and the dead. He wished to believe it and so he used to convince himself that everything was just the way he preached it, precisely because it was unbelievable and inconceivable. He wanted to believe it because if nothing he preached was true, then life would be no more than a meaningless cluster of days between the beginning and the end, between the eternity that preceded it and the eternity that would come after.

Previously he had trodden paths that people had followed for centuries and now all of a sudden he found himself in the middle of an immense plain devoid of paths. He could set off in any direction. Admittedly he could not see the end of the plain but he knew that whichever direction he took he would eventually confront an insurmountable, bottomless abyss.

He had done what he could to dispel that image of an open space leading to an abyss that engulfed everything and everyone, but he had not succeeded.

He was conscious of a cold panic, dizziness and gripping heart pain.

He ought to get up and leave this tiny room, go and find his children, his wife, go and make love to Bára. He ought to kneel down here before this unfinished carving of Jesus on a donkey and beg for the gift of faith that alone could dispel the anxiety, bridge the abyss and offer the grace that is denied to all other life.

He didn't kneel down.

The pain in his chest grew.

He got up and walked over to the window. There was a sudden break in the clouds and the heavens were revealed. Beyond them an endless universe. Billions and billions of stars. An infinity of time and space. And astonishingly, there was no place in it any longer — no fitting place in it — for a God who had become man and watched over events on this insignificant planet.