Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

It was only when I'd touched on the spiritual basis of terror that it seemed to me appropriate to give an account of what happened here and explain why so many members of the intellectual elite — poets, lawyers, journalists or academics — willingly supported the Communist terror. Finally in my contribution I would deal with what the seminar organizers no doubt particularly expected from me: the efforts to trace the ringleaders of the terror campaigns and bring them before our none-too-willing courts for judgement.

On Saturday I was packed and ready to leave for the bus when Kristýna called and I detected even more sadness in her voice than usual. So I said something that immediately flabbergasted me. I promised her I'd cancel my trip and come and meet her. What made me do it? Was it love for her or my subconscious fear that I wouldn't make the grade when confronted by all those experts?

6

I wake up. I'm lying in my own room on my own divan, but someone is breathing quietly at my side and someone else's hand is lying on my thigh. You're here with me, little boy. You said such lovely things to me as we were making love and when we were falling asleep.

It's a long time since anyone said 'my love' to me or called me their little girl, after all it's ages since I was a little girl; no one has touched me or stroked me until I fell asleep. I've been neglected.

The divan is too narrow and I'm afraid to move lest I wake him. I could get up and go and sleep in Jana's room but I don't want to leave him.

I wonder where my daughter is sleeping. I oughtn't to have let her go; I ought to keep an eye on her at night, at least. She promised to call me, but she didn't. Unless she called when I was wandering around Prague. I know she's beyond my control now. She needs a father. Maybe this young man next to me might help play that role, but I'm afraid to bother him with it, and also I can't be sure how my daughter would take it. Maybe she'd accept him as a pal or flirt with him, or maybe she'd refuse to have anything to do with him.

If I hadn't let Jana go, he wouldn't be lying alongside me now.

The yellowish light of the street lamp shines in the window. I raise myself slightly and study his face. It's peaceful and somehow childlike. It seems guileless to me, which is odd for someone in his line of activity. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings, my own hopes, on to him. I have no son. Maybe I could have had one, or more than one, but I allowed them to be aborted. Maybe one of them would have looked like him.

I'll never have a son now — I'm too old. My lover could still have lots of sons or daughters, but not with me. He must realize that. I ought to ask him if he wants to have children, but what could he reply? If he said yes it will be tantamount to telling me

he'd have to find another woman. Maybe he doesn't hanker after children. My first and only husband didn't want a child. It was I who eventually persuaded him, no longer wanting to destroy the life that he had engendered in me.

There must have been a time when men longed to have heirs to whom they could pass on their land, their business or their estate — these days most of them don't have anything to pass on.

I'll ask my young man anyway.

I feel love for him and make believe that he loves me too. He lavishes more care on me than all the men I've ever known. He gave me an enormous rainbow shell that made a sound when he blew into it. A shell because I'm a Pisces. I happened to mention that I'd broken my sunglasses and he brought me a new pair the very next day. Admittedly they don't suit me, but I wear them anyway because they're from him. He brought me back a silk scarf from some official trip; it is sky blue and there is a skein of flying geese woven into each corner.

'Where are they flying to?' I asked him.

'To freedom.'

'Do you think one can fly to freedom?'

'People can't, only geese can.'

'If you were a goose, where would you fly to?'

'To you, of course!'

I love him for all of that. But at the same time I can't understand why he should love me — there is nothing unusual about me: an ageing woman who messes around in people's mouths, who has an almost adult daughter and suffers from early-morning depressions that she exorcizes with nicotine and a glass of wine. What have I to offer him? Maybe I resemble his mother or correspond to some other subconscious notion of his. Feelings are kindled in people without their being able to explain why and these feelings fizzle out just as inexplicably.

I search for an explanation and persuade myself that the lad next to me is different from other men — less selfish: kind and

accommodating. But even if he's like that, nothing will efface the fact that one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a months time, maybe in a year, his feelings will fizzle out. What will he do then?

He'll leave, of course.

And if he didn't we'd only have a hard time, both of us. My beloved Karel Capek wrote a novel about a woman who has a young lover. It's a tragic story that ends in a senseless murder. How will my story end?

Jan stirs and opens his eyes, which are completely dark in the gloom. 'You're not asleep?' he asks.

'I woke up and started to think about my worries.'

'What worries do you have?'

I was thinking about how you'll leave me one day, I don't tell him. 'Jana s playing up. She doesn't study properly, she plays truant, and she smokes marijuana.'

'You've never even shown her to me.'

'She doesn't know about you.'

'Are you ashamed of me?'

'You know I'm not.'

'I could maybe help you with her. Although I don't have any experience of marijuana.' He snuggles up to me for a moment. Then he realizes how little space he has left me and offers to sleep on the floor.

I tell him I want him to stay by me and it occurs to him that we could shift Jana's bed in here.

'Now, in the middle of the night?'

'I only ever shift beds in the middle of the night.'

At two o'clock in the morning we carry in Jana's divan. The two divans standing here side by side after such a long time are reminiscent of a marriage bed.

'That's given me a thirst,' he says. A half-empty bottle of wine stands on the table. But he doesn't want wine. He didn't even have any with me during the evening. Instead he goes to the kitchen to run himself a glass of the vile liquid from the tap.

'You're not hungry?' I ask him.

'I'm always hungry, because I almost never have time to have a proper meal.' And he adds that it seems to him like a waste of time to bother with food. I now know at least, why he's so slim.

I offer to butter him some bread, but he says he'd like to make some soup. So at two-fifteen in the morning I start to cook. He insists on cooking the potato soup himself. All I need to do is prepare the necessary ingredients.

I'm not accustomed to someone cooking for me at any hour of the day or night. I'm not used to sitting and simply looking on. 'Why are you so nice?'

'I'm not nice at all. When we get together to play hero games, I generally choose the role of the villain.'

'But there's no way you can tell what you're really like.'

'So why do you ask?'

We are eating the soup and he is telling me how in some game, whose rules are a mystery to me, he played a Chinese cook who was supposed to poison his emperor.

'And did you poison him?'

'Of course I did. I had high levels of skill and intelligence.'

'You haven't mixed anything into my soup, have you?'

'Why else do you think I cooked it?'

'So that's why you stayed in Prague. You don't mind too much that you weren't able to deliver your paper?'

At three in the morning, the only thing I mind is that it will soon be dawn.'

His reply disappoints me a little. He notices and says, 'I'll find an opportunity; give it some time,' thus consoling himself too.