Ivan Klima - Lovers for a Day

Then she sat down again. So long as the bed doesn't creak and the landlord doesn't make any comments, and the boy doesn't talk needlessly and it's a bit nice at least. He came back from the counter and handed back her purse.

She opened it absentmindedly, and sorted through the change. Suddenly she realized: 'Wasn't there enough left for a room?' It sounded almost triumphal.

'I don't know… I… I didn't ask. .' Then she saw him blush and at that moment she too felt a pang of shame and pushed back her chair noisily.

They walked down the long street of darkened houses with dogs barking from the gardens as they passed. But there was a pure and comforting silence. God I've not done this before, it's really crazy. Then there remained a path through the fields, the scent of acacia, and the only light came from the moon high above: unfamiliar and mysterious.

'Where are we going?' she asked. She stared at the rounded toes of her shoes and tried to make out how badly damaged they were. 'Nowhere, I expect,' she answered herself, 'that's the whole point. .'

He probably didn't notice the irony. 'Once when I was a boy I ran away from home,' he began. 'With a friend of mine. I didn't know where I was going then either. We took sleeping bags and loads of tinned food. .'

'Yeah, yeah,' she interrupted him impatiently. 'You slept in the woods and the owls hooted but you weren't scared. Then they caught you at the railway station at Český Krumlov. You didn't even get a beating when you got home and so you fell in love. You were thirteen. She was a geography teacher. She clashed your hopes when you came upon her in the arms of the married PE teacher. So you wrote your first poem. Oh, God! If only you'd written a song, at least!'

'What?' he said, mystified.

'A song,' she repeated. 'But no. All any of you wrote was poems.'

Perhaps she shouldn't have said 'any of you'; he would find that the most hurtful thing. Now he said no more and their journey was even more aimless. And the silence was oppressive.

At length he spoke up once more. 'Why are you always like that? You never want to hear anything!' And when she did not reply he asked her again, 'What do you actually do?'

'Stop it! Stop interrogating me!' Then she said, 'Film. In the archives if you must know.'

'That must be interesting.'

'Awfully!'

Before that she had worked in an accounts department and had never dreamed of anything like it: four films a day; Marlon Brando, Laurence Harvey, Alain Delon; all those kisses, those rendezvous on street corners, those ball gowns, those dinners, those bars and orchestras. The stars: Cybulski, Marilyn Monroe, May Britt. Unfinished stripteases and suggested rapes. War: all that horror and lucky encounters. Successful careers. Railwaymen, turners and miners looking for new relationships. Hooligans. Murder in a bathroom and murder on a deserted road. Many abandoned journeys. Twilight and dawn on deserted trails. Parks. Park benches. Children and pensioners and lovers in parks. Hide-and-seek in parks. Departing trains. Street lights at night. The world through a wet windowpane. The poetry of solitude. The poetry of rain. The poetry of great plains. The poetry of mountains. The poetry of discord. The poetry of war ruins. The poetry of sun between branches. The poetry of the first kiss that ends the film — or starts it. Everything. She knew everything.

The power of the sentence left unsaid. Of the gesture not made. The effectiveness of the hint. The provocativeness of undressing viewed from the rear and of brassieres discarded.

Legs naked up to the thigh. Necks exposed. Down as far as the breasts. The provocativeness of concealed nakedness. Nakedness concealed by a blanket. Nakedness concealed by darkness. Concealed by a table. Nakedness behind a screen. Nakedness wrapped round by a towel. In an untied dressing gown.

She knew everything. She knew precisely why it was worth living. She knew precisely why it was not worth living.

'I'm studying worms,' he said, 'and suchlike stupidities. I'm being examined on them tomorrow.'

They slowly climbed a long shallow incline. They didn't stop until they reached the summit where there stood a low ramshackle chapel. A rugged limestone cliff fell away sharply below. In the valley was a river from which dark paths rose upward. The horizon was far away, several ranges of hills in the night.

'Look!' he pointed.

She was tired and her feet were hot and sore. I ought to take off my shoes, it occurred to her. Whatever possessed me to come here in my stilettos? Whatever possessed me to come at all, in order to stand here in the middle of the night on some unknown rock — she'd never believe it if someone else Cold her about it. 'So what now?' she said. 'We can hardly stand here gawping for ever!' He turned and gingerly grasped the church door's rusty handle. A warm air drifted from within the chapel, full of the scent of flowers long wilted and burnt wax.

The corpse-like face of the Madonna stared at them from (he altar and on the floor lay a threadbare rug.

'What are we going to do here?'

'Nothing,' he said, 'unless you fancy praying.'

She sat down wearily on the rug and leaned back against the low step beneath the altar. She drew her knees up beneath her chin and closed her eyes.

'There's a strange silence here,' she whispered.

'Well that suits you, doesn't it?'

'Yes.' But the silence here was more ponderous than outside. This was a place of vast desolation.

'Do you know how to pray?' she whispered.

'No.'

She didn't know how to pray either. Back in the war her grandmother had taught her the Our Father and the Hail Mary and she herself had mumbled the words she'd learnt the moment the sirens started to wail and the flak to explode, but she had never prayed. She had been only three years old at the time and since then nobody had required her to pray, not even when she was ill or her parents' marriage collapsed and her Dad left home. She had not asked for mercy or help or even revenge, nor had she asked for a blessing on her new father — by that time she was a big girl of ten. She had never prayed or asked for anything. Now it struck her that it must be an odd and marvellous feeling to have someone. Not to have someone to pray to as much as someone to turn to and confide in. It was a long time since she had had someone like that.

And what for anyway, she said to herself bitterly. It's easy to fool yourself. Whether you believe in God or some guy or whatever, you always fool yourself in the end.

'Say something!' she said out loud. 'Don't just sit there like a mummy!'

'I don't feel like it!' he snapped.

She felt the waxen face of the statue behind her, and the

scent of the old flowers aroused her. He was standing somewhere behind her, or maybe beside her. All she could see was a bare wall and a tiny window that a strange dim light shone through. But she could hear his breathing. It irritated her. 'Can you sing?'

'A little.'

'Sing something!'

'I don't know anything suitable.'

'That doesn't matter.'

'I can hardly belt out hit songs here, can I?'

'It makes no difference.'

'You're crazy,' he said.

'Well stop breathing, then!'

'What?'

'Go away!' she yelled. 'Or stop breathing!'

'Okay,' he replied.

And now she really couldn't hear anything. As if he had suddenly disappeared or died and she was left alone here in this deserted spot, totally alone. She knew she lacked the strength to stand up and go out into the darkness, and even if she did stand up, and even if she did find the path, she would have nowhere to go.

She felt a pang of anxiety. Come back and don't be dead, she silently told him. Don't die! Don't go away! Don't struggle! Stay with me! Take me away from here!