Ivan Klima - Lovers for a Day

He jumped on board. He could make out the brown oval barrels in the darkness. There was a smell of beer.

She had to take off her shoes and hand them to him. Then she tried to swing her leg over the high tail gate, but her skirt was too tight. He leaned over, gripped her under the armpits and hauled her up. For a moment he held her in his arms with her mouth very close to his.

A bundle of damp, grubby sacks lay by the side board. It was

extremely cramped. They sat on the blankets, their elbows touching and their knees drawn up under their chins.

'There you are, then,' he said. 'There you are.'

His face was right next to hers. She could see each of his features in the light that streamed through a hole in the tarpaulin. A boyish face. Quite smooth and unblemished.

He wants me to say I'm fond of him. And he wants to kiss me. I have to find some way of telling him I like him and for that reason don't want to kiss him. Not now. Not now, at least. She knew she had to say something quickly so that he understood her. It was a matter of finding the words, ordinary words: I like you!

So you love me, he will say. Let's go somewhere together, then. No! Some other way. She strained every muscle to find the words and they started to come to her, from a long way away: two lights on a deserted dawn road, a broad sheet of canvas, a quiet whisper from beneath the tarpaulin. It's been an unforgettable evening. Even if we are to share nothing else together, it will have been worth getting to know one another. But we'll never leave each other now!

'You promised me. .' he said.

'Just stop that!' she snapped at him. How she hated all those clichés. They confined her. They merged with her. They were inside her. She was drenched in them. They were all she could come up with. She couldn't manage anything else. All she could do was kiss him!

So you love me? Let's go somewhere together, shall we?

Where?

To your place maybe.

She tried to stop the film but it was already running.

A little bedroom as dawn is breaking. An unmade bed. I'm afraid it's a bit of a mess.

Boyish eyes open wide. It's really nice here! Nervous shuffling. Where should I go while. .

Turn your back!

A languid feline gesture. Arms raised. A bronze chain being undone.

Outside the window the city awakes. Dustmen. Milk cans.

Detail of a chair. The remaining items of underwear fall.

'There you are then,' he broke the silence. 'We'll be in Prague in a minute. A fat lot you're going to tell me.'

By now he didn't even want to hear anything. He just needed something to take his frustration out on. Frustration at the fact she'd constandy managed to evade him, that he had fallen for that mystique of hers. She had come with him so that he could fill her emptiness for one evening. But he wasn't completely sure. If she were to look at him now, if she were to smile a little bit, he'd take it all back. But no, she remained silent, and he repeated to himself over and over again. An empty, ordinary, empty girl… 'So you're not going to tell me anything?' he asked once more.

She tried desperately to find a single sentence, but a meaningless jumble of phrases and protestations swirled around in her head: the tenderest of banalities, the names of animals and flowers, jabbering words — my love, my precious, my darling, my valentine, my copperhead, my sweet boy, my one and only — long lingering glances seemed to pour out of the beer barrels along with the soft sound of kisses. There was nothing else. Nothing at all. She opened her mouth slightly, gulped and shook her head from side to side.

'You. . you!'

'No,' she said hastily, 'please don't!'

She shook her head stupidly. He clasped her face in his hands, for a short moment her eyes were very close and he was

appalled at how motionless they were. 'No,' she said very quietly, 'please don't!'

Then they knelt there on the damp, grubby sacks and kissed.

He kissed her — my love, my precious, my darling, my Snow White, my beautiful, my fragrant, my Lingula, until at last the lorry started to jolt over the cobbles of the city and she whispered, 'Stop it now! Stop it!' And again they sat side by side with their knees under their chins, and his arm around her shoulders. With the stench of beer.

Through the hole in the tarpaulin she could see sooty fragments of walls and roofs and chimneys and her head was clear and she was utterly calm as always when she returned late from a night out.

'Lingula,' he said, 'are you happy?'

Oh, God, back to work again. I'll hardly have time to change and I'll have bags under my eyes. 'You know I am,' she said with a voice that was clear and level.

The lorry pulled up in front of the Electricity Board. She jumped down first. He held her in his arms once more. Then they waited in front of the white-tiled building as a golden mist rose up from the river.

'Shall we go?'

One of the old-style trams came rattling over the bridge. 'I'll take this one,' she said. 'Perhaps you'll let me go now.'

He nodded. 'And when will we see each other again?'

'What for?' she repeated.

She saw the amazement on his face and remorse began to well up in her too. She should have run across the street long ago. But she wanted to say at least something to him.

They faced each other in silence. 'What's "Lingula"?' she remembered.

At last he could get his own back for all her silence.

'Lingula? Stop that! Your tram's about to leave!'

He watched her run across the wide, deserted road junction.

He couldn't understand how she could leave just like that. Without a single word. Had it all really meant nothing to her? Could she really have felt nothing of what he had felt? For a moment pain gripped his mouth and throat and he was obliged to swallow several times to ease it slightly. He saw her leap into the open tram car as it started to pull away. It was time for him to go too but he waited. She was still standing on the steps of the tram. She could have turned her head at least.

She stood on the dirty steps. She was getting back very late again but it didn't matter. It had been a remarkable night — a pity it couldn't have lasted, a pity the lorry had turned up, a pity the morning had come, a pity he was like all the others. . Someone behind her shouted, 'Climb aboard, miss!' She moved to the top step and the tram screeched its way round the bend. Maybe he's still standing there. She wanted to lean out and check, but she was being jostled into the car. She caught sight of an empty seat. At last she realized just how tired she was. The conductor clipped her ticket — the dark-coloured tram uniform — he smiled slightly, possibly at her, but more likely at the bronze coin — it felt out of place at this time of the morning.

She half closed her eyes and could suddenly see the dark silhouette and it occurred to her that even if she were to shut her eyes tight or run away from it as far as she could, she would still see it — motionless on the dark wall nearby. It was inside her. She could reach out and touch it, saying, Come with me, don't

leave, don't struggle, stay by me, and he would be with her at last and never leave her. She took her ticket and smiled back.

The time on the large street clock was 5.30 a.m. He had to be in for his exam by eight-thirty. Nobody else will have prepared themselves in such a sensational fashion. An entire afternoon, evening and night. With her. And in the end she kissed me. They're not going to believe that.

Lingula, he said to her in his mind, lingula, he recited silently, a genus of the order of brachiopods, the shells either open or closed in the anterior free part of the shell that has embedded bristles. Like this entire group of worms, the lingula is closely related to the order of phoronids. .