Ivan Klima - Lovers for a Day

'You're a hairdresser, that's what you are! If you fancy making a bit on the side,' the man suddenly said in his high effeminate voice; his eyes were almost popping out of his head and he spoke rapidly. 'I don't live far from here and it wouldn't be anything — you'd only have to take off your skirt. . Just watch,' he

burst out, 'just you watch, Miss!' He went over to the cracked counter and put a five-crown coin down on the sheet of glass covering the wafers and chocolate biscuits.

'Don't worry about him,' the barman said to her. 'He's a bit of a, you know, cripple. He can't whatsname, you see,' and he dashed here and there between the tables.

Afterwards, as she climbs the steps to the student residence and passes the scarred corner of the building and the badly-painted railing, that familiar sense of hope starts to come back. He might still love her, even if she doesn't know what it means any more, love. But maybe he is expecting me and when I arrive he'll say, What have you been doing the whole week? I'm glad you're here. I'm not even sure why I'm here. It's just that I was lying there with my head in the sand and it just occurred to me that you will be kind to me, for a little while at least, even though you don't love me, and that you'll pay attention to me even when I don't say anything. In the passage there are two lit gas burners and a black student in white plimsolls and purple boxer shorts, and from behind a closed door the sound of a jazz trumpet.

'So you've come, then? You've seen sense, after all!' The cocksure star of the parallel bars in a tracksuit that had shrunk slightly in the shoulders. 'It was daft to sulk like that. You know how things are nowadays. You mustn't take it that way. .'

The bottom half of the windows pasted over with photos, a jumble of discarded textbooks and study materials, sporting trophies all over the walls, a carved ox horn, and on a shelf a glass box painted with flowers and birds that's used as an ashtray.

'You're such a little girl still, Katka. You're always thinking about things you shouldn't, even when they're nothing to do with you.'

'But it is do with me when you're going out with someone else.'

'Don't be daft. All that matters is what there is between the two of us. Nothing else.'

And silence. The jazz trumpet from the passage. On the other side of the door the black student whistles a monotonous melody, outside the window it is evening. They chased them all over Petřín Hill, but I'm not a student, I won't build bridges, I won't reel off the names of kings or dynasties or study nine symphonies and it makes no difference, no difference at all. My kingdoms are white and pink cards in a hall with pale blue light and brushing off my skirt every single day at four-thirty. I'll brush off my skirt tomorrow and live in hope of a glimmer of merciful consideration if he happens to turn up. I'll wait outside the gate looking here and there and just go on waiting patiently, assenting now and then to clumsy minor indignities and to major deceptions like your current one, and go on 'waiting and waiting and waiting until the day when the two men in blue-and-white stripes arrive and toss a rope over and start to pull. . No, I don't want to think about it, about what is going to come, what has to come, I just don't want to think about it.

'This is the third day here on my own already,' he said. 'After we've waited so long for it you had to go and sulk. Have you had something to eat?'

He's got some wine in the cupboard — the cheapest kind, naturally — and yesterday he came second in the rings in the assessment competition.

'It's time I was going.'

However she sits on the very dirty bed, the other bed is made and as level as a coffin. I'll go over and sit on it and just watch you. I don't feel like staying here, but where am I to go?

And so she drinks some wine, cheap and sharp, that she doesn't like at all and doesn't even bring much relief, just a slight drowsiness and a gradual blurring of the day and the days. Now you can talk about what you like now you can touch me and kiss me.

'Why did you do it? Why did you run away?'

'You know why.'

'You're like a little kid, Katka. What is it you're after?'

He goes and switches off the light. We're trapped in the dark like the mink, outside the window the lights from other windows. Now I see why they pasted over the bottom of the windowpanes. And a jazz trumpet from the other side of the wall.

'I'll switch on the radio so they won't hear. .'

'Won't hear what?'

'You are daft, Katka. Or do you just put it on?'

He carries her easily and now they he side by side, the radio is playing, someone is walking along the passage; it's bound to be the black guy in the purple boxer shorts. The jazz trumpet has fallen silent. If only it were quiet I would hear your breathing. God, I'm here next to you, what am I doing here? But I had to go somewhere, I didn't want to stay on my own. That's why I'm here, for one night at least. What choice did I have for tonight? And you'll indulge me for a little while, for this evening and this night. We've been lovers for one night. Say something at least. Don't stay silent — I feel uneasy with this strange music in a strange bed. And they lie here side by side. He kisses her, You're really pretty, little girl, come closer to me. - I'd like to see your face. - Come closer to me, okay? — Say you love me. - You're daft to ask me like that.- I'm daft to have come. — No, just daft to ask me like that.

But I do really love you and I'd tell you if you were to say it, but you don't say anything, just let your hands wander all over my body and nothing, nothing — why don't you take off your skirt? — but I'm glad, you lift me out of this day, you lift me up to you, maybe that feeling of happiness will come after all, so kiss me: I want to so much, I want to, my darling.

And so now they lie side by side half naked. It is stifling with such a low ceiling and the windows closed. He explores her body, pleased that she came by. The music has given way to a voice that intones gloomily. . qui est aux deux! Que ton nom soit sanctifié. . her eyes are half closed and she is waiting for that moment, intent on it, and her eyes staring inwards watch every movement of her heart and pulse and suddenly from out of the depths of the night there comes the sound of a hollow thud and the deafening roar of doors opening, and the two of them are already waiting, arms open, smiling; the ropes rise upwards, the nooses swaying delightfully; how beautiful you are, your body's like silk, what for, for loving, what for, and the two of them are already swaggering over to her, show me your head, your throat is all white even in the dark, what for, for loving, silence, the priest has finished his prayers — silence and the sound of an organ.

'You're crying, Katka. What for?'

They are gone. Outside the window lighted windows. You lie at my side wearily the way all lovers lie, that's the way it is, and they leave and are lost, and they will return, the two stripy guys, and they'll hang around and one day they'll get to me too and the rope will start to chafe against my throat, and I'm rising upwards, for ever and for good, and you do nothing to hold me hack, nobody holds me back, no one and nothing, and so the

doors will close for ever, I know now, now I've realized it. Everything is clear to me.

'You're daft, Kateřina, you'll like it next time.'

4

There is total darkness and silence. The two of them are at home asleep — if Mum were to wake up, I expect we'd both have a cry, but what's the point, she's got her own. . The same old homecoming, how many homecomings like this. So she doesn't even open the door but climbs the narrow winding staircase. The roof slopes down and the window is small and high and there is nothing here but childhood junk and a tin washbasin to bring water from the passage, and a cupboard, an ironing board with a hole burnt in the cover, a rocking chair and a great big ball of blue twine, not of hemp, let alone paper, but of some synthetic material that is much stronger than the strongest natural material, twine for tying up parcels of old rags and battered suitcases, as well as for hanging washing and those in despair.