Ivan Klima - Lovers for a Day

'You know,' he mumbled. 'I was supposed to be going for a swim but it didn't work out.'

'Someone diddled me again today,' she said, slowly. 'I don't see how it could have happened.'

She fixed a tired gaze on him and her arm lay wearily on the table top: a small hand, the veins showing through coarse skin; her nail varnish had cracked during the day. He covered her hand with his own. She didn't move a muscle but just kept staring into his face, or beyond it, somewhere behind him. Then she raised her glass and finished her beer. 'I don't see how it

could have happened,' she repeated. 'I suppose I must have miscounted when I was giving that tram bloke his change.'

'Which bloke?' he asked and took two ten-crown notes out of his wallet.

'Forget it,' she said. 'Just forget it.'

He left the money on the table. 'There was one guy today,' she began to tell him, 'with a sort of a limp. I see him in here occasionally. He got drunk and kept going on about being falsely convicted or something. It seems he went to jail,' she went on slowly, 'and got out last year, before Christmas. But what does he have to keep thinking about it for? There's no point thinking about it the whole time.' She took his glass and her own and stood them on the counter. Then she went to the door and pulled down the grill.

She let him out the back way.

'Well, then?' he asked.

"Fraid not.'

Her house stood at the end of a dark street. If only she weren't so tired. Just a little further. Go dancing, at least. If only she weren't so tired. 'Can you smell that?' he said. There was the scent of something but he couldn't tell what. She unlocked the door. 'You must have an early start tomorrow too. .'

'I know.'

He followed her down a long row of doors. She lived in a single room; water dripped quietly in the passage. 'I'll have to mend that for you,' he said.

'You've been promising that. . Ever since you first came. .'

She started making up the bed on the couch. The place was empty apart from a cupboard, a small table, a chair and the couch. And two pictures on the wall: some sort of cliff above a river and a birch wood. He sat down and waited.

'Why don't you have a wash in the meantime?' she asked.

'Okay' He went out into the passage. Hair grips, a bottle of egg shampoo, lipstick and a few half-squeezed tubes lay scattered on the shelf by the sink. He ran some water before taking off his shirt.

'There was a bloke I knew once. .' she called. 'You don't mind me talking about them?'

'No!' he said, over the sound of the water.

'There's no point, though.' He heard her slapping the eiderdown. 'I'm completely fagged out today' she called. 'Should I make some coffee?'

She opened the door slightly and he could see the kettle in her hand. 'Fill it for me.'

He had finished washing long ago, but he stayed there

splashing himself with the cold water.

'He used to drink an awful lot of coffee,' she remembered, 'that bloke. He'd drink four coffees of an evening. Big ones, and I used to have to make them with three spoonfuls of coffee. He'd always bring it with him. He was a doctor. They posted him to somewhere in the country where he was all on his own. And had to make night calls too. He used to before. . and he said he had got used to it. So he couldn't get to sleep,' she said. 'Some nights he didn't manage to fall asleep at all.'

He dried himself with a soft, fragrant towel. 'You told me before.'

'About that bloke?'

'About him driving to see that woman who was dying.'

'There you go,' she said, 'I'd completely forgotten.'

'What's he doing now?'

'Him? No idea. He hasn't shown up in ages. Some of them

disappear all of a sudden. They don't even try to get in touch… As if we hadn't been. . You won't, will you?'

'Of course I won't,' he muttered.

'Maybe that coffee did for him,' she said quickly, 'and that's why he's not been in touch.'

They were sitting opposite each other — he by now only in his boxer shorts — and drinking coffee. 'Come to bed,' he said. 'Seeing you're so tired.'

'All right.'

He knew she would now spend ages washing herself. He hated waiting for her to finish washing, the time he had to stay in the room alone. It wasn't an ugly room, just empty and alien. There was nothing out of the ordinary, not even a spot on the wall, not even an old radio, or an aquarium with a single blue fish.

'Why the silence?' she called.

'I don't feel like talking!' Now he too felt an oppressive weariness. He always did lying here under a strange eiderdown, when he knew he ought to say something: to say he loved her and why he had come, or about the way things were and were going to be. Or at least to think about her and look forward to her. But weariness would force him to close his eyes, and he would start to fall into the dark sack with coarse sides, always the same material; it enveloped him and didn't let in the tiniest ray of light, or thought or image, even. He lay there totally still until suddenly he noticed that the coarse-woven side of the bag, the dark impervious material, was moving, slowly, inch by inch, moving almost imperceptibly: an endless grey conveyor belt.

A few quiet footsteps, the click of the light switch and he felt her body at his side. 'My little boy,' she said, 'my pet. Did you fall asleep?'

He opened his eyes, and a bright reflection moved across the ceiling before her face got in the way: two big shining. .

'Now I'm glad you're here,' she whispered. 'I'm always glad when you're with me.'

She waited in case he said something too, but she knew he'd probably stay silent. He never said anything. Sometimes it made her sad. 'My daddy-long-legs,' she whispered, 'my horrible daddy-long-legs.' Then she touched his chin with her lips, then his neck, breathing quickly and loudly, then his cheeks. Then she moved her lips to his, put her arms around him. And this was the moment, the moment that always made him come back for more. He knew it, she knew it. The soft pressure of her body. He was falling. He could feel himself gently floating. The unbearably light, dizzy fall, now it was for real. . Completely and totally happy at this moment. Nothing could equal this moment. Nothing tempted him away from it, everything converged here in this single instant, even though it was so brief and then after there would just be an ordinary old night.

'My little boy,' she whispered afterwards. She waited but he only breathed wearily. 'Do you like it here with me?' she asked.

'Yeah,' he whispered. He tried to hold onto the moment but didn't know how, and felt that even now it was beginning to slip away from him and he was beginning to fall into the night. The woman next to him moved slightly, whispered something, got up and pattered out to the passage. Water splashed noisily into the sink. She returned with a grey washbasin and a towel over her naked shoulder. She put the basin on the chair. 'Don't you want to wash yourself?'

So he had to get up and wash himself while she lay behind him. 'I don't know if I feel like sleeping any more,' she whispered. 'What if I switched on the radio?'

Then they lay side by side and the radio cast a dark rhomboid against the wall.

'Aren't you hungry?' she asked.

'No.'

'You usually. .' she started. 'My little boy,' she whispered, 'do you love me a little?'

He said nothing. A horribly sweet tune issued from the radio. Just as well he was able to ignore it. The motionless rhomboid. The cold strangeness of this room, of this night, this music, these words, this loving; he half closed his eyes and tried to conjure up his horse, quietly clicking his tongue at it, but couldn't even hear a response, it was sleeping somewhere — maybe his horse was worn out by that long day, wearily staring into a night full of stars while his warm nostrils quivered. The world was falling into a dark sack, the same old material. He lay there motionless: if only something, something were to come — a white horse at the corner of the street, Morning Star, something. .