Ivan Klima - Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

'I don't understand that.'

'There's another president now.'

'I don't understand, that he is and that he isn't any more. What are you going to do now that he isn't?'

'I'm going to make films.'

'I don't know — I don't know if you will or not, but I love you all the same, Pavel. . you're my. . what exactly are you?. . my. .?'

'Your son.'

'I thought you were my Good Samaritan. And you were my husband before. Or maybe not. What am I? Your. .?'

'You're my mother.'

'Oh, go on,' she laughed. 'That was a long time ago.'

She combed her hair and then closed her eyes. 'I feel like eating something,' she said. 'I haven't eaten for days.'

'I'll make you some mashed potatoes.'

'You're going to make me mashed potatoes? You're not going to run away from me, into the forest? You're a good boy, Pavel. I'm fond of you.'

He went into the kitchen and took several potatoes out of the pantry. There were various things in the kitchen left over from the commercial shoots. Chewing-gum, different slicers and a set of supposedly ever-sharp knives. Using one of these, he peeled the potatoes and put them on the stove. He could have gone back in to his mother, but his conversation with her had exhausted him. He preferred to sit in the dark kitchen and watch the blue gas-flame.

A few days before, Robin had come to see him. He brought along the dog, and a large bag containing several neatly ironed shirts and his pyjamas. 'This is from Mum,' said the boy. 'She says you might need them. '

'Thanks.'

Argus rubbed up against him, then stood on his hind

legs, put his paws on his chest and licked his face.

'He misses you,' said Robin. 'He waits for you every day.'

He nodded. He had always got on better with dogs than people. Or rather, they got along better with him. He didn't like attributing human qualities to animals, but at least they certainly didn't try to own people, or punish them for being less than perfect.

The boy hesitated for a moment. 'Don't be angry with Mum,' he said. 'She means well. She thinks that I should be with my father.'

'I'm not angry with her.'

'You were always good to me,' said the boy. 'Honest. I feel bad that I might not see you again.'

'You can always come and visit me if you want to.'

'Thanks! But maybe they wouldn't like it.'

'I'm sure we'll see each other again.' He felt he should say something more, but instead he merely asked, 'Things going well at school?'

'It's OK.' Suddenly he perked up. 'School was always a pile of crap, but now they're teaching us things that weren't in the old textbooks. And we don't have to call the teachers "Comrade" any more.'

'Is that better?'

'I'll say!'

He rumpled Robin's hair and then gave him a fistful of chewing-gum before he left. He would probably never see him again.

His own son had never been born, and he'd lost his substitute son. He was surrounded by total strangers, and his mother barely recognized him.

He drained the potatoes, added milk and mashed them. Then he fried some eggs and put them on the plate with the mashed potatoes.

His mother had fallen asleep again. Her sunken cheeks were yellowish-grey and they puffed up slightly with each breath she took. The sound of feeble snoring came from her chapped lips.

He put the plate on the bedside table. 'Here's your food, Mother.'

She didn't move.

He spoke to her again, louder this time, and then he touched her shoulder with his hand. 'Mother!'

The doctor arrived in less than half an hour. She took his mother's pulse and blood pressure and looked under her eyelids. Then she sat down at the table and asked him a few questions, quickly jotting down his answers. 'We're taking your mother to the hospital. Here's an ambulance voucher. But I'm afraid that there's not a lot that can be done.'

'You think not?'

'She's eighty years old.'

'She hasn't been very well lately,' he said. 'Life was pretty much a burden to her.'

The doctor left. He called the ambulance, then sat in the armchair and looked at his mother. She was still breathing regularly, and her head rested on the pillow at an odd angle. He got up, ran the comb through her thin hair and stroked her forehead.

What was death?

You live for as long as you still see some meaning in being alive. You can live less than your allotted time, but not longer. It's not important whether you're still breathing or not.

Death is the moment a person, as an alien, falls among aliens and they surround him like a clinging layer of damp earth.

He suddenly felt the full weight of his mother's loneliness. He'd been with her so little in recent weeks and months, and hadn't stayed long even when he came to visit her, not even when he slept in her flat. And now, at this moment, he would have liked to make it up to her, but as usual he came to that realization when it was too late.

3

Before he set out for the castle, he stopped in the little shop in the village. It was now in private hands, and offered several different kinds of wine and chocolate. At the castle, he learned that Alice had moved away two

months ago. It might have occurred to him that she would not have stayed there by herself after Peter had gone.

Fortunately she had moved to a neighbouring town, where the local authorities had found her a flat. They desperately needed a nurse for their health centre. 'Nurses are leaving for abroad in droves,' the new custodian told him. 'They can make five times as much as they do here.'

It was evening by the time he reached the small house where she lived. A window on the second floor opened when he rang. 'Pavel, is that you?' She ran down, hugged him and held her face up to be kissed. Perhaps she was really glad to see him.

Her new flat was small and modestly furnished.

'I hear you're working again,' he said.

'Yes. The children are bigger, I have to make a living and I needed somewhere to live.'

'Are you enjoying it?'

'There's plenty to do. And life is interesting now,' she said, avoiding a direct answer. She took him into a small room wjth a couch, an armchair, a table and some shelves on the wall. Even with its meagre furnishings, the room seemed crowded. Some geraniums were blooming in a window-box. 'And what are you doing? Are you still working in television?'

'I'm about to leave,' he said. 'I've left Eva, and my mother died last month.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'It was for the best.'

'That's too many things all at once. I want you to tell me all about everything, if you're not in a hurry.'

'No, I was only in a hurry to get here, to see you.'

'I still have to put the baby to bed. The others are fine on their own. Then we'll have time for ourselves. '

He would have liked to go with her, but would probably have been in her way.

There were several books on the shelves. A concise medical dictionary, nursing-school texts.

Haemorrhagai cerebri, brain haemorrhage.

Respiratio agonalis, terminal respiratory distress.

There was also an anthology of love poetry.

The geraniums gave off a faint, musty smell. He felt as

though he were suffocating. He stood up and opened the window wide and then went and opened the door slightly. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of her leaning over a small fair-haired child in the bathroom. Although she had had three children, her figure was still girlish.

She noticed him looking at her. 'Don't stare at me. My hair's a mess and I'm wearing these awful old clothes.'

'You look fine to me.'

She laughed, lifted the little boy to the floor and closed the door.

The fourth child, or really the first — his son — had never been born.

There was a newspaper lying on the table. He picked it up but couldn't concentrate on the headlines. It shook in his hands. He put it down and held out his fingers. Either I'm drinking too much, or I'm overexcited at the thought of being here alone with her.