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

'I've just filmed a demonstration. And the day after tomorrow I'm going to the Castle. We're doing a documentary about the president.'

'Which one?'

'Ours. It's his birthday.'

'How old will he be?'

'Seventy-five.'

'He's younger than I am,' she said. 'I'm already old, aren't I?'

'There are people who are older,' he said.

'I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror any more.'

'I can't stand to look at myself either,' he said, and grimaced at the double meaning.

'I don't know, maybe you should be making films about more ordinary people,' she said. 'Someone like that could ruin you if he doesn't like what you do.'

'What if he does like it?'

'Then someone who doesn't like him could ruin you.'

'Why would anyone want to ruin me?'

'Because that's the way the world works, and you needn't talk so loud,' she said, lowering her voice and pointing to the wall. 'The whole world doesn't have to know. And your shirt's dirty. Why can't that woman of yours do a decent wash?'

'She does. And she's not my woman.'

'I don't understand that.'

'We're only sort of half together.'

'What does that mean, half together?'

'Come on, you know she's not my wife.'

'Well, it's still a disgrace,' said his mother. 'To have a man live with you and not marry him.'

'It's not her fault, it's mine. I don't want to get married.'

'Don't you love her enough?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'It's time you settled down. Surely you don't want to be alone all your life? How much longer are you going to wait? Till I'm not here?'

'Oh, come on, Mother!' She didn't usually talk about her own death, but he was surprised that she still thought of herself as the only one who could relieve his loneliness. 'Why don't we go for a walk?'

She looked out of the window. 'I think I'd be cold. And I've hardly any feeling in my legs. I think we should just stay put. You're not rushing off, are you?'

'I'm playing tennis this evening.'

'Who with? Your father?'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, Mother! With Sokol, one of the producers. He's the one I went to Mexico with.'

'I don't know about any Mexico,' she said abruptly. 'Your father played tennis too.'

His father had died ten years ago. She hadn't gone to his funeral. He had left her, and in doing so had wronged her. Most people had wronged her, including Pavel. He had tried to flee the country when she needed him, aggravating the anxiety that plagued her. She could never see that it was his life and he had the right to live it according to his own lights. During the war, her father had been sent to a camp where he had perished. Her anxiety obviously had its beginnings in that experience, and she had seen nothing in her life since to persuade her it was groundless.

'He came to see me yesterday,' said his mother.

'Who?'

'Who were we talking about? Your father. He even brought me a ring to make it up to me. But I don't have it, so I probably didn't accept it. I can't remember.'

He should probably have tried to make her see the truth, but what good would that do? It was a harmless delusion, and perhaps it made her feel better.

'You shouldn't go anywhere else today. You look tired. You must be driving yourself too hard.' His mother cleared the teacups off the table and went to wash them.

'I'm going to call you "Sister",' he had suggested to Albina back then in the mountains.

'They all call me that at the hospital.'

'But it will mean something different to me.'

'What will it mean to you?'

'That I don't know anyone who is closer to me than you are.'

'How can you say that when you don't know me at all?'

'I'm serious. Besides, I like the word: Sister.'

'Stop it!'

'Do you like working there?'

'You mean in the hospital? I don't know. I don't know of anything better.'

'There are lots of other jobs. And you wouldn't have to watch people die.'

'Dying is part of life. And people who are dying need someone with them more than anyone else. Because. . mostly they're not ready for it.'

'What do you mean?'

'When they're alive they don't think about death. And then when the moment comes they feel cheated. Death has caught up with them before they've had a chance really to live, before they've managed to understand what life is all about. They leave life before they've come to terms with death.'

'Have you come to terms with death?'

'I don't know,' she replied, 'but I try to live as fully as I can.'

'What does living fully mean?'

'It means not wasting time.'

'That's not a proper answer. What does not wasting time mean?'

'Being close to someone you love.'

And what if you don't love someone?'

'Then you have to look for that person.'

It's odd that when they first talked of love they talked of death at the same time. Was this an omen? Or was it no more than a realization that love and death cannot be separated?

By summer they were living together. Once, they drove to a borrowed cottage. On the way he noticed a small clump of trees standing in a meadow, surrounded by crumbling walls. It was not hard to find an opening to squeeze

through. When they had crawled through a tangled patch of bushes they came upon some old rain-worn stone slabs. Some were sticking at odd angles in the earth, others had been overturned and lay broken in the grass. They still bore traces of Hebrew lettering. He pulled his camera out of his bag and took a picture of a toppled gravestone.

'Why are you doing that?' she asked him.

'It's what I do.'

'You want to sell pictures of graves?'

'No. I only want to capture what's here.'

'The dead should be left in peace.'

'Am I disturbing them? I didn't knock these stones over.'

'Not everything needs to be captured.'

'Haven't you ever wanted to preserve the image of something that impressed you?'

'Not like that.'

'How then?'

'Inside me.'

Her remark made him angry. 'I'd soon die of starvation.'

What did it mean to preserve an image inside oneself?

To carry, for oneself, an intimation of what is hidden beneath the surface of a thing, of what you have liberated from it in the act of perceiving it.

Who might be interested in such images?

Someone who was also free.

What did it mean to be free?

'Pavel,' said his mother, 'why have you been silent for so long?'

'I'm glad just to be able to sit here beside you and not have to say anything.'

'And why are you sitting here with me? It can't be much fun.'

'You're my mother.'

'Yes,' she said, as though his answer surprised her. 'I am your mother.'

An hour later he walked on to the tennis-court in his whites. His adversary Sokol was almost ten years older than him and, although somewhat overweight, surprisingly agile. But agility couldn't save his game. He lacked the capacity for a good clean return, just as in his work he lacked

precision in his use of language. But he made up for his verbal clumsiness with an acute political antenna; he was very sensitive to what went on beneath the apparently immobile surface of society. He could anticipate not only what was required at the moment, but also what would be required in the near future. Sokol's story ideas were always appropriate. He would have fits of dynamism, followed by periods of utter indifference to everything beyond his immediate surroundings. He liked to eat and drink well and when they were together in Mexico he preferred the beach or a shot of tequila en la fonda to work. Pavel could go along with him, or he could go off by himself and film whatever he wanted. It was a style of collaboration he liked because it placed no limits on him.

As usual he defeated his partner so quickly that he didn't even manage to tire himself out.