Lovers for a Day

THE WHITE HOUSE

A blind girl stood before the castle entrance playing the Amerindian melody 'El Condor Pasa' on the flute. A short distance away a coach full of foreigners pulled up and their guide started bellowing instructions into a megaphone. Japanese tourists swarmed from the bus and started taking photographs; someone started to play a hit song loudly on a radio. The sound of the flute was almost drowned out in the din, but the blind girl went on playing single-mindedly.

Jakub stopped a short way off. He liked the tune and he was also taken by the blind girl's tenacity. Maybe it wasn't tenacity but desperation. He found the girl attractive. Her hair was a blaze of coppery red, while her complexion seemed almost unhealthily pale. Her eyes were shut and her white stick was propped against the wall of the house. A small case lay in front of her with a few coins in it.

Jakub had had a successful day. Admittedly he was only a student of mathematics (though he also attended a few philosophy lectures), but he had just received an honour for his last exam and what's more he had just got a good deal for his step-father and been paid a decent commission for his pains. He pondered whether he should just give the girl a coin or even a bank note, but in the end he went over to her and said, 'You play really well. Could I invite you to dinner for that song?'

The girl turned her face to him. 'Is it me you are asking?' she said and blushed. She was wearing a cheap frock of flowery calico.

'There is no one else playing here.'

'There's always someone playing here every day from morning to night. And I don't even know you.'

So Jakub introduced himself.

'Why are you inviting me?'

'I told you. Because I like the way you play.'

'I'm not sure. I'm not sure,' she repeated. 'I don't want you to pity me. But you have a kind voice. May I touch your hand?'

Jakub gave her his hand but she didn't shake it. She ran the tips of her fingers over it as if by doing so she could tell if he wanted to harm her. She had long, fine fingers and her touch seemed tender to him. 'Okay', she said, 'but not to dinner, I couldn't accept that from you. What if we just go and sit somewhere and have a mineral water? Or a glass of wine, maybe?'

He took her to a Chinese restaurant, because he liked Chinese food and he had had a successful day. He also wanted to please her. Why her of all people? He had no girlfriend at the time, or anyone else he needed to please. He ordered duck done in some Chinese style (the girl declared she had never eaten anything like it, and he felt as flattered as if he had cooked the food himself) and some rice wine. So they became acquainted.

The girl's name was Alžběta and she was a year older than Jakub. She had been blind from birth and there was no hope of her ever gaining her sight. From time to time she earned a bit of extra money by playing the flute, as the invalidity pension she received barely covered her rent and basic necessities. And sometimes she wanted to buy a cassette or CD or go to a concert. She also wanted to buy a new guitar.

Her eyes were a misty grey and Jakub had the impression that now and then she gazed at him fixedly, but then her eyes would assume an empty look. She was shy and often apologized, asking him repeatedly whether she wasn't keeping him or if he was bored.

Then he walked 'with her to the house where she lived. It was an ugly and shabby apartment house in a dirty street in Vršovice. When they were saying goodbye, she thanked him several times and then said, 'I shouldn't think we'll see each other again.'

What most surprised or even moved him about this little speech was the word 'see'. 'Why not?' he asked. 'I know where you live now.' And he gave her his address too.

A few days later he rang her doorbell and invited her out for a walk.

'Why did you come for me?' she asked.

He wasn't sure himself. But he replied, 'Because I wanted to see you.'

'I didn't expect you to come.' Then she let him take her by the hand and lead her. They walked as far as Grôbe Park. Spring was coming to an end: there was the scent of jasmine all along the path and the park was a riot of colour. They sat down on a bench and he tried to describe the city below them. But the city was a mixture of shapes and colours that she could not possibly comprehend. She recognized only sounds, scents

and smells, and the only shapes she knew were the ones she could span with her fingers.

They talked about music and then Jakub tried to explain post-modernism to her. He told her he went horse-riding and mountaineering, and enjoyed playing basketball, as he was over six feet tall. Also, that he helped his step-father sell real-estate and that until the beginning of last spring he had been going out with his classmate Jitka.

Alžběta hadn't been going out with anyone — either last spring or the previous one. She played the flute, the violin and the guitar and had a good musical memory. She could memorize simple tunes at the first hearing; more difficult ones she needed to hear twice. She had a number of girlfriends, most of whom were blind as well. She also had two brothers who were older than herself and sighted.

He accompanied her as far as her house and then leaned over and kissed her on the hair. 'You have pretty hair.'

'So I've been told. Apparently it's the colour of flame.' She took his hand and pressed it. Then she stood on tiptoe and searched for his face with her hand. When she found his chin she stroked him from his mouth to the tips of his hair. 'Thank you,' she said.

'What are you thanking me for?'

'For today.'

'I didn't make it.'

'For me, you did.' She didn't ask if they'd see each other again and he didn't say anything either, but he came back two days later.

So the two of them started to go out together.

He wouldn't have been able to explain to anyone why he was going out with a blind girl, but then there is no explaining

love, it simply happens. At first he was attracted by the fact that she moved in a different world, one without light or colour, a world full of hostile shapes and obstacles. In the days following their first encounter he tried to imagine that world. He stopped watching television and started to listen to the radio, partly so that he would be able to talk to her about various programmes. On his way home — he lived in a quiet residential area — he would try walking along the familiar footpath with his eyes closed. Sometimes he would even pick up a fallen branch and try to use it like a white stick. Even so he never managed to walk more than forty paces. Then he would stop and not dare take another step in the dark. A world without colour was like a black-and-white film, but even a black-and-white film made use of shapes. What shapes were there in her world? What were her dreams like? He would have liked to ask, but they got used to not talking about her blindness and she did her level best not to seem different in any way from other people. In fact, once when he took her with him to the riding school she asked if she could try riding a horse. He went along with her game that she differed in no way from him and explained to her what she must do in the saddle. Then he helped her mount one of the mildest tempered fillies and led her in a circle around the arena, while Běta, thanks to her natural sense of rhythm, jogged up and down in the saddle as if she was an avid watcher of Westerns.

'What colour is this filly?' she wanted to know.

'Brown.'

'I thought so.'

'Why?'

'Because she's warm.'

In an effort to become more familiar with his world, the

world of the sighted, she would ask about colours which she could only imagine as various degrees of warmth or cold. What was cold she perceived as white, what was hot as red, orange or yellow.

How would she perceive the yellowing leaves of the birch trees in autumn?

Most likely as the quietest of rustling in the breeze.

She also liked using words that belonged to the vocabulary of the sighted. 'I saw you in the distance,' she would say when they had a rendezvous somewhere. How could she see him in the distance? Only insofar as she could make out the sound of his footsteps.

She stopped in front of a flower-stall. 'Look at those beautiful fresh roses!'

How could she tell they were beautiful and fresh? By their scent maybe.

He was also moved by her gratitude for his love. 'Is it possible that you really love me?'

He assured her that it was.

'But why? You could have found so many sighted girls.'

He told her it didn't matter whether she could see or not.

'Why? With me you can do hardly any of the things you could with them.'

He told her that he particularly liked the fact that her world was different from his. On the contrary, uniformity was like death. In death everything and everyone became the same, didn't they?

'You'll leave me one day, anyway. But I don't want to think about it. You're with me now and I'm grateful to you for every second.'

'Don't thank me. I could just as easily thank you.'

'For what? For what?'

'For your love.'

'You can't thank me for that.'

'There you are, then.'

'I'm grateful to you anyway. Maybe I'll repay you one day. Either I will, or God will.'

'There's nothing to repay.' Then he said. 'Love can only be repaid with love.'

'I know. That's what I mean.'

Sometimes it struck him that her world, which lacked colours and clearly defined shapes, was no poorer than his own. It might be less colourful, but it was deeper and more intense. The same was true of her feelings and her capacity to experience things. He wasn't sure 'whether he would be capable of such depth, of concentrating on a piece of music, a thought, an experience or a feeling, the way she did. When he first met her he was ready to pity her. He liked the fact that he had to lean down to her, that he was giving her what nobody else would give her, but he could equally envy her and accept that she was giving him something that he would never find with a woman who was as frivolous as he was.

They listened to music together, walked together in the streets and parks, sipped wine in cheap little cafés (he was only a student, after all) and made love in his room, in the woods, or on a sun-warmed rock that she boldly clambered up with him.

Sometimes when they were parting, she would say softly, like a word of farewell, 'Don't leave me yet!' And he wasn't sure whether she meant that very moment or the next day; whether it was a quiet entreaty for him to come again. Usually he would kiss her then and tell her he wouldn't leave her.

He hadn't left her — so far, but as the summer went by

there was a waning of his enthusiasm for the impenetrable world of the blind. He was, after all, too attached to the hustle and bustle of the world of the sighted and more and more often he would be aware of what he was missing with a blind girl. He was also sure that he didn't want to live with her for the rest of his life, that it would be too much for him. He knew that one day, sooner rather than later, he would leave her. This realization did not unduly bother him: after all one lived for the present, not the future. People who 'worried too much about the future were incapable of experiencing the here and now. When the time came, most likely at the end of the holidays, they would simply stop seeing one another. It might be harder for Běta than for him, but it couldn't be helped.

Before the holidays were over he planned to go off to the Tatras with his mountaineering friends. He could simply tell Běta that he was going off for ten days, but subconsciously he felt that this would be a more final separation. After the holidays, his life would return to normal and she wouldn't fit into it somehow. He felt that he ought to think up a last treat for her, something special that they could both remember. He had had a warning dream in which he fell into a deep rocky chasm from which there was no escape. Even though he wasn't superstitious and the dream could easily be interpreted as suppressed anxiety, it was a good pretext for him to change his travel plans. He set off with Běta for the Silica plateau area of Southern Slovakia. They found a room in a little inn near the station. The countryside was almost flat but dotted here and there with limestone outcrops or seemingly bottomless ravines.

The morning after their arrival was sultry, a sign of an impending storm, but in spite of this they decided to go into

the forest to escape the heat. The forest lay close to the village and extended way beyond the Hungarian border.

They climbed a stony footpath that was already scorching hot from the morning sun and entered the woods. As long as they kept to the path he didn't even need to lead her by the hand. She only needed to hear the sound of his footsteps ahead of her.

The path was narrow and in places it disappeared in the grass. They reached a cross-roads: one path sloped gently uphill and he chose that one. She followed him obediently like a blind puppy. What would become of her if he lost her? She'd die, most likely. What would happen if he were to injure himself in some way and they couldn't go on? They'd both die, probably. Strange hollows started to appear at each side of the path, as if someone had forced the land into a powerful press and it was beginning to burst.

He took Běta by the hand for safety. The forest became darker and there was the sound of distant thunder. At the next cross-roads he started to become anxious. They ought to make their way back but he was no longer sure of the right direction. He took one of the paths and guided her along it until eventually the track ended in a kind of wooded gorge.

Then it started to rain. He found shelter beneath a tall beech tree with dense foliage. The rain and the darkness became more intense and when they set off again an hour later they were stiff and soaked to the skin, and to make it worse he had no idea which direction they should take. He set off aimlessly along sodden paths that would peter out unexpectedly or become totally lost in the high untrodden grass.

Ashamed to admit he was lost he just plodded on this way and that. The rain hissed loudly in the treetops, but otherwise

there was only the sound of their own footsteps. Neither of them spoke. At last she said, 'Don't get upset and don't worry about me. I don't mind the rain.'

'That's good.'

Nevertheless he felt a growing sense of irritation. If he were on his own he would be able to cope. He'd run or keep going in the same direction regardless of the conditions underfoot. Instead he had to lead this sightless girl by the hand and whenever they came to a dead end he had to go back and find another path. As time went on he realized that they had not seen anyone along the way and if they ended up going deeper into the forest along the frontier they might not find a way out before evening. How much longer would that frail creature manage to stumble along paths that were full of snares for her? He couldn't abandon her. He couldn't say to her: wait there, I'll come back for you, because he couldn't be certain of finding her again. What he was certain of was that she wouldn't be able to find the way on her own.

They came to a kind of hollow from which water now overflowed. Water always flowed in one direction so if he managed to follow it they must eventually come out somewhere.

For a while he led Běta through boulders and slithered with her down a steep hillside before discovering that the water, as often happens in limestone country, suddenly disappeared underground. He halted. 'Shall we rest here a moment?'

'We don't have to on my account.' Then she asked, 'Are you lost?'

'It looks like it.'

'Are we deep in the forest?'

'How should I know? I haven't the foggiest idea where we are.'

She pressed herself to him. 'Don't be cross with me. Up there,' she said, pointing up the overgrown gorge, 'I can see a house. A white house.'

He looked in the direction she was pointing. All he could see were the rainswept tops of broad-leaved trees and a white boulder gleaming in their midst.

'That's a rock,' he snapped. 'There's no house there.'

'Yes, there's a rock and the house is behind it. Perhaps we could shelter in it.'

'We can't shelter in a house that doesn't exist. How can you tell me you can see something?'

'I'm sorry. I know I can't really see anything. It just seemed to me there was a house.'

It made little difference now which way they went. Although there was no path leading in that direction, he took her by the hand and, almost with a sense of relish, dragged her uphill through the bushes. She tripped on tree roots and got caught up in the long thorny creepers. He disentangled her crossly.

'Are you very cross with me?'

'No, but it's pouring with rain and we're both soaked to the skin.'

'And I'm holding you back.'

'Don't talk about that. .'

'When we get home. .'

'If we get home!'

'We'll reach it in a moment.'

'What, the white house? You can shut up about that at least.'

'Don't be cross with me. When we get back to the inn, you can put me on the train and I'll go back to Prague. I won't be in your way any more.'

He ought to say he wouldn't do anything of the sort, but he remained silent. He imagined what a relief it would be to put her on a train and be free of the burden.

They clambered on until at last they reached the ridge. The woods on the opposite slope were sparse and not far below them he could make out the low wall of a cemetery. Beyond it, away from the gravestones, the low, newly painted mortuary shone white. He stood, gaping at it in amazement.

'Is something the matter?' she asked.

'You must see it now, even I can.'

'Is it white?'

'White and cold.'

'Do you think we'll find shelter there?'

'I expect it's locked.'

'Doesn't anyone live there?'

'No, this isn't a place for the living.'

'Is it a cemetery?'

'Yes.'

'Then there must be a path leading to it.'

'All paths lead to it.'

'I didn't mean it that way. Are you angry?'

'Me, with you?'

'Everything's more difficult with me tagging along, you know that. You could have been home ages ago.'

They reached the cemetery wall. A pavement led to it from the other side. 'I wouldn't want to be home now.'

'Thank you,' she said.

'What for? You found the path.'

'You didn't leave me.'

He stopped and looked at her. Her weary face was soaking wet and a trickle of blood ran from a fresh scratch beneath her

unseeing left eye. Her hair had darkened and lost its fiery colour.

'Are you looking at me?'

'How can you tell? Can you see everything?'

'I can't see anything. I just sense things.'

'Did you sense the cemetery too?'

'I sensed that I loved you.'

'I want to say something to you. Something important.'

She seemed to him to cower, as if to ward off a blow, as if she knew what had been going through his mind not so long ago.

'Don't leave me!' he said.

(1994)