The Ultimate Intimacy

Chapter One

l

The light has grown dimmer in the chapel. Outside, seen through the narrow window, large flakes of March snow are falling. There are only two weeks left to Easter, so the chapel is almost full. Unless Daniel counts the three dozen or so loyal members of the congregation, people these days tend to come to church only around the traditional feast days.

'Christ,' Daniel says as he approaches the end of his sermon, crowned his work and teaching about the importance of love as the supreme expression of humanity with the most consequential of actions: he sacrificed his life for the love of people. The story of Jesus is also a message about God's new dispensation: original sin is erased. Sin brought forth evil. The penalty for sin and evil was death. Christ's death restores hope to mankind. It opens the way to good. Death is overcome and mankind is invited into God's presence.'

Reverend Daniel Vedra concludes his sermon, descends the two steps from the pulpit and sits down on a chair. His daughter Eva, the only child of his first marriage, once more takes her place at the harmonium. She plays well — very well. She has inherited his perfect pitch. The congregation on the other hand — in spite of all his efforts — sings badly, terribly in fact. Scarcely one in ten of those present has attended hymn practices.

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son, Endless is the victory thou o'er death hath won.

How many of them truly believe the words they are now singing? But for the minister the words have a particular significance: his mother is dying. He has spent the entire previous night at her bedside

even though she probably didn't notice him; her soul was already preparing itself for the long journey into the unknown, the journey where she would meet Him. His mother believed this fervently while she was still capable of expressing her convictions.

Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away, Kept the folded grave-clothes, where thy body lay.

The minister looks around the gloomy chapel. He knows all of those present by name, he knows their life stories, their troubles, their jobs and the names of their children. But in the back row, at the side, an unknown woman dressed in strikingly colourful clothes has been sitting since the beginning of the service. She reminds him of Jitka, his first wife, with her long fair hair with its auburn sheen and her voice.

Jitka has been dead for almost eighteen years. Don't fret, she wrote to him several days before her death. Don't be sad. We'll meet again, won't we?

Yes, but in what form? In what form, Mummy?

Has death truly been vanquished? How long will it be before he finds out? How long before he discovers, unless there's nothing to discover at all.

No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of Life; Life is naught without thee: aid us in our strife.

What is stronger, faith without doubts, or faith that contends with doubts? 'I'd like to believe,' one of the prisoners he used to visit twice a month told him a year ago. 'How do I go about it, vicar?'

He was a young fellow who procured drugs for himself and others. He used to steal and take drugs because he didn't want to work and because he had no one to turn to. 'Pray, Petr. Confide in Him. Tell Him everything, even the most intimate things.' That did not convince him. How can you confide in someone you don't believe exists? But then, if you start to confide in someone, they start to exist. A heretical thought. Very heretical, in fact. Six months later Petr asked to be baptized.

He stands up and mounts the pulpit. Eva briefly continues improvising on the Handel tune. With a scraping of feet, rustling of clothes and coughing, the congregation rises to join him in prayer and, through his mediation, affirm their humility, confess their guilt and

sinfulness and make supplication. Jesus, who died for us on the cross, Lamb of God sacrificed for us sinners, You who suffered that we might have eternal life, have mercy on our weakness and give us the strength to believe. Be with those who believe in you and those who do not. Be with the powerful and the powerless. Be with prisoners and also with those who rule our country. Give our rulers wisdom and humility. And abide with those who are in any way unsure of the way ahead and seek a path to You. And do not forsake, we beseech You, either the sick or those who at this time are taking leave of this life in anxiety and in hope of Your mercy.

Now the Lord's Prayer and the blessing: The blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

The closing hymn. He has chosen a short one. He is in a hurry and still has to take leave of each member of the congregation. He looks at them. His wife Hana is sitting in the front row in her old-fashioned Sunday clothes; beside her, their Magda, gazing at him devotedly through thick lenses.

He also notes that the unknown woman is leaving before the end of the hymn; one less to take leave of at least.

He walks up the aisle between the pews while the people wait in deference for him to leave first. The chapel is on the ground floor of a three-storey apartment house belonging to the congregation. On the first floor there is a library, an office and two guest rooms. He and his family live on the second floor. Now he stops outside the front door. A cold wind is blowing. The minister is too tall and thin, he looks as if any moment he might bend in the wind like the trees in the street. The wind can do little to dishevel the minister s already thinning hair, but it creeps under his black gown so that before long he will be chilled to the marrow. Fortunately he is used to it, having served for years in the Moravian Highlands where the cold months outnumbered the warm ones.

He grips an aged hand. 'It was very kind of you to come, Mr Houdek.'

'Why not, from time to time? It gives my wife pleasure and it does me no harm. And she is not up to it any more, much as she'd like to come. But you gave a good sermon, even for the likes of us pagans.' Mr Houdek owns a nursery that the Communists confiscated from him forty-five years ago, but he has lived to see it returned to him in his declining years. He probably does not believe in God but he occasionally comes to the service on account of his wife, who is unable to

make it here, just so that he can tell her what the sermon was about and who was at church.

'I'll drop by for a chat with your wife,' the minister promises. 'You sang splendidly, young Alois,' he says, turning to a lanky, red-headed lad. Alois used to be one of Petr's gang. He doesn't know who his father is, and his mother is in prison. He escaped a prison sentence; he didn't steal, apparendy. Or that's what he maintains, at least. He admires Petr, which is why he turned up here and why he asked to be baptized. But he strikes the minister as more sincere than Petr these days. His wife has taken to the lad too and she recently suggested that he could come and live with them; the guest rooms are hardly used and Alois would get a taste of family life for the first time. Unless it was too late.

Admittedly, Daniel considered that at nearly seventeen it might be too late for the boy. He was also a little afraid for his own family, but agreed that they should trust in the essential goodness of their own children.

'Do you know they might release Petr next week?'

'I was expecting they might.'

'Do you think he'll keep it up outside as well?'

'He'll toe the line on your account, if for no other reason.'

Dr Wagner has a wide smile on his broad greyish face beneath a head of greyish hair.

'Good of you to come, Dr Wagner.'

Dr Wagner, by all accounts an excellent lawyer, has been coming to church since he failed to win a seat in parliament. He is an interesting man: well-read and thoughtful, but at the same time there is inside him a surprising emptiness that needs to be filled — through activity, through a career. When his career failed he turned to God. 'One has to draw some spiritual strength from somewhere.' And then he adds unexpectedly, 'It's something that often crosses my mind: there's something wrong with our society. It lacks a spiritual dimension. Nobody is guided by the Ten Commandments any more. And without them everything goes downhill.'

Elder Kodet approaches with his wife and two children. He shakes the minister's hand even more firmly than usual. 'Reverend, I have some good news for you.' He owns a real-estate firm and Daniel entrusted him with the sale of a house which has been returned to him as part of the restitution measures. It had belonged to his father and stood in a excellent location just behind the National Museum. Built

on art nouveau lines, it had even retained the original glass in two of its five balcony windows. He had been given back a house that he had never given a second thought to in his life, and had never hankered after.

'Shall I wait for you in the office?' Kodet asks.

He has no time for that now. He must rush to the airport to collect his sister and then take her to the hospital. Besides, doing business in the temple on a Sunday? In fact, the house frightens him somewhat. He fears that kind of good news. He has never owned a thing in his life and poverty strikes him as more honourable than a life of wealth. It is something he has often repeated in his sermons. Money, like power, deflects one from the essence of life. People who think about money tend to forget about the soul. These past few years have provided repeated evidence of that.

'No, I have to see my mother. I'll come and see you another time. When will you be in your office?'

'For you, any time, Reverend.'

The Soukups are among the last out. They have come without their children, who have no doubt been sent to the grandmothers. It strikes him that Masa's eyes are red from crying. He is concerned about the couple, or rather he is concerned about the husband, who has taken leave of his senses. The father of four small children, he has fallen in love like a teenager and wants a divorce. And Daniel always regarded him not only as wise but also as an ardent and devoted Christian. Even an ardent Christian can fall in love, of course; we are all human after all. But a father of four children ought not to lose his head. His wife is a good soul, evidently sensitive and gentle.

'I'm glad you both came, and together.'

'A fine sermon, Reverend,' Soukup says as he does every Sunday. His wife says nothing. Tears stream down her cheeks.

'Wouldn't you like to call on me some time?'

'Together?' the husband asks.

'I'd prefer to see you both together.'

'Fine.'

His wife merely nods and looks away as if ashamed and humiliated by her husband's infidelity.

While he is shaking her hand he adds, 'Be strong, Masa, and have faith that even if everyone were to let you down, the Lord will never abandon you.' He is excessively blunt. He shouldn't have taken the

service today at all. Brother Kodet would have been only too glad to stand in for him. If he had asked his friend Martin Hájek or his wife, one of them would have preached in his place.

There is less than an hour until the plane lands, so he dashes off to the airport. He left it until last week, when his mother's condition suddenly took a turn for the worse, to call his sister in America. He put off breaking the bad news to her for too long and now he reproaches himself that Rút might not see her mother compos mentis.

Rút lives out in Oregon and they have seen each other just twice in the past twenty-five years. Until recently, they were only able to write about the most banal things, so they preferred not to write at all. But for years Rút used to send him a thousand dollars every Christmas, which amounted to more than his entire annual salary. Last year she even invited him to Oregon.

Rút was born two years before the beginning of the Second World War, while he arrived two years before its end. His sister could still remember air raids and their father's first arrest, whereas he is not sure he remembers his father's first release. He ascribes the difference in their characters to the different times into which each of them was born — or conceived, for that matter. His sister liked to laugh and her loud giggling accompanied his childhood years, whereas he tended to be serious. While his sister read pot-boilers and love stories, he chose War and Peace and Madame Bovary, as well as Plato, Bacon and Calvin's Institutes.

Both grew up in periods when hate was publicly proclaimed as something necessary, useful and unavoidable and when people acted accordingly. Rút refused to take account of it and shut her eyes to the reality. And when at last that was no longer possible, she fled the country. He decided he would challenge hate by choosing a lifestyle based on love. And being a person of conviction, he decided to study theology, at a time when he could be in no doubt that it would mean a life of poverty, with plenty of harassment into the bargain.

He manages to reach the airport on time and from the balcony overlooking the conveyor he catches sight of his sister waiting for her baggage.

When Rút at last appears in the exit, they hug each other, and he takes her travel bag. They then drive with great speed to the hospital.

He guides her to their mother's bed. She is asleep. As the nurses have removed her dentures, her bloodless, yellowing cheeks are deeply

sunken. Her thinning hair hangs in strands over her forehead. Some colourless fluid is flowing down a transparent plastic tube into a needle inserted in one of her veins.

Rút leans over her mother and speaks to her several times. Her mother does not stir. If she fails to come round, Daniel realizes in dismay, he will have wronged both his mother and his sister by preventing them taking leave of each other through his shilly-shallying.

But at that moment, his mother opens her eyes and says: 'Rút, my girl, where have you been gallivanting for so long? You haven't been to see me for at least a week!'

2

Diary excerpts

Shortly after she glimpsed Rút, Mother lapsed into unconsciousness. Hana said to me: 'Your mother's not aware of who's with her now anyway, go and get some sleep. Rutka and I won't stir from her. ' So I went home but I didn't go to bed. I tried to think about something ordinary, to do everyday things. A copy of the Koran was lying on my desk. By sheer chance I opened it at the Bee Sura: 'Your God is one God; as for those who do not believe in the hereafter, their hearts are ignorant and they are proud. '

Last time I visited Petr he said to me: 'Reverend, I'm just beginning to realize I was in Satan's hands and you freed me. '

'That wasn't me, Petr, 'I told him. 'All I did was tell you who could free you. '

He often speaks about his mother. At our first meeting he spoke ill of her, blaming her for divorcing and remarrying and for packing him off to the nursery school and playgroup for days at a time, and in the end she had done nothing to prevent them locking him away. Now he realizes how much he hurt her by the things he did and by the way he behaved. He is sorry and intends to make up for everything.

He really is beginning to examine his past without making excuses or justifying himself, and that's important. He has lots of good resolutions, I only hope he finds in himself the strength to act on some of them, at least.

Martin Hájek paid me a visit last week. He was remembering how they had refused to grant him a licence when he graduated from college and how, two years later, he received it for a remote parish in the Moravian Highlands. His fate was similar to mine. He wondered whether it didn't strike me occasionally that even in those frightful times we felt better than we do now?

We recalled how on the first Monday of every month we would hold a gathering of young people, some of them coming from very distant congregations. And we would often have discussions with people who were officially 'non-persons'. We talked for a while about how in those days we had a sense of mission. Or was it just a feeling of pride in our mission and our resistance? 'Do you know I met Berger in Jihlava?' Martin said. Berger had been the Secretary for Church Affairs for the two of us until a few years ago, but it seemed to me at that moment as if he belonged to another life altogether. 'What is he up to?' I asked.

'He's bought a pub, but he spent the whole time telling me about his ailments. I was expecting him to make some mention of what he used to do, that he'd maybe try to apologize for the way he treated us, but it didn't even occur to him to do anything of the sort. He behaved towards me as if we were old acquaintances or friends. '

'Humility is foreign to them, no one taught it to them,' I said.

Martin went on to ask about my mother and I told him her soul was growing wearier all the time. Then we talked about our children, and Martin remembered Jitka too. Generally everybody keeps quiet about her. It's not done to mention the departed, because it might upset those who remain. And the dead move further and further away from us until in the end we are unable to make out their shape.

I always find being close to death oppressive. I repeat to myself Paul's words: 'He has freed us from the very arms of death and will free us…' And also his message to the Romans: 'Yet the hope remains that the very Creation will be freed from the thraldom of death and be led into the freedom and glory of the Children of God. ' And yet I feel anxious. More so than most other people perhaps. Most people follow Spinoza's dictum: Homer liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitât.

But a preacher expounding the Scriptures is in permanent contact with death — the issue of resurrection from the dead is the beginning and end of our message. A thought sometimes occurs to me: it wasn't just the Holy Spirit that ensured that, in spite of all the oppression, Christianity spread through the world and overcame all the pagan cults; the promise of eternal life also had a powerful effect. The moment we are freed from the clutches of death, from the law which binds all living things without exception, our entire being acquires a different perspective. The anxiety felt by every beast being led to the slaughter, or maybe even by the fly caught in the spider's web, is banished or at least attenuated. I reproach myself for my doubts. But were not the very apostles who witnessed the wonders that took place themselves prone to doubt sometimes? Didn't Thomas ask to touch Christ's wounds in order to believe?

And why did that wonder take place then, of all times; almost two thousand years ago, when the Jews fervently believed in the coming of the Messiah? Why, since then, has He only looked on in silence?

The Apostle Paul also wrote: And if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. ' (1 Corinthians 15: 17–19) I have read and even preached those three verses but none the less there is something that strikes me each time I read them. It's as if the apostle here was not referring to what happened but to how badly off we would be if it had not happened. As if faith ought not to be founded on the event, but that the event should be based on the fact that without it we would be simply wretched mortals like the rest of creation.

I ought to go to the hospital. I think about my mother all the time, but the awful thing is that even though she is still alive I think about her in the past tense. She was always severe but kind. She seldom kissed or hugged me but she was never unkind. I suppose she was just shy of showing her feelings. I take after her in that respect.

When they sent my father to prison they sacked her from the school where she was teaching and eventually she found a job with a bookbinder. She once brought me a beautifully bound book — a life of Comenius. She said: 'Nobody has been to collect this book for over a year.

They are either in prison or dead. You can read it for now. 'It was not at all the sort of reading matter that appealed to me — I wasn't yet nine — but I loved that strange, captivating language. It sounded like music. And that musical language drew me to him. I have a picture of Comenius hanging in my office even though I have an aversion to worshipping saints of any kind.

I wanted Mother to move in with us but she refused. During the last six months I have visited her at least three times a week and taken care of her. I did her shopping, cooked for her and in the end even fed her. I used to tell her that I was praying for her, but I couldn't tell her I loved her. It's something I can't even say to Hana. It's as if inside me there is a rock face that I first have to scale. I managed to climb real rock faces with Jitka but this one beats me.

I am faithful but am incapable of being intimate. With Him still, maybe, but not with people. Not with my mother, nor the children nor with Hana. And intimacy is the first degree of fidelity, surely? Or is it the other way round: fidelity is the first degree of intimacy?

One of my first memories. A pile of sand that had been tipped in front of the house (at the time we were still living in the villa in Střešovice which they moved us out of when they sent my father to prison). I was happy to have the chance to play in the sand. All of a sudden right in front of me there appeared an enormous cur with jaws half open and teeth bared. I was terror stricken and couldn't move. I expect I started to cry but I don't really remember. I just recall that primitive anxiety, a sense of menace that derived not from my own experience but the experience of our species. Then suddenly saving hands appeared — Mother's — and lifted me up high. Mother's soothing voice like music, like a prayer, like the song of angels. The assurance of safety and love.

It's ages since those hands were capable of lifting me up; on the contrary it is I who have been lifting Mother these past weeks and carrying her to the bathroom, or to her bed, or to the window to let her breathe a bit of fresh air. But even so, those hands — wrinkled and veined beyond recognition — still lived and could still caress. When they cease to live, the assurance of safety and the assurance of love will have gone.

When my father was near to death he lay in the hospital. Being a doctor he had his own ward and we could visit him whenever we liked. I would go and see him every day. We would talk about trivial things and avoid any mention of death. Father wanted to live but he knew that his heart would give out soon. One day I finally made up my mind and told him that his existence would not end with death, that the soul would not die but would live for ever.

He stared at me. He had very beautiful dark-blue eyes that age had not affected; not even his imminent death had dimmed them. He said nothing. I actually had the impression he was smiling. At first I assumed it was because, after all, he had heard some note of hope in my words, but then I realized that he was remaining silent simply out of a wish not to hurt me, in order, just before the end came, not to get into an argument with his grown-up son, whose opinions were to be respected.

I was intending to say something else about God's mercy but suddenly I became incapable of saying anything at all, so I also remained silent and just took Father's hand in mine and held it for a while.

Father closed his eyes and I felt him moving away from me into some unknown region. Then, without warning, he said: 'Eternity! What is eternity?'

I fell asleep where I sat. I slept for barely an hour but had a dream. I'll note it down quickly before I leave for the hospital: I was clambering up a steep rock which was partly covered in ice. The summit was close and the covering of ice glistened in the sunlight. I halted for a moment, flattened myself against the rock face and glanced back. In the depths I could see the dark-green bands of pine trees penetrating the stony moraine. No sign of life anywhere, I was here alone.

When I turned back to the rock face once more and looked upwards, it struck me that a strange glow was emanating from there. I carefully drove the ice-axe into the icy snow. I climbed with ease, as if I wasn't even climbing a rock face, but floating.

And then I caught sight of a being at the summit. How it had got there I couldn't tell, from heaven maybe. I had the impression that it was emitting light: so bright that I was unable to make out its features.

I stepped forward several paces — or rather I leaped the distance that still separated us. 'Who are you?' I asked.

'Daniel, don't you recognize me?'

'Mother, is that you? But how can you be here?'

'Don't ask, just believe!'

By now I could make out her features, but her face was as I remembered it from childhood, unmarked by old age and mental decline. Then she stretched out her arms as if to bless me, and I heard her say softly, 'You live right and you do right, I am pleased with you. 'A wind suddenly arose and she started to dissolve beneath its gusts. All that remained on the mountain top was. .

At this very moment, in other words at 11.15p.m., 20 March, Hana phoned from the hospital. Mother passed away ten minutes ago. She lived seventy-eight years. Lord be merciful to her soul. 'I called you an hour ago,' Hana told me. 'Rút and I wanted you to come to the hospital, but no one answered the phone. '

3

It was drizzling on the day of the funeral. The suburban cemetery was on a hill and the clouds seemed to tumble and roll just above the pointed tops of the conifers. The freshly dug earth gave off a damp smell. Reverend Martin Hájek was now speaking about his friend Daniel's mother, how he had known her in the days when he was studying in Prague. He spoke about how he would visit Daniel's family and it felt as if this was his second home. 'Sister Vědrová was someone very special. I have known few women as kind or as patient as she was. She travelled through this life, which by our criteria was not an easy one, with a heart untrammelled by hatred or resentment; she travelled with courage and humility, always ready to listen to others, to understand them and lend them a hand.'

His mother had truly borne her fate with courage and if she had suffered she had done so in silence. Even though in her latter years her vascular illness had virtually prevented her from walking, she had not

complained. She would not speak about herself. Usually she would talk about Daniel and his worries and needs, or about the children and their requirements. When she retired sixteen years ago she used to ask him to bring her the manuscripts of samizdat books which she would then bind and with the proceeds she would buy clothes and toys for the children. She had even bought them a television set for his fortieth birthday.

The final prayer. He uttered the words of the Lord's Prayer without being aware of them. How many times had he repeated those same words in the course of his life? His kingdom had not come, but her spirit, so he hoped, now dwelt in it.

He watched as the gravediggers lowered the coffin suspended on thick ropes. For some people, such as his father, death was the last, irrevocable certainty. The certainty of an end. For others it meant the certainty, or at least the hope, that something new would begin for them, something definitely superior and less paltry than was offered by earthly existence. None the less he found both possibilities depressing. That new existence was veiled too thickly by the unknown. Unlike his first wife, he was incapable of envisaging the possibility of a future reunion.

On their return home they naturally talked together about the departed. Rút recalled experiences he could not have remembered. When the war was coming to an end, their mother had started looking for red and blue cloth as early as April. Not finding any, she dyed an old bed sheet, cut up two pairs of undershorts and sewed them into a Czechoslovak flag several days before the Prague Uprising. His sister also recalled their father s arrest four years after the war and how their mother had not wanted to let the officers of the state police enter their flat at five o'clock in the morning. She told them they were behaving like the Gestapo and amazingly enough nothing happened to her. 'You slept through the lot,' Rút told him. 'You were just six years old and were due to start in first class.' Then she reminded him of his schoolboy pranks. On one occasion, before the start of a Russian lesson, he had hidden some sort of letter full of Russian vulgarities in the class register. It had caused an enormous fuss, but he was not found out because he had resolutely denied it. His Russian had come in handy when the Soviets invaded the country ten years later, as it enabled him to write on the wall in Cyrillic: Iditye domoi! He had also tried to persuade the soldiers that they were being duped and manipulated and serving the devil instead of God. The trouble was they

were obeying someone else's orders, not God's. That was if they had even heard of God.

'They're sure to have,' Daniel commented. 'And even if they hadn't, every human being has at least an inkling of His existence.'

'Isn't that awful,' Rút sighed. 'It looks as if Dan still believes that, after all he's been through! And that flag that Mother sewed during the war,' she recalled once more, 'Dan found it in the attic and carried it over his shoulder in the demonstration, shouting slogans. What was it we shouted, in fact?' she said, turning to her brother.

'I can't remember any more,' Daniel prevaricated. And yet come to think of it, it was "No traitors as legislators" or "Red brothers, get back to your reservations". And we pledged loyalty to those who showed no loyalty to us in the end. But that's the way it goes.'

His children listened with interest to the stories of their father's misdemeanours and patriotic deeds, and meanwhile their grandmother's death receded.

Rút was to fly home that same day as she had patients already waiting to see her. She refused to let him drive her to the airport, however. It was better to say their farewells here than in the airport departure lounge.

So he went off with his sister to call for a taxi and they found themselves alone for a moment in the passage. It occurred to him that there were important things they had not found time to talk about yet. They ought to speak about their father, the inheritance and their lives. But none of these were mentioned. There was no time, besides which protracted farewells wreck the slow progression towards intimacy and create a gulf which he, for one, was incapable of bridging. They embraced at least. And when she climbed into the taxi he stayed on the pavement waving until the car disappeared around the corner.

'Daddy, are we going to sing?' Magda wanted to know when he rejoined the others. 'Or perhaps we shouldn't after Granny's death?'

Now and again they would sing in the evening whenever there was time, or they would improvise a comedy which they made up themselves. It could be on a historical theme, or from their own everyday lives, or just some nonsense. He enjoyed thinking up absurd repartee and making crazy faces. The children liked it and it made them laugh.

A comedy was out of the question today, naturally. 'I'm sure Grandma wouldn't mind if we sang something. She enjoyed singing, after all.'

They went into the room where the piano was. He brought his guitar and Marek fetched his violin.

'Granny used to love "Sing the glad tidings!" ' Eva suggested.

'And "By the waters of Babylon",' Magda recalled.

When he was small his mother had sung him lullabies and taught him simple little prayers. His father had most likely scorned them but kept his opinion to himself. Sometimes his parents would go out together in the evening and he would stay at home with his sister, frightened to go to sleep in case a robber came in the night. Death might even creep in.

By the waters of Babylon we laid down and wept, and wept, for Thee, Sion we remember, we remember, we remember Thee, Sion.

At nine o'clock he said good-night to his children and went with Hana to the kitchen.

His wife ran water into the sink. 'Dan, you ought to go to bed, you look tired.'

'No. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway.'

'I know it's hard on you, but it was the best thing as far as she was concerned. She had nothing but suffering to look forward to.'

'Don't worry, I will be able to sleep again.'

'We've got this journalist on our ward by the name of Volek,' she said, apparently changing the subject. 'He has just had a stomach resection and reminds me of someone, though I can't remember who. From time to time he comes into the nurses' station and keeps everyone entertained.' Hana related to him how the man had travelled a good part of the globe, had lived in China and spent time in New Zealand. He had told the nurses about the Maoris, and their belief that everyone who came into contact with the dead, even if only assisting in a burial, was forbidden to associate with people and was treated as a total outcast. Such a person is not even allowed to touch food, and has to be fed or eat without hands like a beast.

'There are some savages who believe that the spirit of the dead person envies them remaining alive,' Daniel explained, 'and therefore wants to do them harm. Even the ancient Jews considered the dead unclean, and anyone touching a corpse was forbidden to touch food.'

'But even those savages believe that the soul survives the body.'

'According to them, everything has a soul. Trees and animals alike. They will often beg the soul of a hunted animal to forgive them for what they have done.'

'It was the funeral that brought it back to mind. Here the people shook each other by the hand, whereas there nobody would be allowed to touch you.'

'Here they share your pain and distress, there they share your anxiety.'

'I share everything with you, Dan. The sadness, the distress and that anxiety.' She came over for him to hug her.

'Now you're all I have!' and he realized his oppressive loneliness. He consoled others in a similar situation with the thought that they had Jesus, who remained with them always, and he added quickly, 'As my nearest and dearest, I mean.'

In his workshop he had an unfinished carving of a woman covering her breasts with her hands. He had not touched the figure for at least a month. If it was successful, he was intending to call it 'Dignity'.

He had first taken the knife, chisel and limewood block in his hands on his return from Gustrow where he had seen Barlach's statues. Perhaps it was neither wise nor useful, but generally, whenever he set eyes on some work of art that enchanted or astounded him, he would fall prey to the temptation to try his hand at it also. And so he had tried painting, composing, and had even written poetry at one time. He played not only the piano and harmonium but also the guitar. So eventually he attempted to produce a human form from a piece of wood. For someone who was self-taught, the work exceeded all his expectations. Having seen some of the carvings, a gallery owner had recently offered him an exhibition, and after hesitation, Daniel had accepted. In fact, the offer had inspired him to work with greater concentration and responsibility.

He mostly carved female figures, giving his creations such names as 'Love', 'Sorrow', 'Longing' or 'Motherhood', but again and again the faces of those carved figures resembled the face of his first wife as it remained fixed in his memory from moments of love-making, when she would seem utterly transformed and more beautiful. Maybe that was why no one but he was able to recognize her in those carved faces.

From the waist downwards the figure would be covered only by a slightly gathered piece of cloth. That was how his first wife used to come to him every night, with a towel tied around her waist and

covering her breasts with her arm. She never stopped being ashamed of her nakedness and always wanted to cuddle him in the dark or at least with the blinds down, and when she then spoke tender words to him she would whisper them as if fearing that someone else might hear her.

Perhaps she would have lost her shyness with the passage of years, but God had only granted them four years of life together — three years of health and one year of gradual dying which had been particularly cruel when the tumour painfully ate away her insides. So young, so kind, so considerate, so incapable of harming anyone. Why she of all people? But who has the right to judge God's will? Our earthly existence is no more than a blinking of His eye. The important thing is what comes after. Because what comes 'after' lasts for all eternity. All eternity close to Him — what meaning can any earthly delight have compared to that? Why then are we so attached to this earthly life? Is it because all that reaches us from over there is dogged silence? And the numbers of the doggedly silent swell all the time. It was curious how thinking about the death of his first wife, which had always dispirited him, seemed to take his mind off this fresh pain.

For a while he tried to make the shapes more precise but his hand shook and he felt too tired and unable to concentrate. Hana was right, he ought to go to bed.

At that moment he realized that light was still shining from another window on to the lawn outside.

Eva's small room was up in the attic.

He tapped on her door but entered too quickly and discovered his daughter trying to conceal a sheet of writing in the pages of a book.

'Who are you writing to?'

'No one in particular.'

And I'm not supposed to see it?'

'No, it's not like that.'

'It's ages since we've talked together.'

'I don't like wasting your time. And you've been preoccupied with Grandma.'

'Grandma will have no more need of me now, besides which you'd hardly be wasting my time.'

'Mum said you had a lot on your mind. And then there were the prisoners.'

'The prisoners are important but not so important that we can't find time for each other.'

'We all have so little time. Mummy, Marek, and me too. All of us are rushing somewhere or chasing something. I sometimes get the feeling things are odd round here.'

'Odd in what way?'

She said nothing. Then she drew from her book the sheet of paper she had tried to conceal from him when he came in and handed it to him. It was a poem:

Somewhere inside us holy delusions flower We snatch the blooms whose scent overpowers. Somewhere inside us are flowers as pure as snow In our dreams, at least, they are our pillow.

It struck him that there was something of his own nostalgia in the poem. His eldest daughter had inherited her mother s looks: the same colour hair and eyes, the long neck and the narrow shoulders. But in character she took after him: a fear of intimacy and therefore a sense of solitariness too. He stroked her hair. 'Tell me, is there something you'd really like?' He stopped short, realizing that what she wanted most of all she had just shown to him in the poem. 'I meant some thing, something nice.'

'You mean something to wear, for instance?'

'For instance.'

She brightened up. 'I did see this sweater, but it was awfully expensive.'

'Where did you see it?'

'You know that little boutique by the tram stop? But not now, not while we're in mourning.'

'I'm sure Grandma would like to give you a treat. What did the sweater look like?'

'It was green and had this design on it — white lilies. I don't really want it. It's only because you asked me.'

'Fine.' He stroked the hair again that reminded him so much of her mother. 'Any time you're feeling a bit sad and think I could help, do come and see me however busy you think I might be.'

He had converted the closet next to Eva's room into a study for himself with a small desk, a chair, a bookshelf and a filing cabinet full of old magazines, letters, newspaper cuttings and photographs.

He ought to sort out his letters. He took several bundles of

envelopes out of the filing cabinet. Then he noticed one that was tied up with a red ribbon. They were letters he had written to Jitka in hospital and the ones she had written to him from there. He had not read them since it happened. He hesitated a moment, before putting the envelope one side and getting on with sorting his correspondence.

4

Hana

Hana was born in the last year but one of the war in a village not far from Litomyšl. She was named after her mother.

She could not remember the war, nor, for that matter, the collectivization of agriculture that had struck their village before she even started to go to school. The village had two churches, one Catholic, the other Protestant, but the age-old quarrels were now forgotten: believers were out of favour if they chose to acknowledge any other church but the Communist one.

Hana's parents used to attend the Protestant church, but not very regularly. Matters of faith were never discussed at home, grace was no longer said before meals and she had no one to encourage her to pray. When she tried asking how the world was made her father evaded her question, saying that it was something even people cleverer than he didn't know. Nevertheless as a child she regarded the pastor as the most venerable person walking the earth.

One was also required to respect one's teachers. At the primary school there was a kind woman comrade who taught her pupils not only to read and write and honour the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, but also took them on nature walks and picked the herbs they found and told them how to make their own herbarium. Hana enjoyed that and she learnt to draw flowers so well that they looked real and the teacher praised her for it. She even told her parents that Hana could study to be a painter.

Her parents considered it too outlandish an occupation and, above all, not practical enough, apart from the fact that Hana drew nothing but flowers and her gift was soon forgotten. She was the eldest of three children, although only one year older than her brother, who

died when she was twelve. From early childhood Hana always looked older than her years, and this encouraged her parents to leave her in charge of her younger siblings at a time when she was still in need of someone to take care of her. She was not particularly attractive to look at, but she was well proportioned, and she let her dark hair grow as long as possible. Her most interesting feature was her eyes: they were large and dark, and in combination with her dusky complexion they seemed to suggest foreign forebears — Spanish, French or maybe Romany, although there was no mention of anything of the sort in the family history.

She was kind-hearted by nature and from a very young age she was brought up to be modest and taught that one came into the world chiefly to work. Her life was subject to the rhythms of village life — a rhythm dictated by the seasons of the year. Summer was the busiest time of all, even though it was the school holidays. It became less busy from autumn onwards. Best of all was the winter when the days were really short and they celebrated Christmas and skated on the village pond.

Once when she was skating, the ice cracked beneath her. Fortunately she was near the bank, so the icy water only reached up to her shoulders and they were able to pull her and two boys from her class out of the pond. A third boy disappeared beneath the ice and was not found until spring when the ice melted. She had not seen the corpse but they said it had been eaten away by the fish. It might not have been true, but the thought of lying helpless at the bottom of the pond, having her body eaten by fish that someone would then catch and eat, bedevilled her for years afterwards. She never went skating again and would not go near the pond even during the summer. She also refused to eat fish.

When she was finishing elementary school, she fell in love with a boy in her class. He lived in the neighbouring village and was half a head shorter than her. His figure seemed altogether shrunken, which probably explained why he was nicknamed Little Joe. He was not handsome by any means and his pale face was covered in freckles and pimples. In class he was ignored rather than admired by the other pupils. That might have been what attracted Hana to him. She always felt sympathy for the outcast, the weak or the handicapped.

Whenever they were standing together in some quiet corner (Hana made sure it was not too remote), Little Joe would say nodiing at

first, but then he would start to entertain her by telling her the plots of the stories he had been reading. They were few in number and mostly about Red Indians. Little Joe became so wrapped up in these stories it was almost as if he had been there himself. He would tell her how wild the mountains were and how broad the prairies. He would describe the beauty of the totem poles and the bravery of the chiefs, reciting their poetic names with affection. At home he made himself a bow and arrows that could actually hit a target. Hana did not find the Red Indian stories exciting but she was attracted to Little Joe's enthusiasm and his voice.

Their love did not go beyond kissing and cuddling. And now and then Little Joe would give her a ride on a tractor and bring her gingerbread hearts from the fair. Once he gave her a bunch of irises. Afterwards she drew them and framed the picture for him. She also baked him a cake and darned a rip in his shirt.

But in the summer holidays the tractor overturned with Little Joe in it and a few days later the lad died from his injuries. People came to his funeral from the surrounding villages; an accidental death always attracts greater attention than a natural one. Unless they belonged to the family of the deceased, children generally walked at the very end of the cortège, far from the grief and out of earshot of the weeping of relatives and friends. Hana, however, walked just behind Little Joes nearest family and sobbed out loud.

Shortly afterwards she went off to Písek to study nursing. She was not entirely sure that she wanted to become a nurse but she knew of no other career she wanted to follow. After all, she had been brought up to regard helping others as the supreme meaning of life. She enjoyed life in the nurses' home even though she rather missed her village and her parents, and above all little Pavel, her youngest brother, a chubby five-year-old with straw-coloured hair and an eternally grubby face, who would run after her as if she were his mother. (Little did she imagine that one day her son would have the same hair and the same chubby figure.)

She still carried around Little Joe's photo in her purse, but the sight of it brought back fewer and fewer memories. In the end she left it where it was only because almost all of her fellow students carried photos of their boyfriends in their purses.

Water in any form seemed destined to be the cause of dreadful experiences in her life. Once when she was coming to the end of her

second year at the school, she agreed to go swimming in the Otava River. Her friends left without her so she set off after them. Halfway there, a dirty, unkempt fellow leapt out at her from behind a tree. He put his hand over her mouth and dragged her off to nearby bushes. There he took his hand away from her mouth but hissed at her not to make a sound or he would strangle her.

She had often heard tell of such assaults and was even afraid to walk along the street on her own at night, but it had never occurred to her that something of the sort could really happen to her. Rapists were to be found only in stories, she had never met one in real life. She was so astounded and terrified in those first moments that she was scarcely able to resist. Then she tried with all her might to get free and even tore off the attackers sleeve and scratched his face. But he was much stronger and twisted her arms until the tears sprang to her eyes. She stopped defending herself and then ceased to be fully aware of what was happening to her.

It all took only a few minutes. After telling her that if she spoke to anyone about it he would find her and kill her, the fellow ran off. For a while she remained lying half-naked in the flattened grass and then she started to groan aloud. A short while ago her principal fear was that she might die; now she had no notion of how she would go on living. She gathered up the tattered pieces of her clothing that lay scattered all around and returned to town.

She told no one what had happened. Not because she believed the rapist's threats but because she was terrified of people discussing how she had been dishonoured. And were it to reach the ears of her parents, the shame might be more than they could bear.

The fellow's unshaven face haunted her for many years afterwards. She would catch sight of it whenever she found herself in a crowd. Also from that time on she would dream again and again of being surrounded by a crowd of naked men with repulsively pink skin and hairy chests. They would dance around her and scream in rhythm at the orders of one unshaven one who would wave his enormous pink genitals. She realized that this was Satan himself trying to have power over her. She would resist him, but in the dream she would be aware of Satan's superior strength, so it wasn't a question of him overcoming her physically so much as taking possession of her soul and filling it with evil.

She toyed with the idea of taking vengeance on people for what one

of their number had done to her, but this was foreign to her nature. Instead she simply turned against men from then on and shunned their touch. And when she went for her first job she asked to work on the gynaecology ward.

She was twenty-two and already living in Prague, when in spite of everything she fell in love with a doctor in the ward where she worked. He was seven years her senior and loved her too, or so he said, telling her all sorts of beautiful things and even reciting poetry while caressing her with the experienced touch of a man who had loved many women — something that was not apparent to her. But even though she enjoyed his caresses she never experienced real pleasure. They went out together for over a year and were already talking about getting married when out of the blue he announced to her he was going to marry another woman; that he had to because she was expecting his baby. At that moment she swore she would never again have anything to do with men. Nothing at all. If it had been possible she would have entered a convent.

So her life wore on between the hospital and the nurses' home where she lived. Lacking any distractions, she used to spend much more time at work than the others and usually did more than was required of her. Only on Sundays, unless she was on duty, she would go to church, though by no means regularly, and if she happened to have a few days off she would make the trip to see her parents and younger siblings. At that time she noticed that her father had started to become dangerously thin, losing all appetite for food. She urged him to see the doctor but her father, either from stubbornness or fear, refused to go, saying there was nothing wrong with him. When at last he let himself be persuaded, it was too late to operate. For a long time afterwards, she blamed herself for not having warned him forcefully enough, even though she had suspected the malignancy of the illness he refused to acknowledge.

When she was thirty-two, she met Daniel, who was the son of a doctor on her ward. It was shortly after Daniels wife had died and Hana knew that he was now alone with a young daughter. One day when he brought his little girl to see his father in the hospital, Hana took the child to the nurses' station and looked after her there. The little girl had straw-coloured hair like her own youngest brother, and it touched her. As Daniel was leaving he thanked her and she told him truthfully how much she had enjoyed looking after the little girl.

In that case, he had said, I will bring her again. And he had indeed, leaving Eva in Hana's care several times after that and almost always chatting with her at each visit. He had asked Hana about her life and invited her to come to one of his church services. The following Sunday she had actually gone and when Daniel was saying goodbye to her at the end of the service and thanking her for coming, Hana had the feeling he shook her hand with particular warmth.

She didn't know whether she loved him, but she felt compassion for his situation, as well as a sense of security in his presence. This seemingly frail man with an honourable profession would never harm her, it occurred to her. All of a sudden she found herself considering the possibility of living with a man, taking care of him, having a family and maybe even having children of her own.

5

Even though Daniel used to visit the prison at least twice a month, he never managed to rid himself of a most unpleasant feeling each time the prison gate swung open in front of him. The guards always treated him in an obliging and even kindly fashion but in spite of that, the memories of his own recent interrogations would begin to come flooding back. The faces of the warders were so strongly reminiscent of the expressions of the officials and Secretaries for Church Affairs with whom he had been forced to endure lengthy and humiliating interviews.

The situation had changed, but not the people — or only slightly. And where there had been a change, he wasn't entirely sure if it was for the better. In fact he wasn't sure even in his own case.

Petr was brought in shortly after Daniel had taken a seat in the interview room.

'How are you, Petr?'

'Welcome to this cool place, Reverend.' The lad smiled. Whenever he smiled he looked almost childlike. Only the long scar on his left cheek testified to the fact that his past had not been so innocent. He also had a scar on his wrist, self-inflicted. 'I've tried killing myself at least five times,' he had told Daniel on their first meeting. 'With a razor, with pills, with water and with rum, and I also tried freezing

myself to death. I went and lay down in the snow just in my pants and socks. But nothing worked!'

At that time he had been quite emaciated, with a sickly grey complexion; only his eyes had shown any real sign of life. But he had put on weight over the past three months and it struck Daniel that this lad who had never worked and had certainly never taken any exercise — who on the contrary had abused his body — had quite an athletic physique.

'Whenever you come it's like the sun coming out.'

'Come on, Petr, where did you read that?'

'In the Bible, of course, the one you left here for me: "His face shone like the sun", or something like that.'

'Everyone sends you greetings,' Daniel said, ignoring Petr's comparison of him with the Saviour. 'Alois too. He's earning money now. He's got a job with a building firm as a bricklayer.'

'Yeah. It's wicked how time flies. On the outside, at least.'

'I brought you some fruit. And my wife baked you a cake.'

'You are angels, the pair of you, Reverend.'

'Give the poetry a rest, Petr, you know I don't like it. It's quite possible that you won't even get a chance to eat it in here.'

'I bet I will. My lawyer told me they're postponing the hearing again. The court went and lost some papers apparently.'

'They've postponed the hearing?'

'For at least a month. They won't get here any sooner.'

'You'll put up with it for another month, seeing that you've put up with it for two years already.'

'I will, of course, but Reverend you have no idea what it's like when you're all ready to leave and then the moment is put off Every day drags by and you suddenly feel what a hell hole this place is.'

'It's also up to us to decide whether we live in hell or not.'

And also up to those who are with you here from morning to night. This place is swimming in evil as if you'd kicked over a bucket of it. And when you behave any differently they start to hate you. When they notice you praying, for instance, they either laugh at you or want to beat you up.'

'I know, Petr. I'll ask the lawyer if there is any way of speeding up the hearing.'

And what if they don't release me?'

'They will. And if they don't, you'll have to put up with it.'

'With your help, I would.'

'You'd cope with it even without my help. If you have really changed inside you'll manage it because you know that the Lord Jesus will help you.'

'I tend to believe in your help, Reverend. The Lord Jesus is too far away'

'He isn't, Petr. You only need to open the Bible.'

'Yeah, I know. But I haven't even got my copy any more. I lent it to that bright spark who shares my cell. He's half gypsy, or says he's only half. He's never read anything like it, but he's quite taken with the way Jesus performed miracles.'

'Petr, the miracles aren't the most important thing in scripture. What's more important is the message of love.'

'I know, Reverend. But what would a gypsy like him know about love?'

'So you tell him then.'

'Me? Hold on, Reverend. . After all, I've lived like an animal all my life. An animal among animals. I can recall every kind word that was ever said to me, there were so few of them.'

'But there were some. Anyway it's good you're thinking this way. That you're thinking about yourself and not blaming everyone around you.'

'You're the one who taught me that, Reverend. Before then I used to do the same as everyone around me. I saw the splinter in other peoples eyes but didn't notice the beam in my own.'

'Petr, I also wanted to tell you I'm trying to find you a job. Mr Houdek from our congregation has a garden centre and he's bound to have some kind of job for you.'

'Thank you, Reverend.' He didn't seem too enthusiastic at the prospect of a job in a garden centre. 'I've also done something for you.' He pulled out a large sheet of paper. On it was drawn a head with a crown of thorns. The face was so deformed that it looked almost cubist. 'I drew this for you. And for your wife.'

Daniel took the picture and thanked him for it. Then he wished him patience and strength. 'Christ can be with you anywhere,' he said to him as they parted. 'There is no place His love can't reach.'

On the way home, it occurred to him to call in at his mother's small flat at Červený vrch and collect a picture. His mother had moved there after his father's death. There had only been room for a few pieces of furniture from the old flat, and some pictures, most of which

had been given to his father by women artists he had treated. There was one picture that Daniel liked. It depicted a young gypsy girl with a basket of flowers. She had a sweet face and big breasts that were just partly revealed. The painting wasn't signed but he didn't mind that; he liked the flower-girl. She had represented for him — during his adolescence at least — an ideal of beauty: dark eyes, a dusky complexion and big breasts. Maybe that was what he found attractive about Hana when he first set eyes on her.

He gazed at the picture for a while but could not make up his mind to take it down from the wall. Instead he opened the window. On the lawn below, someone had set up a low metal pylon and fixed vanes on top of it. It might have been a work of art, a child's construction or even part of a wind generator. He watched the vanes revolving quietly for a moment and then went back into the room and opened the wardrobe. All his mothers clothes were hanging there: her jumper with the darned sleeves, her worn overcoat and a few dresses, only one of which was worthy of the name of Sunday best. His mother wore it only on family birthdays, or for church on Sundays.

He was touched by the shabbiness of the things, even though possessions meant little to him. His mother couldn't afford to buy clothes and he didn't earn enough to give her anything towards them. It was only now that he could afford it, now that it was too late.

He wandered around the flat a little longer. He opened the refrigerator, which contained nothing but a half-empty bottle of ketchup and a tube of some ointment that had to be kept cool. It looked as if Hana had already taken away any food that might have gone bad.

On the armchair by the bed there lay a black-bound Bible in the Kralice translation; his mother had refused to abandon the language she had grown up with. There was a bookmark in the third chapter of John's Gospel and he noticed that his mother had drawn a faint line alongside three of the verses.

And this is the condemnation, that light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

His mother strove to live in truth as revealed in scripture and as required by it, and she had brought him up to do likewise. She had believed he would manage it; she believed he would achieve something important, that he would leave his mark on this world.

When he failed to get into the grammar school because his father happened to be in prison at the time, branded as an enemy of the state and of the rotten system that held sway then, Daniel became despondent at the thought of having to become a trainee somewhere. At the time, his mother consoled him and assured him that everything that befell him would prove useful one day, and that as long as it was God's will that he should achieve something good and useful, there was no power on earth that could prevent it, and there was no reason why he should slacken his resolve.

In those days, he really did believe he was pre-destined for great deeds. Since he had no interest in technology, travel or politics, those deeds would have to be performed in other spheres. He used to have dreams — they might have been daydreams, but it was impossible to tell so many years on — in which he would appear dressed in a toga like a Greek philosopher, or a prophet even, and at such moments of enlightenment he would come up with all sorts of sentences that struck him as both wise and significant.

So he was enrolled on a booksellers' training course, but he didn't have a chance to qualify, as a year later his father returned home from eight years in prison, and strangely enough, Daniel was accepted into the grammar school.

Daniel naturally grew out of his adolescent dreams, but he always regarded his work as a mission and for a long time believed that moments of enlightenment would come again and that he would discover what was 'the truth' and find the answer to the most secret questions of being and non-being. And sometimes when he was talking to his first wife — who was capable of listening to him as no one had since — it would seem to him that he really would manage to get to the root of the mystery that veiled the manifestations of divine action in the world and discover the cause of human failings.

But when Jitka died, he seemed to dry up inside. He still strove to discharge conscientiously what he regarded as his mission; the question was what had he really accomplished — what, in retrospect, was there to show for it?

He had married several dozen couples, made sure the dead had a

decent burial, and possibly given some of the living encouragement by convincing them that life had some purpose. During his period in the Moravian Highlands, there had been some Catholics who came to his sermons as well as some 'non-believers' on the odd occasion, but even so, the church — built in the eighteenth century, when the anti-Protestant laws were repealed — remained very empty, as most people in the village and its environs had no interest in his message.

Since the Velvet Revolution, he had suddenly been allowed to appear on television and visit prisons, and yet this wasn't quite what his mother had expected of him, or what he himself had once dreamt about. Moreover, he was no longer convinced that there existed any ideas that were sufficiently wise, noble or significant to influence people's behaviour. People's behaviour tended to be influenced by ideas that lacked both wisdom and nobility.

On the lowest shelf there stood some boxes full of papers. The outside of the boxes bore inscriptions in his mother's elegant schoolmistress's hand: Richard's letters. Letters to me. Letters from the children. Official correspondence. Miscellaneous. Photographs.

What was he to do with these writings? Would he read them? Eva would most likely move into the flat. Before that happened, he would have to take away the letters. He would take them away unread and store them away somewhere in the cellar, where his children would find them after his death and dump them.

The photographs were also sorted into a whole lot of envelopes. He pulled one out. In a very amateurish, grey snapshot his mother was leaning against the fence of their villa in Střešovice holding a baby in her arms. The baby must have been him. The back of the photo bore the date: summer 1944. His mother was wearing a summer dress, which he could not recall, of course. The dress was shabby looking — it was the last year of the war. His father was in a concentration camp, his mother had been left on her own with the two children. Their father had returned only to be imprisoned again several years later. Their mother remained alone once more. No one even visited them. Only the old minister from their congregation called in from time to time and pressed a thousand-crown note on their mother towards the housekeeping. That minister was also long dead but he now discovered a photograph of him standing among a confirmation group. Daniel scarcely recognized himself, he was even thinner in those days and his forehead was partly obscured by hair.

And there were wedding photos of Jitka. They all stood there together. Only Rút was missing — she was already over the hills and far away. He turned over the photographs absentmindedly and returned them to their envelope: himself with Jitka with mountaineering ropes round their waists; his father; a coloured snap of Rút at the Yosemite Falls; the manse in Kamenice; a wedding photo with Hana. Another one with his mother sitting in her armchair bent slighdy over some sewing. The armchair still stood here by the bed. He recalled how when his mother did any sewing she would generally prick her fingers until they bled. The blood would distress him, or maybe it was his mothers clumsiness that upset him. He became aware of the tears burning his throat. As if he only now realized that he would never again set eyes on his mother, either here in her armchair or anywhere else on this earth.

He stuffed the box back into the wardrobe and tried to dispel his gloom by thinking of their next meeting which had to occur one day, although there was no telling when, where or how. But no sense of relief came. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, 'We want to hear you again on this subject. ' (Acts 17:32)

6

Matouš

Matouš Volek was born and grew up in Michle. His father had been a tailor's assistant — a very quiet and mild-mannered man. He died of belatedly diagnosed tuberculosis when Matouš was thirteen. A few days before his death, Matouš had observed above his fathers head a strange glow that quickly grew pale before disappearing entirely. It had frightened the boy but he never told anyone what he had seen.

Matouš inherited his father's scrawny and rather stunted body, as well as his long-sightedness, diligence and meditative tendencies, not to mention pathological mood swings and a fear of women.

Matous's mother had not remarried and the devotedness that was her main character trait was transferred from the ailing husband to the healthy son. She worked as a postwoman and her daily duties entailed

doing the rounds of dozens of streets which at the time were mosdy made up of low, temporary dwellings. In spite of this, she would manage to return home in time to prepare her son's lunch and chat to him about his problems. She even tried helping him with his studies by testing him on his school homework after quickly reading up the subject beforehand in his textbook. She wanted him to go to university so that he could be educated and learned, and respected by all, preferably becoming a doctor, or a civil engineer at least.

Matous indeed went on to university, but to study something else entirely, namely, oriental languages at the Arts Faculty. Having a gift for languages and virtually no other interests (he didn't go out with girls, or rather none of them felt inclined to go out with him), he made full use of the opportunity and learnt Chinese. He acquainted himself with Chinese thinking, being attracted most of all to Taoism at that time, although, like the majority of Europeans, he only selected certain elements from it for his own lifestyle; he certainly proved incapable of freeing himself totally from his own self.

When, in 1968, Soviet troops invaded the Republic, Matouš was in his third year at university and like most of his fellow students he joined the street demonstrations to protest against the invasion. As the political situation deteriorated, however, he had to decide whether to go on protesting and thereby lose the opportunity to make his mark in the profession for which he had prepared himself, or to take the chance then offered for someone with no past. The prospect of losing his career didn't appeal to him. One of the wise sayings of Lao Tzu stressed that only the person capable of adapting to everyone would emerge the victor over all. 'Reserve your judgments and words and you maintain your influence.'

He therefore decided to coexist with the revamped ancien régime. This entailed joining the prescribed organizations, voting in the sham elections and not taking part in anything that might cast doubts on his loyalty, but also not getting involved in anything that would offend his own conscience. After all, the sage relies on the hidden life and nonaction, in other words he argues with no one and thus avoids unnecessary quarrels. His best teachers were forced to leave the faculty but those who had reached the same decision as Matouš remained. There was no great change in the language teaching, but the associate professor purged the history syllabus of the most stimulating and also the most significant epochs in favour of the most recent Communist

period. This did not worry him too much as he tended to seek knowledge in books which he had either acquired earlier, before they were removed from the libraries, or which he borrowed from the professors who had fallen out of favour.

He had counted on remaining in the faculty after graduating, or going to work at the Oriental Institute, but there was no vacancy for him in either place, and he was offered a job in the press agency instead. He regarded it as demotion, but in spite of his liking for Lao Tzu's teachings, the outside world held a deep attraction for him and he enjoyed travelling, observing and discovering, so he took the job. He also translated poetry and wrote verse himself: not about love, but about nature — the mood of a rainy day, about nostalgia and loneliness, about equanimity and spiritual calm. He wrote it in the style of ancient Chinese poetry or of the Japanese haiku:

October again.

Leaves wilt.

From the slate-grey sky, lethargy now falls.

He managed to get several poems printed in magazines, although his efforts to have a collected edition published came to nothing. All the same he regarded himself as an artist; he believed he would make a name for himself one day as a poet. Then he would change his lifestyle, stop going out to work and devote himself to study and meditation, and maybe travel. However, for years he lacked everything necessary for such a lifestyle, namely, status, contacts, total freedom to travel — and money.

His visits to the nurses' station where he would tell the nurses all about his experiences in foreign parts were motivated more by loneliness than a desire to please. His illness depressed him, that and the fact that his wife Klára had left him.

When he first met her, Klára was a waitress in a little bistro where he would sometimes go for a meal. He found her physically attractive (although she was quite ordinary: bleached hair and varnished nails, and if she spoke for more than a minute it was tediously banal) but she had no sympathy for Chinese philosophy and poetry, and on the one occasion he had tried to explain to her the contrast between the forces of yin and yang she had fallen asleep. All the same, Klára herself set

store by the fact that Matouš was a graduate and had seen a lot of the world. She was also taken by his flat, particularly the room in which the blades of a wooden fan rotated slowly beneath the ceiling and where there was a glass case and shelves full of the most unusual objects, such as purple-coloured receptacles for crickets, old-fashioned Chinese tiles or statues of the Buddha, some of them gilded. What most attracted Klára, who handled dozens of cups and saucers made of the cheapest and heaviest china, were the tiny tea cups of translucent porcelain decorated with exotic paintings of flowers and birds. When she first picked them up and felt their fragility, the very touch of them sent a thrill through her. They must have been not only rare but expensive too. Klára came to the conclusion that Matouš was wealthy as well as interesting.

Shortly before their first meeting, his mother had died unexpectedly (unexpectedly from the medical point of view, but as in the case of his father he had previously observed a fading aura above his mother's head), so he needed someone to take over the household duties and generally to attend to the practical questions of his existence. So he imprudently asked Klára if she would like to be his wife.

The marriage had lasted almost seven years. It continued now, in fact, as Klára had not divorced him and would put in an appearance at least once a month to ask him for money. He was always short of cash, and he could see no reason why he should pay her, as she didn't live with him and they had no children. The trouble was she would start to yell and heap reproaches on him until, in the end, she extracted some small sum from him.

Although he was nearly fifty, Klára was his first and only wife. He had lived with his mother until her death and during that time had had a few fleeting acquaintances with married women, all of them older than himself. Klára was different from them. Not only was she unmarried, she was also fifteen years his junior. She had been looking for a love affair, whereas he was hoping for a housekeeper rather than a lover. In his view, Klára was typical of the kind of modern women who looked after their own bodies first and foremost and wanted to dominate men. That was why they went after good-hearted fellows or preferably fools. Then they expected to be spoiled and supported, be given expensive gifts and lots of money to spend on new clothes and shoes, and later on with their lovers.

Even though little in Matous's life turned out as planned, his

marriage had turned out worst of all. But whose marriage ever turns out well anyway? He was determined that once he was divorced — which would definitely happen in the foreseeable future — he would not marry again, unless he happened to come across a woman that resembled his mother (should such a woman exist at all) or one who was rich and sufficiently generous to enable him to fulfil his plans to become an independent artist and philosopher. Never having met such a woman, he was able to talk non-committally to those in whom he had no interest, and even entertain them with interesting stories.

The hospital nurses genuinely enjoyed listening to him. His life seemed to teem with any number of exciting experiences, exotic cities, abrupt reversals of fortune, dust storms, fascinating encounters, Buddhist monasteries, oriental gambling dens, night-time hold-ups and other situations where it was a matter of life or death, or at least honour. Many of the stories in which he himself featured he had only heard or read about, or dreamt up. But he wasn't a liar, just an inveterate story-teller, and anyway he didn't attach any great importance to the stories (after all there was little difference between what actually happened and what could have happened) and as soon as he had borrowed them and retold them, he believed them himself. He definitely dijd not make it all up, however. During his life, he had travelled a good part of the globe and spent a total of more than two years in China. He had lived through the end of the Cultural Revolution, the death of Chairman Mao and the unexpected thaw at the end of the 1970s.

He found that great country quite different from the one he read about in the books of the ancient sages, yet at the same time he found much of what he expected: the Chinese theatre, music and drawing, and the regime and the government seemed to enjoy greater authority than what he was accustomed to back home. He found there curiosity, superstition, immense poverty and hospitality, as well as fanaticism and astonishing licence. There were lots of colourful costumes on festive occasions and drab uniform-like clothes on work days. He saw a good deal of the country: enormous cities, the valleys of great rivers and the mountains of the north, but there was much he did not see because, as a dog-eyed foreigner, he was not allowed to go everywhere, and besides, the country was too vast for anyone to visit the whole of it in a single lifetime.

He also managed to get as far as New Zealand, where he was able to

hear the Maori tongue and to experience more than the average citizen of the free world, let alone of a country like Czechoslovakia where every foreign journey was a privilege, or at least an exception. His attitude to life's problems and to people was particularly influenced by his experiences in those countries where neither modern civilization nor Communist dictatorship had managed to wipe out traditional relationships and rituals.

From his travels he would send back stories to the illustrated magazines. In them he would argue that when civilization reached as far as the little islands in the South China Sea, it broke down traditional values without offering anything new in their place. Oriental thinking had always stressed that man was part of nature and was distrustful of theories that sought to separate man from the natural cycle. Christianity and Islam were seen to be retrograde steps in that respect, particularly since what vanquished the local traditions were not the values of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount or the Sura of the Nocturnal Path, but the false values of consumerism. While missionaries, whether Christian or Muslim, arguably brought a spiritual message (though often they would have done better to accept it themselves rather than force it on others), the traders who came with them, or even preceded them, offered more attractive commodities — strictly for this life not the hereafter: transistor radios, televisions, cars and medicines that cured people the witch doctors or traditional medicine couldn't help. Admittedly all that was available only to a few, but the possibility was open to everyone. And the people paid for it with their countries' natural wealth and the traditions by which they had lived for thousands of years. Superficially it looked as if prosperity had come to those parts, whereas in fact they had been overrun by poverty, both material and spiritual.

His articles were cut and sentences were added, changing the sense of his message. He wrote about civilization violating old cultures but the editors substituted 'colonialism' and 'imperialist interests' for 'civilization'.

His hospitalization and stomach operation (his doctor had told him he had stomach ulcers but he suspected they were concealing the true diagnosis from him) had alarmed him. He had previously regarded death as part of life; dying was a force within us heading towards its goal. A person who died was simply someone who had returned. True life fulfilment could only be achieved by returning to

the beginning. The living would never discover, Lao Tzu conjectured, what it was to be dead, and the dead would never know what it was to be alive. We had not known the thousands of generations who went before us, nor would we know those who came after. So what was the point of getting worked up about something we could not know?

So long as one has health and strength, it was possible to pride oneself on achieving discernment and peace of mind and self-knowledge. But when illness came, one realized one's mistake and saw that one was still wedded to the physical self. Anyway, Matouš had never achieved the equanimity he sometimes wrote about in his poems. In reality, he fluctuated between a state in which he possibly came close to seeing what was concealed from others, and one of hectic activity. In the first of them, which would sometimes last several days, he would abandon himself to inactivity or write his short poems, then he would throw himself into activity — travelling, writing articles and dreaming more about physical than spiritual pleasures.

What was bad about death, whichever way he looked at it, was that it would extinguish his self, the very thing that mattered most to him. Death would thereby deprive him of the chance to discover what direction the world would take subsequently, what the future would bring.

The thought of returning home filled him with desolation. Where was he to find someone who would chat to him in the evening and have a hot meal ready for him so he wouldn't have to traipse around pubs, or hold his hand when he was gripped by the fear that a malignant tumour was spreading in his stomach? There was nothing waiting for him at home that in the least resembled a living being, apart from the stuffed canary that his mother had left him.

The matron in the surgical ward where they had removed three-eighths of his stomach reminded him at least slightly of his mother on account of her kindness. On one occasion — it was when he had a particular attack of anxiety — she had appeared in the ward at his bedside and said to him: 'Don't be afraid, you'll be as right as rain again in a few days.' She had actually leant over and stroked his thinning hair. That touch remained fixed in his memory and it occurred to him that he would like to spend some time with such a woman occasionally, or at least converse with her.

7

Brother Kodet, who owned a real-estate company and was an elder of the church, shook Daniel vigorously by the hand. 'Please accept once more my deepest sympathy, Reverend.'

'Thank you for coming to pay your respects to my mother.'

'It was the least I could do. After all she was known and loved by everyone here. And she didn't have an easy life. I just regret she didn't live to see what we managed to obtain,' the real-estate agent said, coming to the point.

'Mother didn't want it. But you know that anyway.'

'She would have been pleased all the same, if only on your account.' He went to the filing cabinet and took out a file bearing the name of the street and the number of the house. He leafed through it for several moments and then began to discuss the situation and the offer. For a house that wasn't in the best condition and, furthermore, was full of tenants paying fixed rents — not enough, in other words, to cover the most essential costs — a German company was willing to pay him five and a half million crowns. While it was true that the price of apartment houses would rise when rents were deregulated, that moment was still far off, so it might be better to assume that prices would fall slightly for some time. But even if they remained unchanged, the condition of the house would deteriorate because repairs would require a lot of money, which Daniel did not have, and a house in disrepair would naturally fall in value.

Daniel listened in silence and could not bring himself to believe that it was his property and his money that was being discussed. Throughout his adult life he had been used to having to decide whether he could afford a new pair of shoes or to have his old pair resoled for the third time. He wore darned socks and grew his own lettuces, tomatoes and even mangolds in the manse garden. From early spring he and Hana would pick nettles which made an excellent soup. A million crowns had always been beyond his imagination, just like a million light years.

'So what do you say, Reverend?'

He had no yearning for property but it was true that his father had been attached to the house and the fact that he was a house-owner was one of the reasons why he had been regarded as a class enemy and fit for a show trial. He should hold on to the house on his father's

account, but what would he do with it? On the other hand, what would he do with the money? 'And what about my sister, are you sure she has no right to it?'

'Not from the legal point of view. She is now a foreign national and has permanent residence abroad. But should you wish to compensate her in some way, no one can stop you.'

'Yes, of course.' He wanted to add that he didn't need it for himself, not even a fraction of that sum, but it struck him that it would be tactless to say it to this man, who was clearly proud of having found him a good buyer.

Should he agree, he could sign the purchase contract straight away. There were a few further formalities to attend to, but the firm's representative had left a small deposit which the minister could take charge of.

So he received a wad of thousand-crown notes in an envelope; the deposit alone was the biggest sum he had ever held in his hand. He thanked Kodet and put the money away in his breast pocket, causing it to bulge somewhat. He could leave now, but feeling rather sheepish that his purpose in coming had been entirely unspiritual, he steered the conversation around to church matters and also talked for a while about the prisoners he visited, one or two of whom seemed to be making a genuine effort to understand what was said to them. Most of them, though, had grown up in surroundings where there was never any mention of God, or of anything else that transcended the most basic interests for that matter and they probably only came to hear him because he offered them a slight change from the tedium of their daily routine. But in what respect did the ones behind bars differ from those who guarded them, or from those who were free to go where they liked?

And then at last he rose and took his leave.

It was only a short walk to the tram stop but he was unable to pay attention to where he was going. Then he realized he had been tapping the outside of his coat to make sure the money was still in his pocket.

They sold flowers at the kiosk by the tram stop. Although he had never been in the habit of bringing his wife flowers, he now asked for three dark-red roses, and as the bunch looked rather paltry, he asked for two more.

In the window of the boutique, he saw the green sweater with white lilies. The price took him aback, but then he realized how ludicrously

little it was compared to the sum he had been talking about a moment ago, and he entered the shop.

When Simon saw that the spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money and said 'Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. 'Peter answered: 'May your money perish with you because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. .' (Acts 8: 18–21)

He not only had perfect pitch, he also had almost perfect recall: the text that he had read many times was etched into his memory.

When he was almost home, it occurred to him that presents and flowers were usually offered for a birthday or some other celebratory occasion. But unearned gains were no cause for celebration.

So he went back and took a tram. He then changed on to a bus which took him out to the cemetery. The trees between the graves were still bare; only a solitary sallow by the cemetery wall was covered in silvery catkins.

He reached the family grave. The freshly turned earth was fragrant. The tombstone still bore only the names of his father and his first wife. The date of her death preceded even that of his fathers. It was a long time ago, almost eighteen years. In recent times, cancer had become a more frequent cause of death, of young children as well, but in those days it was regarded as an old persons illness. He had found it almost impossible to believe when the doctor in the hospital told him his wife had an incurable disease. 'But we've got a little baby,' had been his totally illogical response at the time.

'That might have caused the tumour to come more quickly,' the doctor had replied, not understanding his comment on their fate, 'but it would most likely have happened anyway.'

Old people die and however distressing it is, it is part of the order which God has established for human life. But another component of that order is that none of the living ever knows the hour of his death. It is only pride that makes us think we have the right to some preordained number of days.

A large jam-jar full of rainwater stood by the gravestone. His mother's body was still lying there, but what remained of the body that he had embraced twelve years before? And where do your souls now dwell, my loved ones?

He ought to buy a decent vase. He placed the jar in front of the

gravestone and arranged the roses in it in such a way that their heads rested against the marble. He then prayed for a long time in silence.

8 Letters

Dearest,

The little one has just gone off to sleep. You needn't worry about her. Your mother is staying here overnight now. Yesterday Evička called her 'Nanna'! I'm sitting in our room and ought to be writing a sermon but I can't concentrate. I keep on thinking about you. It's empty here without you, even though someone is always dropping in, and the place is often full of people. But I don't need to tell you that. And everyone asks about your health and is praying for you to get well soon.

And the Strakas told me about a healer in Stará Ves, a Mr Zástěra. He draws strength from the trees and then transmits it to people. Mrs Straková used to have that big lump on her face and the doctors said she'd need an operation to remove it, but then Zástěra laid his hands on her three times and the lump disappeared. They told me people come from Prague to see him, and from as far away as Brno and Olomouc. Even doctors visit him, apparently, and when they see the results they say they have no explanation for it. He even cures conditions which they regard as incurable. When you come back from hospital we'll go and see him.

This Sunday I intend to preach on Matthew 14, on the feeding of the five thousand, but what caught my attention in particular was a sentence that we don't tend to lay much stress on: 'And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward them, and healed their sick.' I realized that it still applies, his power to heal anyone who arouses his compassion. And it can know no bounds, can it, since he's the embodiment of love? That's why he came among us mortals and died the way he did. It was to cure those of us who are sick and to give us life — here and beyond the grave — a life of love and hope. That's going to be the theme of my sermon and you know that above all I'll be speaking for you and about you, so that you'll get well.

I want you to know that I'm with you every moment of the day in my prayers and my thoughts, and at night in my dreams.

Last night I dreamt we were walking alongside the River Vltava at Zbraslav. It was a sunny summer's day and your hair glowed in the sun as if it was on fire. And you were completely well and you were laughing and I could hear your laughter. And then all of a sudden a boat arrived, a big river steamer full of happy passengers. We could hear music from on board and see the coloured lanterns. And…

Evička just called me, so I went and warmed her some semolina and she's sleeping again.

I won't continue with the dream. I'd better say cheerio, because I have to get on with my sermon. I'll pop the letter into the hospital for you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow is a visiting day again. I can't wait to see you and I hug you in my thoughts. Keep the faith. Don't lose hope. You know what he said: 'Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.'

Fondest love, Dan

18 November 76 My dearest Dan,

They've just brought me your letter and I'd sooner write straight back. I know you're coming tomorrow, but what if something happens in the meantime? I feel terribly weak, but that doesn't mean I've stopped hoping and believing. It's just that I can't ignore what awaits me. After all, you can see it too, can't you, and the reason you didn't tell me the end of your dream wasn't because Evička woke up but because you yourself got a shock. Because only I went on board the boat, even though you wanted to follow me. And the boat moved off and you didn't manage to get on board. That was the way it was, wasn't it, Dan? But the passengers were all cheerful. They weren't sorrowful even though they knew they would never return. That's the important thing, dearest. That boat isn't going to capsize, it's just going somewhere the two of us have not visited yet. But that's no reason to grieve, is it?

I won't be coming back to you, even though it makes me sad to think about it, Dan. I'm sad it all lasted such a short time, that I didn't get a chance to enjoy Evička, that I'm leaving the two of you on your own, even though I

don't want to. I don't want to leave you. You know I was happy with you. I don't know what made me write 'was' — I still am happy, of course.

But when that boat takes me away, don't grieve. You've got to go on living, Dan. You have a power within you that you'll be able to transmit to others: strength and wisdom and love. It has been a privilege to live with you. Maybe I won't be here tomorrow, but people will remain. Our little girl, all of them, are going to go on needing you and you will go on serving them. And even if we must part for a while, don't let it distress you, don't be sadder than you need be. We'll meet again one day, after all. In a place where nobody will ever separate us again.

Forgive me for writing this particular letter. It's not from lack of faith, it's just that I'm afraid of leaving without having said the most important thing.

All my love,

Your Jitka

28 November 76 Dear Rút,

Something terrible has happened. Jitka died. I don't know how I'm going to live. I'm trying in vain to find some consolation in scripture, from the thought that God's will is inscrutable. Evička will be six months old in two days' time.

I enclose the death announcement. That's as much as I can write.

Your Dan

3 April 1994 Dear Reverend, my friend and deliverer,

I must thank you most of all for your last visit. And also, of course, for the things you brought me, especially the fruit and bananas. I know you or your children don't even have everything you need. But you're the sort of person who makes sacrifices in order to give other people a treat. I've never met anyone else like you. Never. I've only ever known the sort of people who try to fleece the next fellow, to hurt him or even kill him. I used to get drunk with the gang, smoke grass and shoot dope. We used to have a laugh and

fool around with girls and boys. But what was good about it? Nothing except the fact we were all wallowing in the same muck. That's what we had in common. Nothing else. Except for getting involved in the same scams on the odd occasion. We used to share out what we took, but mostly it wasn't fair shares. The one who was strongest got the most. It stands to reason.

Dear Reverend, my friend and deliverer, I thank you most of all for the fact you talk to me as if I never did anything wrong. As if I was the same as you. You told me last time that I ought to think as much as possible about my future. You know that I've never really had a job in my life. I've spent the five years since I was fifteen either in here or loafing around bars where I had a good time. As they say. In other words I spent all I stole. I've no idea what I'll do outside. I've got no proper skills, have I? I could drive a car maybe, or some of the things they taught me in the can like raking leaves, digging and a bit of work on the lathe that I've already forgotten. I used to hate their methods. And all the time I was wanting to have no one over me. And you told me that he is over all of us. Jesus and his love. And I'm going to have debts to pay. And at the same time I'd like to live like a man and not a beast. By which I mean I don't want to drink, smoke or shoot up any more, but have something decent to eat at least. And find some nice girl and have kids. I'd like to be their breadwinner and look after them so they should never be in need. And Reverend, my friend and deliverer, I'd like to make up for the things I've done. And make it up to my Mum first off. I hurt her a lot and cost her a wad of money. And then some of the people I stole from. There was one old neighbour, she was eighty. I stole five hundred from her. That was nothing for me. The price of a bottle in a bar. But not for her. It could have been her dinner money. And I ought to pay back lots more. And give some thought to my future. Nothing definite, I'm afraid. I just know I'll never return again to Satan's world. No way. I'd sooner go and work in a hospital. Only I'd never earn enough there to do the things I've just been writing about. Dustmen are paid better. I don't know whether I'd be up to work like that. I'd like something more. But I've had no schooling and I doubt I'll ever catch up now. There's no time. There isn't the money. But I don't blame anyone. It's my fault the way I wasted my life like an idiot. Maybe you'll be able to advise me, and show me the way in this too. Or maybe he'll show me the way. You've told me so much about him that I'd never heard or dreamt of even. Who had compassion for the least of people? Who said: Ask and it will be given to you? Knock and the door will be opened to you. Another thing I have to tell you. He appeared to me himself.

It was some time in the night when I got this panic attack that I wouldn't keep it up, that there'll be too much for me to change or live up to, and at that moment I heard a voice. He whispered to me, don't be afraid, have faith. Your faith will save you. It wasn't a dream because I looked round the cell to see who'd whispered to me, but they were all asleep, and anyway none of them would say anything like that and then I caught sight of a face above me. It was terribly pale and nothing like the face of a living person. And the moment I set eyes on it it disappeared. Maybe they'll release me next month on probation for good behaviour. I enclose an invitation for you.

Best wishes, Petr Koubek

Dear Petr,

I was really pleased with your letter and am happy that you're sticking to the path you've decided to take.

I'm glad that in your mind at least you've found the path back to your mother. Always remember: 'A foolish son is a grief to his mother.' It also says in the book of Proverbs: 'Hear, my son, your father's instruction. And do not forsake your mother's teaching! And right after that: 'My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, "Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us wantonly ambush the innocent… we shall find all precious goods, we shall fill our houses with spoil; throw in your lot among us, we will all have one purse" — my son, do not walk in the way with them, hold back your foot from their paths; for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood… but these men lie in wait for their own blood, they set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of all who get gain by violence; it takes away the life of its possessors'

You can look up the saying yourself, it is in the first chapter of Proverbs. There you are, already thousands of years ago people had the same worries and problems as we do. Some did their best to live as they should, others longed to get rich at any price and refused to see that the price was precisely their own souls. I believe that you, young Petr, have already grasped the essentials and have now left the paths of those who set murderous ambushes. I don't want to give you the idea that the path you are taking will be an easy one, but one thing I can promise you: you won't

remain alone on that path, there are plenty of good people who will help you and support you when you grow weary. Maybe you won't fill your house with expensive goods, but instead you'll be able to invite the friends you'll make there.

Forgive me for being so brief, but I am giving a talk on television today. I'll be talking about our relations with those who are despised by people for no reason, purely on account of some prejudice.

May the love of Christ remain with you even in the place where you are now living.

With best wishes and congratulations,

Yours, Daniel

Dear Daniel,

I was unable to come to the funeral as I was in bed with a fever. But I was thinking about you, dear Dan, and what you were probably going through and the pain you were feeling. We only have one mother, after all. She and I didn't see each other very often, but from the first I knew she was a good person, a fine and wise woman. I have never stopped thanking God that she brought up her son the way she did. It took someone very special to do that. My Hana will always be grateful to her too. After all, she had such a hard life, full of disappointments and but for you she would have grown bitter and spent her life in solitude. I am sure you'll be able to rely on her at this difficult time and even though she can't take a mother's place she can at least give you her love now and for the rest of her life. All of us who love you will do that too.

With love to you all, Granny Hana

Dear Mum and Dad,

I'm only writing a postcard, because all the girls are only writing a card. The snow is wet but it's possible to ski. The Partridge said I was good. Apart from that we muck about terribly. We broke in a door and broke a window and hid the Partridge's skis. And we got drunk on wine, but I didn't. The

Partridge said we'll give her a heart attack, but before that she'll give us all black marks for misbehaviour. Last night I said my prayers, and I prayed for Grandma to like it in heaven. Best wishes to Eva and Marek.

Love, Magda

Dear Dan,

I had to stay at the hospital for the afternoon shift too. Things are quiet on the ward for a moment. I'd love to talk to you, but you're at the synod and will be coming in even later than me, so I thought I'd write to you. Anyway we have so little time to talk together these days and whenever we do, somehow we always seem to be in a hurry.

I realize that your grief over your mother's death comes on top of all the other things on your mind. I'd love to help you but I know that grief is something that words or pills can't dispel.

Two old ladies died on the ward today. One of them reminded me of your mother. She was also a small woman — quiet patient and devout. She received extreme unction the day before yesterday. It's something I've noticed over the years about people with a faith, even if they die unhappy, they have no anxiety and instead have hope. It's important that your mother left us in that way: with our love and her faith. As my father used to say: A believer now the Lord will endow. I still miss my father but one has to come to terms with it.

Nobody loves one as much as one's mother, nobody listens to one as well as she does, I'm aware of that. But whenever you're sad, Daniel, you've got me, even if I'm not able to tell you as well as your mum that I understand and share your feelings and I'm with you. Maybe it's precisely because I'm often unable to tell you and I'm shy of saying it out loud that I'm writing now to say I love you and that you're the only person for me, that you're mine.

Your Hana