The Ultimate Intimacy

Chapter Five

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He was already asleep when the phone rang. 'It's me, Dan. You're not cross with me for calling so late?'

'I've no idea of the time. It must be midnight, isn't it?'

'I don't know either. I dashed out without my watch. I need to have a talk with you, but I don't suppose you'd be able to.'

'I'm alone at home. My wife is still in the country.'

'Do you think you could come and meet me somewhere?'

'Are you crying?'

'Maybe. I'm awfully upset.'

'Has something happened? Is it the children?'

'No, the children are asleep. Everyone's at home in the warm, only I'm out here freezing in the phone-box at the bus stop. It's like being in a glass coffin. But I'd sooner be in a wooden one. Seeing nothing, knowing nothing and then being pushed into the flames where it would be warm at least.'

'I'll come then.'

Half-past midnight. Outside, an unseasonal July chill and the wind chasing clouds across the sky, their edges pallid in the light of the moon.

He catches sight of her in the distance standing at the bus stop, long after the last bus has gone. She is huddled up in a short blue-and-yellow mottled coat.

He pulls up right in front of the bus stop and opens the door.

'I've got cold hands again,' Bára says, 'and feet too. I'm cold all over and you've come in spite of that.'

He asks her what has happened.

'I ran away. He threw a ruler at me.'

'Your husband?'

'Who else? We were having a row. Over Saša. But I don't want us to sit like this in the car.'

'I don't know where we could go.'

'So just drive on!'

'All right. Will you tell me what happened?'

'You don't mind the muck spilling on to you?'

'That's why I've come, isn't it? So you could tell me what happened.'

'Didn't you come because you love me?'

'It's one and the same.'

'I know. So take my hand.'

Her hand is as cold as that time she drove him. How long ago was that?

'He can't stand Saša,' she says of her husband. 'He's always bossing him about, forbidding him things. Calling him a good-for-nothing idler who does no studying and comes in late. And today he yelled at him that he needn't think he'd be going on to university, that he'd maintained him long enough. And I said I'm the one who maintains him anyway, he's my son, and Sam started yelling at both of us that we're layabouts. I sent Saša away and told Sam that he mustn't dare do that to me. It flabbergasted him that I should have the gall to stand up to him, because after all he is someone whereas I am no more than a flea that has crept into his clothes, a dustbin in which he chucks all his foul moods. He grabbed the steel ruler and hurled it at me. If I hadn't dodged, he could have killed me. Oh God, it's so vile, forgive me, I dashed out of the flat but I had nowhere to go. I would have gone to Mum's, but it was too late and she would have had a fright, so I called you.'

'I'm glad you called me.'

'I'll never forget you came for me, that you didn't leave me in that phone-box. And now, instead of getting a night's sleep. . Where are you taking me? To the airport?'

'No, I'm just driving along.'

'I'd fly somewhere with you. Somewhere far away. Somewhere overseas. Somewhere that's warm. Barcelona, say. They're bound to have warm weather there, and Gaudi too. But wherever I am with you it's warm, your heart gives out warmth. Don't worry, I don't intend to drag you off somewhere or throw myself on you. I'm going home. No, don't stop. Bear with me for a while still. Drive me somewhere, just for a short while.'

So at Červený vrch he turns off the main road. He draws up in front of one of the tower blocks. 'There's an empty flat up there. It belonged to my mother.'

'Your mum died that same day. I know.'

When he unlocks the door he looks up and down the passage, as if fearful someone might see him. But they are all asleep at this hour.

Inside the flat, he is aware of the familiar odour that has still not disappeared even in the five months that his mother has not been here.

He helps Bára out of her coat and they sit down opposite each other. Bára fixes on him a look of total devotion, or at least that is what it seems like to him and he realizes he is pleased; instead of wasting time sleeping he can spend it with her.

'I don't suppose you'd have a drop of wine here?'

'There's not a thing to eat or drink here. Nothing but ketchup.'

'It doesn't matter. Why did you sit down so far away from me?'

'I'm sitting quite close.'

'I want you to sit closer.'

He moves his chair so that their knees touch.

'There was a time when he really did maintain us,' she said, 'when Aleš was small. But I was the one who looked after them. He didn't have to lift a finger at home. And what's more, in the evenings I would help him with tracing plans. But since the revolution I do as much work as him, maybe more, because I drudge for him at the office, play the occasional bit part on television, and also do the housework. So tell me, what sort of layabout am I? How can he say he maintains my son?'

'I don't consider you a layabout, do I?'

'But he does.'

'I doubt that even he does, really.'

'So what makes him say it?'

'I don't know. I don't know him. Maybe he just wanted to hit out at you somehow. The pain of a slap passes quickly, the pain of injustice lasts longer.'

'But tell me why, why he should want to cause me pain? Why?'

'Maybe he's jealous of your son.'

'Why should he be jealous of my child?'

'You give him love he would like for himself

'And don't you find that horrible?'

'It's human.'

And would you be jealous of my Saša too?'

'No. No one has the right to deprive another of his share of love.'

'I know. You definitely wouldn't torture me.'

'I've done all sorts of bad things in my time, but so far I don't think I've been cruel to anyone.'

'You've done lots of bad things? There is only one that I know of. Tell me, why didn't you come for me long ago?'

'How could I come for you when I didn't know you?'

'Exactly. You weren't interested in any old Bára. You happily left me to the mercies of a fellow who hurls steel rulers at me.'

'Don't think about it any more.'

'You're right. I'm sorry. Here I am with you and I spend the time talking about another man. Tell me, do you still remember your first wife?'

'How do you mean?'

'Can you still bring her to mind?'

'Of course.'

'Often?'

'It depends what you mean by often. Less now than years ago. But most frequendy I remember some situation when we were really happy or, on the contrary, when we hurt each other.'

'You're able to hurt someone too?'

'Such as when I didn't do something she wanted or didn't protect her enough. When we were going out together, we lived a long dis-tance apart, several hours' journey. There were times when I didn't bother to make the trip because I didn't feel like trudging all that way. And once — it was when she was already expecting Eva — she was summoned to an interrogation. And I let her go there and didn't even wait for her outside the office because there were other things I had to do. Whenever I remember that, I feel regret that I didn't stand by her then.'

But it only bothers you because she is dead.'

'Yes, I can't make up for it any more.'

'You can make up for it with the living.'

'I've tried to ever since.' Then he says, 'And you remind me of her.'

Do you think I resemble her?'

'No. It's more a sense of familiarity, a sort of intimacy.'

'It must have been awful for you when she died. Tell me, did it ever strike you as unjust?'

'It's not the business of death to be just, is it?'

'And how about God?'

'God is just, but his justice is not the same as human justice.'

'Do you think there can be two sorts of justice?'

'It's not the question of a different sort, but of a different dimension.'

'You believe in the fourth dimension?'

'I mean the dimension in which God moves.'

'When my sister died I felt it to be an injustice. Why her, of all people?'

'Your sister died? You didn't tell me.'

'It's ten years ago now. I don't like speaking about it.'

'She was the one who found you when you wanted to kill yourself?'

'I only had one sister. Katka was so kind to me. The kindest of all next to Mum.'

'What was she suffering from?'

'Nothing. She got into a skid when she was driving her car. For five days she was conscious and they just thought she would never walk again. Then she lapsed into unconsciousness. They kept her for six more weeks on a life-support machine. When they switched it off, that was that. When does the soul leave the body? When they turn off the machine, or before?'

'I couldn't tell you.'

'Do you think it's fair that good young people should die?'

'Good and bad people die. We all must die.'

'Yes. Ever since then I've known that I can say cheerio in the morning to someone I love and I may never see them alive again. Or they me. It's sad. It's a sad arrangement, don't you think so?'

'And how would you like it to be? How would you have life arranged?'

'I'd like to know I have a few days left. For living. For loving you.'

'You're sure to have.'

'How can you tell?'

'I'll pray for it.'

'You'll pray for me not to die yet?'

He nods.

'I prayed for my sister too, that time. But it didn't help.'

'Don't think of death any more.'

'You're right. Don't be cross with me. Here I am with you and I'm talking about death. It's just the mood I'm in. Tell me, will you lie

down with me, or are you in too much of a hurry?' She gets up and finds the door to the bathroom without difficulty.

He hears water running. It is most likely rusty. It has been months since he ran any water here. He was unable to forget his first wife. Particularly during the first years after her death. Maybe that was the reason he was never able to be completely close to Hana. He was grateful to his second wife and he loved her. But he was incapable of loving her like his first wife. It seemed natural to him, in fact, that one could give oneself fully only to one person in a lifetime. What is it that he feels now? Real love? Or has he yielded to some comforting self-deception?

When Bára returns she is wrapped in a towel, in the same way his first wife used to wrap herself. 'I took it,' she says, referring to the towel. 'It belonged to your mum, but she would have been sure to lend it if she knew I was here with you and I loved you.' Then she asks him to turn off the light in the room, but to leave the one in the lobby burning as she is scared of the dark.

They make love on the old ottoman that he still remembers from his childhood. 'My darling,' Bára whispers, 'I love it when you put your arms around me. You're so attractive: I love your mouth, your teeth, your eyes. They're a greyish blue like the Prague sky. If I didn't have you, if you hadn't come to meet me, maybe I wouldn't be living now. I need love to live and without it I'd die. Without you I'd die.'

She groans in ecstasy and begs, 'Save me. You will save me, won't you?'

'From what?'

'From all evil. From cruelty. From the world. From me. From death. You can. You can do it. You can do anything.'

'I don't have that power, sweetheart. But I love you.'

'There you are. You have the power of love.'

The light from the lobby falls on her face that seems pale. But her hair has a coppery sheen and her eyes are dark.

'I've already told you I'm not God.'

'One doesn't need God for love, though. Love is in the human heart. In mine and in yours.'

What time can it be? How did he come to be here? Is it a sin? Is he betraying those he loves? Is he betraying himself? Or, on the contrary, would he be betraying himself if he weren't here, if he had renounced this moment when the love he feels overwhelms everything?

She puts her arms around him. 'Tell me you don't mind I dragged you out at night.'

'I'm glad.'

"We've never been together at night before. And never the whole night. And we won't be tonight either. But I'd love to wake up in the morning at your side. At least once.'

'So would I.'

'Would you go somewhere with me and spend a whole day and a night with me?'

He looks at her and into her honey-coloured eyes, and she says, 'Yes, it's me!'

'I'd go with you for a night and a day and a night and a day and.. '

'No, you know yourself it will never happen. And besides, when you woke in the morning you'd notice I had wrinkles, you'd notice I'm old.'

'But you're not old.'

'I'll be forty-one next month. Do you realize how dreadful that is?'

'No, that's not dreadful.' He sits up. The light from the street enters the room. What is dreadful is to live a lie, to deceive one's next of kin — this is what occurs to him, but all he says is that she is still a little girl compared to him.

Bára stretches out her arms as if wanting to draw him to her, but she too sits up. 'You want to go already? All right, I know, we have to.' She embraces him again. 'Don't forsake me!'

'I won't.

'But you will. You will in the end. Just now you were thinking what a problem I am for you.'

'No, what was actually going through my mind is that I am deceiving my wife and you're deceiving your husband.' He gets up and goes over to the window. The windmill below the window turns silently.

'I know it bothers you. And already I feel a chill down my spine at the thought of what awaits me at home.' She dresses rapidly. 'Maybe he'll kill me one of these days and you won't even find out! And you'll go on preaching how important it is for us all to love each other!'

2 Diary excerpts

I talk to Eva in a friendly way, I don't reproach her with anything and I act as if everything was all right. But I can't dispel the fear that I've neglected something, that I've messed something up. I always wanted to set a good example to my children, not to speak about truth and love, but to be truthful and live in love. But what if the way I behaved, the way I acted and the way I treated her, only tended to increase her sense of inferiority and inadequacy? Young people are prone either to excessive belief or excessive disbelief. It depends on their character and the people they model themselves on. As a child I scarcely knew my father. He was in prison. When at last he came home he was my hero, but his behaviour was so natural and earthy, and he tried so 'sinfully to enjoy life, that I sometimes found him hard to take. Maybe it would be better for the children if I were to swear sometimes, or play cards, or at least get drunk from time to time. But what if they were to discover what I'm really doing?

It is well known how hard it is to be the child of famous parents. Clergy aren't usually famous people, but their children don't tend to have an easy time either. Exemplary behaviour is expected both from the parents and from the children. But should any of them fail, they are the butt of scorn and their disgrace is the subject of general satisfaction.

My thoughts are in a tangle, just as my life is. And I look for excuses for my actions.

I have definitely fallen far short of being a perfect example for my children. I have simply tried to live in accordance with what I preached. And I have never exalted myself over anyone, and that includes my own children. I've never saddled them with any burden of responsibility. At most I've reminded them of the words of Ecclesiastes that always struck me as wise:

Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. .

I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine — my mind still guiding me with wisdom — and how to lay hold on folly till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few days of their life. .

I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man's delight.

And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure. .

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

I'm not sure whether they were capable of understanding the text. And what about me? Am I still capable of accepting its wisdom? If I am, I'll preach on it. No, if I still accept it, I'll live by it.

I was invited to take part in a radio phone-in on what was supposed to be a topical issue: Why are people losing confidence in the church. Apart from me, there was a parish priest, Father M., a tolerant and big-hearted man, plus some sociologist and an editor. The listeners who phoned in mostly attacked the Catholics, accusing them of hankering after property, of wanting to take possession of the national cathedral, and of having used power to force their beliefs on people and burn the innocent at the stake. I kept on waiting for someone to raise some serious objection, such as calling into question Christ's divinity or Mary's virginity, saying that everything we preach is based on a faith that is an insult to the intelligence of people nowadays, but nobody voiced anything of the sort. I left at the end with the galling feeling that the human mind just flitters on the surface, fascinated with property, violence and old grievances. As Comenius writes in his own biography: 'For I have observed that people do not speak at all, but only mouth things, i.e. they do not transfer a thing or the meaning of a thing from one mind to another, but instead they exchange among themselves words that are misunderstood, or understood insufficiently and wrongly. And this is done not merely by the populace, but also by the semi-learned crowd. .'

From the last letter of Mrs Milada Horáková, written a few hours before her execution on 27 June 1950:

'I'm completely calm and prepared. The minister has been here, and even though Dr Kučera couldn't come, I found it a great support — I begged him also to help you above all. Rely on all of those who can and want to support you. Live! Live!. . There are so many of you — I'm alone and also have to cope.

'I never doubted your strength, but you have surprised me. It will be painful for a while, but the pain will gradually diminish. Go out into the meadows and the woods, you'll find a little bit of me there in the scent of the flowers. Go into the fields, look at all the beauty and everywhere we'll be together. Look at the people around you and I'll be reflected in each of them in some way. I'm not at my wit's end or in despair — I'm not putting it on, I'm so peaceful inside because my conscience is clear.

'. . During these last moments everything has seemed so unreal to me, but in fact I have only minutes left to count. It's not so bad — you're the ones that matter now, not me any more. Be strong! I love you so much and a love like this can't be lost or just evaporate, can it? Nothing in the world is ever lost, everything goes on growing somehow and is renewed again. Follow only the things that are close to life. Cling on to each other and support one another!

'I repeat it once more: the new life that is now approaching has brought me incredible peace of mind. The play is over for me and the curtains coming down, but a new play is beginning. . Maybe I played my part badly, but it was an honest attempt. You can take my word for it. I meekly submit to the will of God — he set me this test and I accept it with just one ambition: to obey God's laws and preserve my good name as a human being. '

What would I write in such a situation? And to whom would I address my last letter?

Bára and I meet in Mother's old flat. We don't see each other more than twice a week and always briefly. We have no time. She talks to me about her work and her life. Several times she has brought a letter she wrote to me in the meantime. But she hasn't wanted me to read it at once. 'You're not going to waste the time you could be with me!' I find her letters almost spellbinding, although I know I must not accept the praise she heaps on me.

I told her that should her husband refuse to support her son's university study, she could rely on me. She said that such a thing was out of the question, but it is important for her that I say it.

Apparently, for several days her husband treated her and even his stepson with more consideration. I asked her if he had apologized for throwing the ruler at her.

'Apologize? To me? That's something he'd never do. In his eyes I'm not a fully developed human. I'm just a woman, aren't I?'

I also confided in her the news that I had found Dad's name on the list of police informers.

She asked if it distressed me very much.

I told her I would like to know the truth.

'But you'll never discover the truth,' she objected.

I said that if truth could not be discovered then there could be no justice on earth.

'And there isn't any, 'she said. 'There truly isn't any justice. '

It's fascinating how Marika, the gypsy girl, takes for granted the accounts of Jesus's miracles. For her, miracles are still part and parcel of life. Unclean spirits move amongst us and the seriously ill can be healed by the touch of a hand and a stormy sea can be calmed by a single command. Her grandmother knew how to exorcise evil spirits and her blind girlfriend was visited in a dream by her late father who prophesied that she would see.

'And did she see?'

'Yes, of course. '

In her world, the dead move about and still live together as they did in life. They are invisible to us, the living but they can visit us in dreams. She believes it is possible to charm or to offend the sun, the moon and the wind. Am I to explain to her that this is all superstition and error, that only our Lord was able to perform miraculous deeds, because he was the Son of God? Or am I, on the contrary to tell myself that the message of Scripture can only be accepted fully and unselfconsciously by people such as she?

Marek and Alois took her to visit the Pentecostals in Libeň. They came back in high spirits as they had experienced something out of the ordinary — even speaking in tongues and, as Marek put it, 'genuine piety. Their enthusiasm did not please me. Something is happening to

people: they are turning outwards instead of inwards. I remember watching a televised service of the Apostolic Church when I was visiting Rút in Oregon, although it looked less like a church service than a television show. The preacher dashed here and there on an enormous stage, yelling, crying and laughing, telling stories from the lives of basketball players and racing drivers, singing and invoking the Holy Spirit, which played some crucial role at the end of each of his stories. He had a pile of paper napkins to hand which he used to wipe the sweat from his brow and then threw them away all over the stage. I told the boys that speaking in tongues was not so much an expression of faith as an expression of confused minds, which leads them into a state of false ecstasy so that they believe they are speaking to our Lord. Wherever the conscious mind is absent, anything can gain a foothold, and mostly it is something bad, not something good.

Petr hasn't shown up for several weeks now. I asked Marek and Alois if they had any news of him and where he was actually living. Alois hadn't a clue, and Marek seemed to me to hesitate before replying — as if he knew something and was frightened to confide in me. I felt like shouting at him but I stopped myself Distrust is worming its way into our family and I myself am not without blame in this regard.

I had a talk with Marek about love and the beauty of the female body. I told him that the really beautiful woman is the one that you love. And suddenly I realized that all the while I was thinking of Bára, and I thought to myself, what right have I to preach to Marek?

Almost every night I wake up with an oppressive awareness of the lie I am living. I ought to give up preaching (not just to my children). How am I supposed to talk about morality, love and honour when the way I live denies them all?

Bára believes that white lies are merciful precisely to those whom we deceive. I won't leave my husband who hurls rulers at me, she told me, and you won't leave your wife, who looks after you, who brought up your daughter, bore you two more children and loves you. So everything will stay the way it is, I'm sure of it. So why cause them pain?

It's a philosophy I can't accept, but on the other hand I am unable — and too craven — to suggest anything else.

B. rang me this morning to say she's ill. She was with her husband at their country place at the weekend and it looks as if she slipped a disc when she was digging the flower bed. She managed the homeward journey, but this morning she was unable to get out of bed. Fortunately, her husband stayed in the country, as he wanted to do some drawing in peace. She told the boys to go to their grandmother's after school and now she's lying at home like an invalid.

I told her it was a pain I was familiar with and had some tablets I could bring her.

She doesn't want tablets, she hates tablets, but if I wanted to, if I were to find a moment and come over, I could find out where and how she lives.

I bought a bunch of roses and a small glass vase from Nový Bor.

'You're crazy 'she said when she opened the door. 'You mustn't go wasting time rushing around the shops. ' She was wearing some faded sweater and tattered jeans. I'm lying down,' she announced. 'You won't mind that I first invited you to our house on the very day I'm unable to stand upright?'

We walked (or in her case, limped) through a spacious lounge in which stood several flower pots containing miniature citrus trees as well as a fig tree that almost touched the ceiling.

I certainly have had little occasion to visit houses of that kind, and I was taken aback by the luxuriousness of the Finnish furniture and the emotional vacuity of the abstract paintings intended to embellish the white walls. She noticed and asked whether I disliked modern art. I replied that I found some works disconcerting and had the impression that some of their creators had no wish other than to be original, whereas I was always looking for some message.

You're a pastor, she said, you have to look for a message in everything. It's good enough for me if they make me happy or I enjoy the colours. Then she added that she accepted no responsibility for the furniture. Although she was an interior designer, the entire arrangement of the house, apart from her own room, had been Samuel's choice, as he couldn't bear to live in anything that was not organized according to his scheme of things.

Then we arrived at her own room. I was fascinated by an enormous desk that took up the entire length of one wall. The desk-top, which rested on a steel base, was made up of smallish square wooden blocks. 'That, 'she said, indicating the desk-top, 'was once a floor in an old villa. They were going to lay linoleum on top of it, the philistines, so I

bought it from them. They have linoleum on concrete and I have a splendid desk that even has a patina. '

The room also contained a divan and an armchair, by which stood a steel standard lamp whose base, I noticed, was formed from the three spikes of a garden fork. You see, she said, a lamp like that has to be in here, Samuel can't abide anything that's slightly off-beat. She lay down, groaned and asked me to cover her with the rug that was lying on the armchair. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, whether she was thirsty or hungry. She told me I wasn't here to wait on her; no one had ever waited on her. All she wanted was for me to sit down and be with her now. If you hadn't come, she said, I would be brooding on my powerlessness and death.

We chatted for a while like close friends who don't see each other often enough. I told her about Eva's drug-taking. She reassured me that it was commonplace nowadays and didn't mean anything. When she was eighteen she must have tried everything they forbade her, and in fact there was very little they did forbid her. She had felt such a need to set herself apart from the world she was forced to live in that in the end she had slashed her wrists.

The telephone on her bedside table rang several times and she talked to people I didn't know.

At one moment she asked me to pass her a large black folder from the desk. It contained her latest set designs and several interiors. It was her first chance to display her work to me. She showed me her design for the interior of a country manse — a Catholic one, naturally. She explained that she had tried to make use of the old furniture that remained in the house, simply adding a number of small armchairs that could be built according to photographs of Schinkel's armchairs from the beginning of the last century. I hadn't a clue who Schinkel was, but I didn't ask. I don't understand furniture, and the furniture we have at home simply assembled over the years as we acquired it. Some things we bought, some we inherited, some were given to us. I was always of the view that the objects didn't matter. They serve a purpose and they should not attract attention either by being in bad taste or enticingly unusual. But I realized she was waiting to hear what I'd say about her work, so I said I liked it, and also that I liked her desk and her idea for the lamp.

Then the phone rang once more and she suddenly changed and became wary. 'Is that you, my love? It's nice of you to call.' And she glanced at me in mute appeal.

I realized it was her husband calling and I crept out of the room. I drifted around the spacious house until I ended up in the kitchen. I located a saucepan and found ketchup and milk in the fridge. Salt, sugar, rice and flour were in containers on the shelves. It was gone noon and it occurred to me that I might make some soup while she was on the phone.

'Why are you so kind to me?' she asked when I brought the bowls. 'You are putting me to shame, for heavens sake. We could have easily had a sandwich. ' Then she said that her husband had called to say he'd finished his work and would be returning that same afternoon.

I was about to get up and leave.

'But it'll take Musil at least two hours to get here. ' Then she asked reproachfully, 'You would actually leave without making love to me?'

I had a dream. Two men were leading me down a long passage. At the end of the passage was a hole, so narrow that a cat could scarcely have squeezed through it. Nevertheless the men stopped in front of the hole: this way!

I stood nonplussed in front of the opening, until one of the men made it bigger with his heel while the other pushed me forward. I was falling through the opening. I don't know how long I was falling but at last I found myself in a dismal office where no one was sitting; there was just an enormous mastiff lying in front of the door.

'Take a seat, ' I was instructed by a voice from some unknown source. 'You realize why you're here?'

I sat down in the seat opposite the desk and said I didn't know. The mastiff raised its head and snarled.

'A lying pastor. '

'I don't know why I'm here, ' I repeated.

'What about the scandal then?'

'I don't know what you're talking about. '

'You preach scandal. And in addition you went into the pulpit naked. '

'That's not true. '

'But you had yourself photographed doing it. '

I banged my fist on the desk. 'That's not true. '

'And what about the little girls in Sunday school? What do you teach them?'

'I teach them the word of God. '

No, you tell dirty stories. I have a pile of complaints here. In children's handwriting. '

All of a sudden a pile of envelopes appeared on the desk in front of me. 'Read that one there, for instance. '

I found in my hand a piece of paper that was indeed covered in children's handwriting but I couldn't decipher a single letter. But I knew that there could be nothing against me in the letters so long as they were genuine. Except that these were definitely not genuine.

'So what do you say to that? Great, isn't it? What do you think your missus will say when it's published?'

'What missus?'

'You've got more than one?'

I became uneasy. There was something out of order here, something bad had happened. After all, my wife was ill and dying. 'You can't do that,' I shouted.

'That depends on you. '

'What do you want of me?'

'You know full well! Take a leaf out of your father's book. He understood the right way to behave. '

All of a sudden the room was full of big fellows in grey clothes, each one identical, the same unfamiliar faces, but they seemed to be smiling in a friendly way and actually offering me a glass of wine. 'We'll reach a deal, though,' said the one offering me the wine.

'You scratch our backs, and we'll scratch yours,' said a fat, grey-haired man as he entered the room. He seemed to be their leader — I recognized him in fact. It was Berger, my old Secretary for Church Affairs.

But there aren't any Secretaries for Church Affairs any more, I remembered to my relief. We're free again, it's just that these chaps don't know it and are threatening me and trying to bribe me with a glass of wine.

I took the glass and smashed it on the ground. The wine spread all over the floor, blood red. And at that moment I realized that Jitka, my good, gentle wife, had died long ago, and I had been left alone, and it made me sad.

3

Daniel generally took a holiday in the second half of August. Sometimes he would stay in Prague but usually he would set off with Hana and the children for a manse in the country run by one of his friends or a former fellow student.

This year, for the first time, they could afford a holiday that would depart from the normal routine.

When he suggested to Hana that they might go abroad it occurred to him that it wasn't so much foreign travel that appealed to him as the possibility of escaping somewhere a long way away. Escaping from the other woman? No, from himself, more likely. Except that there is no escaping oneself.

Hana agreed that he should take a rest. It was necessary to renew one's strength or one day it would run out. But why go on a foreign holiday and leave the children here? What if something happened to them?

The children would be at Grandma's and we don't need to travel far. Just to the Alps, say.

The Alps held no appeal for Hana. The Šumava Mountains seemed more feasible to her, besides which she could make herself understood there.

Fine, we can drive to somewhere in Western Bohemia and maybe go on an excursion to Germany from there.

While Hana was doing the packing he quickly sorted out his correspondence. When the phone rang, he felt a strange agitation and hesitated before picking up the receiver.

'It's me, Dan,' said a familiar voice. 'I'm calling from our casde in the country. Samuel has gone fishing and I thought I might still catch you.'

'Your instinct was sound. We are about to leave any moment.'

And you don't mind me calling?'

'No, I'm pleased to hear you.'

And are you on your own there?'

'My wife is packing.'

'So go and give her a hand! I just wanted to tell you I'm thinking of you and that I'm missing you, that I wish I could be with you.'

'I'm thinking of you too.'

'Nice things or nasty?'

'That's not a proper thing to ask.'

'I wanted to ask whether you'd forget me.'

'It's almost impossible to erase anything from my memory.'

'And you'd be so vile as to want to erase me?'

'I didn't say anything of the sort. I only said I have a good memory. And I'll never erase you from it.'

'That's good. I wish you lots of sunshine. And I don't only mean the sort that comes from the sky. I mean the sunshine you have within you.'

'I don't know whether I ever had it within me, and even if I did, I fear it's hidden behind the clouds now.'

'Do you feel that I'm the clouds?'

'No, if it's possible to have sunshine within oneself then the clouds must also come from within.'

'That's true. And you have love within you and that sunshine. I'll hang up now, you have to go and pack. And forgive me if I've hurt you.'

'How could you have?'

'It's possible to hurt someone without wanting to, even someone you love.'

'The person you can hurt most is yourself. And then those you love, of course.'

'I know that. So I'll say cheerio. And don't forsake me.'

He and Hana were staying in a new hotel near Domažlice. Their room had a bathroom and a colour television, and there was a telephone on each of the bedside tables.

'Do you like it?' he asked his wife.

'It's unnecessarily luxurious.'

'We could make a trip over the border to Regensburg tomorrow.'

'Why Regensburg?'

'It's only a short drive from here and it's a beautiful city. With an old cathedral.'

'If you like.'

'I thought you'd like it too.'

'I'm happy wherever we are together.'

'Do you fancy a little walk before dinner?'

'That's a good idea. I'll just have to change my shoes.'

'It's ages since we've been for a walk together, isn't it?' he said as they left the hotel.

'It's because we've had so little time. Whenever you had a spare moment you had to visit your mum. And apart from that, you've had so much on your plate.'

He had the feeling they hadn't done much walking even when his mother was still well. Sometimes he got the impression that his wife was afraid of being left alone with him. Maybe it was more shyness than fear. And now it was he who avoided talking to her.

They set off along a path that led between meadows. The edge of the path was yellow with hawkweed and cat's ear and a kestrel circled above the meadow.

'I wonder what the children are doing,' Hana said.

'They're rejoicing at having got rid of us for a while.'

His conversation with Hana tended to be mostly about the children. And sometimes she would tell him about goings-on in the hospital and he would share with her his parish concerns. They almost never talked about books. Hana had no time to read, even if she had the inclination. They only rarely went to the theatre and he didn't watch television. Whenever they had guests, which was at least once a week, she would worry about what they would eat or drink and see to it they had fresh bed linen, but she seldom took part in the conversation, which generally dealt with theological issues or the situation in the church.

Also he did not talk to her about things that happened to be on his mind, and he would prepare his sermons without discussing them with her.

She differed from his first wife in almost every way, both in character and appearance, and maybe that was the very reason why he had never managed to be completely intimate with her, even though, until just recently, he had had nothing to conceal from her.

They reached a bush that was covered in blackberries. He bent down and picked a handful of them to offer his wife.

'You're so kind to me, Dan.'

'But it's nothing at all.'

'It's lovely here. A pity Magda isn't here, at least.'

'Magda's fine at your parents.'

'I know. It just struck me that it would be nice if we were all together.'

He stroked her hair and then took her by the hand and they continued along the footpath towards a village some distance away. He

couldn't remember the last time they had walked along like that, holding hands. But that time it must have been from a sincere feeling, whereas now he was trying to atone for his offence in some way. That was why he had booked an expensive hotel room and thought up the trip to Regensburg. He would buy her some clothes there, anything she fancied — as if that would in any way change what had happened or make up for anything. At most it would delay the moment when he would find sufficient courage — or hard-heartedness maybe — to tell her at least something of what he was perpetrating.

'And I'm a bit worried about Eva too,' Hana said a moment later. 'Once someone starts to experiment with drugs, there is always the temptation to return to them. We oughtn't to leave her for a long time at home on her own.'

'We wouldn't be able to keep an eye on her all the time anyway. If someone really has a mind to do something, there's no way you can watch them continuously. They don't even manage to keep the inmates in prison under permanent surveillance. All you can do is explain, entreat, ask and trust.'

'When someone's eighteen and on their own it's a temptation for them. Besides which, she's attracted to Petr.'

'You've noticed that too?'

'It's not good. Not for her, anyway.'

'Don't worry. When she gets to the Conservatoire and into a different environment, she'll find other friends.'

They had dinner together in the hotel dining room and he prevailed on his wife not to look at the prices and just have what she liked.

That night they lay down beside each other as always. The blue reflections of the neon signs shone into the room. He got up and drew the curtains.

Then Hana said, 'It's been a lovely day, Dan. Did you enjoy it too?'

His wife quickly fell asleep. It had been a long time since he made love to her. He knew it gave her no pleasure, so he had the feeling he was molesting her or taking physical advantage of her.

He could not get to sleep. It was his custom to meditate last thing at night, turning over in his mind everything that had happened or pondering on what he had to do in the coming days. Now it was as if everything, both the past and the future, fixed him with a reproachful look. He tried to pray. To think about a sermon. On what text? Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt

through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4: 22–25)

For a moment he tried to summon up the image of his first wife and recall the words he used to lavish on her. The tender words returned but not the image of his first wife, instead the image of the new one — the one who had come on the day of his mothers death — forced itself upon his consciousness. What had brought her to him? What was she intended to recall? His mother's love or her death? Why had she appeared that particular day? Who had sent her — what force?

He strove to dispel the picture of her face, but instead her voice imposed itself on him: Don't forsake me!

How was it possible not to forsake a person one wasn't with and oughtn't to be with? Or was it the despairing cry of someone who feels forsaken? Forsaken by whom?

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Suddenly the telephone rang on his bedside table. He snatched up the receiver and in spite of the absurdity expected to hear the voice of the woman he had been thinking about.

'Reception here,' said the voice on the telephone. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, but I noticed the stamp of a Protestant church in your identity card and thought you might be a pastor.'

'I am, yes.'

'I thought I'd just ask you: one of our guests, an old gentleman, has had a bad turn. We've already called the doctor but the gentleman also asked for a priest.'

'But I don't give extreme unction.'

'If it wasn't too much trouble to you, I don't understand these things, but seeing that he did ask

'Yes, of course,' he said, and started to get dressed.

4 Matous

Matouš is seized by the demon of activity. He scarcely sleeps and he wrote sixteen articles during the month of September. In fact, though, it was not he who wrote them, but some essentially alien and rather unpleasant being that occasionally worms its way into his mind and, before he can expel it, commits all sorts of indiscretions. He knows by now that when it whispers something into his pen he mustn't sign it with his own name, and so for at least a year now he has been delivering these inventions under the name of Lukáš Slabý.

Matouš brings a feature about schoolchildren smoking pot to one of the tabloids, and pretends he wrote the article himself. He tells the editor that in these times the only successful stories are about drugs, prostitution, contract killings, and billion-crown scams, or so it seems to him. But he has an advantage over the others who write about the same things: he can enrich his stories with his experiences of the hashish dens in Hong Kong or Singapore, although — to be honest — he felt safer there than here. His colleague nods, Matous's articles read well. Then he goes off with Matouš to a cheap wine bar for a drink. After the fourth glass he mentions that Matous's ex-wife Klára spends her time sitting around with foreigners at the Hotel Evropa. Sitting around and lying around, most likely.

Matouš, who makes a practice of referring to Klára as his ex-wife although he is not yet divorced, gives no indication, even now, that this news affects him in any way and simply says, 'She always was a tart.' And he concurs with his colleague that women are tarts by nature, although some lack the courage to be so brazenly open about it.

However, when he gets home he feels to his surprise something akin to grief, disappointment or bitterness. That woman still continues to use his name and can even keep it should she cease to be his wife. When he first met her she had seemed to him innocently girlish and he loved her, trusted her and brought her into his home, from which she soon drove out all peace and tranquillity.

He sits down in the armchair placed in front of the television set. As the news is about to start, he switches on and watches the reports with the professional eye of Lukáš Slabý to whom he owes his living. On the screen, they are just carrying away the corpse of a woman

covered in blood, another woman tears her hair — a Bosnian or a Serb. It doesn't register with him anyway. Countless unknown corpses affect one less than one single betrayal close to home.

Matous watches the flickering colours impassively and he is suddenly seized by torpor. He stares for a moment at the stuffed canary sitting motionless on its perch in the cage. He recalls a park not far from Peking University where the old men would bring their caged birds to give them an airing. Birds flying out of their cages. The scent of jasmine. Bright-coloured kites. Nostalgia. He won't find the energy or resolve to make any more journeys, he is gradually losing the will to live.

Then he makes up a not particularly successful haiku in his head about his not particularly convincing notion about his own death:

Just dream a sweet dream Be awoken by no one Turn into a shade.

He won't even write it down, but with his last ounce of strength he forces himself to get up from the armchair, puts on a white shirt and the silk tie, he brought all the way back from Shanghai years ago, and sets out for the Hotel Evropa.

Klára is indeed sitting there. It is still early, so she is sitting on her own, slowly sipping from a glass containing wine or something purporting to be wine. Her long red nails glitter, her blouse pretends to be embroidered with gold, while from her ears dangle rings that are genuinely gold, like the rings he had given her.

He approaches her and asks if the other chair is free.

Only now does she notice him and gives him a startled look. Then she says, 'Yeah, for the time being. What are you doing here, for heaven's sake?'

'I'm the one who should be asking you that!' Matouš comments.

'You've no right to ask me anything!'

'You're still my wife.'

'That doesn't mean I can't sit where I like. I'm a free person, aren't I?'

'I hope you make a decent living, at least.'

'Don't be disgusting, Volek!'

'You've not shown up in a long while,' he says. 'You've still got

some things at my place and it's about time we went to court at last, so you can feel truly free.'

They argue for a while about their mutual relationship, each blaming the other for breach of faith. Klára maintains that the only reason she is sitting here is because he drove her to it, because of his lack of interest in her, his insensitivity and his meanness. 'Don't you understand you are impossible to live with?' she asks.

He asks her why, and she, whose brain was never disturbed by the slightest interesting or original thought, she, who was capable of listening to inane pop music from morning to night or gawping at even more inane television shows, she who has never once in her whole life read one decent book (and probably not even an indecent one either), says to Matouš, who has always prided himself on the breadth of his knowledge and his ability to entertain people: 'Because you're insuf-lerably boring!'

'Does that mean you have no intention of ever coming back?' he asks pointlessly.

'I couldn't give a toss about you.'

'Or my money?'

'With the money I get from you, I could hardly afford widow's weeds.'

Then a group of foreigners arrives in the dining room and Klára tells Matouš he had better clear off.

Matouš instantly suppresses a fit of helpless rage. Most of all he would like to hit her but it goes against the grain to hit a woman. Besides, here in the restaurant it would probably cause a scandal. So he gets up and whispers, 'Have a good time then, you dirty slut!' And he knocks over her wine glass with his elbow. Klára leaps up out of her chair just in time to stop the wine running into her lap and kicks Matouš in the shin with the imprecation, 'Fuck off, you impotent old bastard!' Matouš does not stop to hear the remaining curses. He limps away across the square as evening falls. He feels dreadful, and is aware of a great number of bizarre-looking individuals and dark faces that look even darker in the night. Whores, pimps, drug dealers and addicts stand around. One of the youngsters loitering in front of the arcade looks familiar, he has the impression that he noticed him at that church he visited not long ago to hear the husband of the motherly looking matron from the hospital. But he was probably mistaken, these people don't look much like churchgoers — unless they were

making a night-time foray. Matouš turns away in disgust. He no longer has the feeling of treading the familiar pavement of pink and slate-blue paving blocks, but is instead groping along a narrow jungle path and has even left his machete behind; maybe the fellow in front will hack a way through, but the fellow suddenly disappears underground and Matouš becomes entangled in some sort of creeper from which he can't extricate himself. He sits down on the ground to take a little rest, but then he is horrified to see, dropping down from the branch above him, a gold-coloured snake. The boiga drops on to his chest and strikes. The searing pain forces him to rise from the ground. He shakes off the snake; he ought to run away and get first aid or, instead, just lie down here on the ground and wait for death. To be born is to begin to die! Why resist?

Nevertheless he raises himself up and drags himself through the jungle burdened with pain and the weight of his own body.

Back home he takes a few tablets to ease the pain. The tablets make him drowsy but the pain remains and sleep refuses to come, even though the exhaustion which now seizes him is almost too much to bear.

The solitude in which he spends his life and the purposelessness of everything weigh on his chest and burn more than the snakebite. When he wakes up the next morning after a brief sleep he doesn't get up but goes on lying there in his bed, with linen that has not been changed in weeks. He stares up at the ceiling, listening to the din of the cars and trams outside the window, and it occurs to him that he will never again get up, never again write a single line. Besides, everything has already been written and everything wise has been said long ago, and anyone left striving for wisdom prefers to remain silent.

At midday he eats a piece of stale bread and goes back to bed. At last he falls asleep for a while and when he awakes he remembers his mother who has been dead for eight years and he bursts into tears and cannot tell whether from pain or hopelessness.

He writes:

Autumn approaches

The softness of the snow attends

missing tenderness.

It then occurs to him that in fact he should be feeling liberated: that frightful woman with whom he rashly encumbered his life, that

creature who hadn't the first idea about anything that enlivened the spirit, and was solely interested in the pleasures of the flesh, had finally disappeared from his life.

He brews himself a pot of very strong Malabar from Java, takes out the seven tangram dice of yellowing ivory and makes them into a figure carrying a cup of tea. Is it the figure of a man or a woman?

It is a woman, and her features come into focus before his eyes. Dark hair and dark eyes: that matron has something exotic about her, something brought from far, far away. He recalls the kindly smiles of the Chinese women who welcomed him into the humblest of shacks.

Matous is already drinking his fourth cup; his stomach pain is still there, but instead of dwelling on it he thinks that fate may have sent that foreign-looking yet motherly nurse his way. Alternatively, fate has sent him her way because her husband was coming to the end of his life's journey and the matron would be left on her own.

Matous once more dons the white shirt that he wore so briefly yes-lerday that he didn't have time to dirty it, then puts on a tie, and sets off for the hospital.

At the hospital, they examine him and give him a prescription for some new medicines, reassuring him that the findings are negative and it is just the scar that is hurting. They advise him not to overdo it and to avoid everything that might over-excite him.

Matous then glances into the room where the nursing officer sits. The pastor's wife is there, tidying something in the medicine cup-hoard. When she sees him she smiles and invites him in.

The surroundings are far from intimate. Moreover, the door is open and he hasn't the courage to close it behind him. Still, he sits down opposite her and when she asks him the reason for his visit, he tells her how yesterday he was overcome by pain and today by despair, but since then his hope has been renewed. 'Good fortune follows upon disaster, disaster lurks within good fortune,' he says, without betraying the source of his wisdom.

'You certainly do look a bit poorly,' Hana comments and she too advises him to take care of himself. Then she adds, 'Whenever you're feeling downhearted like that you're welcome to call us or just drop by. My husband might help raise your spirits.'

'I'd sooner come to visit you, Matron. And talking about visits, it's your turn to visit me, isn't it?'

'Take a seat then.' It looks as if both his attempt at flattery and his

invitation have passed unheeded. She asks him if he'd like a cup of tea and when he accepts her offer, Hana takes two cups from the metal cupboard, and after apologizing that she only has ordinary teabags she goes off somewhere. For a moment, Matouš looks around the room in which everything is coldly white; the refrigerator hums quietly and specks of dust swirl in the rays of sunlight. He then takes out his notebook and spends a moment composing a three-liner.

The pastors wife returns with the small teapot from which steam now rises and asks him if he is already back at work.

He explains to her that his work consists of writing something and taking it to an editor. He also tells her that he doesn't really enjoy journalism and has never particularly enjoyed it.

'What would you enjoy doing, then?'

He says he once spent a lot of time studying Chinese philosophy. He found it a source of reassurance when the Communists were in power. Things were bad in China too during the rule of the first emperor of the Ching dynasty. For the first time in history they burned books and ownership of them was actually punishable by death. But the emperor died and ying — the spirit of conciliation and love — was restored. He has also translated and written verse, he tells her. He would like to publish his poems, but whereas in the past it wasn't possible because his poetry was not sufficiently optimistic or politically committed, nowadays no one's interested in publishing poems, unless he pays them to. He opens his notebook and reads out his newly written tercet:

Even the river

will melt when over the waves

flash flocks of black coots.

Matron Hana nods. She is unlikely to see anything poetical in the statement, let alone realize he wrote the lines to impress her. She used to read poetry, she says, but it was a long time ago, these days she doesn't have the time.

'These days nobody has the time,' Matouš says. 'Either for poetry or for living. Life rushes on and from the emptiness one knows one falls into the emptiness one doesn't. And what will one leave behind here? You will leave behind children. But what will remain after me? A bed, a couple of dictionaries and books and a few tattered clothes.'

'Everyone leaves something behind,' Hana disagrees, 'providing they've lived decently. And those poems of yours,' she recalls, 'I'd like to read them now I know you.'

'I'll bring them to you, or I'll show them to you when you visit me.'

At that moment, some nurses burst into the office and Hana no longer has any time for him, nor, clearly, can she pay him attention.

So Matouš gets up and as he is leaving suggests that he might wait lor Hana at the gate.

'But I won't be finished for nearly an hour,' Hana objects. But that is not the sort of objection that would put him off.

But just for a moment,' Hana says when they meet. 'You know they're waiting for me at home.'

He escorts her to the same bistro as last time and on this occasion he offers her a glass of wine. Hana declines and just has a coffee.

They chat for a while about Matouš s health and the tablets that don't relieve his condition.

'Once when I was travelling westwards from Peking,' Matouš recalls, 'I got a swelling of the knee. There was no doctor in the vicinity so they brought me to the local soothsayer who was also a healer. She tried to find the cause of the illness. Your grandfather on your fathers side, she said to me, suffered from leg trouble, until in the end he was unable to walk. And when he was dying he didn't have his walking stick with him.'

'Was it true?'

'I don't know whether he had his stick with him or not, I wasn't horn then. But apparently he suffered with his legs and before he died he was unable to walk. So that old woman advised me to cut a walking stick out of paper and burn it at the crossroads at full moon in order to appease the suffering of my grandfather's spirit, and then I would find relief.'

And did you do it?'

'What harm was there in trying? It happened to be the day before the full moon.'

'But the spirit of your grandfather. . After all, your grandfather didn't live in China.'

'I have no particular belief in ghosts, Matron, or in the survival of the spirit, but if ghosts did indeed survive somewhere, then I expect they could accompany us on our travels.'

'And did it help you?'

'I don't know. The swelling went down and the knee hasn't hurt me since. Now it's my stomach that hurts me and I don't know which of my forebears I'm supposed to appease.'

Then he tells Hana about his troubles with Klára, from whom he is getting a divorce. Hana is sure this is the real cause of his pain.

'Do you know I never used to have any fear of solitude,' Matouš confides to her, 'nor of death, for that matter. I didn't think about it. While you're still young, you have the feeling that everything is opening up before you, and in fact you shun any commitments that might bind you. But then the dread of solitude descends upon you. On that point I differ from the sages I have read about. The wisest of them, once they had fulfilled their obligations towards their family and brought up their children, went away to a monastery or to some isolated hermitage and there they devoted themselves to contemplation and to understanding the Order. I haven't managed the first and I'm not even prepared to do the other. What else can I expect from life now? At best a nursing home.'

'But you're not going to stay on your own, are you?' Hana says. 'An interesting person like you.'

Matouš objects that no one is interested in what he has experienced or seen, nor the things he knows. Particularly not women.

'You're wrong there. Almost all women yearn for something different, for some change.' She stops short, and then says, 'I know this from our congregation and from the hospital; I know what the women talk about.'

Maybe she is only consoling him. Maybe she is only passing on the experiences of others. But most likely she is speaking about herself. Matouš would like to stroke her hand, at least, but he is shy to do so here in a bar where there are lots of people. Besides, he is afraid it might startle the pastor's wife and frighten her away.

It occurs to Hana to ask whether it really costs so much money to get a poetry collection published.

Matouš explains that it depends what one means by a lot of money, but in any event it would have to be at least enough for a publisher, if there was one, not to suffer a loss.

'I'll ask my husband,' Hana promises. 'Perhaps we could give you something towards it.'

'I couldn't possibly ask you to do such a thing.'

'Why not? People should help each other.'

'You're an angel, Matron.'

Hana waves her hand as if to ward off his words.

'No,' Matouš says, you're completely different from other women.'

'Different?'

'Better.'

Hana blushes, then says it is time she was going. So Matouš pays the bill and then before they part he repeats his invitation. Hana should come and see his collections. She says she's not sure that her husband will have the time, but Matouš may visit them whenever he likes. She will be pleased to see him and looks forward to the poems. The manse is there for people to come to whenever they feel low in spirits.

When Matouš gets home, he realizes that his stomach pain has gone. He makes himself another pot of tea and lies down fully dressed on the unmade bed. He makes up his mind to get rid of Klára once and for all, and when the pastor dies, he'll marry his widow.

5

Daniel was to write an article on the theme of Advent. The Bethlehem story had excited him ever since his youth: the Son of God appearing as a needy, even persecuted, human being; God arriving from somewhere other than people expected and not arriving as a bolt of thunder, not descending from the heavens, but being born of a woman — helpless and defenceless, just as we all arrive in the world. By accepting our fate from beginning to end, God made known that He accepted us and loved us, receiving us exactly as He made us, i.e. as His children whose death would grieve him.

Now Daniel sits at his computer and is incapable of finding within himself the requisite certainty of faith in God's birth.

Years ago, he had known a country doctor who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism. He was an outstanding doctor, a man who made a genuine effort to believe. The greatest problem for him was accepting the virgin birth. Perhaps his medical training proved an obstacle. One day he had come running to Daniel with an epic piece of news. He had just read in a specialized American journal that something of the sort was possible, that in one in a trillion cases self-induced

conception could occur and a sort of human clone was produced. That would explain Mary's immaculate conception. Except that, as he himself pointed out, it would entirely eliminate Jesus s divine origin and His identity as the Son of God would only be symbolic, as would His resurrection from the dead in that case. 'Or am I mistaken, Reverend?'

At the time, Daniel had told him that God's actions were one single mystery and it made no sense to try to explain them by some scientific hypothesis or other. That was what he himself believed or strove to believe then. For him, faith had represented a path that led from inhuman conditions towards humanity: Jesus embodied the spirit at a time when matter was invoked on every hand and science was proclaimed as the all-powerful conqueror of truth. Jesus represented love that had to be defended, when hatred was proclaimed as the driving force of history. The language of Scripture had sounded like music amidst the cacophonous caterwauling of the political leaders' speeches from every radio and television set. The hatred showered on Jesus's teaching by those who embodied violence, hypocrisy and treason, and who despised the free or independent spirit, had seemed to confirm the truth of those who then stood by Him — persecuted and mocked as in the early days of Christianity. The world seemed divided between good and evil by a clear and straight boundary.

The boundaries were now crumbling, both within people and outside them. The doubts that Daniel had thrust deep into his subconscious suddenly surfaced. The words that until recently he had solemnly proclaimed — aware of the greatness of the message they carried — now stuck in his throat.

The event at Bethlehem had probably occurred quite differently from the way he had so far expounded it, and therefore its significance was also different. It was mankind who, in their age-old longing to escape the inevitability with which life always ended in death, and in the spirit of the ancient myths and archetypes, had thought up both a royal and a divine origin for the crucified Christ, and devised His birth and hence His divine nature which they then proceeded to debate in subsequent centuries.

In the area in which Jesus lived, worked and was crucified, people had been sacrificing their king for thousands of years in the conviction that he would be resurrected. Before killing him, they used to hang him between heaven and earth. They then ate his body and drank his

blood in order to achieve their own rebirth through his resurrection.

Jesus, above whose cross was said to have been fixed the mocking label 'King of the Jews', died hanging between heaven and earth. His death was to open the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven, which he entered, reborn — or as we say, resurrected. To this very day we symbolically consume his body and blood in order to share in his resurrection.

But anyone who lets such comparisons enter his thoughts risks being accused of one of the age-old or more recent heresies.

How could God create the universe and time and transform Himself into a baby who then grew up and aged until one day, in totally human time, He allowed Himself to be executed by some imperial bureaucrat?

On that occasion, he had not replied to Bára that God is capable of everything. Had he declined to give her that answer because he himself was in doubt, or because it was an answer that could be used to dispose of any question? Or was it perhaps because the order which had governed his life was beginning to crumble?

As usual in the past weeks, his mind somehow strayed to that other woman, the woman who had appeared because the order in his life was beginning to crumble. Or had it started to crumble because she had appeared in his life?

He got up and switched off the computer. He couldn't concentrate anyway. From inside the flat came the strains of the piano. Eva was playing Bach's Prelude and Fugue in G major.

The idea that God who created the universe and time probably did not take upon Himself the form of a Jewish infant was an idea, Bára, defended from the very beginning of the church by the proponents of poor Christology. For them, Christ was simply a prophet, a mere human. And some of the first bishops were excommunicated from the church for those very same doubts about Jesus's divinity. They were outvoted at the councils and thereby became eternal heretics. There were countless heretics: some did not accept Jesus's divinity, others did not recognize the Holy Spirit, the immaculate conception or the assumption of the mother of Jesus. Later there were those who rejected the sale of indulgences and demanded communion of both kinds at the Lord's Supper. At first, the church used to excommunicate them, later it tortured them and turned them over to the secular authorities to be burned alive.

Perhaps it would have taken very little for the dogmas to be completely different, or for the Gospels to be different, for that matter. But the person who defended the present version happened to be more eloquent or had more supporters, and everything turned out the way it is accepted today. Even such transcendental issues as the essence of God or the resurrection were decided by vote.

I have never voiced this opinion to anyone before, Bára. It would be difficult to hold it and go on working as a preacher. And it's going to be difficult if I go on thinking the way I do and living the way I am now.

So I don't know how I'm going to live. No, I'm not thinking about supporting the family; in fact, I wouldn't have to work at all any more, I could simply live from what I made on the sale of the house. It's the meaning of my life that concerns me. What meaning will I give to my last few years on earth? Will I bring some work or project to completion or, on the contrary, abandon everything, cancel it, and stand in no man's land; in other words, at the end of my days will I find myself back at the beginning? And with whom, my love? With you? With my family? Alone? At the end you always stand alone.

That's what Dad always used to say to me: Dan, in death you're always left on your own, whether you believe or not. And he saw lots of people die: during the war in that concentration camp and after the war in prison, and in fact for the entire remainder of his life — being present at death is part of a doctor's job.

Daniel flinched at the memory of his father. He had not finished the job of clearing his name. He had not found out anything; in fact he had stopped searching.

He entered the room without Eva noticing him. He observed her mutely for a moment. His daughter, Jitka's only child. She played faultlessly, her head slightly inclined, her thoughts in heaven.

She called Hana 'Mummy', but she knew from her childhood that her real mother was not on earth but in heaven. When she started to learn the piano, she asked him if Mummy could hear her up there. 'Of course she can hear you,' he had assured her. Since then she had played to her. Once she said to him, 'Mummy told me I played well.' He had thought she was referring to Hana, but when he asked Hana she told him she hadn't praised her. The praise had come from her mother in heaven.

'How about us playing a duet?' he now suggested.

Eva gave a start. 'That would be lovely. It's ages since we played together.'

He brought another stool and Eva made room for him.

Music had always brought him relief. The awareness that whatever happened in life, there existed something that was so elevated and elevating above the mundane filled him with calm and gave him hope.

He had still not been to a concert with Bára nor had the opportunity to play anything to her; he had only heard her sing, and could only sing with her during the service.

'Did you know they called Bach the fifth evangelist?'

'You told me that before, some time!'

'Really? I'm starting to get old and repeat myself.'

'Maybe you're just absent-minded. You've got too many worries.'

'What do you think I'm worried about?'

'Me, for instance,' said Eva. 'But my piano teacher complimented me yesterday,' she added quickly, 'on my technique.'

'I'm glad she complimented you.' He suspected that he worried more about the fate of his eldest child than about the fate of her brother and sister. As if he felt accountable for her to her late mother. Or maybe he wanted Eva to achieve what her mother had not had time to achieve.

'She wants me to practise at least three hours each day,' Eva went on to inform him. 'At least. Four hours would be better and five hours best of all. That's pretty tough, don't you think?'

'It requires effort to learn anything. And to learn anything well requires even more effort. It's just that in some fields it's possible to cheat a bit. That's not possible in music because it's immediately noticeable.'

When they finished playing he went downstairs to his workshop. He had a new carving half-completed there. He ought to finish it. And prepare that exhibition the gallery owner had asked him for.

The wood was fragrant in spite of being dried out, just as it was in his grandfather's long-defunct workshop. From the dead material familiar features emerged. Instead of a violin shape a woman's face.

Most of the time he managed to concentrate on this work, but otherwise he really was absent-minded and worried. About himself.

In the corner of the room, there still lay the boxes of correspondence, just as he had brought them from his mother's flat. He ought at

least to take a look at them, sort out what he would keep and take the rest to the recycling depot. Maybe he would find among the correspondence some clue as to whether his father had really committed something dishonourable. He had probably not looked in the boxes out of a subconscious fear of what he might find there.

He hesitated a moment and then brought out a box of his father s letters. It was stuffed with large envelopes on each of which his mother had written a description: Pre-wedding. Letters from prison. From the camp. From the tart. He stared in amazement at the last inscription. He took the envelope and opened it. There were only a few sheets of paper inside and a card on which his mother had written: I found these letters in Richard's desk at the hospital after his death.

On the first sheet, written in large, neat — apparently female — handwriting, he read:

Dear Ritchie,

I couldn't phone you my love so this is just a note to say that I'll be all on my own for the next three days. Do you think you'll be able to find some way of slipping away from your Mumsie? I know you can do it. You can do anything. At least for me who loves you the most. Looking forward to you, my little doenut. A lot. .

He skipped the remaining few lines; he oughtn't even to have read the previous ones. You shouldn't read what isn't intended for you. Or rummage in letters full of bygone feelings, spelling mistakes and betrayals that we leave behind.

He recalled his fathers funeral. Hundreds of people came to it; the room at the crematorium had been full. Most of them were women, some of whom were weeping. His father had been a gynaecologist and had no doubt saved the lives of many of them or restored them to health. Maybe they included his mistresses too. By now they would probably be old ladies, if they were still alive. Sixteen years had passed since that day.

Even the serious crimes and real betrayals of the living were no longer prosecuted after that length of time.

Even the lists had almost been forgotten now, although it was only three years since they had been published. Everything slipped into the past. More quickly nowadays than before, because the times were fast-moving and forgetting was one of the ways to escape going mad.

My children don't remember Dad any more, they know their grandad only from stories and nobody is likely to tell their children about him.

So what is the point of investigating and trying to seek some son of judgement?

Judgement, he had always believed, was the Lord's when He came again in glory — the Lord who taught love and forgiveness.

But it was unlikely there would ever be any Last Judgement. It was just a fiction, just a longing for a higher justice which would redress all the wrongs and injustices committed on this earth; a fiction from the days of the first church when they were still awaiting Christ's return in their lifetime. Christ had not returned; how many wrongs would have to be judged since those days?

There was nothing more to be done with his father's life. On the other hand, he ought to do something with his own.

6

Hana

The hospital director summons all the senior nursing staff and announces to them that he already owes three months' laundry payments. In all, it come to three-quarters of a million. Unless he is able ro obtain credit from somewhere or to persuade the laundry to wait another month, they will be obliged to close down the hospital or do the laundry themselves. For the time being, he asks them to go easy on the linen and try to wash any slightly soiled items on site. He realizes this will mean extra work but he won't be able to pay them for it; he'll be happy if he can find the money to pay their salaries at the end of the month. 'The insurance companies owe me over a million crowns,' he says finally. Then he dismisses them and Hana returns to her ward where she reluctantly conveys the director's request. Recently the worries at work have grown while her sense of satisfaction has waned.

She makes herself a coffee, sits down at her small desk and tries to think of something pleasant.

A few days ago she got a call from that journalist who had showered her with kind words. He complained a bit about his health; he

had run out of tablets and he didn't feel like going to the doctor for more. He didn't feel like going out at all, in fact. He didn't feel up to it even though at home his only companions were gawping Buddhas and a stuffed canary. Then he renewed his invitation to her to come and see his collection. She told him that it would not be proper for her to visit him — unless she were to bring him his medication, it occurred to her.

Then she did pay him a visit. She was unsure why she decided to, and persuaded herself that she was only doing it in order to deliver his medicine to him.

And of course when he opened the door she told him that she wouldn't be coming in, but then let herself be persuaded to sit down for a few moments.

He made her tea — a truly fragrant and interesting tea. They drank it from almost translucent little cups and he talked non-stop the whole time. Hana realized, incredulously, that this fellow, who must have travelled the whole world over and had no doubt met distinguished personalities on many occasions, felt even shyer than she did just then.

They drank tea and she was thinking that she ought to get up and go. At one moment, when he was showing her some Japanese engraving and moved up close to her, she was scared. What would she do if he tried to cuddle her, for instance?

But he didn't.

He read her a few poems which didn't mean a great deal to her. She merely sensed in them a sadness and a yearning to escape the daily routine into a better, unreal world, where love, purity of heart, friendship, calm and order reigned. But he didn't lend her the book he had told her about. He had to read the poems through once more himself, he explained, before daring to lend them to her.

Anyway, she stayed there longer than she ought to have done. But what was the harm in it? Daniel was often away from home until late at night. And she told him about her visit that very evening. Only she did not divulge to him that when the journalist looked at her she had felt an odd excitement, or more accurately a kind of satisfaction that the man felt disconcerted by her presence. Nor did she mention that he had asked her to address him informally, and she had not refused. She was used to informality with the members of the congregation. When at last she was leaving, she shook hands with him. His handshake was, as she had expected, soft and boyishly reticent. He asked her

if she would come again some time and she replied: 'Should you ever need tablets and were unable to come for them. .'

He would definitely be needing them, he had assured her, but she had made no response.

During her visit he had tried to persuade her once more that she ought to be doing something other than her present job.

Hana now writes out who did how many hours overtime on the ward. She had never before entertained the thought that there was no longer any need for her to stay here obliging nurses to wash out soiled linen as quickly as they could. Daniel had inherited a house and sold it for a lot of money. He had told her for how much, but she had preferred not to take it in. They definitely no longer depended on her earnings.

Maybe she could do social work within the church or even establish a Diakonia centre in their own building. There were guest rooms there; one was empty and Alois was still using the other, but it was high time that he found somewhere else to live.

Not long ago, when she and Daniel were on a trip to Northern Bohemia, she had seen a centre where the handicapped were producing pottery and had even built themselves a kiln. They could try a different activity, such as weaving, painting on glass — flowers on glass — that was something she could learn to do herself and then teach it to the handicapped.

As she contemplates her potential new vocation, it occurs to her that it could open up some new avenues for her, and that she should definitely talk to Daniel about it. It's unlikely he'd reject her idea. She actually picks up the phone and tries to call him, but Daniel is neither in his office nor the flat. Eva answers and tells her that Daniel has some meeting with the moderator, but she is glad Hana has called because Daddy had left her a message to say he wouldn't be coming to the concert at the Rudolfinum this evening as they had planned. If Hana wanted, Eva could go with her instead of Daniel — 'but only if you really want me to, Mummy'. Hana says she'll be pleased for her to come, of course, and then asks if Marek and Magda are home from school yet.

Magda is already home, Marek has a practical class in the afternoon. Suddenly Magda's voice comes down the line: 'Mummy, I've got some great news for you. I got an A for my essay on Hus.'

'That's good.'

'I knew what he said about truth. Seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, cleave to the truth, defend the truth and that.'

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

'But there's something you won't be pleased to hear.'

'What did you do?'

'I wrote "I done". I knew the right answer, but I just goofed because I was nervous.'

'OK, Magda. But I have to hang up now. The doctor's waiting for me.'

'Bye then, Mum. And come home soon.'

Hana goes about her work with a vague sense of disappointment and dejection that no longer has anything to do with what the director told them that morning. Something unpleasant has happened that she can't exactly put her finger on, or she is reluctant to contemplate. It clearly has something to do with her home and with Daniel. When did it last happen that Daniel gave anything precedence over a concert? Besides which, they were supposed to be playing Bach. And why hadn't he phoned her — why had he only left her a message? After all, he knows she is at the hospital all day.

It strikes her that there is something wrong with almost everyone these days — people are changing. She notices it all around her, at the hospital and in the congregation. Maybe Daniel is changing too. Now he has more work, more money and more freedom. After years of crouching in the shadows, he has come out into the light and it has blinded him.

Perhaps she's doing him an injustice. Maybe he simply had to rush off somewhere and couldn't get through to her on the phone. The hospital line is often engaged. Or maybe there was no one at the nurses' station.

Hana checks the medicines that a young lad on civilian military service has brought up from the pharmacy, but she ponders on the fact that Daniel has changed: he is less affable and definitely does not behave like someone who longs for her company. Sometimes she even gets the impression he's avoiding her and evading conversation about anything but the most mundane matters.

It occurs to Hana that every love tires in time. Perhaps their love has grown tired too, and the two of them remain together only for the children, and because it is right that people should stay together when they have promised to.

The medicines are in order. The young lad on civilian military service asks her if she has any jobs for him and she tells him she has nothing for the moment and that he may take a rest.

That evening Hana sits with Eva at the concert. They are playing Bach's violin concertos. On their way there Eva seemed to her pale and out of sorts and said virtually nothing. And now she is sitting here all slumped and Hana wonders if she has been taking drugs again, although it is possible she is just not feeling well.

Then she stops thinking about Eva and pays attention to the music. Hana doesn't have perfect pitch like Daniel or her step-daughter but when she listens to powerful music she falls into a strange trance in which pictures and live scenes pass in front of her eyes. She closes her eyes, so that Daniel often thinks she has gone to sleep, while on the contrary she is experiencing something so powerful that she is suffused with an ecstasy that she has never experienced even during love-making.

The dejection of the morning quickly leaves her and she screws up her eyes. While she is still aware of the violinists face, it is gradually transformed into the pimply face of the journalist who invited her to his home and served her tea and talked to her about a river that melts. He had said: You're an angel. You're completely different from other women. You're better. Those words now blend with the music and together they caress and fondle her until she quivers beneath their touch. Ther, she notices that the journalist's face is growing handsome; he is now wearing a Geneva gown with a white band, and the other members of the orchestra have donned gowns too and are no longer playing on the concert platform but on a beach by a pond. A big pond with lots of water — it may be the sea. Hana suddenly realizes that the conductor is now looking straight at her and giving her a sort of sign with his baton, inviting her to join him. At that moment she becomes aware of her heart thumping, like in the old days, like the time when Daniel first invited her for a date and she realized that she could love him. Something she thought would never happen to her again could actually happen. Maybe if she accepted that invitation… But at that moment something starts to surface from the water: a long, dark object — it's a coffin — and it rises higher and higher. Alongside it, four pale girlish faces also emerge, they are bridesmaids in dazzling white dresses from which the water gushes in streams; they are bearing the coffin. They pass in front of the orchestra and come to a

halt in the open space just in front of Hana. They carefully put the box down on the sand.

The music is still playing. The violinist, whose face is no longer visible, steps over to the coffin and leans towards it, as if playing solely for the one who is inside. And the one inside can hear because the lid slowly rises and Hana beholds a female figure. Oh, how well she knows that face from the photographs as well as from Daniel's carvings, even though he imagines she has never noticed: it is his first wife. The face is as white as the bridesmaids' dresses, the wax-like ghastly face of the dead. But she is alive and approaching Hana with her hands stretched in front of her. Get back, you accursed creature, Hana whispers, you're the one who still steals his love from me, you always stole his love from me, and yet there's nothing for you here among the living. The white, accursed thing starts to stagger and then collapses lifelessly on the ground. At that moment Hana becomes aware of a painful sympathy for the poor creature; after all Jitka has a daughter here, whom she hasn't seen for eighteen years. It must be awful for a mother not to see her own daughter for eighteen years and not to be able to hold her even once. People are sorry for the orphan but don't spare a thought for the mother. Tears of pity gush from Hana's eyes over that wasted, unfulfilled maternal love.

The orchestra are coming to the end of the finale. The violinist has his own face back again and he and the conductor are bowing and shaking hands.

Hana glances at Eva; the girl is as white as that apparition a moment ago.

'Is there something wrong with you? They didn't play badly, surely?'

'It's nothing, Mummy.'

'Would you like to go home?'

'No, Mummy. It's just… I just need to pop out for a moment.'

After the concert Daniel is waiting for them on the steps. He wants to know how the concert was. Eva says it was lovely. It occurs to Hana that she ought to tell him about her vision, but suddenly it strikes her that it had been not just unreal, but also ungracious: it had been nasty to Daniel, in that she had thought tenderly about another man; nasty towards Jitka who is long dead and it is therefore unbecoming to be jealous of her. It shows Daniel in a good light that he didn't completely forget Jitka, that he tried to capture in his carvings the memory of that face which, after all, will never come alive again on this earth. In the

afterlife only God knows what face we will be endowed with, if any at all.

They walk side by side across the bridge, ahead of them the illuminated castle buildings, below them the water whose odour is indiscernible, smothered by the smell of the city. Hana notices that Daniel stoops slighdy as he walks, as if sagging beneath some load. She also notices that his shirt collar is badly turned down and the striped shirt he is wearing doesn't go with his checked jacket.

They are now walking along in silence. Hana realizes she could never leave Daniel, not so much on her own account as on his; Daniel is probably unaware of it, but without her he would be left like a child abandoned somewhere on an empty shore.

7

Three days before Bara's birthday, Daniel invited her to a restaurant for dinner. He brought her a letter he had written to her in a sort of trance, and also a gold ring with a small diamond. (He had never given a woman a ring before, not counting the wedding ring he had given Jitka.)

'You wrote me a letter?' she said. 'Should I read it? No, not now. When I'm with you I have to make the most of you and not be reading.' Then she opened the little box and for a moment she gazed at the ting. 'You're crazy, Dan, a thing like that. How am I to explain it at home?'

'Perhaps you could say it was a gift from your first husband.'

'From him of all people!'

'From your mother, then?'

'How could Mum afford it on her pension? You're crazy, I don't need a ring, do I, when I have your love?'

'Don't speak about it any more.'

She slipped the gold band on her finger and for a few seconds looked at it with delight. 'It's a perfect fit, it's obvious you know my hand off by heart.' She kissed him and then she recalled: 'I've invited my son Saša to come too, I hope you don't mind?'

Daniel was astounded. 'What did you tell him?'

'He knows about you anyway'

'You told him about me?'

'Ages ago. Mum too. They are my folks. And I don't want to keep anything from my folks. He likes you, even though he's never set eyes on you, because he knows you love me and you don't boss me about like his stepfather. I also thought you might put him straight about some things.'

'I'm supposed to start putting him straight about things, at our very first meeting?'

'No, I don't mean it like that. It will be enough for him to meet someone who knows what he lives for. While being a good person.'

'I'm not sure if I fulfil those requirements.'

'He'd so much like to have a father, because there has been no decent man in his life. I deprived him of his own father. Or his father deprived himself of me and the boy. It makes no difference, but he gave the boy nothing. And his stepfather never accepted him. He simply provided for him and let him know it. As far as he is concerned, Saša is a good-for-nothing wastrel. And it's possible that he, my little boy, is indeed growing up wild. Nothing appeals to him, work least of all. All he does is play basketball and tennis, or watch people shooting each other on television. He also enjoys fiddling around with all sorts of little mechanical gadgets and getting music out of them. You're not cross with me for inviting him without asking you first?'

'No, you did right.' It was the right thing to do in a wrong situation. If you loved someone you had to take them lock, stock and barrel, which meant their folks above all. 'I've not been faring too well with young people just lately.'

'In what respect?'

'In trying to persuade them about anything that I believe in. Not even my own children. Sometimes I get the impression that they're persuading me.'

'One's own children are the hardest to persuade. One's own husband and one's own children,' she added.

The lad was slim and almost as tall as Daniel. He seemed to have inherited his high forehead and hair colour from his mother, but otherwise he was quite unlike her. His eyes were light blue. 'They gave me a really silly name,' he said, introducing himself, 'after some Russian tsar or Pushkin. Mum adored Pushkin when she was young. Mind you, she still is young, but she was eighteen years younger then

and identified with Tatyana. She's still got the one about her on her bookshelf and she makes me read it:

'Such a heavenly gift,

To be strongwilled and wild,

Of mind so swift,

Passionate — but tender as a child. '

'Saša,' Bára cut him short, 'don't you think you've said quite enough to be going on with?'

'It's only because I'm shy,' the boy said and blushed. 'Thank you for the invitation. Mummy says such nice things about you that I wanted a chance to meet you. But I don't need to stay to dinner, I'm sure you have things to talk about.'

'We can all talk together,' Daniel suggested.

'Thank you. Musil doesn't talk to me; I get on his nerves the moment he claps eyes on me. And my dad only asks me how are things in school because he hasn't got any idea what to talk to me about when we see each other twice a month.'

The waiter brought them menus. 'I really am afraid I'm going to be in your way,' the boy apologized, 'and anyway I'm not used to going to such posh places.'

'Neither am I,' Daniel said quickly, 'and I don't intend to become used to it either.'

'Do you think I could have the lamb stuffed with chicken livers?'

'Have what you feel like.'

'Maybe it's a daft idea; I've never eaten anything like that before. The Big Boss doesn't take us out for meals and Dad only takes me to a sweet shop sometimes or to some buffet where he has a beer and orders me some sickly muck.'

'Saša won't drink alcohol,' Bára explained.

'And what would you like to talk to your father about, for example?' Daniel asked him after ordering the food.

The lad shrugged. 'I don't know. With the lads and the girls we just talk drivel. You know what I mean.'

Are you going out with someone?'

'Of course, but I can't talk about it. Not here, at least.'

'I didn't mean to pry. It's just that I have a daughter of your age and a lad just a bit younger.'

'I know. Mum told me. She knows them from the church where she used to go to see you.'

'Saša,' Bára interrupted, you're talking too much. The reason I went to church was to hear something to raise my spirits.'

'That's true, that is the reason she went,' the lad chimed in. 'She often got the blues. We all suffer from depression, in fact. It's a kind of virus we have: we are all frightened of the Boss and of death. The Boss — Musil I mean, the architect, the Doctor of Science and laureate is only afraid of death, of course, but quite a lot because he's old and has high blood pressure. He's always swallowing pills. We used to call him the Builder of the Tower of Babel because he had a hang-up about grandiose projects, but now we just call him the Pill Popper. And we also call him Vampire Bat. Whenever he gets a downer he starts to wail. He climbs up on to Mum's shoulder and starts to suck her strength. Then Mum has to comfort him. But there's no one to comfort Mum: I can't, and anyway when the catkins arrive on the trees I start to whine too because I can hardly breathe. Aleš is healthy but he's still small and silly. And then you came along. But Mum deserves you, she's a lovely person.'

The waiter interrupted his monologue and started to serve their meals from large metal bowls.

'Wow,' the lad commented, 'I feel like the Little Prince. We'll have to persuade rill Popper to bring us here too some time.'

'Sasa's putting it on a bit,' Bára said. 'He's acting as if he grew up on bread and water.'

'Come off it, Mum! When did we last go out for a meal?'

'Last spring at the seaside,' Bára said. 'Were you living in a cave, or what? And we went there on your account, because the doctor recommended sea air for your allergy.'

'And it did me good too!'

He observed the two of them. It seemed to him that they were merely continuing a long-established game in his presence: the fellow-conspirator son taken by his mother into another home in search of true love, and now brought here because she was still searching, while the son was seeking a father. The question was whether it wasn't already too late for both of them. Even though the expression 'too late' was one he always challenged — at least as far as faith was concerned.

'I used to go to Divinity classes,' the lad said. 'Mum wanted me to and Musil let me. But it meant nothing to me — no, nothings too strong — very little. It was all too otherworldly. All those miracles and angels and

fallen angels and hell and damnation. Anyway, I immediately forgot it all.'

'I used to send him to the Catholic class,' Bára explained. 'I could have sent him to a Jewish class on account of Mum, but there wasn't one. I wanted him to hear something about God at least, so that he could make up his own mind. The trouble was their teacher wasn't like you. He hadn't the slightest bit of enthusiasm, he was just bitter somehow, and he talked to them more about hell than about the need for people to love one another.'

'Anyway, I could have got more out of it,' the lad admitted, 'but I found it impossible to concentrate. It's the same with all subjects, apart from geography. I enjoy geography because it's about real things.'

'Would you like to travel?'

'Everyone would. But I'll have to wait for the time being because the Big Boss won't let me: I don't behave well enough at school or at home. But anyway I wouldn't like to travel to big cities and go sightseeing around monuments. I prefer it where there are fewer people, such as in the forests or mountains. People in cities are like ants. Thousands of ants all over the place, in cars and walking down the street. I'm not just getting at the rest. I'm an ant too, and a lazy one at that.'

Bára said, 'It's not surprising he has an aversion to monuments and buildings in general, seeing his stepfather and mother are architects. I haven't a clue how he's going to make a living.'

'So what that you haven't a clue,' the boy commented. 'What's more disturbing is that I haven't got one. But if the worst comes to the worst I'll be a hunter.'

'What would you hunt?'

'That's the problem: I wouldn't kill a frog, or even a butterfly.'

'Castles in the air are the most he'd ever hunt!' Bára said.

'I'm no worse than you, Mummy!'

When dinner was over, the lad got up, and after rather profuse thanks — he was his mother's son, after all — he left.

'You have a splendid son,' Daniel told her.

'Did you like him? He made a real effort. He's not usually that talkative. Most times he's a fairly quiet boy. He's a bit lazy but his heart's in the right place.'

'Definitely.' He recalled the lad's remark about the lazy ant. Once, when he himself was still a boy, he had observed an ant that had fallen into the cleverly constructed pit of an ant-lion. He had watched its

vain efforts to free itself. He had watched it fulfil its destiny. He could picture it so clearly that he shuddered involuntarily.

She noticed and asked, 'What's the matter? Is something wrong?'

8 Letters

Dear Bára,

This is a letter for your birthday. Although I know but a modest six months out of your forty-one years I feel as if I've known you longer than people I've known for many years.

I think I knew true love with my first wife — and I love Hana. I never thought I'd be able to love another woman. I genuinely had no wish to. I don't know whether I secretly yearned to in some corner of my soul, but if I did it was so secret I didn't even discover it. And then you appeared. For me, every moment with you is special and beautiful (even though it also fills me with a sense of guilt — guilt towards Hana, towards you, guilt towards God who, while I believq He is merciful, could hardly approve of deceit).

Birthdays are times for wishes. So I wish you first of all, that wherever you go, you should dwell in mercy, understanding, freedom and kindliness. I wish you moments of peace and a faith that will overcome your anxieties. I wish you the love of your sons. I wish that everything of importance that happens in your life will be better than what went before. I wish (and pray) that death, of which you so often speak, should stay away from your door. I wish that your eyes should see what the eyes of others cannot, that your fingers should work wonders, that your plans should find fulfilment and that your words should be heard, that your heart should find love and your dreams peace.

/ ask God to forgive us for yielding to love. My sweet dove in the cleft of the rock concealed above the ravine grant that I see my own face allow me to hear your voice.

Thinking of you,

Love, Daniel

My love,

I still feel you to be a miracle. (How long can one live with a miracle?) It's as if you were wanting to demonstrate to me everything that is unbelievable. You surprise me again and again, either with something new or with something that endures.

I read your birthday wishes over and over again and each time they thrill me and move me. No one has ever said so many beautiful things to me. What I find most fascinating of all is that I believe every word, that I trust you, that I believe things can last. The possibility of things lasting dumbfounds me because it is something so rare, so difficult and even unseemly. That love could last — I don't mean the everyday kind, but the love that is a celebration — is something I had ceased to believe in when I realized the weakness and weariness of the poor little human creature and its inability to stick at anything.

I think of that first day I entered the church where you were preaching and it was the day when your mum died, which was something I didn't suspect and in fact at that moment you didn't yet know about it. Such fateful coincidences have been written about. Who arranges them? But in order for one to obey that mysterious command it is necessary to have a very special sort of perceptiveness. You summoned me to you and I know of no boundary I wouldn't want to cross with you. I'm not afraid of you. I trust you. When I'm with you the only feeling I have is one of security. I'm not afraid of you and I'm not afraid of myself with you. I'm happy, I'm unhappy that one day I'll discover it's the last day. I feel I'm morbid the way I'm often thinking about death, but most of all about the end. One day it will be adieu instead of au revoir. At every beginning I've always sensed the end and known that life only has meaning because it has an end. Like every embrace, every day, every joy, every pain.

I'd like to be with you now and instead I'm going away. With a husband who isn't nice to me, and with my children. They need me. I am their mother after all and I want to be a good one. At least that. I'll try and write you a letter if they leave me a few moments to myself.

I'll be back in Prague on Monday. Will you phone? Or write?

I'm thinking of you. I love you. Don't leave!

Love, Bára

Dearest,

Again I haven't seen you for several days. You're not sitting opposite me. You're not asking me questions. You're silent. But I know that for most of the time you'll be with me only in spirit. I can't tear myself away from you. It looks as if I — or we — might have crossed some inner barrier beyond which it is impossible to tear oneself away. Is that good? I don't know, but it is only beyond that barrier that real intimacy begins.

People oughtn't to lie to each other, they shouldn't lie about their feelings. One often forces oneself to have certain feelings on account of the children, or out of cowardice, or from a sense of duty, or out of sympathy (that's a feeling too), or from inertia, or anxiety, or from fear of being left on one's own or even of losing property. The two of us share neither children nor property, nor any duty to each other. All we have is love and I will never lie to you about it, I promise you, so you will be able to say: 'I believe everything you say'. Loveless love-making is humiliating and soul-destroying. Sometimes when I realize that's the way it is with most people (or so I believe and I have some knowledge from my experience as a clergyman), I say to myself: What hells people create instead of homes.

I read your letters and I'm almost afraid to believe them: they contain so much tenderness, anxiety, pain, longing, determination and despair. We have so little time and yet it flies at its age-old speed and we don't even manage to tell each other what has happened over the past hours let alone what has happened in the course of our lives. But love is not measured in minutes. What is it measured in? Completeness? Or devotion? Or the extent of longing? Or intimacy? What is completeness? How far does devotion extend? Giving one's life for another. Being frank with them. Standing by them in suffering. Not abandoning them even at moments when they seem quite distant. Thinking about them every moment. Saying not a single word to hurt them. Having patience. Knowing how to listen. Knowing how to understand what seems incomprehensible. Knowing how to wait. How to forgive. What is intimacy? There must be several degrees of intimacy and which of them is the highest degree, the most special, I am not able to say.

Something else occurs to me: the fact that you yearn to live in love means

you are closer to Jesus than those who pray every day yet call for revenge or harbour hatred in their hearts.

I'm talking like a preacher again. But I love you so much that I lose for a few seconds at least the feeling of guilt that pursues me almost unceasingly.

What will become of us?

Love, Dan

Dear Dannie,

We're having an Indian summer out here in Oregon and it's our second year fighting for the survival of the salmon. I've had loads of work as we've been repairing the house and changing the heating system, apart from which we've taken in my mother-in-law. She is eighty-five (see, there are even older grannies than me) and a bit confused. The other day she took the old pendulum clock off the wall, weights and all, and started to fiddle about with it. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was changing the batteries. I told her that that was something we all needed — to have our batteries changed — but unfortunately (for the time being anyway) it's not possible. So I have to shoulder everything here. My Bob can just about manage to trim branches and mow the lawn, but he's helpless in the house, even though it's his mother and he loves her.

Re. what you told me about Dad: I don't know what to think, I've been away for twenty-five years (a quarter of a century, brrr!). As far as his moral conduct is concerned I don't think he had too many scruples. He two-timed our mother. He thought Mum didn't know, but she did and she let me in on it (though probably not you), and she actually used to write to me about those women. She used to call them 'Daddy's tarts'. But I don't condemn Dad. In fact, I might have a teeny bit of understanding for him. He was a good-looking guy and women were crazy about him. I noticed it in the hospital. Mum was from another world, he must have had to live like a hermit with her. I don't think he and she hit it off too well, but since he was basically a nice guy, he never abandoned her. On the other hand, he lost a lot of years of his life. Maybe you don't know, but when they arrested him they held him for eight months in solitary. Can you imagine how horrific that was? And they beat him up. But seemingly they didn't manage to beat anything out of him, which is why they jailed him afterwards. What

happened after I've no idea, but I can understand that when he got back from there he wanted to make up for everything he'd missed. Or to experience something really powerful that would exorcize the horror of it. I expect I'm talking about something other than what you wanted to know, but then again, maybe not entirely. I don't know what's worse: to betray people you don't know, or betray your own folks. I understand your desire to clear Dad's name insofar as it's in jeopardy. I've always been pragmatic to a fault and it seems to me that when someone is that long dead, it's best to let him rest in peace. Those who loved him will go on loving him as long as they live. Those who didn't are not going to be swayed by you anyway. And in the end we'll all be forgotten, along with all the good and the bad things we did on earth.

I wrote that Dad was a good guy and like you I don't believe he wanted to hurt anyone, or ever did.

Do you remember how they stopped you from attending grammar school when the poor guy was in jail? And how they admitted you when he was released. Maybe the two things were connected. The best thing is to say: it's a closed book.

There goes the mother-in-law ringing for me again. She rings for me at least twice a day, but at least it's cheaper than when she calls her friends on the East Coast or in London. She does that all the time, unless she happens to be eating, sleeping or ringing for me.

We're planning a trip to Europe next year so maybe we'll see each other. What's new in my dear homeland? Have our films, hamburgers, chewing gum and tourists reached you yet? Poor country!

Give my love to Hana and the kids.

And a big kiss for you, saintly man!

Love, Rút

Dear Dan,

It's Sunday morning, the sun is not yet fully awake and the rest are still asleep so I'm actually all alone. The garden is beneath my window. The grass is full of leaves that give off a scent of mould. There is music playing. Heaven must be something like this. Forgive me for such a banal image of

heaven in which I rejoice in the song of the birds instead of the nearness of God.

I started to write to you because I need to be with you, yet I don't know when I'll see you again in the flesh. On the radio they were just reciting some poem by a Lebanese poet. Among other things it said: if love gives you the signal, obey it; also, love not only crowns you but also nails you to the cross. So I ask myself: is there within me a love that crowns and also crucifies? Do I have the self-discipline and patience to accept from it both the exaltation and the torment?

I had a bad day yesterday and the cross was almost unbearable again. My dear spouse had a headache and declared that it was because of me, that all his ailments were because of me. I wanted to know why. He said he was tired of explaining it to me all the time. I apparently lack any sense of order. I was playing music when he was trying to concentrate. I slammed the door and disturbed him. I splashed the water in the bathroom too loudly (!!). When he needed me to do a transfer of a plan I wasn't home (I'd gone shopping). So many crimes in one day.

I told him that none of it was important. What was important was that I was with him. He started to shout that I didn't understand a thing and one day I'd kill him, unless he killed me — or himself — first.

That's how things have been with us for years now, but every time I shiver like a cur. All it takes is for him to give me a little smile and a look (not a kind one, just a look) and straight away I suck up to him again.

Am I really so terrible? Do I really ruin my husband's life? What am I like, tell me? I have the feeling that you can judge, that you can be a judge of people because you have it all within you: patience, humility, kindness, a yearning for freedom and a sense of duty.

You write about a sense of guilt that pursues you. You ask what will become of us? It will come to an end, because everything on earth comes to an end. But just this once I'm not thinking about the end, I'm not thinking about the consequences of our actions, I don't want to think about what will be, I want to feel what is now. I think about you with tenderness and only wish that you'll be all right, and that I can help you to be, even from a distance.

I also want to tell you something I've never told you. My husband was never concerned about what I felt when we made love, in those far-off days when

we still made love. He was only interested in his own body. With you it's different. With you I've discovered that a man's love doesn't have to be selfish.

Life close to you has meaning because you are able to think about the other person. I'm not just an object for you. You are able to love and listen and also seek an answer. You answer questions like no other man I've ever known. All men are scared of answering questions, committing themselves, stepping out of themselves and their selfishness. They live in fear. Of themselves, of solitude, of death. What kind of man are you? Is it because you were born that way, or because you recognize someone higher than you, the Lord who commanded you to love people? You treat me in a way no one has treated me before and in so doing you give my life another dimension. I want you to be with me always. I know that it won't happen, either today, tomorrow or in the future. If we were both single I would want you as my husband. The tarot card reader predicted that I will be hanging around till I'm eighty-two, which means I've still got half my life ahead of me. And you won't be my husband in the second half either. You're not going to be with me, but perhaps you'll be with me for a little while longer, as long as I deserve — as we deserve. I'm sure you see things differently and when I talk of deserving something you hear in it pride or sacrilege, just as you do in the fact I believe some fortune-teller. I don't really believe her, it's just a game, and I know that I might not be here tomorrow and that I might never see you again.

We're only here for a short moment, the length of a dream, you once wrote to me. And life is a dream, I feel like saying, because from the point of view of an eternal universe and time it lasts less than a millionth of a second. But I want a life in which I've consciously lived millions of seconds, so I don't want life to be just a dream. I want a conscious life, not one that is just dreamily unconscious. Since I've known you I've had dreams every day. I try to decipher them but I just can't. Every morning I'm glad it was just a dream. I don't have beautiful dreams. They must be the outcome of some conflict between my conscious and my unconscious. Or my conscience perhaps? Perhaps they're the outcome of my conflict with God. Or the fact I bring you into conflict with your faith, that I'm harming you, that I'm harming the best person I ever met.

I was writing about heaven. I'm in heaven with you, another heaven than the one you believe in, but a heaven like the way I used to imagine it when

I was a little girl, when I looked forward to my dad coming home and saying: Hello sweetheart, I couldn't wait to see you again. But he never did. That's why I'm so receptive when someone's kind to me like you are. I sense that you wouldn't let me fall. That you would appear wherever I might be in danger of dying. I'm miserable when I think I must live this gift of my life without you. I'm happy that I can live at least a moment of this gift with you. Don't forsake me yet a while. Because when at last you do forsake me I will have an empty space inside me and I don't know what I'll fill it with. Work? Faith? An empty space left by love can't be filled with anything but love and most likely it will remain an empty space till the end.

I haven't started to pray yet. But I know that in every prayer one says: Don't forsake me, Lord! I don't pray, but every evening when I'm falling asleep I repeat in the quiet void: Don't forsake me yet a while, my darling.

Love, Bára

P.S. Now that I've written a litany about myself and my woes I expect you think I don't see anything else and that nothing else interests me. But actually the whole world and its future interests me. In fact, that's one of the few things I can talk to Sam about without fear: how everything around us will collapse one day, leaving only ruins behind!

Dear Reverend,

I was sorry your visit did not prove as successful as you'd hoped. After you had gone I tried to check my memory, particularly regarding the members of the service your father might have been seeing. Some of them came to mind. Even though some of them have gone where I won't meet them again, should I happen to see any of them I'll mention your problem to them. Maybe they'll have a better memory.

Seeing I wrote: I won't meet them again, I'd like to trouble you with a few questions, Reverend. As you maybe know I was dismissed from the service during the screenings back in sixty-nine and did various jobs afterwards to earn a living. I don't deny that in my youth I was a red-hot fighter for the socialist cause and against its enemies. In accordance with my training I regarded them as the enemies of everything progressive and therefore of the working people. For the same reason I regarded religion as opium to turn

the working man away from the just struggle. For me God was something invented by people and particularly the priests.

But now I read lots of other things in the press and I even watch religious broadcasts on the television on the odd occasion. Not that I've entirely changed, though! But it occurs to me that if I could have been misled about the rest I could have been misled about this too. Apart from which I'll be seventy-four this autumn and I have to admit that it's not easy to come to terms with the thought that you've not long to go and that's that.

So my question is this. Do you really believe people have souls and that the soul can live after death, and that it will even be rewarded or punished for what it did, that it will be sent somewhere? There's supposed to be hell, purgatory and heaven. Could you explain to me where they are all supposed to be? On earth or in outer space? Also, you declare that the soul is not a material substance. But can something that's not a material substance exist in the world? God is supposed to be something similar. I just can't imagine it. And also souls are supposed to pass from the dead into the living. But who can testify to it? After all, every baby is born without intelligence.

Reverend, if I'd written you a letter like this twenty years ago you might

have taken it as a provocation, but not now, surely? Looking forward to your reply, Alois Bubnik

Dear Bára,

From our first or maybe our second conversation, I was taken aback by your gratitude for every sign of interest and for every answer to a question. Then I realized that you were someone thirsting for love (since childhood?) and that was why you were so grateful and humbly thankful.

I can imagine the gratitude you heaped on your husband, particularly since he was a professional whom you respected, when he left his wife and daughter on your account (or so you thought, although he no doubt did it on his own account as well, because he wanted you).

Gratitude, humility and praise are the way to kindle love in a good heart, that is what you believed and you behaved accordingly, as you still do. But when gratitude and admiration are expressed constantly they can have the

opposite effect. They become a kind of drug for the one who is on the receiving end, who then starts to demand admiration and gratitude at all costs, by means of violence, blackmail or threats.

In so doing you can cause the person on whom you shower gratitude and admiration to believe in his superiority and above all his superiority over you. In place of a companion from whom you expect love you create yourself a master who regards himself as a god, who gives orders, takes decisions and issues pardons and rewards where appropriate. But all those functions belong to another Lord altogether. The human reward for gratitude and recognition tends to be ingratitude. The person who has tried to obtain love by means of gratitude and service tends to receive the opposite. In the words of the apostle: love is the fulfilling of the law. Everything in life that is given apart from it is of less account. Therefore, he who gives thanks for love without accepting thanks for the love he himself gives, helps to enfeeble or even destroy it.

You heap gratitude on me but forget about yourself. You're very special. And don't thank me for every caress — after all, you do your share of caressing.

I'd like to caress you now, for a long time without stopping. I'd caress you like that until the world outside the window disappeared along with my 'mission', our obligations and commitments and we'd remain all alone in the world (for a moment, at least).

All alone — does that mean without God too? I expect so. He might be able to accept our love but not our deception.

I'm sorry for also mentioning the thing I fear, but perhaps it only shows how much I love you that I act the way I do.

Love, D.

P.S. Re. the future of the world and humanity. I think it all depends on whether we manage to feel another's pain as our own.

Dear Rút,

I've hesitated a long time, wondering whether I ought to write to you about something I've not talked to anyone else about, or whether I was able to. But even though you're so far away, you are still the only really close

relative I have and the only one who might possibly have some understanding for me.

I've committed something I never thought I'd be capable of doing. No, of course I've not killed anyone, or stolen the Sunday collection. Maybe you can guess. Yes, I've been unfaithful to Hana and still am and I've not had the courage to tell her yet.

I'm not able to explain my behaviour let alone excuse it. I still love Hana. But it's sort of a calm and unexciting relationship. The other woman excites me. She is passionate by nature and she lures me the way one is lured to an abyss. I've made up my mind a hundred times to put an end to it but then she phones me or I catch sight of her and I realize that I haven't the strength to break it off with her. Besides which, she begs me over and over again not to forsake her. I have the feeling she needs me in order to live. Maybe I'm deceiving myself as I have on so many occasions when I have trusted my conviction that people mean what they say. I know you can't advise me and it's not advice that I want, nor understanding for that matter. I simply needed someone to confide in and don't really have anyone but you. What a pity you're so far away.

Best wishes. Love, Dan