The Ultimate Intimacy

Chapter Six

1

Old Mrs Houdková is on the point of death. She wants to stay home, she has no wish to die in hospital. Daniel therefore calls on her at least once a week, usually on a Thursday. He doesn't even need to say anything or comfort her, just his presence reassures the old lady.

A bunch of asters is wilting slightly in a vase. Daniel makes the old lady some tea and puts the piece of tart that Hana has sent her on a plate, which the grandmother hardly touches. 'How is it out?' she wants to know.

Outside it is fine and unusually mild for the third week in October.

'But the birds haven't flown away yet,' the old lady says, 'and the roses are almost finished.' Then she asks Daniel to say the Lord's Prayer with her and she adds the Apostles' Creed of her own accord. She believes that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead and also in the resurrection of the dead. 'Verily, verily, I say unto you He that heareth my word, and believeth in him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.'

The old lady glances up and says without warning, 'I'm anxious, Reverend.'

'About what, Sister Houdková?'

'About what's to come.'

He ought to reassure her and tell her that she can expect bliss in the presence of the Lord, eternal love, in other words, but he remains silent, and suddenly feels as if he is on the edge of a dark pit into which every living thing falls, in which nothing lasts, neither hours, nor days, nor years, nor centuries, nor millennia. Nothing will escape it.

Make haste to answer me, O Lord! My spirit fails!

Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the Pit.

(Psalm 143)

He merely takes the old lady's veiny, wizened hand in his and says what anyone might say: 'Have no fear, Sister Houdková!' That's all. He doesn't even add: The Lord is with you and will not forsake you. Not even what he had once said to his father: that his soul would not die but would live for ever. He just holds her hand in silence. Then he gets up, promises he will be back soon, and leaves her.

When he leaves the house he realizes he is still standing on the edge of a dark pit, with emptiness below him and before him, and he is overcome by dizziness.

It is just midday and suddenly he is at a loss what to do with his time. Hana is at work and the children aren't back till the evening. He can go and sit in his office and wait in case someone comes requiring help, which he won't give anyway. Also he could prepare his sermon but he has the feeling he will never again be able to mount the pulpit to say a single word. He could go to his workshop and do some carving, wrest from the formless wood all the shapes it contains. He could sit and play the piano. Or write a letter to Bára. Instead he stops in front of a telephone booth and hesitates for a moment. He knows Bára doesn't like him calling her at home or at the office where her husband might be present, and even when he is not there, his and her colleagues are, and are always watching her.

Nevertheless, he dials the office number and an unfamiliar female voice announces it to be the design studio. He asks for Mrs Musilová, the architect.

A moment later Bára takes the phone. 'How do you do,' she says in a formal tone. 'One moment, please,' she says then, 'I'll take the call next door.'

He waits in the booth, aware of a strange agitation; another step and he'll fall.

'Dan, is something up?' her voice says at last.

'No, or rather yes. Something has come over me. It's strange, on such a lovely day. I need to see you.'

'Right now?'

'If possible. The days are getting short.'

'But I'm at work.'

'Maybe they could spare you for once.'

'But what would I say? Sam will be back and he'll come looking for me.'

He waits for her a few blocks from her office.

'For your information, I'm on my way to the land registry office,' she announces on her arrival. 'I can get held up there for once. Where do you want to go?' He doesn't want to go anywhere; he wants to be with her because he is frightened of being on his own. He is frightened of his own teeming thoughts, which threaten to engulf and drown him unless he manages to divert them from their present course.

'I thought we might go for a drive somewhere, to a park, maybe,' he says, because she always expects some suggestion.

'Out of town? You're crazy. But I've got to be at home this afternoon when the children come home from school.'

'We'll be in the country in ten minutes.'

'There are no parks in this direction, apart from Šárka. Or Veltrusy. Now that's a park I like, because it was my favourite when I was a child and also because it's romantic. But it's a long way out.'

Some destination at last. He drives across the narrow bridge over the dark pit and sets off for Veltrusy.

On the hillsides, he notices, the larches are yellowing while the guelder roses and dogwood are turning red; the fields have been ploughed and above the horizon there hangs the grey haze of the autumn mists. She is sitting next to him, he feels her closeness, her scent, her breath. That narrow bridge is love; when it ends the bridge will collapse noiselessly. But now it is here with him and he starts to feel ashamed for having succumbed to anxiety, that he who should console needed comfort, or more likely a companion to escape with. He asks her if she's cross with him for dragging her away from work.

'I've dragged you away more than once. Besides, the work I do is slave labour anyway.' The architect, she explains, bringing him back down to earth, spends nine-tenths of his time on organization and the remainder on creative activity, at least that is how it works out with Musil. She doesn't even get that tenth, and spends her entire time dealing with phone calls, running between official departments and keeping an eye on construction firms to make sure they're not cheating too much. Formerly people stole from the State and thought there was nothing wrong with it. Now they steal from the State and have the

feeling they are acting according to market principles. She leans over and kisses him: 'You're trying to escape my chatter and you're driving like a lunatic.'

'I thought you were in a hurry.'

'We don't have much time, darling, but if we get killed, we won't have any. Not here on earth, at least. And up there, as you believe,' she says, pointing to the roof and on the source of his anguish, 'people don't meet again, do they? And certainly not sinners like the two of us.' Then she remembers something: 'Saša liked you, he said you're a man, which in his book means a real man.'

'But he hardly knows me.'

'Well, the most important things you don't learn anyway, you have to sense them. I also sensed it about you the first time I met you.'

'I liked him too.'

'My little lad has a high forehead and a good heart. Takes after me. I expect he likes the fact you believe in God. I like it too. Maybe that's why I love you so much, the fact you can believe in something that is mysterious and beyond us and that I still can't bring myself to believe in.'

They drive through shabby villages. He is still aware of Bara's closeness and realizes that something has radically changed in his life.

At a moment of anguish he had not run to the Lord, he had not battled for his faith, but had given up and run to this woman who did not belong to him, nor he to her. To the woman who likes the fact he believes. Or it excites her. And meanwhile his soul is filled with doubts. Formerly he would strive to act well according to his conscience, so that one day he could look back without shame, so that he should not do anyone any harm or lead others to sin by setting a bad example. And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. (Matthew 18:8)

The pit terrifies him, whether it is full of fire or empty, but he is not only abandoning what he has believed his whole life — or has striven to believe in — he is also forsaking everything he has lived for so far: his family, his vocation, his future. A man without a future. That's the title of a novel. No, the title is: A Man Without Qualities. Der Mann ohne Eigenshaften.

One such method, that admittedly kills the soul, but then preserves it,

as it were, in little jars for general use, is to link it with reason, conviction and practical dealings, as has been practised with success by all moral codes, philosophies and religions.

'Darling,' Bára breaks the silence, you're sitting beside me but in fact you're not here at all. You're not taking the slightest bit of notice of me. What's up?' He blames all the bends in the road.

Half an hour later they pull up in Veltrusy Park. A chemical stench hangs in the air, mingling with the scent of mouldering leaves.

'Do you know it here?'

'No, I've never been here before.'

I haven't been here for ages either. At least ten years. But when I was small, my parents used to bring us here. My grandad who died before the war used to be the superintendent here, so in a way it was our park. There wasn't a stinking chemical works here then, although the little bridge with the sphinx and all those crazy neo-classical pavilions and artificial ruins were here, of course. And a flaming horses head used to haunt the park not far from here, though I never saw it. I didn't believe in ghosts. I didn't believe in anything that wasn't real. I couldn't manage to even when I was small.'

She leads him to a spot from where it was possible to see an Egyptian chamber and tells him that water still flowed through it in those days. She shows him a rare, enormous tulip-tree, a gingko pine and a true chestnut tree.

They sit down on a bench opposite the Temple of the Friends of the Countryside and Gardens. She unbuttons her yellow and blue coat and rests her head on his chest, her face turned to the sun. 'I once saw a gnome here,' she says. 'He had a big head, short crooked legs and red rrousers, and he had a pannier on his back.'

'How old were you?'

'I don't remember. Four or five maybe. I called to my dad to come quickly and see, but he was reading the paper, the stupid paper — there wasn't any other kind then — and before he put it down the gnome had run off. What's wrong with me today? First I waffle on about being cheated, now I'm going on about gnomes. Haven't I managed to put you off me yet?'

'No, you mean more to me than you can ever imagine.'

'You don't just want me for my body, do you?'

'Whatever makes you ask?'

'I just wanted to hear what you'd say. That you're also interested in my soul.'

'Love is a coming together, isn't it? And most of all a coming together of souls.'

'You think so too? And what form does it take?'

'Words, for instance. Words are the seeds of the soul. Even a dog or a crocodile has seeds of the body'

'What made you think of a crocodile of all creatures?'

'Actually it was a dragon that I first thought of. In the legends, dragons used to have maidens thrown to them.'

'Yes, I know. I wouldn't want you if you made love to me like a crocodile! Tell me, are you happy to be with me?'

'I couldn't be happier with anyone else.'

'So why aren't you with me always?'

'You said yourself. .'

'No, you don't have to explain anything. I have a husband who is my son's dad. It would be hard for him to lose him and me. And you have a wife and children, apart from which you are a pastor who is required to set an example to others.'

'Do you really think I lead an exemplary life?'

'You lead your life as best you can. That's why you're with me now. I also think I lead my life the best way I can. That's why I'm here with you now, and why I will never be with you for ever. When I was getting divorced I thought that it was all or nothing in this life. Either fidelity or infidelity. Love or indifference. Truth or lie. Either I'm with someone one hundred per cent or not at all. But in reality nothing is either or. With one exception.'

Are you thinking about death again?'

'Yes. I can see you really don't like what I say.'

'I have so often preached and defended the text that our yes should be yes and our no be no. Anything beyond that comes from evil.'

And do you think that always applies in life?'

'I definitely thought so when I preached it.'

'You'll leave me anyway,' she says, 'as soon as you grow weary of me. Or until it occurs to you that there are better ways for you to spend your time. In order to save your soul. In order for you to be sure once more what is good and what is evil. Because I come from evil. I have no written permission to have you!'

'I won't leave you.'

'Until when?'

'Until death.'

'Whose?'

'I'm speaking of my own.'

'I'd like you to be with me when I'm dying.'

'I won't be alive by then.'

'I would like you to be with me and hold my hand. Because I'll be frightened. But when you're with me, nothing frightens me. Even death wouldn't frighten me. Tell me you'll come.'

'I'd come if I were still alive.'

'Do you promise?'

'I promise.'

'I believe you. I believe everything you say.'

'What shall we do?'

'How do you mean?'

'In order to be together.'

'Nothing,' she replies quickly. 'We can't do anything except what we're doing. We can go and make love now, and know that we're as together as it's possible to be.'

'Here?'

'Here. Have you never made love in a park?'

'What if someone sees us?'

'Who would see us? There's no one here, is there?'

They find a spot that is separated from the path by a none too thick bush.

They lie half-undressed in the autumnally withered grass with scattered dry leaves and a smell of sulphur dioxide. The branches of the trees now shield the sun, so they feel the cool of the shade on their naked legs. 'My love,' he whispers to her, 'my dear little girl, you came to find me and now you're with me.'

'Danny, you're making love to me in my own park. I bet you've never made love in the woods before. You're a servant of God, but now you're mine. You are the Lord's compensation for all my suffering. You're my divine compensation, my boy.'

All of a sudden they catch the sound of children's voices apparently just nearby.

'Oh, God,' Bára whispers, 'he begrudges me it.' For a moment she grips him even more firmly before suddenly releasing him. 'Fear not, my darling, they're only gnomes!'

They manage to get dressed and return to the footpath before the first childish figures emerge from behind the trees. Her mother's dark hair and Eva's old skirt. It's Magda! What is she doing here?

His immediate instinct is to dash back into the bushes, but at that moment several other little red figures hobble into the open on short legs.

His sight really must be failing, or perhaps his bad conscience is beginning to distort the world and people.

A young nun approaches, pushing a wheelchair containing a handicapped child. 'Children,' she calls, 'let's not forget our manners!'

'Lord Jesus Christ be praised!' the handicapped children chorus somewhat erratically.

'It turned out fine,' the nun says, 'so we decided to take a trip and let our darlings have a chance to enjoy the last of the sun.'

'Yes,' says Bára, 'we enjoyed it too.'

I am filled with disgrace and look upon my affliction .. (Job 10:15), comes to mind but he remains silent. It's too late for him to save his soul anyway.

2

Diary excerpts

Invisible chimneys spew smoke and sulphur

on to the neo-classical summer-houses.

The brook no longer flows through the Egyptian pavilion

Leaves fall in drops from the trees

never to grow again maybe.

From the bushes squint the eyes of twofold death.

Gazing with love on a noble lady as she walks through her allotted park I am suffused with the fateful tenderness of her eyes and the anguish falls in drops from my soul. Upon the lovers blinded by their love from the bushes squint the eyes of crooked gnomes.

I gave Bára these few lines to read when we met in Mum's flat. 'You're crazy, ' was her appraisal. 'You're a lovely lunatic. You see what others can't see and hear things that are beyond the hearing of others. '

Afterwards, when she was lying beside me, she asked me whether I still loved her and I said yes, as she expected. I was suddenly overcome with the falseness of the situation. The strangeness of the body that I was touching. It occurred to me at that moment that Bára had come to me to take revenge on her husband. But she was not vengeful. No, she had come to obtain something she felt cheated of. Maybe it was belief in some higher power, maybe just kindliness or words of love. She had come on her own account, of course, not mine. And one day she'll leave the same way.

How did I come to be lying alongside a woman who didn't belong to me, telling her that I love her and having congress with her as with my wife?

'Dan, my love, 'she said to me at that moment, 'why are you looking at me like that from so far away?'

'I'm looking at you from right close up. '

'Don't make excuses. And don't pretend you don't know what I mean!' She put her arms around me and hugged me to her. 'Yes, it's me. I'm here with you.'

When we were saying goodbye she told me that for All Souls she usually went all the way to Boskovice in Moravia to lay flowers on the grave of her maternal grandparents, even though they were Jews and hadn't, of course, observed All Souls' Day or laid flowers on graves. Her husband, for his part, travelled to South Bohemia to lay flowers on the grave of his forebears. She generally stayed in Moravia overnight at an old aunt's. Were I to go with her we could stay that night together somewhere.

Magda came down with tonsillitis. She tends to exaggerate her feelings. When she is happy she is wildly joyful, when she is sad, one would think she was the most miserable person on earth, when she has a pain, it always hurts terribly. Perhaps she really was feeling very bad— the antibiotic hadn't had time to take effect yet and she would groan and be wanting something at every moment: tea, or a book, or another blanket

because she was shivering with the fever. Then she wanted me to sit and talk to her about something.

I asked her what she wanted me to talk about. She said, 'About Jitka, for instance. '

For a moment I wasn't sure who she meant, and I asked her why she wanted to hear about her.

'Because she had a pain too. And because you've never talked to me about her. '

I told her instead about how I had been ill when I was a little boy, and then about how I trained to be a bookseller. Then I recalled the beginning of the revolution and how I had gone to meetings at the theatre and taken part in demonstrations. 'Do you remember I took you with me to the one on Letná Plain?' For a moment, I relived my feelings of that day: the enthusiasm, the expectation, and the hope for a life of greater truth and freedom.

'Yeah, I know, 'she said, 'but it was no fun for me. It was awfully cold and the people just stood there and there were terribly long speeches that were no fun at all. '

'And there were all the flags. '

Flags are no fun either. '

'What's your idea of fun, then?'

She pondered for a moment and then asked, 'That time, or in general?'

'That time or in general. '

'My idea of fun would be to fly. Not in a plane, but to actually have wings. To be a flamingus, say. '

'A what?'I said, baffled.

'You know, a bird of some kind,' she explained. A beautiful bird that flies where it likes. And I shouldn't think it suffers from sore throats and it doesn't have to go to a stupid school,' she added prosaically.

I gave her another cold compress and spread her some bread and butter. Then I told her I had to pop out for a while, but that her mother would be back in an hour.

She asked me where I was going.

I told her I had a meeting with the moderator but actually I had a date with Bára. We had arranged it when Magda was still well and I hadn't had a chance to call her and cancel it.

I knew that Magda would survive on her own for an hour; most fathers are out at work during the day and are therefore unable to sit

with their sick children, but I also knew that if I left her I would be taking one more step towards the destruction of myself and my family. A home that is divided inside cannot survive. 'I went anyway.

There was an autumnal storm in the night. The sky lit up and went dark and the thunder gradually got louder. I love storms. Maybe because they signify change, or more precisely a change that does not disturb order but on the contrary happens in harmony with it. Suddenly I recalled a storm in the distant past: the centre of it seemed to come to rest right over where we were living at the time. The lightning flashed again and again and the thunder roared without stopping. Mum was visibly scared, though she scarcely ever showed her feelings and certainly never fear. She was so scared that she made Rút and me move into the middle of the room and say a prayer with her.

So I relived the moment when my mother, still young at the time, stood next to me asking Almighty God for protection. I could still hear her voice that was lovelier and more powerful than any other sound and truly drowned the thunder.

I was overcome with nostalgia. How cruel is the law that God has imposed on all life. Death takes one's dearest and there is no appeal.

'Remember,' John Hus writes in The Daughter, 'that God created thee eternal and wants to dwell in thee for ever: eternal, to wit, immortal, for thou wilt never die. And in order that, immortal, thou shouldst be in eternal joy, God the Father gave His only begotten Son, true God, His own equal, and for you the Son submitted himself to a most loathsome and most cruel death, so that thou shouldst never die, He the best, the most beautiful, the most wise, the most rich and the most honoured!'

Haifa millennium later, the Czech — or more accurately, Moravian — philosopher Šafařík wrote: 'We can thank Darwin for having brought nature into history and thereby thrown light on the nature of "success" as a historical phenomenon: in "survival of the fittest" he distinguished success as an animal category and demonstrated that a live dog is more successful than a dead saviour. . In this respect, Jesus's life was a total failure. In historical terms, Golgotha is a place of execution and Jesus is

dead. The gallows are history, the cross mythology. Science and technology represent the hangover of a Christian world woken and sobered up after a mythical dream about the magical giver of cheap immortality. . It is an irony of the "history of salvation" that whereas salvation was supposed to put paid to history, history, on the contrary, has put paid to salvation. '

In Prague almost every second marriage ends in divorce. That doesn't apply to our church and even less so to married clergy. I know only a few divorced clergymen. They are condemned by their congregations and in most cases the pastor is obliged to leave. Does a man have a right to fall in love once he is married? Has he the right to look for intimacy with another person when he is unable to find it with those nearest to him?

The trouble is it is hard to recognize rights in love. It happens when one doesn't want it and even when one resists it. One tries to suppress that illegitimate feeling but the more one suppresses it, the more it grows.

I don't want to excuse myself or find excuses. I have acted irresponsibly. Certainly I acted irresponsibly that time, at the very beginning. When I held the hand of a woman who was still a stranger at the time. When I invited her into a house where I was alone and asked her not to leave yet. When I first embraced her. And I've only myself to blame that I wasn't able to confide in my wife.

The last time we met I put the following suggestion to her: What if I told my wife about you and you told your husband about me?

How old is your little girl? she asked.

I told her she was just twelve.

And you want to abandon her?

I said nothing.

Do you want to leave your wife?

I said nothing.

So why do you want to hurt them?

But it's just not possible to go on deceiving forever the people you live with.

Nothing lasts forever, she said.

I wanted to know what she meant.

Everything comes to an end one day. Even the tallest skyscraper has a roof. Life isn't a television serial.

You mean our love will end?

I mean everything will end. Life too.

I tried to persuade her that lying corrodes the soul. By doing things in secret we did more harm than if we acted openly.

No, she stuck to her guns: it wouldn't change anything, people would only suffer more. Then she added: Maybe it would change something, after all.

For a moment I fell for the hope that she knew of some solution, but she said: We'd stop seeing each other, because they would give us an ultimatum.

Then she burst into tears. You want to leave me. You're only thinking about it because you want to leave me! Then she said: There's nothing to stop you leaving me and no reason not to hurt me because I contravene the Ten Commandments!

I don't want to hurt her or Hana, but there's nothing for it but to hurt someone now. Either that or live a lie and destroy my soul. Can someone preach the Gospel to others, knowing that he is going to hurt another, or when he is living a lie?

Oh, Lord. . you are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies. (Psalm 5)

On the way home I decided I would make a clean breast of it to Hana. The moment I decided, I felt a sense of relief. I also considered each of the sentences I would say and their possible consequences.

When Hana came home from the hospital in the evening, she sat down as usual and made herself a coffee. I went to her but instead of asking her what was new at work I told her there was something I would like to speak to her about.

She glanced in my direction. Has something happened? she asked.

Her face, so familiar to me, reflected her tiredness, but in her look L saw total unsuspecting trust and I suddenly felt like a criminal lying in wait for his victim and raping her, thereby depriving her of any belief

she had in love, in people, in God, in life in general. Oh my God, I realized, she's been through that once already!

She waited expectantly for what I would say, but I could not bring myself to say any of the things I had prepared. So I told her I had been thinking about the Soukups, and beginning to wonder whether divorce might not be better than living together when there is no love.

But it's up to individuals, she answered, whether they were capable of keeping their love.

I nodded and left quickly, because I was ashamed. Ashamed of my cowardice, my dishonesty and my faithlessness. Unless I find the courage to tell Hana everything there is nothing for it but to break it off with the other one. To put an end to our relationship. Or to myself?

We had a seminar up in Hejnice. It was also attended by several professors who were at the faculty in my time. The theme was predestination and the meaning of good works. It's an eternal theme about which, as with most themes, everything has been said that could be said. In the evening I went for a walk with Martin and his wife Marie, and we were joined by a few other friends. Martin spoke on his favourite topic, saying we oughtn't to lay such stress on the supernatural passages of the scriptures. 1 pointed out that the moment we abandoned them, we abandoned the divinity of Christ, and all that we would be left with would be the original Judaism or some mishmash of philosophical opinions several thousand years old.

Martin said: 'But he wasn't God, though. He wasn't even the Son of God in the sense we preach it. His mother and father were ordinary people. We all know that, don't we?' We all glanced at him in surprise, but amazingly enough nobody voiced any objection.

At the end of the youth meeting Marika talked about the mysterious forces that inexplicably manifest themselves in her surroundings.

She was on her own at home one day, for instance, and all of a sudden the doorbell rang, not just a little ring but ringing like mad. She rushed to the door and when she opened it there was no one there. And there wasn't even any movement on the staircase.

'Or I'm lying in bed, 'Marika went on, 'on my own at home again and all of a sudden the light comes on in my bedroom and when I go to switch it off I notice that the lights are on all over the flat. And yet they were all off when I went to bed. So I call out: Is anyone there? I switch them all off one by one and when I go back to bed they all come on again. '

'You're having us on,' Alois declared. 'Someone was home and you didn't know. '

'Do you mind?' Marika said, taking umbrage. 'Who could have been there? Mum had gone out, one of my brother's inside and the other one's in Ostrava. I was there all on my own, I can swear it on my mother's death!'

'No, don't do that, ' I said to her, 'save your oath for something really important. '

'And what is really important?' someone asked.

Only six months ago I would have replied: fidelity, for instance. Or honesty. Or decency. I didn't reply.

'Forgive me, I didn't intend to criticize you,' I said to Marika. 'I wanted to say that I believe you. There are things that happen that one just can't explain and they remain a mystery forever. The entire Bible message is one great big mystery, although I wouldn't want to compare it.'

When the young people were gone, I wondered whether I really did believe Marika, or whether I had said it because I wanted to defend her dignity in front of the others. I wasn't able to make up my mind, all I knew was that I would like to have believed her.

I dreamed that I was still quite young and attending the booksellers' training school, apparently quite unaware that I would one day become a preacher and on the contrary being interested most of all in the girls. I made a date with one of them who had just quarrelled with her boyfriend. When I arrived to meet her at her house I discovered I was wearing odd shoes. I tried to conceal the fact by hiding my right foot behind the left one. She invited me upstairs and I was relieved that I could change out of my shoes into the slippers that she had prepared for me. We did some petting and then went out again. We were already outside when I realized I was still wearing the slippers. She told me to

wait downstairs: she would bring me my shoes and we could leave the slippers in the letter box. Then I realized that she would now discover I was wearing odd shoes. I dashed up the stairs after her in order to explain somehow. But she only laughed and praised me for having each shoe a different colour. She told me it had cheered her up.

Each shoe different. The left foot from a different home than the right one. Making love in a strange flat and praise for something I'm trying to conceal.

3

Máša Soukupová was sitting opposite him and making an effort to speak coherently. Her husband had moved out and he wanted to take the children. He had hired a good lawyer and they were planning to prove in court that she was incapable of bringing up the children. And she had actually signed some paper when she was in a state of shock at learning that her husband wanted to leave her. It was possible that the paper said she agreed that he should take the children.

The sound of the piano could be heard from downstairs. In recent times, Eva really had played at least four hours a day, sometimes just improvising in a mournful and laboured fashion. Something was still bothering her. On a few occasions her eyes looked as if she had been crying. Whenever he asked her something he would get fragmentary replies, mostly just a single word.

'How do you like school?'

'OK.'

'Is there anything the matter?'

'No, I'm all right.'

He ought to have a proper talk with her, find half a day to talk to his own daughter before something irreparable happens. Instead he was sitting here with Mrs Soukupová, and even if this poor woman wasn't here, he would most likely be using any spare time to meet the woman he oughtn't to be seeing.

'But I took good care of them, Reverend. I didn't leave them for a moment. It must be two years since I last went to the cinema or the theatre, apart from the puppet theatre. And they depend on me. I'm

their mother after all! Surely they can't take them from me! Surely God couldn't allow it!'

God had already allowed other things. Sometimes when Daniel considered all the things He had allowed, he doubted whether He would display the slightest interest in what was happening to mankind and the world, let alone to any one individual. But he didn't say so. Nor did he say what not so long ago he would have said: that it was only a test, that the Lord had tested even Job, and when he stood the test, He blessed him more than ever before.

'You must fight to keep your children, Máša. And I'll ask Dr Wagner to represent you.'

'But how will we live?'

'You have to tell yourself that there are lots of people worse off than you, Máša. There are mothers whose children die. Others give birth to blind or crippled babies. And you've not been left entirely on your own. You have the Lord Jesus and all of us, your brothers and sisters, who support you.' He stopped short, sickened by his own words, his hypocrisy. It was as if he wasn't talking to her but to his own wife. Even though he had not abandoned Hana, had not moved away, not raken the children; instead he always returned to them and behaved affably as if he still dwelled with them in love and peace. Who was behaving worse, in fact, he or Mášas husband, who had made his choice? Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil.

'Life is like that, Máša,' he added. 'There are also moments when we are put to the test and we have to come to terms with that. Maybe it's better to separate than to live without love. Now your heart is too full of pain, but it will pass and you'll start to see that life's worth living.'

The piano fell silent.

Máša thanked him tearfully for his words of comfort, though he knew he had been no consolation. However, he shook her by the hand and stroked her hair as she was leaving.

Then he went down to the chapel, but his elder daughter was gone and he did not even find her in her room. She must have left a few moments before Máša.

He went all the way up to the attic and found his son with Alois as he expected, making improvements to their home-made telescope. 'Have you discovered anything yet?' he asked.

'You couldn't discover anything with this telescope,' Marek

explained. 'It's impossible to see anything that isn't in the Milky Way.'

'We're sort of learning to observe, that's all,' Alois added.

'What I'd be really interested to know,' said Marek, 'when I see all those stars — what I can see of them anyway — is how it was all created. The stars, the sun and the earth.'

'You don't think God created it?'

Marek shrugged. 'Our Principal says: Reason was more likely the outcome than the origin.'

'That's why everything is so rationally organized, I suppose?'

'I don't know, Dad. But it couldn't have been as simple as it's described in the Bible.'

He noticed that Alois was listening with expectant interest.

Of course the world we all live in is moving faster and faster away from the one inhabited by those who wrote down the Bible message, and the interest that people have in it will continue to wane. How much easier it was for preachers in the days when the earth was the centre of the universe and the moon and stars were there to rule the night, and the lamps of heaven had simply been kindly lit by God so that the night should not be so hopelessly dark.

'I understand what you're saying,' he said to Marek. 'The universe arose fifteen or maybe eighteen billion years ago. A billion either way doesn't matter, it's beyond our imagination anyway. It is expanding. The earth and the sun are somewhat younger. Stars are born and die. There are more stars in the universe than we can count. The Lord told Abraham: Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. There are black holes and white dwarves. All those things can be determined. But what was at the beginning, whether it was divine intention or a big bang when all of that came into existence from a speck of matter, is purely a matter of belief

Unlike his companion, Marek continued to look sceptical. And Daniel wasn't pleased with his own speech either. In such a universe, a God who created it and at the same time assumed the form of a Jewish infant, who grew up, was baptized by John, preached, was arrested, condemned and shamefully executed, seems less and less likely, less and less possible, harder and harder to defend.

'Listen,' he said to Marek to cover up his uncertainty, 'you didn't deign to come to the service last Sunday? Or did I miss you?'

'No, I wasn't there,' his son reluctantly admitted.

'It's no fun listening to your dad on Sunday as well?'

'It's not that,' his son replied. 'I just didn't feel like it. If it wasn't you preaching I'd feel like it even less.'

'And what did you feel like doing?'

'I did some reading.'

'About black holes?'

'Why about them in particular? I read a novel.'

'About what?'

'It's hard to explain, Dad. Science fiction.'

A journey into space?'

'No. It was about another civilization. But they were ants, not humans.'

'You found that interesting?'

'Fairly. But it's made up, a civilization like that doesn't really exist. And even if it did, we'd never find out about it.'

'Are you sorry?'

About what?'

'That you'll never find out about the ant civilization?'

'If it existed, yes. It would be a pity if we never found out.'

'Fine, Marek, I'm glad you have an interest in those things, but perhaps you could spare me that hour on a Sunday?'

'The hour's not the point, Dad!'

'What is the point, then?'

'I just believe that everything was completely different from the way the Bible says and the way you preach it.'

'Its certain that nothing was literally the way it is written in the Bible.'

'Well, there you are.'

'But nor was it exactly the way it is described in scientific texts either.'

'That's possible, Dad. But what those books say is more likely.'

'Marek, it's not a question of what is more likely. The essence of the Bible message is not about how life developed, but how we ought to live it.'

'People don't live by it anyway,' Marek commented stubbornly, and suddenly Daniel had nothing to refute him with.

'So you won't be going to church on Sundays any more, then?'

'It's not that, I'll be coming all right,' Marek said, suddenly startled at his own defiance.

He had not managed to persuade Marek. Likewise, he was incapable of talking to his daughter or finding out what was troubling her. He had railed to comfort Máša or advise her how she ought to live. He had not managed to stay faithful to his wife. He wrote letters to Bára that were possibly tender and in which he spoke of his great love for her, but he couldn't bring himself to yield to her entirely.

He had been incapable of bringing anything to a satisfactory conclusion recently. His life was definitely out of kilter with the Bible message and even with ordinary human decency.

As he was coming downstairs, he caught sight of his wife who had just rushed out into the passage. 'Dan, where have you been? I've been looking for you everywhere. There's just been a call from the police in Plzeň. They've arrested Petr.'

4

Samuel

Samuel returns from a two-day business trip to Ostrava several hours earlier than he told Bára he would. Bára isn't home, of course. The flat is tidied and empty, and it doesn't appear to have been heated. There is just the musty smell of stale tobacco smoke in the air. Aleš must be at his grandmother s and Bára will be somewhere with some chap. He still suspects young Vondra, he's good-looking and he definitely has a better way with women than Samuel had at his age, not to mention now. When it was Bara's birthday he brought her a rose. And he's always looking in on her whenever he gets a chance. Not long ago, he offered to accompany her to Příbram on business. Bára refused, but that might only prove she's more cautious than he is. He calls his mother-in-law. Yes, Aleš is with her; Bára said she had something to attend to. No she didn't say what or with whom; she never gives her details. His mother-in-law wants to know whether she is to bring Aleš, or whether he is to sleep at her place.

That depends on when Bára will come home.

She's bound to be home soon, it's not six o'clock yet.

Sam tells his mother-in-law he'll call her later. He could have spoken to his son, but he didn't think about it in the surge of rage. He walks

nervously around the empty flat; he dislikes emptiness, it unnerves him. He tries phoning the office but there's no one there any more. What sort of business could Bára have to attend to?

She could have all sorts of business. Bára is almost unbearably active. She manages to do the housekeeping, work in the office, deal with clients and also act on television from time to time. When he comes home dog-tired in the evening, Bára is there teaching Aleš something, chatting to Saša, making phone calls, singing and she's even willing to talk to him until midnight about his ailments, his work or the political situation, and after all that she expects him to make love to her.

There was a time when he regarded her activity as a positive attribute, but now that he is continually tired, he finds Bara's craving for life, activity and constant change infuriating. What infuriates him, he realizes, is her youthfulness. She does not yet feel death at her back or understand how futile is the longing to touch everything, try everything and be part of everything.

He should have realized it when he married a woman so much younger than himself. Except that at the time he was still full of energy and Bara's submissiveness concealed her craving for life.

Of course she has no business to attend to. Why should she tell her mother? Anyway, the two of them stick together against him; all women stick together against the common enemy — men.

He then dials the number of Vondras flat. Vondra is home and immediately wants to know how he fared in his negotiations in Ostrava. 'Very well, excellent, in fact,' Samuel says, even though things didn't go at all well, but he isn't in the mood to talk about business matters.

Vondra says he is pleased to learn of Samuel's success and they say goodbye. For a moment Samuel has a feeling akin to relief. Then he realizes that Bára could have been lying there all the time in the arms of that playboy. What's more, she could be lying in the arms of thousands of other men he knows nothing about.

He switches on the television where they are just giving the weather forecast. He listens to it: a fine autumn day is expected, but it won't be fine for him. He doesn't feel like watching the news, but the room feels so inert and empty that he turns down the sound and just watches the pictures move.

Bára is still not home. There is nothing for it but to wait; time that drags on interminably because there's nothing else to do, nothing sensible to concentrate on. Occasionally, when he gets held up somewhere

in the evening, he tries at least to call her, but the phone always tends to be engaged and he can only conjecture who she might be talking to. Whenever he finally gets through and asks her, she says it was to a girlfriend or her mother, or that Saša was gossiping.

He knows that it could well be true, but is not necessarily so: Bára is deceitful. She manages to smile at him even when he can feel her iciness. The smile merely conceals her real intentions. But she's quite adroit and alert and never lets the cat out of the bag, never leaves any real clues. Her countless phone calls are innocence itself and she never leaves any love messages in her handbag.

And when he asks her to be home on time, Bára explains to him all the commitments she has and tells him he sometimes comes home late too. He ought to put a stop to her television appearances, at least. Those rehearsals or performances are just a pretext for her to go and see her cronies.

But if he tried to talk her out of anything Bára would start to wave her rights in front of his nose. He has noticed she has been reading feminist pamphlets lately. Although there was hardly any need for her to read them, she could write her own.

Some sort of actors' dressing-room appears on the screen. Samuel can imagine his own wife in it, and she's not alone, of course.

For God s sake, it's only too obvious to him that there is no keeping an eye on a woman: she can make love anywhere — on the floor, on a table, in an armchair, on a heap of straw, in a wood, in a meadow, standing up in a gateway, on a car seat or in some shed where building materials are stored.

When they were at that reception given by the English last week, he noticed that she was approached by men he didn't know at all. Where did they know her from? He registered the note of pleasure in her voice that they were interested in her. They addressed him with respect too. Indeed, many of the guests would have been honoured for him to spare them a moment, but his mind was elsewhere: he was watching Bára and feeling so hopelessly deserted and betrayed, that in the end he dragged her off home on the pretext that he wasn't feeling well. So she steered him to the car and insisted on driving even though she had drunk at least four glasses of wine. And when they got home she made him take some tablets as if she didn't know full well that his illness was simply caused by her.

At half-past eight Bára arrives at last. 'You're home already?' she says,

and in her voice feigned satisfaction is mixed with fear and disappointment. She comes to embrace him, but as she brings her face close to his, he detects the odour of wine and refuses to kiss her. 'Where have you been so long?'

Bára has a perfect alibi ready, of course. In the afternoon at the building department and in the evening she dropped by Ivana's because she had promised her some drops to prevent migraine. And she actually takes a brown medicine bottle out of her handbag: ten drops in a small bottle of water. Water to be added as the contents are used up.

Samuel doesn't listen to her. 'What about Aleš?'

'I'll phone Mum to bring him. Or should I go and pick him up in the car?'

'Why didn't you pick him up on the way?'

'I wanted to get home as soon as possible. In case you came in early and had to wait here on your own.'

'I did come in early and I did wait here on my own.'

'I'm sorry about that, I really am,' and she adopts an expression as if she really was sorry. 'How did you make out?'

For the second time he says it went well, excellently, in fact.

'I'm pleased. And most of all I'm pleased you're home.' She acts as if she really was pleased and waits for him to kiss her after all, but he would sooner give her a thrashing and get out of her where she really has been and how long she's been carrying that bottle around in her handbag as an excuse and what those drops are really to prevent, that's if the bottle contains drops for preventing anything. He turns on his heel and goes to his room.

Aren't you going to eat?' Bára calls after him.

'There isn't anything yet.'

'I'll make something straight away. But I'll just call Mum first and ask her to bring Aleš.'

'It's too late,' he says. 'Surely you don't want your mother dragging him home through the city in the dark?'

In his room he sits down at his enormous desk and switches on his computer, but he doesn't feel like working. It occurs to him that he will never again create anything decent or original anyway. He's getting on for sixty and there are other, younger and more ambitious fellows with much better opportunities than he ever had, with different backgrounds and happier homes, maybe. What he hasn't managed to achieve so far, he never will.

He can feel the despondency growing in him, as well as anger with Bára. He had asked her where she had been for so long and he had accepted her excuse, not letting on that he totally disapproves of her dumping their son on his grandmother instead of taking care of him, and there is no way he can agree to her wandering off God knows where, with God knows who the moment his back is turned.

At that moment, the door of the flat bangs: it is his stepson coming in. As usual, he mistakes the front hall for some woods and is whistling some mind-numbing pop song.

Samuel rushes out of his den and gives Saša a ticking-off.

Saša looks offended and says he has hardly done anything terrible. He didn't know his dear daddy was home, he was supposed to be away.

Samuel explains to him that one acts civilly at home even if one is on one's own.

His stepson asks him what is so uncivil about someone whistling to himself at home when he is on his own.

Samuel starts to yell that he's had enough of such rudeness and impertinence.

Bára peeps into the front hall and asks what he's annoyed about.

Samuel, his voice faltering with annoyance, informs her that he has reason enough to be annoyed. He has come home to an empty flat. One of the children has been dumped on his grandmother and the other is out mooching around somewhere, and its no surprise seeing that his mother sets such a splendid example.

'What's that supposed to mean?' Bára asks.

'That no home would be better than such a home as this.'

'Nobody's forcing you to stay here,' Bára says.

'Stop fighting,' Saša begs them, afraid that a row is brewing between them. 'After all, nothing so terrible has happened.'

'Does that mean you want a divorce?' Samuel asks.

'You're the one who doesn't feel at home here.'

And are you trying to say this is a home?'

'Jesus Christ,' Bára shouts, 'what's a home supposed to be then? Am I supposed to sit at home like a slave even when my lord and master isn't meant to be here?'

And what about the children?'

'Children, children. The boy's not even allowed to whistle in the front hall.'

'Your son does too much whistling.'

'My son is not allowed to whistle because he's my son,' Bára shouts. If you loved me just a little bit you'd love him too.'

'If you loved me just a little bit, you'd behave differently.'

'If I behaved differently — it's always me. I spend my time running around you like a maidservant and when did you last even say a kind word to me?'

'If you were to behave differently I might say kind words to you.'

'What is behaving differently supposed to mean?'

'Not behaving like a tart!'

'What did you say?'

Samuel can feel the blood rushing to his head and at the same time he feels a sharp pain in the region of his heart: she'll actually cause him to have a heart attack.

Bára sobs and her son comforts her. Samuel turns on his heel and without a word locks himself in his room.

He feels like breaking something. He picks up the newspaper, crumples it up and throws it in the basket; then he kicks the basket, which overturns and scatters papers all around the room.

Coloured stars move around on the computer screen. He stares at them for a moment; he could throw the computer on the ground, but he knows that he won't, he'll just switch it off to stop it irritating him.

His anger gradually gives way to despair.

He opens the top drawer of his desk in which all his various medicines are neatly arranged and he takes two diazepam tablets to calm his nerves, although he knows that no tablets will help him. She's the only one who can help him, that damned woman. If only she were to come and say: I love you, I don't want to be with anyone, anyone, anyone but you because you're the best man in the world. The best man of all — the way she used to repeat it when they first met, when she was fighting to win him and to get him to marry her.

Then he remembers how they spent a holiday in the firm's chalet in the Western Tatras three years after their marriage. She was already expecting Aleš and couldn't go on hikes. So he and two of his colleagues set off on a long hike to Ostrý Roháč via Baníkov. When they set out in the morning it looked like the start of a sunny summer day, hut on the return journey the weather changed completely and a storm arrived with hail, fog and cold. They were obliged to shelter for some

time beneath a rocky cliff, and instead of returning at dusk they didn't get back until late at night.

When at last they arrived totally exhausted, she threw herself on him, hugging him and kissing him and helping him out of his wet clothes and rubbing his frozen feet, all the while repeating over and over again how she had been afraid for him, and had actually prayed for him to return safe and sound, and how happy she now was that he was back with her again. Then all of a sudden she burst into tears. He asked her why she was crying and she said, 'because I love you so much and couldn't live without you'.

It occurs to Samuel that if he had died that night he would have died happy, because he was loved. Still young and loved. He won't ever manage that now, he has lost his chance to die young and loved. His chest tightens more and more with self-pity and he notices that his face is wet. Now it is he who is crying; he is crying because if he were to die now Bára would not even shed a tear, instead she would probably heave a sigh of relief.

If only he had the strength to leave this hell, this insecurity. If only he had sufficient determination to be alone. If only he had just one pillar to lean on. Samuel sits crumpled up in his armchair. He listens to the movements in the flat. But his stepson isn't whistling any more and Bára nas most likely locked herself in her bedroom. He would wait in vain for her to come and ask him to forgive her.

It strikes Samuel that he should buy himself a dog to share his dog's life with him.

5

First thing in the morning, Dr Wagner rushed into the parish office and informed Daniel that he had some important news for him about his father. He had managed to find a man in the ministry who had access to the secret police files and he was willing to let him have a look at them. 'I needed it in connection with something else but as I was there I asked him whether I might not take a look at your father's file too, if it existed. He brought it to me and I discovered that it contained no agreement signed by your father.'

Wagner then started to explain that State Security classified their

collaborators into several categories. At the lowest level were the 'confidants' who were often unaware what they were being used for. For instance, it was enough to persuade a doctor to send someone for spa treatment or clinical examination and that would allow their agents to enter his flat undisturbed in order to install a bugging device or photograph something.

'The doctor would have to have been willing to do what they wanted,' Daniel commented.

'But they wouldn't introduce themselves as secret policemen, would they? They would pretend to be someone who was concerned about the health of one of his subordinates. Or as the chairman of the trade union branch. On other occasions, they would pretend to be investigating some crime or other.'

'Do you think they merely took advantage of my father, then?'

'Definitely.'

'For how long?'

'That's the second piece of good news. Less than two years. Then your father, as is clear from the report of his controlling officer, started to suspect they were playing some game with him and began talking to his friends about it, and that fact was reported by one of the secret police agents working in the hospital. So they terminated the connection.'

'When did all this happen?'

'Shortly after your father's release from prison. Inter alia they classified him as a 'has-been', on account of that house of your grand-lather's.'

'Poor old Dad. They would stick a label on people and shove them into a category from which there was no escape.'

'But your father did escape, as you can see.'

Yes, the best way of escaping them was by departing from this world. Dad managed that seventeen years ago.

'Thank you very much, I'm extremely grateful.' He ought to make a greater show of gratitude and pleasure, even though, as he noted to his surprise, he felt nothing of the kind. He was too aware of his own burden to feel any real sense of relief at that moment. None the less he said, 'I am in your debt, very much so.' Then the thought struck him: 'Figuratively and literally. I expect that information must have cost you something, not to mention the time that you have spent on obtaining it.'

'But Reverend, I did it on account of your father's good name. Moreover, as I explained to you, I got in contact with that fellow in connection with another matter.'

Dr Wagner took his leave and it struck Daniel that it was possible that the file the lawyer had seen had also contained details about his father's private life. The thought that a member of his congregation might know about his father's peccadilloes, and perhaps even the names of his mistresses, did not cheer him.

Fortunately no one was keeping a file on him any more, or so Daniel hoped.

However, if they weren't keeping a file on him, he was keeping one himself by storing Bara's letters. It would be more sensible to get rid of them, but they seemed to him so special, so full of love, that he could not bring himself to destroy a single one. But he ought to do something with them, all the same. Take them to his mother's flat and transcribe them in a secret code, or translate them into a little-known language like Hebrew and then discard the originals.

When, after supper, he shared Wagners news about his father with Hana, she said, 'There you are. And all the torment you had.'

'Only for a while. Then I said to myself that it was already outside the statute of limitations whether it happened or not. Still, I'm glad that Dad didn't lead some secret life,' he quickly added.

'There's something I was wanting to tell you too,' his wife said in such a serious tone that it made him jump.

However, what she was wanting to tell him had nothing to do with the concealed part of his life, but concerned her work. She had more and more worries in the hospital; sometimes she came home completely exhausted. And now that her salary was no longed needed, it had been occurring to her that she could find some other work for which she could be her own boss, to a small degree at least. What if she were to try and set up a diaconal centre here in the house? She would enjoy being involved in its work. But she immediately added, as if she was suddenly startled at daring to make such a radical proposal, that she didn't want to add to Daniel's worries, and she realized how much effort it would require.

But her idea appealed to Daniel. If he could get fully involved in that kind of work, he could excuse himself from his other duties, for a time at least. Caring for the handicapped was not the same as

preaching about the Son of God or officiating at the Lord's Supper while entertaining doubts about himself and the institution.

Furthermore, in establishing a diaconal centre he could find a use for the money that he still felt ashamed of possessing, or rather he was ashamed of the way he had used it so far.

He promised that he would speak with the moderator of presbytery and the director of Diakonia. Hana could definitely quit the hospital as soon as it was possible.

As he was passing the children's room, he overheard Magda screeching. He went in and discovered Marek fighting over some object with his sister.

'Tell him to leave me alone, Daddy,' Magda begged, 'he's taking my things!'

'Look, Dad,' Marek said accusingly, 'she buys these stupid sprays that are full of CFCs.' He manages to wrest two metal containers from Magda's hands and displays them to Daniel triumphantly.

'Why are you taking them from her?'

'But that's what I'm telling you: they're full of CFCs.'

'What do you need them for, Magda?'

'Nothing. But they're mine. I bought them.'

'What does she need them for? To spray stupid signs on walls.'

'Is that true, Magda?'

'It's none of his business.' Magda had tears in her eyes. 'He's got no right to boss me about.'

'And what do you write?'

'Nothing.'

'Magda!'

'Love, for instance,' Magda said.

And what else?'

'Nothing else. Just that. And once I sprayed a bird. A flamingo.'

'I think Marek's right. There's nothing nice about spraying things on walls.'

'Love is nice, and so are flamingos.'

'That's precisely why you shouldn't spray them on walls.'

'The others do it.'

'That doesn't make it any cleverer.'

'So make him give me back the sprays.'

'Give them back to her, Marek. And don't you spray anywhere with them.'

Marek stood the tins up on the top of her wardrobe, out of Magda's reach, and left without a word.

'First you tip things on passers-by from the window and throw spiders at them, and now you're writing nonsense on walls.'

'What am I supposed to do then, Daddy?'

'What do you mean?'

'To have a bit of fun.'

He was about to tell her that having fun wasn't the only purpose of living, but at that moment the phone rang in the next room.

'Daniel, I'm sorry to be calling like this but something terrible has happened. Sam has gone and swallowed a whole lot of his pills.'

Something like this had to happen, naturally. What they had done could not go unpunished. He feared the answer when he asked, 'Is he alive?'

'Yes.' Bára hurriedly explained how she had woken up in the night and heard strange noises. She had found Samuel in his room. The noise had been his choking. On the bedside table, he had left two empty tubes of his anti-depressant tablets. And a farewell note. The first thing she did was call an ambulance. She had been in the hospital until Sam revived a short while ago.

'What did the note say?'

'What notes like that usually say. That he's old and has nothing to look forward to, that he's just a burden on everyone and on me in particular. That he feels I yearn for freedom and so he is giving it to me.'

'I'll come and see you.'

'No, not now. I have to go back to the hospital, he needs me there. I just had to tell you, that's all.'

'I'd like to help you somehow.'

'I don't know what you could do to help. There is one thing, though. Tell me you're not cross with me for always adding to your worries, and tell me you won't forsake me!'

6

Bára

Bára now divides her time between visits to the psychiatric hospital where they continue to hold her husband and work in the office where

she is obliged to stand in for Samuel. She feels sorry for Samuels suffering. At the same time, however, she feels a long-forgotten sense of freedom, with no one to watch over her, no one to tell her off for coming in late, no one demanding that she create the semblance of a home by her constant presence, care and tenderness. Daniel calls her each morning and sometimes in the evening and they usually talk about Samuel and how his action will affect her life. Daniel is a good listener who isn't trying to catch her out all the time and tell her off in order to demonstrate his male superiority. Bára has the feeling that Daniel shares all her worries, anxieties and doubts, so it is easy to talk to him.

She can't make the trip to lay a wreath on the grave of her grandparents since she has to visit Samuel every day in hospital, but she is loath to lose the opportunity of spending at least one night with Daniel. She suggests that they could spend it in her flat. There's no chance of Samuel being discharged at night and she won't be visiting him then either. She'll send Aleš to his grandmother's for the night and Saša can sleep at a friend's place.

Daniel says nothing for a moment as is his wont, but she already knows that his silence does not simply mean silence. Daniel says nothing because he is in a quandary or is suffering a feeling of anxiety that he is departing more and more from his idea of how he ought to live. He is scared of the sin he is committing.

'Will you come?'

Daniel promises he will.

All Souls' Day is the following Wednesday. Immediately after lunch, Bára dashes to the hospital, stopping to buy Samuel not only fruit, but also a big bunch of asters. She brings with her a candlestick and a candle for her husband to light in memory of his dead, seeing that he is unable to visit their grave.

Outside, the day is misty and damp, and the heavy sky oppresses even those who are in good health.

Samuel is alone in a three-bed ward and doesn't feel at all ill. He considers psychotherapy to be nonsense, and can see no good reason why he should talk about his relationship with his mother or about his first and second wives when his greatest pain — the wound from which his life has been draining away for years — is Bára. And he can't understand why she has to visit him every day, when she only goes away again, leaving him at the mercy of loneliness and his doubts. Why isn't

she persuading him to come home straight away? Why isn't she telling him that if he came home she would stay by him and take care of him and never wander off again? Why, instead of that, is she traipsing into the hospital with flowers and a candlestick as if the place wasn't cluttered enough as it is? He scolds her for needlessly throwing money away on flowers.

'I thought you'd be pleased,' Bára says, stroking his forehead and telling him he looks really well today.

Samuel can walk, of course, but now he deliberately lies on the bed and does not look in her direction. So Bára takes the vase and goes into the ugly bathroom to fetch some water in a battered bowl. As the water runs from the tap, Bára weeps. Then she puts the flowers in the vase, wipes her eyes and actually manages to force her mouth into something resembling a smile — since she is here to comfort, not to grieve. She returns to her husband and asks him if she should light the candle.

Samuel says nothing. His silence does not mean mere silence or anxiety, instead it is the attempt of a powerless person to prove his superiority and his power. That power is now expressed solely in the ability to hurt — himself and her. So Bára lights the candle and gives him the news from the office. She also tells him she has bought Aleš some new shoes and helped him with his history homework and civic education. These future citizens are told about the unity of body and soul. Aleš had asked her what the soul was.

Samuel stares at the ceiling. Maybe he isn't listening, although it is quite likely he is but wants to demonstrate his lack of interest.

'What is the soul?' Bára asks him.

And without looking in her direction, he says, 'It's what you lack.' Eventually he looks towards her in order to see her reaction, so Bára says, 'Thank you for the explanation, I'll pass it on to Aleš.' And she thinks of Daniel: Daniel wouldn't have fobbed her off, he'd have tried to explain the soul, which he says is eternal. Daniel believes in something, something noble, unfathomable and mysterious, whereas her husband simply believes in his own strength and power, which is now gradually waning,

She peels Samuel an orange, separating the segments and arranging them neatly on a saucer. Samuel displays no interest in the orange, because that would entail him showing interest in her, the source of everything bad in his life, including the fact he is lying here on a

hospital bed and everyone stares at him as if he were a suicidal maniac.

'Wouldn't you like a bit of a walk?' Bára suggests.

To her astonishment, Samuel raises himself without a word and puts on his slippers. Then he walks out into the corridor at her side, shuffling his feet slightly. And Bára realizes that she is walking alongside an old man and she feels sorry for the man who is the father of her younger son, for the man she once loved more than anyone else, the man she once admired and revered, and whom, at the same time, she feared and whose love she longed most humbly to earn. She feels sorrow that Samuel never understood that love has to be gained through goodness of heart not through orders, that in spite of his horror of solitude he is driving himself into it because his harshness repels even his nearest and dearest.

The hospital corridor is not a long one; men in blue-and-white striped dressing-gowns sit here and there on benches and in the autumn gloom they seem to her like figures from a prison drama.

Samuel is now holding forth to her about himself and his prospects, and the unlikelihood of his ever returning to work. He feels he has lost not just interest in life, but also his powers of imagination; maybe the pills he swallowed have affected his mind. An architect without imagination is like a woodcarver without arms, she surely must appreciate that.

It's odd that he should say woodcarver. After all, Daniel does wood-carving. Sam might equally have said that an architect without imagination is like a pastor without faith. At that moment, she would have been worried that Samuel suspected something. But he suspects nothing, he simply has one of his depressions that can't be checked even by chemicals or psychotherapy; Samuel is too strong a personality for that: stubborn and unbending, even though his strength is already on the wane. So Bára comforts him: everything will sort itself out again and he will be home in a few days; he'll be properly rested and as soon as he gets back to the office he'll see that his head will be teeming with ideas.

'I'm too old,' Samuel says, 'I can't cope with it all any more. If you want to leave you're welcome.'

'What do you mean?'

'Just what I said. Leave for good.'

Bára is weeping again. She'd no intention of ever leaving him, had she? Not unless she died first.

When they say goodbye she kisses Samuel on the mouth and notices that his lips are dry and he himself is cold: he doesn't put his arms around her or hug her. Samuel's body may still be alive, but his soul is already dead.

Bára promises that she will come tomorrow morning and she rushes away because she must drive Aleš to her mother's. On her way out, the senior consultant stops her in the corridor and invites her into his consulting room to ask her a few questions about Samuel's past, and how often he used to have depressions. He wants to know whether any of his forebears had suffered from mental illness. Bára recalls Samuel's mother who refused to associate with her on the grounds that Bára had been invaded by some dark and destructive forces. At the time, Bára used to put those irrational theories down to her age. Samuel himself always said as little as possible about his mother, and when, shortly after their marriage, she died, he never spoke about her again. So Bára tells the psychiatrist that she knows of no mental illness in Samuel's family. None the less, the consultant is of the view that Samuel is not entirely fit and may never be again. His mind is hampered by delusions that are clearly paranoid in character. It will require extraordinary patience from her because Samuel's delusions centre on her; she is their focal point. And the psychiatrist goes on to say that people are reluctant to recognize mental illness as an illness, even though it is a disease like any other: the patient requires love and understanding. While he is speaking to her the consultant gazes fixedly at Bára as if wanting to discover whether Samuel is indeed suffering from delusions or whether his beautiful wife isn't in fact a beauty with the soul of a monster. And Bára bursts into tears for the third time that day.

Finally, the consultant promises her that he will release Samuel next week, even though, in his view, he should be under permanent psychiatric supervision in future.

Afterwards Bára drives Aleš to her mothers. They are scarcely on the road when the boy asks her what she'll be doing in the evening. She fobs him off with a story about tickets for the theatre.

Being not just her son but also his father's, Aleš is naturally curious to know who she's going with, seeing that Dad's in hospital. Bára snaps at him not to be so nosy. Then, suddenly ashamed of her evasiveness, she tells him she's going with a friend. Aleš offers to stay at home with his brother, or even on his own, but Bára gives him a hug

and tells him it would spoil her evening because shed have him on her mind.

Bára has to spend a few moments with her mother and then do some shopping for her as she now finds it hard to use the stairs. She does her own shopping at the same time. She ought to cook something, a celebratory dinner, but she feels too tired all of a sudden. It's late already and she wouldn't have time to prepare things in advance. Besides, she's hardly going to waste the precious time she could be with Daniel on cooking. So she just buys the necessary ingredients for a cold supper. She drops off her mother's shopping and takes leave of her and of Aleš, who is scarcely aware of her any more, since he is gawping at a television programme which is demonstrating a new car. Oh God, she really is a terrible mother to leave him at the mercy of these pictures of dead objects.

Daniel is waiting for her in front of the telephone booth where they met the time when she called him out at night. He has brought her roses: white roses with a red border. 'You're crazy,' she tells him and gets him to sit in the back seat. Luckily it's autumn and already dark, so no one will notice there's someone in the car. She drives him in the luxury jalopy right up to her house and asks him to stay in the car while she opens the entrance to the garage. She then drives him right into the garage where he is again told not to get out until she has closed all the doors: they can gain entry into the house direct from the garage. Only when they are inside at last does she kiss him. His lips are hot and moist.

Daniel puts his arms around her and hugs her to him. His body is alive and so is his soul: she must ask him what the soul is.

'Welcome,' Bára says when they enter the lounge, where one of the lemon trees is in blossom and filling the place with an overpowering scent. Oddly enough she feels it somewhat inappropriate that Daniel should spend the night with her; it is her and Samuel's home, after all.

It's sad, everything is so sad. All her life she has longed for love and whenever she thinks she has found it, she turns out to be mistaken. Is she mistaken now?

There are four enormous black armchairs in the lounge. She sits him in one of these and switches on just the small light above the drinks cabinet. She brings a bottle of wine and glasses and, for the second time today, goes to fill a vase with water. The bathroom is tiled with Italian tiles that fit together to form flower shapes. Samuel's

dressing-gown is hanging from a hook. In the corner, Samuel's slippers await his return. Especially warm slippers, because Samuel usually suffers from the cold. People with cold hearts tend to have cold feet too. Samuel s toothbrush is missing from its glass.

And Samuel is missing from the flat. For a split second she is gripped with anxiety that he will turn up out of the blue, see the roses, see Daniel and hurl himself at her and kill her — kill them both.

The water is already pouring over the edge of the vase and Bára thinks about how she used to love Samuel. All of a sudden, she conjures up past embraces, secret rendezvous, making love in borrowed flats, declarations of love and mutual reassurance. Will you ever leave me? Never. We'll never leave each other! He hasn't left her. Samuel has never gone back on his word.

Before going to join Daniel, Bára glimpses herself in the mirror. She looks tired. She can't ignore the wrinkles on her face. She is weary: she's old and worn out. A vampire has been sitting on her back for years: not a real vampire, they kill you, just a little vampire bat that has slowly sucked her blood and drained her strength. Bára unties the ribbon holding back her hair and lets it fall about her face, concealing it slightly. It's something she knows men like.

She arranges the roses and returns to Daniel. 'You're always bringing me flowers,' she says, 'I bet you could never be nasty to me.'

'Nobody could be nasty to you, could they?'

They drink to each other. Then Daniel asks how her husband is. Bára answers that he is better and says he'll be coming home next week.

Daniel says it's good news.

'You were afraid he'd die and you'd be lumbered with me?'

The question leaves Daniel flabbergasted, but before he has time to utter any rash assurances, Bára sidetracks her own question by saying she too is glad that Sam is better. It's just that it's impossible to envisage what their life will be like from now on. Samuel says he intends to stay at home, which means he'll want her to spend all her free time with him and she won't even have the tiny bit of freedom she managed to wrest for herself lately.

'The amount of freedom one has depends on how much one wants it.'

'I know but I'm not self-assertive enough,' Bára admits. 'I completely lack the will when it comes to my own needs.' Then she mentions

what the consultant told her today. Maybe he really does think that Bára has driven her husband to despair.

She observes Daniel and notices that he has become a trifle uneasy. His clerical conscience has no doubt taken fright at that prospect and his own involvement. 'Do you also believe I drove him to it?' She doesn't give him time to answer but shouts at him, 'You're like all the rest, you think it's the woman's place to put up with it all. And your commandments even give you a rod for her back.'

'But I broke them with you, just as you did with me.'

'Why do you think such vile things about me, then?'

'I don't!'

'Fifteen years I was faithful to him and scarcely glanced at any other men, but he used to bully me long before I knew you existed, before I knew that someone like you could actually exist.'

'I believe that you loved him.'

'First he courted me, then he started to educate me. After that he started to regard me as his servant, then as his enemy and now as some kind of monster that deceives him every moment of the day and night. He's got hold of a revolver— as protection against criminals, he says. But I'm the greatest criminal of all, aren't I! How am I supposed to put up with this to the end of my days?'

'I don't accuse you of anything.'

'But you do think I've hurt him.'

'People hurt each other when they live together without love.'

'I looked after him the whole of that time. You know yourself. I almost never had a moment left for you.'

'I know you to be someone who wouldn't want to hurt anyone else.'

'If you thought I would, I wouldn't be sitting here with you.' She stretches out her hand to him and he kisses it. Then Bára gets up to go and fix them something to eat, but first she takes a video-cassette out of a cupboard, puts it in the video-player and suggests that in the meantime he should watch a film in which she played one of her bit parts. She abandons him to coloured shadows of herself.

No sooner does she get to the kitchen than the phone rings. It is Vondra, her office colleague, asking her to have a look with him at a project from the National Savings Bank for the reconstruction of a building. It's a splendid contract worth several million. She tells him she'll take a look at it tomorrow.

And how's Samuel making out? What is she doing with herself? Isn't she feeling lonely all on her own with the nights closing in?

As if she were necessarily on her own just because her husband has swallowed some pills. Or because that young Casanova hasn't yet invited her for a glass of wine. She peeps into the lounge, where Daniel is dutifully watching the screen, but even though he has his back to her, Bára senses that he is not taking in anything that is happening on the screen. Daniel is still unsettled by her presence, he is still burdened by the awareness of committing something that conflicts with his faith and the commands he accepted long ago. Daniel is a big, superannuated child. He had definitely not had many women — probably only the two he had lawfully married — and had not been unfaithful to either of them.

Nevertheless he comes to her and is here now, which means that he loves her more than his principles and his vocation, more than peace of mind and a clear conscience. He loves her more than his wife, but he would still never leave his wife. He wouldn't even do it on her account. He is more likely to leave Bára. He'll leave her as soon as his infatuation passes and she will remain alone once more with a half-crazed Samuel who hates her and sucks her strength.

The phone rings once more. This time it is Samuel himself asking her if she is saving all the bills, as they will be needed for claiming tax relief. Bára reassures him that she is, even though she knows full well that at this moment Samuel has not the slightest interest in the bills. He merely wants to find out whether she's home. She asks Sam how he is and he snaps back, 'What makes you so interested all of a sudden?'

'I'll come and see you again in the morning,' Bára promises. 'Now go and get some rest. Don't think about the bills any more, think of something pleasant.'

'Like what, for instance?' and this time there is a note of genuine, unfeigned despair in Samuel's voice. And she realizes that this man, her husband, truly doesn't know of anything pleasant to think about, and she has no advice to give him, nor has she the strength, at this moment, to reassure him of her love. She brings the call to an end, then quickly slices some bread and prepares a cold supper. There is the sound of the piano from the lounge; the video must have finished. Those phone calls have taken up too much of Bara's time. For a moment she remains in the doorway listening to Daniel's playing.

Then she enters the lounge and starts to set out the plates and cutlery. 'What was that you were playing?' she asks.

'Nothing much, just some tunes that come to me when I'm thinking about you.'

'You think about me when you're at home?'

'Almost all the time.'

'In what way do you think about me?'

'With love and anxiety.'

Bára doesn't ask him the source of his anxiety, but as he is sitting opposite her at the table she enquires: 'Do you really love me enough to compose tunes for me?'

'They're only improvisations.'

'And do you love your wife?'

Daniel doesn't know how to reply, and that's all right, it's better than overwhelming her with a lot of big words that would not be true.

'Don't worry,' she says, 'I do know you have a wife and children and a congregation. I don't want to take you away from your family, I just want you to be with me for as long as you feel you love me.'

They eat.

'I'm sorry I shouted at you earlier on,' she says. 'I couldn't take any more at that moment. Maybe I really have hurt Sam. He must sense how I've gone cold inside, that my smiles are forced, that I speak to him out of duty and that I caress him out of sympathy not desire. He must sense it, but he'll never realize that he was the one who destroyed everything that was alive in me.' And there is nothing forced about the smile she gives him; it comes from her eyes and her entire being.

'So long as I lived according to his way of thinking,' she adds, 'he was satisfied. But one doesn't live to fulfil someone else's notions. You only have one life and that's your own, and you have to live according to your own way of thinking, at least partly.'

'So long as you can manage to.'

You say that as one who can?'

'I can't manage to at all.'

Are you trying to say that I've wrecked your notions?'

'What I feel for you is more powerful than my ideas about how one should live.'

'You forgot to say: so far.'

Daniel says nothing.

When they finish their meal, Bára gets up and brings a box full of

photographs. She puts it on the table and starts to pull out pictures. This is her at the age of seven, and in this one she is sixteen. Her father. He's quite a snappy dresser — the photo is from the war years. 'That's Mum during the war too, a six-pointed star on her coat; it was yellow. Seemingly Jews were always marked out with the colour yellow; in the Middle Ages they made them wear yellow caps. Why yellow, when it's such a warm, sunny colour? Mum was always sunny, and still is.' The very young, beautiful woman is Bara's sister; this is the last photo of her, taken just a few weeks before she had the accident.

She takes out some old yellowing photographs showing her mothers parents before they were taken to Auschwitz. They are all here: her mothers two brothers and her sister some time at the beginning of the war.

'You never told me about them,' Daniel says.

'I never knew them. They were all killed before I was born. Only Mum survived and she doesn't like talking about them, because it's so terrible. But she still has their photographs on the wall at home. Grandad was a court clerk, Grandma had a tiny little grocery shop, but she gave too much credit and went bankrupt. I find it strange to talk about them as Grandad and Grandma, or about my uncles and aunt, as I never saw them alive. One of my uncles studied to be a doctor and married some girl from an awfully rich banking family. But the other one and his sister were still children and they were gassed straight away.'

'It was appalling.'

'For a long time Mum told me nothing about it and I had no inkling that anything of the kind had happened. When I was small I was more afraid of an atom bomb falling on us. Whenever I asked Mum about Grandma or her brothers, she would just say they'd died. Only later did she tell me about them. For me it was like hearing a horror story dreamt up by some totally demented Edgar Allan Poe — I hadn't heard of Hitchcock then. Only when the truth finally came home to me did I start to cry. I also started to feel really afraid that something similar could happen again.'

'It was appalling,' Daniel repeats. 'I was never able to come to terms with the thought that God could permit such a thing.'

Bára is suddenly filled with accumulated anger. Her husband told her that a soul is something she doesn't have and poured contempt on her, and now here is Daniel trying to persuade her that everything she

has been through, even what preceded it, all happened because of some higher will.

'What God? What are you talking about?'

Daniel seems to grow uneasy. 'God. There's only one God.'

'God, God,' Bára says, raising her voice, 'do you really think someone all-powerful and benevolent still rules over this world and looks on while people massacre each other and the brunt is borne by poor people who can't defend themselves? If there was any God he'd have to be a real bloody sadist!'

Daniel remains silent and she goes on to ask him if he really can't grasp that they were simply a triviality that just happened to appear in the universe for a split second.

'I wasn't intending to offend you,' Daniel says. 'I really wasn't.'

'I know you weren't. You just think that it's better to have a love that is certain when there is so little of it in the world.'

'Nothing is certain, either here or there,' he says.

'But there can be love here. Here it is in our power. Whereas there, there will most likely be nothing at all.' She gazes at him and stretches out her arms to him and he hugs her to him.

She leads him into the bedroom, sits him down in one of the small armchairs there, and orders him to wait a moment. In the chest of drawers she finds a night-dress with the inscription 'Love Me' in English (love gets written about on walls and on night-shirts) and goes to take a shower. When she returns she is a trifle nervous: although she has made love to Daniel so many times already, it has never been here in the room where for years she used to make love to her husband. So she quickly lights a cigarette and sits down on the edge of the divan opposite Daniel. Daniel gets up with the intention of going to the bathroom too, but she stops him. 'Don't go yet, please. Wait with me until I finish my cigarette.'

Daniel looks at her. She seems to sense devotion in his gaze. When was the last time someone looked at her like that?

A large oil painting of her husband hangs on the bedroom wall alongside photos of his buildings. Samuel is omnipresent here but Bára isn't thinking about that now. 'Do you really love me?'

'Yes.'

'Enough for you never to leave me?'

'Yes.'

'You'll leave me anyway. Everything comes to an end one day,

doesn't it!' She finishes her cigarette and when Daniel goes off to the bathroom she dims the light enough for the shadow to conceal all her wrinkles.

'I'm glad we're going to spend a whole night together,' she says when they are lying down together. 'Spending the night together is perhaps more than making love.'

7

Next morning, Daniel had to go to Plzeň to visit Petr.

He found an empty compartment on the train and sat down, full of Bara's kisses and caresses and the scent of her body.

They had slept for only a short while when he was awoken by her crying. He had asked her what was wrong.

She had had a terrible dream and now she was afraid. Afraid that her husband would die. Afraid that he, Daniel, would die and that she would die too. Life was senseless. It was badly devised. You were either unhappy and suffered or you were happy and afraid that everything would coma to an end.

He had taken her in his arms and she had begged him: Stay with me. Hold me tight. Don't forsake me! Then she had fallen asleep. He had felt an oppressive tiredness. The bridge that led across the dark pit ended on the brink of another dark pit. What was the point of seeking bridges that led nowhere anyway? Was life really just the outcome of a lottery run by nature? Just a cluster of incredibly complex proteins? Would everything come to an end? Our soul, this earth, the entire universe? And he, for most of his life, had merely cherished false hopes, and consoled himself and others with the news of the great, miraculous event of resurrection, an occurrence that overturned all the natural laws that had applied up till then?

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?

A lamp had been shining weakly in the corner of the bedroom so he had been able to make out that the room he was lying in was not his

home and the woman lying at his side was not his wife. He had been gripped by a strange feeling of uncertainty or even angst. As if someone had thrust him into an alien world, a tree in a foreign garden, a landlubber in a wobbly coracle or a sailor in the desert. He had got up and tiptoed out of the room, finding the toilet in the dark. Then he had drifted around the strange house for a while. The emptiness of the universe had stared out at him from the abstract paintings that covered the walls. One of the houses inhabitants had placed a model of some lofty and extremely concrete hangar in a glass case. A desk was strewn with rough drafts of plans, as well as several journals. He had picked up the topmost one. Discovering Modernist Art in Catalonia.

He had leafed through it nervously, registering in passing the bizarre shapes of buildings in coloured photographs: Casa Vicens, Casa Batdó, Palau Guell, Casa Lleó Morera. . He had put the journal down again and closed his eyes for a moment.

It was an alien world. Six billion people. Six billion separate worlds. What were the chances that the one he had entered into a relationship with, maybe by accident, maybe by divine guidance, would turn out to be friendly? What if the woman on whose account he was staking everything he had lived by so far had really driven her husband to that desperate action? How could he have agreed to make love to her in a suicide s bed? How could he believe in the totality of her love, knowing that she was deceiving another man?

Because he is a foolish clergyman, who has more experience of Scripture than of women and childishly believes that his vocation is to believe!

From somewhere a carillon could be heard, no doubt sounding the hour. It was six in the morning.

When had he returned, Bára had been sitting on the bed. 'Something up?'

'No, nothing.' What did it mean that this woman had first appeared at the very moment his mother was leaving the world?

'Don't you like being with me any more?'

'What makes you ask?'

'You're looking at me so strangely.'

'It's the unfamiliarity, that's all. I'm not accustomed to seeing you the moment I wake up.'

'Do you find me frightful in the morning?'

'I never find you frightful.'

'I hope not.' She had let him embrace her but then had pushed him away. 'You've got your prisoner to go and see and I must go to the hospital.'

'First thing this morning?'

'I must go to the hospital,' she had repeated, 'and sort out lots of other things. You forget I also have a job, and I'm a mother and a wife.'

He couldn't understand her. She cared for her husband with the selfsame devotion with which she had made love to him a few hours ago. It didn't perturb her to make love to him while her husband was lying in a mental hospital. Was she callous or just desperate? Perhaps her husband had hurt her so much that she felt free to heed the promptings of her heart. Or perhaps this was natural behaviour, the way that most men and women behave, and it was only that he had never suspected it till now, because he had lived in the artificial, long-abandoned world of biblical commandments?

'Do you love your husband?' he had asked, when they were sitting at breakfast.

'Don't parrot my questions!'

'Sorry.'

'I'll tell you the dream I had last night.' She had briskly cut and buttered some bread. 'Do you like honey?'

'I'll have what you have. Are you going to tell me that dream?'

'Dream? Oh, yes, the one that gave me a fright. Wait a mo, I must try and remember the beginning. Oh, yes. I was walking along a road; it was in the country, where we have our country seat, and all of a sudden I saw an overturned motorcycle at the side of the road and alongside it a headless human body — the head was lying on the ground a little way off. But living eyes were staring at me from that head and when they caught sight of me, the head started to speak, begging me to save it. And I dashed back like a wild thing to the village post office and shouted at them to call for an ambulance, that there was a man lying there in need of help. In the dream I believed that the head could be joined back on to the body, but the women sitting there gossiping weren't perturbed in the least, they just pushed a telephone in my direction and told me to call whoever I liked. When I managed to get through to the hospital and tell them I'd found a head without a body and a body without a head and they had to come and help quickly, the doctor said to me — and I remember it word for

word — "I fear, madam, that it will be too late, we don't resuscitate the dead."'

'A strange dream.'

'Why strange? All I've got left of Sam is his head which has achieved things I have great regard for. And I don't want to accept that a head without a body is dead and can't be saved. That's the way it is with my love for him, seeing that you asked.'

She had accompanied him all the way to the station and on to the platform. 'So we won't see each other again today?' she had asked, as if she had only just realized that he was leaving. They had kissed, but she had stayed waiting on the platform until the train had pulled away.

He opened the window, letting in a gust of cold air full of smoke, soot and poisonous fumes, and leaned out to cool his forehead.

Then he sat back in the corner and closed his eyes. I ought to focus my thoughts on the prison visit: what am I going to tell that lad? Am I to cheer him up or reprimand him for letting me down and tell him he can no longer count on my help? His thoughts didn't obey him. He was unable to tear himself away from the previous night, from his own promises, from the caresses that his body could still feel.

How long ago was it since he first set eyes on that lad among the inmates? Petr had aroused his interest because of the rapt attention with which he followed his message about a forgiving Lord who calls to Himself all those who are pure in heart.

That time, two years ago, he still had some enthusiasm and strength and could impart it to others. Or perhaps he thought he had some, and thought he could impart it. When he baptized Petr, he believed he had managed to wrest one victim from the clutches of Satan. And he had said as much to the lad, even though for Daniel, Satan was just a pictorial expression of the fall into the void, into the dark pit, where nothingness reigns. When he formally pronounced the words: Petr Koubek, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, he noticed the lad starting to shake with emotion and saw a tear roll down his cheek.

But apparently he had been wrong about him and about himself.

Perhaps he had only imagined his strength. Perhaps he had only imagined his faith — he had simply needed it to give his actions a goal

and lend meaning to his life, to cover up the emptiness that terrified him.

Faith could offer an escape from reality, from the cold indifference of the universe, from the cruelty of the world and from life's sufferings, in the same way that drugs or love could.

'He wants to help people,' his daughter had said about Petr. Help people find an escape from reality. From the cold indifference of the universe. Etcetera.

If I accept that, in what way do I differ from that lad, whom I should console and try to wrest once more from Satan's grasp? What kind of moral relativism will I end up in?

Less than two hours later he was sitting opposite Petr in the visiting room, where cheap curtains sought to conceal the bars. Daniel passed him a parcel of food and a few books that Eva had chosen for him. But he did not let on who had wrapped the parcel or chosen the books.

Petr was pallid but didn't seem to be low in spirits. Everything he had done, he now asserted, he had done in a good cause. Nothing in the world could be achieved without money, not even spreading the faith in the saving power of the Holy Spirit. He had already come to an agreement with some of his new friends — he'd better not mention their names here — that they would start to publish a magazine and he had promised to get them a few thousand at least to get it off the ground, for paper and printing. Once they had started selling the magazine, everything would have been different. He had tried to explain that to the people who interrogated him, but there were so many ex-Communists among them and they hated any mention of God's work. In fact they enjoyed obstructing it.

'If you think,' Daniel interrupted him, 'that you were doing God's work, then you're very much mistaken.'

Petr was ready for that reproach. 'So what about those who were doing God's work and were tortured or burnt at the stake as heretics?'

'You're not being prosecuted because of your beliefs but because you sold drugs.'

'That was only a beginning, Reverend. It was necessary if I was to show people they had to believe. Mankind is on the wrong path and Satan is leading it to destruction.'

Daniel said nothing. Petr's words echoed around the room: as empty, wretched and hollow as this place with its curtain-covered bars.

It was strange how for years he had striven to spread belief in a Saviour who rose from the dead and could resurrect others, and had never before doubted that the belief was good and that therefore he was doing good, and rejoiced over every single person he managed to persuade to listen and reflect. But what if he had been wrong throughout his life and the belief was neither positive nor negative? What if it was conducive to good and evil alike, in the same way that, as so often in the past, what was said in its name could be life-giving or deadly, hollow or meaningful, helpful or despicable. Was it possible to murder in its name and help the sick?

'But Reverend, you know me, don't you? You know I've taken the path to a new life, and what I did I did to guide to that path everyone who is looking for it.'

He felt like shouting at him to hold his tongue, and stop yelling about his great plans, that they were simply a means of trying to cover up his contemptible behaviour. But he wasn't here to accuse Petr. He had lost the need to reproach him for letting him down, and could not find in himself sufficient conviction to trust him again, or convince him of anything.

When they were saying goodbye, Petr asked him to take his best wishes to Eva, but he pretended not to hear the request. Anyway, there was nothing to stop him writing her letters should he wish.

He left the prison. Large snowflakes were flying through the air. It seemed to him that they were a dirty grey colour even before they reached the ground. Maybe they only looked that way to him. It occurred to him that his decision, after the revolution, to visit the prisons and try to save prisoners' souls, was maybe just a sign of overweening pride.

8 Letters

Dearest Dan,

I am so filled with you, and so desperate to talk to you (and when we're logether there's never time for anything — why must one eat and sleep?)

that I will pour my heart out to you through the computer at least. But fear not, there'll be no blood on the paper, just ink (my printer runs on ink).

It's odd how in spite of having death so near to me I am unable to perceive it as something real. I perceive it with my intellect, but not with my entire being. As if I was most aware of death at moments that seem unconnected with it. Such as when love or enthusiasm die, or if I say to myself: that's nothing new. Maybe it's because I was in a kind of shock and didn't have time to take in what had happened as something real. Now that I'm gradually getting over it, I feel an intense sorrow. I can't help thinking that life is so fragile, and the boundary between when someone is alive and when they turn into a corpse destined for nothing but decay is such a fine line and so hard to be aware of, that we can cross it at any moment, without warning and without a farewell.

We will all die. We are no more than flowers that wilt, for instance, or animals that die.

Perhaps I'm sad because people are being nice to me, while the man that I devoted most of my care, my time, my energy and my life to wants to hurt me, wants to bring me to my knees even if he has to die in the attempt. Now I've realized how cunningly he dreamed up his revenge (for what, dear God, for what?). Either he'd survive — which he definitely hoped he would — and I'd have to live with the permanent threat that he would do it again, or he wouldn't survive and he would burden me for ever with guilt by making a murderess of me. It was his intention to bring me to my knees, not to kill himself. If he had really wanted to kill himself, he has a revolver at home. All he had to do was take it out, place it to his head and press the trigger. Except that that would… I won't talk about it any more.

Darling, I'm so miserable that when I wake up in the morning I wonder whether I ought to get up at all, whether there is any sense in living. But then I remember the children, my mother and you, and think to myself that you might be sorry if I wasn't around, so I get up and keep going.

I thought about you today, how I woke up yesterday to find you there. I ask myself whether I really deserve you and persuade myself that I do, but the very next moment I am unable to figure out why you love me. I think about the worth of a person and what is important in life. I think about the fact that no one has ever been so kind to me as you. I'll never get used to it, I'll

never take it for granted. It will always remain a miracle and an honour, a favour, a whim of fate, maybe an accident, but in that case the accident is God or his mercy (see how you've already trapped me in your web?), in other words, something I didn't dare believe in, but must have been heading towards, after all. He made me a gift of you even though it went against his own Commandments, and his gift will last as long as I deserve it. I don't mean as a reward for anything specific, I mean a reward that won't ever be assessed, let alone enumerated or named. Maybe it will be for as long as I remain pure, hopeful, undemanding, unselfish, and believing that only pure love gives life meaning. Our love cannot be impure, even though, in the eyes of the holy joes and all the rest who aren't capable of it, all love-making is impure. You're incomparable and I thank the Lord God that he led me to you. If ever again I had the right to choose the man I'd like to live with, you would be the one.

Love, Bára

Dear Bára,

Last night, the moon was shining a day after full moon, and it was strangely veiled as if behind a luminous, translucent curtain. (The Manicheans apparently believed that the sun and moon go dark because they use a special veil in order not to see the cosmic battle.) Yesterday Magda said to me: It's amazing how fast the moon moves. It's moved a whole chunk in just a little while. I said: But it has to circle the earth in a single day. And her comment was: It moves terribly slowly then. I said: It's because it's a long way away. Things that are a long way away appear to move slowly even when they are flying at the speed of light.

You're a long way away. To be in the same town and yet so far from each other. When you're close, when we are together, time flies at the speed of light, because the distance is in fact still there and the imminence of parting weighs on the short moment of togetherness. When I can't see you, time drags by like a night on the rack. I wanted to tell you not to become downhearted. I can understand that you have death on your mind, but death is part of life. 'Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil,' for He is with me. I share your suffering and think of you constantly.

You write that sometimes you wake up in the morning and wonder whether there is any sense in living and that it helps you to think of those who

would be sad at losing you. It is undoubtedly important to know that there are people who love you so much that it would be extremely hard for them to live without you, but all the same, you ought to live because you yourself need to live, because you rejoice in the gift of life. And a woman like you certainly has no need to justify her existence in terms of how many people would miss her.

I'm not sure whether our love can be completely pure, but I do know that I love you.

Love, D.

P.S. You write that I am incomparable. I'm not. But you are! You're amazing, I've never known and couldn't even imagine a woman like you. It's as if you were a distillation of all creatures, as if you were a composition by Bach and Beethoven together.

Dearest love,

I'm sad again today. Why? Because I don't lead a virtuous life? Because you don't think I have a pure heart? Because there is always some new source of worry? After all, I could just as easily shout from the rooftops that I am happy because I've found you.

Or can I be happily sad?

I was with Sam today, as I am every day. At least they have managed to dispel some of his low spirits and he is in his usual form again, so that he is able — and eager — to domineer me. And in two days' time he'll be back home already, and that means he can domineer over me day and night. I drove home from the hospital in the dark with a whole line of cars coming in the opposite direction. It was Sunday evening and I said to myself the main thing is to get there and not think about what is going to happen.

I heard again for the umpteenth time that I am the cause of everything bad in his life. What he did was on account of me; apparently he was toying with the idea for at least a year. Twelve months ago I hadn't even met you, twelve months ago I was running around after him and trying to get at least a smile out of him, seeing that he no longer wanted the slightest physical contact with me. By then I simply served as a lightning conductor for him, always to hand, a dustbin to take all the refuse, a sewer for all the slops.

That's what it had been like for all the previous years, as a WOMAN, that was all I was good for and nothing else.

The trouble was that I started to find it too little, I emancipated myself, and that hadn't been agreed on. I liberated myself and there was nothing about it in the marriage contract. I'm a different person from the one he first knew, and that's not on, really. So either I have to be the way he wants me to be or it is necessary for one of us to disappear from the other's life. He wanted to leave for good but I stopped him. So today he offered me a divorce. Or was it separation? Since I already know something about the scenes from my own married life, and therefore know that I am required to serve as the one on whom all the depression, the anxiety and fear are poured out, I don't take it seriously. Were I to take it seriously, he really would try to take his own life. At the same time I'm happy to be of service if it lets him get it off his chest, but sometimes I give into the feeling that I'm human too. That I too have anxieties, I too would like to be weak and not have to play the strong man. I know that's how I can be when I'm with you. But you're a long way away. No, I'm not complaining. I even believe that your loving ubiquity will last precisely because I'm actually of no use to you, because I am not at home with you — by which I mean we don't have a home together. At home I was always there to be used, always ready and waiting, arranging everything and doing the necessary. I was as useful as the sewer that takes in everything.

There used to be a saying that a woman's skirts hide all sins. Except that instead of a skirt I am strapped into a bottomless dustbin. But the rubbish and the muck doesn't come out, it sticks to my body. Can't you smell it when I'm in your arms? Are you willing to hug me in spite of it?

I don't even know how many of the tablets he took. In fact, he could have put those bottles on the table empty. And the farewell note could have been part of the game, part of the blackmail he thought up in order to drag me to him and bind me hand and foot, because that's what he was after, not to give me my freedom.

I'm gradually coming to the realization that it was all dreamed up to ensnare me. Now I'll be systematically blackmailable, which means he'll blackmail me. I know I don't accept it, but I also know that I mustn't upset him, I mustn't say what I think or feel, seeing that I'm almost a murderer, even though I spent fifteen years believing that my life's number one task was to care for him at home and ensure a sense of security, sharing and

happiness. I don't understand why I let myself be manipulated, blackmailed and driven to tears. After all, I know I can take care of myself, that I don't have to ask anyone for anything. Inside me there are some toxins from my past that I can't remove. I used to be bewitched, spellbound. I wanted to serve body and soul, soul and body. I knew I was demeaning myself, trampling on my own dignity, so why has it lasted? I know that Sam is dependent on my love and care, and for my part I'm dependent on his whip.

So there I was driving along in the car and suddenly I felt like stepping on the accelerator and driving straight into a wall or a street lamp and putting an end to it all, but then I remembered you. You've told me so many times that you love me and have provided practical proof of it. That means that I am possibly a lovable person. And so I drove on with the thought that I must go on living. I would simply like to know: Why is it men are so weak? You aren't. Maybe it's because you have your faith, or quite simply you were born that way. So I can rely on you for a little while. Or on myself perhaps. Or on God, who you're persuading me exists and never forsakes one. Or maybe on some vital force that I can feel within me, which does not allow me to perish, but enables me to love. I'd also like to love the one who destroys me, who brings me down, takes my self-esteem and does not value me. I love him as a human being who is suffering, who will die and won't be here any more.⁴ But how am I to love him as a man, when he is so weak and dependent that he uses it to blackmail me, when he is so grudging and unloving? But loving someone as a human being is not the same as loving someone as a man. And I'm nothing when I don't have a man to love. When I love a man I know I'm alive. I love you and I'm not sure if I'll be good enough for you: not now when I'm getting over the shock, but in general. Sometimes I feel that I'm worn out and no one could want me any more and I don't deserve anyone. My darling, don't be cross with me for pouring out my sad heart to you and writing to you at sixes and sevens. Before I finish I want to tell you how I've taken you into my life as someone who is mine — who belongs to me more than one could expect after just six months. You are mine because I feel that you love me. Like my mother. For myself alone. I'm cuddling you, missing you, crying over you, loving you, believing you. You're the best man of my life. Really.

Love, Bára

P.S. Monday a.m. Last night I wailed about myself, but I don't like feeble self-pity. I want to tell you that I am happy on account of my love for you.

Now the sun has come out again, a spider has crocheted me a lovely web in the lounge that is a real architectural achievement. (What will the poor thing eat now there are no more flies around?) The day is beautiful. And so is life.

Don't cry, little girl, don't cry,

And don't despair. Your husband is more despairing because he feels that the order he was accustomed to is crumbling (it is something that is happening to all of us but we have to find the strength to endure it) and in addition, he has heard death knocking on the front door. He felt lonely and still does. And he blames that loneliness on you. It would require great wisdom for him not to try using force to extort what he wants. You say yourself that men tend to be weaker and neither weakness nor despair are conducive to wisdom. A person in despair makes fatal mistakes and acts foolishly and self-destructively. Don't ascribe evil intentions when someone is shaking with despair. Despair has no logic or rational cause, in this it is akin to love or hate or any other emotion.

You haven't told me much about your life but one thing I've understood is that you wanted an outstanding man at your side. What you failed to realize is that men who have achieved something tend to be engrossed with themselves; they follow their own goal and don't look around themselves much. They want to be cosseted and praised, they require obedience and service. I expect that was and is your experience, which is why you praise me so much and apologize for not being of service to me. Why ever should you be? One can't serve another's interest and will and live and create at the same time. If two people want to live together they must give up at least some of their selfishness, in fact it is a major opportunity for people to prove their ability to love selflessly. If they're not capable of it, or if one of them isn't, it is generally bad for both. Those that felt themselves the centre of the universe suddenly discover that they have been left all on their own, but they rarely admit their fault. Instead they start to lament or blame their companions. But there's no reason for you to be depressed. You're not alone, it's just that your cross sometimes weighs you down. Nobody's going to forsake you. Even your husband got into such a panic at the thought of losing you that he made up his mind to do what he did.

It's late now. Outside it's a starry night even here in Prague and I'm still

affected by your letter. I'm thinking of you and am beginning to understand that the praise that you heap on me so often and which seems to me unmerited I am actually hearing on behalf of someone else. It is someone else that you're constantly apologizing to, someone else you're trying to explain to that he is marvellous, whereas you are no rose of Sharon, no lily of the valley, no turtle dove in the cleft of the rock, but nothing, the dust of the earth to be walked on. You do it in the hope of receiving mercy at last. Dearest, you are the cause of your own suffering, you give rise to a situation in which the one who should be thanking you is angry instead, and the one who does the giving also does the thanking. And I have the feeling that the scar on your wrist is not your only one, nor the most important one for that matter: the main one is inside, in your heart, in your mind, in your soul. Somewhere in that scar, in that wound, is the root of why so often you feel you would like to end your existence, end your life, to escape. Those who are denied the right to an equal share of love (as they see it) are affected in the very ground of their being.

For me you remain a rare treasure, a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley, a dove in a cleft of the rock, where I would always come to find you and hold you in the palm of my hand, so that you should know you are worthy of love.

Love, D.

Dear Reverend,

I am sending you these two roses which have miraculously flowered with many thanks for the words you said at my dear Betty's grave. If she could have heard them and still been able to understand them, she would have wept with emotion the way I did. Even though I'm a pagan, Reverend, and the only thing I believe is that we are dust and to dust we will return, I'm grateful to you that you bring some dignity to that departure from this world. There is nothing worse than an assembly line ceremony and I am sure that you would render me the same service.

When I entered the greenhouse this morning for the first time since the day she died, I came and gave the sad news to all the flowers. You might not even be aware that my late wife had a very special relationship with them and she was endowed with a great power. Whenever the roses started to wilt or when they didn't come into flower, she would come and talk to them

or sing them a song and the roses would perk up and a few days later would blossom abundantly, and the same applied to other flowers too.

Now we've been left on our own, motherless orphans, but I can look after myself. In the final months I had to take care of Betty too when she was unable to look after herself any longer.

When she was still alive, you mentioned that you were looking for a room for that lad who's staying with you. I've got plenty of room here and he wouldn't even have to pay anything. What need have I for money? I only hope there won't be any problems with him like with that Petr Koubek, although even he parted company with us peacefully. On the other hand, at least I wouldn't be alone in the flat and I don't want to think about a woman in place of my Betty. I'm too old to change my ways now.

The roses are a hybrid tea called Bettina. I grew them on account of their name and they used to love her. Whenever she walked among them they would bow their heads to her. Once more, please accept my thanks.

Respectfully yours,

Břetislav Houdek

Dear Dan

The first thing Samuel did when he came back from the mental hospital was to lay into me verbally: I didn't have enough fresh bread at home and water had been splashed in the bathroom (Saša had taken a shower in the morning). I was told that life with me is quite simply unbearable because I constantly force him to concern himself with crap. I'm not sure whether the crap is supposed to be me or whether he meant it figuratively, but quite simply I drag him down with banalities. I had, of course, scrubbed the place from top to bottom and done the shopping as if expecting a visit from the President himself. This was his response to my efforts, and at moments like that something inside me rebels and I cease wanting to live.

I have to admit that after Samuel's scene I took myself off and visited my tarot reader. And she read it all: suffering and illness in the family, but what was most important of all was the location of the king of hearts which led my card reader to utter: You have a big love on the way. Not on the way, I said, it's here already!

I'm happy. I've met you. You are the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. In a lasting sense too, I believe. And that's coming from someone who every minute of her life thinks about finite things. The joy you bring me is pure; it is unsullied by doubt, lack of trust or fear — or, you may be surprised to hear, by pangs of conscience.

When I fell in love with my husband, I believed there would never again be anyone who would mean more to me. I valued the fact that something like that had happened to me. In the end it all came to naught. How naive it is to think that something is going to last, that it will be the same at the end as at the beginning. Is it a failure? Is it a defeat? I still believe that love outlives everything and it can last. I know that as long as I live I shall love, as long as I breathe my heart will yearn for deep, complete feeling.

I write about my heart — what sort of an animal is it?

My love, I want to deserve you and I don't know how. I have the feeling I do nothing for you. I just am, and in addition, I complain all the time. I serve a husband who destroys me and whom I fear, and do nothing for you whom I love and who are kind to me. I'm afraid of losing you if I do nothing for you. I just keep asking you all the time: Keep me for a little while longer, for as long as destiny or your God allows, for as long as we're happy that we have each other, for as long as the miracle lasts. We won't be hurting anyone that way, will we? We'll just have a little extra…

(A day later. I had to stop writing yesterday. Sam wanted me to discuss his state of health with him.)

I have something to boast to you about. Now that I myself decide what I do, I took the opportunity to design an interior for a rich Czech American who has come back here to do business. Complete décor for seven rooms. I asked him today whether he liked real wood and he said: Sure! I sometimes work with a little firm in a village that is not very far from Prague, and they are capable of making furniture according to my design from any wood that is available. A miracle! So I thought about you, and the fact you like wood too and that your grandfather worked with it. You carve it and I venerate it at least. I love wood, in fact: its smell, its colour, its grain. I just don't understand how anyone can put a piece of plastic, tubing or chipwood in their home. For that American's living room I designed some bird-armchairs, a bit like herons standing on one leg with their long necks. I like storks, herons and flamingos (I'll show you the designs when I see you). I was so het up about doing

something decent that I enjoy doing, that I couldn't get to sleep. Now it's two in the morning and I'm thinking about you. You're the most loving person on earth, someone from another — a better — world. (Maybe it's because in your world Jesus reigns instead of male selfishness.) You even managed to write an understanding letter about my husband. It is against your nature, as it is against mine, to harm somebody, to do anything artful or malevolent.

But I still think I deserve you and at this moment it is the peak of my self-confidence, because to deserve it is necessary to be pure, kind and good-hearted.

When we were sitting in Veltrusy Park recently I was calmly and serenely happy in a trusting and devoted way. The heavens opened up for me. There was only now. There was only you. The poisons that contaminate my soul had drifted away. And the poisons that you smelt in the air are nothing compared to the poisons that infest the soul.

What I feel for you is a trust that is so complete that it might be something like faith. It seems to me that someone who believes in God feels something akin to what I feel for you. So through you I have come to understand what is felt by someone who believes intrinsically, i.e. something I have never really experienced. Don't protest! I'm not comparing you to God Almighty, it's just that human beings, including Jesus Christ, were always closer to me than some abstract God. I believe you. You are my security. With you I don't even fear death. You've turned me into a queen, i.e. a relatively self-aware person, who would otherwise have a tendency to fall into the depths of doubt about herself. Forgive me all my weaknesses and inadequacies, all my omissions, and ascribe them not to the selfishness of my soul but to the extreme weight of the burden I have rashly accepted as my fate. I don't want one day to regret not having done everything I could for you. Oh, God! What am I to do? I love you. I love you.

Bára

Dear Dan, my unholy brother,

Well, your recent letter about you falling in love knocked me sideways, I must say. As your sister I ought to have understanding for you, but as a married woman I ought, on the contrary, to be cross. Since I am both, I understand you, but I don't share your enthusiasm for your new feelings.

Not at all because it is inappropriate for a man of your calling — to hell with the calling and the good Lord has better things to do than worry about your philandering. But to two-time your wife, who trusts you and stood by you even in the bad times, giving you two children and also caring for Eva, is simply disgusting. I'm surprised at you and I don't know this person you describe.

No doubt like all unfaithful husbands you have plenty of good excuses for your behaviour: the other woman is more interesting, younger, she understands you better and is on the same wavelength, she attracts you and adores you (that's something you men are suckers for). You experience something unique and incomparable with her and moreover she needs you because, like you, she fails to find understanding at home. But surely you're not too infatuated to see that it's a bit hackneyed.

You say you don't expect any advice, so I'll refrain from telling you off like an older sister — it would make no sense anyway. Perhaps you're not entirely to blame. You've inherited Dad's inconstancy and even though you tried to escape it through your vocation, it caught up with you anyway.

Of course I wish for you to enjoy the few years remaining to you on this earthly roundabout as much as you can. It's up to you to decide what is best for your happiness or for you to feel good, and I just hope that your God preserves your mental balance.

With kisses and a tweak of the ear,

Love, Rút

Dear Bára,

You write that you're afraid of losing me because you do nothing for me. But I expect no service from you. After all, the only way you can bind another person to you is by love. All other bonds can be broken, and most of all they feel like chains. In most cases, people want everything from their partners, but as the proverb wisely puts it: He who wants everything usually has nothing. People have only the right to want things from themselves. Except that people expect things anyway. They expect caresses, kind words, understanding and companionship. They even hope that they won't be forsaken.

People read about the history of the universe over billions of years and most of the time they can't even cope with their own allotted span. I look forward to time with you: it is a time of fullness. I love you and trust you.

Love, Dan