The Ultimate Intimacy

Chapter Eight

l

Spring is only just beginning. It is raining and a cold wind is blowing; and there are reports of snow in the mountains.

An ex-minister and his daughter have been killed in an avalanche in the Tatras. The billboards display an advertisement of a crucified naked woman. A poll has shown that four-fifths of the country's citizens want euthanasia, and skinheads have been demonstrating for the return of capital punishment. Is a new multi-storey hotel to be built on the embankment and transform the panorama of Old Prague?

Daniel and Bára are sitting together in the bedsitter at Červený vrch and discussing events that are extraneous or at least have no direct bearing on themselves. Until very recently, their favourite topic of conversation was love, but now they each have their own worries and they try to mask them with talk. In a few days' time it will be a year since Daniel's mother died, a year since the day he first set eyes on the woman now sitting opposite him.

They both try not to think about the bad things or about the difficulties that they face in the world outside this incubator they have created for their meetings.

Daniel has brought Bára a bunch of roses and an art nouveau glass from which she is now sipping wine.

'Why this goblet?'

'Because you came to see me that time.'

'I came on my own account.'

'But you helped me.'

'How?'

Yes, how? 'To think more about life and stop being miserable and brooding on death!' he says.

'I came because I was miserable and was brooding on death. I found you attractive — ' she then says, ' — you preached about love and I felt you were searching for it like me.'

He kisses her for those words but finds himself unable to rejoice in her love as he did only a few weeks ago. Too much has collapsed around them. To get closer to her he has to struggle through the ruins.

Bára mentions that her friend Helena is getting a divorce.

'Why?'

'Her engineer is a drunkard and she couldn't stand being with him any more. And she has fallen in love.'

'Who with?'

'It's immaterial,' Bára says. 'She simply wishes to be with the one she loves.'

Her announcement contains an implicit reproach. 'Everyone's divorcing,' Bára adds.

'Do you think we should too?'

'Maybe we should, but we won't.'

They quickly finish off the bottle of wine — they have little time. Then they make love. Making love at least distances them for a moment from the world in which they move for the remainder of the day, for the remaining days, and they may quietly speak words of love.

Afterwards Bára bursts into tears.

'What's up, my love?'

But Bára shakes her head. She doesn't want to burden him with her concerns, she knows he has enough worries of his own.

'I don't have any worries when I'm with you.'

'I'm happy too when I'm with you. These are my only moments of happiness.'

'But you're crying.'

'I'm crying because I have so little time with you. Because I don't know what to do now. . Sweetheart, I'm so disheartened, so miserable and you won't protect me, all you do is lure me to you, and then you turn me out into the cold wind.'

Daniel says nothing. Then he asks if there has been any change at home.

Bára tells him that Sam mostly says nothing. He takes tablets and that calms him slightly. It looks as if he might have got over his

insane notion about the reincarnated murderess; Bára has locked the pistol in her own desk and he has not come looking for the weapon, even though he's sure to have noticed its disappearance. He hasn't apologized but behaves as if he could remember nothing of that mad scene when he wanted to shoot her. Perhaps he really can't. But he constantly makes it plain that Bára is his misfortune. She disrupts the order of his life, creates commotion and neglects her duties.

'He's sick,' Daniel says.

'Don't I know it. And he always will be.'

'Shouldn't he be in an institution?'

'I'm hardly going to send my husband to a loony bin, am I? I've seen the inside of one myself and I know what it means. Death would be better than that.'

'Do you want to leave him?'

'Are you, a pastor, advising me to walk out on a sick man?'

'I'm not giving you any advice. I simply asked what you intend to do.'

'You ask me things instead of being with me and saving me. Tell me, why aren't you with me?'

Daniel remains silent. He knows that either he ought not to be lying at her side or he ought to be with her completely. He has gone too far in adopting her comforting, and seemingly comfortable, assertion that there is no such thing as either/or in life. In reality there are situations in which people simply find excuses because they can't make up their minds and such indecision destroys both them and those around them. He has known that since the outset, but he accepted this offer of escape from responsibility because it let him put off the decision, because it allowed him to rejoice in his new love without having to draw the conclusions which he feared.

'I know,' Bára says as usual, 'you can't be with me when I'm with Sam. And I can't abandon him because he's mentally ill. And it'll be like that till the end. Tell me, don't you think it's terrible that I'll have to put up with this torture for the rest of my life? Do you think it can be endured?'

Daniel says nothing.

'I always thought I could put up with anything because I'm strong, but these days it sometimes occurs to me that it will drive me round the bend. Tell me, will God take into account the fact that I stayed with a tormenting husband solely to nurse him?'

'No,' he says.

'Why?' she asks in surprise.

'God has other worries. And anyway you don't stay with your husband.'

Bára almost leaps up. 'That's rich coming from you! Why don't you tell me like he does that I torment him and am driving him into his grave!'

Daniel says nothing.

'You're like all the rest,' Bára yells at him. 'You teach and preach and prattle about love instead of doing something about it. For you, a woman is good for only one thing. Go away, go away, go away, I don't want you any more.' And she starts to sob.

Daniel puts his arms around her and holds her head in his hands, kissing her and telling her he loves her.

At that moment it strikes him that he has already overstepped the limit anyway. He has been treading a completely different path to those in his entire previous life. It's simply a matter of acknowledging it and stopping pretending to himself and to his nearest and dearest. Who is the pretence intended for most of all, who does he lie to most of all? He is too attached to this woman, he has steered his course by her for almost a year now and there is no turning back. He says, 'If you like, I'll stay with you.'

'How do you mean?'

'Exactly what I say.'

'You'll abandon your wife and children?'

He says nothing, but doesn't deny it.

'You're crazy,' she says. 'And what will I do with Sam? Am I supposed to kill him, or what? I told you I can't walk out on a sick man.'

'I'm not asking you to.' And he realizes that Bára will never leave her husband. She will stay with Samuel not because he is sick nor because she has a son by him, she'll stay with him because in a strange way she is bound to him: because of her long years of devotion, because of her fear of him and for him, and because of an unquenchable longing to win back his favour and his love. None of that will change, not even when she's in the arms of Daniel. It wouldn't even change if Samuel were to beat her or shoot at her.

'My poor dear love,' Bára says. 'I know I'm awful. I don't know what I want. No — I know I'd like to be with you, but I know it's

impossible. In the end I'll ruin everyone's lives, including yours. You were better off a year ago. You had no need to add my worries to your own.'

'That year of my life has meant more to me than you can ever imagine,' he says. 'In spite of all the worries.'

'So don't forsake me yet. Bear with me for a little while longer.'

She pulls him down into her abyss, into her dark pit, where the only light comes from her dark eyes. She hugs him, they hug each other and he promises her he'll never leave her.

Before they part they make a date for the following Monday as usual.

Everything is as it was, except that he has the added burden of a promise.

2

Diary excerpts

The house is fall of workmen. They are knocking down partition walls, pulling up floors, replacing window frames, making conduits for new wiring. In one of the rooms I pulled up the floor myself and cut out a hole for the cables.

'You don't want to be doing that, Reverend, ' the foreman told me. 'That's our job and they'll put it on your bill anyway. '

I told him I was doing it for enjoyment's sake not to save money.

In fact I was doing it to take my mind off things and to tire out my body. It's a relief just to have to think about keeping strictly to the plan when cutting a hole in a wall. And it's easier to get to sleep at night when your body's weary.

I observe Hana who is fall of vitality and looking forward to her new work. I realize that I love her. I'm capable of leaving her for a while, but I couldn't abandon her. I think about the other woman and realize that I am capable of being without her most of the time, but I couldn't abandon her either.

The awareness of my duplicity is a constant torment to me, but what if it is simply the human lot? Maybe we have confined our nature with

more commandments than we are able to fulfil and then we torment ourselves with feelings of guilt.

I was surprised to find Eva singing a lot just lately and playing happy tunes on the piano, such as Janacek's Nursery Rhymes. 'I'm playing to him, of course, 'she told me, indicating her tummy that is already swelling slightly.

We have the same conversation over and over again. She believes that as soon as Petr returns from prison he will begin a new life. Petr has promised her. He writes her long letters every week, she even reads out some sentences from them: a whole lot of beautiful phrases, promises and resolutions. Eva thinks Petr will feel responsibility for the child. After all, he suffered so much himself from not having a father and growing up without love.

Perhaps. What is more likely is that he will take fright at the responsibility and flee from it, either literally or metaphorically. She oughtn't to forget that drugs weren't his only escape, he also made several attempts at suicide.

She explains to me that he was unhappy. Nobody loved him.

We end up with me trying to persuade her not to marry him, but to wait and see how he'll behave after his release, when action will be needed, not words. Talking is easy, I told her, it's living that is terribly difficult sometimes.

But that goes for everyone, she objected.

I said nothing. It goes for me too, of course.

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

Alois announced to me that he would like to marry Marika. 'What would you say to it, Reverend?'

I told him it mainly depended on the two of them and I asked him whether they were having to get married. Alois assured me this was not the case, but that they loved each other.

If you love each other and think you're old enough, why not?

He told me the main reason he was asking me was whether it mattered. . for a moment he was lost for words, but then remembered what some of his mates from the building site had told him. He said they laughed at him for going with a gypsy girl and prophesied that they would have thieves for children.

I convinced him that was nonsense. That cheered him up.

Then I asked him about the date, and he replied: some time next month, but we haven't agreed on an actual day yet.

I almost envied him his easy-going, irreproachable love.

Nietzsche in chapter 42 of Antichrist: 'The type of the redeemer, the doctrine, the practice, the death, the meaning of the death, even the sequel to the death — nothing was left untouched, nothing was left bearing even the remotest resemblance to reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that entire existence beyond this existence — in the lie of the "resurrected" Jesus. In fact he could make no use at all of the Redeemers life — he needed the death on the Cross. . ' And in chapter 43: 'If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the 'Beyond'— into nothingness — one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct — all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering, all that holds a guarantee of the future of the instincts henceforth excites mistrust. '

Every lie destroys one's soul. If everything we believe in is a lie what happens to our soul then?

My father would have said: The soul? No such thing. All we have is a brain — a higher nervous system. And the brain is the first thing to rot after death.

Martin called me to ask if I'd heard about the death of Jaroslav Berger, the Secretary for Church Affairs in the district we were both exiled to for a time. I hadn't heard about his death. From time to time he would call me in for a ticking-off. 'Reverend Vedra, you are in breach of our laws. You're welcome to preach the Bible, but don't go addling people's brains, and particularly not our youngsters'. Do you think we don't know how

many of them come to your meetings on the first Monday of the month?' On occasions he was tipsy and once he was totally drunk. 'Reverend,' he said to me on that occasion, 'you're a fortunate man, you don't have to be afraid of death. When you die you'll go somewhere, to heaven or whatever. I, on the other hand, will die just like a dog. ' If I'd heard about his death in time, I would have gone to his funeral, in the same way he came to fitka's.

Magda has reached a beautiful age. She still retains her girlish directness and likes to giggle and play childish tricks, but at the same time she is beginning to assert her individuality. She draws well and writes wittily, and apart from that she seems to have obvious acting talent. Sometimes I catch her standing in front of the mirror making faces.

The other day I came into her bedroom and noticed a diary lying open on her bedside table.

'You're not to read it, Daddy!'

'I'm not. '

She consulted the diary herself. 'Here's a bit you can read. There's nothing in if. '

On one page there was quite a good caricature of one of her teachers, on the other, a text of some kind.

The writing was childishly uneven and didn't manage to stay on the line. Maybe her longsightedness has something to do with it.

I've just hoovered the front hall and the washing-up, Mum tidied the living room. The Partridge is completely loopy today she wrote in Zuzana's record book: You daughter was lacqering her nails and was determined to continue with this activity even in my presence. Then I did an imitation of her and made the class laugh. What makes me laugh are words like maggot or worm. .

I said: 'How many is a maggot to the fifth minus a worm to the two and a halfth?'

And she burst into merry laughter and for a moment I was happy too. Irreproachably happy, I'd even say.

An extremely odd thing happened to me. I was sitting in my office writing something. Suddenly there was a loud bang on the window and I just managed to catch sight of a bird's body dropping to the ground beyond the window pane.

I ran out in front of the house and saw a blackbird lying paralysed, as I thought, in the grass. I leaned over to pick it up and see what had happened to it, but to my surprise it revived and with some difficulty flew across the lawn and hid behind the blackcurrant bush.

The following day, almost at the same hour, there came the same bang, even louder than on the previous day.

This time it wasn't a blackbird I found in the grass, but a white dove. When I picked it up, it turned out to be dead. I've always tried not to fall prey to superstitions, but what explanation can there be for two birds of different kinds colliding with the same pane of glass on two subsequent days, when no bird had even brushed against it before that?

Various myths and fables featuring birds, and specifically doves, came to mind. Birds have always symbolized messengers between the cosmos and mankind and the souls of saints assumed the form of a white dove. And indeed wasn't the Holy Ghost portrayed as a white dove? What sort of sign was this and where precisely did it come to me from?

The damaged blackbird that flew lurchingly away and hid itself in the bushes, that's me, while the white dove that will never fly away again, that could be my soul.

A dream: I found myself before some tribunal made up entirely of Catholic dignitaries. Lots of cardinals and bishops. I was to defend myself against the charge of heresy, that I had propagated Archimedes' Principle and violated the vow of celibacy, and actually ravished women. The entire indictment was brought by one of the cardinals, a small, fat and choleric old man, who demanded that the church excommunicate me and hand me over to secular justice. I answered the charge by stating that I was not a Catholic priest and therefore could not violate the celibacy vow, but the only response to that was surly laughter.

Then some kind of bailiff came over and manacled me before

leading me from the court. I was expecting to be led to a stake where I would be burnt, but that before then I would be given the opportunity to recant, even though I was no longer sure what I was to recant and what to proclaim. The fellow didn't lead me to the stake but to some open space where two immense brewers dray horses stood. I was ordered to lie down between them so that my head was at the hindquarters of the one and my feet at the hindquarters of the other. Then they attached some kind of straps to me and harnessed them to the horses. I heard a shout and then the crack of a whip. The horses took the strain each in opposite directions — I was to be torn asunder. I could feel my muscles tautening, the tension was gradually transformed into unbearable pain.

When I awoke, I realized that I really could feel a pain somewhere between my stomach and my heart. I wasn't sure whether I was to attribute the pain to the dream or vice versa.

I raised myself slightly. My wife was sleeping peacefully at my side. Her presence calmed me and the pain seemed to recede.

It suddenly struck me: Is this still my wife?

3

Daniel announced to the elders his intention to relinquish his pastoral duties for a period of several months. The building of the diaconal centre was taking up too much of his time, in addition to which he would like to concentrate on preparing the exhibition of his carvings that was due to open at the end of spring. Neither of those reasons was the real one, but the elders received his request with understanding and accepted his proposal that Reverend Marie Hájková should stand in for him while he was on special leave.

For his farewell sermon he chose his text from Paul's letter to the Philippians:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without

grumbling or questioning that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. .

Thus he took leave of them as a good and conscientious shepherd who leaves the flock entrusted to him, in the knowledge that it stands aside from the crooked and perverse world just as he himself does.

Was such an exhortation, such a challenge, a sign of pride or simply of a yearning for a fairer world? Could anyone be denied that yearning?

Those who yearned to become the children of God, he declared, often looked upon those around them as pitiable wretches, who regarded their stomachs as their god, whose thoughts were earth-bound, who took pride in things they should be ashamed of. In other words, they regarded the rest as a crooked and perverse generation. And when we also look at the world around us, it appears to be going to ruin, and that the whole of life is being increasingly transformed into a dance around the golden calf. But let us not be haughty or proud, let our hearts not be hardened by our severe assessment of our neighbours. It is not our task to condemn them, it is our task to do our best with our lives and realize that each of us will go astray. Our lives cannot be without blemish, but there is hope for us in that the Lord Jesus Christ will not forsake us, that in Him we have a light that will shine in the darkness and lead us back out of it.

Daniel spoke and as in a mist he could make out familiar faces; he knew everyone gathered here, knew them by name, knew their life stories, their cares, their jobs, the names of their children.

Large flakes of spring snow swirled outside the window. Like that time a year ago. All of a sudden that critical day came back to him: that is if it were possible to designate a particular day as a turning point. His mother was dying and he was endeavouring to rekindle his faith, to rekindle it or to beg for its return, for the return of his belief in the immortality of the human spirit. And at the very moment, when his thoughts were taking a completely different direction, into these confines stepped a woman who was destined and willing to transform his life utterly.

His thoughts wandered to the past while his lips spoke of the importance of bringing light into the lives of others. Nothing in your life is more important than that. To be a light in the life of your neighbour means more than any wealth, more than any power.

He didn't say that for years he had striven for it, had tried to live that way, and perhaps he had indeed lived that way in spite of all his mistakes. Daniel felt a sudden pang of regret that something of importance in his life was coming to an end, something so important that it was as if his very life was ending. He struggled to control his voice, while at the same time he became aware of a real pain gripping his chest.

He had survived the time of oppression but not the time of freedom.

When the sermon ended, silence descended on the chapel. Had he announced that he was leaving his post for good, someone would most likely be rushing up with a bouquet and a speech of thanks, but he had kept his defection secret, so they all simply waited for him to introduce his replacement. He led her to his place and allowed her to say a prayer and the blessing.

He did not go out into the street; the weather outside was too inclement. So he and Marie said goodbye to the congregation in the passage. People shook him by the hand and wished him all the best, voicing the hope that the building work would soon be successfully completed and that he would also enjoy success with his carvings. Everyone wanted to know the date of the exhibition and he promised to let them know in good time.

He still had to go to his office where he and Marie received the money from todays collection from Brother Kodet. Here he handed over to Marie various keys, promising that he would, of course, still attend the next elders' meetings and the Bible study class. Then he went downstairs to his workshop.

A half-finished carving sat on the small workbench: a man astride a small donkey. Jesus entering Jerusalem. How many artists, both renowned and unknown, had portrayed that event, which may never have happened?

He took the gouges from their case and started to hone them on a small oilstone before sitting down to carve.

A few days earlier the gallery owner who had promised him the exhibition had visited him to ask how the preparations were coming along. He had also taken a look at the latest carvings and seemed to be delighted with them. He maintained that they were not just better from a technical point of view, they were also better in terms of expression, in the way that his figures, through each of their details,

expressed a turmoil of mind and emotion that was almost tumultuous.

The gallery owners praise had gratified him although he ought to have told him that the mental and emotional turmoil in the wood reflected a far more passionate and tumultuous agitation in his soul.

He had preached today for the last time. He had told no one, not even himself, but he knew that he would never again return to the pulpit. Was it because of the woman who had entered the chapel unexpectedly and uninvited?

No, he had brought it on himself; the woman simply stood at the end of a path he had embarked on a long time before she appeared. He had been guilty of deception before then, when he had concealed his doubts about the fundamentals, about the message he brought and about the Christ he proclaimed.

His only excuse was that he had deceived himself too. He wanted so much to believe in everything he preached, to believe that God assumed human form, that He suffered, that He died on the cross, that He descended into a vague and unimaginable hell and on the third day rose again from the dead. That He ascended into a heaven that was situated in a vague and unimaginable space, and there sat down at the right hand of His Father, God Almighty, where He will remain until the day He returns to earth to judge the living and the dead. He wished to believe it and so he used to convince himself that everything was just the way he preached it, precisely because it was unbelievable and inconceivable. He wanted to believe it because if nothing he preached was true, then life would be no more than a meaningless cluster of days between the beginning and the end, between the eternity that preceded it and the eternity that would come after.

Previously he had trodden paths that people had followed for centuries and now all of a sudden he found himself in the middle of an immense plain devoid of paths. He could set off in any direction. Admittedly he could not see the end of the plain but he knew that whichever direction he took he would eventually confront an insurmountable, bottomless abyss.

He had done what he could to dispel that image of an open space leading to an abyss that engulfed everything and everyone, but he had not succeeded.

He was conscious of a cold panic, dizziness and gripping heart pain.

He ought to get up and leave this tiny room, go and find his children, his wife, go and make love to Bára. He ought to kneel down here before this unfinished carving of Jesus on a donkey and beg for the gift of faith that alone could dispel the anxiety, bridge the abyss and offer the grace that is denied to all other life.

He didn't kneel down.

The pain in his chest grew.

He got up and walked over to the window. There was a sudden break in the clouds and the heavens were revealed. Beyond them an endless universe. Billions and billions of stars. An infinity of time and space. And astonishingly, there was no place in it any longer — no fitting place in it — for a God who had become man and watched over events on this insignificant planet.

Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and turned cold; Daniel realized he was beginning to fall. Everything started to rush away from him. And tomorrow he had a date with Bára; how would he get there? He groped around him for something to hold on to.

4

Hana

This is Daniel's fourth day in intensive care, so Hana returns to the hospital, this time as a volunteer nurse. The heart attack was fairly extensive, affecting almost a quarter of the cardiac muscle, but the doctors are satisfied with the progress of his recovery so far.

Hana sits by Daniel's bed holding his hand and trying to appear calm to boost his confidence and strength. Each day she tells him again how everyone is praying for him, at home and in the congregation, how people call the manse asking how he is. Hana smiles at Daniel, strokes his hand and tells him for what must be the hundredth time already that everything will be fine, his heart will have a little scar, but otherwise it will be back to normal and serve him for a long time to come, except that he'll have to take care not to overdo things, and when he comes home he'll have to have a proper rest. After all, he has scarcely had a holiday in recent years.

Daniel gazes at her in silence. It's as if old age has crept into his

blue-grey eyes, or rather, as Hana has come to know so well during her thirty years in the hospital, it's as if an intense weariness stared out of them.

Hana then reports on how the rebuilding work at the manse is progressing; the potter s wheel is already installed and the joiner is putting up shelving. Máša comes to the manse every other day; she has been looking out books and already has several boxes full, most of them for children.

Daniel asks after Masa's children.

There will be a new court hearing next week and Dr Wagner believes Máša will get the children back. She will have to declare that the paper in which she relinquished the children was signed under pressure from her husband. Even a few weeks ago she would have been incapable of declaring anything of the sort, but at least now she has recovered somewhat from the shock of her husbands abandoning her. Hana always makes a point of talking to her about it in order to give her encouragement.

Finally, Hana tells him about Magda and Marek who can't wait for Daniel to be moved on to the general ward where they will be able to visit him. Then she dries up. She is not sure what interests Daniel at this moment. She fears that her concerns may seem remote to him, that other peoples worries must seem preposterous, seeing that his body and particularly his soul are contending with the weariness that Hana can detect in his eyes. She ought to do something to cheer him up but she doesn't know what. So she tells him how much she misses him. She says, 'I love you, Dan. You're the person I'm fondest of. When you come home I'll take care of you and make sure everything's all right. We'll take a trip down to my folks perhaps, or anywhere you like.'

Tears suddenly appear in Daniel's eyes and his lips move silently.

'Were you wanting to say something?' Hana asks. She wipes away the tears and hands him a glass of tea to moisten his lips.

Daniel asks, for the first time, 'How did it happen?'

And Hana tells him how he was a long time coming to lunch and how she went down to the workshop and found him lying by the window, groaning.

'I got an awful fright,' Hana says. Her immediate thought was that it might be his heart so she called the emergency services. 'They brought you here and you've been here ever since.'

'That's what I thought,' Daniel says and closes his eyes.

'I was at your side all the first night, but you didn't know anything about it.'

Before going, Hana pours fresh tea into his glass and changes the water in the vase containing roses that Daniel probably doesn't even notice.

Then she gives Daniel a kiss and promises to come again in the afternoon.

'What's the time now?' Daniel asks her.

Hana says it is nearly noon. She just wants to check that Magda is safely home from school and give the workmen something to eat.

'You don't have to come,' Daniel says. 'They are taking good care of me here and I'm getting better, aren't I? You said so yourself.'

'No, I want to be with you!'

At home she finds everything as it should be. Magda is chatting with the joiner, who is having a beer. Magda is scarcely aware of her mother as she tells the joiner how two boys in her class lay down in the middle of the street and were almost run over by a lorry. 'The driver leapt out of the cab. .'

'Aren't you even going to ask how Dad is?'

'I can tell he's better,' Magda says.

'How can you tell?'

'You'd be crying otherwise. And what did Dad say?'

'He said he was looking forward to seeing you all.'

'So are we,' she says and gets ready to finish her story.

The joiner is looking for some drawings that he was talking to Daniel about, but Daniel hadn't had a chance to give them to him.

Hana promises to try and find them. She goes to Daniel's office; the desk is locked and there is nothing resembling drawings or plans lying on it or on the shelves. Then it dawns on her that Daniel would probably have taken all his things home, since he had handed the office over to Marie on the very Sunday that it happened.

So Hana goes up to Daniel's room. Here too the desk is locked, but a bunch of his keys remains in the flat. One by one Hana unlocks the drawers in which there are stacked dozens of labelled files. Hana has no idea what the drawings are supposed to look like so she looks for a file with a label saying something like DIACONAL CENTRE, but finds nothing of the sort. The best thing will be to ask Daniel in the afternoon.

In the very bottom drawer, beneath all the files, lies a black notebook without a label. Hana opens it almost involuntarily and recognizes Daniels handwriting, and her eye just happens to fall on her own name. She cannot resist the temptation even though she's in a hurry, and she reads how Daniel could not relate his dreams to her. Then she turns over several pages at random and discovers an unfamiliar woman's name.

Hana sits down at the desk and reads Daniel's diary, all about her husband making love to some unknown female. Hana's heart thumps so hard that she feels she is about to suffocate. She tries to persuade herself that Daniel was writing some sort of story, that he had dreamt up a fictional account to use in some article or other, or in a sermon, but as she reads on there can be no doubt that this is Daniel's record of his own life: an incredible double life led behind her back, behind the backs of their children and everyone who trusted him. Hana closes the notebook and puts it back where she found it. She is at a loss as to what to do next. How is she to go to the hospital, how is she to speak to Daniel knowing something that she obviously wasn't supposed to know: that he lied, even to the children, that he had concealed a whole part of his life, possibly the most important part?

Somehow she couldn't grasp the extent of what had happened, as if what she had seen on paper hadn't yet become reality.

Could it really have happened? Could the man she trusted most of all have deceived her? How could he have done it while preaching to others how they should live? If it really had happened, what or whom would she ever dare believe again? Perhaps it was all just a terrible misunderstanding. She needed to talk to Daniel about it.

Tears run down Hana's face. She feels defiled, the way she did the time when that unknown man raped her not far from Písek.

It occurs to her that she should have heeded her conscience and gone off to Bosnia to help the wounded, perhaps a bullet would have found her and she wouldn't have had to live through this moment.

And she was such a fool that she had actually had qualms of conscience on the few occasions she had nostalgically recalled the lonely journalist who liked telling stories about China.

How is she now to behave towards a man who has deceived her, with whom she has children and who at this moment is balancing between life and death?

And suddenly it strikes her that Daniel's heart gave way precisely

because he was not equipped for a life of duplicity. After all, Daniel was almost childlike — neither disloyal, nor deceitful. He was defenceless, more than anything else, in a world in which everyone was out for himself. Anyone could pull the wool over his eyes with fine words. He had believed Petr and apparently he believed some unscrupulous tart who had muddled his head and then latched on to him the way such women know how, and Daniel was unable to shake her off; he wasn't able to abandon his home or abandon the other one and in his desperation he let himself be dragged along almost to his death.

A feeling of regret and sympathy for Daniel starts to grow in Hana and she might even be ready to forgive him. God forgives our sins, so we humans should be ready all the more to forgive others. But at the same time she can feel a growing anger towards the other woman who wanted to usurp Daniel for herself, ignoring the fact he had a wife and children, heedless of the fact that he was actually suffering, not caring that she was driving him to despair and hounding him to his death.

Hana feels a need to do something, to change something straight away, to find the other woman and tell her what she thinks of her, tell her she's a murderer, a mean, selfish and self-seeking murderess.

Only she doesn't know who the woman is or where to look for her. She had only managed to make out that her mother lives somewhere in the Small Quarter and that she herself lives in some sumptuous villa, apparently in Hanspaulka. Women like that tend to be spoilt, and think they have to possess everything they take a fancy to, from clothes and perfumes to a man they find attractive.

Daniel knows her name, of course, and knows where to find her, except that she can't ask Daniel anything, not now at least. It would agitate him so much, he might die. Although it might be a relief for him to rid himself of the burden of deception.

I have to think of a way, it strikes Hana, to indicate to him that the worst thing for him in his situation is to suffer mentally, to torment himself over the things he has done and the way he has lived.

Hana cannot stay any longer in this confined space with this black notebook, tempting her to open it once more and read it through properly, except that she is terrified to open it again and read the terrible testimony that Daniel has penned in the confusion of his heart.

If only she had someone she could confide in, but she knows that

she has no one like that in the world; the only person she was close to has let her down.

Hana wipes her eyes and goes to the bathroom where she rinses her face with cold water. Then she tells the joiner that she couldn't find the plans but will ask her husband about them at the hospital.

Then she hugs Magda and says, 'Oh, my poor little girl!' And before Magda has a chance to ask why she is supposed to be poor, she leaves the flat and rushes back to the hospital.

5

Daniel had been moved on to the general ward.

He was no longer tormented by physical pain, but only aware of the void into which he would sink again and again. On several occasions, mostly at night, he wept for pity.

Everyone here was kind to him and called him Reverend. 'Should you need anything, Reverend,' the fellow in the next bed offered almost as soon as they had brought him in, you have only to say. I can already walk about normally.' He had obviously been informed in advance.

Daniel needed nothing. He wanted to call Bára and tell her what had happened to him; explain why he hadn't kept their date and why it was unlikely he would ever keep a date again. But nobody could make that call for him. He actually had a telephone at his bedside and all he needed to do was lift the receiver, but the mere thought of doing so set his heart thumping so rapidly that he felt a pain in his chest.

After lunch, Marek and Magda visited him. Magda had cut some daffodils from the garden for him. While she was sticking them in a vase she asked how he was and whether he still had a pain. She made do with a single-word reply and without prompting announced that she had got three As, although, because of a fatal oversight, she got an E for maths. 'I'm going to be an actress, anyway,' she consoled herself and him.

'What will you act in?'

'I don't know — something to make people laugh. And to become famous.'

'Magda,' Marek rebuked her, 'Dad's feeling rotten and you just talk drivel.'

Apparently they had said nothing to Magda about his actual condition, so she had no inhibitions about gossiping like that, whereas Marek wore a serious expression. 'I really regret not going to church for your sermons a few times, but now I've been praying for you and I'll start going to church again,' he declared in a previously prepared apology and statement of intent.

He was touched by his children. He felt regret, even shame. 'That's nice of you. But only do what you are convinced is right.' He stopped short and then he added, 'If you have sufficient strength and determination.'

'Exacdy,' said Marek, 'that's my concern.' He also brought an important message from Alois: they were postponing the wedding until Daniel returned. 'Because he wants you to marry them, and nobody else.'

'That's nice to hear, but tell him I don't know when I'll be coming back. Tell him it doesn't matter who blesses them, it means the same thing. And it's chiefly up to them if they are to be happy together.'

'They will be,' Marek promised on their behalf. Not a word was uttered abput stars or the universe. What do his children believe in, in fact? What will become of them, how will they live? Would he ever find out, even if his heart did get better? One never finds out the important things.

'We'll help you,' Marek said finally, as he was saying goodbye.

'What with?'

'Everything, of course.'

When it came to the fundamental issue one had to help oneself. What was the fundamental issue? How one lived, of course.

'You have nice children, Reverend,' his neighbour said after Marek and Magda had left. And well-behaved too, I expect.'

'Yes.' And once more he was seized with regret.

'You'll have to get back to them soon. But what is one supposed to do for one's health? I thought to myself that as soon as I'm able to get about a bit I'll make a trip to Czestochowa or Medjugorie, or even to Lourdes. What do you say, Reverend? Do you think Our Lady will help with heart trouble too?'

'No,' said Daniel. 'You'd do just as well to visit some healer in Smíchov or Košíře.'

'Don't you believe in her miraculous power, then?'

'No one will save us from death here on earth. Even Lazarus, who Jesus might actually have raised from the dead, died once more. Maybe the very next day. Or the year after.'

'I heard one priest saying how some famous scientists in America had measured the power hidden in the human brain when it's dying,' his neighbour said. 'In the case of a believer, that power is five hundred degrees positive and twenty-five times stronger than one of the most powerful radio stations in America.'

Daniel turned his back on the man. What made everyone want to talk to a clergyman about metaphysical problems? Why did they have to reel off to him all the obscurantist nonsense they'd ever heard? Would they even come and bother him when he was on his deathbed?

'In the case of an unbeliever,' his neighbour went on to say, 'the power was five hundred degrees negative.'

'Please don't tell me any more,' Daniel requested him. 'I'm a Protestant minister and my father was a doctor. I don't believe in such nonsense.'

The man relapsed into an aggrieved silence.

When Daniel first came round in the intensive care unit a week earlier, his wife was sitting facing him and stroking his hand. At the time, the pain permeated his entire body. Then it gradually receded and he could distinctly hear a familiar melody and a huge mixed choir singing faultlessly the old Calvinist hymn:

How beauteous is the blue sky, It wondrously doth bless. This gift to man from God on high Is so hard to express.

How often, though, the light of dawn Is hid by evening's fear. Man wakes perplexd and all forlorn And trust doth disappear.

Tears started to flow from him and fear concealed the light. He didn't know what he feared more, death or life. He closed his eyes and whispered to Hana, Am I dying?'

'Don't worry, everything will be all right.'

After that he no longer heard a coherent melody, just a weary, monotonous drumming.

Ever since then, Daniel had pondered on his life. The drugs that they introduced into his bloodstream filled his mind with disconnected images. They were mostly images from his own life: long-forgotten fragmentary memories and phrases were washed up and then dissolved. Faces the way they looked long ago. His mother lighting a candle before a storm, her face still unwrinkled; the high forehead, the Byzantine nose, and the halo of hair around her head. Father returning from prison emaciated, his eyes lost in the depths of their sockets. Who is this man picking him up? I'm frightened of him, he's a stranger. His sister, whose pigtail always tempted him to pull it, waits for him at some station, or maybe it isn't his sister; can it be Jitka? Jitka laid out in the closet. Jitka-no-longer, just her body. May I lift the sheet? No, don't, Reverend, the image will only haunt you afterwards. I want to see her once more. It would be better to remember her alive. The cold touch of her cheek on his lips. Hana in a long white dress with a posy of white roses. Dan, I trust you, you'll never let me down. Nor you me, I'm sure. Children running in the garden of the country manse. A dog barking: come to think of it, what was its name? Daniel just cannot remember, as if it mattered at all that the bitch was called Diana. Don't cry, my little Eva. But my ear aches. Mum will give you something warm to put around it. It's a boy. Reverend, if you'll wait there we'll bring him to show you. Marek Vedra, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Magda, whatever possessed you to throw spiders at people? And suddenly that unexpected woman: Don't forsake me! Darling, don't be cross with me for pouring out my unhappy soul to you in such a miserable way. I miss you. I just want to tell you that I'm happy that you're alive and thinking about me.

The pain near his heart again. Maybe he should call the nurse.

Don't think about anything that might upset you!

Augustine was the first one to talk about the heart as the site of love. A father of the church, Bishop of Hippo. During his life he had several quite worldly loves and he wasn't too worried about being unfaithful to his betrothed. For him love was the highest attribute, the true form of God. Love of God is simply a reflection of our capacity to love man.

Mount Durmitor. Dannie, would you dare tackle that chimney?

If you'll anchor me!

Lord Jesus, be with all those who are suffering and ill, and also with all those who in these moments are dying. Be with my wife and don't forsake her; look down on her in your love. Do not forsake me!

I am sated with you. You fill me with love. You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me in my life. I share everything with you, Dan. Sorrow, pain and even this anxiety. I've fallen in love lots of times, Daddy. I wish you a life of love, and that you should dwell in mercy, understanding, freedom and kindness.

Daniel lifted the receiver and started to dial Bara's number. If her husband answers, he'll replace the receiver. If she takes the phone, he'll simply tell her he's in hospital and still alive.

For a moment, he had the impression he had stopped breathing.

There was a ringing tone. He waited. The ringing tone continued; he realized his hand was shaking.

Apparently there was no one at the other end. Should he take it as an omen?

'I wouldn't bother,' his neighbour chips in. 'The telephone costs you three times as much these days and you don't get through anyway.'

Daniel hung up.

'Even if you are a Protestant,' his neighbour returned to his favourite topic, 'I don't see how you can reject the Virgin Mary. We should all work with her for the salvation of the world.'

We can't work for the salvation of the world unless we work first of all for the salvation of ourselves. Who will help us, seeing that the mother of Christ and her son have long ago rotted in their graves? Will we manage it without the help of someone above us? The starry heaven above us and the moral law within us.

Fortunately, the door opened with a creak. It wasn't Hana but quite a young nurse. 'How are you feeling, Reverend?'

'Not too bad, thanks!'

'In a few more days you'll be out running. .' She stopped short; she was probably about to say: running after the girls, but such encouragement seemed out of place for a clergyman. Clergymen don't run after girls. They try to live according to God's commandments as best they can. And they pray to Almighty God, as long as their faith remains. And when they don't live according to the commandments and their faith dwindles, so that all that remains are empty words? Then they can run after the girls, but they try to conceal them from the rest of the world. When they succeed, they don't

conceal them from their consciences, or their hearts. Then their hearts fail.

Daniel pondered on what had happened to his life. The other woman was now very remote and seemed to him like a dream, as if from another life. It was odd, almost incredible, that just a few days ago they had lain in each others' arms and made love. Had it been bad or just human, the way he had behaved?

One succumbs to a longing for love, for new companionship, for feelings that seem stronger than all other feelings. These then overwhelm the sense of duty and promise of fidelity, putting at risk everything: family, reputation, honour, and in the end, one's life too. But now, as he lay here with only a remote possibility of seeing the other woman, and the illness widening the gulf between them, not only in space but also in time, Daniel was overcome with shame and regret for what he had dissipated, and above all that he had deceived his nearest and dearest. Hana showed him love even though he had betrayed her and that made him feel ashamed. He didn't know whether he would live or how he would live, he only knew that he oughtn't to go on living the way he had been: in deceit and duplicity.

6

Matous

Matouš leaves the courthouse. Even though he feels that the woman judge who has just released him fairly willingly from the shackles of marriage has removed his life's heaviest burden from him, he is overcome by nostalgia. He stops outside the front entrance. Although he won't admit it, he is waiting for Klára.

Finally Klára appears and notices him. She seems to hesitate for a moment, wondering whether to walk past him disdainfully as if he was of less interest than the window display of some boutique, but then she stops and says: 'Ciao then, you poor old devil. Enjoy yourself!'

She then permits Matouš to light her cigarette before walking away on high heels towards a Honda car in which some foreign devil is

waiting for her. She climbs into the seat next to him and then drives out of Matouš's life, probably for good.

Matouš should feel relieved and light-headed at the prospect of a future of calm stretching out before him as well as the fulfilment of his destiny, but instead his legs become heavy.

He walks home, takes off his coat and stretches out on the bed. He lies there for a long time, several hours, gazing up at the ceiling and slowly drags himself through the thicket of hopeless contemplations. On the bedside table there is a jug of wine from the previous day, along with a loaf of bread going stale and a bowl of boiled rice with peanuts. There is no knife to hand so he simply breaks off lumps of bread and slowly chews them. There is also a pile of books by the bed. From time to time he picks up the topmost one and leafs through it for a while before tossing it to one side.

The ceiling is covered in cracks and the dirty threads of cobwebs which flutter in the draught that wafts into the room along with the screech of tram wheels and the din of lorries.

Faces flicker across the greyish surface of the ceiling. Some of them are savage and long forgotten, others are familiar: they are alive, more alive than all the faces of actors and non-actors that move across the television or cinema screens. Women whom he trusted or on whom he even showered love, while knowing they would leave him in the end, scowl and leer at him. He tries to ignore them and to ignore Klára who wantonly tumbles into bed with unknown men.

His thoughts turn to the nurse whom he now takes the liberty of calling Hana. He has already been twice to the church and listened to the confused litanies of her husband, whose aura has already totally disappeared, or possibly Matouš has not been able to concentrate enough to make it out. The time that Matouš was invited to lunch by the minister's wife, he actually had a conversation with the minister. He had felt an unconscious need to take issue with that follower of the resurrected Christ. Did the minister know that the Chinese, the worlds most populated nation, had managed to get by without believing in a god and yet the people did not live any less morally than in those places where they acknowledged a god or gods? The minister was aware of this. In the East, he said, there was less individualism and people were more obedient to an order that had been established over centuries.

Did that mean that concepts of a god or gods and an immortal soul

were simply products of our individualism, of our reluctance to countenance the extinction of our own selves?

The minister said that was not what he had in mind, although anxiety about the extinction of the self certainly played a role in our notions of God.

The minister was either incredibly conciliatory or was consumed with doubts of some kind. Either about himself or about God.

Matous has only spoken to the minister's wife a couple of times since he promised her his poems, and he still hasn't taken them to her. He has been waiting for some more suitable moment: he has the feeling that his poems ought to crown his acquaintance with that woman, rather than be an opening gambit.

But on one occasion, when he was feeling particularly bad and Hana brought him his medicine for the second time, he had recited to her some of his poems and told her that she had been the inspiration for them.

Surely not — she replied in astonishment — how could I have?

Just by being you, he told her. There is something mysterious about you, something oriental and mystical.

That's all in your imagination, she commented.

No. My whole life was meaningless until I met you.

You sound delirious, she laughed in embarrassment, and even touched his forehead to see if he had a fever, but she took her hand away before he had time to press it to his forehead.

Now Matouš thinks about that good woman with particular intensity. He thinks about her not only because his solitariness was officially confirmed today, but also because he has an odd premonition that something bad has befallen Hana and that she might perhaps welcome Matous's attention.

He ought to phone her and offer his help should she require it, but at this moment he lacks the will to do anything.

He who does, loses. All we hold we lose in the end.

Matouš falls asleep.

When he wakes up he can hear the boom of the ocean waves and the murmur of the crowd as they watch condemned prisoners being driven away to execution. Curiosity and indifference in the ant heap. Blazing fires.

Then his mothers voice intrudes upon him: Mattie, why aren't you eating? Stop complaining, Mattie, and pull yourself together,

everything's going to be all right again. The touch of his mother's hand stroking his hair.

Matouš realizes that it is a long time since he visited either his mother's or his father's grave. That's bad. It is one's duty to pay respect to those who gave one life, and his mother was the only good woman he had met in his life. Then Matous's thoughts stray once more to another woman, to Nurse Hana, and he realizes that he misses her; he misses her voice and her smile, he misses a mother's love.

At last he gets up, opens the refrigerator and finds in it a piece of dry salami and gobbles it down. Then he opens a can of goulash and with his fingers he fishes out pieces of meat from the unpleasantly smelling sauce before throwing the can into the pedal bin which emits a swarm of flies the moment he opens the lid.

He takes a shower and puts on a clean shirt.

For weeks now his poems have lain waiting on the table in a black binder. He has chosen almost two hundred of them, precisely one hundred and eighty-seven of them, in fact: the ones he feels sure are successful. He resists the temptation to open the binder and read at least the best ones once more — he knows them by heart anyway.

He lifts the receiver and hesitates for a moment before dialling the number of the manse. Luckily enough, the minister's wife answers the telephone.

He announces himself, but apparently she cannot recall his name, as she says: 'I expect you want to speak to my husband. I'm afraid he's in hospital.'

The nurse's voice is unusually sad.

'Anything serious?' he asks.

A heart attack.'

'I hadn't heard. I'm sorry to hear it, Hana. And how is he?'

'Thank you. I think he has got over the worst of it.'

'I'm glad to hear it.' Nurse Hana is wrong, because she believes in some medical gadgetry and doesn't realize that her husband's life force is fading. She doesn't realize she will come into his wealth. It is unlikely she gives it a thought. He therefore says once more, 'I really am glad to hear it, you must have been very worried.'

'I expect you're calling about your poems,' the ministers wife recalls. 'You promised me them ages ago.'

'Only partly. I just had the feeling all of a sudden that something had happened to you, that something was troubling you and I ought to give you a ring.'

'Troubling me? Oh, yes, there's always something troubling one.' The minister's wife remains silent for a moment and he says: 'Everything will be all right again, you'll see.'

'Nothing will ever be the way it used to be,' says the minister's wife and Matouš makes out a quiet sob. Then that good woman forces herself to turn her thoughts from her own distress and ask him what his poems are about.

He says that it is impossible to say in a few words. They are attempts at capturing his moods, but he wouldn't like to bother her with them now, not unless his poems might bring her a little comfort.

Yes, that's something she would need at this moment. From the tone of her voice Matouš recognizes that Hana's thoughts are divorced from her words. None the less he tells her that poetry is there to console. Like music. Or meditation. Or prayer.

'If you like, and if you happen to be passing, you're welcome to drop by with them,' the minister's wife decides all of a sudden.

'Right away?'

'If you like. I have to visit my husband this afternoon.'

'Thank you, matron. I'll come in time to spend a little while with you. After all, you visited me when I was feeling low.'

Matouš is suddenly full of energy. He puts on his most expensive, pure silk tie — a golden Chinese dragon against a blue background — and carefully combs his thinning and already grizzled hair. Then he puts into his briefcase the black binder containing the one hundred and eighty-seven poems that will perhaps, be published after all, just as he might eventually hope to receive some love or at least understanding. At the kiosk by the tram stop he buys three white carnations.

The minister's wife opens the door and thanks him for the flowers before inviting him in. She is pale and her eyes are red, either from lack of sleep or crying. If Matouš were to be taken to the hospital, or if he actually died there, who would weep for him?

Matouš asks after her husband s health once again. Hana is making coffee and in the process she gives him some of the details in a succinct and matter-of-fact way. Her husband is getting better; if things continue the way they have gone so far, he could be home in two weeks.

He is being well looked after in the hospital and he is even in a side ward now, with a bedside telephone.

Matouš has the impression that her description of her husband is all a bit too professional, as if the sorrow in her face was related to something other than her husband s illness.

'So there's no point in upsetting yourself, Hana,' he says. 'In any case, you won't change fate by upsetting yourself.'

'Don't you think so? There are things I can't tell you, anyway.' The minister's wife pours the coffee into pink cups.

'All the more reason not to upset yourself,' Matouš repeats. 'We have to take life as it comes and realize that everything will pass away one day: pain and joy, and in the end ourselves too. Because what are we compared to the sky and the stars? Or even to a tree? At least within trees there is peace, whereas we just wriggle around in the throes of passion, rage, longing and betrayal.'

The matron sips her coffee. She looks away from him. Then she says: 'You're not like I thought you were.'

'In what way?'

'You're more serious.'

'We all have several faces. And we generally conceal the real one from other people.'

'I always thought there were people who didn't conceal anything.'

'And don't you think so any more?'

'I've never concealed anything,' she says, avoiding an answer.

'Everyone conceals something,' Matouš objects, 'we all have some secret or other.'

All right. I've never done anything I would have to conceal.'

Matouš is now convinced that the source of her distress is not merely her husband's illness. Some duplicity or other has shaken her faith in human goodness. 'I'm sure that you would be incapable of harming anyone,' he says. 'I have never deceived anyone either.'

He looks at the woman opposite; there is still sorrow in her face, but also kindness. All of a sudden it is as if he was transported back whole decades: his mother is waiting for him with his lunch and asking how things were in school and he is starting to speak, complaining about his fellow pupils for mocking him or even beating him up. Matouš starts to take the minister's wife into his confidence. He doesn't speak about his travels, or about his real or imagined experiences in foreign parts, he speaks about himself, how he was deceived by women he

loved, and most of all by the latest one, whom he took into his home and whom he divorced only yesterday.

Matouš starts to lament over his own goodness of heart and the ingratitude that has been his reward. He also talks about everything he had wanted to achieve in his life, but how he had managed almost none of it, because the world is not well disposed towards people like him, people who don't elbow their way through life, who lack both influence and property. The world is not wise — it respects strength, not decency and honesty. It's not interested in real values. People want to have a good time and live it up, regardless of what they destroy in the process.

The matron listens to him, the same way his mother used to. He has the feeling she agrees with him; subconsciously, Matouš is expecting this nice little lady, this good woman, to rise and come over to him, stroke his hair and say: Stop complaining, Mattie, and pull yourself together, everything's going to be all right again!

'You're not part of that world either,' Matouš goes on to say. 'That's why you are in low spirits. People like us ought to get together and live in mutual trust, so as to bear our burden more easily.'

Hana makes no response to his challenge, to his declaration. She looks at her watch and says, 'I'm sorry, but I have to dash to the hospital to see my husband.'

Matouš is taken aback. He starts to apologize for holding her up and heaping his own troubles on her when she has plenty of her own.

'Don't worry, I'm used to it. People often used to come to me like this; I am a minister's wife after all.'

Matouš suddenly collapses inside and can scarcely find the strength to get up. He doesn't even offer to accompany Hana to the hospital or take her there by taxi, seeing that he has delayed her.

No sooner does he reach the street than he realizes he has forgotten to give Hana his poems. Now he is unlikely ever to show them to her. In fact he is unlikely to show them to anyone at all. His poems will remain hidden like many other people's verses and, like many other people, he will end his days in loneliness.

7

Two days after Daniel was first permitted visitors, Eva appeared in his ward. The dress she was wearing was new to Daniel; it was loose fitting to conceal her condition. 'Hi, Dad, how are you?'

'It's getting better every day, thanks. And how about you?'

'There's nothing wrong with me, is there?' She leans over to kiss him. 'Well, maybe there is, but at least my life's not at stake.'

'Life is always at stake.'

'I've brought you some peaches.' She took out a large paper bag. 'I know what you mean.' She drags one of the free chairs over to his bedside. 'I wanted to come yesterday with Marek, but I had two full days at college. And I couldn't manage it before.'

'Don't apologize, I'm glad you're here now.'

'Daddy, I've been thinking about you all that time. An awful lot. And apart from that, I was wanting to tell you something. I haven't told you. Shall I wash you a peach?'

'No thanks. I'd sooner hear what you were wanting to tell me.'

'Right away?'

'It's best not to put things off.'

'OK. I didn't tell you that when I discovered what had happened to me with Petr, I felt I just couldn't leave it like that and I went to the doctor to see about a termination. The waiting-room was full of women and they were almost all talking about the same thing. It made me feel dreadful. I recalled a Scottish ballad about a mother who stabs her baby through the heart and then she meets it and it blames her for laying it in the grave instead of in its cradle. And I also realized that the doctor had known Grandad and most likely knows you too, and that as soon as he saw me he'd say to himself: a fat lot she's achieved. Or he'll ask: What does your dad have to say about it?'

'What I'd have to say is hardly the most important thing.'

'I know. I'm just telling you what I felt. I knew you'd be terribly disappointed in me when you discovered what had happened, but there in that waiting-room it occurred to me that you'd have been even sorrier to hear that I had had it killed, that you'd tell me my mother would never have done such a thing. So I got up and left.'

'You did the right thing, Eva. But why do you keep talking about what I'd think or say? It was a question of you and your child!'

'I simply wanted to tell you that I was thinking about you even at that moment. Because I blame myself, Daddy, that I might have been the cause of what went wrong with your heart!'

'I could just as easily blame myself for being the cause of you and Petr going out together.'

'Exactly. I know you expected something else from me. That I disappointed you.'

'No. If anyone disappointed me, it was myself. Remember, you must live in such a way so as not to disappoint yourself

'I know, Daddy. But you always wanted me not to be like me but like Mummy.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'You saw her in me, Daddy. But I couldn't be her because I was me.'

'That's perfectly in order. I'm fully aware of that.'

'But you used to compare me with her more and more. And I couldn't help but lose every time, because no one can be as good as someone who is already dead, that you only remember the beautiful things about.'

'I must say that never occurred to me. I didn't realize. If that's the way you felt, I'm really sorry.'

'I've been thinking a lot about everything. Ever since they brought you here and we've been worrying about you so much. Daddy, when I told you and also wrote to you that I might marry Petr straight away, that was the reason. I wanted to demonstrate that I was someone else. That I wasn't like Mum, that I was me. But at the same time I knew you were right, and that I ought to wait, that there was a chance I would be making up for a stupidity by committing an even worse one.'

'It's good you realized.'

'I'm not going to marry Petr. Not for the time being anyway. Not until I can be sure he'll change.'

'And you're doing it on your own account, not mine?'

'On my own account.'

'I'm glad. I wouldn't want you to be blackmailed by my illness.' He reached out to his daughter and squeezed her hand. 'I'm glad. Glad that you've taken that decision and glad you told me those things.'

'I'd like to help you get better.'

There was a knock at the door. Then Bára entered with a big bunch of roses. 'I've just brought you a few roses, Reverend. I don't want to disturb you.'

His heart gave a painful jolt.

'You can stay if you like,' Eva said. 'Dad will be glad of a visit, and I was going anyway.'

'Your daughter looks very well on it,' Bára said when they were on their own. 'You're not cross with me for coming?'

He took the bunch of roses from her and placed them in the vase on his bedside table.

'I just wanted to come and say hello. To see you and ask how you were. Please don't be cross with me, I couldn't bear not being able to see you.'

'For the last time?'

'For the last time, if that's what you want.'

'I didn't mean it that way.'

'I wanted to see for myself that you were getting better.'

'I'm feeling better. I am already up on my feet and I took a walk in the corridor yesterday. Today I'm allowed out into the garden. We could go out there together if you like. Thanks for the beautiful roses and for coming.' He took an envelope out of his bedside table and put it in his dressing-gown pocket. Even though they were now alone, it was better not to stay here.

'I'm not going to take up your time, Dan,' she said when they came out into the corridor. 'I really did just want to see you.'

'How did you find out?'

'At church, of course. From Ivana.'

They walked down the steps. Behind the building there were a number of benches on which the sun was now shining. They sat down. 'What have you gone and done to me, Dan?' she asked.

'I don't know. I once read that shortly before his death Kafka wrote: My brain and my lungs have ganged up on me behind my back. It looks as if my heart and brain have ganged up behind my back.'

'On me?'

'No, on me.'

'The sun doesn't bother you?'

'No, it doesn't.'

'Does it bother you that we can be seen here?'

'I didn't say anything was bothering me.'

'I've been missing you, Dan. Awfully. And I was so afraid for you, from the moment you didn't come that Monday.'

'It's the first time I didn't turn up when I promised. I thought about it when I came round, how you must have waited in vain.'

'Dan, that wasn't important, was it? Nothing was important but your life and ever since Ivana gave me the news I've thought about nothing else.'

He had the impression Bára was holding back tears. 'I didn't want to burden you with extra worries on top of all the ones you had already. I never wanted that.'

'You're hardly going to apologize, are you?'

'Any change at home?' he asked.

'None. Saša sends his regards. He says he's thinking about you and hoping you get better. Apart from that, the place is as cold and silent as a freezer. The only warmth I ever got was with you. And when you didn't turn up I knew something had happened. Something really bad, otherwise you wouldn't have abandoned me without saying a word.'

'I called you from here. Several times, but there was never any reply. I took it to be an omen.'

'Of what?'

'I don't know. That I'd never get through to you.'

'I know what you mean. An omen that I don't belong to you. No, it wasn't an omen, we were just away for a few days. I couldn't stand being in a city where you were lying ill and I wasn't allowed to visit you.'

He felt her closeness. Here she was sitting next to him again, drawing him to her again.

'Do you realize it's already over a year since I first came to hear you preach?'

'Of course. I could hardly forget that day, could I?'

And we once sat together on a bench in Veltrusy Park, remember?'

'My heart may be in a mess, but there's nothing wrong with my head.'

'There are some things you remember more with your heart than your head.'

And my heart's alive too for the time being.'

'Does your wife visit you here?'

'Yes. She takes care of me.'

'That's good. Even though I envy her. I'd like to visit you and take care of you.'

'Thank you. Thank you for coming now.'

'Dan, don't worry about anything,' she said. 'I unloaded so many of my woes on you and now I feel guilty that they were only the woes of a spoilt brat. You're not to worry about anything. You must give your heart a rest.'

'I'm trying to.'

'I wrote you a letter, but don't read it now.' She took an envelope from her handbag. 'Though I'd better not give it to you now either. Another time.'

'It's not entirely certain I'll have another time.'

'No, you're going to live. I wanted to tell you that I will love you to the end of my days. You were a revelation to me and will remain so even if we never see each other again.'

'Thank you. I wrote you a letter too.' He pulled the envelope from his pocket.

'All right, I'll give you mine too. It's like an exchange of diplomatic notes,' she said. 'The meeting took place in an atmosphere of mutual friendship. Shall I walk you back?'

'Perhaps not.'

'I'd like to stay with you. We never had much time to stay together, especially me. Now I regret it. I blame myself. Maybe I'll still make up fork.'

'Don't blame yourself for anything. It's not the amount of time that matters. Most of the time quantity doesn't matter, even though everything tends to be measured by quantity.'

'I know. I'm grateful to you for everything. I know it's something you're not supposed to measure, but it was more than I had ever received and more than I deserved. I'd better go now before your wife comes. Get well. Get well as quickly as you can, and don't worry about anything.'

He went to put his arm around her but stopped short. They were too much on display. But what did that matter seeing he might not be alive tomorrow?

She noticed the unfinished movement and kissed him on the lips. 'Thank you for everything, Dan!'

'I thank you too.'

And don't forsake those of us who need you!'

He watched her as she walked quickly away; as his love retreated from him.

His legs were a trifle shaky and he was obliged to sit down twice before reaching his ward. His legs weren't important; the main thing was that his heart had survived the encounter.

When he got back to the ward Hana was already waiting for him.

'I took a little walk,' he said.

'You oughtn't to go out on your own.'

'I feel fine.'

'I'm glad to hear it.' She took some fruit out of her bag.

'How are the children?' he asked.

'They're coming too. As soon as they're out of school.'

'And how's the building work?'

'All right. I think we could enrol our first children next month. You'll be back by then. I had to pay some bills too, but I don't want to bother you with them now.'

'I'm looking forward to it. A lot.'

'To being home?'

And to the work.'

'So long as it won't be too much for you! You realize you're going to have to take it easy for some time!'

'People aren't born to take it easy. And besides, I won't be preaching any more.»

'Not preaching any more? Why not?'

'I don't think it would be honest.'

'Maybe you only think that way on account of your heart. But it'll be all right again.'

'My heart maybe.'

'Well, what won't be?' Hana is staring at him. Then, out of the blue, she asks, Are the roses from her?'

'From whom?'

'Bára, I think you call her.'

How did she find out? It's immaterial. She knows and that's good. Now if he dies, he won't die and leave behind only a lie. 'Yes, she brought them for me.'

'They're nice.'

'I wanted to tell you about her, but I didn't want to hurt you. Never in my life have I wanted to hurt you. I loved you. I still love you,' he corrected himself.

'Dan, it was awful. I couldn't believe you could lie to me, and for so long.'

'Do you think you'll be able to forgive me?'

'I've already forgiven you, haven't I? Haven't you noticed?' And his wife takes a handkerchief from her handbag and weeps. She weeps because he deceived her and because she doesn't know whether she'll ever believe him again.

8 Letters

Dear Bára,

Today I walked a bit for the first time, freed from the tubes. Walking is a sign of life and so I'm still alive, even though I don't know how many steps I am destined to take. But I am alive and that means I can still talk to you, in spirit at least. Or take leave of you, so that should I depart I won't do so without saying farewell. Taking leave doesn't mean saying goodbye but instead saying the most important thing, the thing that I didn't have the time or the determination to say before…

An hour later (I came over faint).

My whole life I have yearned for the closeness of a loved one, for intimacy, in other words. Is it at all possible between two people? There are many degrees of intimacy: people are close to each other when they are able to converse without fear, when they embrace, when they make love. Is love-making the ultimate, the supreme degree of intimacy? One can make love to all sorts of people (although it has never been the case with me), but is that the ultimate intimacy?

The ultimate degree of intimacy — surely that is the capacity to trust utterly and therefore to confide everything, even one's deepest secrets, even the things one conceals from oneself. Not concealing even the things one deceives oneself about…

Night time: Where did I break off? You came to me, like many others, because you were afraid of death. I told you, as I'd told so many other people, that death had been overcome by that one single sacrifice, by that one single death on the cross. It's what I told myself too. I wanted so

dreadfully much to believe it and I confided to no one, not even my first or my second wife, that I doubted it. That I was proclaiming as the highest truth what was my own wish, yearning and hope. Now at this time, when I don't know if it will be my last message, I admit it to you at least. You will not condemn me, I'm sure. You won't be scandalized, but will have understanding for me.

I told you and others that God's love will redeem us, but I think I was wrong. I don't think there is anyone who would one day judge our faults, forgive us and give us absolution. There is no higher justice than our own. Nothing lasts for ever, except forgetting, maybe.

What is left of all the things in my life that I proclaimed and worked for? Maybe just the conviction that love is the greatest thing we can encounter in life and the most important thing we may strive for. I'm talking about human love; if God's love doesn't exist then only the human sort remains: fleeting and imperfect. But Christ talked about that sort too, and thousands of others after him. And we are still incapable of appreciating it and living by it.

Maybe it's a bad message, but accept it from me as something that is more than a declaration of love, something that is the ultimate degree of intimacy…

Love, Dan

Dearest, dearest, dearest,

I want to let you know I'm thinking about you all the time. I wanted to tell you that thanks to you I have discovered what love is. I'm not referring now to anything physical. I have in mind what you sometimes talked to me about. I was selfish, I wanted you for myself. I am ashamed of it and I apologize to you for it.

When I learned what had happened to you I was in despair and didn't know what to do. I dashed around the city like a mad thing to all the places where we had been together. And I was afraid for you and I wanted to cry and then rush to the hospital to find you and be with you and hold your hand and beg you not to forsake me. Not to forsake us. To stay here. Here! And then it suddenly struck me: I knelt on the floor and I asked Him to forgive both of us for all the bad things we had done and begged Him that you

should live. I told Him that I did not want it for myself, that I no longer want you for myself, I just want you to live, because it is only right, because the world without you would be worse than it is.

And all of a sudden I felt something extraordinary, something greater than relief. I felt that He was listening to me, that He could hear me and would take my entreaty into account, that He would forgive both me and you, because He knows that if we did something bad, it was out of love and out of helplessness and desperation, but never out of wickedness. And all of a sudden I knew that He existed, that I wasn't abandoned, just as you are not abandoned, even at the moments of greatest trial.

God is with you, my dearest, and even if I can't be with you and maybe never will be again, that's not important. He will remain with you, just like my love, as long as you live.

Love, Bára