“Please,” said Jiří. “Ready when you are.”
Professor Hájek began to read, slowly and distinctly:
Dear Květa,
with great delay I have realized that I still love you. That is why I must tell you: I still love you! My shyness and lack of common sense, together with the pain inflicted on me by the news of your long-ago relationship with Hynek, have resulted in this constant searing pain becoming entangled with a feeling of humiliation. As a result I have tried to deny and erase my love for you. Yet I have found that I am not capable of it. In fact I must admit that I have never been capable of it, though I consciously attempted with all my might to do so many times. At first when I left you I tried to forget you, and I hated you several times a day. Yet my hatred was knottily intertwined with my enduring love for you. Every day for many years I tried to forget you. But then I would see you somewhere and once again I would bitterly realize that my hatred for you was gone and I had to try slowly to rebuild it. They were bitter moments, full of despair and the unrealized dream of forever erasing you from my life. So it went, day after day. But then, just when I thought I had succeeded and that, at least in my mind, you had ceased to exist, I would once again be reminded of you by Alice. As she matured, her voice became increasingly similar to yours. One day, years ago, when my hearing was still good, I asked her to go find out how much it would cost to buy a new vise in Prague that I needed for my workshop in Lhotka. A few days later she called and when I picked up the receiver I heard you. She didn’t say, “Hi, Dad,” the way she usually did, but just spit out a confused list of prices for different items, and instead of her again I heard you. I hung up with my heart pounding so hard that I didn’t think I would survive the day. My dream of banishing you from my head and my heart for the rest of my life had run aground. No matter how I tried, I found that all my intentions fell to pieces like the Tower of Babylon. The well-hewn granite blocks of my pain were not capable of holding together that terrible edifice. It took a long time for me to discover that the reason for my failure was not lack of hatred, but the excess of love I never stopped feeling for you. I am sure all these things will seem self-evident to you, Květa. But I was truly unaware of them. I never much concerned myself with my feelings or yours. Both of us have had to pay for this unfortunate negligence. I can only say that I apologize to you and that I regret it. I am an old fool who in his understanding of your feelings and his own does not reach even to the constellation of freckles covering your right ankle. But I must admit that when I realized my memories of you caused love rather than hate, I felt like an inventor or an explorer who had discovered new lands. Really! I’m not exaggerating! Forgive me and my foolish metaphors, but I think I felt the way my childhood hero James Watt must have felt when his improved steam engine began to work at full capacity. I don’t know how to explain it any less foolishly. For that matter I’m not a poet and I am well aware that my attempt at an apology and an explanation of my love only goes to show that my foolishness and folly have grown in direct proportion to my increasing years. My love still exists. It exists to this day, and to this day it grows stronger. Once upon a time I was sheepish and bewitched! As bound to happen to anyone gazing into your eyes.
My dearest, I am now trying to overcome my conceitedness, my hollow pride, which instead deserves to be called vainglory, and after many futile attempts I have managed to forgive you. It was not easy, it was hard work. Brick by brick I dismantled the grand edifice, which only got in the way of everything and was entirely useless. I came to know the feeling that the workers must have had dismantling the remains of the unfinished Tower of Babel. My strenuous work, however, was redeemed with relief. I would hate ever again to undertake such a foolish, clumsy, and nonsensical comparison, but in my lungs I could smell the melting and the perfume of budding shoots. I will spare you all the worthless feelings which I encountered along the way. I can tell you about them later, and if you permit us to see each other at least every now and again, then perhaps we may also have some time left for that. There is but one thing I wish to ask of you: Please forgive me my complacency and conceitedness, and forgive me the pain I have caused you. I beg of you!
Though I remain convinced that time is a fixed physical quantity and I am aware that a second is merely one eighty-six-thousandth of the mean solar day, I confess, Květa, that I waver in my faith. For my senses betray me more every day, and the days fly by incessantly like a herd of stampeding colts. I fear I won’t have the chance to tell you of my lasting love. Nearly everything in life has taken less work than to admit this to you. Thus it occurred to me what a letter might look like in the language of the Hittites and their cuneiform script. I was driven to this folly by the memory of our first meeting, our first dates. This is the one thing I know I don’t have to explain to you.
Josef
When Jiří came home, he removed the translation of the letter from his briefcase as dictated to him by Professor Hájek, who had also added a few explanatory notes. Looking at his transcript of the translation, Jiří realized Alice wouldn’t be able to read his writing, and rewrote it in cursive, then returned the two original sheets of paper to the display case. Alice came home from work, the two of them had supper, and when they were done, Jiří gave her the translation to read. She washed her hands with soap, dried them, and carefully laid the letter on the table. When she had finished reading it, she read Professor Hájek’s notes, asked Jiří to explain what a neologism was, said she would take the letter home to show her mother the next day, and thanked him. Jiří wrote a letter about it to his sister, explaining that it felt like stepping onto an elevator carrying two passionate lovers who had something so important to tell each other that they ignored the other people getting on and off at each floor, who meanwhile did their best not to notice the lovers’ glances and caresses, maintaining a neutral, noncommittal smile as the elevator traveled up the shaft. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was inappropriate. He repeated to himself that honestly nobody, including him, could have known what was contained in the letter, but the feeling that he had peeked behind the screen into a bathroom where, naked and scarred, troubled, aging, and abused, love and illusions sat in the bathtub washing each other, made him very uncomfortable. It was reassuring to him that Alice’s response to the letter was far less emotional. Also she told him that if he wanted he could go with her to the hospital to see her mother the next day and explain to her exactly how the whole thing had happened and what the translator had told him. Jiří agreed and they both went to bed.
They arrived at the hospital the next morning a few minutes before eight. They climbed the stairs to the third floor and proceeded to make their way down the corridor with the vaulted ceiling to Květa’s room. Alice stopped a moment, smiled uncertainly, and pulled the translation out of her handbag. She glanced at it, then hurried to catch up with Jiří, who was now a few steps ahead. As they passed an open office, a nurse inside called out to them, and rushed past Jiří to Alice as if he were invisible. “Mrs. Černá, Mrs. Černá!” Alice stopped and looked back. “I assume you didn’t get the message?” she said. Alice shook her head and shot a quick glance at Jiří. The look on his face was neutral, as always when he was worried. He really is half English, Alice thought to herself as the nurse opened the door and they stepped into her office. Inside, a woman sitting behind a desk in a white coat told her that her mother had passed away at five thirty that morning. Only when Alice clenched her lips did Jiří realize how much she resembled Květa. Alice’s eyes wandered over a large photograph of a mountain valley behind the woman’s back. Later Alice realized that the calendar was two years old. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Černá,” said the woman behind the desk.