He really ought to concentrate on his sermon, but the woman at his side distracts him. She is nothing like his sister, more like his first wife. They were born, he realizes, at about the same time. But the image of his first wife has become fixed and unchanging. What would she have looked like if she'd lived to be forty? She'd certainly not have used eye make-up like this one. Or would she? And she would dress more soberly. She was unassuming and even a trifle ascetic. Maybe he was too. What is the point of dressing flamboyantly? Those who care too much for the outer covering are usually trying to conceal emptiness or sterility inside.
'It was most likely fear that brought me,' she eventually answers.
'Fear of what?'
'Of what? I can't really say. One doesn't have to be afraid of anything in particular, just afraid, that's all. Of people. Or of loneliness. Of life or death. Death mostly. Even though there are days when I don't feel like living at all.'
'Fear is human, Mrs Musilová.'
'Do you think so? My husband doesn't accept it. He can't stand it when I'm not in a good mood. He believes he's the only one with any right to have the blues.'
'Have you been married long?'
'Wait a second, I'll have to work it out. It's nearly fifteen years. With Samuel, that is. My husband has a biblical name. But it's the only saintly thing about him.'
'Samuel wasn't a saint. He was a judge and a prophet in ancient Israel.'
'No doubt. I wouldn't know such things. All I meant was that my husband has a character defect. But I expect I shouldn't have said anything, it's not polite to talk about the character defects of someone you don't know and who isn't present.'
A large farm office serves as a prayer room. In front of it there is already a huddle of old women waiting, as well as two men in their Sunday best, looking with some distrust at the luxurious foreign car.
He gets out. 'Thank you very much. And don't wait for me, I'll get home somehow.'
'I'll happily wait for you. I'll come and listen to your sermon, seeing that I'm here. Or are you going to preach the same one as in Prague?'
The room contains four rows of six chairs each, and even these are not filled. He writes the numbers of the hymns on a blackboard while greeting those who are gradually taking their places in the last two rows. There are nine in the congregation, including his companion, who remains standing by the door. Why? Maybe she feels out of place here. She is not dressed for a village service.
He sits down at the harmonium and plays a short improvisation. He concentrates. He has prepared an Easter sermon on a text from the Letter to the Romans. 'If we are united with him because we are involved in his death, we will certainly be involved in his resurrection also.' Quite unconsciously, he ends up speaking to his recent companion about her anxiety.
But he speaks less about resurrection, which has always somewhat disconcerted him, than about love that does not falter at any sacrifice, and about Jesus who, out of love for mankind, was crucified.
We speak of the miracle of resurrection after death, but we ought not to forget that living for love means resurrection during one's life. Several times during the sermon he looks in the direction of the
unknown woman who brought him here. She is standing motionless by the door, cowering slightly, as if trying to protect herself from the cold or from his words.
When they get back into the car and drive off, she asks him: 'Do you truly believe that someone who is dead can rise again and walk? Someone who is long dead, I mean.'
'But it's a. .'
'It's a myth,' she says. 'No, please don't explain anything. Not at the moment, at least. Do you think that the people sitting there understand you. Do they give any thought to what you told them?'
'I don't know. As far as they are concerned it is a ritual. They grew up with it. Besides, faith is not something you think about. You can reflect on God and many people have, but they've still not come up with anything. Even the psalmist complained: "I wondered what to make of it all and it seemed far from easy to me.'"
'And you don't wonder about him?'
He hesitates for a moment, and then says, '1 do, of course.'
'But you know it's impossible to come up with anything. Is it also chiefly a ritual for you too?'
'No, I didn't grow up with it.'
'Your parents weren't believers?'
'My mother was. As for my father, I can't say. One doesn't have the right to judge whether or not another person believes, particularly when it is one's father.'
'My father wasn't a believer. I told you that already. He was a sort of— what the Russians call a "superfluous man". He did just one truly good and useful thing in his life: he married my mother and didn't divorce her, not even during the war. Even though he's bound to have two-timed her on many occasions afterwards.'
'My father was a doctor. But he spent many years in concentration camps. Under the Nazis and the Communists. What he went through in those camps shattered him. It is truly hard to reconcile those experiences with belief in a just and all-powerful God. Father didn't believe there was any higher justice. He didn't believe people have souls either. "Man has a brain," he used to say. "The brain is nature's greatest wonder, but it is terribly impermanent. The soul is the brain. When the brain perishes what remains of the soul?"' He checks himself.
And in spite of that you chose your present career?'
'Maybe not in spite of but because. My father was a tolerant man.
He left it up to me to decide what I believed about the world, about people and their souls.'
'He died a long time ago?'
'Sixteen years ago. But he lived to see…' He checks himself again. 'A few days before his death he said to me, "What we have here on earth is neither God's nor Satan's creation. Heaven or Hell is what we create ourselves. Most of the time we create Hell."'
'Did you love him?'
'The way that everyone loves their father.'
Why is she asking him? Why does it interest her?
They are nearing Prague. The city is veiled in smoke. Human life veiled in mystery. And God's existence?
'I didn't love mine,' the woman breaks the silence. 'He used to come home, put his feet up on the table and demand to be waited on hand and foot by us. My mother, my sister and me. Mother would come in exhausted from work and had to put up with him. Whatever he earned he used to gamble. He seldom won, and when he did it was just used for more gambling. Mother used to support the lot of us. That's why I married so young. In order to get away from there. His shadow still hangs over me today. But he was tolerant as well, as far as I was concerned, at least. He let me study to be an actress even though I doubt if he'd ever set foot in a theatre in his life. I exaggerate. Apart from that he watched television.'
And you're an actress?'
'No, I didn't finish the course. When I met Sam I switched to study architecture — not at the technical university, though, more the theory than the practical stuff. And these days I work as a kind of high-class secretary in his practice, or I design interiors for his buildings. I must admit, though, that I do act on the odd occasion when one of my former fellow students finds me a bit-part on TV.'