I married my husband, who is successful and highly respected, out of love. I so earnestly wanted that love to last for ever, and still do, and want to remain true to this wish, true to my husband. And yet I watch with horror as that love fades and is replaced by recriminations, quarrels or cold silence. All that remains is a fixed routine: breakfast, shopping, cooking, housework and visiting people together, or even receptions with feigned smiles and bonhomie. I have two sons. Because of my own irresponsibility I deprived Saša of a father when he was very small. And I now know I must not deprive my little Aleš of his father.
Sometimes I wake up at night with a feeling of anxiety that I have difficulty in describing to you. It is a sense of wasting my life, my only life, my days, each of which is unrepeatable. Yet I spend them emptily, engaged in some duty or other which I mostly don't recognize as such, in a life without love and without devotion, even though I have long conversations about them at home with my husband.
There are times when I'd just like to take myself off somewhere or cuddle up to my husband and beg him to be with me, be mine, do something, save me. But he is asleep and if I did wake him he would tick me off for bothering him. I only interest him as a component. A component of the home where he takes refuge, where he needs me to look after and listen to him, as well as tidy and cook for him. But am I directing my request to the right person at this moment? You are happy because you have prayer and someone who listens to you, or at least so you believe. That's a comfort. That is hope.
There is also hope in what you wrote to me and the advice you gave, although I get the feeling that to live according to your advice one definitely needs enormous strength, patience and perseverance.
You have been so kind to me that I take the liberty to ask whether I might be able to come and talk to you about these things some time — whether I'm allowed to if I'm not a member of your church. I know that time is the most precious commodity that we have and were you to spare me a few minutes I would be eternally grateful.
Yours, Bára M.
Penned just before midnight on Wednesday in our fair, royal city which neither the Communists nor my husband have managed to disfigure.
Vedra, you gypsy mouthpiece,
I watched your antics on television and it made me want to throw up. You literally called on us to be kind to 'poor' criminals and even gypsies! But do you share a house with them? I do. No sooner do you meet them than they're reaching for their knives. They get drunk and yell beneath your window. If it wasn't for the skinheads they'd have cut the throats of the lot of us. They will one day, anyway, when they outnumber us, and that won't
be long. The only reason they haven't done it so far is because someone has to feed and clothe them. Have you already forgotten what you Christians have on your consciences? How many people did you burn at the stake just for saying the world was round, for instance? And what about when you used to bless weapons? Take your bloody love and stick it up your arse and don't come spreading it on the television where nobody could give a damn about you.
A viewer from Usti
Dear Rút,
You know how terrible I am about writing letters. You're so far away that it seems inappropriate to let you know all the little details of our lives. And that leaves only the major events. One important event that affects both of us I've been keeping from you. Some time ago — it must be about two years already — a magazine here published a list of secret police informers. The list was obtained illegally and published without any official authentication. It contained over a hundred thousand names of people living and dead, some who signed to advance their careers and others who were forced to in prison. I found our father's name on the list: his real name, his code name and his date of birth. That's all. 1 have no other information and only the people on the list have the right to have it checked. If they died in the meantime, it can't be helped. You can imagine my feelings when I discovered Dad's name on the list. I wanted to spare you them. Besides, I've heard all sorts of conflicting reports about the matter over the past two years that I really don't know what to think. There is talk about people who found themselves mistakenly on the list because they happened to sign a bit of paper which they didn't think important and subsequently did nothing dishonourable. Now it seems to me that we ought to try to clear Dad's name if he was innocent, and knowing him and remembering him as I do, I just can't bring myself to believe he was capable of harming anyone in order to gain some advantage for himself or to spare himself some hardship. It struck me that you, as the older one, might know a bit more about him in those years when he returned from prison, that you might have noticed something that I was oblivious to, or even have heard something from him that he didn't feel he could tell me. This is the reason why I'm writing to you about it so belatedly.
I'm thinking of you. It's a pity we had to meet in the shadow of death and there was no opportunity for us really to spend some time together.
Love, Dan
Dear Mrs Bára Musilová,
Thank you for your frank letter. I welcome anyone who feels a need to talk to me about 'such things'. I enclose a card with the times you can catch me in my office — it is situated in the same building as the chapel.
And please don't speak in advance about gratitude before knowing what you'll receive.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Vedra
Dear Reverend,
I thought I'd make it to church, but you know what we pagans are like — in the end we would rather do something else than help our souls. So I'm writing to you instead. I expect you can guess it is to do with that young man Petr Koubek that I hired on your recommendation and gave the job of driving the garden tractor. I've no complaints about the young man, it's just that he worries me a bit. To put it in a nutshell, he tries to do the job properly but his heart isn't in it. He has other ambitions. I suppose you might call them spiritual, but they seem to me inappropriate. As you know, he's a good-looking young fellow with an interesting face and a murky past. I mostly employ women, some of whom are still very young. Don't get the idea that he is tempting them to do anything wrong, anyway it would be quite normal if he happened to fancy some of them. No, he preaches to them, while they're hard at work and you can imagine that we have more than enough to do in the gardens at this time of year. He turns off the motor and, job or no job, he starts to tell them all about the life of the Holy Spirit in love and fellowship, saying that all people should be transformed. He feels that he is called on to start that transformation. The girls listen to him transfixed, and he enjoys that. But in the meantime the borders are overgrown with weeds and the carnations go unwatered. Maybe it would be
a good idea for you to have a word with him, Reverend, and explain to him that he's in the garden to work and not to preach to the girls about the Holy Spirit.
Wishing you all the best,
Yours truly, Břetislav Houdek
Chapter Three
1
Brother Soukup has been sitting in his office for almost an hour and the conversation is getting nowhere. 'You condemn me, Reverend!'
'I never condemn anyone.'
'I know. But you think I'm behaving badly.'
'Irresponsibly perhaps.'
'Towards the children, you mean?'
'Towards everyone.'