'I used to go to Divinity classes,' the lad said. 'Mum wanted me to and Musil let me. But it meant nothing to me — no, nothings too strong — very little. It was all too otherworldly. All those miracles and angels and
fallen angels and hell and damnation. Anyway, I immediately forgot it all.'
'I used to send him to the Catholic class,' Bára explained. 'I could have sent him to a Jewish class on account of Mum, but there wasn't one. I wanted him to hear something about God at least, so that he could make up his own mind. The trouble was their teacher wasn't like you. He hadn't the slightest bit of enthusiasm, he was just bitter somehow, and he talked to them more about hell than about the need for people to love one another.'
'Anyway, I could have got more out of it,' the lad admitted, 'but I found it impossible to concentrate. It's the same with all subjects, apart from geography. I enjoy geography because it's about real things.'
'Would you like to travel?'
'Everyone would. But I'll have to wait for the time being because the Big Boss won't let me: I don't behave well enough at school or at home. But anyway I wouldn't like to travel to big cities and go sightseeing around monuments. I prefer it where there are fewer people, such as in the forests or mountains. People in cities are like ants. Thousands of ants all over the place, in cars and walking down the street. I'm not just getting at the rest. I'm an ant too, and a lazy one at that.'
Bára said, 'It's not surprising he has an aversion to monuments and buildings in general, seeing his stepfather and mother are architects. I haven't a clue how he's going to make a living.'
'So what that you haven't a clue,' the boy commented. 'What's more disturbing is that I haven't got one. But if the worst comes to the worst I'll be a hunter.'
'What would you hunt?'
'That's the problem: I wouldn't kill a frog, or even a butterfly.'
'Castles in the air are the most he'd ever hunt!' Bára said.
'I'm no worse than you, Mummy!'
When dinner was over, the lad got up, and after rather profuse thanks — he was his mother's son, after all — he left.
'You have a splendid son,' Daniel told her.
'Did you like him? He made a real effort. He's not usually that talkative. Most times he's a fairly quiet boy. He's a bit lazy but his heart's in the right place.'
'Definitely.' He recalled the lad's remark about the lazy ant. Once, when he himself was still a boy, he had observed an ant that had fallen into the cleverly constructed pit of an ant-lion. He had watched its
vain efforts to free itself. He had watched it fulfil its destiny. He could picture it so clearly that he shuddered involuntarily.
She noticed and asked, 'What's the matter? Is something wrong?'
8 Letters
Dear Bára,
This is a letter for your birthday. Although I know but a modest six months out of your forty-one years I feel as if I've known you longer than people I've known for many years.
I think I knew true love with my first wife — and I love Hana. I never thought I'd be able to love another woman. I genuinely had no wish to. I don't know whether I secretly yearned to in some corner of my soul, but if I did it was so secret I didn't even discover it. And then you appeared. For me, every moment with you is special and beautiful (even though it also fills me with a sense of guilt — guilt towards Hana, towards you, guilt towards God who, while I believq He is merciful, could hardly approve of deceit).
Birthdays are times for wishes. So I wish you first of all, that wherever you go, you should dwell in mercy, understanding, freedom and kindliness. I wish you moments of peace and a faith that will overcome your anxieties. I wish you the love of your sons. I wish that everything of importance that happens in your life will be better than what went before. I wish (and pray) that death, of which you so often speak, should stay away from your door. I wish that your eyes should see what the eyes of others cannot, that your fingers should work wonders, that your plans should find fulfilment and that your words should be heard, that your heart should find love and your dreams peace.
/ ask God to forgive us for yielding to love. My sweet dove in the cleft of the rock concealed above the ravine grant that I see my own face allow me to hear your voice.
Thinking of you,
Love, Daniel
My love,
I still feel you to be a miracle. (How long can one live with a miracle?) It's as if you were wanting to demonstrate to me everything that is unbelievable. You surprise me again and again, either with something new or with something that endures.
I read your birthday wishes over and over again and each time they thrill me and move me. No one has ever said so many beautiful things to me. What I find most fascinating of all is that I believe every word, that I trust you, that I believe things can last. The possibility of things lasting dumbfounds me because it is something so rare, so difficult and even unseemly. That love could last — I don't mean the everyday kind, but the love that is a celebration — is something I had ceased to believe in when I realized the weakness and weariness of the poor little human creature and its inability to stick at anything.
I think of that first day I entered the church where you were preaching and it was the day when your mum died, which was something I didn't suspect and in fact at that moment you didn't yet know about it. Such fateful coincidences have been written about. Who arranges them? But in order for one to obey that mysterious command it is necessary to have a very special sort of perceptiveness. You summoned me to you and I know of no boundary I wouldn't want to cross with you. I'm not afraid of you. I trust you. When I'm with you the only feeling I have is one of security. I'm not afraid of you and I'm not afraid of myself with you. I'm happy, I'm unhappy that one day I'll discover it's the last day. I feel I'm morbid the way I'm often thinking about death, but most of all about the end. One day it will be adieu instead of au revoir. At every beginning I've always sensed the end and known that life only has meaning because it has an end. Like every embrace, every day, every joy, every pain.
I'd like to be with you now and instead I'm going away. With a husband who isn't nice to me, and with my children. They need me. I am their mother after all and I want to be a good one. At least that. I'll try and write you a letter if they leave me a few moments to myself.
I'll be back in Prague on Monday. Will you phone? Or write?
I'm thinking of you. I love you. Don't leave!
Love, Bára
Dearest,
Again I haven't seen you for several days. You're not sitting opposite me. You're not asking me questions. You're silent. But I know that for most of the time you'll be with me only in spirit. I can't tear myself away from you. It looks as if I — or we — might have crossed some inner barrier beyond which it is impossible to tear oneself away. Is that good? I don't know, but it is only beyond that barrier that real intimacy begins.
People oughtn't to lie to each other, they shouldn't lie about their feelings. One often forces oneself to have certain feelings on account of the children, or out of cowardice, or from a sense of duty, or out of sympathy (that's a feeling too), or from inertia, or anxiety, or from fear of being left on one's own or even of losing property. The two of us share neither children nor property, nor any duty to each other. All we have is love and I will never lie to you about it, I promise you, so you will be able to say: 'I believe everything you say'. Loveless love-making is humiliating and soul-destroying. Sometimes when I realize that's the way it is with most people (or so I believe and I have some knowledge from my experience as a clergyman), I say to myself: What hells people create instead of homes.