'I promise.'
'I believe you. I believe everything you say.'
'What shall we do?'
'How do you mean?'
'In order to be together.'
'Nothing,' she replies quickly. 'We can't do anything except what we're doing. We can go and make love now, and know that we're as together as it's possible to be.'
'Here?'
'Here. Have you never made love in a park?'
'What if someone sees us?'
'Who would see us? There's no one here, is there?'
They find a spot that is separated from the path by a none too thick bush.
They lie half-undressed in the autumnally withered grass with scattered dry leaves and a smell of sulphur dioxide. The branches of the trees now shield the sun, so they feel the cool of the shade on their naked legs. 'My love,' he whispers to her, 'my dear little girl, you came to find me and now you're with me.'
'Danny, you're making love to me in my own park. I bet you've never made love in the woods before. You're a servant of God, but now you're mine. You are the Lord's compensation for all my suffering. You're my divine compensation, my boy.'
All of a sudden they catch the sound of children's voices apparently just nearby.
'Oh, God,' Bára whispers, 'he begrudges me it.' For a moment she grips him even more firmly before suddenly releasing him. 'Fear not, my darling, they're only gnomes!'
They manage to get dressed and return to the footpath before the first childish figures emerge from behind the trees. Her mother's dark hair and Eva's old skirt. It's Magda! What is she doing here?
His immediate instinct is to dash back into the bushes, but at that moment several other little red figures hobble into the open on short legs.
His sight really must be failing, or perhaps his bad conscience is beginning to distort the world and people.
A young nun approaches, pushing a wheelchair containing a handicapped child. 'Children,' she calls, 'let's not forget our manners!'
'Lord Jesus Christ be praised!' the handicapped children chorus somewhat erratically.
'It turned out fine,' the nun says, 'so we decided to take a trip and let our darlings have a chance to enjoy the last of the sun.'
'Yes,' says Bára, 'we enjoyed it too.'
I am filled with disgrace and look upon my affliction .. (Job 10:15), comes to mind but he remains silent. It's too late for him to save his soul anyway.
2
Diary excerpts
Invisible chimneys spew smoke and sulphur
on to the neo-classical summer-houses.
The brook no longer flows through the Egyptian pavilion
Leaves fall in drops from the trees
never to grow again maybe.
From the bushes squint the eyes of twofold death.
Gazing with love on a noble lady as she walks through her allotted park I am suffused with the fateful tenderness of her eyes and the anguish falls in drops from my soul. Upon the lovers blinded by their love from the bushes squint the eyes of crooked gnomes.
I gave Bára these few lines to read when we met in Mum's flat. 'You're crazy, ' was her appraisal. 'You're a lovely lunatic. You see what others can't see and hear things that are beyond the hearing of others. '
Afterwards, when she was lying beside me, she asked me whether I still loved her and I said yes, as she expected. I was suddenly overcome with the falseness of the situation. The strangeness of the body that I was touching. It occurred to me at that moment that Bára had come to me to take revenge on her husband. But she was not vengeful. No, she had come to obtain something she felt cheated of. Maybe it was belief in some higher power, maybe just kindliness or words of love. She had come on her own account, of course, not mine. And one day she'll leave the same way.
How did I come to be lying alongside a woman who didn't belong to me, telling her that I love her and having congress with her as with my wife?
'Dan, my love, 'she said to me at that moment, 'why are you looking at me like that from so far away?'
'I'm looking at you from right close up. '
'Don't make excuses. And don't pretend you don't know what I mean!' She put her arms around me and hugged me to her. 'Yes, it's me. I'm here with you.'
When we were saying goodbye she told me that for All Souls she usually went all the way to Boskovice in Moravia to lay flowers on the grave of her maternal grandparents, even though they were Jews and hadn't, of course, observed All Souls' Day or laid flowers on graves. Her husband, for his part, travelled to South Bohemia to lay flowers on the grave of his forebears. She generally stayed in Moravia overnight at an old aunt's. Were I to go with her we could stay that night together somewhere.
Magda came down with tonsillitis. She tends to exaggerate her feelings. When she is happy she is wildly joyful, when she is sad, one would think she was the most miserable person on earth, when she has a pain, it always hurts terribly. Perhaps she really was feeling very bad— the antibiotic hadn't had time to take effect yet and she would groan and be wanting something at every moment: tea, or a book, or another blanket
because she was shivering with the fever. Then she wanted me to sit and talk to her about something.
I asked her what she wanted me to talk about. She said, 'About Jitka, for instance. '
For a moment I wasn't sure who she meant, and I asked her why she wanted to hear about her.
'Because she had a pain too. And because you've never talked to me about her. '
I told her instead about how I had been ill when I was a little boy, and then about how I trained to be a bookseller. Then I recalled the beginning of the revolution and how I had gone to meetings at the theatre and taken part in demonstrations. 'Do you remember I took you with me to the one on Letná Plain?' For a moment, I relived my feelings of that day: the enthusiasm, the expectation, and the hope for a life of greater truth and freedom.
'Yeah, I know, 'she said, 'but it was no fun for me. It was awfully cold and the people just stood there and there were terribly long speeches that were no fun at all. '
'And there were all the flags. '
Flags are no fun either. '
'What's your idea of fun, then?'
She pondered for a moment and then asked, 'That time, or in general?'
'That time or in general. '
'My idea of fun would be to fly. Not in a plane, but to actually have wings. To be a flamingus, say. '
'A what?'I said, baffled.
'You know, a bird of some kind,' she explained. A beautiful bird that flies where it likes. And I shouldn't think it suffers from sore throats and it doesn't have to go to a stupid school,' she added prosaically.
I gave her another cold compress and spread her some bread and butter. Then I told her I had to pop out for a while, but that her mother would be back in an hour.
She asked me where I was going.
I told her I had a meeting with the moderator but actually I had a date with Bára. We had arranged it when Magda was still well and I hadn't had a chance to call her and cancel it.
I knew that Magda would survive on her own for an hour; most fathers are out at work during the day and are therefore unable to sit