The Ultimate Intimacy

'Why this goblet?'

'Because you came to see me that time.'

'I came on my own account.'

'But you helped me.'

'How?'

Yes, how? 'To think more about life and stop being miserable and brooding on death!' he says.

'I came because I was miserable and was brooding on death. I found you attractive — ' she then says, ' — you preached about love and I felt you were searching for it like me.'

He kisses her for those words but finds himself unable to rejoice in her love as he did only a few weeks ago. Too much has collapsed around them. To get closer to her he has to struggle through the ruins.

Bára mentions that her friend Helena is getting a divorce.

'Why?'

'Her engineer is a drunkard and she couldn't stand being with him any more. And she has fallen in love.'

'Who with?'

'It's immaterial,' Bára says. 'She simply wishes to be with the one she loves.'

Her announcement contains an implicit reproach. 'Everyone's divorcing,' Bára adds.

'Do you think we should too?'

'Maybe we should, but we won't.'

They quickly finish off the bottle of wine — they have little time. Then they make love. Making love at least distances them for a moment from the world in which they move for the remainder of the day, for the remaining days, and they may quietly speak words of love.

Afterwards Bára bursts into tears.

'What's up, my love?'

But Bára shakes her head. She doesn't want to burden him with her concerns, she knows he has enough worries of his own.

'I don't have any worries when I'm with you.'

'I'm happy too when I'm with you. These are my only moments of happiness.'

'But you're crying.'

'I'm crying because I have so little time with you. Because I don't know what to do now. . Sweetheart, I'm so disheartened, so miserable and you won't protect me, all you do is lure me to you, and then you turn me out into the cold wind.'

Daniel says nothing. Then he asks if there has been any change at home.

Bára tells him that Sam mostly says nothing. He takes tablets and that calms him slightly. It looks as if he might have got over his

insane notion about the reincarnated murderess; Bára has locked the pistol in her own desk and he has not come looking for the weapon, even though he's sure to have noticed its disappearance. He hasn't apologized but behaves as if he could remember nothing of that mad scene when he wanted to shoot her. Perhaps he really can't. But he constantly makes it plain that Bára is his misfortune. She disrupts the order of his life, creates commotion and neglects her duties.

'He's sick,' Daniel says.

'Don't I know it. And he always will be.'

'Shouldn't he be in an institution?'

'I'm hardly going to send my husband to a loony bin, am I? I've seen the inside of one myself and I know what it means. Death would be better than that.'

'Do you want to leave him?'

'Are you, a pastor, advising me to walk out on a sick man?'

'I'm not giving you any advice. I simply asked what you intend to do.'

'You ask me things instead of being with me and saving me. Tell me, why aren't you with me?'

Daniel remains silent. He knows that either he ought not to be lying at her side or he ought to be with her completely. He has gone too far in adopting her comforting, and seemingly comfortable, assertion that there is no such thing as either/or in life. In reality there are situations in which people simply find excuses because they can't make up their minds and such indecision destroys both them and those around them. He has known that since the outset, but he accepted this offer of escape from responsibility because it let him put off the decision, because it allowed him to rejoice in his new love without having to draw the conclusions which he feared.

'I know,' Bára says as usual, 'you can't be with me when I'm with Sam. And I can't abandon him because he's mentally ill. And it'll be like that till the end. Tell me, don't you think it's terrible that I'll have to put up with this torture for the rest of my life? Do you think it can be endured?'

Daniel says nothing.

'I always thought I could put up with anything because I'm strong, but these days it sometimes occurs to me that it will drive me round the bend. Tell me, will God take into account the fact that I stayed with a tormenting husband solely to nurse him?'

'No,' he says.

'Why?' she asks in surprise.

'God has other worries. And anyway you don't stay with your husband.'

Bára almost leaps up. 'That's rich coming from you! Why don't you tell me like he does that I torment him and am driving him into his grave!'

Daniel says nothing.

'You're like all the rest,' Bára yells at him. 'You teach and preach and prattle about love instead of doing something about it. For you, a woman is good for only one thing. Go away, go away, go away, I don't want you any more.' And she starts to sob.

Daniel puts his arms around her and holds her head in his hands, kissing her and telling her he loves her.

At that moment it strikes him that he has already overstepped the limit anyway. He has been treading a completely different path to those in his entire previous life. It's simply a matter of acknowledging it and stopping pretending to himself and to his nearest and dearest. Who is the pretence intended for most of all, who does he lie to most of all? He is too attached to this woman, he has steered his course by her for almost a year now and there is no turning back. He says, 'If you like, I'll stay with you.'

'How do you mean?'

'Exactly what I say.'

'You'll abandon your wife and children?'

He says nothing, but doesn't deny it.

'You're crazy,' she says. 'And what will I do with Sam? Am I supposed to kill him, or what? I told you I can't walk out on a sick man.'

'I'm not asking you to.' And he realizes that Bára will never leave her husband. She will stay with Samuel not because he is sick nor because she has a son by him, she'll stay with him because in a strange way she is bound to him: because of her long years of devotion, because of her fear of him and for him, and because of an unquenchable longing to win back his favour and his love. None of that will change, not even when she's in the arms of Daniel. It wouldn't even change if Samuel were to beat her or shoot at her.

'My poor dear love,' Bára says. 'I know I'm awful. I don't know what I want. No — I know I'd like to be with you, but I know it's

impossible. In the end I'll ruin everyone's lives, including yours. You were better off a year ago. You had no need to add my worries to your own.'

'That year of my life has meant more to me than you can ever imagine,' he says. 'In spite of all the worries.'

'So don't forsake me yet. Bear with me for a little while longer.'

She pulls him down into her abyss, into her dark pit, where the only light comes from her dark eyes. She hugs him, they hug each other and he promises her he'll never leave her.

Before they part they make a date for the following Monday as usual.

Everything is as it was, except that he has the added burden of a promise.

2

Diary excerpts

The house is fall of workmen. They are knocking down partition walls, pulling up floors, replacing window frames, making conduits for new wiring. In one of the rooms I pulled up the floor myself and cut out a hole for the cables.

'You don't want to be doing that, Reverend, ' the foreman told me. 'That's our job and they'll put it on your bill anyway. '

I told him I was doing it for enjoyment's sake not to save money.

In fact I was doing it to take my mind off things and to tire out my body. It's a relief just to have to think about keeping strictly to the plan when cutting a hole in a wall. And it's easier to get to sleep at night when your body's weary.