Lovers for a Day Page 17

  For several years this was the pattern of their life together; for her it was quiet, monotonous and lonely. She knew none of the other tenants, even though they were mostly of her own age. Jeans and jean-jackets, trainers, tinted hair, the same deodorants and make-up, the same greetings said with the same intonation – everything and everyone became indistinguishable. Only in the flat below theirs lived an old man who was different from the others both in age and appearance: he walked with the aid of crutches.

  On the odd occasion that they met by the lift in the hallway, she would hold the door open for him until he had manoeuvred himself in. As the lift went up, the old man would keep his gaze fixed on her. Several times she thought he was about to say something to her, but he apparently thought better of it or realized that he wouldn’t manage to say all he wanted to by the time they reached his floor. Once she found him carrying a large box. When the lift stopped at the sixth floor, she helped him carry the parcel to the door of his flat. As soon as he opened his door, a mixture of organic and chemical smells wafted towards her. From inside the flat she could hear a parrot squawking and a fat tom-cat came and rubbed up against the old man’s legs. The man started to thank her and she quickly said goodbye. As she was closing the door behind her she read his name on the door. It struck her that he must have been a very good-looking man in his youth. Everything about him was powerful, but most of all his hands, neck and chin. He still had a thick head of hair, even though it was nearly white. What had happened to him to make him need crutches? Then she stopped thinking about him.

  The very next day she met him again in front of the flats as she was coming home from work. He greeted her and she smiled at him. She met him three more times that week – an odd coincidence, if it was a coincidence. On the third occasion, he was carrying a bunch of roses and as he was leaving the lift he handed them to her.

  ‘But you can’t have bought them for me!’ she protested.

  ‘Maybe I did,’ he said and hobbled out of the lift.

  The scent of the flowers filled her with a sense of vague expectation. When she put them into a vase she could not help smiling at her own feelings.

  She baked some tarts for the weekend and set some aside, putting them in a chocolate box and then wrapping the box in tissue paper.

  The old man lived in a single room that was more like a workshop or studio. Alongside a work bench stood a wooden press and a guillotine whose blade pointed upwards and made her feel queasy. Along the walls there were untidy heaps of books and papers. And the shelves and chairs were piled high with things too. The tom-cat was sleeping on the divan surrounded by a heap of discarded clothes. She noticed a number of unframed paintings – old-fashioned, romantic subjects that seemed out of keeping with the newness of the painting. Only then did she become aware of a painter’s easel and on it a portrait in progress. She stared in consternation at the unfinished face. There could be no doubt: it was her own.

  ‘I never studied painting,’ she heard him say from behind her. He laid the box she had brought him on a table without opening it and hurriedly started to clear one of the chairs. ‘I spent my whole life binding books. This is a new thing. I was attracted by the way you looked. You have so much noble beauty. Unfortunately I’m unable to capture it. There’s something of our Slav forebears in you …’ The chair was now empty but she did not sit down. She apologized for arriving unannounced and quickly left.

  Back in her own flat she rushed to the mirror and gazed at herself for a moment before realizing that in reality her eyes were much smaller than in the painting. She tried to open them as wide as she could and smiled at her reflection.

  The next day she picked up her son from kindergarten in the early afternoon as usual. Matouš talked incessantly. She usually enjoyed his mixture of childish notions, make-believe and actual experience but today she found she was unable to concentrate. When in the distance she caught sight of the old bookbinder waiting in front of the flats she took her son to the sandpit so that she could go into the building on her own. He greeted her and hobbled after her into the lift. ‘I tidied the place up today,’ he announced to her as soon as the lift started to move. ‘Wouldn’t you like to drop in for a minute or two?’

  Her portrait was now covered with a clean sheet and the clutter had disappeared from the chairs and the divan.

  After all there was nothing wrong in visiting an old invalid who was obviously lonely. She sat down by the window in order to keep an eye on the sandpit – and also to conceal her embarrassment. She refused his offer of refreshments.

  The bookbinder laid his crutches aside and sat down with difficulty. For a moment he gazed at her mutely, but then started to ask her questions. Was she happy with her life? What sort of childhood had she had? Had she chosen her profession because she enjoyed being with children? It was his belief that people who looked after children fulfilled a noble mission.

  His language was slightly overblown but what impressed her most was his interest in her life. A sudden sense of intimacy filled her with alarm and she swiftly made her excuses and hurried off to find her son.

  She would call on the old bookbinder from time to time and bring him some cakes she had baked. For his part he would present her with either books or flowers. She read the books but they meant little to her as their subject matter was too far removed from her usual reading. She never stayed longer than a few minutes in the bookbinder’s flat, but those short moments increasingly began to fill her thoughts.

  She now knew everything about the bookbinder’s life that he considered important for her to know. He was sixty-five. He had moved there from a village where his sister still lived. Originally he was to have taken over his father’s farm, but in the last days of the war his leg had been blown off by a mine and he had almost bled to death. At the age of twenty he had felt that his life was at an end. In time, however, he had come to realize that there were doors still open to him, in spite of his misfortune. Doors to knowledge and mystical experience. All he had to do was muster the strength to break free of the external world with its passions and strivings and start to open the door to a higher bliss, to the vision of God. One door did remain closed. He could never start a family of his own. As the years went by, he gradually lost those close to him and he lived out his days in solitude, only visiting his sister during the summer. He was usually away at this time of year.

  ‘Why are you still here, then?’ she asked.

  ‘But you know perfectly well why,’ he replied.

  It sometimes occurred to her that he made rather too much of the tranquillity and contentment he had achieved. She had the feeling that the equanimity on which he laid such stress merely concealed a deep longing as well as the wounds he had suffered in the distant past. At other times, she found his statements completely baffling. She could not understand his enthusiasm for the religion of the ancient Aryans and the mores of their Slav forebears, nor why he suspected the Jews of conspiring against all other nations. She didn’t know any Jews anyway, let alone any Indians, and the concerns or practices of the ancient Slavs were alien to her. None the less she listened attentively to the old man as if wanting to make up for all the years when no one had listened to him.

  At the end of spring, her husband was due to leave Prague for a week on business: whenever she thought of his departure she felt a thrill, though she wasn’t quite sure why. The evening after Jakub’s departure, she waited until her son was asleep and then changed into her best clothes. She sat down in front of the mirror and gazed at her face for a long time. She tried to apply some eyeshadow, but her hands trembled too much. Instead she went into the bedroom where her son was sleeping, kissed him on the forehead and then tiptoed out onto the landing. The noise of television sets was audible as she passed the other flats, but when she lightly pressed his doorbell it seemed as if the sound could be heard through all thirteen floors.

  He came to the door. ‘Is something wrong?’

  She shook her head. She sat down o
n the chair, where she usually sat – on the occasions when she did sit. The bookbinder brought a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘Have you the time today?’

  She noticed that there was a new picture of her on the wall but she was unable to concentrate on it.

  ‘Has your husband gone?’

  She nodded.

  ‘A pity I’m so old,’ he lamented, ‘and a cripple into the bargain.’

  ‘That’s not important, is it? The main thing is I really enjoy being with you.’ She was at a loss what to do. She stood up and turned towards the door, but stopped disconcerted in the middle of the room. ‘Do you think I should go?’

  ‘No, definitely not!’

  She didn’t look at him. Several dark cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the sound of music came through the wall.

  The old man came over to her and kissed her on the neck. ‘It’s a long time since I have been with a woman. Many years.’

  She put her arms around him. Suddenly all the embarrassment and uncertainty left her. She went over to the ottoman, took off her clothes and waited for him to join her.

  He came and sat by her, gently calling her by the names of different Slav goddesses while stroking her forehead, her cheeks, her neck and her breasts. His words and his touch aroused a deep longing in her. She whispered words that came unexpectedly into her mind, as if she were weaving charms for herself and the old man. When at last he lay down beside her it was as if she had waited her whole life for this moment and she became aware of an unfamiliar delight that went on growing until she could bear it no longer and she let out a cry loud enough to penetrate all thirteen floors and rouse everyone, whether awake or asleep.

  The bookbinder caressed her body with his coarse hands and waves of bliss washed over her again and again. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, ‘I love you.’ At that moment she overheard a strange barking sound coming from beyond the wall. Her son was suffocating.

  She rushed out onto the landing half naked. When she opened the door she was greeted with total silence. She went numb at the thought of her son lying there lifeless, having choked to death while she wickedly indulged her passion.

  But Matouš was asleep and breathing peacefully. One of his pillows had simply fallen off his bed onto the floor. ‘Oh, my poor little lamb!’ She knelt down and touched his forehead and the wisps of his hair that had grown damp as he slept. ‘Mummy will never leave you on your own again!’ She stretched out on the rug, put the child’s pillow under her head and closed her eyes. Red spots danced before her eyes, swelling up and then dwindling again. Gradually butterflies’ wings emerged and flittered above her, combining to form romantic landscapes. Then everything faded and went dark and out of the darkness emerged the figure of the old bookbinder. His face was bathed with light and, with a sudden sense of happiness, she realized that the light was coming from her.

  The next evening, as soon as her son fell asleep she went to find the old man and spent most of the night with him. It was nearly morning when she returned. She lay down beside her son’s bed and fell asleep straight away.

  When Jakub returned a week later he found her haggard, as if exhausted from a fever. She avoided his kiss and was scarcely aware of what he was saying. Then she announced that she couldn’t live with him any more and tried to explain to him what had happened. He listened to her aghast. When he had grasped the sordid nature of her infidelity, he yelled at her that she disgusted him. He was about to hit her but it seemed too theatrical and undignified, so he just spat on the floor and dashed out of the room. She could hear him shouting from the next room, most likely for her benefit but perhaps he wanted the person downstairs to hear. ‘With a cripple like that – she goes and does it with a senile cripple!’

  Marie put her son to bed. For a moment she hesitated over whether she should go to her husband and try and make him understand that she had no wish to hurt him. Then she realized that the old bookbinder was sure to be waiting for her and she crept out onto the landing.

  When news of her behaviour spread, people were scandalized. Such a misalliance left all other adultery in the shade. A social worker voiced doubts about whether she was a suitable person to bring up her son and submitted a lengthy report to her superiors showing that the mother had left her child alone in the flat night after night. The director of the crèche asked her to find a job somewhere people didn’t know her.

  On the day of the divorce hearing, the old bookbinder accompanied her to court. He carefully stood his crutches against the wall and took a seat in the back row.

  The judge was a stout, kindly looking man. In his time he had dissolved hundreds of marriages but he would always try to reconcile the couples, usually without success. He tried to reconcile Marie Anna with her husband too. Lots of unexpected things could happen in the course of a marriage, he told them. People found themselves in situations they would have never have dreamed of and so found it impossible to deal with them: at such moments they could take rash decisions that they would regret. It was up to their partners, if they loved them, to show forbearance and offer them a helping hand.

  He turned to Marie and urged her to consider her actions and think not only about her partner who had so far behaved like a model husband, but also to take her son’s interests into account. Nothing would ever make up for the comfort of a happy home. A child should be brought up by the joint efforts of both parents. Didn’t she realize that she could lose her son not only by a court decision, but also by a judgement of the heart, were her son not to accept her actions when he was old enough to fully understand? And last but not least she should think about herself. After all, she too wanted to live with someone who was her equal, spend not just a few short months with him but live to see the fruits of their joint efforts, live with her partner to a ripe old age, when one needed the support of one’s companion more than in one’s youth. The judge looked towards the seats where her lover sat, whose early demise he seemed to prophesy, and then turned to her husband and asked him if he was still willing to take Marie back as his wife. Jakub seemed overcome with emotion and was about to say something when he simply nodded. The judge adjourned the hearing to give them time to think things over.

  The three of them left the court room. Jakub hesitated for a moment, then, without a word, started to stride away, healthy and self-confident, while she walked along silently at the side of the lame old man.

  The bookbinder talked continuously as if suddenly taken aback by his responsibility: the hearing was bound to have upset her and she must have been scared by the threat of her son being taken away from her by the authorities. It was an unlikely eventuality, but should there really be such a risk, she was not to take him, an old man, into account. He would leave and remove the burden that he was becoming to her.

  She shook her head. In fact she hadn’t found the hearing particularly upsetting. She felt that it had nothing to do with her and she had not yet absorbed the fact that she might lose her son.

  The old man at her side picked up the judge’s words about death and those who are left alone. He said he had no right to ask her to bind herself to him, to take her away from her family and then abandon her, leaving her alone in the world.

  She listened to him horrified. How could he talk so coldbloodedly if he loved her? How could he call into question the very thing that had raised them above what would otherwise be a meaningless existence?

  She shook her head once more. Then they parted company and without another glance in his direction she hurried off to fetch her son. Only now did the judge’s words begin to sink in. When Matouš ran up to meet her at the kindergarten, she took him in her arms, hugged him and burst into tears.

  Back home she played with the little boy, then fed him and put him to bed. Her husband had gone off somewhere, but for the first time in ages she did not go down to the flat below.

  In the bathroom she glanced in the mirror. She had grown thin over the past three weeks, her face struck her as emaciated, with her small eyes lo
oking even more deeply set, surrounded by a dark shadow.

  Jakub returned before midnight. His face showed momentary surprise but he walked past her in silence. He stank of beer.

  She lay down in the bedroom which until recently she had shared with Jakub but which neither of them used these days. The judge had warned her about loneliness should she remain with the old man and he died before she did. As if death was governed solely by age, and death alone determined people’s loneliness. As if a few months of love didn’t mean more than a whole life without it.

  She got up, put on her dressing gown, and quietly opened the door behind which her husband was lying. He wasn’t asleep, he was smoking.

  ‘Don’t take him from me,’ she said, meaning her son.

  He didn’t even turn his head towards her.

  ‘I don’t know why it happened,’ she went on, ‘but we were happy.’

  Jakub made a gagging noise.

  ‘Forgive me. I don’t know why it happened.’ She realized that he could never understand her choice and so he could hardly grant her this wish. Receiving no reply, she turned and left the room.

  She stopped outside the door on the floor below but didn’t ring the bell; she just stood and waited. She listened to the silence from inside. Nothing disturbed it. She realized she had no wish to disturb it either. A man may be a cripple, but he must remain a man who did not shy away from responsibility.

  She walked down the remaining six floors.

  Fate offered everyone a moment when they could shine, the chance of some deed to transcend their own emptiness. But when that moment passed, what then? What should follow?

  She leaned wearily against the wall of the building. She looked upwards, but the light of the stars was obscured by the glow of the street lamps.

  (1987)

  RICH MEN TEND TO BE STRANGE

  There are men who love women, there are men who love alcohol, nature or sport, there are men who love children or work, and there are men who love money. It is possible, of course, for a man to love more than one of these, but he will always give one priority over the rest. If he is sufficiently ambitious he can hope to achieve the thing he yearns for most.