Lovers for a Day Read online

  Alois Burda loved money and subordinated everything else to it. Under the old regime he was the manager of a car mart, under the new one he opened one of his own. Under the old regime he had skilfully negotiated with the few cars he had for sale and soon found a way of maximizing bribes. After the revolution, his above-board commission gave him about the same income as he had enjoyed previously. Alois Burda was therefore a rich man and as early as the 1970s had built himself a family home with a living area (in accordance with the legislation then in force) of less than 120 square metres. In reality it was three times the size. The house contained a gymnasium, a covered swimming pool and three garages, and alongside it stood a tennis court, although he himself didn’t play tennis. He had one secret bank account in Switzerland, and since the Swiss banks paid miserable interest rates, he had another in Germany. He had only been divorced once because he discovered that divorce could be a rather expensive business. With his first wife he had two sons, with his second, a daughter. He rarely saw his sons. Since they had grown up they didn’t meet more than once a year. He soon grew tired of his second wife too, though she took fairly good care of the home and didn’t bother him too much. Nor did she concern herself with how he spent his free time. She was fond of sports and went skiing and horse-riding, played tennis and golf and was a good swimmer, none of which interested him in the least. From time to time he would take a mistress, although he would seldom feel anything for her and expected nothing in return.

  Occasionally he would ask his daughter for news from school, but he would forget her reply by the next morning and he was never entirely sure which class she was in. Then she too left school and got married. As a wedding present he gave her a new car that cost more than half a million crowns. The gift took her by surprise and she was almost ready to believe it was given with love, although it was more likely to salve his conscience or just a momentary whim. Besides, a sum like that meant nothing to Burda.

  He knew a lot of people, since he had clients everywhere, but he had no real friends. At best he had a few cronies with whom he would go for a drink from time to time or dream up business deals.

  As his sixtieth birthday approached, he suddenly started to suffer from exhaustion, lost his appetite and started losing weight. He put it down to his hectic lifestyle but his wife noticed the transformation in him and told him to go to the doctor. He ignored his wife’s advice on principle, and was afraid the doctor would discover that there was something seriously wrong. He decided he would take things more easily and even take a non-business trip abroad. He also visited a well-known healer who mixed him a special herbal tea and recommended that he eat pumpkin seeds every day. But none of it did any good. Burda started to suffer from stomach pains and would wake up in the night soaked in perspiration, thirsty and in the grip of a strange anxiety.

  Finally, he decided to see a doctor who was one of his oldest clients and had treated his first wife. The doctor tried to give the impression that everything was in order and chatted for a while about the latest Honda.

  ‘Is it serious?’ the car dealer asked him.

  ‘Do you want me to be totally frank?’

  The car dealer hesitated, and then nodded.

  ‘You need an operation without delay,’ the doctor said.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we’ll see.’

  ‘Aha,’ Burda realized, ‘it’s life or death, then?’

  ‘None of us is here for ever,’ the doctor said, ‘but we must never give up hope. When they open you up, we’ll know more.’

  The car dealer knew, of course, that when his number came up that would be it, but he was shocked none the less. After all, he still had almost ten years to go before he attained the average life span for Czech men. He had always believed that death came most frequently in the form of a road accident. And he was an excellent driver.

  ‘There are increasingly effective drugs around,’ the doctor added, ‘so don’t give up hope.’

  ‘As far as drugs are concerned, I can afford anything, however much it costs.’

  ‘I know that,’ said the doctor, ‘but it’s not a question of money.’

  ‘What is it a question of, then?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Your resistance. The will of God, fate, or whatever you want to call it.’

  The operation was arranged for the following week. In the meantime he would have to undergo all the necessary tests.

  When Burda came home and his wife asked what the doctor had discovered, he answered laconically, ‘I’m going to die.’ Then he went to his room, sat down in an armchair and pondered on the strange fact that soon he might not be here any more. Human beings had always struck him as being like machines: machines and human beings wore out with use, but a machine could be kept going more or less indefinitely by replacing its parts. But how was it with a human being? It seemed so cruel and unjust that a dead machine could be virtually eternal, whereas human components were mostly non-renewable and people were therefore condemned to die before their time. Then he started to worry over what he would do about his property and with his secret bank accounts. When he died everything he owned would go to his wife and children. This seemed to him unjust because none of them had contributed towards the family income. And besides he had given his daughter a car not long ago – and his sons didn’t want to know him. It was true that his wife took care of him, but he regularly gave her money for that and paid for her to go skiing in the Alps every winter and every spring. She was bound to have lovers all over the place, in fact he knew about one for sure. He had happened to come upon a letter from the man in his wife’s handbag when he was looking for a bill or something. So why, in addition to all the property and money of his that she would inherit, should his wife get money that she didn’t even know existed, just because he had married her?

  Then he pondered on the doctor’s words about hope and the will of God. To rely on the will of God was as pointless as trusting in fate. The will of God was just something to pacify the weak and the poor, whereas fate did what it was bribed to do. So far he had successfully bribed it and now he shied from the thought of drawing a total blank.

  That same afternoon, he climbed into his Mercedes, taking with him his passport and a suitcase, and set off for the border. There was only a hundred thousand francs in his Swiss account, but more in his German one. To the dismay of the teller he asked for it in cash. He returned with the money the next evening and hid the bank notes in a little safe to which he alone had the combination. The following day he went for his first test.

  When he was about to go into hospital he was faced with the problem of what to do with the money. The doctor had warned him that he might be in for several weeks. That he might never leave was not mentioned, but the car dealer was all too aware that this possibility could not be ruled out. In fact he might never leave the operating theatre alive. He didn’t feel like leaving the money at home, but he could hardly take it to the hospital. Where could he hide it? What would he do with it while he was lying unconscious on the operating table?

  Eventually he made up his mind and divided up the hundred-thousand wads into smaller bundles which he stuffed into some old felt slippers and hid them with a pair of rolled socks. Then in his wife’s presence he packed the slippers into a box and sealed it with sticking tape, asking her to bring it to the hospital along with a few other odds and ends, such as ordinary slippers, his toilet bag, two issues of a motoring magazine and his wallet with a few hundred crowns as soon as he asked for them.

  He put aside a few thousand marks, sealing them in an envelope for the surgeon. However, the latter made some vague excuse about being superstitious and not wanting to hear about money before the operation, and refused to take the envelope from him.

  When they opened Burda up on the operating table they discovered that the cancer had not only taken possession of his pancreas, it had also invaded other organs. A radical operation looked so hopeless that they simply sewed him back up ag
ain. After two days on the intensive care ward, he was transferred to ward eight which he shared with two other patients. The man to his left was an old blabbermouth from the country who spent most of his time telling trivial stories about his life back home and worrying over the fate of the smallholding that he had left his wife to look after on her own. In the bed to his right was an old man who said nothing and was most likely dying. Now and then, whether awake or asleep, he would produce strange, unintelligible animal-like screeches. These would disturb the car dealer even more than the smallholder’s stories, which he simply ignored.

  The doctors prescribed a great many drugs and once a day a nurse would bring a stand over to his bedside and hang a bottle from it. She would then insert a needle into one of his veins and he could watch the blood or some colourless liquid flow down the transparent tube and into his body. In spite of it, he felt more and more wretched with each passing day.

  His wife brought him all the things he had asked for, adding a bunch of Gerbera and a jar of stewed fruit.

  Flowers didn’t interest him and he had lost all appetite for food. When his wife left, he opened the box with the slippers, took out the socks and checked that the wads of bank notes were there. He stuffed the socks back in, closed the box and hid it in his bedside table. He was still able to walk, but only to shuffle over to the window or into the corridor before returning to his metal bed. These days he didn’t even like leaving the ward. His own death wasn’t something he thought about as such, but he couldn’t help noticing that his strength was steadily waning. Eventually he would have no strength left at all and he would close his eyes and be incapable of thinking or speaking, let alone taking decisions. What was he going to do with that money?

  His wife visited him twice a week and sometimes his married daughter would look in as well. Once his elder son came. They would each bring something he had no use for and he would put it away in his bedside table without interest, and it would either stay there or he would take it and throw it in the waste bin as soon as they had gone.

  There were several nurses on the ward. Apart from one older woman, they were hardly more than schoolgirls. They all seemed alike to him and he could only tell them apart by the colour of their hair. They treated him with professional kindness and sometimes would try to joke with him or cheer him up. Before sticking the needle into his vein they would apologize that it was going to hurt a little bit. But then a new nurse appeared – probably just back from leave. She seemed no older than the others, but he was immediately struck by her voice, which reminded him of the long-lost and almost forgotten voice of his mother. The nurse’s name was Věra. He noticed that whenever she came over to him to do some routine job she would always find something to say. And to his surprise, it wasn’t just the usual words of comfort, but something about the world outside; about the nice warm day, the jasmine in bloom or the strawberries already ripening on her balcony. He would listen to her, often unaware of what she was actually saying, conscious merely of the colour of her voice and its soothing quality.

  One day when he was feeling slightly better after a blood transfusion, he tentatively asked her if she would come and sit by him.

  ‘But Mr Burda,’ she said in astonishment, ‘what would Matron say if she caught me slacking?’ None the less she brought a chair and sat down beside him, taking his hand, punctured with so many injections, and stroking the back of it.

  ‘What sort of a life do you have, nurse?’ he asked.

  ‘What sort of a life?’ she laughed. ‘Average, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you live with your parents?’

  She nodded. She told him she had a little room in a block of flats. That the room contained just a bed, a chair, a bookshelf, and a bamboo stand with pots of flowers: a passion-flower, a fuchsia and a Crown of Thorns. She talked to him for a long time about flowers. Flowers had never interested him and their names evoked neither colours nor shapes, but he was conscious of the tenderness in the woman’s voice and the gentle touch of her fingers on the back of his hand. He noticed that her eyes were dark brown even though she had naturally fair hair. She promised to bring him some of the flowers she grew on her balcony and then stood up and left.

  The next day she really did bring him a lily and once again she came and sat by him.

  He asked her if there was anything important that she lacked.

  She didn’t understand the meaning of his question.

  So he asked her if she had a car.

  ‘A car?’ She laughed at the question.

  ‘And would you like one?’

  ‘You used to sell them, didn’t you?’ she recalled. Then she said she had never thought of having one. She lived with her mother and they scarcely had enough money to buy the occasional bag of tomatoes. Last year she had planted a few tomato plants on the balcony but they had been attacked by mould and there had been nothing to harvest. She asked him if he liked tomatoes. She asked him the way he used to ask people if they liked caviar or whether they preferred oysters. He replied that he liked them, although in fact he couldn’t recall whether he had ever enjoyed them.

  He was about to ask her if she found her life depressing, but at that moment he had a sudden spasm of pain and the nurse ran off to find a doctor who gave him an injection that left him groggy.

  When he began to come round that night, he realized for the first time, with absolute urgency, that he was likely to die in the next few days. He switched on the light above his bed, leaned over and took the box of slippers out of his bedside table. Underneath the rolled socks lay a fortune that could buy whole wagonloads of tomatoes.

  He tidied it all away again and returned the box to the bedside table; the wealth that usually imbued him with a sense of satisfaction was suddenly becoming a burden.

  Should he give it to some charity? Or to the hospital? Give it to the doctors who weren’t even capable of helping him? Or to his wife, so she could afford even more demanding lovers and go off skiing somewhere in the Rocky Mountains?

  Then suddenly he could see the face of the nurse and hear the sound of her voice that so resembled his mother’s. He wondered whether she would be on duty the next day and realized that he hoped she would.

  She did come the next day and she brought him a tomato. It was large and firm and the colour of fresh blood. He thanked her. He bit into it and chewed the mouthful for a long time, but was unable to swallow it for fear of vomiting.

  The nurse brought a stand over to his bed, attached a bottle and announced: ‘We’re going to have to feed you up a bit, Mr Burda. You’re getting too weak.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Does your family visit you?’ the nurse asked.

  He ought to reply that he had no family, just a wife and three children, but instead he answered that it was a long time since anyone had visited him.

  ‘They’ll come soon,’ the nurse said. ‘That’ll cheer you up.’

  He closed his eyes.

  She touched his forehead with her fingers. ‘It’s flowing now,’ she said. ‘God can work miracles and cure the sick as well as forgive the sinner. And He welcomes everyone with love.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, and meant why was she telling him this, but she replied, ‘Because God is love itself.’

  In spite of the strong tablets they were giving him, he could not get off to sleep that night. He was thinking about the strange fact that the world would continue, that the sun would still go on rising, that cars would go on running, that they would go on dreaming up new types of car, that they would continue selling them in the showrooms that his wife would no doubt get rid of, that new motorways and overpasses would be built, that the Petřín tunnel would be opened, but he would never hear about any of them. That realization was like an icy hand gripping him by the throat. He tried to fight it, to find someone to help him but he had no one to turn to. Then the face of the nurse who had sat by his bed appeared to him, saying that God can welcome anyone with love. God could do it, though he himself had never be
en able to. That was if God existed. If He did, then at least a little bit of love would reign on earth. He tried to remember those he had ever loved or who had ever loved him. But apart from his mother, who had been dead for thirty years, he couldn’t think of anyone. Tomorrow he would ask the nurse where she had come by her belief in God, or in love, at least. Finally he fell asleep. When he woke up in the middle of the night, an absurd idea struck him: he would give the money to the nurse. For telling him those things about God and love. For stroking his forehead even though she knew he was going to die. She was aware of it just as all the others were, but they didn’t stroke his forehead.

  Then he tried to imagine how she would respond to unexpected wealth. Would she accept it? In his experience, people never refused money. Outwardly they hesitated, but eventually they succumbed. He couldn’t just stuff several million into her pocket, though; he would have to ask her to call a notary. He would dictate his will and leave the money to her. What would she do with it?

  The following day, instead of questioning her about her beliefs, he asked her whether she lived only with her mother, or if she was going out with someone.

  She stared in surprise, but she answered him. Her boyfriend’s name was Martin and he was a violinist. They had been at a concert together the previous evening. It had been a performance of Beethoven’s D Minor concerto. Did he know it? Did he like it?

  He wasn’t familiar with Beethoven, even though he must have heard the name some time. He had never had any time for music. There was always music playing in the showrooms, but it was pop music.

  She went on to tell him that she and Martin were getting married in the autumn. ‘Will you come to our wedding?’ she asked.

  ‘If you invite me.’

  The next day nurse Věra was off duty, so he had a chance to reflect on whether he had thought things through clearly, and whether his decision hadn’t been over-hasty. What if he got better? What if God were to perform a miracle or one of the medicines they were injecting into him restored his strength? Why else would the nurse have invited him to her wedding? She would hardly have been joking with a dying man.