"Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light"

My friend Andrew sent this to me, all the way from Illinois: it's from a Czech writer Ivan Klima.



'Do you feel claustrophobic here?' Albina asked.
'Why do you think that?'
'I feel that it's claustrophobic for you here. Should I open
the window or maybe turn on the light?'
'Just stay. Stay here with me. I feel good like this. I like
the dark.' He embraced her. 'Maybe I've been waiting my whole
life for you, waiting for this moment.'
'Life is waiting for the light, not for the dark,' she
said. 'My Indian teacher told me that. He was blind.'
--
'I'm already old, aren't I?' said his mother.
'Not that old,' he replied, as he always did. 'Others are
older.'
'And how old am I, really?'
'You'll be seventy-eight next birthday.'
'I don't understand that,' she said. 'But yesterday they
called me to the office and asked me whether I'd already
reached my limit.'
'What limit?"
'Mine, of course. Seven thousand eight hundred metres.'
"what did you tell them?'
'That it's a pretty decent piece. It's such a big piece of
cloth it can't even be measured. They wrote that down. They
can measure very exactly. They have special instruments. They
measure it and they cut it. That's what they're there for.' 'Should I read you something?' 'I don't know. What time is it?' He got up. His books were still in the bookshelf. There were
some novels and even several volumes of poetry. He'd got
those from Albina. She'd given him poetry, but poetry wasn't
his kind of reading. He couldn't concentrate on the lines or
look for hidden connection between the metaphors.
He picked up a book from the little table. It was last
year's Protestant almanac. He leafed through it for a while,
looking for an appropriate text, but nothing caught his eye
and so he began to read poems at random.
Then he looked into his mother's face.
She was oblivious.
Where is your soul, your wretched soul, your light, Mother?