Laughable Loves
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Yes, Dr. Havel had guessed correctly: the editor had dropped in on the woman doctor the very same day that his master had praised her. After just a few sentences he discovered within himself a surprising boldness, and he told her that he found her attractive and that he wanted to go out with her. The woman doctor stammered in alarm that she was older than he and that she had children. At this the editor gained self-confidence, and his words simply poured out: he claimed that she possessed a hidden beauty that was worth more than banal shapeliness; he praised her walk and told her that when she walked her legs were most expressive.
And two days after this declaration, at the same time that Dr. Havel was contentedly arriving at the hot springs, where already, from a distance, he could see the muscular blonde, the editor was impatiently pacing up and down in his narrow attic; he was almost certain
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of success, but this made him all the more fearful of some error or mishap that could deprive him of it; every little while he would open the door and look down the stairs. At last he caught sight of her.
The care with which Frantiska was dressed and made up changed her somewhat from the everyday woman who wore white pants and a white smock. To the excited young man it seemed that her erotic magic, heretofore only suspected, was now standing before him almost brazenly exposed, so that respectful diffidence assailed him. To overcome it he embraced the woman doctor in the doorway and began to kiss her frantically. She was alarmed by this sudden assault and begged him to let her sit down. He did let her, but he immediately sat at her feet and, on his knees, kissed her stockings. She put her hand in his hair and attempted to push him gently away.
Let us note what she said to him. First she repeated several times: "You must behave yourself, you must behave yourself; promise me that you'll behave yourself." When the young man said: "Yes, yes, I'll behave myself," and at the same time moved his mouth farther up the rough nylon, she said: "No, no, not that, not that"; and when he moved it still higher, she suddenly began to use his first name and declared: "You're a young devil, oh you're a young devil!"
Everything was decided by this declaration. The young man no longer encountered any resistance. He was carried away; he was carried away by himself, he was carried away by the swiftness of his success, he was
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carried away by Dr. Havel, whose genius had entered into him and now dwelled within him, he was carried away by the nakedness of the woman who was lying beneath him in amorous union. He longed to be a master, he longed to be a virtuoso, he longed to demonstrate his sensuality and savagery. He raised himself slightly above the woman doctor, with a passionate eye he examined her body lying there, and he murmured: "You're beautiful, you're magnificent, you're magnificent. ..."
The doctor hid her belly with both hands and said: "You mustn't make fun of me�"
"What are you talking about? I'm not making fun of you! You're magnificent!"
"Don't look at me," she said, clasping him to her body so that he wouldn't see her. "I've had two children, you know."
"Two children?" said the young man uncompre-hendingly.
"It shows. I don't want you to look at me."
This slowed the young man down a bit in his initial flight, and it was only with difficulty that he once again attained the proper arousal; in order to manage this better, he tried hard to reinforce with words his diminishing intoxication, and he whispered into the doctor's ear how beautiful it was that she was here with him naked, absolutely naked.
"You're sweet, you're terribly sweet," said the woman doctor.
The young man went on repeating the words about
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her nakedness, and, he asked her whether it was also arousing for her that she was here with him naked.
"You're a child," said the woman doctor. "Of course it arouses me." But after a brief silence she added that so many doctors had already seen her naked that it had become ordinary. "More doctors than lovers," she said, and without interrupting their amorous movements she launched into an account of her difficulties in childbirth. "But it was worth it," she ended by saying: "I have two beautiful children. Beautiful, beautiful!"
Once again his arousal, come by with difficulty, was slipping away from the editor. He even had the impression that they weren't making love but sitting in a cafe and chatting over a cup of tea. This outraged him. He began to make violent love to her again, and endeavored to engage her in more sensual thoughts: "When I came to see you last time, did you know that we would make love?"
"Did you?"
"I wanted to," said the editor, "I wanted to terribly!" and into the word "wanted" he put immense passion.
"You're like my son," the woman doctor said in his ear. "That kid wants everything too. I always ask him: Ts it the moon you want?'"
That is how they made love: Frantiska talked to her heart's content.
Then when they were sitting next to each other on the couch, naked and tired, the woman doctor stroked the editor's hair and said: "You have a cute little mop like him."
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"Like who?"
"My son."
"You're always thinking about your son," said the editor with timid disapproval.
"You know," she said proudly. "He's his mother's pet, he's his mother's pet."
Then she got up and dressed. And all of a sudden the feeling came over her in this young man's little room that she was young, that she was a really young woman, and she felt deliciously good. As she left she embraced the editor, and her eyes were moist with gratitude.
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After a beautiful night, a beautiful day began for Dr. Havel. At breakfast he exchanged a few promising words with the woman who resembled a riding horse, and at ten o'clock, when he returned from his treatment, a loving letter from his wife awaited him in his room. Then he went to take a walk through the colonnade among the crowd of patients. He held the porcelain mug to his lips and he beamed with good humor. Women who at one time had passed by him without any show of interest now fastened their eyes on him, so that he nodded slightly to them in greeting. When he caught sight of the editor, he beckoned cheerfully to
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him: "I visited Frantiska this morning, and according to certain signs that cannot escape a good psychologist, it seems to me that you've met with success!"
The young man wanted nothing more than to confide in his master, but the events of the past evening had somewhat perflexed him. He wasn't sure if it had really been as great as it should have been, and that being so, he didn't know whether a precise and truthful account would raise or lower him in Havel's estimation. He was hesitant about what he should confide and what he shouldn't.
But when he now saw Havel's face beaming with cheer and shamelessness, he could do nothing but answer in a similarly cheerful and shameless tone, and, with enthusiastic words, he praised the woman Havel had recommended to him. He related how attractive he had found her when he had looked at her for the first time with eyes devoid of small-town prejudice, how she had quickly agreed to come to his place, and with what remarkable speed she had given herself to him.
When Dr. Havel put various precise and detailed questions to him, so as to analyze all of the matter's nuances, the young man willy-nilly came closer and closer to the truth, finally acknowledging that although he had been perfectly satisfied with everything, the woman doctor's conversation while making love had put him out somewhat.
Dr. Havel found this very interesting, and, having persuaded the editor to repeat the dialogue to him in detail, he interrupted the account with enthusiastic
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exclamations: "That's excellent! Perfect!" "Oh, that eternal mother's heart!" And: "My friend, I really envy you!"
At that moment the woman who resembled a ri
ding horse stopped in front of the two men. Dr. Havel bowed, and the woman offered him her hand: "Don't be angry,'' she apologized, "I'm a tiny bit late.''
"Never mind,'' said Havel. "I've been enjoying myself enormously with my friend here. You must forgive me if I finish my conversation with him."
And, not letting go of the tall woman's hand, he turned to the editor: "My dear friend, what you've told me surpasses all my expectations. You must understand that the pleasures of the body left only to its silence are tiresomely similar. In this silence one woman becomes like another and all of them are forgotten in all the others. And surely we throw ourselves into erotic pleasures above all in order to remember them. So that their luminous points will connect our youth with our old age by means of a shining ribbon! So that they will preserve our memory in an eternal flame! And take it from me, my friend, only a word uttered at this most ordinary of moments is capable of illuminating it in such a way that it remains unforgettable. They say of me that I'm a collector of women. In reality I'm far more a collector of words. Believe me, you'll never forget yesterday evening, and you'll be happy about that all your life!"
Then he nodded to the young man, and still holding the tall woman who resembled a horse by the hand, he moved away slowly with her along the colonnade.
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Eduard and God
1
Let me begin Eduard's story in his older brother's little house in the country. His brother was lying on the couch and saying to Eduard: "Ask the old hag. Never mind, just go and talk to her. Of course she's a pig, but I believe that even in such creatures a conscience exists. Just because she once did me dirt, now maybe she'll be glad if you'll let her make up for her past misdeed."
Eduard's brother was always the same: a good-natured guy and a lazy one. He probably had been lolling on the couch this way in his student attic when, quite a few years ago (Eduard was still a little boy then), he had lazed and snored away the day of Stalin's death. The next day, still unaware of the news, he had turned up at the university and caught sight of his fellow student, Comrade Cechac-kova, standing in ostentatious rigidity in the middle of the hall like a statue of grief. Three times he circled her and then began to roar with laughter. The offended girl denounced her fellow student's laughter as political provocation, and Eduard's brother had to abandon his studies and go to work in a village, where since that time he had acquired a house, a dog, a wife, two children, and even a weekend cottage.
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In this village house, then, he was now lying on the couch and explaining to Eduard: "We used to call her the chastising working-class whip. But that shouldn't intimidate you. Nowadays she's an aging woman, and she always had a weakness for young men, so she'll be helpful."
Eduard was at that time very young. He had just graduated from teachers college (the course from which his brother had been expelled) and was looking for a position. The next day, following his brother's advice, he knocked on the directress's office door. She was a tall, bony woman with greasy black hair, black eyes, and black fuzz under her nose. Her ugliness relieved him of the shyness to which feminine beauty still always reduced him, so that he managed to talk to her in a relaxed manner, amiably, even courteously. The directress was evidently delighted by his approach, and several times she said with perceptible elation: "We need young people here." She promised to find a place for him.
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And so Eduard became a teacher in a small Bohemian town. This made him neither happy nor sad. He always tried hard to distinguish between the serious and the
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unserious, and he put his teaching career into the category of unserious. Not that teaching itself was unserious (in fact he was deeply attached to it, because he knew that he would not be able to earn a living any other way), but he considered it unserious in terms of his true nature. He hadn't chosen it. Society's requirements, his party record, his high school diploma, and his entrance examinations had imposed it on him. The interlocking conjunction of all these forces eventually dumped him (as a crane drops a sack onto a truck) from high school into teachers college. He didn't want to go there (his brother's failure was a bad omen), but eventually he acquiesced. He understood, however, that his occupation would be among the fortuitous aspects of his life. It would be attached to him like a false mustache, which is something laughable.
But if what is obligatory is unserious (laughable), what is serious is probably optional: in his new abode Eduard soon found a girl who struck him as beautiful, and he began to pursue her with a seriousness that was almost sincere. Her name was Alice and she was, as he discovered to his great sorrow on their first dates, very reserved and virtuous.
Many times during their evening walks he had tried to put his arm around her so that he could touch the region of her right breast from behind, and each time she had seized his hand and pushed it away. One evening when he was trying this once again and she (once again) was pushing his hand away, she stopped and asked: "Do you believe in God?"
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With his sensitive ears Eduard caught a discreet insistence in this question, and he immediately forgot about the breast.
"Do you?" Alice repeated her question, and Eduard didn't dare answer. Let us not condemn him for fearing to be frank; as a newcomer in this town he felt lonely, and he was too attracted to Alice to risk losing her favor over a single simple answer.
"And you?" he asked in order to gain time.
"Yes, I do." And once again she urged him to answer her.
Until this time it had never occurred to him to believe in God. He understood, however, that he must not admit this. On the contrary, he saw that he should take advantage of the opportunity and knock together from faith in God a nice Trojan horse, within whose belly, according to the ancient example, he would slip into the girl's heart unobserved. Only it wasn't so easy for Eduard simply to say to Alice, "I believe in God"; he wasn't at all impudent, and he was ashamed to lie; the simplicity of lying repelled him; if a lie was absolutely necessary, he wanted it to remain as close as possible to the truth. For that reason he replied in an exceptionally thoughtful voice:
"I don't really know, Alice, what I should say to you about this. Certainly I believe in God. But ..." He paused and Alice glanced up at him in surprise. "But I want to be completely frank with you. May I?"
"You must be frank," she said. "Otherwise surely there wouldn't be any sense in our being together."
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"Really?"
"Really," said Alice.
"Sometimes I'm troubled by doubts," said Eduard in a choked voice. "Sometimes I wonder whether he really exists."
"But how can you doubt that?" Alice nearly shouted.
Eduard was silent, and after a moment's reflection a familiar thought struck him: "When I see so much evil around me, I often wonder how it is possible that a God exists who would permit all that."
That sounded so sad that Alice seized his hand: "Yes, the world is indeed full of evil. I know this only too well. But for that reason you must believe in God. Without him all this suffering would be in vain. Nothing would have any meaning. And if that were so, I couldn't live at all."
"Perhaps you're right," said Eduard thoughtfully, and on Sunday he went to church with her. He dipped his fingers in the font and crossed himself. Then there was the Mass and people sang, and with the others he sang a hymn whose tune was familiar, but to which he didn't know the words. Instead of the prescribed words he chose only various vowels, and he always hit each note a fraction of a second behind the others, because he only dimly recollected even the tune. Yet the moment he became certain of the note, he let his voice ring out fully, so that for the first time in his life he realized that he had a beautiful bass. Then they all began to recite the Lord's Prayer, and some old ladies knelt. He could not hold back a compelling desire to kneel too
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on the stone floor. He crossed himself with impressive arm movements and experienced the marvelous feeling of being able to do something that he had never done in his life, neither in the classroom nor on the street nor anywhere. He felt marvelously free.
When it was all over, Alice looked at him with a radiant expression in her eyes. "Can you still say that you doubt he exists ? "
"No."
And Alice said: "I would like to teach you to love him just as I do."
They were standing on the broad steps of the church and Eduards soul was full of laughter. Unfortunately, just at that moment the directress was walking by, and she saw them.
3
This was bad. We must recall (for those at risk of losing the historical background) that although it is true that people weren't forbidden to go to church, nonetheless churchgoing was not without a certain danger.
This is not so difficult to understand. Those who had fought for what they called the revolution maintained a great pride: the pride of being on the correct side of the front lines. Ten or twelve years later (around the time
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of our story) the front lines began to melt away, and with them the correct side. No wonder the former supporters of the revolution feel cheated and are quick to seek substitute fronts; thanks to religion they can (in their role as atheists struggling against believers) stand again on the correct side and retain their habitual and precious sense of their own superiority.
But to tell the truth, the substitute front was also useful to others, and it will perhaps not be too premature to disclose that Alice was one of them. Just as the directress wanted to be on the correct side, Alice wanted to be on the opposite side. During the revolution they had nationalized her papa's shop, and Alice hated those who had done this to him. But how should she show her hatred? Perhaps by taking a knife and avenging her father? But this sort of thing is not the custom in Bohemia. Alice had a better means for expressing her opposition: she began to believe in God.
Thus the Lord came to the aid of both sides, and, thanks to him, Eduard found himself between two fires.
When on Monday morning the directress came up to Eduard in the staff room, he felt very ill at ease. There was no way he could invoke the friendly atmosphere of their first interview, because since that time (whether through artlessness or carelessness), he had never again engaged in flirtatious conversation with her. The directress therefore had good reason to address him with a conspicuously cold smile: "We saw each other yesterday, didn't we?"
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"Yes, we did," said Eduard.
The directress went on: "I can't understand how a young man can go to church.'' Eduard shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, and the directress shook her head. "A young man like you."
"I went to see the baroque interior of the cathedral," said Eduard by way of an excuse.