Laughable Loves

by Milan Kundera

"Ah, so that's it," said the directress ironically. "I didn't know you were interested in architecture."

  This conversation was not at all pleasant for Eduard. He remembered that his brother had circled his fellow student three times and then roared with laughter. It seemed to him that family history was repeating itself, and he felt afraid. On Saturday he made his excuses over the telephone to Alice, saying that he wouldn't be going to church because he had a cold.

  "You're a real sissy," Alice rebuked him when they saw each other again during the week, and it seemed to Eduard that her words sounded cold. So he began to tell her (enigmatically and vaguely, because he was ashamed to admit his fear and his real reasons) about the wrongs being done him at school, and about the horrible directress who was persecuting him without cause. He wanted to arouse her compassion, but Alice said: "My woman boss, on the contrary, isn't bad at all," and, giggling, she began to relate stories about her work. Eduard listened to her merry voice and became more and more gloomy.

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  4

  Ladies and gentlemen, those were weeks of torment! Eduard longed hellishly for Alice. Her body fired him up, and yet this very body was utterly inaccessible to him. The settings in which their dates took place were also tormenting; either they wandered for an hour or two in the streets after dark or they went to the movies; the banality and the negligible erotic possibilities of these two variants (there weren't any others) prompted Eduard to think that perhaps he would achieve more success if they could meet in a different environment. Once, with an ingenuous face, he proposed that for the weekend they go to the country and visit his brother, who had a cottage in a wooded valley by a river. He excitedly described the innocent beauties of nature, but Alice (naive and credulous in every other respect) swiftly saw through him and categorically refused. It wasn't Alice alone who was resisting him. It was Alice's (eternally vigilant and wary) God himself.

  This God embodied a single idea (he had no other wishes or concerns): he forbade extramarital sex. He was therefore a rather comical God, but let's not laugh at Alice for that. Of the Ten Commandments Moses gave to the people, fully nine didn't endanger her soul at all; she didn't feel like killing or not honoring her father, or coveting her neighbor's wife; only one commandment she felt to be not self-evident and therefore posed a genuine challenge: the famous seventh, which

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  forbids fornication. In order to practice, show, and prove her religious faith, she had to devote her entire attention to this single commandment. And so out of a vague, diffuse, and abstract God, she created a God who was specific, comprehensible, and concrete: God Antifornicator.

  I ask you where in fact does fornication begin? Every woman fixes this boundary for herself according to totally mysterious criteria. Alice quite happily allowed Eduard to kiss her, and after many, many attempts she eventually became reconciled to letting him stroke her breasts. However, at the middle of her body, let's say at her navel, she drew a strict and uncompromising line, below which lay the area of sacred prohibitions, the area of Moses's denial and the anger of the Lord.

  Eduard began to read the Bible and to study basic theological literature. He had decided to fight Alice with her own weapons.

  "Alice dear," he then said to her, "if we love God, nothing is forbidden. If we long for something, it's because of his will. Christ wanted nothing but that we should all be ruled by love.''

  "Yes," said Alice, "but a different love from the one you're thinking of."

  "There s only one love," said Eduard.

  "That would certainly suit you," she said, "Only God set down certain commandments, and we must abide by them."

  "Yes, the Old Testament God," said Eduard, "but not the Christian God."

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  "How's that? Surely there's only one God," objected Alice.

  "Yes," said Eduard, "only the Jews of the Old Testament understood him a little differently from the way we do. Before the coming of Christ, men had to abide above all by a specific system of God's commandments and laws. What went on in a man's soul was not so important. But Christ considered some of these prohibitions and regulations to be something external. For him the most important thing was what a man was like deep down. When a man is true to his own ardent, believing heart, everything he does is good and pleasing to God. That's why St. Paul said: 'Everything is pure to the man who is pure at heart."

  "But I wonder if you are pure at heart."

  "And Saint Augustine," continued Eduard, "said: 'Love God and do what it pleases you to do.' Do you understand, Alice? Love God, and do what it pleases you to do."

  "But what pleases you will never please me," she replied, and Eduard understood that his theological assault had foundered completely; therefore he said:

  "You don't love me."

  "I do," said Alice in a terribly matter-of-fact way. "And that's why I don't want us to do anything we shouldn't do."

  As I have already mentioned, these were weeks of torment. And the torment was that much greater because Eduard's desire for Alice was not only the desire of a body for a body; on the contrary, the more she refused

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  him her body, the more lonesome and afflicted he became and the more he coveted her heart as well. However, neither her body nor her heart wanted to do anything about it; they were equally cold, equally wrapped up in themselves and self-satisfied.

  It was precisely this unruffled moderation of hers that exasperated Eduard most. Although in other respects he was quite a sober young man, he began to long for some extreme action through which he could drive Alice out of her unruffled state. And because it was too risky to provoke her through blasphemy or cynicism (to which by nature he was attracted), he had to go to the opposite (and therefore far more difficult) extreme, which would coincide with Alice's own position but would be so overdone as to put her to shame. In other words Eduard began to exaggerate his religiousness. He didn't miss a single visit to church (his desire for Alice was greater than his fear of boredom), and once there he behaved with eccentric humility: he knelt at every opportunity, while Alice prayed beside him and crossed herself standing, because she was afraid to get a run in her stockings.

  One day he criticized her for her lukewarm religiosity. He reminded her of Jesus' words: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven." He criticized her, saying that her faith was formal, external, shallow. He criticized her for being too pleased with herself. He criticized her for being unaware of anyone but herself.

  As he was saying all this (Alice was not prepared for his

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  attack and defended herself feebly), he suddenly caught sight of an old, roadwide cross with a rusty Christ on it. He briskly withdrew his arm from Alice's, stopped (as a protest against the girl's indifference and as a sign of his new offensive), and crossed himself ostentatiously. But he did not really to see how this affected Alice, because at that moment he spied on the other side of the street the woman janitor of the school. She was looking at him. Eduard realized that he was lost.

  5

  His fears were confirmed when two days later the woman janitor stopped him in the corridor and loudly informed him that he was to present himself the next day at twelve o'clock at the directress's office: "We have something to talk to you about, comrade."

  Eduard was overcome by anxiety. In the evening he met Alice so that, as usual, they could stroll in the streets for an hour or two, but Eduard had abandoned his religious fervor. He was downcast and longed to confide to Alice what had happened to him, but he didn't dare, because he knew that in order to save his unloved (but indispensable) job, he was ready to betray the good Lord without hesitation. For this reason he preferred not to say a word about the inauspicious

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  summons, so he couldn't e
ven get any consolation. The following day he entered the directress's office in a mood of utter dejection.

  In the room four judges awaited him: the directress, the woman janitor, one of Eduard's colleagues (a tiny man with glasses), and an unknown (gray-haired) gentleman, whom the others called "Comrade Inspector." The directress asked Eduard to be seated, and told him they had invited him for just a friendly and unofficial talk. For, she said, the manner in which Eduard had been conducting himself in his life outside the school was making them all uneasy. As she said this she looked at the inspector, who nodded his head in agreement, then at the bespectacled teacher, who had been watching her attentively the whole time and who now, intercepting her glance, launched into a long speech. He said that we wanted to educate healthy young people without prejudices and that we had complete responsibility for them because we (the teachers) served as models for them. Precisely for this reason, he said, we could not countenance a religious person within our walls. He developed this idea at length and finally declared that Eduard's behavior was a disgrace to the whole school.

  A few minutes earlier Eduard had been convinced that he would deny his recently acquired God and admit that his church attendance and his crossing himself in public were only jokes. Now, however, faced with the situation, he felt that it was impossible to tell the truth. He could not, after all, say to these four people, so serious and so passionate, that they were impas-

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  sioned about a misunderstanding, a bit of foolishness. He understood that to do that would be involuntarily to mock their seriousness, and he also realized that what they were expecting from him were only quibbles and excuses, which they were prepared in advance to reject. He understood (in a flash, there wasn't time for lengthy reflection) that at that moment the most important thing was for him to appear truthful or, more precisely, that his statements should resemble the idea of him they had constructed; if he wanted, to a degree, to correct that idea, he also, to a degree, had to accept it.

  "Comrades, may I be frank?"

  "Of course," said the directress. "After all, that's why you're here."

  "And you won't be angry?"

  "Say what you have to say," said the directress.

  "Very well, I'm going to confess to you then. I really do believe in God."

  He glanced at his judges, and it seemed to him that they all exhaled with satisfaction. Only the woman janitor snapped at him. "In this day and age, comrade? In this day and age?"

  Eduard went on: "I knew that you'd be angry if I told the truth. But I don't know how to lie. Don't ask me to lie to you."

  The directress said (gently): "No one wants you to lie. It's good that you are telling the truth. But please tell me how you, a young man, can believe in God!"

  "These days, when we send rockets to the moon!" The teacher lost his temper.

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  "I can't help it," said Eduard. "I don't want to believe in God. Really I don't."

  "How can you say you don't want to believe, if you do?" The gray-haired gentleman (in an exceedingly kind tone of voice) joined the conversation.

  "I don't want to believe, but I do believe." Eduard quietly repeated his confession.

  The bespectacled teacher laughed. "But there's a contradiction in that!"

  "Comrades, I'm telling it the way it is," said Eduard. "I know very well that faith in God leads us away from reality. What would socialism come to if everyone believed that the world is in God's hands? No one would do anything and everyone would just rely on God."

  "Exactly," agreed the directress.

  "No one has ever yet proved that God exists," stated the teacher.

  Eduard continued: "The difference between the history of mankind and prehistory is that man has taken his fate into his own hands and no longer needs God."

  "Faith in God leads to fatalism," said the directress.

  "Faith in God belongs to the Middle Ages," said Eduard, and then the directress said something again and the teacher said something and Eduard said something and the inspector said something, and they were all in complete accord, until finally the teacher with glasses exploded, interrupting Eduard: "So why do you cross yourself in the street, when you know all this?"

  Eduard looked at him with an immensely sad

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  expression and then said: "Because I believe in God."

  "But there's a contradiction in that!" repeated the teacher joyfully.

  "Yes," admitted Eduard, "there is a contradiction between knowledge and faith. I recognize that faith in God leads to obscurantism. I recognize that it would be better if God didn't exist. But what can I do when here, deep down"�at this he pointed to his heart�"I feel that he does exist? You see, comrades, I'm telling it to you the way it is! It's better that I confess to you, because I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want you to know what I'm really like," and he hung his head.

  The teacher had a shortsighted view; he didn't know that even the strictest revolutionary considers violence merely a necessary evil and believes that the intrinsic good of the revolution lies in reeducation. He, who had become a revolutionary overnight, did not enjoy much respect from the directress, and he did not suspect that at this moment Eduard, who had placed himself at his judges' disposal as a difficult case and yet as an object capable of being reeducated, had a thousand times more value than he. And because he didn't suspect it, he attacked Eduard with severity and declared that people who did not know how to part with their medieval faith belonged in the Middle Ages and should leave their position in a present-day school.

  The directress let him finish his speech, then administered her rebuke: "I don't like it when heads roll. This comrade has been sincere, and he told us the truth. We must know how to respect that.'' Then she turned to

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  Eduard. "The comrades are right, of course, when they say that religious people cannot educate our youth. What do you yourself suggest?"

  "I don't know, comrades," said Eduard unhappily.

  "This is what I think," said the inspector. "The struggle between the old and the new goes on not only between classes, but also within each individual. Just such a struggle is going on inside our comrade here. With his reason he knows, but his feelings pull him back. We must help our comrade in this struggle, so that reason may triumph."

  The directress nodded. Then she said: "I myself will take charge of him."

  6

  Eduard had thus averted the most pressing danger: his fate as a teacher was now in the hands of the directress exclusively, which was entirely to his satisfaction: he remembered his brother's observation that the directress had a weakness for young men, and with all his vacillating youthful self-confidence (now deflated, then exaggerated) he resolved to win the contest by gaining as a man his sovereign's favor.

  When, as agreed, he visited her a few days later in her office, he tried to assume a light tone and used

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  every opportunity to slip an intimate remark or bit of subtle flattery into the conversation, or to emphasize with discreet ambiguity his singular position as a man at a woman's mercy. But he was not to be permitted to choose the tone of the conversation. The directress spoke to him affably, but with the utmost restraint; she asked him what he was reading, then she herself named some books and recommended that he read them; she evidently wanted to embark on the lengthy job to be done on his thinking. Their short meeting ended with her inviting him to her place.

  As a result of the directress's reserve, Eduard's self-confidence was deflated again, so he entered her studio apartment meekly, with no intention of impressing her with his masculine charm. She seated him in an armchair and, in a friendly tone, asked him what he felt like having: some coffee, perhaps? He said no. Some alcohol then? He was embarrassed: "If you have some cognac ..." and was immediately afraid tha
t he had been presumptuous. But the directress replied affably: "No, I don't have cognac, but I do have a little wine," and she brought over a half-empty bottle, whose contents were just sufficient to fill two glasses.

  Then she told Eduard that he must not regard her as an inquisitor; after all, everyone has a complete right to convictions he believes to be correct. Naturally, one can of course (she added at once) wonder whether such a person is fit to be a teacher; for that reason, she said, they had had to summon Eduard (although they hadn't been happy about it) and have a talk with him, and

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  they (at least she and the inspector) were very pleased with the frank manner in which he had spoken to them, and the fact that he had not denied anything. Then she said that she had talked with the inspector about Eduard for a very long time, and they had decided that they would summon him for another interview in six months' time and that until then the directress would help his development through her influence. And once again she emphasized that she merely wanted give him friendly help, that she was neither an inquisitor nor a cop. Then she mentioned the teacher who had attacked Eduard so sharply, and she said: "That man is hiding something himself, and so he would be glad to sacrifice others. Also, the woman janitor is letting it be known everywhere that you are insolent and pigheadedly stick to your opinions, as she puts it. She can't be talked out of her view that you should be dismissed from the school. Of course I don't agree with her, but on the other hand you must understand her. It wouldn't please me either if someone who crosses himself publicly in the street were teaching my children."

  Thus the directress showed Eduard in a single outpouring of sentences, how attractive were the prospects of her clemency and also how menacing the prospects of her severity. And then to prove that their meeting was genuinely a friendly one, she digressed to other subjects: She talked about books, showed Eduard her library, and asked how he liked the school, and after his conventional reply, she herself spoke at length. She

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  said that she was grateful to destiny for her position; that she liked her work because it was a means for her to educate children and thus be in continuous and real touch with the future, and that only the future could, in the end, justify all this suffering, of which she said ("Yes, we must admit it") there was plenty. "If I did not believe that I am living for something more than just my own life, I probably couldn't live at all."

  These words suddenly sounded very sincere, and it was not clear to Eduard whether the directress was trying to confess or to commence the expected ideological polemic about the meaning of life. Eduard decided to interpret them in their personal sense, and he asked her in a choked, discreet voice: