Ignorance

by Milan Kundera

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  counter. Passing a shopwindow, she catches a glimpse of her own reflection. She stops. Looking at herself is her vice, perhaps the only one. Pretending to look over the merchandise, she takes a look at herself: the brown hair, the blue eyes, the round outline of the face. She knows she is beautiful, has always known it, and it is her sole good fortune.

  Then she realizes that what she is seeing is not only her vaguely reflected face but the window display of a butcher shop: a hanging carcass, severed haunches, a pig's head with a friendly, touching muzzle, and, farther into the shop, the plucked bodies of poultry with their claws lifted, impotently and humanly lifted, and suddenly horror shoots through her, her face crumples, she clenches her fists and strains to banish the nightmare.

  Today Irena asked her the question she hears from time to time: why she has never changed her hairstyle. No, she never has changed it and she never will change it because she is beautiful only if she keeps wearing her hair the way it is arranged around her head now. Knowing the chatty indiscretion of hairdressers, she found her-

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  self one in a suburb where there wasn't a chance any of her friends would come wandering through. She had to guard the secret of her left ear at the cost of enormous discipline and an elaborate system of precautions. How was she to reconcile men's desire with the desire to be beautiful in their eyes? At first she had tried for a compromise (desperate journeys abroad, where nobody knew her and no indiscretion could betray her); then, later on, she had gone radical and sacrificed her erotic life to her beauty.

  Standing at a bar, she slowly sips a beer and eats a cheese sandwich. She does not hurry; there is nothing she must do. All her Sundays are like that: in the afternoon she'll read, and at night she'll have a lonely meal at home.

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  Irena felt the fatigue still dogging her. Alone in the room for a few minutes, she opened the minibar and took out three tiny bottles of various liquors. She opened one and drank it down. She slipped

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  the other two into her purse, which she laid on the night table. There she noticed a book in Danish: The Odyssey.

  "I thought about Odysseus too," she tells Josef when he returns.

  "He was away from his country like you. For twenty years."

  "Twenty years?"

  "Yes, twenty years exactly."

  "But at least he was pleased to be back."

  "That's not certain. He saw that his countrymen had betrayed him, and he killed a lot of them. I don't think he can have been much loved."

  "Penelope loved him, though."

  "Maybe."

  "You're not sure?"

  "I've read and reread the passage on their reunion. At first she didn't recognize him. Then, when things were already clear to everyone else, when the suitors were killed and the traitors punished, she put him through new tests to be sure it really was he. Or rather to delay the moment when they would be back in bed together."

  "That's understandable, don't you think? A

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  person must be paralyzed after twenty years. Was she faithful to him all that time?"

  "She couldn't help but be. All eyes on her. Twenty years of chastity. Their night of lovemak-ing must have been difficult. I imagine that over those twenty years, Penelope's organs would have tightened, shrunk."

  "She was like me!"

  "What?"

  "No, don't worry!" she exclaims, laughing. "I'm not talking about mine! They haven't shrunk!"

  And, suddenly giddy with the explicit mention of her sex organs, her voice lower, she slowly repeats the last sentence translated into dirty words. And then yet again, in a voice lower yet, in words yet more obscene.

  How unexpected! How intoxicating! For the first time in twenty years, he hears those dirty Czech words and instantly he is aroused to a degree he has never been since he left this country, because all those words—coarse, dirty, obscene—only have power over him in his native language (in the language of Ithaca), since it is through that language, through its deep roots,

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  that the arousal of generations and generations surges up in him. Until this moment these two have not even kissed. And now thrillingly, magnificently aroused, in a matter of seconds they begin to make love.

  Their accord is total, for she too is aroused by the words she has neither said nor heard for so many years. A total accord in an explosion of obscenities! Ah, how impoverished her life has been! All the vices missed out on, all the infidelities left unrealized—all of that she is avid to experience. She wants to experience everything she ever imagined and never experienced, voyeurism, exhibitionism, the indecent presence of other people, verbal enormities; everything she can now do she tries to do, and what cannot be done she imagines with him aloud.

  Their accord is total, for deep down Josef knows (and he may even want it so) that this erotic session is his last; he too is making love as if he hopes to sum up everything, his past adventures and those that will no longer happen. For each of them it is a tour through sexual life at high speed: the daring moves that lovers come to only after many encounters, if not many years, they

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  accomplish in a rush, the one stimulating the other, as if they hope to compress into one single afternoon everything they have missed and are going to miss.

  Then, winded, they lie side by side on their backs, and she says: "Ah, it's years since I've made love! You won't believe me, it's years since I've made love!"

  That sincerity moves him, strangely, deeply; he shuts his eyes. She takes advantage of the moment to lean over to her purse and slip a tiny bottle out of it; swiftly, discreetly, she drinks.

  He opens his eyes: "Don't drink, don't! You'll be drunk!"

  "Leave me alone!" she defends herself. Feeling the fatigue that won't be driven off, she'll do whatever it takes to hold onto her fully wakened senses. That is why, even though he's watching, she empties the third little bottle and then as if to explain herself, as if to excuse herself, she repeats that she hasn't made love for a long while, and this time she says it in dirty words from her native Ithaca and again the magic of the obscenity arouses Josef and he begins again to make love to her.

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  In Irena's head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdnesses in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears.

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  The mother set the disk into a big player and pressed several buttons to program the pieces she liked, then she plunged into the bathtub, and, with the door left open, she listened to the music. It was her personal selection of four dance pieces, a tango, a waltz, a Charleston, a rock-and-roll, which through the machine's technical prowess played over and over endlessly with no further intervention. She stood up in the tub, washed at length, stepped out, toweled herself down, slipped on her robe, and walked into the living room. Then Gustaf arrived after a long lunch

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  with some Swedes passing through Prague, and he asked her where Irena was. She answered (mixing bad English with some Czech, simplified for his sake): "She phoned. She won't be back till late tonight. How was lunch?"

  "Much too much!"

  "Have a digestive," and she poured some liqueur into two glasses.

  "That's something I never turn down!" Gustaf exclaimed, and he drank.

  The mother whistled the tune of the waltz and undulated her hips; then, without a word, she laid her hands on Gustaf's shoulders and did a few dance steps with him.

  "You're in a magnificent mood!" said Gustaf.

  "Yes," the mother answered, and she went on dancing, her movements so overdrawn, so theatrical, that with short awkward bursts of laughter Gustaf executed some exaggerated steps and gestures himself. He went along with this parodical performance both to
prove that he didn't want to spoil the fun and to recall, with bashful vanity, that he used to be an excellent dancer and still was. As they danced, the mother led him toward the great mirror on the

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  wall, and the two of them turned their heads to watch themselves.

  Then she let go of him and, without touching, they improvised routines facing the mirror; Gustaf was making dancing gestures with his hands and, like her, never took his eyes off their reflection. So he saw the mother's hand come to settle on his crotch.

  The scene taking place illustrates an immemo-rial error of men: having appropriated for themselves the role of seducers, they never even consider any women but the ones they might desire; the idea doesn't occur to them that a woman who is ugly or old, or who simply stands outside their own erotic imaginings, might want to possess them. Sleeping with Irena's mother was to Gustaf so thoroughly unthinkable, fantastical, unreal that, struck dumb by her touch, he has no idea what to do: his first reflex is to lift her hand away; yet he does not dare; a commandment is graven in him since his childhood: thou shalt not be crude with a woman; so he goes on making his dancing motions and staring in stupefaction at the hand placed between his legs.

  Her hand still on his crotch, the mother rocks in

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  place and keeps watching herself in the mirror; then she lets her robe gape open and Gustaf glimpses her opulent breasts and the dark triangle below; embarrassed, he feels his member swelling.

  Without taking her eyes from the mirror, the mother finally lifts her hand away, but only to slip it into his trousers and grasp the naked member in her fingers. It grows harder and, still continuing her dance movements and gazing at the mirror, she exclaims admiringly in her vibrant alto voice: "Oh, oh! Unbelievable! Unbelievable!"

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  As he is making love, from time to time Josef looks discreetly at his watch: two hours left, an hour and a half left; this afternoon of love is fascinating, he doesn't want to miss any part of it, not a move, not a word, but the end is drawing near, ineluctable, and he must watch the time running out.

  She too is thinking about the waning time; her

  lewdness is growing the more reckless and fevered, her talk leaps from one fantasy to another as she senses that it is already too late, that this delirium is about to end and that her future lies empty. She says another few dirty words, but she says them in tears because, racked with sobs, she can't go on, she ceases all movement and pushes him away from her body.

  They are lying side by side, and she says: "Don't go today, stay awhile."

  "I can't."

  She is still for a long time, then: "When will I see you again?"

  He does not answer.

  With sudden determination, she leaves the bed; she is not crying now; on foot facing him, she says without sentiment, abruptly aggressive: "Kiss me!"

  He lies still, uncertain.

  Motionless, she waits, staring at him with the whole weight of a life that has no future to it.

  Unable to stand up to her gaze, he capitulates: he rises, approaches, sets his lips on hers.

  She tastes his kiss, gauges the degree of his coldness, and says: "You're a bad man!"

  Then she turns to her purse where it lies on the

  night table. She pulls out a small ashtray and shows it to him. "Do you recognize this?"

  He takes the ashtray and looks at it.

  "Do you recognize it?" she repeats, harsh.

  He does not know what to say.

  "Look at the inscription!"

  It is the name of a Prague bar. But that tells him nothing and he does not speak. She observes his discomfort with attentive, increasingly hostile mistrust.

  He feels uneasy beneath her gaze, and just then, very briefly, there flickers the image of a window ledge with a bowl of flowers beside a lighted lamp. But the image vanishes, and again he sees the hostile eyes.

  Now she understands everything: not only has he forgotten their meeting in the bar, but the truth is worse: he doesn't know who she is! he doesn't know her! in the airplane he did not know whom he was talking to. And suddenly she realizes: he has never addressed her by name!

  "You don't know who I am!"

  "What?" he says, sounding desperately awkward.

  Like a prosecutor she says: "Then tell me my name!"

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  He is silent.

  "What's my name? Tell me my name!"

  "Names don't matter!"

  "You've never called me by my name! You don't know me!"

  "What?"

  "Where did we meet? Who am I?"

  He wants to calm her down, he takes her hand, she thrusts him away: "You don't know who I am! You picked up a strange woman! You made love with a stranger who offered herself to you! You took advantage of a misunderstanding! You used me like a whore! I was a whore to you, some unknown whore!"

  She drops onto, the bed and weeps.

  He sees the three empty liquor vials scattered on the floor: "You've had too much to drink. It's stupid to drink so much!"

  She isn't listening. Stretched flat on her belly, her body twitching spasmodically, all she can think of is the loneliness ahead.

  Then, as if stricken with exhaustion, she stops crying and turns onto her back, unaware as her legs spread carelessly apart.

  Josef is still standing at the foot of the bed; he

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  gazes at her crotch as if he were gazing into space, and suddenly he sees the brick house, with a fir tree. He looks at his watch. He can stay a half hour longer at the hotel. He has to get dressed and find a way to make her dress as well.

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  When he slid out of her body they were silent, and the only thing to be heard was the four pieces of music repeating endlessly. After a long while, in a distinct, almost solemn voice, as if she were reading out the clauses in a treaty, the mother said in her Czech-English: "We are strong, you and I. But we are good, too. We won't be harming anyone. Nobody will know a thing. You are free. You can whenever you want. But you're not obligated. With me you are free."

  She said it this time without any hint of parody, in the most serious tone possible. And Gustaf, serious too, answers: "Yes, I understand."

  "With me you are free," the words echo in him

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  for a long while. Freedom: he'd looked for that in her daughter but did not find it. Irena gave herself to him with all the weight of her life, whereas he wanted to live weightless. He was looking to her for an escape, and instead she loomed before him as a challenge; as a puzzle; as a feat to accomplish; as a judge to face.

  He sees the body of his new mistress rise from the couch; she is standing, showing her body from the back, the powerful thighs padded with cellulite; that cellulite enchants him as if it expressed the vitality of an undulating, quivering, speaking, singing, jiggling, preening skin; when she bends to pick up her discarded robe from the floor, he cannot contain himself and, from where he lies naked on the couch, he strokes those magnificently rounded buttocks, he fingers that monumental, overabundant flesh whose generous prodigality comforts and calms him. A feeling of peace envelops him: for the first time in his life, sex is located away from all danger, away from conflict and drama, away from persecution, away from any accusation, away from worries; he has nothing to take care of, love is taking care of him, love as he's always wanted it and never had it:

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  love-repose; love-oblivion; love-desertion; love-carefreeness; love-meaninglessness.

  The mother has gone into the bathroom, and he is alone: a few minutes ago he thought he had committed an enormous sin; but now he knows that his act of love had nothing to do with a vice, with a transgression or a perversion, that it was an utterly normal thing. It is with her, the mother, that he makes up a couple, a pleasantly ordinary, natural, suitable couple, a couple of serene old folks. From the bathroom comes the sound of water; he sits up on the couch and looks at his watch. In two hours he is expecting the son of his most
recent mistress, a man, young, who admires him. Gustaf will introduce him this evening among his business friends. His whole life he's been surrounded by women! What a pleasure, finally, to have a son! He smiles and begins to look for his clothes where they're scattered on the floor.

  He is already dressed when the mother returns from the bathroom, in a robe. The situation is very slightly solemn and thus embarrassing, as are all such situations when after the initial love-making, the lovers confront a future they are suddenly required to take on. The music is still

  playing, and at this delicate moment, as if it hoped to rescue them, it shifts from rock to tango. They obey the invitation, they come together and give over to that indolent monotone flood of sounds; they do not think; they let themselves be carried along and carried away; they dance, slowly and at length, with absolutely no parody.

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  Her sobs went on for a long time, and then, as if by a miracle, they stopped, followed by heavy breathing: she fell asleep; this change was startling and sadly laughable; she slept, profoundly and irretrievably. She had not changed position, she was still on her back with her legs spread.

  He was still looking at her crotch, that tiny little area that, with admirable economy of space, provides for four sovereign functions: arousal, copulation, procreation, urination. He gazed a long while at that sad place with its spell broken, and was gripped by an immense, immense sadness.

  He knelt by the bed, leaning over her gently snoring head; he felt close to this woman; he could

  imagine staying with her, being concerned with her; they had promised in the airplane not to inquire into each other's private life; he knew nothing about her, therefore, but one thing seemed clear: She was in love with him; prepared to go off with him, to give up everything, to begin everything over again. He knew she was calling on him for help. He had a chance, certainly his last, to be useful, to help someone, and among the multitude of strangers overpopulating the planet, to find a sister.

  He began to dress, discreetly, silently, so as not to wake her.

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  As on every Sunday evening, she was alone in her modest impecunious-scientist studio apartment. She moved about the room and ate the same thing she had at noon: cheese, butter, bread, beer. A vegetarian, she is sentenced to such alimentary monotony. Since her stay at the mountain hospital, meat reminds her that her body could be cut