"I wonder where you find any good wine in this dump," said the assistant.
"My impression, Chief, is that you brag too much," the cameraman added, seeking to ridicule the intruder. "It's true that after a certain age one can hardly do anything else."
"You are wrong," said Bertlef as if he had not heard the cameraman's insult, "they still have some bottles hidden here that are a great deal better than what you can find in the grandest hotels."
He was shaking the hand of the manager, who had been barely visible earlier but was now welcoming Bertlef and asking him: "Shall I set the table for everyone?"
"Certainly," Bertlef replied, and turned to the others: "Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to drink a wine with me that I have had here a number of times and find excellent. Do you accept the invitation?"
No one replied to Bertlef, and the manager said: "When it's a matter of food and drink, I can advise the ladies and gentlemen to have full confidence in Mister Bertlef."
"My friend," Bertlef said to the manager, "bring two bottles and a platter of cheese." Then, turning to the others: "Your hesitation is unnecessary, Ruzena's friends are friends of mine."
A boy of no more than twelve came running out of the restaurant carrying a tray with glasses, saucers, and a tablecloth. He put the tray on a nearby table and then leaned over the customers one by one to remove their half-full glasses. He parked these, along with the open bottle, next to the tray he had just put on the nearby table. Then he carefully wiped their visibly dirty table with a dish towel and spread on it a tablecloth of dazzling whiteness. After that he went back to the nearby table to get the glasses and put them back in front of the customers.
"Get rid of those glasses and that bottle of vinegar," Bertlef said to the boy. "Your papa will bring us better wine."
The cameraman protested: "Would you be kind enough, Chief, to let us drink what we like?"
"As you wish, sir," said Bertlef. "I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails. Listen, son," he said, turning to the boy: "Give each of them back the old glass and an empty new one. My guests can choose freely between a wine produced in fog and a wine born of the sun."
So now there were two glasses per person, one empty and the other with leftover wine. The manager approached the table with two bottles, gripped one between his knees, and pulled out the cork with a grandiose gesture. Then he poured a bit of wine into Bertlef's glass. Bertlef brought his glass to his lips, took a sip, and turned to the manager: "Excellent. Is it the twenty-three?"
"It's the twenty-two," the manager corrected.
"Pour it!" said Bertlef, and the manager went around the table with the bottle and filled the empty glasses.
Bertlef held up his glass by the stem. "My friends, taste this wine. It has the sweet taste of the past. Savor it as if you were breathing it in, sucking in a long bone-ful of marrow, a long-forgotten summer. I would like with this toast to marry the past and the present, the sun of nineteen twenty-two and the sun of this moment. That sun is Ruzena, that thoroughly simple young woman who is a queen without knowing it. Against the backdrop of this spa town, she is like a dia-
mond on a mendicant's robe. She is like a crescent moon forgotten against the pale sky of day. She is like a butterfly fluttering against the snow."
The cameraman gave a forced laugh: "Aren't you overdoing it, Chief? "
"No, I am not overdoing it," said Bertlef, and then he addressed the cameraman: "You are under that impression because you merely live in the basement of being, you anthropomorphized barrel of vinegar! You are filled with acids seething in you as in an alchemist's pot! You are devoting your life to discovering around you the same ugliness you carry within you. That is the only way you can feel at peace for a moment with the world. Because the world, which is beautiful, frightens you, sickens you, and constantly pushes you away from its center. How unbearable it is to have dirt under your fingernails and a pretty woman sitting beside you! And so you have to soil the woman before you enjoy her. Isn't it so, sir? I am glad you are hiding your hands under the table, I was certainly right to have talked about your fingernails."
"I don't give a shit about your good manners, and I'm not a clown like you with your white collar and tie," the cameraman snapped.
"Your dirty fingernails and torn sweater are not new under the sun," said Bertlef. "Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone for displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: T see your vanity
through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty."
Ruzena could not get over her amazement. A man she had vaguely known as a patient had come to her aid out of the blue, and she was captivated by the natural charm of his behavior and by the cruel assurance with which he had reduced the cameraman's insolence to dust.
"I see that you have lost the power of speech," Bertlef said to the cameraman after a brief silence, "and please believe that I did not in the least wish to offend you. I love harmony, not quarrels, and if I allowed myself to be carried away by eloquence, I ask you to forgive me. I want only one thing, that you taste this wine and join me in toasting Ruzena, for whose sake I have come here."
Bertlef had raised his glass, but no one joined him.
"Mister Restaurateur," said Bertlef, addressing the manager, "come and drink a toast with us!"
"With this wine, any time," said the manager, and he took an empty glass from the nearby table and filled it with wine. "Mister Bertlef knows all about good wine. A long time ago he sniffed out my cellar like a swallow finding its nest from a distance."
Bertlef emitted the happy laugh of a man whose self-esteem has been flattered.
"Will you join us in a toast to Ruzena? "
"Ruzena?" asked the manager.
"Yes, Ruzena," Bertlef said, indicating his neighbor with a look. "Do you like her as much as I do?"
"With you, Mister Bertlef, there're only pretty women. You barely have to look at her to know she's beautiful, since she's sitting next to you."
Bertlef once more emitted his happy laugh, the manager laughed with him, and oddly enough, Kamila, who had found Bertlef amusing ever since his arrival, joined them. This unexpected laughter was surprisingly and inexplicably contagious. Out of tactful solidarity the director in turn joined Kamila, then the assistant, and finally Ruzena, who plunged into the polyphonic laughter as if into a gentle embrace. It was her first laughter of the day. She laughed louder than the others and was unable to get her fill of it.
Bertlef lifted his raised glass higher: "To Ruzena!" The manager raised his glass in turn, and then Kamila, followed by the director and his assistant, and they repeated after Bertlef: "To Ruzena!" Even the cameraman ended up raising his glass and, without a word, taking a sip.
The director tasted his mouthful. "This wine really is excellent," he said.
"What did I tell you?" said the manager.
Meanwhile the boy had set a platter of cheese in the middle of the table, and Bertlef said: "Help yourselves, they are exquisite!"
The director was astounded: "Where did you find this selection of cheeses? You'd think we were in France."
All of a sudden the tension had completely receded, the atmosphere had calmed. They became talkative,
helped themselves to the cheeses, wondered where the manager had managed to find them (in this country where the varieties of cheese were so few), and kept refilling their glasses.
When things were at their peak, Bertlef rose and took his leave: "I am very glad to have been in your company, and I thank you. My friend Doctor Skreta is giving a concert this evening, and Ruzena and I want to be there."
19
Ruzena and Bertlef vanished into the light mist of nightfall, and the initial momentum that had carried the company of drinkers away to the dreamed-of island of lust
fulness had clearly been lost, and nothing could restore it. Everyone gave way to dishearten-ment.
For Mrs. Klima it was as if she were coming out of a dream in which she would have wished at all costs to linger. She had been reflecting that she didn't have to go to the concert. How fantastically surprising it would be for her to discover that she had come here not to track down her husband but to have an adventure. How splendid it would be to stay with the three film people and return home on the sly tomorrow morning.
Something whispered to her that this was what she needed to do; that this would be to act; to be delivered; to be healed; to be awakened after a bewitchment.
But now she was already too sober. All the magic spells had stopped working. She was alone again with herself, with her past, with her heavy head full of agonizing old thoughts. She would have liked to extend this much too brief dream, even if only for a few hours, but she knew that the dream was already growing pale, like the half light of early morning.
"I have to go too," she said.
They tried to dissuade her, even though they realized that they no longer had the power and self-confidence to make her stay.
"Shit!" said the cameraman. "Who was that guy, anyway?"
They tried to ask the manager, but now that Bertlef had left, once again no one was paying attention to them. From the restaurant came the noise of tipsy customers, while they sat abandoned around the table in the garden with their leftover cheese and wine.
"Whoever he is, he spoiled our party. He took away one of our ladies, and now the other one is going off all alone. Let's go with Kamila."
"No," she said. "Stay here. I wish to be alone."
She was no longer with them. Their presence now disturbed her. Jealousy, like death, had come looking for her. She was in its power, and she took no notice of anyone else. She got up and went off in the direction Bertlef and Ruzena had taken a few moments earlier.
From a distance she heard the cameraman saying: "Shit…"
20
After greeting Skreta in the artists' room, Jakub and Olga went into the hall. Olga wanted to leave during the intermission in order to spend the rest of the evening alone with Jakub. Jakub replied that his friend would be angered by their early departure, but Olga maintained that he wouldn't even notice it.
The hall was just about full, with only their two seats still vacant in their row.
"That woman has been following us like a shadow," said Olga, leaning toward Jakub as they sat down.
Jakub turned his head and next to Olga saw Bertlef and next to him the nurse with the poison in her handbag. His heart skipped a beat, but since he had tried hard all his life to hide what was going on deep down inside him, he said quite calmly: "I see that our row's tickets are the complimentary ones Skreta gave to his friends and acquaintances. So he knows where we are, and he'd notice us leaving."
"Tell him that the acoustics were bad here and that we moved to the back of the hall during intermission," said Olga.
Klima was already coming forward on the bandstand with his golden trumpet, and the audience began to applaud. When Dr. Skreta appeared behind him, the applause gained strength and murmuring swelled through the hall. Dr. Skreta stood modestly behind the trumpeter and awkwardly waved his arms to indicate that the concerts real star was the guest from the capital. The audience perceived the exquisite awkwardness of the gesture and reacted to it by applauding still louder. In back of the hall someone shouted: "Long live Doctor Skreta!"
The pianist, who was the most unobtrusive and least acclaimed of the three, sat down at the piano on a low chair. Skreta took his place behind an imposing set of drums, and the trumpeter came and went between the pianist and Skreta with a light and rhythmic step.
The applause ended, and the pianist struck the keyboard to begin a solo introduction. But Jakub noticed that his friend seemed nervous and was looking around in exasperation. Then the trumpeter, too, became aware of the physician's distress and approached him. Skreta whispered something to him. The two men bent over. They examined the floor, and then the trumpeter picked up a drumstick that had fallen at the foot of the piano and handed it to Skreta.
The audience, which had been watching the whole scene attentively, burst into new applause, and the pianist, thinking that the acclaim was in tribute to his solo, nodded his head in acknowledgment as he continued to play.
Olga took hold of Jakub's arm and whispered into his ear: "This is marvelous! So marvelous I think that from this moment on my lousy luck today is over."
The trumpet and drums finally joined in. Klima was blowing in time with his small rhythmic steps, and Skreta sat enthroned over his drums like a splendid, dignified Buddha.
Jakub imagined the nurse thinking of her medicine during the concert, swallowing the tablet, collapsing in convulsions, and slumping dead in her seat while on the bandstand Dr. Skreta banged his drums and the audience yelled and applauded.
And all of a sudden he understood clearly why the young woman was sitting in the same row as he: the unexpected encounter in the brasserie a while ago had been a temptation, a test. It had occurred only so that he might see his own image in the mirror: the image of a man who gives his neighbor poison. But the One who is testing him (God, in whom he does not believe) demands no bloody sacrifice, no blood of innocents. The test might end not in a death but only in Jakub's self-revelation, which might confiscate his inappropriate moral pride. The nurse is now sitting in the same row to enable him, at the last moment, to save her life. And that is also why she has next to her a man who the day before became Jakub's friend and who will help him.
Yes, he will wait for the first opportunity, perhaps at the first break between numbers, and he will ask Bertlef and the young woman to step outside with him
for a moment. Once there, he will explain everything, and the unbelievable madness will end.
The musicians finished the first piece, the applause broke out, the nurse said "Excuse me" and left the row, accompanied by Bertlef. Jakub tried to get up to follow them, but Olga grabbed him by the arm and restrained him: "No, please, not now. After intermission!"
It was all so quick he had no time to realize what happened. The musicians had already launched into the next piece, and Jakub understood that the One who was testing him had seated Ruzena nearby not in order to redeem him but in order to confirm his failure and his condemnation beyond all possible doubt.
The trumpeter was blowing, Dr. Skreta was towering over his drums like a great Buddha, and Jakub was sitting immobile in his seat. He saw neither the trumpeter nor Dr. Skreta, he saw only himself, he saw that he was sitting immobile, and he could not tear his eyes away from this horrifying image.
21
When the clear sound of his trumpet resounded in Klima's ears, he believed that it was he himself who was vibrating thus, that he alone was filling the space of the entire hall. He felt strong and invincible.
Ruzena was sitting in the row of complimentary reserved seats, she was sitting next to Bertlef (and that too was a good omen), and the evening's atmosphere was delightful. The audience was listening intently and, above all, in such a good mood that it gave Klima the cautious hope that all would end well. When the applause for the first piece broke out, he pointed with a stylish gesture to Dr. Skreta, who for some reason he found likable and felt close to that evening. The doctor stood up behind his drums and took a bow.
But when he looked into the audience after the second piece, he noticed that Ruzena's seat was empty. This frightened him. From then on he played tensely, running his eyes over the entire hall seat by seat, checking each one but failing to find her. He thought that she had deliberately left in order not to have to hear his arguments once again, having made up her mind not to appear before the Abortion Committee. Where should he look for her after the concert? And what would happen if he failed to find her?
He felt that he was playing badly, mechanically, absentmindedly. But incapable as it was of detecting the trumpeter's gloomy m
ood, the audience was satisfied and the ovations increased in intensity after each piece.
He reassured himself with the thought that she had merely gone to the toilet. That she was having the sickness common to pregnant women. When half an hour had passed he told himself that she had gone home to
get something and would be reappearing in her seat. But after the intermission had gone by and the concert was nearing its end, her seat was still vacant. Perhaps she didn't dare come back into the hall in the middle of the concert. Perhaps she would come back during the final applause.
But now he was hearing the final applause. Ruzena had not appeared, and Klima was at his wits' end. The audience rose and shouted for encores. Klima turned toward Dr. Skreta and shook his head to indicate that he did not want to play anymore. But he was met by a pair of radiant eyes that wanted only to drum, to go on drumming the whole night through.
The audience interpreted Klima's shake of the head as a star's routine flirtatiousness and went on applauding. Just then a beautiful young woman edged her way to the foot of the bandstand, and when he noticed her, Klima thought he was going to collapse, to faint and never reawaken. She smiled at him and said (he could not hear her voice, but he read the words on her lips): "Please play! Please! Please!"
Klima lifted his trumpet to show that he was going to play. The audience instantly quieted.
His two partners were delighted and started to encore the last piece. For Klima it was as if he were playing in the funeral band marching behind his own coffin. He played, and he knew that all was lost, that there was nothing more to do but close his eyes, give up, and let himself be crushed under the wheels of fate.
22
On a small table in Bertlef's suite stood bottles adorned with splendid labels bearing exotic names. Ruzena knew nothing about luxury drinks, and, unable to specify anything else, she asked for whisky.
Farewell Waltz Page 14
