Her mind, meanwhile, was trying hard to penetrate the veil of giddiness and to understand the situation. She asked Bertlef several times why he had been looking for her today in particular, though he barely knew her. "I want to know," she kept repeating, "I want to know why you thought about me."
"I have been wanting to for a long time," Bertlef answered, gazing steadily into her eyes.
"But why today instead of some other day?"
"Because there is a time for everything. And our time is now."
These words were puzzling, but Ruzena felt they were sincere. The insolubility of her situation had become so intolerable today that something had to happen.
"Yes," she said pensively, "it's been a very strange day."
"You see, you yourself know that I arrived at the right time," Bertlef said in a velvety voice.
Ruzena was overcome by a confused but delightful feeling of relief: Bertlef's appearing precisely today meant that everything that happened had been ordained elsewhere, and she could relax and put herself in the hands of that higher power.
"Yes, it's true, you came at the right time," she said.
"I know it."
And yet there was still something that escaped her: "But why? Why were you looking for me?"
"Because I love you."
The word "love" was uttered very softly, but the room was suddenly filled with it.
Ruzena lowered her voice: "You love me?"
"Yes, I love you."
Frantisek and Klima had already said the word to her, but only now did she see it as it really is when it comes unasked for, unexpected, naked. The word entered the room like a miracle. It was totally inexplicable, but to Ruzena it seemed all the more real, for the most basic things in this world exist without explanation and without motive, drawing from within themselves their reason for being.
"Really?" she asked, and her voice, usually too loud, was only a whisper.
"Yes, really."
"But I'm a very ordinary girl."
"Not at all"
"Yes, I am."
"You are beautiful."
"No, I'm not."
"You are tender."
"No," she said, shaking her head.
"You radiate kindness and goodness."
She shook her head: "No, no, no."
"I know what you are. I know it better than you do."
"You don't know anything about it."
"Yes, I do."
The confidence in her that was emanating from Bertlef's eyes was like a magical bath, and Ruzena wished that gaze, which flooded over and caressed her, to go on for as long as possible.
"Is it true? That I'm like that?"
"Yes. I know you are."
It was as beautiful as a vertigo: in Bertlef's eyes she felt herself delicate, tender, pure, she felt as noble as a queen. It was like being suddenly gorged with honey and fragrant herbs. She found herself adorable. (My God, she had never before found herself so delightfully adorable!)
She continued to protest: "But you hardly know me."
"I have known you for a long time. I have been watching you for a long time, and you never even suspected it. I know you by heart," he said, running his fingers over her face. "Your nose, your delicately drawn smile, your hair…"
Then he started to unbutton her clothes, and she did not resist at all, she merely looked deeply into his eyes, into that gaze that enveloped her like water, like velvety water. She was sitting facing him, her bare breasts rising under his gaze and desiring to be seen and praised. Her whole body was turned toward his eyes like a sunflower toward the sun.
23
They were in Jakub's room, Olga talking and Jakub repeating to himself that there was still time. He could return to Karl Marx House, and if she was not there he could disturb Bertlef in the suite next door and ask him if he knew where the young woman had gone.
Olga chattered on, and he went on to imagine the painful scene in which, having found the nurse, he was telling her something or other, stammering, making excuses, apologizing, and trying to get her to give him the tube of tablets. Then, all of a sudden, as if wearied by these visions that for several hours had been confronting him, he felt gripped by an intense indifference.
This was not merely the indifference of weariness, it was a deliberate and combative indifference. Jakub came to realize that it was absolutely all the same to him whether the creature with the yellow hair lived or died, and that it would in fact be hypocrisy and shameful playacting if he tried to save her. That he would actually be deceiving the One who was testing him. For the One who was testing him (God, who did not exist) wished to know Jakub as he really was, not as he pretended to be. And Jakub resolved to be honest with Him; to be who he really was.
They were sitting in facing armchairs, with a small table between them. Jakub saw Olga leaning toward him over that small table and heard her voice:"I want
to kiss you. How can we have known each other such a long time and never kissed? "
24
With a forced smile on her face and anxiety deep down within her, Mrs. Klima slipped into the artists' room behind her husband. She was afraid of seeing the actual face of Klima's mistress. But there was no mistress at all. There were several girls flittering around Klima asking for autographs, and she discerned (she had an eagle eye) that none of them knew him personally.
All the same she was certain that the mistress was somewhere nearby. She could see it on Klima's face, which was pale and absent. He smiled at his wife as falsely as she smiled at him.
Dr. Skreta, the pharmacist, and some others, probably physicians and their spouses, introduced themselves to Mrs. Klima with nods. Someone suggested they go to the only bar in town. Klima excused himself, claiming fatigue. Mrs. Klima thought that the mistress must be waiting in the bar; that was why Klima was refusing to go there. And because calamity attracted her like a magnet, she asked him to please her by overcoming his fatigue.
But in the bar, too, there was no woman she might suspect of having an affair with Klima. They sat down at a large table. Dr. Skreta was garrulously praising the trumpeter. The pharmacist was filled with shy happiness he was unable to express. Mrs. Klima tried to be charming and cheerfully talkative: "Doctor, you were magnificent," she said to Skreta, "and you, too, my dear pharmacist. And the atmosphere was genuine, cheerful, carefree, a thousand times better than at the concerts in the capital."
Without staring at Klima, she did not for a second stop observing him. She felt that he was hiding his nervousness only with great effort, and that he was uttering a word now and again only to avoid showing that his mind was elsewhere. It was obvious that she had spoiled something for him, something out of the ordinary. If it had been only a matter of some ordinary adventure (Klima always swore up and down to her that he could never fall in love with another woman), he would not have gone into such a deep depression. Admittedly she had not seen the mistress, but she believed she was seeing the love; the love in his face (suffering, desperate love), and that sight was perhaps still more painful.
"What's the matter, Mister Klima?" suddenly asked the pharmacist, who was all the more friendly and perceptive for being so quiet.
"Nothing. Nothing at all!" said Klima, struck by fear. "I've got a little headache."
"Do you want an aspirin?" the pharmacist asked.
"No, no," said the trumpeter, shaking his head. "But please excuse us if we leave a bit early. I'm really very tired."
25
How had she finally dared to do it?
From the moment she had joined Jakub in the brasserie, she found him not as he had been. He was quiet yet pleasant, unable to focus attention yet docile, was mentally elsewhere yet did whatever she wished. The lack of concentration (she attributed it to his approaching departure) was agreeable to her: she was speaking to an absent face, and it seemed to her that she was speaking into distances where she could not be heard. She could thus say to him what she had never said before.
No
w, in asking him for a kiss, she had the impression that she had disturbed him, troubled him. But this did not discourage her at all, on the contrary, it pleased her: she felt she had finally become the bold, provocative woman she had always hoped to be, the woman who dominates the situation, sets it in motion, watches her partner with curiosity, and puts him into a quandary.
She continued to look him firmly in the eye and said
with a smile: "But not here. It would be ridiculous for us to lean over the table to kiss. Come."
She took his hand, led him to the daybed, and savored the finesse, elegance, and quiet authority of her behavior. Then she kissed him and was stirred by a passion she had never known before. And yet it was not the spontaneous passion of a body unable to control itself, it was a passion of the brain, a passion conscious and deliberate. She wanted to tear away from Jakub the disguise of his paternal role, wanted to shock him and arouse herself with the sight of his confusion, wanted to rape him and watch herself raping him, wanted to know the taste of his tongue and feel his paternal hands become bit by bit bolder and cover her with caresses.
She unbuttoned his jacket and took it off.
26
He never took his eyes off him throughout the concert, and then he mingled with the fans who rushed behind the bandstand to get the artists to scribble an autograph for them. But Ruzena was not there. He followed a small group of people leading the trumpeter to the spa town's bar. He went in behind them, convinced that Ruzena was already waiting there for the trum-
peter. But he was wrong. He went out and for a long time kept watch in front of the entrance.
A sudden pang went through him. The trumpeter had come out of the bar with a female figure pressed against him. At first he thought it was Ruzena, but it was not she.
He followed them to the Hotel Richmond, and Klima and the woman vanished inside.
He quickly went across the park to Karl Marx House. The door was still unlocked. He asked the doorkeeper if Ruzena was at home. She was not.
He ran back to the Richmond, fearing that Ruzena in the meantime had joined Klima there. He paced back and forth on the park path, keeping his eyes fixed on the entrance. He didn't understand what was happening. Several possibilities came to his mind, but they didn't matter. What mattered was that he was here and that he was keeping watch, and he knew that he would keep watch until he saw them.
Why? What good would it do? Would it not be better to go home to sleep?
He repeated to himself that he finally had to find out the whole truth.
But did he really want to know the truth? Did he really wish so strongly to make sure that Ruzena was going to bed with Klima? Was he not waiting instead for some proof of Ruzena's innocence? And yet, suspicious as he was, would he lend credence to such proof?
He didn't know what he was waiting for. He knew only that he would wait a long time, all night if he had
to, and even several nights. For time spurred on by jealousy passes with amazing speed. Jealousy occupies the mind more completely than passionate intellectual work. The mind has not a moment of leisure. A victim of jealousy never knows boredom.
Frantisek keeps pacing a short stretch of path, barely one hundred meters long, from which the Richmond's entrance can be seen. He is going to be pacing back and forth like this all night, until everyone else is asleep, he is going to pace back and forth like this until tomorrow, until the last part of this book.
But why is he not sitting down? There are benches facing the Richmond!
He cannot sit down. Jealousy is like a raging toothache. One cannot do anything when one is jealous, not even sit down. One can only come and go. Back and forth.
27
They followed the same route as Bertlef and Ruzena, Jakub and Olga; up the stairs to the second floor, then along the red plush carpet to the corridor's end at the large door to Bertlef's suite. To the right was the door to Jakub's room, to the left the room Dr. Skreta had lent to Klima.
When he opened the door and turned on the light, he noticed the quick inquisitive look Kamila cast through the room. He knew she was looking for traces of a woman. He was familiar with that look. He knew everything about her. He knew that her kindness was insincere. He knew that she had come here to spy on him, knew that she would pretend to have come here to please him. And he knew that she clearly perceived his embarrassment and that she was certain she had spoiled one of his love adventures.
"Darling, you really don't mind that I came?" she asked.
"Why should I mind?"
"I was afraid you'd be sad here."
"Yes, without you I'd be sad. It pleased me to see you applauding at the foot of the bandstand."
"You seem tired. Or is something bothering you?"
"No. No, nothing's bothering me. I'm just tired."
"You're sad because you're always surrounded by men here. But now you're with a beautiful woman. Am I not a beautiful woman?"
"Yes, you're a beautiful woman," answered Klima, and these were the first sincere words he had said to her that day. Kamila was gloriously beautiful, and Klima felt immense pain at the thought that this beauty was exposed to mortal peril. But this beauty smiled at him and began to undress before his eyes. He gazed at her body being bared, and it was as if he were bidding it farewell. The breasts, her beautiful, flawless breasts, her narrow waist, the belly from which her underpants
had just slipped free. He watched her with longing, as if she were a memory. As if through a window. As if from a distance. Her nakedness was so distant that he felt not the least aroused. And yet he was contemplating her with a voracious gaze. He drank her nakedness as a condemned man drinks his last glass. He drank her nakedness as a man drinks a lost past, a lost life.
Kamila came near him: "What is it? Aren't you going to undress?"
All he could do was undress, and he was terribly sad.
"Don't think you have the right to be tired now that I've come all this way to be with you. I want you.''
He knew that it was not true. He knew that Kamila did not have the slightest desire to make love, and that she was forcing herself to behave provocatively only because she saw his sadness and attributed it to his love for another woman. He knew (my God, how well he knew her!) that she was trying to test him with this love challenge, to find out to what degree his mind was engrossed by another woman, he knew that she wanted to wound herself with his sadness.
"I'm really tired," he said.
She took him in her arms and then led him to the bed: "You'll see how I'm going to make you forget your fatigue!" And she began to play with his naked body.
He was stretched out as if on an operating table. He knew that all his wife's efforts would be useless. His body shrank into itself and no longer had the slightest power of expansion. Kamila ran her moist lips all over his body, and he knew that she wanted to make herself
suffer and make him suffer, and he hated her. He hated her with all the intensity of his love: it was she and she alone, with her jealousy, her suspicions, her mistrust, she and she alone who had spoiled everything by coming here today, it was because of her that their marriage was menaced by a bomb deposited in another woman's belly, by a charge timed to blow everything up in seven months. It was she and she alone, with her insane fear about their love, who had destroyed everything.
She put her mouth to his belly and felt his member contract under her touches, going back inside, fleeing from her, becoming more and more small and anxious. And he knew that Kamila saw the rejection of her body as a measure of the extent of his love for another woman. He knew that she was suffering, and that the more she suffered the more she would make him suffer and persist in putting her moist lips to his powerless body.
28
He had never wanted to go to bed with this girl. He desired to make her happy and shower her with goodness, but this goodness had nothing in common with sensual desire, better still, it totally excluded such desire, for it wished to be pure, disinterested, detached fro
m all pleasure.
But what could he do now? Must he, in order not to sully his goodness, reject Olga? He knew he could not do that. His rejection would hurt Olga and would mark her for a long time. He realized that he must drink the chalice of goodness to the dregs.
And then she was suddenly naked in front of him and he told himself that her face was noble and pleasing. But that was small comfort when he saw the face together with the body, which looked like a long thin stem topped by an inordinately big, long-haired flower.
But whether she was beautiful or not, Jakub knew that there was no escape. Besides, he felt that his body (that servile body) was once more quite willing to lift its obliging spear. His arousal, however, seemed to him to be happening to someone else far away, outside his own soul, as if he were being aroused without his participation and were secretly scorning it. His soul was far from his body, obsessed by the thought of the poison in the woman's handbag. At the utmost, it watched regretfully as the body blindly and pitilessly pursued its trivial interests.
A fleeting memory passed through his mind: he had been ten years old when he learned how children come into the world, and since then the thought of it had increasingly haunted him, all the more when, over the years, he gradually discovered the actual substance of the female organs. Since then he had often imagined his own birth; he imagined his tiny body sliding through a narrow, wet tunnel, he imagined his nose and his mouth full of the strange mucus he was entirely anointed with
and marked by. Yes, that female mucus had marked Jakub throughout his life with its ability to exert its mysterious power to summon him to it at any moment and to control the bizarre mechanisms of his body. This had always been repugnant to him, and he rebelled against that servitude by at least refusing to give women his soul, by safeguarding his freedom and solitude, by restricting mucus power to particular hours of his life. Yes, his great affection for Olga probably derived from her being sexually out of bounds to him, and from his certainty that her body would never remind him of the shameful way he had come into the world.
Farewell Waltz Page 15
