He abruptly pushed these thoughts away, because the situation on the daybed was developing rapidly, and in a moment or two he was going to have to enter her body, and he did not wish to do so with a sensation of repugnance. He told himself that this woman opening herself up to him was the only woman to whom he was attached by pure and disinterested affection, and that he was now going to make love to her only to make her happy, to please her, to make her self-confident and cheerful.
But now he amazed himself: he was moving on top of her as if he were rocking on waves of goodness. He felt happy, he felt good. His soul humbly identified itself with the activity of his body, as if the act of love were merely the physical expression of a kindly tenderness, of a pure feeling toward one's neighbor. There was no obstacle, not a false note. They held each other tightly, and their breaths mingled.
Those were long, beautiful minutes, and then Olga whispered a lewd word in his ear. She whispered it once, then again and yet again, arousing herself with the word.
The waves of goodness suddenly ebbed, and Jakub and the young woman found themselves in the middle of a desert.
No, Jakub ordinarily had nothing against lewd words during lovemaking. They awakened his sensuality and ferocity. They made women pleasantly strange to his soul, pleasantly desirable to his body.
But the lewd word coming from Olga's mouth brutally destroyed the whole sweet illusion. It woke him from a dream. The haze of goodness lifted, and suddenly he saw Olga in his arms as he had seen her a while earlier: with the big flower of her head atop the swaying thin stem of her body. This touching creature had the provocative manner of a whore without ceasing to be touching, so that the lewd words sounded ridiculous and sad.
But Jakub knew that he must not let anything show, that he must control himself, that he must drink the bitter chalice of goodness again and again, because this absurd embrace was his only good deed, his only redemption (not for a moment did he forget the poison in that woman's handbag), his only salvation.
29
Like a large pearl in a mollusk's double shell, Bertlef's luxurious suite is surrounded on both sides by the less luxurious rooms occupied by Jakub and Klima. In these two neighboring rooms silence and calm have been reigning for quite a while, as Ruzena, in Bertlef's arms, heaves her last sighs of voluptuous pleasure.
Then she lies stretched out peacefully beside him as he caresses her face. She soon bursts into tears. She cries for a long time, her head buried in his chest.
Bertlef caresses her as if she were a little girl, and she really does feel little. Little as never before (never before has she hidden this way in anyone's chest), but also big as never before (never before has she experienced so much pleasure). And the spasmodic movements of her sobs carry her away to sensations of well-being which until now had been equally unknown to her.
Where is Klima at this moment, and where is Frantisek? They are somewhere in a distant haze, figures as light as feathers receding toward the horizon. And where is Ruzena's stubborn longing to grab hold of one and get rid of the other? What has become of her fits of anger, of the offended silence she has locked herself into since morning?
She is lying down, she is sobbing, and he is caressing her face. He tells her to sleep, that his bed is in the next room. Ruzena opens her eyes and looks at him: naked,
Bertlef goes to the bathroom (the sound of running water is heard), then he returns, opens the wardrobe, takes out a blanket, and delicately unfolds it over Ruzena's body.
Ruzena sees the varicose veins on his calves. When he is bent over her she notices that his curly hair is graying and thin enough to let the scalp show through. Bertlef is sixty, perhaps sixty-five, but that is not important to Ruzena. On the contrary, his age calms her, his age throws a radiant light on her own still dull and expressionless youth, and she feels full of life and that she has finally arrived at the very beginning of her journey. And here in his presence is where she finds out that she will still be young for a long time, that she has no need to hurry. Bertlef again sits down beside her and caresses her, and she has the sense of having found refuge not only in the comforting touch of his fingers but also in the reassuring embrace of his years.
Then she loses consciousness, the confused visions of sleep's approach passing through her head. She awakes, and it seems to her that the whole room is flooded with a strange blue light. What is this unnatural glow she has never before seen? Has the moon come down here veiled in blue? Or is Ruzena dreaming with her eyes open?
Bertlef smiles at her and goes on caressing her face.
And now she closes her eyes for the night, carried away by a dream.
Fifth Day
1
It was still dark when Klima awoke from a very light sleep. He wanted to find Ruzena before she went to work. But how to explain to Kamila that he had an errand to run before daybreak?
He looked at his watch: five o'clock. He would miss Ruzena if he did not get up right away, but he could not think of an excuse. His heart pounded, but unable to do anything else, he got up and started to dress, quietly for fear of waking Kamila. He was buttoning his jacket when he heard her voice. It was a high-pitched, half-asleep little voice: "Where are you
going?"
He went over to the bed and lightly kissed her lips: "Go back to sleep, I'll be back soon."
"I'll go with you," said Kamila, but she was instantly asleep again.
Klima quickly left.
2
Was it possible? Was he still pacing back and forth?
Yes. But suddenly he stopped. He saw Klima coming out of the Richmond. He hid briefly and then started to follow him discreetly to Karl Marx House. He passed the doorkeeper's lodging (the doorkeeper was asleep) and stopped at the corner of the corridor leading to Ruzena's room. He saw the trumpeter knock at the nurse's door. The door did not open. Klima knocked several more times, then he turned to go.
Frantisek rushed out of Marx House after him. He saw him heading down the park to the thermal building, where Ruzena was due to begin work in half an hour. He rushed back to Marx House, hammered at Ruzena's door, and in a hushed but distinct voice said through the keyhole: "It's me! Frantisek! Don't be afraid of me! You can open the door for me!"
There was no answer.
As he left, the doorkeeper was waking up.
"Is Ruzena at home?" Frantisek asked him.
"She hasn't been here since yesterday," said the doorkeeper.
Frantisek went outside. In the distance he saw Klima entering the thermal building.
3
Ruzena regularly awoke at five-thirty. Even this morning, after having dozed off so pleasantly, she slept no longer than that. She got up, dressed, and tiptoed into the adjacent room.
Bertlef was lying on his side, breathing deeply, and his hair, always carefully combed during the day, was disheveled, revealing the naked skin over his skull. In sleep his face looked grayer and older. The small bottles of medicine on the night table reminded Ruzena of a hospital. But none of this disturbed her. Looking at him brought tears to her eyes. She had never had a more beautiful night. She felt a strange desire to kneel down before him. She did not do so, but she leaned over and delicately kissed his brow.
Outside, as she approached the thermal building she saw Frantisek coming toward her.
The day before, such an encounter would have disconcerted her. Even though Ruzena was in love with the trumpeter, Frantisek meant a great deal to her. He and Klima formed an inseparable pair. One embodied the everyday, the other a dream; one wanted her, the other did not want her; from one she wanted to escape, the other she desired. Each of the two men determined the meaning of the other's existence. When she decided that she was pregnant by Klima she did not eliminate Frantisek from her life; on the contrary: Frantisek remained the abiding reason for this decision. She was
between these two men as between the two poles of her life; they were the north and south of her planet, the only one she knew.
But this
morning she suddenly realized that it was not the only habitable planet. She realized that it was possible to live without Klima and without Frantisek; that there was no reason to hurry; that there was time enough; that it was possible to let a wise, mature man lead you far away from this accursed domain where you age so quickly.
"Where did you spend the night?" Frantisek burst out at her.
"It's none of your business."
"I was at your place. You weren't in your room."
"It's absolutely none of your business where I spent the night," said Ruzena, and without stopping she passed through the entrance to the thermal building. "And quit following me. I forbid it."
Frantisek remained standing in front of the building, and then, because his feet hurt from a night spent pacing back and forth, he sat down on a bench from which he could keep a close watch on the entrance.
Ruzena rushed up the stairs to the second floor two at a time and entered the large waiting room lined with benches and chairs. Klima was sitting at the door to her workplace.
"Ruzena," he said as he stood up and looked at her with desperate eyes. "I beg you. I beg you, be reasonable! I'll go there with you!"
His anxiety was naked, stripped of all the sentimen-
tal demagogy to which he had devoted so much effort in the previous days.
Ruzena said: "You want to get rid of me."
This frightened him: "I don't want to get rid of you- on the contrary. I'm doing all this so we'll be even happier together."
"Don't lie," said Ruzena.
"Ruzena, I beg you! It'll be a disaster if you don't go!"
"Who told you I'm not going? We still have three hours. It's only six o'clock. You can quietly get back into bed with your wife!"
She closed the door behind her, put on her white smock, and said to the fortyish nurse: "Please do me a favor. I need to go out at nine o'clock. Could you take my place for an hour?"
"So you've let yourself be talked into it after all," her colleague said reproachfully.
"No. I've fallen in love," said Ruzena.
4
Jakub went over to the window and opened it. He thought of the pale-blue tablet, and he could not believe that he had really given it the day before to a stranger. He looked up at the blue of the sky and breathed in the crisp air of the autumn morning. The
world he saw through the window was normal, tranquil, natural. The episode with the nurse the day before suddenly seemed absurd and implausible.
He picked up the phone and dialed the thermal building. He asked to speak with Nurse Ruzena in the women's section. He waited a long time. Then he heard a woman's voice. He repeated that he wanted to speak with Nurse Ruzena. The voice replied that Nurse Ruzena was now at the pool and couldn't come to the phone. He thanked her and hung up.
He felt immense relief: the nurse was alive. The tablets in the tube were to be taken three times a day; she must have taken one yesterday evening and another this morning, and thus she had swallowed Jakub's tablet quite a while ago. Suddenly everything seemed absolutely clear: the pale-blue tablet he had been carrying in his pocket as a guarantee of his freedom was a fraud. His friend had given him a tablet of illusion.
My God, why had the thought not occurred to him before? Once more he recalled the distant day when he had asked his friends for poison. He had just been released from prison then, and now he realized, after the passage of many long years, that all of them had probably seen his request as a theatrical gesture designed to call attention, after the fact, to the sufferings he had endured. But Skreta had with no hesitation promised to get him what he asked for, and a few days later had brought him a shiny, pale-blue tablet. Why hesitate, why try to dissuade him? Skreta had handled
it more cleverly than those who had turned him down. He had furnished him the harmless illusion of calm and certainty, and in addition made a lifelong friend.
Why had this thought never occurred to him? He had at the time found it a bit strange that Skreta had furnished him the poison in the guise of an ordinary manufactured tablet. While he knew that Skreta, as a biochemist, had access to poisons, he did not understand how he had tablet-making machinery at his disposal. But he asked no questions. Although he doubted everything else, he believed in his tablet as one believes in the Gospel.
Now, in this moment of immense relief, he was of course grateful to his friend for his fraud. He was happy that the nurse was alive and that the whole absurd misadventure was merely a nightmare, a bad dream. But nothing lasts long in this world, and behind the subsiding waves of relief, regret raised its shrill voice:
How grotesque! The tablet he kept in his pocket had given his every step a theatrical solemnity and allowed him to turn his life into a grandiose myth! He had been convinced that he was carrying death with him in a piece of tissue paper that in reality held only Skreta's stifled laughter.
Jakub knew that, when all is said and done, his friend had been right, but he could not help thinking that the Skreta he loved so much had suddenly become an ordinary doctor like thousands of others. His having furnished him the poison with no hesita-
tion, as a matter of course, radically distinguished him from other people Jakub knew. There was something implausible about his behavior. He did not act the way other people did. He had not even wondered if Jakub might misuse the poison in a fit of hysteria or depression. He had dealt with Jakub as a man who was in total control of himself and had no human weaknesses. They behaved with each other like two gods forced to live among humans-and that was beautiful. Unforgettable. And suddenly it was over.
Jakub looked up at the blue of the sky and thought: Today he brought me relief and calm. And at the same time he robbed me of himself; he robbed me of my Skreta.
5
Ruzena's consent put Klima into a sweet stupor, but nothing could have lured him away from the waiting room. Ruzena's baffling disappearance the day before was threateningly imprinted on his memory. He resolved to wait there patiently, to see to it that no one dissuaded her or carried her away.
Women patients began to arrive, opening the door behind which Ruzena had vanished just now, some of them staying in there and others returning to sit in the
chairs along the walls and examine Klima curiously, for men were not usually seen in the women's section waiting room.
Next a buxom woman in a white smock came in and took a long look at him; then she approached him and asked if he was waiting for Ruzena. He blushed and nodded.
"You don't have to wait here. You've got till nine o'clock," she said with obtrusive familiarity, and Klima had the impression that all the women in the room heard her and knew what was going on.
It was a quarter to nine when Ruzena reappeared, dressed in street clothes. He went behind her as they silently left the thermal building. They were both immersed in their own thoughts and did not notice that Frantisek was following them, hidden by the park's bushes.
6
Jakub had nothing more to do but say goodbye to Olga and Skreta, but first he wanted to take (for the last time) a brief walk by himself in the park and have a nostalgic look at the flaming trees.
Just as he was coming out into the corridor a young woman was locking the door of the room opposite, and
her tall figure caught his eye. When she turned around he was stunned by her beauty.
He spoke to her: "Aren't you a friend of Doctor Skreta's?"
The woman smiled pleasantly: "How did you know?"
"You've just left the room he reserves for his friends,'' said Jakub and introduced himself.
"I'm glad to meet you. I'm Mrs. Klima. The doctor put up my husband here. I'm going to look for him. He must be with the doctor. Do you know where I might find them?"
Jakub contemplated the young woman with insatiable delight, and it occurred to him (yet again!) that this was his last day here, which imparted special significance to every event and turned it into a symbolic message.
But what did the message say?
&nbs
p; "I can take you to Doctor Skreta," Jakub told her.
"I'd be very grateful,'' she replied.
Yes, what did the message say?
First of all, it was only a message and nothing more. In two hours Jakub would be going away, and nothing would be left for him of this beautiful creature. This woman had appeared before him as a denial. He had met her only to be convinced that she could not be his. He had met her as an image of everything he would lose by his departure.
"It's extraordinary," he said. "Today I'm probably going to be talking to Doctor Skreta for the last time in my life."
But the message this woman had brought him also said something more. The message had arrived, at the very last moment, to announce beauty to him. Yes, beauty, and Jakub was startled to realize that he actually knew nothing about beauty, that he had spent his life ignoring it and never living for it. The beauty of this woman fascinated him. He suddenly had the feeling that in all his decisions there had always been an error. That there was an element he had forgotten to take into account. It seemed to him that if he had known this woman, his decision would have been different.
"Why are you going to be talking to him for the last time?"
"I'm going abroad. For a long time."
Not that he had not had pretty women, but their charm was always something incidental for him. What drove him toward women was a desire for revenge, or sadness and dissatisfaction, or compassion, or pity: the world of women merged for him with his country's bitter drama, in which he had participated both as persecutor and victim, and had experienced plenty of struggle and no idylls. But this woman had sprung up before him suddenly, separate from all that, separate from his life, she had come from outside, she had appeared to him, appeared not only as a beautiful woman but as beauty itself, and she proclaimed to him that one could live here in a different way and for something different, that beauty is more than justice, that beauty is more than truth, that it is more real, more indisputable, and also more accessible, that beauty is superior to everything
Farewell Waltz Page 16
