else and that it was now permanently lost to him. This beautiful woman had shown herself to him so that he would not go on believing that he knew everything and had exhausted all the possibilities of life here.
"I envy you," she said.
They crossed the park together, the sky was blue, the bushes were yellow and red, and Jakub again thought that the foliage was the image of a fire consuming all the adventures, all the memories, all the opportunities of his past.
"There's nothing to envy me for. Right now I feel I shouldn't be leaving at all."
"Why not? Are you starting to like it here at the last minute?"
"It's you I like. I like you a lot. You're extremely beautiful."
He was surprised to hear himself say this, and then it came to him that he had the right to tell her everything because he would be leaving in a few hours and his words could have no consequences either for him or for her. This suddenly discovered freedom intoxicated him.
"I've been living like a blind man. A blind man. Now, for the first time, I realize that beauty exists. And that I went right by it."
She merged in his mind with music and paintings, with a realm in which he had never set foot, she merged with the multicolored foliage around him, and all of a sudden he no longer saw in it any messages or significance (images of fire or incineration) but only the ecstasy of beauty mysteriously awakened by the
beat of her footsteps, by the touch of her voice.
"I'd do anything to win you. I'd abandon everything and live my whole life differently, only for you and because of you. But I can't, because at this moment I'm no longer really here. I should have left yesterday, and I'm only here now through my own delay."
Ah yes! Now he understood why it had been given him to meet her. This meeting was taking place outside his life, somewhere on the hidden side of his destiny, on the reverse of his biography. But he spoke to her all the more freely, until he suddenly felt that, even so, he would be unable to say everything he wanted to say.
He touched her arm: "This is where Doctor Skreta has his office. On the second floor."
Mrs. Klima gave him a long look, and Jakub plunged into that look, tender and misty like a distance. He touched her arm again, turned, and went off.
A bit later he turned around and saw that Mrs. Klima was still standing in the same spot, following him with her eyes. He turned around several more times; she was still looking at him.
7
About twenty anxious women were sitting in the waiting room; Ruzena and Klima could find no seats. On
the wall facing them hung the obligatory big posters aiming to dissuade women from having abortions.
MAMA, WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME? read the large letters on a poster showing a smiling baby in a crib; below the baby, in heavy letters, was a poem in which an embryo implores its mama not to scrape it away and promises boundless joy in return: "… If you don't let me stay alive-oh why?/Whose arms, Mama, will hold you when you die?''''
Other posters displayed big photos of smiling mothers pushing baby carriages and photos of little boys peeing. (Klima thought that a little boy peeing was an irrefutable argument for childbearing. He remembered once seeing a film in which a little boy was peeing, and the whole theater quivered with blissful female sighs.)
After waiting a while, Klima knocked on the door; a nurse came out and Klima dropped Dr. Skreta's name. In a moment the doctor arrived and handed Klima a form, asking him to fill it out and wait patiently a while longer.
Klima held the form against the wall and started to fill it out: name, date of birth, place of birth. Ruzena whispered her responses. Then he came to FATHER'S NAME, and he hesitated. It was horrifying to see this infamous title in black and white, and to put his name next to it.
Ruzena noticed that Klima's hand was trembling. That gave her great satisfaction: "Go on, write!" she said.
"What name should I put down?" Klima whispered.
She found him spineless and cowardly, and she was filled with contempt for him. He was afraid of everything, afraid of responsibility, afraid of his own signature on an official form.
"Come on! I think you know who the father is!" she said.
"I thought it wasn't important," said Klima.
She no longer cared about him, but deep down she was convinced that this spineless fellow was guilty of doing her harm; it delighted her to punish him: "If you're going to keep on lying, we're not going to get along." After he had written his name in the space, she added with a sigh: "Anyway, I still don't know what I'm going to do…"
"What?"
She looked at his terrified face: "Until they take it away from me, I can still change my mind."
8
She was sitting in an armchair with her legs extended on the table, and she was skimming the detective novel she had bought for all the dreary days in the spa town. But she could not concentrate because the situations and words of the evening before kept coming to mind. Everything had pleased her yesterday, particu-
larly she herself. At last she was what she had always wished to be: no longer the victim of male intentions but the author of her own adventure. She had definitively rejected the role of innocent ward which Jakub had made her play, and, on the contrary, she had remodeled him in accord with her own wishes.
She now felt elegant, independent, and bold. She looked at her legs up on the table, sheathed in tight white jeans, and when she heard a knock on the door she shouted cheerfully: "Come in, I'm waiting for you!
Jakub entered, looking distressed.
"Hello!" she said, keeping her legs on the table for a moment. Jakub seemed perplexed, and that pleased her. She got up, went over to him, and lightly kissed him on the cheek: "Will you stay a while?"
"No," said Jakub sadly. "This time I've come to say goodbye for good. I'm leaving very soon. I thought I'd take you to the baths one last time."
"Sure!" said Olga cheerfully. "Let's go for a walk."
9
Jakub was filled to overflowing with the image of the beautiful Mrs. Klima, and he needed to overcome a kind of aversion to come and say goodbye to Olga,
who the day before had left his soul uneasy and blemished. But not for anything would he let her see this. He enjoined himself to behave with extraordinary tact, that she must not suspect how little pleasure and joy their lovemaking had brought him, that her memory of him should remain unspoiled. He put on a serious air, uttered insignificant phrases in a melancholy tone, vaguely touched her hand and caressed her hair, and, when she looked into his eyes, tried to appear sad.
On the way she suggested that they stop for a glass of wine, but Jakub wanted to keep their last meeting, which he found difficult, as brief as possible. "Saying farewell hurts too much. I don't want to prolong it," he said.
In front of the thermal building he took both of her hands and looked into her eyes for a long while.
Olga said: "Jakub, it was very good of you to have come here. I spent a delightful evening yesterday. I'm glad that you've finally stopped playing papa and become Jakub. Yesterday was fantastic. Wasn't it fantastic?"
Jakub understood that he understood nothing. Did this sensitive girl see last evening's lovemaking simply as entertainment? Was she driven toward him by a sensuality free from all feelings? Did the pleasant memory of a single night of love outweigh for her the sadness of final separation?
He gave her a kiss. She wished him a pleasant journey and vanished through the building's grand entrance.
10
He had been pacing back and forth in front of the clinic building for two hours, and he was starting to lose patience. He kept reminding himself that he must not make a scene, but he felt that his self-control was waning.
He went inside. The spa was a small place, and everyone knew him. He asked the doorkeeper if he had seen Ruzena. The doorkeeper nodded and said that she had gone up in the elevator. Since the elevator only stopped at the fourth floor and all the lower floors were reached by stairs, Frantisek co
uld narrow his suspicions to the two corridors on the top floor. In one were offices, in the other was the gynecology clinic. He tried the former first (it was deserted) and then entered the latter, with the unpleasant feeling that men were not allowed here. He saw a nurse he knew by sight. He asked her about Ruzena. She pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. The door was open, and some women and men stood waiting at the threshold. Frantisek went in and saw more women sitting, but neither Ruzena nor the trumpeter was there. "Did anybody see a young woman, a blonde?" A woman pointed to the office door: "They're inside." Frantisek looked up: MAMA, WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME? And on the other posters he saw the photographs of newborns and little boys urinating. He began to understand what was going on.
11
There was a long table in the room. Klima sat beside Ruzena, and facing them Dr. Skreta sat enthroned, flanked by two ample ladies.
Dr. Skreta lifted his eyes to the applicants and shook his head with disgust: "It makes me sick even to look at you. Do you know how much trouble we go to here to restore fertility to unfortunate women who can't have children? And then healthy, well-built young people like you of their own accord want to get rid of the most precious gift life can offer us. I warn you categorically that this committee is not here to encourage abortions but to regulate them."
The two women emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on giving his moral lesson for the benefit of the two applicants. Klima's heart was pounding. He guessed that the doctor's words were not addressed to him but to the two judges, who with all the strength of their maternal bellies hated young women who refused to give birth, yet he feared that Ruzena might allow herself to be swayed by this speech. Had she not told him a few minutes earlier that she still didn't know what she was going to do?
"What are you living for?" Dr. Skreta resumed. "Life without children is like a tree without leaves. If I had the power I would prohibit abortion. Aren't you distressed by the thought that our population is going down each year? Here in this country where mothers
and children are better protected than anywhere else in the world! In this country where no one has to fear for his future?"
The two women once again emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on: "The comrade is married and afraid of assuming all the consequences of an irresponsible sexual relationship. But you should have thought of that before, comrade!"
Dr. Skreta paused, and then he addressed Klima once more: "You have no children. Are you really unable to get a divorce for the sake of this fetus's future?"
"It's impossible," said Klima.
"I know," said Dr. Skreta with a sigh. "I've received a psychiatric report saying that Mrs. Klima suffers from suicidal tendencies. The birth of this child would endanger her life and destroy her home, and Nurse Ruzena would be a single mother. What can we do?" he said with another sigh, and then pushed the form toward one and then the other of the two women, each one sighing too as she signed her name in the proper space.
"Be here Monday morning at eight o'clock for the operation," Dr. Skreta said to Ruzena, and he motioned that she could leave.
"But you stay here!" one of the heavy women said to Klima. Ruzena left and the woman went on: "Terminating a pregnancy is not as harmless an operation as you think. It involves much bleeding. By your irresponsibility you will make the comrade lose blood,
and it's only fair that you give your own." She pushed a form at Klima and told him: "Sign here."
Filled with confusion, Klima signed obediently.
"It's an application for membership in the Voluntary Association of Blood Donors. Go next door and the nurse will take your blood right away."
12
Ruzena walked through the waiting room with lowered eyes and didn't see Frantisek until he spoke to her in the corridor.
"Where have you just been?"
She was frightened by his furious expression and walked faster.
"I'm asking you where you've just been."
"It's none of your business."
"I know where you've just been."
"Then don't ask me."
They went down the stairs, Ruzena in a rush to escape Frantisek and the conversation.
"You've been to the Abortion Committee," Frantisek said.
Ruzena remained silent. They left the building.
"You've been to the Abortion Committee. I know it. And you want to have an abortion."
"I'll do what I want."
"You're not going to do what you want. It's my business too."
Ruzena was walking still faster, nearly running. Frantisek was running right behind her. When they arrived at the thermal building, she said: "I forbid you to follow me. I'm at work now. You don't have the right to disturb me at my work."
Frantisek was very excited: "I forbid you to give me orders!"
"You don't have the right!"
"You're the one who doesn't have the right!"
Ruzena swept into the building, with Frantisek behind her.
13
Jakub was glad that it was all finished and that there was only one more thing to do: say goodbye to Skreta. From the thermal building he slowly headed across the park to Karl Marx House.
Coming toward him from a distance on the broad park path were about twenty nursery-school kids and their teacher. She had in her hand the end of a long red string, which the children held on to as they followed her single file. They walked along slowly, and the
teacher pointed at the various trees and shrubs while giving their names. Jakub stopped to listen because he did not know much botany and always forgot that a maple was called a maple and a hornbeam a hornbeam.
The teacher pointed at a tree thick with yellowing leaves: "This is a linden."
Jakub looked at the children. They all wore little blue coats and red berets. You could take them for little brothers and sisters. He looked at their faces and found that they resembled one another not only because of their clothes but also because of their features. He counted seven among them with markedly big noses and wide mouths. They looked like Dr. Skreta.
He remembered the big-nosed toddler at the forest inn. Could the doctor's eugenic dream be more than just a fantasy? Could it really be that children were coming into the world in this country from the great begetter Skreta?
Jakub found this ridiculous. All these kids looked alike because all children in the world look alike.
And yet he couldn't help but think: What if Skreta really was carrying out his remarkable project? Why can't bizarre projects be carried out?
"And what's this one, children?"
"It's a birch!" answered a little Skreta; yes, he was the picture of Skreta; he not only had the big nose and wide mouth but also wore little eyeglasses and spoke with the nasal voice that made Dr. Skreta's speech so touchingly comical.
"Very good, Oldrich!" said the teacher.
Jakub thought: In ten or twenty years this country will have thousands of Skretas. And once more he had the strange feeling of having lived in his own country without knowing what was happening in it. He had lived, so to speak, at the center of the action. He had lived through all the current events. He had got involved in politics, and it had nearly cost him his life, and even when he was pushed out, politics remained his main concern. He always believed he was hearing the heartbeat of the country. But who knows what he was really hearing? Was it a heart? Or was it an old alarm clock? An old discarded alarm clock that gives the wrong time? Had all his political struggles been anything more than will-o'-the wisps distracting him from what really mattered?
The teacher led the children down the broad path, and Jakub still felt pervaded by the image of the beautiful woman. The recollection of her beauty incessantly brought a question back to mind: What if he had been living in a world entirely different from what he imagined? What if he had been seeing everything upside down? What if beauty meant more than truth, and what if it really had been an angel, the other day, who gave Bertlef a dahlia?
He heard the teacher's voice: "And what's this one?"
The little Skreta in eyeglasses answered: "It's a maple!"
14
Ruzena rushed up the stairs two at a time, trying not to look back. She slammed the door to her section and hurried to the changing room. She slipped her white nurse's smock over her bare body and gave a sigh of relief. The scene with Frantisek had disturbed her, but at the same time, oddly, it had calmed her. She felt that both Frantisek and Klima were now alien and distant.
She left the cubicle and went into the huge treatment room, where women rested after their baths in beds lined up against the walls.
The fortyish nurse was sitting at the small table near the door. "Well, did they authorize it?" she asked her coldly.
"Yes. Thanks for taking my place," said Ruzena, handing a new patient a key and a large white sheet.
As soon as the fortyish nurse left, the door opened and Frantisek's head appeared.
"It's not true that it's none of my business. It's both of our business. I've got something to say about it too!"
"Will you please shove off!" she answered. "This is the women's section, men aren't supposed to be here! Get going this minute or I'll have you thrown out!"
Farewell Waltz Page 17
