Life Is Elsewhere (34 page)

He reflected that throughout the time of their acquaintance he and the girl had never done each other harm; they had always been considerate of each other; they had always given each other the gift of a brief moment of well-being and had wanted no more than that; they had nothing to reproach themselves for. And he felt particular satisfaction that after the girl's arrest he had done everything he could to free her.

He raised her from the armchair. He wiped the tears from her face with his fingers and tenderly took her into his arms.

13

Beyond the windows of this moment, somewhere dis-tant, three years back, death stamps its feet impatiently in the story we have abandoned; its skeletal figure has already come onto the illuminated stage and projects its shadow so far that the studio apartment in which the girl and the man in his forties are now standing face-to-face is invaded by twilight.

He tenderly embraces the girl's body, and she is nestled motionless in his arms. What does this nestling mean?

It means that she is abandoning herself to him; she is settled in his arms and she wants to stay there.

But this abandonment is not an overture! She is set-tled in his arms, closed, locked up; her hunched shoulders guard her breasts, her head is turned away from his face and leans on his chest; she is staring into the darkness of his sweater. She is settled in his arms, sealed up so that he hides her in his embrace as in a steel safe.

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He lifted her wet face to his own and began to kiss her. He was driven by compassionate warmth and not by sensual desire, but situations have their own automa tism, which one cannot escape: while he was kissing her he tried to pry her lips open with his tongue; in vain; the girl's lips remained shut and refused to respond.

Strangely enough the less his kisses succeeded, the more he felt the wave of compassion in him increase, for he realized that the girl he was holding in his arms was under a spell, that her soul had been torn out of her and that all that was left after this amputation was a bloody wound.

He felt a bloodless, bony, pitiable body in his arms, but the damp wave of sympathy, sustained by the twilight that had begun to fall, obliterated contour and size, depriving them both of their distinctness and their materiality. And just at that moment he felt himself desiring her physically!

It was entirely unexpected: he was sensual without sensuality, he was aroused without arousal! Pure kindness had, perhaps by some mysterious transubstantia-tion, turned into arousal of the body!

But perhaps just because it was unexpected and incomprehensible, this arousal carried him away. He caressed her body eagerly and began to unbutton her dress.

"No, no! Please don't! No!" she defended herself.

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Since words were unable to stop him, she ran for refuge into a corner of the room. "What's the matter with you? What's happened?" he asked.

She pressed herself against the wall and remained silent.

He approached her and caressed her face: "Don't be afraid of me, you needn't be afraid of me. Tell me what's the matter. What's happened to you?"

She was motionless, silent, unable to find words. She saw looming up above her the horses passing the prison gate, great robust beasts that with their riders formed arrogant creatures with double bodies. She was so far beneath them and so incommensurable with their animal perfection that she wished to merge with something within her reach, with a tree trunk perhaps, or with a wall, to hide in their lifelessness.

He persevered: "What's the matter with you?"

"What a pity you're not an old woman or an old man," she said at last.

Then she added: "I shouldn't have come here, because you're neither an old woman nor an old man."

16

He silently caressed her face for a long time, and then (the room was already dark) he asked her to help him make the wide daybed; they lay side by side on it, and he talked to her in a soft, comforting voice, in a way he had not talked to anyone in years.

The physical desire had vanished, but his great and steady warmth for her was still there, and he felt a need for light; the man in his forties turned on the small bedside lamp and gazed at the girl.

She was stretched out tensely, staring at the ceiling. What had happened to her? What had they done to her? Beaten her? Threatened her? Tortured her?

He didn't know. The girl was silent, and he caressed her hair, her brow, her face. He caressed her until he felt the terror vanishing from her eyes.

He caressed her until her eyes closed.

17

The studio apartment window was open, allowing the breeze of a spring night to enter; the bedside lamp had been turned off, and the man in his forties, lying motionless beside the girl, was listening to her agitated breathing and watching her drowsiness, and when he was sure she was asleep, he once more caressed her hand very gently, happy to have been able to provide her the first sleep in the new era of her sad freedom.

The window of the cottage to which I have compared this sixth part is also always open, allowing entrance to the fragrances and sounds of the novel that we left a bit before its climax. Do you hear death stamping its feet impatiently in the distance? Let it wait, we are still here in that stranger's studio apartment, secluded in another novel, in another story.

In another story? No. In the lives of the man in his forties and the girl, their encounter is an interlude in the middle of their stories rather than a story itself. This encounter will hardly engender a series of events. It is only a brief moment of respite the man in his forties bestows on the girl before she embarks on the long scramble her life will be.

In this novel, too, this sixth part has been only a quiet interlude in which a stranger suddenly lights the lamp of kindness. Let us keep looking at it a few moments more, that gentle lamp, that kindly light, before the novel's cottage vanishes from our sight.

PART SEVEN

The Poet Dies

1

Only a real poet knows how sad it is inside the poetry house of mirrors. The crackle of distant gunfire is heard through the window, and the heart longs for departure. Lermontov is buttoning his military uniform; Byron is putting a pistol into the drawer of his night table; Wolker, in his poems, is marching with the crowd; Halas is rhyming his insults; Mayakovsky is stomping on the throat of his own song. A splendid battle is raging in the mirrors.

But beware! The moment a poet mistakenly steps outside the house of mirrors he will perish, for he is a poor shot, and when he fires he will hit his own head.

Alas, do you hear them? A horse is proceeding on a winding Caucasian road; the horseman is Lermontov, armed with a pistol. And here are other hoofbeats and a creaking carriage proceeding! This time it is Pushkin, also with a pistol and also heading for a duel!

And what do we hear now? A streetcar; a Prague streetcar, clanking and decrepit; Jaromil is inside it, on his way from one suburb to another; it's cold: he's wearing a dark suit, a necktie, an overcoat, and a hat.

2

What poet never dreamed of his death? What poet never imagined it? "If I must die, let it be with you, my love, and only by fire turn into heat and light. ..." Do you think that it was merely an accidental play of the imagination that induced Jaromil to visualize his by fire? Not at all; for death is a message; death speaks; the act of dying has its own semantics, and it matters how a man dies, and in what element.

Jan Masaryks life ended in 1948 with a fall into the courtyard of a Prague palace, after he had seen his destiny shattered by the hard shell of History. Three years later the poet Konstantin Biebl, frightened by the face of the world he had helped to bring about, threw himself from a sixth floor onto the pavement of the same city (the city of defenestrations), perishing on the element earth and with his death offering an image of the tragic discord between the air and weight, between dream and awakening.

Jan Hus and Giordano Bruno could not have died by the rope or by the sword; they could have died only at the stake. Their lives thus became the incandescence of a signal light, the beam of a lighthouse, a torch shining far into the space of time. For the body is ephemeral and thought is eternal and the flicker of fire is the image of thought. Jan Palach, who twenty years after Jaromil's death drenched himself with gasoline in a Prague square and set his body afire, would have been less likely to succeed in making his cry ring out to the nation's consciousness as a man who had drowned.

On the other hand Ophelia is inconceivable afire and had to die by water, for the depth of water converges with the depths of the human soul; water is the exterminating element of those who have been led astray in their own selves, in their love, in their feelings, in their madness, in their mirrors and their whirlwinds; in old folk songs girls whose fiances fail to return from war drown themselves; Harriet Shelley threw herself into the water; Paul Celan drowned in the Seine.

3

He got off the streetcar and headed toward the snow-covered villa he had so precipitously run away from the other night, leaving the beautiful dark-haired young woman alone.

He thought of Xavier:

In the beginning there was only Jaromil.

Then Jaromil created Xavier, his double, and with him his other life, dreamlike and adventurous.

And now the moment has come to end the contradiction between dream and waking, between poetry and life, between action and thought. At the same time the contradiction between Xavier and Jaromil has also vanished. Both have merged into a single creature. The man of daydreams has become the man of action, the adventure of dreams has become the adventure of life.

He approached the villa and felt the return of his old timidity, heightened by a sore throat (Mama had not wanted to let him go to the party; he would have been better off listening to her and staying in bed).

He hesitated at the door, and to give himself courage he had to summon up all the big days he had recently experienced. He thought of the redhead, he thought of the interrogation she had undergone, he thought of the police and of the train of events he had set in motion by his own strength and his own will. . . .

"I am Xavier, I am Xavier . . . ," he told himself, and he rang the bell.

4

The people at the party were young actors and actresses, painters, and art students; the owner of the villa was present, and he had made all the rooms available for the evening. The filmmaker introduced Jaromil to a few people, put a glass in his hand, asked him to serve himself from any of the many bottles of wine, and left him.

Jaromil felt ridiculously stiff in his dark suit, white shirt, and tie; everyone around him was dressed casually, and a number of the guests were in sweaters. He squirmed in his chair and finally came to a decision; he took off his jacket and put it over the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt collar; after that he felt a bit more at ease.

The guests were surpassing one another in calling attention to themselves. The young actors were behaving as if they were on stage, speaking loudly and unnaturally, and all were trying to impress with their wit or the originality of their opinions. Jaromil, too, after having emptied several glasses of wine, tried to raise his head above the surface of the conversation; he managed a number of times to utter remarks that he considered audaciously witty and that attracted the attention of the others for a few seconds.

5

She hears noisy dance music coming from a radio on the other side of the wall; not long ago the authorities had assigned the third room on the floor to the tenant family; the two rooms left to the widow and her son are a shell of silence besieged on all sides by noise.

Mama hears the music, she is alone, and she is thinking about the filmmaker. From the very first time she saw her, she had sensed the far-off danger of love between her and Jaromil. She tried to become friends with her solely in order to occupy a favorable position in the impending battle to keep her son. And now she realizes with humiliation that her efforts had been in vain. The filmmaker had not even thought of inviting her to her party. They had shoved her aside.

One day the filmmaker had confided to her that she worked at the National Police film club because she came from a wealthy family and needed political protection to enable her to pursue her studies. And now it occurs to Mama that this unscrupulous girl knows how to exploit everything in her own interest; to her, Mama had merely been a stepping stone to get to Jaromil.

6

The competition continued: everyone tried to be the center of attention. Someone played the piano, couples danced, adjacent groups loudly laughed and talked; people tried to outdo each other in wit, everyone tried to surpass the others and be seen.

Martynov was there, too; tall, handsome, almost operetta elegant in his uniform and with a large dagger, surrounded by women. Oh, how much he irritated Lermontov! God was unjust to give such a handsome face to that idiot and short legs to Lermontov. But if the poet lacked long legs, he had a sarcastic wit that had lifted him high.

He approached Martynov's group and awaited his opportunity. Then he made an insolent remark and watched the stunned faces near him.

7

At last (after a long absence) the filmmaker reappeared in the room. She came over toward him and gazed at him with her large dark eyes. "Are you having a good time?"

It seemed to Jaromil that he was going to relive the beautiful moment they had experienced together in her room, when they had sat gazing at each other.