The unbearable lightness of being (12 page)

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THE
BEAUTY OF NEW YORK

Franz
and Sabina would walk the streets of New York for hours at a time. The view
changed with each step, as if they were following a winding mountain path
surrounded by breathtaking scenery: a young man kneeling in the middle of the
sidewalk praying;

a few steps away, a
beautiful black woman leaning against a tree; a man in a black suit directing
an invisible orchestra while crossing the street; a fountain spurting water and
a group of construction workers sitting on the rim eating lunch; strange iron
ladders running up and down buildings with ugly red facades, so ugly that they
were beautiful; and next door, a huge glass skyscraper backed by another,
itself topped by a small Arabian pleasure-dome with turrets, galleries, and
gilded columns.

She was reminded
of her paintings. There, too, incongruous things came together: a steelworks
construction site superimposed on a kerosene lamp; an old-fashioned lamp with
a painted-glass shade shattered into tiny splinters and rising up over a
desolate landscape of marshland.

Franz said,
"Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it.
We've always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That's what
enabled Western man to spend decades building a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance
piazza. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's
unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic
cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without
design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden
wondrous poetry."

Sabina said,
"Unintentional beauty. Yes. Another way of putting it might be 'beauty by
mistake.' Before beauty disappears entirely from the earth, it will go on
existing for a while by mistake. 'Beauty by mistake'—the final phase in the
history of beauty."

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And she recalled
her first mature painting, which came into being because some red paint had
dripped on it by mistake. Yes, her paintings were based on "beauty by
mistake," and New York was the secret but authentic homeland of her painting.

Franz said, "Perhaps New
York's unintentional beauty is much richer and more varied than the excessively
strict and composed beauty of human design. But it's not our European beauty.
It's an alien world."

Didn't they then
at last agree on something?

No. There is a difference. Sabina
was very much attracted by the alien quality of New York's beauty. Franz found
it intriguing but frightening; it made him feel homesick for Europe.

SABINA'S
COUNTRY

Sabina
understood Franz's distaste for America. He was the embodiment of Europe: his
mother was Viennese, his father French, and he himself was Swiss.

Franz greatly admired Sabina's
country. Whenever she told him about herself and her friends from home, Franz
heard the words "prison," "persecution," "enemy
tanks," "emigration," "pamphlets," "banned
books," "banned exhibitions," and he felt a curious mixture of
envy and nostalgia.

He made a confession to Sabina.
"A philosopher once wrote that everything in my work is unverifiable
speculation and called me a 'pseudo-Socrates.' I felt terribly humiliated and
made a furious response. And just think, that laughable episode was the
greatest conflict I've ever experienced! The pinnacle of the dramatic
possibilities available to my life! We live in two different dimensions, you
and I. You came into my life like Gulliver entering the land of the
Lilliputians."

Sabina protested. She said that
conflict, drama, and tragedy didn't mean a thing; there was nothing inherently
valuable in

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them,
nothing deserving of respect or admiration. What was truly enviable was Franz's
work and the fact that he had the peace and quiet to devote himself to it.

Franz shook his
head. "When a society is rich, its people don't need to work with their
hands; they can devote themselves to activities of the spirit. We have more
and more universities and more and more students. If students are going to
earn degrees, they've got to come up with dissertation topics. And since
dissertations can be written about everything under the sun, the number of
topics is infinite. Sheets of paper covered with words pile up in archives
sadder than cemeteries, because no one ever visits them, not even on All Souls'
Day. Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the
madness of quantity. That's why one banned book in your former country means
infinitely more than the billions of words spewed out by our
universities."

It is in this
spirit that we may understand Franz's weakness for revolution. First he
sympathized with Cuba, then with China, and when the cruelty of their regimes
began to appall him, he resigned himself with a sigh to a sea of words with no
weight and no resemblance to life. He became a professor in Geneva (where there
are no demonstrations), and in a burst of abnegation (in womanless, paradeless
solitude) he published several scholarly books, all of which received
considerable acclaim. Then one day along came Sabina. She was a revelation.
She came from a land where revolutionary illusion had long since faded but
where the thing he admired most in revolution remained: life on a large scale;
a life of risk, daring, and the danger of death. Sabina had renewed his faith
in the grandeur of human endeavor. Superimposing the painful drama of her
country on her person, he found her even more beautiful.

The trouble was
that Sabina had no love for that drama. The words "prison,"
"persecution," "banned books," "occupa-

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tion,"
"tanks" were ugly, without the slightest trace of romance. The only
word that evoked in her a sweet, nostalgic memory of her homeland was the word
"cemetery."

CEMETERY

Cemeteries
in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful
flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down,
the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are
dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as
innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in
the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all
occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far
behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so
well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.

"I'd never
drive. I'm scared stiff of accidents! Even if they don't kill you, they mark
you for life!" And so saying, the sculptor made an instinctive grab for
the finger he had nearly chopped off one day while whittling away at a wood
statue. It was a miracle the finger had been saved.

"What do you
mean?" said Marie-Claude in a raucous voice. She was in top form. "I
was in a serious accident once,

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and I wouldn't have
missed it for the world. And I've never had more fun than when I was in that
hospital! I couldn't sleep a wink, so I just read and read, day and
night."

They all looked
at her in amazement. She basked in it. Franz reacted with a mixture of disgust
(he knew that after the accident in question his wife had fallen into a deep
depression and complained incessantly) and admiration (her ability to transform
everything she experienced was a sign of true vitality).

"It was
there I began to divide books into day books and night books," she went
on. "Really, there are books meant for daytime reading and books that can
be read only at night."

Now they all
looked at her in amazement and admiration, all, that is, but the sculptor, who
was still holding his finger and wrinkling his face at the memory of the
accident.

Marie-Claude
turned to him and asked, "Which category would you put Stendhal in?"

The sculptor had
not heard the question and shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. An art critic
standing next to him said he thought of Stendhal as daytime reading.

Marie-Claude
shook her head and said in her raucous voice, "No, no, you're wrong!
You're wrong! Stendhal is a night author!"

Franz's
participation in the debate on night art and day art was disturbed by the fact
that he was expecting Sabina to show up at any minute. They had spent many days
pondering whether or not she should accept the invitation to this cocktail
party. It was a party Marie-Claude was giving for all painters and sculptors
who had ever exhibited in her private gallery. Ever since Sabina had met Franz,
she had avoided his wife. But because they feared being found out, they came to
the conclusion that it would be more natural and therefore less suspicious for
her to come.

While
throwing unobtrusive looks in the direction of the

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entrance hall,
Franz heard his eighteen-year-old daughter, Marie-Anne, holding forth at the
other end of the room. Excusing himself from the group presided over by his
wife, he made his way to the group presided over by his daughter. Some were in
chairs, others standing, but Marie-Anne was cross-legged on the floor. Franz
was certain that Marie-Claude would soon switch to the carpet on her side of
the room, too. Sitting on the floor when you had guests was at the time a
gesture signifying simplicity, informality, liberal politics, hospitality, and
a Parisian way of life. The passion with which Marie-Claude sat on all floors
was such that Franz began to worry she would take to sitting on the floor of
the shop where she bought her cigarettes.

"What are you working on now, Alain?" Marie-Anne asked the man
at whose feet she was sitting.

Alain was so
naive and sincere as to try to give the gallery owner's daughter an honest
answer. He started explaining his new approach to her, a combination of
photography and oil, but he had scarcely got through three sentences when
Marie-Anne began whistling a tune. The painter was speaking slowly and with
great concentration and did not hear the whistling. "Will you tell me why
you're whistling? " Franz whispered. "Because I don't like to hear
people talk about politics," she answered out loud.

And in fact, two
men standing in the same circle were discussing the coming elections in
France. Marie-Anne, who felt it her duty to direct the proceedings, asked the
men whether they were planning to go to the Rossini opera an Italian company
was putting on in Geneva the following week. Meanwhile, Alain the painter sank
into greater and greater detail about his new approach to painting. Franz was
ashamed for his daughter. To put her in her place, he announced that whenever
she went to the opera she complained terribly of boredom.

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"You're
awful," said Marie-Anne, trying to punch him in the stomach from a sitting
position. "The star tenor is so handsome. So handsome. I've seen him
twice now, and I'm in love with him."

Franz could not
get over how much like her mother his daughter was. Why couldn't she be like him?
But there was nothing he could do about it. She was not like him. How many
times had he heard Marie-Claude proclaim she was in love with this or that
painter, singer, writer, politician, and once even with a racing cyclist? Of
course, it was all mere cocktail party rhetoric, but he could not help
recalling now and then that more than twenty years ago she had gone about
saying the same thing about-him and threatening him with suicide to boot.

At that point,
Sabina entered the room. Marie-Claude walked up to her. While Marie-Anne went
on about Rossini, Franz trained his attention on what the two women were saying.
After a few friendly words of greeting, Marie-Claude lifted the ceramic pendant
from Sabina's neck and said in a very loud voice, "What is that? How
ugly!"

Those words made
a deep impression on Franz. They were not meant to be combative; the raucous
laughter immediately following them made it clear that by rejecting the pendant
Marie-Claude did not wish to jeopardize her friendship with Sabina. But it was
not the kind of thing she usually said.

"I
made it myself," said Sabina.

"That
pendant is ugly, really!" Marie-Claude repeated very loudly. "You
shouldn't wear it."

Franz knew his
wife didn't care whether the pendant was ugly or not. An object was ugly if she
willed it ugly, beautiful if she willed it beautiful. Pendants worn by her
friends were a priori beautiful. And even if she did find them ugly, she would
never say so, because flattery had long since become second nature to her.

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Why, then, did
she decide that the pendant Sabina had made herself was ugly?

Franz suddenly
saw the answer plainly: Marie-Claude proclaimed Sabina's pendant ugly because
she could afford to do so.

Or to be more
precise: Marie-Claude proclaimed Sabina's pendant ugly to make it clear that
she could afford to tell Sabina her pendant was ugly.

Sabina's
exhibition the year before had not been particularly successful, so
Marie-Claude did not set great store by Sabina's favor. Sabina, however, had
every reason to set store by Marie-Claude's. Yet that was not at all evident
from her behavior.

Yes, Franz saw it
plainly: Marie-Claude had taken advantage of the occasion to make clear to
Sabina (and others) what the real balance of power was between the two of them.

A Short
Dictionary of Misunderstood Words
(concluded)

THE
OLD CHURCH IN AMSTERDAM

There
are houses running along one side of the street, and behind the large
ground-floor shop-front windows all the whores have little rooms and plushly
pillowed armchairs in which they sit up close to the glass wearing bras and
panties. They look like big bored cats.

On the other side of the street is
a gigantic Gothic cathedral dating from the fourteenth century.

Between the
whores' world and God's world, like a river