The unbearable lightness of being (26 page)

The holiday from
the operating table was also a holiday from Tereza. After hardly seeing each
other for six days, they would finally be together on Sundays, full of desire;
but, as on the evening when Tomas came back from Zurich, they were estranged
and had a long way to go before they could touch and kiss. Physical love gave
them pleasure but no consolation. She no longer cried out as she had in the
past, and, at the moment of orgasm, her grimace seemed to him to express
suffering and a strange absence. Only at night, in sleep, were they tenderly
united. Holding his hand, she would forget the chasm (the chasm of daylight)
that divided them. But the nights gave him neither the time nor the means to
protect and take care of her. In the mornings, it was heartrending to see her,
and he feared for her: she looked sad and infirm.

One Sunday, she
asked him to take her for a ride outside Prague. They drove to a spa, where
they found all the streets relabeled with Russian names and happened to meet an
old patient of Tomas's. Tomas was devastated by the meeting. Suddenly here was
someone talking to him again as to a doctor, and he could feel his former life
bridging the divide, coming back to him with its pleasant regularity of seeing
patients and feeling their trusting eyes on him, those eyes he had pretended to
ignore but in fact savored and now greatly missed.

Driving home,
Tomas pondered the catastrophic mistake he had made by returning to Prague from
Zurich. He kept his eyes trained on the road so as to avoid looking at Tereza.
He was furious with her. Her presence at his side felt more unbearably
fortuitous than ever. What was she doing here next to him? Who put her in the
basket and sent her downstream? Why was
his
bed chosen as her shore? And
why
she
and not some other woman?

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Neither of
them said a word the whole way.

When
they got home, they had dinner in silence.

Silence lay
between them like an agony. It grew heavier by the minute. To escape it they
went straight to bed. He woke her in the middle of the night. She was crying.

"I was
buried," she told him. "I'd been buried for a long time. You came to
see me every week. Each time you knocked at the grave, and I came out. My eyes
were full of dirt.

"You'd say,
'How can you see?' and try to wipe the dirt from my eyes.

"And I'd
say, 'I can't see anyway. I have holes instead of eyes.'

"And then
one day you went off on a long journey, and I knew you were with another woman.
Weeks passed, and there was no sign of you. I was afraid of missing you, and
stopped sleeping. At last you knocked at the grave again, but I was so worn
down by a month of sleepless nights that I didn't think I could make it out of
there. When I finally did come out, you seemed disappointed. You said I didn't
look well. I could feel how awful I looked to you with my sunken cheeks and
nervous gestures.

"T'm
sorry,' I apologized. 'I haven't slept a wink since you left.'

'"You see?'
you said in a voice full of false cheer. 'What you need is a good rest. A
month's holiday!'

"As if I
didn't know what you had in mind! A month's holiday meant you didn't want to
see me for a month, you had another woman. Then you left and I slipped down
into my grave, knowing full well that I'd have another month of sleepless
nights waiting for you and that when you came back and I was uglier you'd be
even more disappointed."

He had never
heard anything more harrowing. Holding her tightly in his arms and feeling her
body tremble, he thought he could not endure his love.

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Let the planet be convulsed with
exploding bombs, the country ravished daily by new hordes, all his neighbors
taken out and shot—he could accept it all more easily than he dared admit. But
the grief implicit in Tereza's dream was something he could not endure.

He tried to reenter the dream she
had told him. He pictured himself stroking her face and delicately—she mustn't
be aware of it—brushing the dirt out of her eye sockets. Then he heard her say
the unbelievably harrowing "I can't see anyway. I have holes instead of
eyes."

His heart was about to break; he
felt he was on the verge of a heart attack.

Tereza had gone back to sleep; he
could not. He pictured her death. She was dead and having terrible nightmares;
but because she was dead, he was unable to wake her from them. Yes, that is
death: Tereza asleep, having terrible nightmares, and he unable to wake her.

During the five
years that had passed since the Russian army invaded Tomas's country, Prague
had undergone considerable changes. The people Tomas met in the streets were
different. Half of his friends had emigrated, and half of the half that
remained had died. For it is a fact which will go unrecorded by historians that
the years following the Russian invasion were a period of funerals: the death
rate soared. I do not speak only of the cases (rather rare, of course) of
people hounded to death,

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like Jan Prochazka,
the novelist. Two weeks after his private conversations were broadcast daily
over the radio, he entered the hospital. The cancer that had most likely lain
dormant in his body until then suddenly blossomed like a rose. He was operated
on in the presence of the police, who, when they realized he was doomed anyway,
lost interest in him and let him die in the arms of his wife. But many also
died without being directly subjected to persecution; the hopelessness pervading
the entire country penetrated the soul to the body, shattering the latter.
Some ran desperately from the favor of a regime that wanted to endow them with
the honor of displaying them side by side with its new leaders. That is how the
poet Frantisek Hrubin died—fleeing from the love of the Party. The Minister of
Culture, from whom the poet did everything possible to hide, did not catch up
with Hrubin until his funeral, when he made a speech over the grave about the
poet's love for the Soviet Union. Perhaps he hoped his words would ring so
outrageously false that they would wake Hrubin from the dead. But the world was
too ugly, and no one decided to rise up out of the grave.

One day, Tomas
went to the crematorium to attend the funeral of a famous biologist who had
been thrown out of the university and the Academy of Sciences. The authorities
had forbidden mention of the hour of the funeral in the death announcement,
fearing that the services would turn into a demonstration. The mourners
themselves did not learn until the last moment that the body would be cremated
at half past six in the morning.

Entering the
crematorium, Tomas did not understand what was happening: the hall was lit up
like a film studio. Looking around in bewilderment, he noticed cameras set up
in three places. No, it was not television; it was the police. They were
filming the funeral to study who had attended it. An old col-

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league of the dead
scientist, still a member of the Academy of Sciences, had been brave enough to
make the funeral oration. He had never counted on becoming a film star.

When the services were over and
everyone had paid his respects to the family of the deceased, Tomas noticed a
group of men in one corner of the hall and spotted the tall, stooped editor
among them. The sight of him made Tomas feel how much he missed these people
who feared nothing and seemed bound by a deep friendship. He started off in the
editor's direction with a smile and a greeting on his lips, but when the
editor saw him he said, "Careful! Don't come any closer."

It was a strange thing to say.
Tomas was not sure whether to interpret it as a sincere, friendly warning
("Watch out, we're being filmed; if you talk to us, you may be hauled in
for another interrogation") or as irony ("If you weren't brave enough
to sign the petition, be consistent and don't try the old-pals act on
us"). Whatever the message meant, Tomas heeded it and moved off. He had
the feeling that the beautiful woman on the railway platform had not only
stepped into the sleeping car but, just as he was about to tell her how much he
admired her, had put her finger over his lips and forbidden him to speak.

That afternoon, he
had another interesting encounter. He was washing the display window of a large
shoe shop when a young man came to a halt right next to him, leaned up close to
the window, and began scrutinizing the prices.

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"Prices are up," said Tomas
without interrupting his pursuit of the rivulets trickling down the glass.

The man looked over
at him. He was a hospital colleague of Tomas's, the one I have designated S.,
the very one who had sneered at Tomas while under the impression that Tomas had
written a statement of self-criticism. Tomas was delighted to see him (naively
so, as we delight in unexpected events), but what he saw in his former
colleague's eyes (before S. had a chance to pull himself together) was a look
of none-too-pleasant surprise. "How are you?" S. asked.

Before Tomas
could respond, he realized that S. was ashamed of having asked. It was patently
ridiculous for a doctor practicing his profession to ask a doctor washing
windows how he was.

To clear the air Tomas came out with as sprightly a "Fine, just
fine!" as he could muster, but he immediately felt that no matter how hard
he tried (in fact,
because
he tried so hard), his "fine"
sounded bitterly ironic. And so he quickly added, "What's new at the
hospital?"

"Nothing,"
S. answered. "Same as always." His response, too, though meant to be
as neutral as possible, was completely inappropriate, and they both knew it.
And they knew they both knew it. How can things be the "same as
always" when one of them is washing windows? "How's the chief?"
asked Tomas. "You mean you don't see him?" asked S. "No,"
said Tomas.

It was true. From
the day he left, he had not seen the chief surgeon even once. And they had
worked so well together; they had even tended to think of themselves as
friends. So no matter how he said it, his "no" had a sad ring, and
Tomas suspected that S. was angry with him for bringing up the subject: like
the chief surgeon, S. had never dropped by to ask Tomas how he

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was doing or whether he needed anything.

All conversation between the two
former colleagues had become impossible, even though they both regretted it,
Tomas especially. He was not angry with his colleagues for having forgotten
him. If only he could make that clear to the young man beside him. What he
really wanted to say was "There's nothing to be ashamed of! It's perfectly
normal for our paths not to cross. There's nothing to get upset about! I'm glad
to see you!" But he was afraid to say it, because everything he had said
so far failed to come out as intended, and these sincere words, too, would
sound sarcastic to his colleague.

"I'm sorry," said S.
after a long pause, "I'm in a real hurry." He held out his hand.
"I'll give you a buzz."

During the period when his
colleagues turned their noses up at him for his supposed cowardice, they all
smiled at him. Now that they could no longer scorn him, now that they were
constrained to respect him, they gave him a wide berth.

Then again, even his old patients
had stopped sending for him, to say nothing of greeting him with champagne. The
situation of the declasse intellectual was no longer exceptional;

it had turned
into something permanent and unpleasant to confront.

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he
had forgotten to keep it stocked. He tried to keep the pain under control by
force of will and was, in fact, fairly successful, but he could not fall asleep
again. When Tereza came home at half past one, he felt like chatting with her.
He told her about the funeral, about the editor's refusal to talk to him, and
about his encounter with S.

"Prague has
grown so ugly lately," said Tereza.

"I
know," said Tomas.

Tereza paused and said softly,
"The best thing to do would be to move away."

"I
agree," said Tomas, "but there's nowhere to go."

He was sitting on the bed in his
pajamas, and she came and sat down next to him, putting her arms around his
body from the side.

"What about the
country?" she said.

"The
country?" he asked, surprised.

"We'd be alone there. You
wouldn't meet that editor or your old colleagues. The people there are
different. And we'd be getting back to nature. Nature is the same as it always
was."

Just then Tomas felt another stab
in his stomach. It made him feel old, feel that what he longed for more than
anything else was peace and quiet.

"Maybe you're right," he
said with difficulty. The pain made it hard for him to breathe.

"We'd have a little house and
a little garden, but big enough to give Karenin room for a decent run."

"Yes,"
said Tomas.

He was trying to picture what it
would be like if they did move to the country. He would have difficulty finding
a new woman every week. It would mean an end to his erotic adventures.

"The only thing is, you'd be
bored with me in the country," said Tereza as if reading his mind.

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The pain grew more
intense. He could not speak. It occurred to him that his womanizing was also
something of an
"Es muss sein!"—
an imperative enslaving him.
He longed for a holiday. But for an absolute holiday, a rest from a// imperatives,
from all
"Es muss sein!"
If he could take a rest (a permanent
rest) from the hospital operating table, then why not from the
world
operating table, the one where his imaginary scalpel opened the strongbox women
use to hide their illusory one-millionth part dissimilarity?

"Your stomach is acting up again!" Tereza exclaimed, only then
realizing that something was wrong. He nodded.

"Have
you had your injection?"

He shook his head. "I forgot to lay in a supply of medication."

Though annoyed at his carelessness, she stroked his forehead, which was
beaded with sweat from the pain.

"I
feel a little better now."

"Lie down," she said, and covered him with a blanket. She went
off to the bathroom and in a minute was back and lying next to him.

Without lifting his head from the pillow, he turned to her and nearly
gasped: the grief burning in her eyes was unbearable.

"Tell me, Tereza, what's wrong? Something's been going on inside you
lately. I can feel it. I know it."

"No."
She shook her head. "There's nothing wrong."

"There's
no point in denying it."

"It's
still the same things," she said.

"The
same things" meant her jealousy and his infidelities.

But Tomas would not let up. "No, Tereza. This time it's something
different. It's never been this bad before."

"Well then, I'll tell you,"
she said. "Go and wash your hair."