Life Is Elsewhere (10 page)

6

As soon as he entered the front of the car, he stopped to catch his breath. Once more he had arrived only at the last moment, and arriving at the last moment was a pride of his: everyone else had arrived at the prearranged time, living their whole lives without surprise, as if they were copying texts assigned by their teacher. He imagined them in the train compartments, in their prearranged seats, conducting prearranged conversations about the mountain chalet where they were going to spend a week, about the daily schedule they had learned at school so that they would be able to live blindfolded, by heart, without the slightest error.

Xavier, however, had arrived unprepared, at the last moment, led by a sudden impulse and by an unexpected decision. Now, in the railroad car, he was wondering what could have prompted him to join in a school excursion with boring schoolmates and bald teachers whose mustaches crawled with lice.

He went through the car: boys were standing in the corridor breathing on the frosty windowpanes and then gluing their eyes to the circular peepholes; others were stretched out lazily on the compartment seats, their crossed skis in the luggage racks overhead; some were playing cards, and in another compartment they were singing an endless student song made up of a primitive melody and a few words tirelessly repeated hundreds and thousands of times: "The old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is now quite dead. ... "

He stopped at the door to that compartment and looked inside: in it were three older boys and, next to them, a blond girl from his class, who blushed when she saw him but said nothing, as if she were afraid to be caught, and with her mouth wide open and her eyes fixed on Xavier, she continued to sing: "The old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is ... "

Xavier withdrew from the blond girl and passed another compartment, from which other student songs and the racket of clowning around resounded, and then he saw a man in a conductor's uniform moving toward him, stopping at each compartment door, and asking for tickets; the uniform didn't fool him, under the peak of the cap he recognized the old Latin teacher, and he immediately realized that he must avoid him, first of all because he had no ticket and then because it had been a long time (he couldn't remember how long) since he had gone to Latin class.

He took advantage of a moment when the Latin teacher had his head in a compartment to slip behind him to the front of the car, with its doors leading to the washroom and to the toilet. He opened the washroom door, surprising in a gentle embrace the Czech teacher, an austere woman in her fifties, and one of his classmates, who sat in the first row and whom Xavier haughtily scorned during his infrequent appearances in class. When they caught sight of him, the surprised lovers quickly moved apart and bent over the wash-stand, feverishly rubbing their hands under the trickle of water coming out of the faucet.

Xavier didn't want to disturb them, and he went back out to the front of the car; there he found himself face to face with the blond classmate, who fixed her big blue eyes on him; her lips were no longer moving, no longer singing the song about the canary, which Xavier had thought would never end. Ah, what naivete, he reflected, to believe in the existence of a song that never ends! As if everything here in this world, from the very beginning, has been anything other than betrayal!

Fortified by this thought, he took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love. So he turned on his heels and went back into the little washroom in which the stocky Czech teacher was again planted in front of Xavier's schoolmate, her hands on his hips.

"Oh, no, please don't start washing your hands again," Xavier said to them. "It's my turn to wash my hands," and then he went discreetly past them, turned on the faucet, and bent over the washstand, seeking thus some relative solitude for himself and for the embarrassed lovers standing behind him. Then he heard the Czech teacher's urgent whisper: "Let's go next door," and the click of the door and the steps of two pairs of feet heading for the adjoining toilet. When he was alone, he leaned with satisfaction against the wall, abandoning himself to sweet reflections on the pettiness of love, to sweet reflections behind which gleamed two big imploring blue eyes.

7

Then the train stopped, a bugle call rang out, and there was a youthful din, banging and stamping; Xavier left his shelter and joined his schoolmates in their rush to the platform. And then the mountains, an enormous moon, and sparkling snow could be seen; they were walking in a night that was as clear as day. It was a long procession, in which the pairs of skis pointed upward like devotional accessories instead of crosses; like the symbol of a pair of fingers taking an oath.

It was a long procession, and Xavier walked along with his hands in his pockets because he was the only one without skis, the symbol of the oath; he walked and he listened to the remarks of his already tiring schoolmates; then he turned around and saw the blond girl, who was small and slender, stumbling in the rear and sinking into the snow under the weight of her skis, and when he turned around again a moment later he saw the old math teacher taking the skis from the girl and putting them on her shoulder along with her own and then taking the girl's arm in her free hand and helping her to walk. It was a sad scene, needy old age pitying needy youth; he looked at the scene and felt good.

After a while the sound of dance music reached them from afar, becoming gradually louder as they reached the restaurant surrounded by the wooden chalets in which the students would be staying. But Xavier had no room reservation, no skis to put away, no clothes to change into. So he went right into the dining room, where there was a dance floor, a band, and guests sitting at tables. He immediately noticed a woman in a thick, dark red sweater and ski pants; there were several men at her table with beer steins, but Xavier realized that the woman was elegant and proud, and that she was bored with them. He went over to her and asked her to dance.

They were the only dancers on the floor, and Xavier saw that the woman's neck was magnificently withered, that the skin around her eyes was magnificently wrinkled, and that two magnificently deep wrinkles made furrows at her mouth; he was happy to have so many years of life in his arms, happy that a high school student could have in his arms a life that was almost completed. He was proud to be dancing with her, and he thought that the blond girl could come in any minute and see him high above her, as if the age of his partner were a towering mountain and the youth of the adolescent girl stood at the foot of this mountain like a lowly blade of grass.

And so it was: the dining room began to fill with boys and girls, who had changed their ski pants for skirts, and they were sitting down at the free tables so that a large audience now surrounded Xavier as he danced with the woman in dark red; he noticed the blond girl, and he was satisfied; she was dressed with much greater care than the others; she was wearing a pretty dress totally inappropriate to the grubby room, a thin white dress in which she looked even more frail and vulnerable. Xavier knew that she had put it on for his sake, and he firmly decided that he must not lose her, that he must live this evening with her and for her.

8

He told the woman in the dark red sweater that he didn't want to dance anymore; that he was disgusted by those oafs staring at them from behind their beer steins. The woman agreed with a laugh; and even though the band was still playing and they were alone on the dance floor, they stopped dancing (everyone could see this) and went off hand in hand, passing along the tables and out onto the snow-covered plain.

They felt the icy air, and Xavier thought that the frail, sickly girl in the white dress would soon come out to join them in the cold. He seized the woman in dark red by the arm and led her across the sparkling plain, and he thought of himself as the legendary Pied Piper and of the woman beside him as the fife he was playing.

In a moment the door of the restaurant opened, and the blond girl emerged. She was even more frail than she had been before, her white dress merging with the snow so that it was like snow moving through snow. Xavier pressed the woman in the dark red sweater— who was warmly clothed and magnificently old—to himself, he kissed her, put his hands under the sweater, and out of the corner of his eye watched the snowlike girl gazing at them in torment.

Then he tipped the old woman over onto the snow, and he sprawled on top of her and knew that time was passing and that it was getting cold, that the girl's dress was thin, and that the frost was touching her calves and knees and reaching up to her thighs and caressing her higher and higher to touch her groin and belly. Then they got up, and the old woman led him to one of the chalets, where she had a room.

The room was on the first floor and the window, a meter above the snow-covered plain, allowed Xavier to see the blond girl only a few steps away and watching him through it; not wanting to leave this girl whose image filled him entirely, he turned on the light (the old woman greeted his need for light with a lascivious laugh), took the woman by the hand, and went with her to the window, where he embraced her, lifted the plush sweater (a warm sweater for a senile body), and thought about the girl, who must have been so chilled that she could no longer feel her own body, that she was no more than a soul, a sad, sorrowful soul barely afloat in a body so frozen that it felt nothing, had already lost the sense of touch, and was merely a dead envelope for the floating soul Xavier boundlessly loved, ah, yes! he boundlessly loved.

But who could bear such boundless love? Xavier felt his hands grow weak, no longer strong enough even to lift the plush sweater high enough to bare the old woman's breasts, and he felt a torpor throughout his body and sat down on the bed. It's hard to describe how good he felt, how satisfied and happy. When a man is excessively satisfied, sleep comes as a reward. Xavier smiled and fell into a deep sleep, into a beautiful sweet night in which gleamed two chilled eyes, two frozen moons. . . .

9

Xavier didn't merely live a single life that extended from birth to death like a long, filthy string; he didn't live his life, he slept it; in this life-sleep he leaped from dream to dream; he dreamed, fell asleep while dreaming, and dreamed another dream, so that his sleep was like a box into which another box is fitted, and in that one still another box, and in this one another still, and so on.

For example, at this moment he is sleeping at the same time in a house by the Charles Bridge and in a mountain chalet; these two sleeps resound like two prolonged organ tones; and now these two tones are joined by a third:

He is standing and looking around. The street is deserted, with once in a long while a shadow passing and vanishing around a corner or into a doorway. He too doesn't want to be noticed; he follows suburban side streets as the sound of gunfire is heard from the other end of the city.

At last he enters a house and descends the stairs; there are several doors in the basement; after a brief search for the right one, he knocks; three times, then once, then three times more.

The door opened and a young man in blue overalls invited him in. They went through several rooms filled with odds and ends, clothes on hangers, as well as rifles propped in corners, and then down a long passage (they must have gone far beyond the building's perimeter) into a small subterranean room, where twenty or so men were seated.

He sat down on an empty chair and scrutinized them; he knew some of them. Three men sat at a table near the door; one of them, wearing a peaked cap, was speaking; he was saying something about an approaching secret date when everything would be decided; according to plan, everything had to be ready by then: leaflets, newspapers, radio, post office, telegraph, weapons. Then he asked each man whether, to ensure success that day, he had executed the task assigned to him. Finally he turned to Xavier and asked him if he had brought the list.

That was an excruciating moment. In order to make sure that it would not be discovered, Xavier a while ago had copied the list on the last page of his Czech notebook. This notebook was in his schoolbag, along with his other notebooks and his textbooks. But where was the schoolbag? He didn't have it with him!

The man in the peaked cap repeated his question.

My God, where was that schoolbag? Xavier thought feverishly, and then from the back of his mind a vague and elusive memory emerged, a sweet breath of happiness; he wanted to seize this memory in flight, but there was no time because all the faces were turned toward him waiting for his answer. He had to admit that he didn't have the list.

The faces of the men he had come to as a companion among companions hardened, and the man in the peaked cap said to him icily that if the enemy were to get hold of the list, the date on which they had placed all their hopes would be ruined and be just another date: a date empty and dead.

But Xavier had no time to respond. The door discreetly opened, and a man appeared and whistled. It was the alarm signal; before the man in the peaked cap could give an order, Xavier spoke up: "Let me go first," he said, knowing that the route awaiting them now was dangerous and that the first one out would be risking his life.

Xavier knew that because he had forgotten the list he must atone for his guilt. But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each second of his life to be measured against the supreme criterion, which is death. That was why he wanted to march at the head of the column, to walk on a tightrope over an abyss, to have a halo of bullets around his head and thus to grow in everyone's eyes and become unlimited as death is unlimited . . .