Life Is Elsewhere (19 page)

27

That's how things were when he successfully passed his high school final examinations. He took leave with great sadness of the classmates with whom he had spent eight years, and his officially confirmed adulthood seemed to stretch before him like a desert. Then one fine day he learned (by chance: he ran into a boy he had seen at the meetings in the dark-haired fellow's apartment) that the girl with the glasses had fallen in love with another student.

He made a date with her; she told him that she was going on vacation in a few days; he took down her address; he didn't tell her what he had learned; he was afraid that talking about it would only hasten their break-up; he was glad that she hadn't dropped him completely, even though she had someone else; he was glad that she sometimes let him kiss her and that she at least treated him as a friend; he was terribly attached to her and was ready to relinquish all pride; she was the only living creature in the desert he saw before him; he clung to the hope that their barely surviving love might still be revived.

The student went away, leaving behind her a scorching summer like a long, stifling tunnel. A letter (whining and imploring) fell into that tunnel and was lost there without an echo. Jaromil thought of the telephone receiver hanging on the wall of his room; alas, that receiver had suddenly taken on a meaning: a receiver with a severed wire, a letter without an answer, a conversation with someone who isn't listening . . .

And women in flimsy dresses glided through the streets, hit tunes floated out of the open windows, streetcars were crammed with people carrying bags of towels and bathing suits, and excursion boats on the Vltava made their way south to the forests .

Jaromil was forlorn, and only Mama's eyes watched him and remained faithful to him; but it was intolerable to him to have these eyes lay bare his forlornness, which wanted to remain invisible and hidden. He couldn't bear Mama's gaze or her questions. He would flee the house, returning late in the evening and going right to bed.

I've noted that he was not born for masturbation but for a great love. During these weeks, however, he masturbated desperately and with frenzy, as if he wanted to punish himself by an activity so vile and humiliating. Afterward he would have a headache for the rest of the day, but this almost made him happy because the pain shielded him from the beauty of women in flimsy dresses and muffled the brazenly sensual melodies of the hit tunes; thus the victim of a pleasant stupor, he could more easily get through the endless surface of the day.

There was no letter from the girl. If only there had at least been a letter from anybody! If only someone had agreed to enter his nothingness! If only the famous poet to whom he had sent his poems had finally written him a few lines! Oh, if only he had written him a few friendly words! (Yes, I did say that he would have given all his poetry to be considered a man, but I must add here: if he was not to be considered a man, only one thing could bring him some consolation: at least to be considered a poet.)

He wanted once more to attract the attention of the famous poet. Not by means of a letter, but by a gesture laden with poetry. One day he left the house with a sharp knife. He walked for a long time around a telephone booth, and when he was certain that no one was nearby he went inside and cut off the receiver. He managed to cut off a receiver a day for twenty days (he still had no letter either from the girl or the poet), collecting twenty receivers with severed wires. He put them into a box that he wrapped with paper and tied with string, addressed it to the famous poet, and wrote his own name as the sender. Quite excited, he took the package to the post office.

As he was leaving the counter, someone slapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and recognized his old friend from school, the school janitor's son. Jaromil was happy to see him (the slightest event was welcome in this emptiness where nothing happened!); he entered into the conversation gratefully, and when he learned that his old classmate lived nearby, he almost compelled him to invite him over.

The janitor's son no longer lived in the school building with his parents, but had his own one-room apartment. "My wife has gone out," he explained as they entered. Jaromil had not suspected that his friend was married. "Yes, a year ago," said the janitor's son, and he said this so naturally and with such confidence that Jaromil felt envious.

They sat down and Jaromil noticed a baby's crib across the room; he reflected that his old classmate was a father and he himself was merely an onanist.

The janitor's son took a bottle of liqueur out of a cabinet and filled two glasses while Jaromil reflected that he couldn't have such a bottle in his room because Mama would have asked him a thousand questions about it.

"What are you up to these days?" asked Jaromil.

"I'm with the police," said the janitor's son, and Jaromil recalled the day he had spent with his neck wrapped in compresses, listening on the radio to the din of the chanting crowd. The police gave the most solid support to the Communist Party, and his old classmate had surely been in the roaring crowd while Jaromil was home with his grandmother.

Yes, the janitor's son had actually spent those days in the streets, speaking about it proudly but cautiously, and Jaromil thought it necessary to make him understand that they shared the same convictions; he told him about the meetings in the darkhaired fellow's apartment. "That Yid?" said the janitor's son without enthusiasm. "Watch yourself with him! He's a strange bird!"

The janitor's son kept eluding him, was always a step ahead of him, and Jaromil hoped to find common ground; he said sadly: "I don't know if you know that my father died in a concentration camp. Since then I've realized that the world has to be radically changed, and I know where my place is."

The janitor's son finally seemed to understand, nodding in agreement; after this they talked for a long while, and when they came to their future Jaromil suddenly asserted: "I want to be in politics." He was himself surprised to have said this; as if the words had preceded the thought; as if the words themselves, not he, had decided his future for him. "You know," he went on, "my mother wants me to study the history of art or French literature or something like that, but I'm not interested. Those things aren't life. Real life—that's what you're immersed in."

As he was leaving the janitor's son's place he reflected that he had just experienced a decisive illumination. A few hours earlier he had mailed a package containing twenty telephone receivers, convinced that this was a fantastic plea that he was addressing to a great poet so that he would respond to him. That he was thus making a gift to him of the fruitless wait for his words, a gift to him of the longing for his voice.

But the conversation with his old classmate right afterward (he was certain it wasn't by chance!) gave his poetic act an opposite meaning: it was no longer a gift and a plea; not at all; he was proudly returning to the poet his fruitless wait; the receivers with severed wires were the severed heads of his veneration, and Jaromil was sending them to the poet with contempt, like a Turkish sultan returning to a Christian commander the severed heads of Crusaders.

Now he understood everything: his whole life had merely been a long wait in an abandoned telephone booth with a dead phone. Now there was only one solution: to leave the abandoned booth as quickly as possible!

28

"What's wrong, Jaromil?" The warmth of this sympathetic question brought tears to his eyes; he couldn't get away, and Mama went on: "You're my child all the same. I know you inside out. I know everything about you, even though you don't confide in me."

Jaromil looked away, ashamed. Mama kept talking: "Don't think of me as your mother, think of me as an older friend. If you confided in me, maybe you'd feel better. I know you're tormenting yourself." And she added softly: "And I also know that it's on account of a woman."

"Yes, Mama, I'm sad," Jaromil admitted, because the warm atmosphere of mutual understanding surrounded him, and he couldn't get away from it. "But it's hard for me to talk about it ...

"I understand. Besides, I don't want you to tell me what it is right now, I just want you to know that you can tell me anything whenever you want to. Listen. It's a beautiful day. I'm going out on a boat ride with some friends. Come along with us. You need a bit of diversion."

The idea didn't attract Jaromil much, but he had no excuse handy; and then was too weary and sad that he didn't have the energy to refuse, and so without quite knowing how, he suddenly found himself on the deck of an excursion boat with four ladies.

The other ladies were Mama's age, and Jaromil provided them with an ideal subject for conversation; they were very surprised to learn that he had already finished high school; they declared that he looked like his mama; they were astonished to hear that he had decided to study political science (they thought the field unsuitable for such a sensitive young man), and of course they asked him suggestively whether he already had a girlfriend; Jaromil hated them in silence, but he saw that Mama was having a good time, and for her sake he kept smiling obligingly.

The boat docked and the ladies and their young man disembarked on a shore covered with half-naked bodies and looked for a spot where they could sunbathe; only two of them had brought swimsuits, the third bared her fat, white body down to her bra and underpants (unashamed of showing her underwear, perhaps feeling her modesty preserved by her ugliness), and Mama announced that she would only tan her face and turned, squinting, toward the sun. All four urged that their young man should undress, sunbathe, and go into the water. Mama had remembered to bring Jaromils swim trunks.

Hit tunes reached them from a nearby cafe, filling Jaromil with an unappeased languorous desire; tanned girls and boys went by them, clad only in bathing suits, and Jarornil had the impression that they were all focusing on him; he was enveloped by their gaze as though by fire; he tried desperately to prevent people from seeing that he was with four middle-aged ladies; but the ladies noisily surrounded him and behaved like one mother with four cackling heads; they insisted he go into the water.

He objected: "There's no place to change."

"Silly boy, nobody's going to look at you, just put a towel around you," suggested the fat lady in the bra and pink underpants.

"He's shy," said Mama, laughing, and the other ladies laughed with her.

"We should respect his modesty," said Mama. "Come on, change behind the towel and nobody'll see you." She held up a large white towel in her extended hands as a partition to shield him from the eyes of the people on the shore.

He backed away, and Mama followed him with the towel. He backed away from her and she kept following him like a huge white-winged bird pursuing its fleeing prey.

Jaromil backed away, backed away and then turned and ran.

The ladies looked at him in surprise, Mama still held the white towel between her extended hands, and he ran, threading his way among bare young bodies until he was out of sight.

PART FOUR

 The Poet Runs

1

The time must come when a poet tears himself away from his mother's arms and runs.

Until recently he was still walking obediently two abreast: his sisters Isabelle and Vitalie up ahead, he behind them with his brother, Frederic, and, like a captain bringing up the rear, his mother, who once a week took her children this way through Charleville.

When he was sixteen, he tore himself away from his mother's arms for the first time. In Paris he was arrested by the police, his teacher Izambard and Izambard's sisters (yes, the ones who leaned over him to delouse his hair) sheltered him for a few weeks, and then, after two slaps in the face, the cold maternal embrace closed on him again.

But Arthur Rimbaud ran away again and again; he ran with a collar fastened to his neck, writing his poems as he ran.

2

The year is 1870, and the cannons of the Franco-Prussian War can be heard in Charleville from afar. That is a particularly favorable situation for running away, because the din of battle has a nostalgic allure for poets.

His squat body with its crooked legs is strapped up tight in a hussar's uniform. At eighteen Lermontov has become a soldier so as to run away from his grandmother and her burdensome maternal love. He has exchanged the pen, which is the key to his soul, for the pistol, which is the key to the world's doors. For when we send a bullet into a man's chest it is as if we are entering that chest ourselves; and another man's chest—that is the world.

From the moment he tore himself away from Mama's arms, Jaromil has not stopped running, and it seems that the sound of his footsteps mingles with still another sound, which resembles the roar of cannon. It is not the detonations of shellfire but rather the tumult of political upheaval. At such a time the soldier is mere decoration, and the politician takes the soldier's place. Jaromil no longer writes poetry but diligently studies political science at the university.

3

Revolution and youth are a pair. What can a revolution promise to adults? To some, disgrace; to others, favor. But that favor is not worth much, for it affects only the more miserable half of life and, along with advantages, brings uncertainty, exhausting activity, and disruption.

Youth is more fortunate: it is not burdened by guilt, and the revolution can take it entirely under its wing. The uncertainty of revolutionary times is an advantage for youth, for it is the world of the fathers that is being hurled into uncertainty. Oh, how beautiful it is to enter adulthood when the ramparts of the adult world are crumbling!

In the first years after 1948, Communist professors were a minority in Czech higher education. To maintain its grip on the university, the revolution had to give power to the students. Jaromil was a militant in his faculty's Youth Union, and as such he was an observer at examinations. He then submitted a report to the faculty's political committee indicating how this or that professor behaved during examinations, the questions he asked, and the opinions he expressed, so that it was actually the examiner rather than the examined who was being subjected to an examination.