Life Is Elsewhere (24 page)

"Of course it is!" said the girl; what else could she say to such a stupid question? But Jaromil wasn't satisfied with that "Of course it is"; he went on:

"I couldn't bear it if anyone else's hands touched you. I couldn't bear it," and he caressed the girl's meager breasts as if his entire happiness depended on their inviolability.

The girl started to laugh (quite innocently): "But what do you want me to do when I get sick?"

Jaromil knew that it was hard to avoid medical examinations and that his position was indefensible; but he also knew that if someone else's hands were to touch the girl's breasts, his whole world would crumble. And so he repeated:

"I couldn't bear it, do you understand, 1 couldn't bear it."

"Then what should I do if I'm sick?"

He said softly and reproachfully: "You could find a woman doctor."

"As if I have a choice! You know how it works," she answered, indignantly this time, "everybody is assigned a doctor! Don't you know what socialist medicine is? You have no choice and you have to obey! Take gynecological consultations, for instance. ..."

Jaromil felt his heart skip a beat, but he said calmly: "Is something wrong with you?"

"No, it's just preventive medicine. Because of cancer. It's compulsory."

"Keep quiet, I don't want to hear about it," said Jaromil, and put his hand over her mouth; his gesture was so fierce that it nearly frightened him, for the redhead could think of it as a blow and become angry; but the girl's eyes looked at him so humbly that Jaromil felt no need to moderate the involuntary roughness of his gesture; he took pleasure in it, and he said:

"I want you to know that if anyone ever touches you, I'll never touch you again."

He was still holding his hand over the girl's mouth; it was the first time he had ever touched a woman roughly, and he found it intoxicating; he then put his hands around her throat, as though he were choking her; he felt the fragility of her neck under his fingers, and he thought that he only had to clench them in order to strangle her.

"I'll strangle you if anyone ever touches you," he said, and he still had his hands around the girl's throat; he was thrilled to feel the girl's possible nonexistence in this contact; he thought that, at least at this moment, the redhead really belonged to him, and a sensation of elated power intoxicated him, a sensation so beautiful that he began again to make love.

During the lovemaking he squeezed her roughly several times, put his hand on her neck (he thought it would be beautiful to strangle a beloved while making love), and also bit her several times.

Afterward they lay side by side, but the lovemaking had probably not lasted long enough to dissipate the young man's anger; the redhead, unstrangled, alive, was lying beside him, a naked body that went to gynecological consultations.

She caressed his hand: "Don't be angry with me."

"I'm telling you that a body other men have touched disgusts me."

The girl realized that Jaromil was serious; she said insistently: "Dammit, it was only a joke!"

"It was no joke! It was the truth."

"It wasn't the truth."

"Sure it was! It was the truth, and I know there's nothing to be done about it. Gynecological consultations are compulsory, and you have to go. I'm not blaming you. But a body other men touch is repellent to me. I can't help it, that's how it is."

"I swear to you there's no truth to it! I've never been sick except when I was a child. I never go to the doctor. I was summoned to a gynecological consultation, but I threw away the notification. I never went."

"I don't believe you."

It was an effort to convince him.

"And what will you do if they summon you again?"

"Don't worry, they're totally disorganized."

He believed her, but his bitterness couldn't be eased by practical arguments; it wasn't only a matter of medical examinations; the root of the problem was that she eluded him, that she was not totally his.

"I love you so much," she said, but he placed no confidence in that brief moment; he wanted eternity; he wanted at least the small eternity of the redheaded girl's life, and he knew that he didn't have it: he recalled that he had not known her as a virgin.

"I can't bear the idea that someone else is going to touch you and that someone else has already touched you," he said.

"No one's going to touch me."

"But someone's already touched you. And that disgusts me."

She put her arms around him.

He pushed her away.

"How many men have you had before me?"

"Just one."

"Don't lie!"

"I swear there's only been one."

"Did you love him?"

She shook her head.

"How could you go to bed with someone you didn't love?"

"Don't torture me," she said.

"Answer me! How could you do that?"

"Don't torture me. I didn't love him, and it was horrible."

"What was horrible?"

"Don't ask me anything about it."

"Why don't you want me to ask you anything about it?"

She dissolved into tears and, still weeping, confided to him that it had been an old man in her village, that he was revolting, that she was completely in his power ("Don't ask me about it"), that she couldn't even remember him ("If you love me, never remind me of him again!").

She wept for so long that Jaromil forgot his anger; tears are excellent stain removers.

He caressed her: "Don't cry."

"You're my Xavipet," she said. "You came in through the window, and you locked him into a wardrobe, and he'll be a skeleton there and you're going to take me far, far away."

They embraced and kissed. The girl assured him that she couldn't bear anyone else's hands on her body, and he assured her that he loved her. They began to make love again; they made love tenderly, their bodies brimming with soul.

"You're my Xavipet," she said to him afterward, caressing him.

"Yes, I'll take you far away, where you'll be safe," he said, and he knew right away where he would take her: he had a tent for her under the blue sail of peace, a tent above which birds fly on their way to the future, fragrances flow toward the strikers of Marseilles; he had a house for her watched over by the angel of his childhood.

"You know, I'm going to introduce you to my mama,'' he said, and his eyes were filled with tears.

4

The family that occupied the rooms on the ground floor of the villa could boast of the mother's protuberant belly; a third child was on the way, and the father stopped Jaromil's mama one day to tell her that it was unjust for two people to occupy the same space as five; he suggested she give up one of the three rooms on the second floor. Jaromil's mother replied that this was not possible. The tenant answered that in that case the authorities would have to see to it that the rooms in the villa were equitably redistributed. Mama asserted that her son was about to get married, and that there would soon be three and perhaps four people on the second floor.

Thus, when Jaromil told her a few days later that he wanted to introduce his girlfriend to her, the visit seemed timely to Mama; the tenants would at least see that she hadn't lied when she spoke of her son's forthcoming marriage.

But later, when he admitted to Mama that she already knew the girl from seeing her at the store, she was unable to hide an expression of unpleasant sur-prise.

"I hope it doesn't embarrass you,'' he said belligerently, "that she's just a salesgirl. I've already told you that she's a working woman, a simple girl."

It took Mama a few moments to accept the idea that the shallow, unpleasant, and unattractive girl was her son's beloved, but she was able to control herself: "It shouldn't be held against me, but it surprises me," she said, ready to endure whatever her son had in store for her.

So the visit took place; it lasted three painful hours. All three of them had stage fright, but they underwent the ordeal to the end.

When Jaromil was alone again with Mama, he asked her eagerly: "Well, did you like her?"

"I liked her very much, why shouldn't I like her? " she replied, well aware that her tone of voice indicated the opposite.

"So you didn't like her?"

"I just told you I liked her very much."

"No, I can tell from your tone of voice that you didn't like her. You're not saying what you think."

During the visit the redhead had perpetrated numerous awkwardnesses (she was the first to extend her hand to Mama, she was the first to sit down at the table, she was the first to bring her cup of coffee to her lips), numerous impolitenesses (she interrupted Mama), and tactlessnesses (she asked Mama how old she was); while Mama was enumerating these faux pas she suddenly feared that she might seem small-minded to her son (Jaromil regarded excessive attachment to the rules of etiquette as petit-bourgeois), and she quickly added:

"Of course, there's nothing incurable about it. Just keep inviting her here a bit more. In our environment she'll become refined and well mannered."

But the thought that she would have to see this redheaded, ungainly, hostile body with some regularity again gave her an overwhelming feeling of disgust, and she said in a comforting voice: "Of course, you can't blame her for being what she is. You have to imagine the environment in which she grew up and where she works. I wouldn't want to be a salesgirl in a store like that. Everybody takes liberties with you, you have to be at everybody's disposal. If the boss wants to seduce a girl, she can't refuse him. In such an environment, of course, an affair of that kind isn't considered important."

She watched her son's face and saw it flush; a scalding wave of jealousy filled Jaromil's body, and Mama herself seemed to feel that same heat (yes, it was actually the same scalding wave she had felt a few hours ago when she had seen the redhead for the first time, so I might say that they now stood face to face like two communicating vessels through which the same acid flowed). Her son's face was again childlike and submissive; suddenly she was no longer facing a strange, independent man but her suffering beloved child, a child who not long ago would run to her for refuge and whom she would console. She couldn't tear her eyes away from this splendid spectacle.

Jaromil left for his own room, and she surprised herself (after some moments alone) by beating her head with her fists and reprimanding herself in an undertone: "Stop it, stop it, don't be jealous; stop it, don't be jealous.''

Nevertheless the deed had been done. The tent stitched up out of airy blue sails, the tent of harmony watched over by the angel of childhood, was in tatters.

For mother and son the era of jealousy was beginning.

Mama's words about affairs that aren't considered important kept resounding in Jaromil's head. He imagined the redhead's fellow workers at the store telling dirty jokes, he imagined the lewd moment of contact established between listener and narrator, and he was horribly tormented. He imagined the store owner rubbing up against her body, surreptitiously touching her breasts or slapping her buttocks, and he was made furious by the thought that such contact wasn't considered important, whereas for him it meant everything. One day when he was at her place, he noticed that she had forgotten to close the toilet door behind her. He made a scene about it, for he immediately imagined her in the toilet at the store and a man inadvertently surprising her sitting on the bowl.

When he revealed his jealousy to the redhead, she managed to calm him with tenderness and pledges of love; but as soon as he found himself alone in his childhood room, the thought recurred that there was no guarantee that the redhead's assurances were true. Besides, wasn't he himself forcing her to lie to him? By reacting so violently to the idea of an insignificant medical consultation, hadn't he prevented her, once and for all, from telling him what she was thinking?

They were over, the happy early days of their love, when the caresses were cheerful and he was full of gratitude to her for having led him with such spontaneous assurance out of the labyrinth of virginity. He was now submitting what he had been so grateful for to a harsh analysis; again and again he evoked the shameless touch of the girl's hand that had so wonderfully aroused him the first time he went to her place; he was now scrutinizing it with suspicion: it wasn't possible, he thought, that he, Jaromil, was the first man she had ever touched that way; if she had dared to employ such a shameless gesture half an hour after meeting him, this gesture must have been totally ordinary and mechanical for her.

What a terrible thought! He had of course already accepted the idea that she'd had another man before him, but only because the girl's words had presented the picture of a liaison that from beginning to end had been bitter and painful, with herself nothing but an exploited victim; that awakened pity in him, and pity diluted his jealousy somewhat. But if the girl had learned that shameful gesture during the liaison, it couldn t have been a total disaster. There was too much joy in that gesture; in that gesture there was an entire little erotic history!

The subject was too painful for him to muster the courage to talk about, for the mere mention of the lover who had preceded him caused him great torment. Nevertheless he tried in a roundabout way to find the origin of the gesture he constantly thought about (and continued to experience, for the redhead delighted in it), and finally he put his mind at ease with the idea that a great love, which abruptly arrives like a lightning bolt, frees a woman at one stroke from all shame and inhibition, and she, just because she is pure and innocent, gives herself to her lover just as quickly as a loose woman; better still: love frees in her suph a powerful source of unexpected inspiration that her spontaneous behavior can resemble the expert procedures of a depraved woman. The genius of love instantaneously replaces every experience. This conclusion seemed beautiful and shrewd to him; in its light his girlfriend became a saint of love.

Then one day a fellow student said to him: "Tell me, who was that I saw you with yesterday? She was no beauty!"