Life Is Elsewhere (36 page)
The man sees the flushed face of a young man in a fevered delirium, and in a low, firm voice Mama says: "I don't know what you want to talk about, but I assure you that my son knew what he was doing. Everything he does is in the interests of the working class."
As she utters these words, often spoken by her son but up to now alien to her, she feels a sense of boundless power; now she is linked to her son more strongly than ever; she and he form a single soul, a single mind; she and he form a single universe carved from the same matter.
20
Xavier was holding his schoolbag, which contained a Czech notebook and a science textbook.
"Where are you going?"
Xavier smiled and pointed at the window. The window was open, the sun was shining, and from afar came the voice of the city filled with adventures. "You promised to take me with you. ..."
"That was a long time ago," said Xavier. "Do you want to betray me?" "Yes, I'm going to betray you."
It took Jaromil's breath away. All he felt was boundless hatred for Xavier. Until recently he had thought that he and Xavier were a single being with two appearances, but now he realized that Xavier was someone else entirely and Jaromils sworn enemy.
Xavier leaned over him and caressed his face: "You are beautiful, you are so beautiful. ..."
"Why are you talking to me the way you talk to a woman? Are you crazy?" Jaromil shouted.
But Xavier went on: "You are very beautiful, but I must betray you."
Then he turned on his heels and headed toward the open window.
"I am not a woman! You know very well I am not a woman!" Jaromil shouted after him.
21
The fever has temporarily subsided, and Jaromil is looking around; the walls are bare; the framed photograph of the man in the officer's uniform has vanished. "Where's Papa?"
"Papa isn't here anymore," Mama says tenderly.
"Why? Who took him down?"
"I did, my darling. I don't want you to look at him. I don't want anyone to come between us. It's pointless now to lie to you. There's something you should know. Your father didn't want you to be born. He didn't want you to live. He tried to prevent me from bringing you into the world."
Jaromil is exhausted from fever and no longer has the strength to have a conversation or even to ask questions.
"My beautiful little boy," says Mama, her voice breaking.
Jaromil realizes that the woman speaking to him has always loved him, never evaded him, never made him afraid of losing her, and never made him jealous.
"I'm not beautiful, Mama. You're beautiful. You look so young."
Mama hears her son's words and feels an urge to weep with happiness. "Do you think I'm beautiful? And you look like me. You've never wanted to admit that you look like me. But you do look like me, and that makes me happy." She caressed his downy yellow hair and covered it with kisses: "You have the hair of an angel, my darling."
Jaromil feels great fatigue. He no longer has the strength to look for another woman, they are all so far away, and the road to them is so endlessly long. "Actually, I never really liked any woman," he says. "Only you, Mama. You're the most beautiful of all."
Mama weeps and kisses him: "Do you remember our vacation in the spa town?" "Yes, Mama, I loved you most of all."
Mama is seeing the world through a huge tear of happiness; everything around her is blurred by moisture; freed from the shackles of form, things dance and rejoice: "Is that really so, my darling?"
"Yes," says Jaromil, taking Mama's hand into his burning palm and feeling tired, immensely tired.
22
Earth is already piling up on Wolker's coffin. Mrs. Wolker is already back from the cemetery. The stone is already in place above Rimbaud's coffin, but his mother, it is said, has had them open the family vault in Charleville. Do you see her, that austere lady in the black dress? She is examining the dark, damp hole to make sure that the coffin is in place and that it is closed. Yes, everything is in order. Arthur is at rest and is not going to run away. Arthur will never again run away. Everything is in order.
23
So it's to be water after all, just water? Not fire?
He opened his eyes and saw leaning over him a face with a gently receding chin and fine yellow hair. That face was so close to him that he thought he was stretched out over a well and seeing the reflection of his own image.
No, no sign of fire. He was going to die by water.
He looked at his face on the surface of the water. Suddenly he saw great fear on that face. And that was the last thing he saw.
COMPLETED IN BOHEMIA IN 1969
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Life Is Elsewhere was written in Czech. In 1985 I revised its French translation so completely that I was able to include, in the subsequent new edition, a note affirming that it was "equal in authenticity to the Czech text." My intervention did not result in a variant of my original; I was led to it only by a wish for fidelity to my thought and style.
Like his earlier translations of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Farewell Waltz (also from my revised French versions), Aaron Asher's present translation results from a uniquely close and fruitful collaboration between author and translator. And so yet again I thank him with all my heart for the fulfillment of my wish.
Paris, April 2000
BOOKS BY MILAN KUNDERA
The Joke
Laughable Loves
Life Is Elsewhere
Farewell Waltz (FARTHER TRANSLATION: The Farewell Party)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Immortality
Slowness
Identity
Jacques and His Master (PLAY)
The Art of the Novel (ESSAY)
Testaments Betrayed (ESSAY)
Milan Kundera
Table of Contents
Contents
The Poet Is Born
Xavier
The Poet Masturbates
The Poet Runs
The Poet Is Jealous
The Man in His Forties
The Poet Dies