The JOKE (22 page)

Yes, that was how I saw it, that was how I explained it, and as year followed year, I was almost afraid of meeting her again, because I knew that we'd meet in a place where Lucie would no longer be Lucie and I would be unable to pick up the thread. Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.

And since Lucie had become for me a definitive past (which still lives as past and is dead as present), she gradually lost in my mind her corporeal, material concreteness and became more and more a kind of legend, a myth inscribed on parchment and laid in a metal casket at the very foundation of my life.

Perhaps that was why the incredible could happen. I wasn't sure whether the woman in the barbershop was Lucie. And that was also why the next morning (duped by the interlude of sleep) I felt that yesterday's encounter was not
real;
that it too unfolded on the level of legend, prophecy, or riddle. If on Friday evening I'd been struck by Lucie's real presence and suddenly transported to a far-off time over which she held sway, on this Saturday morning I only asked with a calm (and well-rested) heart:
why
did I meet her?

what did the encounter mean and what was it trying to
tell
me?

Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it
means
something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live comprise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can't rid myself of the need continually to
decipher
my own life.

So I lay on the creaky hotel bed and I thought of Lucie, transformed again into a mere idea, a mere question. The bed began to creak, and as soon as the creaking entered my consciousness, my thoughts turned (abruptly, brutally) to Helena. As if that creaking bed was a voice

summoning me to duty, I heaved a sigh, slipped my feet off the bed, sat up, stretched, ran my fingers through my hair, looked out the window at the sky, and stood up. My Friday encounter with Lucie, de-materialized though it was in the morning, had nonetheless dulled and tempered my interest in Helena, an interest so intense only a few days before.

All that was left of it now was a mere
awareness
of interest; an interest translated into the language of memory, a sense of obligation to a lost interest that my reason assured me would certainly return in all its former intensity.

I went over to the sink, threw off my pajama top, and turned the faucet on full force; I cupped my hands under the stream of water and immediately started splashing my neck, shoulders, and body; I rubbed myself down with a towel; I wanted to send the blood coursing through my veins. Because I felt alarmed; alarmed by my indifference to Helena's arrival; alarmed that my indifference (my temporary indifference) would spoil an opportunity that was hardly likely to come again. I decided to eat a hearty breakfast and wash it down with a shot of vodka.

I went downstairs to the coffee shop, but all I found was an array of chairs mournfully stranded, legs up, on bare tables, and an old woman in a dirty apron puttering around in their midst.

I went to the reception desk and asked the porter, ensconced behind the counter in a deep armchair and deep lethargy, whether I could get breakfast in the hotel. Without moving, he told me that the coffee shop was closed on Saturdays. I went outside. It was a pleasant day, the clouds scudding across the sky and a gentle wind raising dust from the pavement. I hurried towards the square. I passed a crowd of women, young and old, queuing outside the butcher's; they were holding shopping bags and nets, and patiently, lifelessly waiting their turn to get into the shop. Among the pedestrians strolling or hurrying by I was caught by those bearing ice-cream cones in their hands like miniature torches and licking their red caps. Soon I came out into the square. Before me stood a sprawling one-story structure, a cafeteria.

I went in. It was a large room with a tile floor and long-legged tables where people stood eating sandwiches and drinking coffee or beer.

I didn't feel like eating breakfast there. From early morning I'd had my heart set
on a good solid breakfast of eggs, bacon, and a shot of alcohol to restore my lost vitality. I remembered a restaurant a short walk away in another square, with a small park and a Baroque monument. That restaurant was not particularly attractive either, but all I needed was a table, a chair, and a single waiter to serve whatever was on hand.

I walked past the monument. The plinth supported a saint, the saint supported a cloud, the cloud supported an angel, the angel supported another cloud, and on this cloud sat another angel, the last. I took a long look at the poignant pyramid of saints, clouds, and angels that simulated in heavy stone the heavens and their heights, whereas the real heavens were pale (morning) blue and hopelessly removed from that dusty stretch of earth.

I crossed the park with its neat lawns and benches (though bare enough not to break the atmosphere of dusty emptiness) and tried the restaurant door. It was locked. I began to realize that my dream breakfast would remain a dream, and this alarmed me because I'd made up my mind with childlike obstinacy that a hearty breakfast was the key to success for the entire day. I realized that provincial towns take no account of eccentrics wishing to eat their breakfasts sitting down and that the restaurants would not open until much later. So rather than set off in search of another place to eat, I turned and walked back through the park.

Again I passed people carrying little red-capped cones, and again I thought that the cones looked like torches, and that there might be some meaning in their shape, because those torches were not torches, but
parodies of torches,
and the pink trace of pleasure they so solemnly displayed was not pleasure but a
parody of pleasure,
which would seem to capture the inescapably parodical nature of all torches and pleasures in this dusty little town. And then I told myself that since I kept meeting these licking torchbearers, I was going in the direction of a pastry shop where I could find that table and chair and perhaps some black coffee and a bite to eat.

Instead of a pastry shop I came to a milk bar; there was a long line of people waiting for cocoa or milk with rolls, the same high tables for

eating and drinking, and in the back a few regular tables and chairs, all taken. So I joined the line, and after inching along for a few minutes I was able to buy a glass of cocoa and two rolls and find a table which, though encumbered by a half-dozen more or less empty glasses, offered a spot free of spilled liquid.

I ate with cheerless haste: in no more than three minutes I was back in the street; it was nine o'clock; I had two hours to go: Helena had taken the early flight from Prague and was due in on a bus from Brno just before eleven. I saw that these two hours would be utterly empty, utterly wasted.

Of course, I could have made the rounds of my childhood haunts, pausing in sentimental meditation before the house where I was born and where my mother lived until she died.

I often think about her, but here, in the town where her remains lie fraudulently buried under alien marble, it is as if all my thoughts of her are poisoned: they might commingle with the feeling of my powerlessness at that time and my venomous bitterness—and that is what I was defending myself against.

So there was nothing for me to do but sit on a bench in the square, stand up after a while, go over to the shopwindows, glance at the titles of the books in the bookshop, buy
Rude
Pravo
at a newsstand, go back to the bench, skim the dull headlines, read a couple of fairly interesting reports in the foreign affairs column, then get up from the bench again, fold the paper, and throw it into a wastebasket in mint condition; next, walk slowly up to the church, stop in front of it, peer up at its two towers, climb its broad steps and enter the vestibule, then the church proper, diffidendy, so no one would be shocked when the newcomer failed to cross himself.

When some more people came in, I started feeling like an intruder who doesn't know what to do with himself, how to bend his head or clasp his hands, so I went out again, looked at the clock, and saw that I still had plenty of time left. I tried to focus my mind on Helena, to put the long minutes to some use by thinking of her; but the thoughts remained static, wouldn't evolve; the best I could do was conjure up a visual image of her. It's a well-known phenomenon: when a man waits

for a woman, he finds it extremely difficult to think of her and can do little else but pace up and down under her motionless effigy.

And pace I did. Across from the church I noticed ten empty baby carriages standing outside the old town hall (today the town's National Committee building). While I wondered what they were doing there, a breathless young man pushed another carriage up to them, the (quite nervous) woman accompanying him lifted a white lacy bundle (clearly containing a baby) from the carriage, and together they hurried into the hall.

Mindful of the hour and a half I had left to kill, I went in after them.

Along the broad staircase there were some idle bystanders, and walking up the stairs, I saw more and more people. The second-floor corridor was crowded, whereas the stairs leading higher were empty. The event they had gathered for was apparently to take place on this floor, most probably in the room off the corridor whose open door was packed with people. I entered and found myself in a modest-sized hall with seven or so rows of chairs occupied by people who seemed to be waiting for some performance to begin. On a dais at the head of the room was a long table covered with red cloth, and on the table, a large bouquet in a vase; the artistically arranged folds of the national flag adorned the wall behind; immediately in front of the dais (about ten feet from the first row of the audience) were eight chairs facing it in a semicircle; at the other side of the hall, in the back, was a small harmonium with a bald old man hunched over its open keyboard.

There were still several free chairs; I took one. For a long time nothing happened, but the people, far from bored, were leaning over and whispering to one another in keen anticipation. Meanwhile the groups that had remained in the corridor filtered in, occupying the few remaining seats and lining the walls.

Finally the long-awaited action got under way: a door behind the dais opened to reveal a woman with a long thin nose, wearing a brown suit and glasses; she looked out into the hall and raised her right hand. The people around me fell silent. Then she turned back towards the room she'd just left, apparently to give a sign to someone there, but instantly she was facing us again, leaning against the wall and flashing a fixed, ceremonial smile. Everything seemed to be perfectly synchronized, for at the very moment her smile came on, the harmonium started up behind my back.

A few seconds later a flaxen-haired young woman appeared in the doorway behind the dais, red in the face, with elaborate hairdo and makeup, a terrified expression in her eyes, and white swaddling clothes in her arms. The woman in brown pressed closer to the wall to let her pass, smiling to encourage the baby carrier. And she advanced, unsure of herself, clutching the baby; then another emerged with the same white swaddling clothes, and after her (in single file) a whole detachment of them. I kept my eye on the first one: she stared up at the ceiling, then her eyes fell and met the glance of someone in the audience; the glance so ruffled her that she tore her eyes away and smiled, but the smile (the
effort
of a smile) quickly vanished, leaving only a rigid configuration of the lips. All this happened on her face within a matter of seconds (the time it took to cover the fifteen or twenty feet from the door); because she was walking too straight a line and failed to turn when she came to the semicircle of chairs, the woman in brown had to detach herself from the wall (frowning slightly), hurry over to her, tap her gently on the shoulder to remind her which way to go. The woman quickly corrected her course and led the other baby carriers around in front of the chairs. There were eight of them in all. Finally, having completed their prescribed routes, they stood with their backs to the audience, each before a chair. The woman in brown pointed to the floor; the women gradually got the message and (their backs still to the audience) sat down (with their bundles) on the chairs.

The shadow of dissatisfaction left the face of the woman in brown, and she was smiling again as she walked over to the half-open door and into the back room. After standing there a few seconds, she stepped briskly back against the wall. A man of about twenty appeared in the doorway; he wore a black suit and a white shirt whose collar, stuffed with a patterned tie, was cutting into his neck. He kept his eyes on the floor and wavered slightly as he walked. Seven more men followed, of varying ages but all in dark suits and white shirts. They walked up behind the women sitting with their babies and stopped, each behind a

chair. At that moment a few of them seemed uneasy and started looking around as if searching for something. The woman in brown (whose face shadowed instantly as before) ran up to them and, hearing out a whispered plea, nodded permission, whereupon the men sheepishly changed places.

Resuming her smile, the woman in brown again went to the door. This time she didn't have to nod or make a sign. A new detachment made its entrance, and I must say that it was disciplined, disciplined and skilled, marching without embarrassment and with almost professional elegance: it was composed of ten-year-old children, boys alternating with girls; the boys wore dark-blue trousers, white shirts, and folded red kerchiefs with one point hanging down their backs and the other two tied in a knot around their necks; the girls wore dark-blue skirts, white blouses, and the same red kerchiefs at their necks; each child carried a small bouquet of roses. They moved, as I say, with supreme confidence, and instead of heading toward the semicircle of chairs like their predecessors, they spread out in front of the dais; then they stopped and executed a left turn, so that they stood in a line before the dais, covering the whole of its length and facing the seated women and the audience.