The JOKE (24 page)

The mediation of a woman is capable of imposing on hatred certain qualities characteristic of affection, for example curiosity, carnal interest, the urge to cross the threshold of intimacy. I rose to a kind of exaltation: I imagined Zemanek, Helena, and their world (their alien world) and with an odd pleasure I fondled my rancor (my attentive, almost tender rancor) against Helena's appearance, rancor against her red hair, rancor against her blue eyes, rancor against her short bristly lashes, rancor against her round face, rancor against her sensuous, flared nostrils, rancor against the gap between her two front teeth, rancor against the ripe fleshiness of her body. I observed her the way men observe the women they love; I observed her as if I wanted to embed everything about her in my memory. And to disguise the rancor behind my interest, my remarks became more lighthearted, more and more amiable, so that Helena became more and more feminine. I kept thinking that her mouth, her breasts, her eyes, her hair, all belonged to Zemanek, and I mentally fingered them, held them, weighed them, testing whether they could be crushed in my fist or shattered against the wall, and then I carefully reexamined them, first with Zemanek's eyes, then with my own.

Perhaps I did have a fleeting and utterly impractical Platonic idea that it might be possible to move this woman further and further from the plane of our coquettish conversation towards the target area of the bed. But it was only one of those ideas that flash through the mind like a spark and are quickly extinguished. Helena thanked me for the information I'd given her and announced that she wouldn't take any more of my time.

We said good-bye, and I was glad to see her go. The odd exaltation had passed; I felt no more for her than my former antipathy, and I was uncomfortable at having treated her with such intimate concern and kindness (feigned though they were).

Nothing would have come of the meeting if Helena herself hadn't phoned a few days later and asked whether she might see me. Perhaps

she really did need me to go over the text of her broadcast, but at the time I had the impression that this was a pretext and that her tone of voice was more in keeping with the intimate, lighthearted side of our last conversation than with its professional aspect. I adopted this tone quickly, without thinking, and stayed with it. We met at a cafe; provocatively I avoided everything connected with Helena's broadcast; shamelessly I made light of her interests as a journalist; I saw that I'd upset her equilibrium and at the same time that I had begun to dominate her. I invited her to go to the country with me.

She protested, reminding me she was a married woman. Nothing could have given me greater pleasure. I lingered over her delightful objection, so dear to me; I played with it; I kept returning to it; I joked about it. The only way she could get me off the subject in the end was to accept the invitation. From then on everything went exactly according to plan.

I had dreamed this plan up with the power of fifteen years of rancor, and I felt inexplicably certain that it would be successfully accomplished.

Yes, the plan was being accomplished. I picked up Helena's small overnight case at the reception desk, and we went upstairs to her room, which was just as hideous as my own.

Even Helena, who had a peculiar tendency to describe things as better than they were, had to admit as much. I told her not to be upset, that we'd manage somehow. She gave me a glance dripping with meaning. Then she said she wanted to wash up, and I said that was a good idea and that I would wait for her in the lobby.

When she came downstairs (wearing a skirt and pink sweater under her unbuttoned raincoat), I noticed again how elegant she looked. I told her we'd have lunch at the People's House, that the food there was far from good but the best there was. She said that since I was a native she would put herself entirely in my hands, offer no resistance.

(She seemed to be choosing her words with their double entendre value in mind, a laughable and gratifying effort on her part.) We followed the route I'd taken that morning in my vain quest for a decent breakfast, and Helena kept reiterating how glad she was to get to know my hometown, but although she was in fact here for the first time, she never once looked around, never asked what this or that building was, never in any way behaved like a visitor who is seeing an unfamiliar town for the first time. I wondered whether her lack of interest came from a shriveled soul that no longer was able to feel ordinary curiosity, or from the fact that she'd concentrated all her attention on me and had none left for anything else; I wanted to believe the second hypothesis.

Again we walked past the Baroque monument: the saint supporting a cloud, the cloud an angel, the angel another cloud, that cloud another angel; the sky was bluer than it had been earlier; Helena took off her raincoat, tossed it over her arm, and said that it was warm; the warmth intensified the persistent sensation of a dusty void; the monument jutted up in the middle of the square like a piece broken off from the heavens that couldn't find its way back; I thought to myself that we too had been
cast out
into this oddly deserted square with its park and restaurant, cast out irrevocably, that we too had been broken off from something; that we imitated the heavens and the heights in vain, that no one believed in us; that our thoughts and our words scaled the heights in vain when our deeds were as low as the earth itself.

Yes. I was struck by an acute awareness of my own
lowness;
it had taken me by surprise; but what surprised me even more was that it didn't horrify me, that I accepted it with a certain feeling of pleasure, if not joy or relief; and the pleasure I felt was enhanced by the certainty that the woman walking by my side was driven to these dubious hours of afternoon adventure by motives not much higher than my own.

The People's House was already open, but because it was only eleven forty-five, the restaurant was still empty. The tables were laid, in front of every chair was a soup bowl containing a knife, fork, and spoon on a paper napkin. We sat down, set the utensils and napkins next to our plates, and waited. Several minutes later a waiter appeared in the kitchen door. He surveyed the dining hall with a weary eye and started to go back to the kitchen.

"Waiter!" I called.

He turned around and took a few steps in the direction of our table. "Did you want anything?" he asked, still fifteen or twenty feet away. "We'd like to have lunch," I said.

"No food until twelve," he replied, heading for the kitchen. "Waiter!" I called again. He turned around

again. 'Tell me," I had to shout because he was quite a distance away, "have you got any vodka?" "Vodka? No, there's no vodka." "Well, then, what have you got?" "Rye," he called out over the distance, "or rum." "That's pathetic!" I shouted, and then: "All right, two ryes!"

"I haven't even asked if you drink rye," I said to Helena.

Helena laughed. "I can't say I'm used to rye."

"No matter," I said. "You'll get used to it. You're in Moravia now, and rye is the most popular drink among the people here."

"Marvelous!" said Helena with delight. "That's what I like best, just an ordinary little restaurant where truck drivers and mechanics go, with just ordinary things to eat and drink."

"So you like lacing your beer with rum."

"Well, not quite," she said.

"But you like being among the people."

"Oh, yes," she said. "I can't stand those chic places with a dozen waiters hovering over you and serving you one dish after another...."

"That's right. There's nothing better than a hole in the wall where the waiter refuses to look at you and you can't breathe for the smoke and the stink. And there's nothing better than rye. I never touched anything else when I was a student."

"I like simple food too, like potato fritters or sausages with onions, I can't think of anything better."

My mistrust is so entrenched that when someone starts listing his likes and dislikes I am unable to take it seriously, or to put it more precisely, I can accept it only as an indication of the person's self-image. I didn't for a moment believe that Helena breathed more easily in filthy, badly ventilated dives than in clean, well-ventilated restaurants or that she preferred cheap alcohol and food to haute cuisine. However, this declaration of faith wasn't without value for me, because it revealed her predilection for a special pose, a pose long since outdated and out of style, a pose going back to the years when revolutionary enthusiasm delighted in anything that was "common," "plebeian,"

"ordinary," or "rustic," just as it loved to despise everything that was "refined" or

"elegant," anything connected with good manners. In Helena's pose I recognized the period of my youth, and in Helena's person Zemanek's

wife. My early-morning concerns quickly dissolved, and I began to concentrate.

The waiter brought us two glasses of rye on a tray, placed them in front of us, and left behind a sheet of paper (the last carbon copy, no doubt) with an all but illegible blur of the day's dishes on it.

I raised my glass and said, "Let's drink to rye, to ordinary rye!"

She laughed, touched her glass to mine, and said, "I've always yearned for a man who was... simple and direct. Unaffected. Straightforward."

We took a swig and I said, "There aren't many like that."

"But they do exist," said Helena. "You're one."

"I wouldn't say that," I said.

"You are."

Once more I was amazed by the incredible human capacity for transforming reality into a likeness of desires or ideals, but I was quick to accept Helena's interpretation of my personality.

"Who knows? Perhaps," I said. "Simple and straightforward. But what does simple and straightforward mean? It means being what you are, wanting what you want and going after it without a sense of shame. People are slaves to rules. Someone tells them to be this or that, and they try so hard that to the day they die they have no idea who they were and who they are. They are nobody and they are nothing. First and foremost a man must have the courage to be himself. So let me tell you right away: I'm attracted to you, Helena, and I desire you, even though you're a married woman. I can't put it any other way, and I can't let it go unsaid."

To say this was embarrassing, but it was necessary. The management of a woman's mind has its own inexorable rules; anyone who decides to persuade a woman or to refute her point of view with rational arguments is hardly likely to get anywhere. It is much wiser to grasp her basic self-image (her basic principles, ideals, convictions) and contrive to establish (with the aid of sophistry, illogical demagoguery, and the like) a harmonious relation between that self-image and the desired conduct on her part. For example, Helena dreamed of "simplicity," "unaffectedness," "straightforwardness." These ideals of hers had their

origin in the revolutionary puritanism of an earlier time and were associated with the idea of a "pure," "unsullied," highly principled, and strictly moral man. But because the world of Helena's principles was based not on reflection but (as with most people) on illogical imperatives, nothing was simpler than to associate the idea of the "straightforward man"

with behavior altogether unpuritanical, immoral, adulterous, and thereby prevent the desired behavior (that is, adultery) from entering into neurotic conflict with her inner ideals. A man may ask anything of a woman, but unless he wishes to behave like a brute, he must make it possible for her to act in harmony with her deepest self-deceptions.

Meanwhile, people had been trickling into the restaurant, and soon most of the tables were occupied. The waiter now reappeared and was going from table to table taking orders. I handed Helena the menu. She said I knew more about Moravian food and handed it back.

There was of course no need to know anything about Moravian food since the menu was exactly the same as in all restaurants of its category and consisted of a narrow selection of standard dishes, all equally unalluring and therefore difficult to choose among. I was (dolefully) contemplating the smeary page when the waiter came up and asked me impatiently for our order.

"Just a second," I said.

"You wanted to order fifteen minutes ago, and you still haven't made up your minds," he reminded me, and left.

Fortunately he came back fairly soon, and we ventured to order roulade of beef and another round of rye, this time with soda. Helena (chewing the beef) remarked how marvelous it was ("marvelous" was her favorite adjective) to be sitting with me in a strange place, a place she'd dreamed of so often during her days in the ensemble when she sang the songs that originated in this region. Then she said that it was probably wrong of her to feel so happy with me, but that she couldn't help it, she hadn't the will power, and that was that. I told her there was nothing more reprehensible than being ashamed of one's own feelings. Soon I called the waiter and asked for the check.

Outside, there was the Baroque monument jutting up in front of us again. It looked laughable. I pointed to it: "Look, Helena, look at those saints climb!

Look at them fighting their way up! How they'd love to get to heaven! And heaven couldn't care less about them! Heaven doesn't know they exist, the winged yokels!"

"How true," said Helena, in whom the fresh air had reinforced the effect of the alcohol.

"Why do they keep them anyway, those holy statues? Why don't they build something to celebrate life instead of all that mysticism?" Yet she still had enough self-control to add,

"Or am I just full of hot air? Am I? Well, am I?"

"No, you're not, Helena. You're absolutely right. Life is beautiful, and we can never celebrate it enough."

"Yes," said Helena. "No matter what people say, life is marvelous, if you want to know who gets my goat, it's those killjoy pessimists, even if I have plenty to complain about, you don't hear a peep out of me, what for, I ask you, what for, when life can bring me a day like today; oh, how marvelous it all is: a strange town, and me here with you...."

I let her talk, inserting a word of encouragement whenever she paused. Before long we were standing in front of Kostka's building.