The JOKE (27 page)

from it on its chain) and tried out a number of positions for comfort: crossing her legs under her and sitting Turkish style, then straightening them out again and leaning on an elbow; finally rolling over onto her belly and pressing her face into my lap. She told me in every possible way how happy she was; in between she kept kissing me, which I endured with considerable self-restraint, as her mouth was too wet and she was not satisfied with my shoulders or cheeks but tried to touch my lips as well (and unless blinded by desire, I loathe wet kisses).

Then she told me she'd never known anything like this before; I told her (just to say something) that she was exaggerating. She swore that she never lied in love, that I had no reason to doubt her. Expanding on her thought, she asserted that she had a premonition of it all, that she had a premonition from our very first meeting; that the body has its own foolproof instinct; that naturally I'd impressed her with my intelligence and my elan (yes, elan; I wonder how she discovered that in me), but she also knew (though she would never have dared bring it up until now) that our two bodies had immediately entered into that secret pact which the human body signs perhaps only once in a lifetime. "And that's why I'm so happy, you see?" She swung her legs down from the divan, leaned over for the bottle, and poured herself another glass. She drank it and said, laughing: "What can I do? If you won't join me, I'll have to drink by myself!"

Although I considered the story finished, I must confess that Helena's words didn't displease me; they confirmed the success of my enterprise and my satisfaction with it.

And mostly because I didn't know what to say and didn't want to seem too taciturn, I objected again that she was exaggerating when she talked about a once-in-a-lifetime experience; hadn't she herself told me her husband had been the great love of her life?

Helena thought seriously about this (she was sitting on the divan, her feet resting on the floor, her legs spread slightly apart, her elbows propped on her legs, and her right hand holding the empty glass) and said quietly, "Yes."

No doubt she calculated that the grand emotion she had just experienced bound her to an equally grand sincerity. "Yes," she repeated,

adding that it was probably wrong of her to denigrate something that once had been in the name of today's miracle. She drank another glass and said that it was the most powerful experiences that were the hardest to compare; and that for a woman love at twenty and love at thirty were completely different; she hoped I understood what she meant: not only from the psychological point of view but also physically.

And then (somewhat illogically and inconsistently) she announced that actually there was a certain resemblance between me and her husband! She was not quite sure where it lay; I didn't look like him, but she couldn't be wrong, she had a foolproof instinct enabling her to look deep into people, behind their outward appearance.

"I'd really like to know what it is that makes me resemble your husband," I said.

She begged my pardon, but after all, I had been the one who wanted to hear about him, and that was the only reason she'd dared to speak of him. But if I wanted to hear the whole truth, she must tell me: only twice in her life had she been attracted to anyone so strongly, so unconditionally—to her husband and to me. The thing we had in common, she said, was a mysterious elan vital; the joy that emanated from us; eternal youth; strength.

Helena may have used a rather vague vocabulary in her attempt to clarify my resemblance to Pavel Zemanek, but there was no denying that she saw and felt the resemblance and clung to it tenaciously. I can't say she hurt or offended me, I was merely stunned by the immense absurdity of her words. I went over to the chair with my clothes on it and slowly started to dress.

"Have I said something wrong, darling?" Helena had sensed my displeasure, and she got up and came over to me; she began stroking my face and begging me not to be angry with her. She tried to stop me from dressing. (For some strange reason she regarded my trousers and shirt as her enemies.) She began trying to convince me that she really loved me, that she wasn't using this word in vain; that perhaps she might have an opportunity to prove it; that she knew right away when I'd asked about her husband that it was foolish to talk about him, that she didn't want any man, any stranger, coming between us; yes, stranger, because her husband had long been a stranger to her. "I haven't been living with him for three years now, silly. The only reason we don't get a divorce is little Zdena.

He has his life, I have mine. We're actually strangers. He is no more than my past, my very ancient past."

"Is that true?" I asked.

"Indeed it is," she said.

"You're lying. I don't believe you," I said.

"I'm not lying. We live in the same flat, but not as man and wife. It's been years since we lived together as man and wife."

The beseeching face of a distressed woman in love was looking at me. Again and again she assured me that she was telling the truth, that she wasn't trying to deceive me; that I had no cause to be jealous of her husband; that her husband was merely the past; that she hadn't even been unfaithful today, because she didn't have anyone to be unfaithful to; and I didn't need to worry: our lovemaking had been not only beautiful but
pure.

Suddenly I realized, with sheer horror, that there was no reason for me not to believe her.

When she saw that, she relaxed a bit and begged me several times to tell her out loud that I believed her; then she poured herself a glass of vodka and wanted us to drink a toast (I refused); she kissed me; it made my flesh creep but I couldn't turn my gaze away from her; I was fascinated by her idiotic blue eyes and by her (animated, quivering) naked body.

But now I saw her nudity in a new light; it was nudity
denuded,
denuded of the power to excite that until now had eliminated all the faults of age in which the whole history and present of Helena's marriage seemed to be concentrated and that had therefore fascinated me. Now that she stood before me bare, without a husband or any bonds to him, utterly herself, her physical unloveliness lost all its power to excite and it too became only itself: a simple unloveliness.

Helena no longer had any idea how I saw her; she was getting more and more drunk and more and more contented; she was happy that I believed in her love but didn't know how to give vent to her happiness. For no apparent reason she decided to switch on the radio, squatting in front of it with her back to me and playing with the dial; she found some jazz; she stood up, her eyes gleaming; she did a clumsy imitation of the undulating movements of the twist (I stared aghast at her breasts flying from side to side). She laughed: "Is that right? You know, I've never tried these dances." She laughed again, very loudly, and came towards me with her arms outstretched; she asked me to dance with her; she was angry when I refused, she said she didn't know the new dances but that she wanted to learn them and I must teach her; she wanted me to teach her a lot of things, she wanted to be young again with me. She begged me to assure her that she was still young (I did). She realized that I was dressed and she was naked; she laughed; it struck her as particularly odd; she asked whether the man who lived here had a big mirror so that she could see us. There was no mirror, only a glass-fronted bookcase; she tried to see us in the glass, but the image was indistinct; she went close to the bookcase and laughed at the titles on the spines of the books: the Bible,
Calvin's Institutes,
Pascal's
Provincial Letters
Against the Jesuits,
the works of Jan Hus; she took out the Bible, struck a solemn pose, opened the book at random, and began to read in a clerical voice. She asked me whether she would have made a good priest. I said that reading from the Bible became her but it was time to get dressed because Mr. Kostka would be arriving any moment. "What time is it?" she asked. "Half past six," I said. She seized my left wrist, looked at my watch, and shouted: "Liar! It's only a quarter to six! You want to get rid of me!"

I longed for her to be gone; for her body (so hopelessly material) to dematerialize, melt, turn into a stream and flow away, or evaporate and vanish out the window—but the body was here, a body I had stolen from no one, in which I'd vanquished no one, destroyed no one, a body abandoned, deserted by its spouse, a body I had intended to use but which had used me and was now insolently enjoying its triumph, exulting, jumping for joy.

There was no way to cut short my bizarre torment. It was almost half past six when she started to dress. As she did so she noticed a red mark on her arm where I had hit her; she stroked it, saying she'd wear it as a memento until she saw me again; then she quickly corrected herself:

she would certainly see me long before the memento on her body had disappeared; she stood facing me just as she was (one stocking on and the other in hand), she made me promise we'd see each other before then; I nodded; that wasn't good enough: I had to promise we'd see each other
many times
before then.

She took a long time getting dressed. She left a few minutes before seven.

5

I opened the window, because I yearned for a wind to waft away all memory of my ill-starred afternoon, every residue of odor and emotion. Then I put the bottle away, straightened up the cushions on the divan, and when I felt all traces had been removed, I sank into the armchair near the window and looked forward (almost imploringly) to Kostka: to his masculine voice (I had a great need for a deep male voice), to his long, skinny frame
and fiat
chest, to his quiet way of talking, eccentric and wise; I looked forward to him telling me about Lucie, who in contrast to Helena was so sweetly incorporeal, abstract, so far removed from conflicts, tensions, and dramas, and yet not without influence on my life: the thought crossed my mind that she'd influenced it in the way astrologers think the movements of the stars influence human life; as I sat there snugly in the armchair (under the open window still expelling Helena's odor), I thought that I had hit on the solution of my superstitious riddle, that now I knew why Lucie had flashed across the sky these past two days: it was to reduce my vengeance to nothing, to turn everything I'd come here for to mist; for Lucie, whom I'd loved so much and who had inexplicably run from me at the last moment, was the goddess of escape, the goddess of vain pursuit, the goddess of mists; and she still held my head in her hands.

PART SIX

Kostka

1

We had not seen each other in many years, and actually we had
met only a few times in our lives. This is rather strange, because in my imagination I meet Ludvik Jahn very frequently, and I turn to him in my soliloquies as
to
my chief adversary. I have grown so accustomed to his incorporeal presence that I found myself in some confusion yesterday when suddenly, after all these years, I met him as a real man of flesh and blood.

I called Ludvik my adversary. Have I the right to do so? Each time I meet him I seem by coincidence to be in a helpless situation, and each time he is the one who helps me out of it. Yet beneath this outward alliance lies an abyss of inward disagreement. I don't know whether Ludvik is as fully aware of it as I am. He has clearly attached greater significance to our outward bond than to our inward difference. He has been merciless to outward adversaries and tolerant of inward discords. Not I. I am the complete opposite.

Which is not to
say that I don't like Ludvik. I love him, as we love our adversaries.

2

I first met him in 1947 at one of those turbulent meetings that racked all institutions of higher learning in those days. The fate of the nation was at stake. We all sensed it, myself included, and in all the discussions, debates, and balloting I stood with the Communist minority.

Many Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, held it against me. They considered me a traitor for allying myself with a movement that inscribed godlessness on its shield.

When I see these people today, they imagine that after fifteen years I have at last seen the error of my ways. But I have to disappoint them. To this day I have not changed my position at all.

Of course the Communist movement is godless. Though only those Christians who refuse to cast out the beam in their own eye can blame Communism itself for that. I say Christians. Yet where are they? Looking around me, I see nothing but pseudo-Christians living exactly like unbelievers. But being a Christian means living differently. It means taking the path Christ took,
imitating
Christ. It means giving up private interests, comforts, and power, and turning toward the poor, the humiliated, and the suffering. But is that what the churches were doing? My father was a working man, chronically unemployed, with a humble faith in God. He turned his pious face to Him, but the Church never turned its face to my father. And so he remained forsaken amidst his neighbors, forsaken within the church, alone with his God until he fell ill and died.

The churches failed to realize that the working-class movement was the movement of the humiliated and oppressed supplicating for justice. They did not choose to work with and for them to create the kingdom

of God on earth. By siding with the oppressors, they deprived the working-class movement of God. And now they reproach it for being godless. The Pharisees! Yes, the socialist movement is godless, but I see in this a casting of divine blame on us, on Christians. Blame for our hardheartedness toward the poor and suffering.

And what am I to do in this situation? Should I be shocked at the drop in church membership? Should I be shocked that the schools are bringing the children up in an antireligious frame of mind? How silly! True religion does not need the favor of secular power. Secular disfavor only strengthens faith.

Or should I fight socialism because we made it godless? Sillier still! I can only lament the tragic error that led socialism away from God. All I can do is to explain this error and work to rectify it.