The JOKE (39 page)

I couldn't imagine myself getting up and leaving. I couldn't imagine myself taking a single step. I was expected at four. But I wouldn't have the strength to get up and leave. I only like it here. Here by the river. Here there is water flowing, slowly, and for millennia.

It flows slowly and I will lie here, slowly and long.

Then someone spoke to me. It was Ludvik. I expected another blow. But I was not afraid now. Nothing could shake me now.

He sat down and asked if I would be at the performance that afternoon. "You're not going, are you?" I asked him. "I am." "Is that why you came from Prague?" "No, that's not why I came. But things turn out differently from the way we expect." "Yes," I said,

"completely differently." "I've been wandering through the fields for an hour. I didn't expect to find you here." "Neither did I." "I have something to ask of you," he said, without looking me in the eye. Just like Vlasta. But I didn't mind it from him. I liked it from him when he didn't look me in the eye. I had the impression that it was his decency.

And this decency warmed and restored me. "I want to ask you," he said, "whether you might let me sit in with the band this afternoon."

10

There were still a few hours before the next bus was due to leave, so I set off, impelled by the disquiet within me, out of the village and into the fields, trying as I went to drive from my mind all thoughts of that day. It wasn't easy: my lip stung where the youth's fist had connected with it, and again the figure of Lucie emerged to remind me that every attempt to right the wrongs done me had ended with my wronging others. I was driving the thoughts away because everything they kept repeating to me I knew very well now; I tried to keep my mind empty and to admit into it only the distant (and now scarcely audible) calls of the horsemen, which carried me away somewhere beyond myself, beyond my painful story, and thus offered me relief. I circled the entire village along the field paths until I reached the bank of the Morava and set off along it downstream; on the opposite bank there were a few geese and in the distance woodland, otherwise just fields and fields. Then ahead of me I saw a figure lying on the grassy bank. As I got nearer, I recognized him: he was lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, and under his head he had a violin case (all around were fields, flat and endless, just as they had been for centuries, only marred by steel pylons supporting the heavy cables of high-tension lines). Nothing would have been easier than to avoid him: his eyes were fixed on the sky and didn't see me. But on this occasion I didn't want to avoid him. I wanted instead to avoid myself and the thoughts that were thrusting in on me. I went up to him and spoke. He looked up at me and his eyes struck me as timid and apprehensive, and I noticed (this was the first time I'd seen him at close range for a number of years) that only a sparse fringe remained of the thick hair which had once added an inch or two to his already lofty stature, and that on the

crown of his head there were only a few sad strands covering the bare skin; his departed hair reminded me of the long years in which I'd not seen him, and I suddenly regretted those years of separation (the calls of the horsemen, scarcely audible, came from the distance), and I felt a sudden guilty love for him. He lay before me, raised on one elbow; he was big and clumsy, while his violin case was small and black like a baby's coffin. I knew that his band (once also
my
band) would be playing that afternoon in the village, and I asked if I might be allowed to sit in with them.

I made this request before I had had time to think it through (as if the words came before the thought), so I expressed it abruptly yet completely in accord with my heart; for at that moment I was filled with a sorrowful love; love for this world I had abandoned years ago, for this world, distant and ancient, in which horsemen ride around a village with a masked king, in which people walk around in white frilled shirts and sing songs, for a world that for me is merged with images of my hometown and of my mother (my poor mother, confiscated from me) and of my youth; all day long that love had been quietly growing in me, and now it had burst out almost tearfully; I loved that ancient world and begged it to offer me sanctuary and to save me.

But how and by what right? Hadn't I avoided Jaroslav two days ago precisely because his appearance evoked that irritating folk music? Hadn't I that very morning approached the folk festival with distaste? What had suddenly destroyed the old barriers that for fifteen years had stopped me from looking back happily on my young days in the cimbalom band, stopped me from returning to my hometown with affection? Could it be because a few hours ago Zemanek had sneered at the Ride of the Kings? Was
he
perhaps the one who had made me dislike folk song, was it
he
who had now purified it again? Was I really only the other end of the compass needle of which he was the pointer? Was I really so degradingly dependent on him? No, it was not only Zemanek's mockery that had made it possible for me to regain my love for the world of folk costumes, songs, and cimbalom bands; I could love it because this morning I had found it (unexpectedly) in its forlornness; in its forlornness and in its
abandonment;
it was abandoned by pomposity and publicity, abandoned by political propaganda, abandoned by social Utopias, abandoned by the swarms of cultural officials, abandoned by the affected adherence of my contemporaries, abandoned (even) by Zemanek; this abandonment had purified it; purified it like someone with not long to live; illuminated it with an irresistible
ultimate beauty;
that abandonment was giving it back to me.

The band's performance was to take place in the restaurant garden where I had recently eaten and had read Helena's letter; when Jaroslav and I arrived, there were already a few elderly people (waiting patiently for their musical afternoon) and about the same number of drunks staggering from table to table; at the back, around the wide-branched linden tree, were a few chairs, and a double bass leaned against the trunk in its gray canvas shroud; not far from it a man in a white frilled shirt was quietly running the mallets over the strings of the cimbalom; the other members of the band stood nearby, and Jaroslav introduced them to me: the second fiddle (a tall, dark young man in folk costume) was a doctor at the local hospital; the bespectacled bass player was the inspector of cultural affairs for the District Committee; the clarinetist (who agreed to lend me his instrument and alternate with me) was a schoolteacher; the cimbalom player, the only one besides Jaroslav that I remembered, was an economic planner at the factory. After Jaroslav ceremoniously introduced me to them as a founding member of the band, and thus as the clarinet of honor, we took our seats under the tree and began to play.

I hadn't held a clarinet in my hands for a long time, but I knew the first tune well, and I soon lost my initial stage fright, especially when the others voiced their approval at the end of the piece and refused to believe it was such a long time since I had played; then the waiter (the same one I'd paid in such desperate haste a few hours before) pulled up a small table, set it under the branches of our tree, and put a wickerwork demijohn of wine and six glasses out for us; gradually, we began to drink. After we played a few more pieces, I nodded to the teacher; he took back his clarinet and told me again that my playing was excellent; pleased by the praise, I leaned against the trunk of the tree, and while I

watched the band, now playing without me, a long-forgotten feeling of warm companionship washed over me, and I was grateful for its coming to my assistance at the end of this bitter day. And once again Lucie emerged before my eyes, and I thought I now knew why she had appeared at the barbershop and then the next day in Kostka's tale, which was both truth and legend: perhaps she had wanted to tell me that her destiny (the destiny of the tarnished young girl) was close to mine; that although we'd passed each other by and failed to find understanding, our life stories were kindred and coupled, because they were both
stories of devastation;
just as physical love had been devastated for Lucie, thus depriving her life of a basic value, so my life had been robbed of values that were to have provided its foundations, and that were in origin pure and innocent; yes, innocent: physical love, however devastated in Lucie's life, is innocent, just as the songs of my region are innocent, just as the cimbalom band is innocent, just as the hometown I hated is innocent, just as Fucik, whose portrait I couldn't look at without loathing, is innocent, just as the word comrade, though for me it had a menacing ring, is as innocent as the word future and many other words. The fault lay elsewhere and was so great that its shadow had fallen far and wide, on the whole world of innocent things (and words), and was devastating them. We lived, I and Lucie, in a devastated world; and because we did not know how to commiserate with the devastated things, we turned away from them and so injured them, and ourselves as well. Lucie, so much loved, so badly loved, is that what you have come to tell me after all these years? Have you come to intercede for the devastated world?

The song came to an end and the teacher handed me the clarinet, saying that he was done for the day, that I played better than he did and deserved to play all the more since nobody knew when I would be coming back. I caught Jaroslav's eye and said I'd be very glad for a chance to come back as soon as possible. Jaroslav asked me if I really meant it.

I said I did and we started playing. Jaroslav had long since abandoned his chair, and with his head bent back and his violin, despite all the rules, far down against his chest, he was walking up and down as he played; the second fiddle and I also stood up now and then, mainly

when we wanted more space for our flights of inspiration. And exactly in those moments when we devoted ourselves to improvisations that demanded inventiveness, precision, and subtle interplay, Jaroslav became the soul of us all, and I was amazed at what an excellent musician this big fellow was, belonging as he did (he especially) to the devastated values of my life; he had been taken from me, and I (to my detriment and to my shame) had let him go, although he had been perhaps my most faithful, guileless, and innocent friend.

Meanwhile, the character of the audience gathered in the garden was slowly being transformed: to the handful of mostly elderly people who had initially followed our playing with warm interest was now added a growing crowd of young people who occupied the remaining tables, ordered (very loudly) beer and wine, and soon (as the alcohol level rose) began demonstrating their wild need to be seen, heard, and recognized. And so the atmosphere changed completely, the place grew noisier and more agitated (the boys were staggering from table to table, yelling at each other and at their girls), until I caught myself ceasing to concentrate on the music and looking too frequently at the tables in the garden, watching the adolescent faces with undisguised hatred. When I saw those long-haired heads spitting out saliva and words, my old hatred for the age of immaturity flooded back and it seemed to me that I could see nothing but actors, their faces covered by masks of cretinous virility and arrogant brutishness; I found no extenuation in the thought that the masks hid another (more human) face, since the real horror seemed to lie in the fact that the faces beneath the masks were fiercely devoted to the inhumanity and coarseness of the masks.

Jaroslav obviously felt the same, for he suddenly lowered his violin and said that he was in no mood to play for this audience. He suggested that we leave; that we take the roundabout path through the fields, the one we used to take in the old days; it was a fine day, dusk would soon be coming, it would be a warm starlit evening, at some point we would stop by a wild rosebush in the fields, and there we would play, just for ourselves, for our own pleasure, as we used to do; we'd fallen into the habit (the stupid habit) of playing only on prearranged occasions, and he had had enough of it.

At first the others all agreed, rather enthusiastically, because evidently they too felt that their love for folk music should be expressed in more intimate surroundings, but then the bass player (the inspector of cultural affairs) reminded us that we had agreed to play until nine, that this was what the District Committee and the restaurant manager expected, that it had all been planned; that we had to fulfill our obligation, that otherwise the whole organization of the festival would fall apart, and that we could play in the fields some other time.

Just then the lights on the long wires strung from tree to tree all came on; since it was not yet dark and barely even dusk, they spread no light around them but just hung there in the graying space like large motionless teardrops, white teardrops that could not be wiped away and could not flow; there was a sudden and inexplicable melancholy that was impossible to resist. Jaroslav repeated (almost imploringly) that he didn't want to stay here, that he wanted to go out into the fields, to the wild rosebush, and play there for his own pleasure, but then he made a gesture of resignation, pressed the violin to his chest, and began to play.

This time we didn't allow ourselves to be distracted by the audience and played with an even greater concentration than before; the more inattentive and rude the atmosphere in the restaurant garden, the more closely we were ringed (like a desert island) by its tumultuous indifference, the more melancholy we felt, the more we turned in towards one another, playing for ourselves rather than for the audience, forgiving the audience, so that we managed to create through the music a protective enclosure in the midst of the rowdy drunks, like a glass cabin suspended in the cold depths of the sea.

"If the mountains were paper and the oceans ink, / If the stars were scribes, and all the world could think, / Not all their words upon words, in the event, / Could come to the end of my love's testament," sang Jaroslav with the violin still at his chest, and I felt happy inside these songs (inside the glass cabin of these songs) where sorrow is not lightness, laughter is not grimace, love is not laughable, and hatred is not timid, where people love with body and soul (yes, Lucie, with body and soul), where they dance in joy, jump into the Danube in despair,