The unbearable lightness of being (35 page)

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freedom. But hadn't
her magnanimity been merely an excuse? She knew all along that he would come
home to her! She had summoned him farther and farther down after her like the
nymphs who lured unsuspecting villagers to the marshes and left them there to
drown. She had taken advantage of a night of stomach cramps to inveigle him
into moving to the country! How cunning she could be! She had summoned him to
follow her as if wishing to test him again and again, to test his love for her;
she had summoned him persistently, and here he was, tired and gray, with stiffened
fingers that would never again be capable of holding a scalpel.

Now they were in a place that led
nowhere. Where could they go from here? They would never be allowed abroad.
They would never find a way back to Prague: no one would give them work. They didn't
even have a reason to move to another village.

Good God, had they had to cover all
that distance just to make her believe he loved her?

At last Tomas succeeded in getting
the tire back on. He climbed in behind the wheel, the men jumped in the back, and
the engine roared.

She went home and drew a bath.
Lying in the hot water, she kept telling herself that she had set a lifetime of
her weaknesses against Tomas. We all have a tendency to consider strength the
culprit and weakness the innocent victim. But now Tereza realized that in her
case the opposite was true! Even her dreams, as if aware of the single weakness
in a man otherwise strong, made a display of her suffering to him, thereby
forcing him to retreat. Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to
capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed into the
rabbit in her arms. She could not get that dream out of her mind.

She stood up
from her bath and went to put on some nice

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clothes. She wanted
to look her best to please him, make him happy.

Just as she buttoned the last
button, in burst Tomas with the chairman of the collective farm and an
unusually pale young farm worker.

"Quick!"
shouted Tomas. "Something strong to drink!" Tereza ran out and came
back with a bottle of slivovitz. She poured some into a liqueur glass, and the
young man downed it in one gulp.

Then they told
her what had happened. The man had dislocated his shoulder and started
bellowing with pain. No one knew what to do, so they called Tomas, who with one
jerk set it back in its socket.

After downing
another glass of slivovitz, the man said to Tomas, "Your wife's looking
awfully pretty today."

"You
idiot," said the chairman. "Tereza is always pretty."

"I know
she's always pretty," said the young man, "but today she has such
pretty clothes on, too. I've never seen you in that dress. Are you going out
somewhere?"

"No,
I'm not. I put it on for Tomas."

"You lucky
devil!" said the chairman, laughing. "My old woman wouldn't dream of
dressing up just for me."

"So that's
why you go out walking with your pig instead of your wife," said the young
man, and he started laughing, too.

"How is
Mefisto, anyway? " asked Tomas. "I haven't seen him for at
least"—he thought a bit—"at least an hour."

"He
must be missing me," said the chairman.

"Seeing you
in that dress makes me want to dance," the young man said to Tereza. And
turning to Tomas, he asked, "Would you let me dance with her?"

"Let's
all go and dance," said Tereza.

"Would
you come along?" the young man asked Tomas.

"Where
do you plan to go?" asked Tomas.

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The young man
named a nearby town where the hotel bar had a dance floor.

"You come too," said the
young man in an imperative tone of voice to the chairman of the collective
farm, and because by then he had downed a third glass of slivovitz, he added,
"If Mefisto misses you so much, we'll take him along. Then we'll have both
little pigs to show off. The women will come begging when they get an eyeful of
those two together!" And again he laughed and laughed.

"If you're not ashamed of
Mefisto, I'm all yours." And they piled into Tomas's pickup—Tomas behind
the wheel, Tereza next to him, and the two men in the back with the half-empty
bottle of slivovitz. Not until they had left the village behind did the
chairman realize that they had forgotten Mefisto. He shouted up to Tomas to
turn back.

"Never mind," said the
young man. "One little pig will do the trick." That calmed the
chairman down.

It was growing dark. The road
started climbing in hairpin curves.

When they reached the town, they
drove straight to the hotel. Tereza and Tomas had never been there before. They
went downstairs to the basement, where they found the bar, the dance floor, and
some tables. A man of about sixty was playing the piano, a woman of the same
age the violin. The hits they played were forty years old. There were five or
so couples out on the floor.

"Nothing here for me,"
said the young man after surveying the situation, and immediately asked Tereza
to dance.

The collective farm chairman sat
down at an empty table with Tomas and ordered a bottle of wine.

"I can't
drink," Tomas reminded him. "I'm driving."

"Don't be silly," he
said. "We're staying the night." And he went off to the reception
desk to book two rooms.

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When Tereza came
back from the dance floor with the young man, the chairman asked her to dance,
and finally Tomas had a turn with her, too.

"Tomas," she said to him
out on the floor, "everything bad that's happened in your life is my
fault. It's my fault you ended up here, as low as you could possibly go."

"Low? What
are you talking about?"

"If we had
stayed in Zurich, you'd still be a surgeon."

"And you'd
be a photographer."

"That's a silly comparison to
make," said Tereza. "Your work meant everything to you; I don't care
what I do, I can do anything, I haven't lost a thing; you've lost
everything."

"Haven't you noticed I've been
happy here, Tereza?" Tomas said.

"Surgery
was your mission," she said.

"Missions are stupid, Tereza.
I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're
free, free of all missions."

There was no doubting that
forthright voice of his. She recalled the scene she had witnessed earlier in
the day when he had been repairing the pickup and looked so old. She had
reached her goal: she had always wanted him to be old. Again she thought of the
rabbit she had pressed to her face in her childhood room.

What does it mean to turn into a
rabbit? It means losing all strength. It means that one is no stronger than the
other anymore.

On they danced to the strains of
the piano and violin. Tereza leaned her head on Tomas's shoulder. Just as she
had when they flew together in the airplane through the storm clouds. She was
experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant:
we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness
was form, the

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happiness content. Happiness filled the
space of sadness.

They went back to their table. She
danced twice more with the collective farm chairman and once with the young man
who was so drunk he fell with her on the dance floor.

Then they all went upstairs and to
their two separate rooms.

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