meeting her at noon.
Olga realized that it was Jakub, and she felt immense joy. And instantly she was surprised by this joy: How
can I be feeling such pleasure at the idea of seeing him again?
Olga was actually one of those modern women who readily divide themselves into a person who lives life and a person who observes it.
But even the Olga who observed life was rejoicing. For she understood very well that it was utterly excessive for Olga (the one who lived life) to rejoice so impetuously, and because she (the one who observed life) was mischievous this excessiveness gave her pleasure. She smiled at the idea that Jakub would be frightened if he knew of the fierceness of her joy.
The hands of the clock above the pool showed a quarter to twelve. Olga wondered how Jakub would react if she were to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him passionately. She swam to the edge of the pool, climbed out, and went to a cubicle to change. She regretted a little not having been informed of Jakub's visit earlier in the day. She would have been better dressed. Now she was wearing an uninteresting little gray suit that spoiled her good mood.
There were times, such as a few minutes earlier while swimming in the pool, when she totally forgot her appearance. But now she was planted in front of the cubicle's small mirror and seeing herself in a gray suit. A few minutes earlier she had smiled mischievously at the idea that she could throw her arms around Jakub's neck and kiss him passionately. But she had that idea in the pool, where she had been swimming bodilessly, like a disembodied thought. Now that she had sud-
denly been provided with a body and a suit, she was far away from that joyous fantasy, and she knew that she was exactly what to her great anger Jakub always saw her as: a touching little girl who needed help.
If Olga had been a little more foolish, she would have found herself quite pretty. But since she was an intelligent girl, she considered herself much uglier than she really was, for she was actually neither ugly nor pretty, and any man with normal aesthetic requirements would gladly spend the night with her.
But since Olga delighted in dividing herself in two, the one who observed life now interrupted the one who lived life: What did it matter that she was like this or like that? Why suffer over a reflection in a mirror? Wasn't she something other than an object for men's eyes? Other than merchandise putting herself on the market? Was she incapable of being independent of her appearance, at the very least to the degree that any man can be?
She left the thermal building and saw a good-natured and touching face. She knew that instead of extending his hand to her he was going to pat her on the head like a good little girl. Sure enough, that is what he did.
'Where are we having lunch?' he asked.
She suggested the patients' dining room, where there was a vacant place at her table.
The patients' dining room was immense, filled with tables and people squeezed closely together having lunch. Jakub and Olga sat down and then waited a long
time before a waitress served them soup. Two other people were sitting at their table, and they tried to engage in conversation with Jakub, whom they immediately classified as a member of the sociable family of patients. It was therefore only in snatches during the general talk at the table that Jakub could question Olga about a few practical details: Was she satisfied with the food here, was she satisfied with the doctor, was she satisfied with the treatment? When he asked about her lodgings, she answered that she had a dreadful neighbor. She motioned with her head to a nearby table, where Ruzena was having lunch.
Their table companions took their leave, and looking at Ruzena, Jakub said: 'Hegel has a curious reflection on the Grecian profile, whose beauty, according to him, comes from the fact that the nose and the brow form a single line that highlights the upper part of the head, the seat of intelligence and of the mind. Looking at your neighbor, I notice that her whole face, on the other hand, is concentrated on the mouth. Look how intensely she chews, and how she's talking loudly at the same time. Hegel would be disgusted by such importance being attached to the lower part, the animal part, of the face, and yet this girl I dislike is quite pretty.'
'Do you think so?' asked Olga, her voice betraying annoyance.
That is why Jakub hastened to say: 'At any rate I'd be afraid of being ground up into tiny bits by that ruminant's mouth.' And he added: 'Hegel would be more satisfied with you. The dominant part of your
face is the brow, which instantly tells everyone about your intelligence.'
'Logic like that infuriates me,' said Olga sharply. 'It tries to show that a human being's physiognomy is imprinted on his soul. It's absolute nonsense. I picture my soul with a strong chin and sensual lips, but my chin is small and so is my mouth. If I'd never seen myself in a mirror and had to describe my outside appearance from what I know of the inside of me, the portrait wouldn't look at all like me! I am not at all the person I look like!'
4
It is difficult to find a word to characterize Jakub's relation to Olga. She was the daughter of a friend of his who had been executed when Olga was seven years old. Jakub decided at that time to take the little orphan under his wing. He had no children, and such obligation-free fatherhood appealed to him. He playfully called Olga his ward.
They were now in Olga's room. She plugged in a hotplate and put a small saucepan of water on it, and Jakub realized that he could not bring himself to reveal the purpose of his visit to her. He didn't dare tell her that he had come to say goodbye, was afraid the news
would take on too pathetic a dimension and generate an emotional climate between them that he regarded as uncalled for. He had long suspected her of being secretly in love with him.
Olga took two cups out of the cupboard, spooned instant coffee into them, and poured boiling water. Jakub stirred in a sugar cube and heard Olga say: 'Please tell me, Jakub, what kind of man was my father really?' 'Why do you ask?'
'Did he really have nothing to blame himself for?'
'What are you thinking of?' asked Jakub, amazed. Olga's father had been officially rehabilitated sometime earlier, and this political figure who had been sentenced to death and executed had been publicly proclaimed innocent. No one doubted his innocence.
'That's not what I mean,' said Olga. 'I mean just the opposite.'
'I don't understand,' said Jakub.
'I was wondering if he hadn't done to others exactly what was done to him. There wasn't a grain of difference between him and those who sent him to the gallows. They had the same beliefs, they were the same fanatics. They were convinced that even the slightest differences could put the revolution in mortal danger, and they suspected everyone. They sent him to his death in the name of holy things he himself believed in. Why then couldn't he have behaved toward others the same way they behaved toward him?'
'Time flies terribly fast, and the past is becoming
more and more incomprehensible,' said Jakub after a moment's hesitation. 'What do you know of your father besides a few letters, a few pages of his diary they kindly returned to you, and a few recollections from his friends?'
But Olga insisted: 'Why are you so evasive? I asked you a perfectly clear question. Was my father like the ones who sent him to his death?'
'It's possible,' said Jakub with a shrug.
'Then why couldn't he too have been capable of committing the same cruelties?'
'Theoretically,' replied Jakub very slowly, 'theoretically he was capable of doing to others exactly the same thing they did to him. There isn't a man in this world who isn't capable, with a relatively light heart, of sending a fellow human to his death. At any rate I've never met one. If men one day come to change in this regard, they'll lose a basic human attribute. They'll no longer be men but creatures of another species.'
'You people are wonderful!' Olga exclaimed as if shouting at thousands of Jakubs. 'When you turn everybody into murderers your own murders stop being crimes and just become an inevitable human attribute.'
'Most people move around inside an idyllic circle between their home and their work,' said Jakub. 'They live in a secure territory beyond good and evil. They're sincerely appalled by the sight of a murderer. But taking them out
