And, by the way, why were these fat women squealing so joyfully? Was it because they wanted to display their beauty to the young men and to seduce them?
Surely not. Their conspicuous shamelessness arose precisely from the certainty that they had no seductive
beauty at their disposal. They were filled with rancor against youthful women, and hoped by exhibiting their sexually useless bodies to malign and mock female nakedness. They wished to take revenge on and torpedo with the repulsiveness of their bodies the glory of female beauty, for they knew that bodies, whether beautiful or ugly, are ultimately all the same and that the ugly overshadow the beautiful as they whisper in men's ears: Look, this is the truth of the body that bewitches you! Look, this big flabby tit is the same thing as that breast you so madly adore.
The joyful shamelessness of the fat women in the pool was a necrophiliac ring dance around the transience of youth, a ring dance made all the more joyful by the presence in the pool of a young woman to serve as sacrificial victim. When Olga wrapped herself in the sheet they interpreted the gesture as sabotage of their cruel rite, and thus they were furious.
But Ruzena was neither fat nor old, she was actually prettier than Olga! Why then did she show no solidarity with her?
Had she decided to have an abortion and been convinced that happiness with Klima was awaiting her, she would have reacted quite differently. Consciousness of being loved separates a woman from the herd, and Ruzena would have been enraptured by the experience of her inimitable singularity. She would have seen the fat women as enemies and Olga as a sister. She would have come to her aid, as beauty comes to the aid of beauty, happiness to happiness, love to love.
But the night before, Ruzena had slept very poorly and had decided that she could not count on Klima's love, so that everything separating her from the herd seemed to her an illusion. All she had was the burgeoning embryo in her belly, protected by society and tradition. All she had was the glorious universality of female destiny, which promised to fight for her.
And these women in the pool exactly represented femaleness in its universality: the femaleness of eternal childbirth, nursing and withering, the femaleness that snickers at the thought of that fleeting second when a woman believes she is loved and feels she is an inimitable individual.
There is no reconciliation possible between a woman who is convinced she is unique and women who have shrouded themselves in universal female destiny. After a sleepless night heavy with thought, Ruzena took (poor trumpeter!) the side of those women.
Jakub was at the wheel, and Bob, sitting beside him on the front seat, kept turning his head to lick his face. Beyond the last houses of the town stood high-rise apartment buildings. They had not been there the year before, and Jakub found them hideous. In the
midst of a green landscape they were like brooms in a plant pot. Jakub was stroking Bob, who was looking at the buildings with satisfaction, and he reflected that God had been kind to dogs in not putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
The dog again licked his face (perhaps he felt that Jakub was always thinking about him), and Jakub thought that in his country things were getting neither better nor worse but only more and more ridiculous: he had once been victim of a hunt for humans, and yesterday he witnessed a hunt for dogs that was like the same old play with a new cast. Pensioners took the roles of examining magistrates and prison guards, and the parts of the imprisoned political figures were played by a boxer dog, a mutt, and a dachshund.
He remembered that several years earlier his neighbors had found their cat in front of their door with its legs bound, nails pushed into its eyes, its tongue cut out. Neighborhood kids had been playing adults. Jakub stroked Bob's head and parked the car in front of the inn.
When he stepped out he thought the dog would rush joyfully toward the door of his home. But instead of starting to run, Bob jumped around Jakub, wanting to play. And yet when a voice shouted 'Bob!' the dog was off like a shot toward a woman standing in the doorway.
'You're a hopeless vagabond,' she said, and she asked Jakub apologetically how long the dog had been bothering him.
When Jakob replied that the dog had spent the night with him and that he had just driven him back home, the woman profusely and noisily thanked him and urged him to come in. She seated him in a special room apparently used for club banquets and rushed off in search of her husband.
She soon came back with a young man who sat down beside Jakub and shook his hand: 'You must be a very nice man to drive all the way here just to bring Bob back. He's stupid, and all he does is run around. But we really love him. Would you like something to eat?'
'Yes, thanks,' said Jakub, and the woman rushed off to the kitchen. Then Jakub recounted how he had saved Bob from a bunch of pensioners.
'The bastards!' exclaimed the young man, and then, turning toward the kitchen, called out to his wife: 'Vera! Come here! You should hear what they're doing down there in town, the bastards!'
Vera came back carrying a tray with a steaming bowl of soup. She sat down and Jakub had to resume the story of his adventure of the day before. The dog sat under the table, letting himself be scratched behind the ears.
When Jakub had finished his soup, the man got up and rushed off to the kitchen to bring back a dish of roast pork with dumplings.
Jakub was sitting by the window and feeling good. The man cursed the people down there (Jakub was fascinated: the man considered his restaurant a lofty place, an Olympus, a point of retreat and loftiness),
and the woman went off to lead a two-year-old boy in by the hand: 'Say thank you to the gentleman,' she said. 'He brought back your Bob.'
The toddler babbled some unintelligible words and emitted a little laugh for Jakub. It was sunny outside, and the yellowing foliage bent gently over the open window. There was not a sound. The inn was well above the world, and one could find peace there.
Although he did not like to procreate, Jakub liked children: 'You have a good-looking little boy,' he said.
'He's a bit strange,' said the woman. 'I don't know where he got that big beak.'
Jakub recalled his friend's nose and said: 'Doctor Skreta told me that he took care of you.'
'You know the doctor?' the man asked cheerily.
'He's a friend of mine,' said Jakub.
'We're very grateful to him,' said the young mother, and Jakub thought that the child was probably one of the successes of Skreta's eugenic project.
'He's not a physician, he's a magician,' the man said admiringly.
Jakub reflected that, in this place where the peace of Bethlehem reigned, these three were a
The toddler with the big nose again babbled unintelligibly, and the young father gazed at him lovingly. 'I wonder,' he said to his wife, 'which of your distant ancestors had a big nose.'
Jakub smiled. A curious question had just occurred
to him: Had Dr. Skreta also used a syringe to impregnate his own wife?
'Isn't that right?' the young father asked.
'Of course,' said Jakub. 'It's a great consolation to think that when we've long been in the grave our noses will still be strolling the earth.'
They all laughed, and the idea that Skreta could be the toddler's father now seemed to Jakub to be a fanciful dream.
5
Frantisek took the money from the lady whose refrigerator he had just fixed. He left the house, got on his faithful motorcycle, and headed toward the other end of town to hand over the day's receipts at the office in charge of repair services for the whole district. A few minutes after two he was through for the day. He started the
