motorcycle again and rode toward the thermal building. At the parking lot he saw the white sedan. He parked the motorcycle next to the car and walked under the colonnades toward the Hall of the People, because he surmised the trumpeter might be there.
He was driven neither by audacity nor combative-ness. He no longer wanted to make a scene. On the contrary, he was determined to control himself, to yield, to
submit totally. He told himself that his love was so great that he could bear anything for its sake. Like the fairy-tale prince who endures all kinds of torments and sufferings for the sake of the princess, confronting dragons and crossing oceans, he was ready to accept fabulously excessive humiliations.
Why was he so humble? Why did he not turn instead to another young woman, one of those available in the small spa town in such alluring abundance?
Frantisek is younger than Ruzena, and thus, unfortunately for him, he is very young. When he is more mature he will find out that things are transient, and he will become aware that beyond one woman's horizon there opens up a horizon of yet more women. But Frantisek still knows nothing about time. He has been living since childhood in an enduring, unchanging world, living in a kind of immobile eternity, he still has the same father and the same mother, and Ruzena, who had made a man of him, is above him like the lid of the firmament, of the only possible firmament. He cannot imagine life without her.
The day before, he had docilely promised not to spy on her and simultaneously had sincerely decided not to bother her. He told himself he was interested only in the trumpeter, and trailing him would not really be a violation of his promise. But at the same time he realized that this was only an excuse and that Ruzena would condemn his behavior, but it was stronger in him than any reflection or any resolution, it was like a drug addiction: he had to see the man; he had to see
him once more, for a long time and close up. He had to look his torment in the face. He had to look at that body, whose union with Ruzena's body seemed to him unimaginable and unbelievable. He had to look at him to confirm with his own eyes whether it was possible to think of their two bodies united.
On the bandstand they were already playing: Dr. Skreta on drums, a slender man on piano, and Klima on trumpet. Some young jazz fans who had slipped in to listen to the rehearsal were sitting in the hall. Frantisek had no fear that the motive for his presence would be found out. He was certain that the trumpeter, blinded by the motorcycle's light, had not seen his face on Tuesday evening, and thanks to Ruzena's caution no one knew much about his relations with the young woman.
The trumpeter interrupted the musicians and sat down at the piano to show the slender man the right tempo. Frantisek took a seat in the back of the hall, slowly transforming himself into a shadow that would not for a moment leave the trumpeter that day.
6
He was driving back from the forest inn and regretted no longer having beside him the jolly dog who had
licked his face. Then he thought it a miracle that he had succeeded for the forty-five years of his life in keeping that seat beside him free, enabling him now to leave the country so easily, with no baggage, with no burdens, alone, with a false (and yet beautiful) sensation of youth, as if he were a student just beginning to lay the foundation of his future.
He tried to get firmly in mind the idea that he was leaving his country. He tried hard to evoke his past life. He tried hard to see it as a landscape he looked back on with longing, a landscape vertiginously distant. But he could not manage it. What he did succeed in seeing behind him in his mind's eye was tiny, compressed like a closed accordion. He had to make an effort to evoke the scraps of memory that could give him the illusion of a destiny that had been lived.
He looked at the trees along the road. Their foliage was green, red, yellow, and brown. The forest looked aflame. He thought that he was departing at a moment when the forests were on fire and his life and memories were being consumed in those glorious and unfeeling flames. Should he hurt for not hurting? Should he be sad for not being sad?
He felt no sadness, but neither was he in any hurry. According to his arrangements with his friends abroad, he should already have crossed the border by now, but he felt he was again prey to that indecisive lethargy so well known and so much derided in his circle because he succumbed to it exactly when circumstances demanded energetic and resolute behavior. He knew
that he was going to maintain to the last moment that he was leaving today, but he was also aware that since the morning he had done all he could to delay the moment of departure from this charming spa town where for years he had been coming to see his friend, sometimes after long intervals but always with pleasure.
He parked the car (yes, the trumpeter's white sedan and Frantisek's motorcycle were already there) and went into the brasserie, where Olga would be joining him in half an hour. He saw a table he liked, next to the bay window in back looking out at the park's flaming trees, but unfortunately it was already occupied by a man in his thirties. Jakub sat down nearby. He could not see the trees from there; he was fascinated instead by the man, who was visibly nervous, never taking his eyes off the door as he tapped his foot.
7
She finally arrived. Klima sprang up from his chair, went forward to meet her, and led her to the window table. He smiled at her as if trying by that smile to show that their agreement was still valid, that they were calm and in alliance, and that they had confidence in each other. He searched the young woman's expression for a
positive response to his smile, but he didn't find it. That alarmed him. He didn't dare talk about what preoccupied him, and he engaged the young woman in a meaningless conversation that ought to have created a carefree atmosphere. Nonetheless his words echoed off the young woman's silence as though off a stone wall.
Then she interrupted him: 'I've changed my mind. It would be a crime. You might be capable of something like that, but not me.'
The trumpeter felt everything in him collapse. He fixed an expressionless look on Ruzena and no longer knew what to say. There was nothing in him but hopeless fatigue. And Ruzena repeated: 'It would be a crime.'
He looked at her, and she seemed unreal to him. This woman, whose face he was unable to recall when he was away from her, now presented herself to him as his life sentence. (Like all of us, Klima considered reality to be only what entered his life from inside, gradually and organically, whereas what came from outside, suddenly and randomly, he perceived as an invasion of unreality. Alas, nothing is more real than that unreality.)
Then the waiter who had recognized the trumpeter two days before appeared at their table. He brought them a tray with two brandies, and said jovially: 'You see, I can read your wishes in your eyes.' And to Ruzena he made the same remark as the last time: 'Watch out! All the girls want to scratch your eyes out!' And he laughed very loudly.
This time Klima was too absorbed in his fear to pay attention to the waiter s words. He drank a mouthful of brandy and leaned toward Ruzena: 'What's going on? I thought we agreed. It was all settled between us. Why did you suddenly change your mind? Just like me, you think we need a few years to devote ourselves entirely to each other. Ruzena! We're doing it only because of our love and to have a child together when both of us really want one.'
8
Jakub instantly recognized the nurse who had wanted to turn Bob over to the old men. He looked at her, fascinated, very curious to know what she and the man with her were talking about. He could not distinguish a
