Because the world, which is beautiful, frightens you, sickens you, and constantly pushes you away from its center. How unbearable it is to have dirt under your fingernails and a pretty woman sitting beside you! And so you have to soil the woman before you enjoy her. Isn't it so, sir? I am glad you are hiding your hands under the table, I was certainly right to have talked about your fingernails.'
'I don't give a shit about your good manners, and I'm not a clown like you with your white collar and tie,' the cameraman snapped.
'Your dirty fingernails and torn sweater are not new under the sun,' said Bertlef. 'Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone for displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: T see your vanity
through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty.'
Ruzena could not get over her amazement. A man she had vaguely known as a patient had come to her aid out of the blue, and she was captivated by the natural charm of his behavior and by the cruel assurance with which he had reduced the cameraman's insolence to dust.
'I see that you have lost the power of speech,' Bertlef said to the cameraman after a brief silence, 'and please believe that I did not in the least wish to offend you. I love harmony, not quarrels, and if I allowed myself to be carried away by eloquence, I ask you to forgive me. I want only one thing, that you taste this wine and join me in toasting Ruzena, for whose sake I have come here.'
Bertlef had raised his glass, but no one joined him.
'Mister Restaurateur,' said Bertlef, addressing the manager, 'come and drink a toast with us!'
'With this wine, any time,' said the manager, and he took an empty glass from the nearby table and filled it with wine. 'Mister Bertlef knows all about good wine. A long time ago he sniffed out my cellar like a swallow finding its nest from a distance.'
Bertlef emitted the happy laugh of a man whose self-esteem has been flattered.
'Will you join us in a toast to Ruzena? '
'Ruzena?' asked the manager.
'Yes, Ruzena,' Bertlef said, indicating his neighbor with a look. 'Do you like her as much as I do?'
'With you, Mister Bertlef, there're only pretty women. You barely have to look at her to know she's beautiful, since she's sitting next to you.'
Bertlef once more emitted his happy laugh, the manager laughed with him, and oddly enough, Kamila, who had found Bertlef amusing ever since his arrival, joined them. This unexpected laughter was surprisingly and inexplicably contagious. Out of tactful solidarity the director in turn joined Kamila, then the assistant, and finally Ruzena, who plunged into the polyphonic laughter as if into a gentle embrace. It was her first laughter of the day. She laughed louder than the others and was unable to get her fill of it.
Bertlef lifted his raised glass higher: 'To Ruzena!' The manager raised his glass in turn, and then Kamila, followed by the director and his assistant, and they repeated after Bertlef: 'To Ruzena!' Even the cameraman ended up raising his glass and, without a word, taking a sip.
The director tasted his mouthful. 'This wine really is excellent,' he said.
'What did I tell you?' said the manager.
Meanwhile the boy had set a platter of cheese in the middle of the table, and Bertlef said: 'Help yourselves, they are exquisite!'
The director was astounded: 'Where did you find this selection of cheeses? You'd think we were in France.'
All of a sudden the tension had completely receded, the atmosphere had calmed. They became talkative,
helped themselves to the cheeses, wondered where the manager had managed to find them (in this country where the varieties of cheese were so few), and kept refilling their glasses.
When things were at their peak, Bertlef rose and took his leave: 'I am very glad to have been in your company, and I thank you. My friend Doctor Skreta is giving a concert this evening, and Ruzena and I want to be there.'
19
Ruzena and Bertlef vanished into the light mist of nightfall, and the initial momentum that had carried the company of drinkers away to the dreamed-of island of lustfulness had clearly been lost, and nothing could restore it. Everyone gave way to dishearten-ment.
For Mrs. Klima it was as if she were coming out of a dream in which she would have wished at all costs to linger. She had been reflecting that she didn't have to go to the concert. How fantastically surprising it would be for her to discover that she had come here not to track down her husband but to have an adventure. How splendid it would be to stay with the three film people and return home on the sly tomorrow morning.
Something whispered to her that this was what she needed to do; that this would be to act; to be delivered; to be healed; to be awakened after a bewitchment.
But now she was already too sober. All the magic spells had stopped working. She was alone again with herself, with her past, with her heavy head full of agonizing old thoughts. She would have liked to extend this much too brief dream, even if only for a few hours, but she knew that the dream was already growing pale, like the half light of early morning.
'I have to go too,' she said.
They tried to dissuade her, even though they realized that they no longer had the power and self-confidence to make her stay.
'Shit!' said the cameraman. 'Who was that guy, anyway?'
They tried to ask the manager, but now that Bertlef had left, once again no one was paying attention to them. From the restaurant came the noise of tipsy customers, while they sat abandoned around the table in the garden with their leftover cheese and wine.
'Whoever he is, he spoiled our party. He took away one of our ladies, and now the other one is going off all alone. Let's go with Kamila.'
'No,' she said. 'Stay here. I wish to be alone.'
She was no longer with them. Their presence now disturbed her. Jealousy, like death, had come looking for her. She was in its power, and she took no notice of anyone else. She got up and went off in the direction Bertlef and Ruzena had taken a few moments earlier.
From a distance she heard the cameraman saying: 'Shit…'
20
After greeting Skreta in the artists' room, Jakub and Olga went into the hall. Olga wanted to leave during the intermission in order to spend the rest of the evening alone with Jakub. Jakub replied that his friend would be angered by their early departure, but Olga maintained that he wouldn't even notice it.
The hall was just about full, with only their two seats still vacant in their row.
'That woman has been following us like a shadow,' said Olga, leaning toward Jakub as they sat down.
Jakub turned his head and next to Olga saw Bertlef and next to him the nurse with the poison in her handbag. His heart skipped a beat, but since he had tried hard all his life to hide what was going on deep down inside him, he said quite calmly: 'I see that our row's tickets are the complimentary ones Skreta gave to his friends and acquaintances. So he knows where we are, and he'd notice us leaving.'
'Tell him that the acoustics were bad here and that we moved to the back of the hall during intermission,' said Olga.
Klima was already coming forward on the bandstand with his golden trumpet, and the audience began to applaud. When Dr. Skreta appeared behind him, the applause gained strength and murmuring swelled through the hall. Dr. Skreta stood modestly behind the trumpeter and awkwardly waved his arms to indicate that the concerts
