My God, why had the thought not occurred to him before? Once more he recalled the distant day when he had asked his friends for poison. He had just been released from prison then, and now he realized, after the passage of many long years, that all of them had probably seen his request as a theatrical gesture designed to call attention, after the fact, to the sufferings he had endured. But Skreta had with no hesitation promised to get him what he asked for, and a few days later had brought him a shiny, pale-blue tablet. Why hesitate, why try to dissuade him? Skreta had handled
it more cleverly than those who had turned him down. He had furnished him the harmless illusion of calm and certainty, and in addition made a lifelong friend.
Why had this thought never occurred to him? He had at the time found it a bit strange that Skreta had furnished him the poison in the guise of an ordinary manufactured tablet. While he knew that Skreta, as a biochemist, had access to poisons, he did not understand how he had tablet-making machinery at his disposal. But he asked no questions. Although he doubted everything else, he believed in his tablet as one believes in the Gospel.
Now, in this moment of immense relief, he was of course grateful to his friend for his fraud. He was happy that the nurse was alive and that the whole absurd misadventure was merely a nightmare, a bad dream. But nothing lasts long in this world, and behind the subsiding waves of relief, regret raised its shrill voice:
How grotesque! The tablet he kept in his pocket had given his every step a theatrical solemnity and allowed him to turn his life into a grandiose myth! He had been convinced that he was carrying death with him in a piece of tissue paper that in reality held only Skreta's stifled laughter.
Jakub knew that, when all is said and done, his friend had been right, but he could not help thinking that the Skreta he loved so much had suddenly become an ordinary doctor like thousands of others. His having furnished him the poison with no hesita-
tion, as a matter of course, radically distinguished him from other people Jakub knew. There was something implausible about his behavior. He did not act the way other people did. He had not even wondered if Jakub might misuse the poison in a fit of hysteria or depression. He had dealt with Jakub as a man who was in total control of himself and had no human weaknesses. They behaved with each other like two gods forced to live among humans-and that was beautiful. Unforgettable. And suddenly it was over.
Jakub looked up at the blue of the sky and thought: Today he brought me relief and calm. And at the same time he robbed me of himself; he robbed me of my Skreta.
5
Ruzena's consent put Klima into a sweet stupor, but nothing could have lured him away from the waiting room. Ruzena's baffling disappearance the day before was threateningly imprinted on his memory. He resolved to wait there patiently, to see to it that no one dissuaded her or carried her away.
Women patients began to arrive, opening the door behind which Ruzena had vanished just now, some of them staying in there and others returning to sit in the
chairs along the walls and examine Klima curiously, for men were not usually seen in the women's section waiting room.
Next a buxom woman in a white smock came in and took a long look at him; then she approached him and asked if he was waiting for Ruzena. He blushed and nodded.
'You don't have to wait here. You've got till nine o'clock,' she said with obtrusive familiarity, and Klima had the impression that all the women in the room heard her and knew what was going on.
It was a quarter to nine when Ruzena reappeared, dressed in street clothes. He went behind her as they silently left the thermal building. They were both immersed in their own thoughts and did not notice that Frantisek was following them, hidden by the park's bushes.
6
Jakub had nothing more to do but say goodbye to Olga and Skreta, but first he wanted to take (for the last time) a brief walk by himself in the park and have a nostalgic look at the flaming trees.
Just as he was coming out into the corridor a young woman was locking the door of the room opposite, and
her tall figure caught his eye. When she turned around he was stunned by her beauty.
He spoke to her: 'Aren't you a friend of Doctor Skreta's?'
The woman smiled pleasantly: 'How did you know?'
'You've just left the room he reserves for his friends,'' said Jakub and introduced himself.
'I'm glad to meet you. I'm Mrs. Klima. The doctor put up my husband here. I'm going to look for him. He must be with the doctor. Do you know where I might find them?'
Jakub contemplated the young woman with insatiable delight, and it occurred to him (yet again!) that this was his last day here, which imparted special significance to every event and turned it into a symbolic message.
But what did the message say?
'I can take you to Doctor Skreta,' Jakub told her.
'I'd be very grateful,'' she replied.
Yes, what did the message say?
First of all, it was only a message and nothing more. In two hours Jakub would be going away, and nothing would be left for him of this beautiful creature. This woman had appeared before him as a denial. He had met her only to be convinced that she could not be his. He had met her as an image of everything he would lose by his departure.
'It's extraordinary,' he said. 'Today I'm probably going to be talking to Doctor Skreta for the last time in my life.'
But the message this woman had brought him also said something more. The message had arrived, at the very last moment, to announce beauty to him. Yes, beauty, and Jakub was startled to realize that he actually knew nothing about beauty, that he had spent his life ignoring it and never living for it. The beauty of this woman fascinated him. He suddenly had the feeling that in all his decisions there had always been an error. That there was an element he had forgotten to take into account. It seemed to him that if he had known this woman, his decision would have been different.
'Why are you going to be talking to him for the last time?'
'I'm going abroad. For a long time.'
Not that he had not had pretty women, but their charm was always something incidental for him. What drove him toward women was a desire for revenge, or sadness and dissatisfaction, or compassion, or pity: the world of women merged for him with his country's bitter drama, in which he had participated both as persecutor and victim, and had experienced plenty of struggle and no idylls. But this woman had sprung up before him suddenly, separate from all that, separate from his life, she had come from outside, she had appeared to him, appeared not only as a beautiful woman but as beauty itself, and she proclaimed to him that one could live here in a different way and for something different, that beauty is more than justice, that beauty is more than truth, that it is more real, more indisputable, and also more accessible, that beauty is superior to everything
else and that it was now permanently lost to him. This beautiful woman had shown herself to him so that he would not go on believing that he knew everything and had exhausted all the possibilities of life here.
'I envy you,' she said.
They crossed the park together, the sky was blue, the bushes were yellow and red, and Jakub again thought that the foliage was the image of a fire consuming all the adventures, all the memories, all the opportunities of his past.
'There's nothing to envy me for. Right now I feel I shouldn't be leaving at all.'
'Why not? Are you starting to like it here at the last minute?'
