is the quintessence of the unforeseeable. A child is unforeseeability itself. You don't know what it will become, what it will bring you, and that is precisely why you must accept it. Otherwise you are only half alive, you are living like a nonswimmer wading near the shore, while the ocean is not really the ocean until you are out of your depth.'
The trumpeter pointed out that the child was not his.
'Let us assume that that is so,' said Bertlef. 'But you in turn should frankly admit that if the child were yours you would be just as persistent in trying to convince Ruzena to have an abortion. You would be doing it for the sake of your wife and of your guilty love for her.'
'Yes, I admit it,' said the trumpeter. 'I'd insist she have an abortion under any circumstances.'
Still leaning against the bathroom door, Bertlef smiled: 'I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.'
The trumpeter scrutinized Bertlef, who uttered these last words in the velvety voice of a wise preacher. He found him admirable. He felt that everything Bertlef said could be a legend, a parable, an example, a chapter from a modern gospel. He wanted (we should know that he was moved by and drawn to inflated gestures) to bow down before him.
'I shall do my best to help you,' Bertlef went on. 'In a while we are going to see my friend Doctor Skreta, who will settle the medical aspect of the matter. But tell me, how are you going to induce Ruzena to do something she is reluctant to do?'
4
When the trumpeter had presented his plan, Bertlef said: 'This reminds me of something that happened
to me in my adventurous youth, when I was working on the docks as a longshoreman, and there was a girl there who brought us our lunch. She had an exceptionally kind heart and didn't know how to refuse anyone anything. Alas, such kindness of heart-and body-makes men more crude than grateful, so that I was the only one to pay her any respectful attention, although I was also the only one who had not gone to bed with her. Because of my gentleness she fell in love with me. It would have hurt and humiliated her if I had not made love to her. But this happened only once, and I immediately explained to her that I would go on loving her with a great spiritual love, but that we could no longer be lovers. She burst into tears, she ran off, she stopped talking to me, and she gave herself still more conspicuously to all the others. When two months had gone by, she told me she was pregnant by me.'
'So you were in the same situation I'm in!' the trumpeter exclaimed.
'Ah, my friend,' said Bertlef, 'are you not aware that what has happened to you is every man's lot?'
'And what did you do?'
'I behaved exactly as you are planning to behave, but with one difference. You are going to try to pretend to love Ruzena, whereas I really loved that girl. I saw before me a poor creature humiliated and insulted by everyone, a poor creature to whom only a single being in the world had ever shown any consideration, and this consideration was something she did not want to
lose. I realized that she loved me, and I just could not hold it against her that she showed it the only way she could, the way provided her by her innocent low-mind-edness. Listen to what I told her: T know very well that you are pregnant by someone else. But I also know that you are employing this ruse out of love, and I want to repay your love with my love. I don't care whose child it is, if it is your wish, I shall marry you.''
'That was crazy!'
'But probably more effective than your carefully prepared maneuver. After I had told the little tart many times that I loved her and wanted to marry her and keep the child, she dissolved in tears and confessed she had lied to me. My kindness made her realize, she said, that she was not worthy of me, that she could never marry me.'
The trumpeter remained silent and pensive, and Bertlef added: 'I would be glad if this story could serve you as a parable. Don't try to make Ruzena believe you love her, try truly to love her. Try to feel pity for her. Even if she misled you, try to see in this lie a form of her love. I am certain she will then be unable to withstand the power of your kindness, and she herself will
make all the arrangements required to avoid wronging
Bertlef's words made a great impression on the trumpeter. But as soon as Ruzena had come to mind in a more vivid light, he realized that the path of love, which Bertlef had suggested, was closed to him; it was the path of saints, not of ordinary men.
5
Ruzena was sitting at a small table in the huge room in the thermal building where, after undergoing treatment, women rested in beds lined up against the walls. She had just received the charts of two new patients. She filled in the date and gave the women towels, large white sheets, and keys to the changing cubicles. Then she looked at her watch and headed for the adjoining room (she was wearing only a white smock over her bare body, because the tiled rooms were filled with hot steam), to the pool where some twenty naked women were splashing about in the miraculous spring waters. She called three of them by name, to tell them their time was up. The ladies obediently left the pool, shaking their bulky, dripping breasts and following Ruzena, who escorted them back to the treatment room to lie down on vacant beds. One after another, she wrapped each in a sheet, wiped each one's eyes with a bit of it, and covered her with a warm blanket. The ladies gave her a smile, but Ruzena didn't smile in return.
It is surely not pleasant to have been born in a small town through which every year ten thousand women but practically no young men pass; unless she moves elsewhere, a woman will have a precise idea by the age of fifteen of all the erotic possibilities her lifetime will offer her. And how is she to move elsewhere? Her employers did not readily release their employees, and
Ruzena's parents protested vehemently whenever she hinted at moving away.
No, this young woman, who all in all did her best to fulfill her professional obligations meticulously, felt no great love for the women taking the waters. We can cite three reasons for this:
Envy: These women came here directly from husbands and lovers, from a world she imagined teeming with a thousand possibilities inaccessible to her, even though she had prettier breasts, longer legs, and more regular features.
Besides envy, impatience: These women came here with their destinies far away, and she was here without a destiny, with one year the same as the next; she was frightened by the thought that, in this small town, she was living an eventless time span, and, despite her youth, constantly thought that life was passing her by before she had begun to live.
Third, there was the instinctive dislike inspired in her by their sheer numbers, which diminished each woman's worth as an individual. She was surrounded by a sad excess of bosoms, among which even a bosom as attractive as hers lost its worth.
Without a smile, she had just wrapped the last of three women when her thin colleague stuck her head into the room and shouted: 'Ruzena! Telephone!'
Her colleagues expression was so reverent that Ruzena knew at once who had phoned her. Blushing, she went behind the cubicles, picked up the receiver, and gave her name.
Klima identified himself and asked her when she would be free to see him.
'I finish work at three. We could see each other at four.'
Then they had to agree on where to meet. Ruzena suggested the spa's big brasserie, which was open all day. The thin nurse, who was standing beside Ruzena and keeping her eyes fixed on her lips, gave an approving nod. The trumpeter replied that he preferred to see Ruzena in a place where they could be alone and suggested driving
