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?”
“It’s you I like. I like you a lot. You’re extremely beautiful.”
He was surprised to hear himself say this, and then it came to him that he had the right to tell her everything because he would be leaving in a few hours and his words could have no consequences either for him or for her. This suddenly discovered freedom intoxicated him.
“I’ve been living like a blind man. A blind man. Now, for the first time, I realize that beauty exists. And that I went right by it.”
She merged in his mind with music and paintings, with a realm in which he had never set foot, she merged with the multicolored foliage around him, and all of a sudden he no longer saw in it any messages or significance (images of fire or incineration) but only the ecstasy of beauty mysteriously awakened by the beat of her footsteps, by the touch of her voice.
“I’d do anything to win you. I’d abandon everything and live my whole life differently, only for you and because of you. But I can’t, because at this moment I’m no longer really here. I should have left yesterday, and I’m only here now through my own delay.”
Ah yes! Now he understood why it had been given him to meet her. This meeting was taking place outside his life, somewhere on the hidden side of his destiny, on the reverse of his biography. But he spoke to her all the more freely, until he suddenly felt that, even so, he would be unable to say everything he wanted to say.
He touched her arm: “This is where Doctor Skreta has his
