Mrs. Klima gave him a long look, and Jakub plunged into that look, tender and misty like a distance. He touched her arm again, turned, and went off.
A bit later he turned around and saw that Mrs. Klima was still standing in the same spot, following him with her eyes. He turned around several more times; she was still looking at him.
7
About twenty anxious women were sitting in the waiting room; Ruzena and Klima could find no seats. On the wall facing them hung the obligatory big posters aiming to dissuade women from having abortions.
MAMA, WHY DON’T YOU WANT ME? read the large letters on a poster showing a smiling baby in a crib; below the baby, in heavy letters, was a poem in which an embryo implores its mama not to scrape it away and promises boundless joy in return: “… If you don’t let me stay alive—oh why?/Whose arms, Mama, will hold you when you die?”
Other posters displayed big photos of smiling mothers pushing baby carriages and photos of little boys peeing. (Klima thought that a little boy peeing was an irrefutable argument for childbearing. He remembered once seeing a film in which a little boy was peeing, and the whole theater quivered with blissful female sighs.)
After waiting a while, Klima knocked on the door; a nurse came out and Klima dropped Dr. Skreta’s name. In a moment the doctor arrived and handed Klima a form, asking him to fill it out and wait patiently a while longer.
Klima held the form against the wall and started to fill it out: name, date of birth, place of birth. Ruzena whispered her responses. Then he came to FATHER’S NAME, and he hesitated. It was horrifying to see this infamous title in black and white, and to put his name next to it.
Ruzena noticed that Klima’s hand was trembling. That gave her great satisfaction: “Go on, write!” she said.
“What name should I put down?” Klima whispered.
She found him spineless and cowardly, and she was filled with contempt for him. He was afraid of everything, afraid of responsibility, afraid of his own signature on an official form.
“Come on! I think you know who the father is!” she said.
“I thought it wasn’t important,” said Klima.
She no longer cared about him, but deep down she was convinced that this spineless fellow was guilty of doing her harm; it delighted her to punish him: “If you’re going to keep on lying, we’re not going to get along.” After he had written his name in the space, she added with a sigh: “Anyway, I still don’t know what I’m going to do …”
“What?”
She looked at his terrified face: “Until they take it away from me, I can still change my mind.”
8
She was sitting in an armchair with her legs extended on the table, and she was skimming the detective novel she had bought for all the dreary days in the spa town. But she could not concentrate because the situations and words of the evening before kept coming to mind. Everything had pleased her yesterday, particularly she herself. At last she was what she had always wished to be: no longer the victim of male intentions but the author of her own adventure. She had definitively rejected the role of innocent ward which Jakub had made her play, and, on the contrary, she had remodeled him in accord with her own wishes.
She now felt elegant, independent, and bold. She looked at her legs up on the table, sheathed in tight white jeans, and when she heard a knock on the door she shouted cheerfully: “Come in, I’m waiting for you!”
Jakub entered, looking distressed.
“Hello!” she said, keeping her legs on the table for a moment. Jakub seemed perplexed, and that pleased her. She got up, went over to him, and lightly kissed him on the cheek: “Will you stay a while?”
“No,” said Jakub sadly. “This time I’ve come to say goodbye for good. I’m leaving very soon. I thought I’d take you to the baths one last time.”
“Sure!” said Olga cheerfully. “Let’s go for a walk.”
9
Jakub was filled to overflowing with the image of the beautiful Mrs. Klima, and he needed to overcome a kind of aversion to come and say goodbye to Olga, who the day before had left his soul uneasy and blemished. But not for anything would he let her see this. He enjoined himself to behave with extraordinary tact, that she must not suspect how little pleasure and joy their lovemaking had brought him, that her memory of him should remain unspoiled. He put on a serious air, uttered insignificant phrases in a melancholy tone, vaguely touched her hand and caressed her hair, and, when she looked into his eyes, tried to appear sad.
On the way she suggested that they stop for a glass of wine, but Jakub wanted to keep their last meeting, which he found difficult, as brief as possible. “Saying farewell hurts too much. I don’t want to prolong it,” he said.
In front of the thermal building he took both of her hands and looked into her eyes for a long while.
Olga said: “Jakub, it was very good of you to have come here. I spent a delightful evening yesterday. I’m glad that you’ve finally stopped playing papa and become Jakub. Yesterday was fantastic. Wasn’t it fantastic?”
Jakub understood that he understood nothing. Did this sensitive girl see last evening’s lovemaking simply as entertainment? Was she driven toward him by a sensuality free from all feelings? Did the pleasant memory of a single night of love outweigh for her the sadness of final separation?
He gave her a kiss. She wished him a pleasant journey and vanished through the building’s grand entrance.
10
He had been pacing back and forth in front of the clinic building for two hours, and he was starting to lose patience. He kept reminding himself that he must not make a scene, but he felt that his self-control was waning.
He went
