Farewell Waltz

1

It was still dark when Klima awoke from a very light sleep. He wanted to find Ruzena before she went to work. But how to explain to Kamila that he had an errand to run before daybreak?

He looked at his watch: five o'clock. He would miss Ruzena if he did not get up right away, but he could not think of an excuse. His heart pounded, but unable to do anything else, he got up and started to dress, quietly for fear of waking Kamila. He was buttoning his jacket when he heard her voice. It was a high-pitched, half-asleep little voice: "Where are you

going?"

He went over to the bed and lightly kissed her lips: "Go back to sleep, I'll be back soon."

"I'll go with you," said Kamila, but she was instantly asleep again.

Klima quickly left.

2

Was it possible? Was he still pacing back and forth?

Yes. But suddenly he stopped. He saw Klima coming out of the Richmond. He hid briefly and then started to follow him discreetly to Karl Marx House. He passed the doorkeeper's lodging (the doorkeeper was asleep) and stopped at the corner of the corridor leading to Ruzena's room. He saw the trumpeter knock at the nurse's door. The door did not open. Klima knocked several more times, then he turned to go.

Frantisek rushed out of Marx House after him. He saw him heading down the park to the thermal building, where Ruzena was due to begin work in half an hour. He rushed back to Marx House, hammered at Ruzena's door, and in a hushed but distinct voice said through the keyhole: "It's me! Frantisek! Don't be afraid of me! You can open the door for me!"

There was no answer.

As he left, the doorkeeper was waking up.

"Is Ruzena at home?" Frantisek asked him.

"She hasn't been here since yesterday," said the doorkeeper.

Frantisek went outside. In the distance he saw Klima entering the thermal building.

3

Ruzena regularly awoke at five-thirty. Even this morning, after having dozed off so pleasantly, she slept no longer than that. She got up, dressed, and tiptoed into the adjacent room.

Bertlef was lying on his side, breathing deeply, and his hair, always carefully combed during the day, was disheveled, revealing the naked skin over his skull. In sleep his face looked grayer and older. The small bottles of medicine on the night table reminded Ruzena of a hospital. But none of this disturbed her. Looking at him brought tears to her eyes. She had never had a more beautiful night. She felt a strange desire to kneel down before him. She did not do so, but she leaned over and delicately kissed his brow.

Outside, as she approached the thermal building she saw Frantisek coming toward her.

The day before, such an encounter would have disconcerted her. Even though Ruzena was in love with the trumpeter, Frantisek meant a great deal to her. He and Klima formed an inseparable pair. One embodied the everyday, the other a dream; one wanted her, the other did not want her; from one she wanted to escape, the other she desired. Each of the two men determined the meaning of the other's existence. When she decided that she was pregnant by Klima she did not eliminate Frantisek from her life; on the contrary: Frantisek remained the abiding reason for this decision. She was

between these two men as between the two poles of her life; they were the north and south of her planet, the only one she knew.

But this morning she suddenly realized that it was not the only habitable planet. She realized that it was possible to live without Klima and without Frantisek; that there was no reason to hurry; that there was time enough; that it was possible to let a wise, mature man lead you far away from this accursed domain where you age so quickly.

"Where did you spend the night?" Frantisek burst out at her.

"It's none of your business."

"I was at your place. You weren't in your room."

"It's absolutely none of your business where I spent the night," said Ruzena, and without stopping she passed through the entrance to the thermal building. "And quit following me. I forbid it."

Frantisek remained standing in front of the building, and then, because his feet hurt from a night spent pacing back and forth, he sat down on a bench from which he could keep a close watch on the entrance.

Ruzena rushed up the stairs to the second floor two at a time and entered the large waiting room lined with benches and chairs. Klima was sitting at the door to her workplace.

"Ruzena," he said as he stood up and looked at her with desperate eyes. "I beg you. I beg you, be reasonable! I'll go there with you!"

His anxiety was naked, stripped of all the sentimen-

tal demagogy to which he had devoted so much effort in the previous days.

Ruzena said: "You want to get rid of me."

This frightened him: "I don't want to get rid of you- on the contrary. I'm doing all this so we'll be even happier together."

"Don't lie," said Ruzena.

"Ruzena, I beg you! It'll be a disaster if you don't go!"

"Who told you I'm not going? We still have three hours. It's only six o'clock. You can quietly get back into bed with your wife!"

She closed the door behind her, put on her white smock, and said to the fortyish nurse: "Please do me a favor. I need to go out at nine o'clock. Could you take my place for an hour?"

"So you've let yourself be talked into it after all," her colleague said reproachfully.

"No. I've fallen in love," said Ruzena.

4

Jakub went over to the window and opened it. He thought of the pale-blue tablet, and he could not believe that he had really given it the day before to a stranger. He looked up at the blue of the sky and breathed in the crisp air of the autumn morning. The

world he saw through the window was normal, tranquil, natural. The episode with the nurse the day before suddenly seemed absurd and implausible.

He picked up the phone and dialed the thermal building. He asked to speak with Nurse Ruzena in the women's section. He waited a long time. Then he heard a woman's voice. He repeated that he wanted to speak with Nurse Ruzena. The voice replied that Nurse Ruzena was now at the pool and couldn't come to the phone. He thanked her and hung up.

He felt immense relief: the nurse was alive. The tablets in the tube were to be taken three times a day; she must have taken one yesterday evening and another this morning, and thus she had swallowed Jakub's tablet quite a while ago. Suddenly everything seemed absolutely clear: the pale-blue tablet he had been carrying in his pocket as a guarantee of his freedom was a fraud. His friend had given him a tablet of illusion.

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?"

"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 office. On the second floor."

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, particu-

larly 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 inside. The spa was a small place, and everyone knew him. He asked the doorkeeper if he had seen Ruzena. The doorkeeper nodded and said that she had gone up in the elevator. Since the elevator only stopped at the fourth floor and all the lower floors were reached by stairs, Frantisek could narrow his suspicions to the two corridors on the top floor. In one were offices, in the other was the gynecology clinic. He tried the former first (it was deserted) and then entered the latter, with the unpleasant feeling that men were not allowed here. He saw a nurse he knew by sight. He asked her about Ruzena. She pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. The door was open, and some women and men stood waiting at the threshold. Frantisek went in and saw more women sitting, but neither Ruzena nor the trumpeter was there. "Did anybody see a young woman, a blonde?" A woman pointed to the office door: "They're inside." Frantisek looked up: MAMA, WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME? And on the other posters he saw the photographs of newborns and little boys urinating. He began to understand what was going on.

11

There was a long table in the room. Klima sat beside Ruzena, and facing them Dr. Skreta sat enthroned, flanked by two ample ladies.

Dr. Skreta lifted his eyes to the applicants and shook his head with disgust: "It makes me sick even to look at you. Do you know how much trouble we go to here to restore fertility to unfortunate women who can't have children? And then healthy, well-built young people like you of their own accord want to get rid of the most precious gift life can offer us. I warn you categorically that this committee is not here to encourage abortions but to regulate them."

The two women emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on giving his moral lesson for the benefit of the two applicants. Klima's heart was pounding. He guessed that the doctor's words were not addressed to him but to the two judges, who with all the strength of their maternal bellies hated young women who refused to give birth, yet he feared that Ruzena might allow herself to be swayed by this speech. Had she not told him a few minutes earlier that she still didn't know what she was going to do?

"What are you living for?" Dr. Skreta resumed. "Life without children is like a tree without leaves. If I had the power I would prohibit abortion. Aren't you distressed by the thought that our population is going down each year? Here in this country where mothers

and children are better protected than anywhere else in the world! In this country where no one has to fear for his future?"

The two women once again emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on: "The comrade is married and afraid of assuming all the consequences of an irresponsible sexual relationship. But you should have thought of that before, comrade!"

Dr. Skreta paused, and then he addressed Klima once more: "You have no children. Are you really unable to get a divorce for the sake of this fetus's future?"

"It's impossible," said Klima.

"I know," said Dr. Skreta with a sigh. "I've received a psychiatric report saying that Mrs. Klima suffers from suicidal tendencies. The birth of this child would endanger her life and destroy her home, and Nurse Ruzena would be a single mother. What can we do?" he said with another sigh, and then pushed the form toward one and then the other of the two women, each one sighing too as she signed her name in the proper space.

"Be here Monday morning at eight o'clock for the operation," Dr. Skreta said to Ruzena, and he motioned that she could leave.

"But you stay here!" one of the heavy women said to Klima. Ruzena left and the woman went on: "Terminating a pregnancy is not as harmless an operation as you think. It involves much bleeding. By your irresponsibility you will make the comrade lose blood,

and it's only fair that you give your own." She pushed a form at Klima and told him: "Sign here."

Filled with confusion, Klima signed obediently.

"It's an application for membership in the Voluntary Association of Blood Donors. Go next door and the nurse will take your blood right away."

12

Ruzena walked through the waiting room with lowered eyes and didn't see Frantisek until he spoke to her in the corridor.

"Where have you just been?"

She was frightened by his furious expression and walked faster.

"I'm asking you where you've just been."

"It's none of your business."

"I know where you've just been."

"Then don't ask me."

They went down the stairs, Ruzena in a rush to escape Frantisek and the conversation.

"You've been to the Abortion Committee," Frantisek said.

Ruzena remained silent. They left the building.

"You've been to the Abortion Committee. I know it. And you want to have an abortion."

"I'll do what I want."

"You're not going to do what you want. It's my business too."

Ruzena was walking still faster, nearly running. Frantisek was running right behind her. When they arrived at the thermal building, she said: "I forbid you to follow me. I'm at work now. You don't have the right to disturb me at my work."

Frantisek was very excited: "I forbid you to give me orders!"

"You don't have the right!"

"You're the one who doesn't have the right!"

Ruzena swept into the building, with Frantisek behind her.

13

Jakub was glad that it was all finished and that there was only one more thing to do: say goodbye to Skreta. From the thermal building he slowly headed across the park to Karl Marx House.

Coming toward him from a distance on the broad park path were about twenty nursery-school kids and their teacher. She had in her hand the end of a long red string, which the children held on to as they followed her single file. They walked along slowly, and the

teacher pointed at the various trees and shrubs while giving their names. Jakub stopped to listen because he did not know much botany and always forgot that a maple was called a maple and a hornbeam a hornbeam.

The teacher pointed at a tree thick with yellowing leaves: "This is a linden."

Jakub looked at the children. They all wore little blue coats and red berets. You could take them for little brothers and sisters. He looked at their faces and found that they resembled one another not only because of their clothes but also because of their features. He counted seven among them with markedly big noses and wide mouths. They looked like Dr. Skreta.

He remembered the big-nosed toddler at the forest inn. Could the doctor's eugenic dream be more than just a fantasy? Could it really be that children were coming into the world in this country from the great begetter Skreta?

Jakub found this ridiculous. All these kids looked alike because all children in the world look alike.

And yet he couldn't help but think: What if Skreta really was carrying out his remarkable project? Why can't bizarre projects be carried out?

"And what's this one, children?"

"It's a birch!" answered a little Skreta; yes, he was the picture of Skreta; he not only had the big nose and wide mouth but also wore little eyeglasses and spoke with the nasal voice that made Dr. Skreta's speech so touchingly comical.

"Very good, Oldrich!" said the teacher.

Jakub thought: In ten or twenty years this country will have thousands of Skretas. And once more he had the strange feeling of having lived in his own country without knowing what was happening in it. He had lived, so to speak, at the center of the action. He had lived through all the current events. He had got involved in politics, and it had nearly cost him his life, and even when he was pushed out, politics remained his main concern. He always believed he was hearing the heartbeat of the country. But who knows what he was really hearing? Was it a heart? Or was it an old alarm clock? An old discarded alarm clock that gives the wrong time? Had all his political struggles been anything more than will-o'-the wisps distracting him from what really mattered?

The teacher led the children down the broad path, and Jakub still felt pervaded by the image of the beautiful woman. The recollection of her beauty incessantly brought a question back to mind: What if he had been living in a world entirely different from what he imagined? What if he had been seeing everything upside down? What if beauty meant more than truth, and what if it really had been an angel, the other day, who gave Bertlef a dahlia?

He heard the teacher's voice: "And what's this one?"

The little Skreta in eyeglasses answered: "It's a maple!"

14

Ruzena rushed up the stairs two at a time, trying not to look back. She slammed the door to her section and hurried to the changing room. She slipped her white nurse's smock over her bare body and gave a sigh of relief. The scene with Frantisek had disturbed her, but at the same time, oddly, it had calmed her. She felt that both Frantisek and Klima were now alien and distant.

She left the cubicle and went into the huge treatment room, where women rested after their baths in beds lined up against the walls.

The fortyish nurse was sitting at the small table near the door. "Well, did they authorize it?" she asked her coldly.

"Yes. Thanks for taking my place," said Ruzena, handing a new patient a key and a large white sheet.

As soon as the fortyish nurse left, the door opened and Frantisek's head appeared.

"It's not true that it's none of my business. It's both of our business. I've got something to say about it too!"

"Will you please shove off!" she answered. "This is the women's section, men aren't supposed to be here! Get going this minute or I'll have you thrown out!"

Frantisek's face flushed, and Ruzena's threat made him so furious that he advanced into the room and slammed the door behind him. "I don't care if you have me thrown out! I don't care!" he shouted.

"I'm telling you to get going this minute!" said Ruzena.

"I can see right through both of you! It's that trumpeter character! It's all lies and pulling strings! He arranged everything for you with the doctor; yesterday they gave a concert together! I see it all clearly, and I'm going to stop you from killing my child! I'm the father, and I've got something to say about it! I forbid you to kill my child!"

Frantisek was yelling, and the women lying on the beds under their blankets lifted their heads with curiosity.

By this time Ruzena, too, was completely unnerved because Frantisek was yelling and she didn't know how to calm things down.

"It's not your child," she said. "You've made that up. The child isn't yours."

"What?" yelled Frantisek and, advancing farther into the room, went around the table to come nearer to Ruzena: "What do you mean, not my child! I'm in a pretty good position to know it is! And I know it is!"

Just then a woman, naked and wet, came in from the pool toward Ruzena to be wrapped in a sheet and led to a bed. The woman was startled when she saw Frantisek staring at her unseeingly a few yards away.

For Ruzena it was a moment of respite; she went over to the woman, wrapped her in a sheet, and led her to a bed.

"What's that fellow doing here?" the woman asked, looking back at Frantisek.

"He's a madman! He's gone out of his mind and I don't know how to get him out of here. I don't know what to do with him!" said Ruzena, covering the woman with a warm blanket.

A woman in another bed shouted at Frantisek: "Hey, there! You're not supposed to be here! Get out!''

"I'm supposed to be here, all right!" Frantisek retorted stubbornly and refused to budge. When Ruzena returned he was no longer flushed but pallid; he no longer shouted but spoke softly and resolutely: "I'm only going to tell you one thing. If you get rid of the child, I won't be around anymore either. If you kill this child, you'll have two deaths on your conscience."

Ruzena sighed deeply and looked down at the table. There was her handbag with the tube of pale-blue tablets in it. She shook one into the hollow of her hand and swallowed it.

And Frantisek said, no longer shouting but pleading: "I beg you, Ruzena. I beg you. I can't live without you. I'll kill myself."

Just then Ruzena felt a violent pain in her entrails, and Frantisek saw her face become unrecognizable, contorted by pain, her eyes widening but unseeing, her body twisted, doubled over, her hands pressed against her belly. Then he saw her slump to the floor.

15

Olga was splashing around in the pool when she suddenly heard… What exactly did she hear? She didn't know what she was hearing. The room was filled with confusion. The women around her were leaving the pool and looking toward the adjoining treatment room, which seemed to be sucking in everything near it. Olga, too, found herself caught in the flow of this irresistible suction, and unthinkingly, filled with anxious curiosity, she followed the others.

In the adjoining room, she saw a cluster of women at the door with the small table near it. She saw them from behind: they were naked and wet, and bending over with their rumps sticking up. Facing them stood a young man.

More naked women came in jostling one another to join the group, and Olga too worked her way through the crowd and saw Nurse Ruzena lying motionless on the floor. The young man got down on his knees and began to yell: "I killed her! I killed her! I'm a murderer!"

The women were dripping wet. One woman bent over Ruzena's recumbent body to take her pulse. But it was a useless gesture, because death was there and no one doubted it. The naked, wet women's bodies jostled one another impatiently to see death up close, to see it on a familiar face.

Frantisek was still kneeling. He clasped her in his arms and kissed her face.

The women were standing all around him, and he lifted his eyes to them and repeated: "I killed her! I did it! Arrest me!"

"We have to do something!" said one woman, and another ran out into the corridor and started shouting. In a moment two colleagues of Ruzena's came running, followed by a physician in a white smock.

Only then did Olga realize that she was naked and that she was jostling and being jostled by other naked women in front of a young man and a man physician, and the situation suddenly appeared ridiculous to her. But she knew that this would not prevent her from staying here with the crowd and looking at death, which fascinated her.

The physician was holding the recumbent Ruzena's wrist, trying in vain to feel her pulse, and Frantisek kept repeating: "I killed her! Call the police, arrest me!"

16

Jakub found his friend in his office at Karl Marx House just as he was returning from the clinic. He congratulated him on his performance on the drums the day before, and he excused himself for not having come to see him after the concert.

"It really frustrated me," said the doctor. "It's your

last day here, and God knows where you'll be hanging out this evening. We had a lot of things to discuss. And what's worse is that most likely you were with that skinny little thing. Gratitude is a dangerous feeling."

"What gratitude? Why should I be grateful to her?"

"You wrote me that her father had done a lot for you.

That day Dr. Skreta had no office hours, and the gynecological examination table stood unoccupied in the back of the room. The two friends sat down in facing armchairs.

"No," said Jakub. "I only wanted you to take care of her, and it seemed simplest to tell you that I owed a debt of gratitude to her father. But in fact it wasn't that at all. Now that I'm bringing everything to an end, I can tell you about it. I was arrested with her father's total approval. Her father was sending me to my death. Six months later he ended up on the gallows, while I was lucky and escaped it."

"In other words, she's the daughter of a bastard," said the doctor.

Jakub shrugged: "He believed I was an enemy of the revolution. Everybody was saying that, and he let himself be convinced."

"Then why did you tell me he was your friend?"

"We were friends. And nothing was more important to him than to vote for my arrest. This proved that he placed ideals above friendship. When he denounced me as a traitor to the revolution, he felt that he was suppressing his personal interests for the sake of some-

thing more sublime, and he experienced it as the great act of his life."

"And is that the reason you like that ugly girl?" "She had nothing to do with it. She's innocent." "There are thousands of girls as innocent as she is. If you chose this one, it's probably because she's her father's daughter."

Jakub shrugged, and Dr. Skreta went on: "You're as perverted as he was. I believe that you consider your friendship with this girl the greatest act of your life. You suppressed your natural hatred, your natural loathing, to prove to yourself that you're magnanimous. It's beautiful, but at the same time it's unnatural and entirely pointless."

"You're wrong," Jakub protested. "I wasn't suppressing anything in me, and I wasn't trying to look magnanimous. I was simply sorry for her. From the first time I saw her. She was still a child when they forced her out of her home and she went to live with her mother in some mountain village where the people were afraid to talk to them. For a long time she was unable to get authorization to study, even though she's a gifted girl. It's vile to persecute children because of their parents. Would you want me, too, to hate her because of her father? I was sorry for her. I was sorry for her because her father had been executed, and I was sorry for her because her father had sent a friend to his death."

Just then the telephone rang. Skreta picked up the receiver and listened for a moment. His face darkened,

and he said: "I'm busy here right now. Do you really need me?" After a pause he said: "All right. Okay. I'm coming." He hung up and cursed.

"If you've got to go, don't bother about me, I have to leave anyway,'' said Jakub, rising from his chair.

"No, you're not leaving! We haven't discussed anything yet. And there's something we have to discuss today, right? They made me lose the thread. It was about something important. I've been thinking about it since I woke up. Do you remember what it might be about?"

"No," said Jakub.

"Good God, and now I have to run to the thermal building…"

"It's better to say goodbye like this. In the midst of a conversation," said Jakub, and he pressed his friend's hand.

17

Ruzena's lifeless body was lying in a small room reserved for physicians on night duty. Several people were bustling around the room, and a police inspector was there and had already interrogated Frantisek and written down his statement. Frantisek once more expressed his desire to be arrested.

"Did you give her the tablet, yes or no?" asked the inspector.

"No!"

"Then stop saying you killed her."

"She always told me she was going to kill herself," said Frantisek.

"Did she tell you why she was going to kill herself? "

"She said she was going to kill herself if I kept spoiling her life. She said she didn't want a child. She'd rather kill herself than have a child!"

Dr. Skreta entered the room. He gave the inspector a friendly wave and went over to the deceased; he lifted her eyelid to examine the color of the conjunctiva.

"Doctor, were you this nurse's supervisor?" asked the inspector.

"Yes."

"Do you think she might have used a poison available in your practice?"

Skreta turned once more to Ruzena's body to examine the particulars of her death. Then he said: "It doesn't look to me like a drug or substance she could have gotten in our offices. It was probably an alkaloid. The autopsy will tell us which one."

"But where did she get it?"

"It's hard to say."

"At the moment, it's all very mysterious," said the inspector. "The motive too. This young man has just revealed that she was expecting a child by him and she wanted to have an abortion."

"That character was forcing her to do it," Frantisek shouted.

"What character?" asked the inspector.

"The trumpeter. He wanted to take her away from me and make her get rid of my child! I followed them! He was with her at the Abortion Committee."

"I can confirm that," said Dr. Skreta. "It's true that this morning we took up her request for an abortion."

"And the trumpeter was with her?" asked the inspector.

"Yes," said Skreta. "Ruzena declared that he was the child's father."

"It's a lie! The child's mine!" Frantisek shouted.

"Nobody doubts that," said Dr. Skreta, "but Ruzena had to declare a married man as the father so the committee would authorize termination of the pregnancy."

"So you knew it was a lie!" Frantisek shouted at Dr. Skreta.

"According to the law, we have to take the woman's word. Once Ruzena told us she was pregnant by Mister Klima and he confirmed her declaration, none of us had the right to assert the contrary."

"But you didn't believe Mister Klima was the father?" asked the inspector.

"No."

"And on what do you base your opinion?"

"Mister Klima has been to this town only twice before, and briefly both times. It's highly unlikely that a sexual relationship could have taken place between him and our nurse. This is too small a town for me not

to hear about such a thing. Mister Klima's paternity most likely was just a deception with which Ruzena persuaded him to appeal to the committee to authorize the abortion. This young gentleman here surely would not have consented to an abortion."

But Frantisek was no longer hearing what Skreta was saying. And he stood there unseeing. All he heard were Ruzena's words: "You're going to drive me to suicide, you're definitely going to drive me to suicide,'' and he knew that he had caused her death and yet he did not understand why, and it all seemed inexplicable to him. He stood there face to face with the unreal, like a savage confronted by a miracle, and all of a sudden he had become deaf and blind because his mind was unable to conceive of the incomprehensibility that had swooped down on him.

(My poor Frantisek, you will wander through your whole life without understanding, you will only know that your love killed the woman you loved, you will carry this certainty like a secret mark of horror; you will wander like a leper bringing inexplicable disasters to loved ones, you will wander through your whole life like a mailman of misfortune.)

He was pale, standing immobile like a pillar of salt and not even seeing that an agitated man had entered the room; the new arrival approached the dead woman, looked at her for a long while, and caressed her hair.

Dr. Skreta whispered: "Suicide. Poison."

The man shook his head violently: "Suicide? I can swear by all I hold dearest that this woman did not take

her own life. And if she swallowed poison it has to be murder."

The inspector looked at the man in amazement. It was Bertlef, and his eyes were burning with angry fire.

18

Jakub turned the ignition key and drove off. He passed the spa town's last villas and found himself in a landscape. He headed for the border, and he had no urge to hurry. The thought that he was driving this way for the last time made this landscape dear to him and strange. He kept feeling that he did not recognize it, that it was different from what he had thought, and that it was a pity he could not stay longer.

But he also told himself that no postponement of his departure, whether for a day or several years, could in any way change what it was now making him suffer; he would never know this landscape more intimately than he knew it today. He must accept the thought that he was going to leave it without knowing it, without having exhausted its charms, that he was going to leave it as a debtor and creditor both.

Then he thought again about the young woman to whom he had given the sham poison by slipping it into a medicine tube, and he told himself that his career as

a murderer had been the briefest of all his careers. I was a murderer for about eighteen hours, he told himself, and he smiled.

But then he raised an objection: It was not true, he had not been a murderer for only such a brief time. He was a murderer right now and would remain one for the rest of his life. For it mattered little whether the pale-blue tablet was poison or not, what counted was that he believed it was and yet had given it to a stranger and done nothing to save her.

And he set about reflecting on all of it with the unconcern of a man who regards his act as existing merely in the realm of the purely experimental: His act of murder was strange. It was a murder without a motive. It had no aim of gaining something or other for the murderer's benefit. What exactly, then, was its meaning? Obviously, the only meaning of his act of murder was to teach him that he was a murderer.

Murder as an experiment, as an act of self-knowledge, reminded him of something: yes, of Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, who murdered in order to know whether a man has the right to kill an inferior human being, and whether he would have the strength to bear that murder; by that murder, he was interrogating himself about himself.

Yes, there was something that brought him close to Raskolnikov: the pointlessness of the murder, its theoretical nature. But there were differences: Raskolnikov wondered whether a superior man has the right to sacrifice the life of an inferior one for his own benefit.

When Jakub gave the nurse the tube containing the poison, he had nothing like that in mind. Jakub was not wondering whether a man had the right to sacrifice the life of another. On the contrary, Jakub had always been convinced that no one had that right. Jakub was living in a world where people sacrificed the lives of others for the sake of abstract ideas. Jakub knew the faces of these people, faces now brazenly innocent, now sadly craven, faces that apologetically but meticulously carried out cruel verdicts on their neighbors. Jakub knew these faces, and he detested them. Moreover, Jakub knew that every human being wishes for someone's death, and that only two things deter him from murder: fear of punishment and the physical difficulty of inflicting death. Jakub knew that if everyone had the power to kill in secret and at a distance, mankind would vanish in a few minutes. He therefore concluded that Raskolnikovs experiment was totally useless.

Why then had he given the poison to the nurse? Was it simply by chance? Raskolnikov had actually spent a long time plotting and preparing for his crime, while Jakub had acted on the impulse of a moment. But Jakub realized that he, too, had unknowingly for many years been preparing for his act of murder, and that the instant he gave the poison to Ruzena was a fissure into which had been shoveled all of his past life, all of his disgust with mankind.

When Raskolnikov murdered the old woman usurer with an ax, he knew that he was crossing a horrifying

threshold; that he was transgressing divine law; he knew that although the old woman was contemptible, she was a creature of God. The fear that Raskolnikov felt, Jakub had not experienced. For him human beings were not creatures of God. Jakub loved scrupulousness and high-mindedness, and he was persuaded that these were not human qualities. Jakub knew human beings well, and that is why he did not love them. Jakub was high-minded, and that is why he gave them poison.

So I am a murderer out of high-mindedness, he said to himself, and the thought seemed ridiculous and sad.

After Raskolnikov killed the old usurer he did not have the strength to control the tremendous storm of remorse. Whereas Jakub, who was deeply convinced that no one had the right to sacrifice the lives of others, felt no remorse at all.

He tried to imagine that the nurse had really died, to see if he felt any guilt. No, he felt nothing of the kind. His mind calm and at peace, he drove on through the pleasant region that was bidding him farewell.

Raskolnikov experienced his crime as a tragedy, and eventually he was overwhelmed by the weight of his act. Jakub was amazed that his act was so light, so weightless, amazed that it did not overwhelm him. And he wondered if this lightness was not more terrifying than the Russian character's hysterical feelings.

He drove slowly, now and then interrupting his reflections to look at the landscape. He told himself that the episode of the tablet had been merely a game,

an inconsequential game like his whole life in this land on whose soil he had left not a single trace, not a root or a furrow, a land he was now going away from as a breeze goes away.

19

Lighter by a quarter liter of blood, Klima impatiently waited for Dr. Skreta in his waiting room. He did not wish to leave the spa without saying goodbye and asking him to look after Ruzena a bit. "Until they take it away from me, I can still change my mind." He could still hear these words of hers, and they frightened him. He was afraid that after he left and Ruzena was no longer under his influence, she might at the last minute go back on her decision.

Dr. Skreta finally appeared. Klima rushed toward him, said goodbye, and thanked him for his beautiful work on the drums.

"It was a great concert," said Dr. Skreta, "you played wonderfully. Let's hope we can do it again! We have to think about arranging concerts like that at other spas."

"Yes, I'd be glad to do it, I enjoyed playing with you!" the trumpeter said eagerly, and he added: "I want to ask you a favor. If you could look after Ruzena

a bit. I'm afraid she'll get all worked up again. Women are so unpredictable."

"She won't get worked up anymore, don't worry," said Dr. Skreta. "She's no longer alive."

For a moment Klima did not understand, and Dr. Skreta explained what had happened. Then he said: "It's suicide, but there's something rather puzzling about it. Some people might find it odd that she did away with herself an hour after appearing before the committee with you. No, no, no, don't worry," he added, seizing the trumpeter by the hand when he saw him turning pale. "Fortunately for us, Ruzena had a boyfriend, a young repairman who's convinced the child is his. I've stated that there was never anything between you and the nurse, that she simply persuaded you into playing the child's father because the committee doesn't authorize abortions when both parents are single. So don't spill the beans if you're ever interrogated. You're clearly on edge, and that's a pity. You've got to pull yourself together, because we've still got a lot of concerts ahead of us."

Klima was speechless. He kept bowing to Dr. Skreta and kept shaking his hand.

Kamila was waiting for him in the room at the Richmond. Klima took her in his arms and without a word kissed her on the cheek. He kissed her all over her face, then he kneeled and kissed her dress down to her knees.

"What's come over you?"

"Nothing. I'm so lucky to have you. I'm so lucky you exist."

They packed their bags and carried them to their white sedan. Klima said he was tired and asked her to take the wheel.

They drove in silence. Klima was exhausted, yet greatly relieved. He was still somewhat uneasy about the thought that he might yet be interrogated. If that should occur, Kamila might get wind of something. But he repeated to himself what Dr. Skreta had told him. If he were to be interrogated, he would play the innocent (and in this country common enough) role of the gentleman who plays the father to do a good turn. No one could hold it against him, not even Kamila if she happened to hear about it.

He looked at her. Her beauty filled the space of the car like a heady perfume. He told himself that he wished to breathe only that perfume for the rest of his life. Then he heard in his mind the sweet, distant music of his trumpet, and he resolved for the rest of his life to play this music solely to please her, his only and dearest woman.

20

Whenever she took the wheel, she felt stronger and more independent. But this time it was not only the wheel that gave her self-confidence. It was also the

words of the stranger she had met in the corridor of the Richmond. She was unable to forget them. Nor was she able to forget his face, so much more virile than the smooth face of her husband. Kamila reflected that never before had she known a man, a real man.

She looked sidelong at the trumpeter's tired face, which kept breaking into inscrutably blissful smiles while his hand lovingly caressed her shoulder.

This excessive tenderness neither pleased nor touched her. Insofar as it was inexplicable, it confirmed yet again that the trumpeter had his secrets, a life of his own that he hid from her and excluded her from. But now, instead of hurting her, the observation left her indifferent.

What had the man said? That he was leaving forever. A sweet, prolonged yearning wrung her heart. Not only a yearning for the man but also for the lost opportunity. And not only for that opportunity but also for opportunity as such. She had a yearning for all the opportunities she had let pass, escape, evaded, even for those she had never had.

The man had told her that he had lived all his life like a blind man, that he had not even suspected that beauty exists. She understood him. Because it was the same with her. She, too, lived in blindness. She had been seeing only a single being lit up by the floodlight of her jealousy. And what would happen if that floodlight abruptly went out? In the unfocused light of day other beings would suddenly appear by the thousands,

and the man she had up until now believed was the only one in the world would become one among many.

She was at the wheel feeling sure of herself and beautiful, and she went on thinking: Was it really love that bound her to Klima or only the fear of losing him? And if it could be said that at the beginning this fear had been the anxious form of love, as time passed had not love (tired, worn-out) slipped away from that form? Was what finally remained only fear, fear without love? And what would remain if she lost that fear?

Beside her the trumpeter smiled inscrutably.

She glanced at him and told herself that if she ceased being jealous nothing at all would remain. She was driving at great speed, and she reflected that somewhere ahead on the road of her life a line indicating the breakup with the trumpeter had already been traced. For the first time, this idea inspired neither anxiety nor fear in her.

21

It was evening. Olga entered Bertlef's suite and excused herself: "Pardon me for barging in on you. But I'm in such a state I can't be alone. I'm not disturbing you, am I?"

In the room were Bertlef, Dr. Skreta, and the inspec-

tor; it was the latter who answered Olga: "You're not disturbing us. Our conversation now is unofficial."

"The inspector is an old friend of mine," the doctor explained to Olga.

"Why did she do it?" Olga asked.

"She had a fight with her boyfriend, and in the middle of the argument she took something out of her bag and swallowed poison. That's all we know, and I'm afraid that's all we'll ever know," said the inspector.

"Inspector, please," Bertlef said forcefully, "I beg you to pay attention to what I said in my statement. Here, in this very room, I spent with Ruzena the last night of her life. Perhaps I have not sufficiently emphasized the main thing. It was a wonderful night, and Ruzena was immensely happy. That unassuming girl only needed to throw off the shackles she had been locked into by her indifferent and dreary companions to become a radiant being filled with love, sensitivity, and high-minded-ness, to become the person you would not have suspected was inside her. I am positive that last night I opened for her the door to another life, and it was just last night that she began to have a desire for life. But then someone stood in the way…" said Bertlef, suddenly pensive, and then he added softly: "I sense in it hell's intervention."

"The police don't have much influence over the infernal powers," the inspector said.

Bertlef did not respond to the irony. "The suicide theory really makes no sense," he replied. "Please understand, I beg you! It is impossible that she would

kill herself at the very moment when she was wishing to begin to live! I repeat, I will not allow her to be accused of suicide."

"My dear sir," said the inspector, "no one is accusing her of suicide, for the good reason that suicide is not a crime. Suicide is not something that concerns justice. It's not our concern."

"Yes," said Bertlef, "suicide is not a crime for you because life has no value for you. But I, Inspector, do not know of a greater sin. Suicide is worse than murder. One can murder for vengeance or out of greed, but even greed is the expression of a perverted love of life. But to commit suicide is to throw one's life down contemptuously at God's feet. To commit suicide is to spit in the Creator's face. I tell you that I will do everything I can to prove that this young woman is innocent. Since you maintain that she did away with herself, please explain why. What motive have you found?"

"Motives for suicide are always mysterious," said the inspector. "Besides, looking for them isn't within my purview. Don't hold it against me for confining myself to my duties. I've got enough of those and hardly any time. The case is obviously not yet closed, but I can tell you in advance that I'm not thinking of the homicide theory."

"I admire your quickness," said Bertlef acidly, "your quickness to cross out a human being's life."

Olga saw the inspector's cheeks redden. But he controlled himself, and after a brief pause said in a voice that was almost too amiable: "All right, I accept your theory that a murder has been committed. Let's ask

ourselves how it could have been perpetrated. We found a tube of tranquilizers in the victim's handbag. One could assume that the nurse wanted to take a tablet to calm herself but that someone had previously slipped another tablet into the medicine tube, one that looked like the others but contained poison."

"You think that Ruzena got the poison from the tube of tranquilizers?" asked Dr. Skreta.

"Of course, Ruzena could have got the poison not from the tube but from elsewhere in the handbag. That's what would have happened if it was suicide. But if we adopt the murder theory, we have to accept that someone slipped into the medicine tube a poison that could be mistaken for one of Ruzena's tablets. That's the only possibility."

"Pardon me for contradicting you," said Dr. Skreta, "but it's not so easy to turn an alkaloid into a normal-looking tablet. For that, you need access to pharmaceutical machinery, which isn't available to anybody around here."

"Are you saying it's impossible for an ordinary person to get such a tablet?" the inspector asked.

"It's not impossible, but it's extremely difficult."

"It's enough for me to know that it's possible," said the inspector, and he went on: "Now let's ask ourselves who might have had an interest in killing this woman. She wasn't rich, so we can rule out any financial motive. We can also eliminate political motives or espionage. So we're left with motives of a personal nature. Who are the suspects? First of all, Ruzena's lover, who

had a violent quarrel with her just before her death. Do you believe he was the one who gave her the poison?"

No one answered the inspectors question, and he continued: "I don't think so. The boy was still fighting to keep Ruzena. He wanted to marry her. She was pregnant by him, and even if the child was another man's, what matters is that the boy was convinced she was pregnant by him. When he learned that she wanted an abortion he felt desperate. But please bear in mind that Ruzena had come back from the Abortion Committee, not from the abortion! For our desperate boy, all was not yet lost. The fetus was still alive and he was ready to do anything to save it. It's absurd to think that he would have given her poison at that point, when all he was hoping for was to live with her and have a child with her. Besides, the doctor has explained to us that it isn't possible for just anybody to procure poison that looks like an ordinary tablet. Where could this naive boy with no connections procure it? Would you explain that to me?"

Bertlef, whom the inspector kept addressing, shrugged his shoulders.

"Let's go on to other suspects. There's that trumpeter from the capital. It was here that he became acquainted with the deceased, and we'll never know to what point their relations went. In any case they were close enough for the deceased to ask him to pass himself off as the father of the fetus and to appear with her before the Abortion Committee. Why did she ask him rather than someone from around here? It's not hard to

guess. Any married man living in this little spa town would be afraid of trouble with his wife if word got around. Only someone from somewhere else could have done Ruzena that favor. What's more, the rumor that she was expecting the child of a famous artist could only be flattering to the nurse and could not harm the trumpeter. We can therefore assume that Mister Klima heedlessly agreed to do her the favor. Is that a reason to murder the poor nurse? It's highly improbable, as the doctor has explained to us, that Klima was really the child's father. But examine even that possibility. Let's assume that Klima was the father and that this was extremely disagreeable to him. Can you explain to me why he would kill the nurse when she had agreed to terminate the pregnancy and the operation had already been authorized? Now, Mister Bertlef, do you really want to say that Klima is the murderer?''

"You're misunderstanding me," said Bertlef calmly. "I do not wish to send anyone to the electric chair. I only wish to exonerate Ruzena. Because suicide is the greatest sin. Even a life of suffering has a mysterious value. Even a life on the threshold of death is a thing of splendor. Anyone who has not looked death in the face does not know this, but I know it, Inspector, and that is why I tell you I will do everything I can to prove that this young woman is innocent.''

"I'm trying to do that too," said the inspector. "And actually there's still a third suspect. Mister Bertlef, an American businessman. He's admitted that the deceased spent the last night of her life with him. One might

object that this is something the murderer probably wouldn't voluntarily admit to us. But that objection doesn't pass scrutiny. Everyone at the concert yesterday evening saw Mister Bertlef sitting next to Ruzena and leaving with her. Mister Bertlef knows very well that under such circumstances it's better to admit something promptly rather than to be unmasked by others. Mister Bertlef claims that Nurse Ruzena had a very satisfying night. That shouldn't surprise us! Mister Bertlef is not only a fascinating man but above all he's an American businessman who has dollars and a passport with which you can travel all over the world. Ruzena is walled up in this place, looking in vain for a way out. She has a boyfriend who wants only to marry her, but he's just a young local repairman. If she marries him her fate would be sealed forever, she will never get out. She has nobody else, so she doesn't break up with him. But she avoids binding herself to him permanently because she doesn't want to give up her hopes. And then suddenly an exotic man with refined manners appears, and he turns her head. She believes that he'll marry her and that she'll permanently leave behind this forsaken corner of the world. At first she knows how to behave like a discreet mistress, but then she becomes more and more of a nuisance. She makes it clear that she will not give him up, and she starts to blackmail him. But Bertlef is married and, if I'm not mistaken, he loves his wife, who is the mother of his one-year-old boy and is expected to arrive here from America tomorrow. Bertlef wants at all costs to avoid a scandal. He knows that Ruzena always

carries a tube of tranquilizers, and he knows what the tablets look like. He has a lot of connections abroad, and he has a lot of money. For him it's no problem to have a poison tablet made that looks the same as Ruzenas medicine. In the course of that wonderful night, while his mistress was sleeping, he slipped the poison into the tube. I think, Mister Bertlef," the inspector concluded with a solemnly raised voice, "that you are the only person with a motive to murder the nurse and also the only person with the means. I ask you to confess."

Silence pervaded the room. The inspector looked Bertlef in the eye for a long while, and Bertlef returned the look with equal patience and silence. His face expressed neither amazement nor irritation. At last he said: "I am not surprised by your conclusion. Since you are incapable of finding the murderer, you have to find someone to assume reponsibility for the offense. It is one of the mysterious laws of life that the innocent must pay for the guilty. Please do arrest me."

22

The countryside was suffused with soft twilight. Jakub halted in a village only a few kilometers from the border crossing. He wished to prolong the last moments he would be spending in his country. He got out of the

car to take a little stroll down the village street.

It was not a pretty street. Lying around in front of the low-roofed houses were rolls of rusted wire, an old tractor wheel, pieces of scrap metal. It was a neglected, ugly village. Jakub told himself that the scattering of rusted wire was like a coarse word his native land was addressing to him by way of farewell. He walked to the end of the street to a small pond. The pond, neglected too, was covered with green scum. Some geese were splashing around at its edge, and a boy with a switch was trying to herd them away.

Jakub turned around to go back to his car. Just then he became aware of a little boy standing behind a window. Barely five years old, he was looking out the window toward the pond. Perhaps he was watching the geese, perhaps he was watching the boy flailing at the geese with his switch. He was behind the window, and Jakub could not take his eyes off him. What fascinated Jakub about the child's face were the eyeglasses. They were large eyeglasses, probably with thick lenses. The child's head was little and the eyeglasses were big. He was wearing them like a burden. He was wearing them like a fate. He was looking through the frames of his eyeglasses as if through a wire fence. Yes, he was wearing the frames as if they were a wire fence he would have to drag along with him all his life. And Jakub looked through the wire fence of the eyeglasses at the little boy's eyes, and he was suddenly filled with great sadness.

It was as sudden as the spread of water over countryside when riverbanks give way. It had been a long

time since Jakub had been sad. Many years. He had known only sourness, bitterness, but not sadness. And now it had assailed him, and he could not move.

He saw in front of him the child dressed in his wire fence, and he pitied that child and his whole country, reflecting that he had loved this country little and badly, and he was sad because of that bad and failed love.

And all at once the thought came to him that it was pride that had kept him from loving this country, pride in nobility, pride in high-mindedness, pride in scrupulousness; an insane pride that made him dislike his kind and detest them because he saw them as murderers. And once again he remembered that he had slipped poison into a stranger's medicine tube, and that he himself was a murderer. He was a murderer, and his pride was reduced to dust. He had become one of them. He was a brother of those distressing murderers.

The little boy with the big eyeglasses stood at the window as if petrified, his eyes still fixed on the pond. And Jakub realized that this child had done no harm, that he was not guilty of anything, and yet he had been born with bad eyes and would have them forever. And he reflected further that what he had held against others was something given, something they came into the world with and carried with them like a heavy wire fence. He reflected that he had no privileged right to high-mindedness and that the highest degree of high-mindedness is to love people even though they are murderers.

He thought once again of the pale-blue tablet, and

he told himself that he had slipped it into the disagreeable nurse's medicine tube as an apology; as an application to be admitted into their ranks; as a plea to be accepted by them even though he had always refused to be counted as one of them.

He quickly headed back to the car, opened the door, took the wheel, and set out again for the border. The day before he had thought that this would be a moment of relief. That he would be glad to be going away. That he would be leaving a place where he had been born by mistake, and where, in fact, he did not feel at home. But now he knew that he was leaving his only homeland and that he had no other.

23

"Don't be thrilled," said the inspector. "The glorious prison gates won't be opening for you to go through like Jesus Christ climbing Calvary. It never occurred to me that you could kill that young woman. I only accused you so you'd stop insisting so stubbornly that she was murdered."

"I am glad you were not serious about the accusation," said Bertlef in a conciliatory tone. "And you are right, it was not reasonable for me to try to obtain justice for Ruzena through you."

"I'm pleased to see you settle your differences," said Dr. Skreta. "There's one thing at least we can take comfort from. However Ruzena died, her last night was a beautiful night."

"Look at the moon," said Bertlef. "It is just as it was yesterday, and it is turning this room into a garden. Barely twenty-four hours ago Ruzena was the fairy queen of this garden."

"And we shouldn't be so interested in justice," Dr. Skreta said. "Justice is not a human thing. There's the justice of blind, cruel laws, and maybe there's also another justice, a higher justice, but that one I don't understand. I've always felt that I was living here in this world beyond justice."

"What do you mean?" asked Olga, amazed.

"Justice doesn't concern me," said Dr. Skreta. "It's something outside and above me. In any case it's something inhuman. I'll never cooperate with this repellent power."

"Are you trying to say," Olga asked, "that you don't recognize any universal values?"

"The values I recognize have nothing in common with justice."

"For example?" Olga asked.

"For example, friendship," Dr. Skreta replied softly.

Everyone remained silent, and the inspector rose to go. Just then, Olga had a sudden thought: "What color were the tablets Ruzena was taking?"

"Pale blue," said the inspector, and then added with renewed interest: "But why do you ask?"

Olga was afraid that the inspector had read her mind, and quickly backtracked: "I saw her once with a medicine tube. I was wondering if it was the tube I saw…"

The inspector had not read her mind, he was tired and bade everyone good evening.

After he had left, Bertlef said to the doctor: "Our wives will be arriving soon. Shall we go to meet them?"

"Certainly. And I want you to take a double dose of your medication tonight," said the doctor with concern as Bertlef went off into the small adjoining room.

"You once gave some poison to Jakub," said Olga. "It was a pale-blue tablet. And he always had it with him. I know it."

"Don't talk nonsense. I never gave him any such thing," the doctor said very forcefully.

Then Bertlef, wearing a fresh necktie, returned from the adjoining room, and Olga took her leave of the two men.

24

Bertlef and Dr. Skreta walked down the poplar-lined avenue to the railroad station.

"Look at that moon," said Bertlef. "Believe me, Doctor, the evening and night yesterday were miraculous."

"I believe you, but you should take it easy. The bodily movements that inevitably go with such a beautiful night can really be very risky for you."

Bertlef did not reply, and his face radiated only happy pride.

"You seem to be in an excellent mood," said Dr. Skreta.

"You're not mistaken. If, thanks to me, the last night of her life was a beautiful night, I'm happy."

"You know," Dr. Skreta said suddenly, "there's a strange thing I want to ask you but have never dared to. And yet I have the sense that today is so exceptional that I might be bold enough to…"

"Speak up, Doctor!"

"I want you to adopt me as your son."

Bertlef stopped in bewilderment, and Dr. Skreta explained the reasons for his request.

"I would do anything for you, Doctor!" said Bertlef. "I am only afraid that my wife might find it odd. She would be much younger than her son. Is this even legally possible?"

"It doesn't say anywhere that an adopted son must be younger than his parents. He isn't a son by blood, but just an adopted son."

"Are you sure of that?"

"I consulted lawyers a long time ago," Dr. Skreta said shyly.

"You know, it is a peculiar idea, and I am a little surprised by it," said Bertlef, "but today I am under such a spell that I want nothing but to make everyone

happy. So if that makes you happy… my son…"

And the two men embraced in the middle of the street.

25

Olga lay stretched out on her bed (the radio in the next room was silent), and it was obvious to her that Jakub had killed Ruzena and that only she and Dr. Skreta knew it. She would probably never learn why he had done it. A shudder of horror ran through her, but then she noticed with surprise (as we know, she knew how to observe herself) that the shudder was delightful and the horror full of pride.

The night before, she had made love with Jakub while he must have been full of the most excruciating thoughts, and she had absorbed him completely into herself, even with those thoughts.

Why doesn't this repel me? she wondered. Why don't I go (and never will go) and inform on him? Am I, too, living beyond justice?

But the more she interrogated herself this way, the more she felt swelling in her that strange, happy pride, and she felt like a young girl who is being raped and is abruptly gripped by stunning pleasure growing all the more powerful the more strongly it is being resisted…

26

The train reached the railroad station, and two women got off.

One was about thirty-five and received a kiss from Dr. Skreta; the other, who was younger and elegantly dressed, carried a baby in her arms and was kissed by Bertlef.

"Show us your little boy, Mrs. Bertlef," said the doctor, "I haven't seen him yet!"

"If I didn't know you so well, I'd be suspicious," said Suzy Skreta, laughing. "Look, he has a birthmark on his upper lip, in exactly the same place as you!"

Mrs. Bertlef examined Dr. Skreta's face and said in a near shout: "It's true! I never noticed it on you when I was here at the spa before!"

Bertlef said: "It is such an amazing coincidence that I venture to rank it among the miracles. Doctor Skreta, who restores health to women, belongs to the category of angels, and like an angel, he puts his sign on the children he has helped bring into the world. It is not a birthmark, it is an angel mark." All were delighted by Bertlef's explanation, and they laughed cheerfully.

"Besides," Bertlef went on, addressing his charming wife, "I hereby solemnly announce that, as of a few minutes ago, the doctor is the brother of our little John. Since they are brothers, it is quite normal for them to bear the same mark."

"Finally! You finally decided…" said Suzy Skreta to her husband with a sigh of happiness.

"I don't understand, I don't understand any of this!" said Mrs. Bertlef, insisting on an explanation.

"I shall explain everything to you. We have many things to talk about today, many things to celebrate. We have a marvelous weekend before us," said Bertlef, taking his wife by the arm. Then the four of them walked off under the platform lights and away from the railroad station.

COMPLETED IN BOHEMIA IN 1971 OR 1972