It was about nine in the morning in the spa town when an elegant white sedan pulled up in the parking lot at the edge of the spa proper (automobiles were not permitted any farther) and Klima stepped out of it.
Running through the spa was a long, narrow park with scattered clusters of trees, sand paths, and colorful benches on the lawn. Along both sides of the park stood the thermal center's buildings, among them Karl Marx House, where the trumpeter had spent a couple of fateful hours one night in Nurse Ruzena's little room. Facing Karl Marx House on the other side of the park was the spa's most handsome structure, a building in the turn-of-the-century art nouveau style covered with stucco embellishments and with broad steps leading up to the entrance and a mosaic over it. It alone had been accorded the privilege of keeping its original name: Hotel Richmond.
"Is Mister Rertlef still staying here?" Klima asked at the desk, and, receiving an affirmative reply, he ran up the red-carpeted stairs to the second floor and knocked at a door.
Upon entering he saw Bertlef, who came to meet him in his pajamas. Embarrassed, Klima started to apolo-
gize for his unexpected visit, but Bertlef interrupted: "My friend! Don't apologize! You are giving me the greatest pleasure I have ever had here so early in the day."
He gripped Klima's hand and went on: "In this country people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste. Can you tell me what kind of day can follow a beginning of such violence? What happens to people whose alarm clock daily gives them a small electric shock? Each day they become more used to violence and less used to pleasure. Believe me, it is the mornings that determine a man's character."
Bertlef took Klima gently by the shoulder, steered him to an armchair, and went on: "And to think that I so love those morning hours of idleness when, as if over a bridge lined with statues, I slowly go across from night to day, from sleep to awakened life. This is the time of day when I would be so very grateful for a small miracle, for an unexpected encounter that would convince me that my nocturnal dreams are continuing, that no chasm separates the adventures of sleep from the adventures of the day."
As the trumpeter watched Bertlef pacing up and down the room in his pajamas and smoothing his graying hair with his hand, he heard in the sonorous voice an ineradicable American accent and something charmingly outdated about his vocabulary, which was easily explained by Bertlef's never having lived here in
his family's country of origin and having learned its language only from his parents.
"And no one, my friend," he now explained, leaning over Klima with a confiding smile, "no one in this entire spa understands me. Even the nurses, who are otherwise quite obliging, look indignant when I invite them to share a bit of pleasant time with me during breakfast, so I must postpone such appointments until the evening, when I am really a little tired."
Then he went over to a small telephone table and asked: "When did you arrive?"
"This morning," said Klima. "I drove."
"You are surely hungry," said Bertlef, and he picked up the receiver. He ordered two breakfasts: "Four poached eggs, cheese, butter, rolls, milk, ham, and tea."
Meanwhile Klima scrutinized the room. A large round table, chairs, an armchair, a mirror, two couches, and doors leading to the bathroom and, he remembered, to Bertlef's small bedroom. Here in this luxurious suite was where it had all started. Here had sat the tipsy musicians of his band, for whose pleasure the rich American had invited some nurses.
"Yes," said Bertlef, "the picture you are looking at was not here before."
It was only then that the trumpeter noticed a canvas showing a bearded man with a strange, pale-blue disk behind his head and holding a paintbrush and a palette. The picture seemed ineptly done, but the trumpeter knew that many seemingly inept pictures were famous works of art.
"Who painted that?"
"I did," replied Bertlef.
"I didn't know you painted."
"I love to paint."
"And who is this?" the trumpeter was emboldened to ask.
"Saint Lazarus."
"What do you mean? Was Lazarus a painter?"
"This is not the Lazarus in the Bible, but Saint Lazarus, a monk who lived in the ninth century in Constantinople. He is my patron saint."
"Really!" said the trumpeter.
"He was a very odd saint. He was not martyred by pagans because he believed in Christ, but by wicked Christians because he loved painting too much. As you may know, in the eighth and ninth centuries the Greek Orthodox Church fell prey to a rigorous asceticism intolerant of all worldly joys. Even paintings and statues were considered objects of impious pleasure. The emperor Theophilus ordered thousands of beautiful paintings destroyed and prohibited my cherished Lazarus from painting. But Lazarus knew that his paintings glorified God, and he refused to yield. Theophilus threw him into prison, had him tortured, demanded that Lazarus give up painting, but God was merciful and gave him the strength to bear cruel ordeals."
"That's a beautiful story," said the trumpeter politely.
"A magnificent one. But surely it was not to look at
my paintings that you came here to see me."
Just then there was a knock at the door, and a waiter came in with a large tray. He set it on the table and laid out breakfast for the two men.
Bertlef asked the trumpeter to sit down at the table and said: "This breakfast is not remarkable enough to keep us from continuing our conversation. Tell me, what is on your mind?"
And so, as he chewed, the trumpeter told of his misfortune, prompting Bertlef at various points of the story to come up with penetrating questions.
He wanted above all to know why Klima had not answered the nurse's two postcards, why he had not taken her telephone calls, and why he had never made a single friendly gesture that might have prolonged their night of love with a quiet, calming echo.
Klima acknowledged that his behavior had been neither gracious nor sensible. But, so he said, it was all too much for him. He had a horror of any further contact with the young woman.
"Any fool can seduce a woman," Bertlef said with annoyance. "But one must also know how to break it off; that is the sign of a mature man."
"I know," the trumpeter admitted sadly, "but my loathing, my absolute distaste, is stronger than all my good intentions."
"Tell me," Bertlef said with surprise, "are you a misogynist?"
"That's what they say about me."
"But how is that possible? You don't seem to be impotent or homosexual."
"That's right, I'm neither. It's something much worse," the trumpeter admitted melancholically. "I love my wife. That's my erotic secret, which most people find totally incomprehensible."
This confession was so moving that both men kept silent for a while. Then the trumpeter went on: "Nobody understands this, my wife least of all. She thinks that a great love keeps us from having affairs. But that's a mistake. Something's always pushing me toward some other woman, and yet once I've had her I'm torn away by a powerful spring that catapults me back to Kamila. I sometimes feel that I look for other women only because of that spring, that momentum, that marvelous flight-filled with tenderness, desire, humility-bringing me back to my wife, whom I love even more with every new infidelity."
"So for you Nurse Ruzena is only a way of confirming your monogamous love."
"Yes," said the trumpeter. "And it's an extremely pleasant confirmation. Ruzena has great charm at first sight, and also it's an advantage that her charm totally fades away in two hours, which means that there's
nothing urging you to go on with it, and that spring launches you into a marvelous return flight."
"Dear friend, excessive love is guilty love, and you are certainly the best proof of it."
"I thought my love for my wife was the only good thing about me."
"And you were wrong. The excessive love you bear your wife is not the opposite pole to your insensitivity, it is its source. Because your wife means everything to you, all other women mean nothing to you; in other words, for you they are whores. But this is great blasphemy, great contempt for creatures made by God. My dear friend, that kind of love is heresy."
Bertlef pushed aside his empty cup, got up from the table, and retired to the bathroom, from which Klima first heard the sound of running water and then, after a moment, Bertlef's voice: "Do you think one has the right to put to death a child that has not yet seen the light of day?"
A while ago he had been discomfited by the portrait of the bearded man with the halo. He had remembered Bertlef as a jovial bon vivant, and it would never have occurred to him that the man could be a believer. He
felt a pang of anxiety at the thought that he was going to be getting a lesson in morality and that his sole oasis in this desert of a spa was going to be covered with sand. He replied in a choked voice: "Are you one of those who calls that murder?"
Bertlef delayed answering. When he finally emerged from the bathroom, he was dressed to go out and meticulously combed.
"'Murder' is a word that smacks a little too much of the electric chair," he said. "That is not what I am trying to say. You know, I am convinced that life must be accepted such as it is given to us. That is the real first commandment, prior to the other ten. All events are in the hands of God, and we know nothing about their evolution. I am trying to say that to accept life such as it is given to us is to accept the unforeseeable. And a child 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?"
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 you."
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.
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 out into the country in his car.
"What for? Where would we go?"
"We'd be alone."
"If you're ashamed of me you shouldn't have bothered to come here," said Ruzena, and her colleague nodded.
"That's not what I meant," said Klima. "I'll meet you at four in front of the brasserie."
"Perfect," said the thin nurse when Ruzena hung up. "He wants to meet you in some hideaway, but you have to make sure you're seen together by as many people as possible."
Ruzena was still very agitated, and the prospect of the meeting made her nervous. She could no longer picture Klima. What did his face, his smile, his posture look like? Their single encounter had left her only a vague memory. Her colleagues had pressed her at the time with questions about the trumpeter, they wanted to know what he was like, what he said, what he looked like undressed, and how he made love. But she was
unable to tell them anything, and merely repeated that it was "like a dream."
This was not simply a cliche: the man with whom she had spent two hours in bed had come down from the posters to join her. For a moment his photograph had acquired a three-dimensional reality, a warmth, a weight, and then had again become an impalpable, colorless image reproduced in thousands of copies and thus all the more abstract and unreal.
And because he had then so quickly escaped back into being his own graphic sign, his icon, she had been left with an unpleasant awareness of his perfection. She was unable to cling to a single detail that would bring him down or bring him nearer. When he was far away, she had been full of energetic combativeness, but now that she felt his presence, her courage failed her.
"Hang in there," said the thin nurse. "I'll keep my fingers crossed."
When Klima had finished his phone conversation with Ruzena, Bertlef took him by the arm and led him across the park to Karl Marx House, where Dr. Skreta had his office and living quarters. Several women were sitting in the waiting room, but Bertlef without
hesitation rapped sharply four times on the office door. In an instant a tall man appeared, wearing a white coat and with eyeglasses on his big nose. "Just a moment, please," he said to the women sitting in the waiting room, and then he led the two men into the corridor and up the stairs to his apartment on the floor above.
"How are you, Maestro?" he said, addressing the trumpeter when all three were seated. "When are you going to give another concert here?"
"Never again in my lifetime," answered Klima, "because this spa jinxed me."
Bertlef explained to Dr. Skreta what had happened to the trumpeter, and then Klima added: "I want to ask for your help. First, I want to know if she's really pregnant. Maybe she's just late. Or it's all an act. That's already happened to me once. That one was a blonde too."
"Never start anything with a blonde," said Dr. Skreta.
"Yes," Klima agreed, "blondes are my downfall. Doctor, it was horrible that time. I had her examined by a physician. But at the beginning of a pregnancy you can't tell anything for sure. So I insisted they do the mouse test. The one where they inject urine into a mouse and if the mouse's ovaries swell up…"
"… the lady is pregnant," Dr. Skreta finished.
"She was carrying her morning urine in a little bottle, I was with her, and right in front of the clinic she dropped the little bottle on the sidewalk. I pounced on
those bits of glass trying to save at least a few drops! Seeing me, you'd have sworn I'd dropped the Holy Grail. She did it on purpose, broke the little bottle, because she knew she wasn't pregnant and she wanted to make my ordeal last as long as possible."
"Typical blonde behavior," Dr. Skreta said, unsurprised.
"Do you think there is a difference between blondes and brunettes?" asked Bertlef, visibly skeptical about Dr. Skreta's experience with women.
"You bet!" said Dr. Skreta. "Blonde hair and black hair are the two poles of human nature. Black hair signifies virility, courage, frankness, activity, while blonde hair symbolizes femininity, tenderness, weakness, and passivity. Therefore a blonde is in fact doubly a woman. A princess can only be blonde. That's also why, to be as feminine as possible, women dye their hair yellow but never black."
"I'm curious about how pigments exercise their influence over the human soul," said Bertlef doubt-fully.
"It's not a matter of pigments. A blonde unconsciously adapts herself to her hair. Especially if the blonde is a brunette who dyes her hair yellow. She tries to be faithful to her hair color and behaves like a fragile creature, a shallow doll, she demands tenderness and service, courtesy and alimony, she's incapable of doing anything for herself, all refinement on the outside and coarseness on the inside. If black hair became a universal fashion, life in this world would clearly be
better. It would be the most useful social reform ever achieved."
"So it's very likely that Ruzena is also putting on an act," Klima interjected, looking for hope in Dr. Skreta's words.
"No. I examined her yesterday. She's pregnant," said the physician.
Bertlef noticed that the trumpeter had gone pale, and he said: "Doctor, you are chairman of the Abortion Committee here, are you not?"
"Yes," said Dr. Skreta. "We're meeting on Friday."
"Perfect," said Bertlef. "There is no time to lose, because our friend is having a breakdown. I realize that in this country you don't readily authorize abortions."
"Not at all readily," said Dr. Skreta. "On the committee with me are two females who are there to represent the power of the people. They're repulsively ugly and hate all the women who come before us. Do you know who are the most virulent misogynists in the world? Women. No man, gentlemen, not even Mister Klima, whom two women have already attempted to hold responsible for their pregnancies, has ever felt such hatred for women as women themselves feel toward their own sex. Why do you think they try to seduce us? Solely to defy and humiliate their fellow women. God instilled in women's hearts a hatred of other women because He wanted the human race to multiply."
"I shall forgive this remark of yours," said Bertlef,
"because I want to return to our friends problem. Aren't you really the one who makes the decisions on that committee, and those hideous females do whatever you say:
"I'm certainly the one who decides, but this doesn't mean I want to keep on doing it. It pays nothing. Tell me, Maestro, how much are you paid, for example, for one concert?"
The amount mentioned by Klima interested Dr. Skreta: "I often think I could supplement my income by making music. I'm not a bad drummer."
"You're a drummer?" asked Klima, showing forced interest.
"Yes," said Dr. Skreta. "We have a piano and a set of drums in the Hall of the People. I play the drums in my free moments."
"That's wonderful!" exclaimed the trumpeter, pleased by the opportunity to flatter the physician.
"But I don't have any partners to have a real band with. There's only the pharmacist, who plays the piano fairly well. We've tried out some things together a few times." He broke off and seemed to be thinking. "Listen! When Ruzena appears before the committee…"
Klima gave a deep sigh. "If she would only come-"
Dr. Skreta gestured impatiently: "She'll be glad to come, just like all the others. But the committee requires the father to appear too; you'll have to be there with her. And to make the trip here worthwhile, you might arrive the day before and give a concert that evening. Trumpet, piano, drums. Tres faciunt
orchestrum. With your name on the posters, we'll fill the hall. What do you say?"
Klima was always excessively punctilious about the technical quality of his concerts, and two days earlier the physician's proposal would have seemed completely insane to him. But now he was only interested in a particular nurse's womb, and he responded to the physician's question with polite enthusiasm: "That would be splendid!"
"Really? Will you do it?"
"Of course."
"And you, what do you say?" Skreta asked Bertlef.
"It seems an excellent idea to me. But I don't know how you can make all the preparations in two days."
By way of response, Skreta got up and went over to the phone. He dialed a number, but there was no answer. "The most important thing is to order the posters right away. Unfortunately the secretary must have gone to lunch," he said. "Getting the use of the hall is child's play. The People's Education Association has an anti-alcohol meeting scheduled for Thursday, and one of my colleagues is supposed to give the lecture. He'll be delighted when I ask him to cancel because of illness. But of course you'll have to get here on Thursday morning so the three of us can rehearse. Unless it's unnecessary."
"No, no," said Klima. "It's essential. You have to prepare in advance."
"That's my opinion too," said Skreta. "Let's play them the most surefire program. I'm good at backing
up 'St. Louis Blues' and 'When the Saints Go Marching In.' I've got some solos ready, I'm curious to know what you'll think of them. For that matter, are you free this afternoon? Would you like to give it a try?''
"Unfortunately, this afternoon I have to persuade Ruzena to consent to an abortion."
Skreta waved his hand: "Forget about that! She'll consent without any coaxing."
"Doctor," Klima pleaded, "better on Thursday."
Bertlef interceded: "I too think you would do better to wait until Thursday. Today our friend would be unable to concentrate. Anyway, I don't believe he has brought his trumpet with him."
"That's a good reason!" Skreta acknowledged, and began to lead his two friends to the restaurant on the other side of the park. But Skreta's nurse caught up with them and begged him to return to his office. The doctor excused himself and let the nurse take him back to his infertile patients.
About six months earlier Ruzena had left her parents' house in a nearby village to move into a small room in Karl Marx House. God knows what she promised herself from this room's independence, but she soon real-
ized that her room's and her freedom's benefits were much less pleasant and much less intense than what she had dreamed of.
This afternoon, having returned to her room from the thermal building a little after three o'clock, she had the unpleasant surprise of finding her father waiting for her sprawled on the daybed. That was hardly convenient, for she wanted to devote herself entirely to her appearance, to do her hair and carefully choose a dress.
"What are you doing here?" she asked irritably. She held it against the doorkeeper that he was an acquaintance of her father's and always ready to let him into her room in her absence.
"I had a bit of free time," said her father. "We're having an exercise in town today."
Her father was a member of the Public Order Volunteers. Because the spa's medical staff made fun of the old men pacing up and down the streets with their armbands and their self-important manner, Ruzena was ashamed of this activity of her father's.
"If that's what amuses you!" she muttered.
"You should be glad to have a papa who's never been a loafer and never will be. We're pensioners, but we're going to show you young people we still know how to do things!"
Ruzena decided to let him talk while she concentrated on choosing her dress. She opened the wardrobe.
"I'd really like to know what things you do," she said.
"A lot of things. This town, my little girl, is an inter-
nationally known spa. And what do you see? Kids running all over the grass!"
"So what?" said Ruzena, rummaging through her dresses. Not a single one pleased her.
"Not only kids, but dogs too! The Municipal Council a long time ago issued an order that dogs have to be leashed and muzzled outdoors! But nobody here obeys it. Everybody does what he pleases. Just look at the park!"
Ruzena took out a dress and began to change behind the open wardrobe door.
"They piss everywhere. Even in the playground sandbox! Think of a toddler dropping his slice of bread and jam in the sand! And then people wonder why there's so much sickness! Here, all you have to do is look," said her father, heading toward the window. "Right now four dogs are running loose there."
Ruzena reappeared and examined herself in the mirror on the wall. The little mirror was the only one she had, and she could barely see down to her waist.
"You're not interested, are you?" her father asked.
"Of course I'm interested," said Ruzena, moving back from the mirror on tiptoes to try to gauge how her legs would look in that dress. "But, please don't be angry, I've got to meet somebody and I'm in a hurry."
"The only dogs I can tolerate are police dogs and retrievers," said her father. "But I don't understand people who keep dogs at home. Soon women will stop bearing children and cradles will be filled with poodles!"
Ruzena was dissatisfied with the image the mirror reflected. She went back to the wardrobe to find a more becoming dress.
"We've decided that people should be allowed to have dogs at home only if everybody in the building agrees to it at the tenants' meeting. Also, we're going to increase the dog-license fee."
"I can see you have serious concerns," said Ruzena, delighted that she no longer lived with her parents. Ever since childhood, her fathers moral lessons and commands had been repugnant to her. She craved a world in which people spoke a language other than his.
"It's no laughing matter. Dogs really are a serious problem, and I'm not the only one who thinks so, the highest authorities think so too. You've probably never been asked what's important and what isn't. Of course you'd answer that the most important things in the world are your dresses," he said, noting that his daughter had again hidden behind the wardrobe door to change.
"They're certainly more important than your dogs," she replied, once again standing on tiptoes in front of the mirror. And once again she was dissatisfied. But dissatisfaction with herself slowly changed into rebellion: spitefully she thought that the trumpeter would have to accept her just as she was, even in this cheap dress, and this gave her an odd feeling of satisfaction.
"It's a question of hygiene," her father went on. "Our towns will never be clean as long as dogs leave their
loads on the sidewalk. And it's also a question of morality. It's intolerable for dogs to be pampered in housing constructed for people."
Something was happening that Ruzena did not suspect: her rebellion was mysteriously, imperceptibly merging with her father's indignation. She no longer felt the intense repugnance for him that had filled her just a while ago; on the contrary, she unknowingly drew energy from his vehement words.
"We never had a dog in the house, and we weren't missing anything,'' said her father.
She continued to look at herself in the mirror and felt that being pregnant gave her a new advantage. Whether she found herself beautiful or not, the trumpeter had made the trip expressly to see her and very nicely invited her to meet him at the brasserie. For that matter (she looked at her watch), at this very moment he was already waiting for her there.
"But were going to make a clean sweep, little girl, you'll see!" her father said, laughing, and this time she reacted gently, almost with a smile: "I'm glad, Papa. But now I have to leave.''
"Me too. The exercise starts again any minute."
They left Karl Marx House together and then went their separate ways. Ruzena headed slowly toward the brasserie.
Klima had never managed to identify entirely with his role of a famous and popular artist, and particularly now, with his private worries, he felt it as a flaw and a handicap. When he entered the brasserie with Ruzena and, opposite the checkroom, saw his enlarged photo on a poster left over from the last concert, he was gripped by a sensation of anxiety. He crossed the room with the young woman, automatically trying to guess which of the customers recognized him. He was afraid of their gaze, thought he saw eyes everywhere observing him, spying on him, dictating his expressions and behavior to him. He felt several curious looks fixed on him. He tried to ignore them and headed for a small table in the back, near a bay window with a view of the park's foliage.
When they were seated he smiled at Ruzena, caressed her hand, and said that her dress became her. She demurred modestly, but he insisted and tried to talk for a while on the topic of the nurse's charms. He was surprised, he said, by her good looks. He had been thinking about her so much for two months that the pictorial efforts of his memory had fashioned an image of her that was remote from the reality. What was extraordinary about it, he said, was that her real appearance, although he had very much desired it as he thought of her, nonetheless topped the imaginary one.
Ruzena pointed out that she had not heard from the trumpeter for two months, and from that she gathered that he had not thought of her very much.
This was an objection he had carefully prepared for. He sighed wearily and told the young woman she could have no idea of the terrible two months he had just spent. Ruzena asked him what had happened, but the trumpeter didn't want to go into the details. He merely replied that he had been the victim of great ingratitude and had suddenly found himself all alone in the world, without friends, without anyone.
He was a little afraid that Ruzena would start questioning him in detail about his worries, with the risk of his becoming entangled in lies. His fears were excessive. Ruzena was of course very interested to learn that the trumpeter had gone through a difficult time, and she readily accepted this excuse for his two-month silence. But she was completely indifferent to the exact nature of his troubles. About those sad months he had just lived through, only the sadness interested her.
"I thought a lot about you, and it would have made me so happy to help you."
"I was so disgusted I was even afraid to see people. Sad company is bad company."
"I was sad too."
"I know," he said, caressing her hand.
"I've known for quite a while that I'm carrying your child. And you gave no sign of life. But I'd have kept the child even if you never wanted to see me again. I told myself that even if I'm left all alone, I'll at least
have your child. I'd never get rid of it. No, never…"
Klima was speechless; mute terror took hold of his mind.
Fortunately for him the waiter, who was casual about serving the customers, now stopped at their table for their order.
"A brandy," said the trumpeter, and immediately corrected himself: "Two brandies."
There was another pause, and Ruzena repeated in an undertone: "No, not for anything in the world would I ever get rid of it."
"Don't say that," Klima replied, regaining his wits. "You're not the only one involved. A child is not only the woman's business. It's the couple's business. Both of them have to agree, or else things could end very badly."
When he finished he realized he had just indirectly admitted that he was the child's father. From now on any conversation with Ruzena would be based on that admission. He was well aware that he was acting according to plan and that this concession was part of it, yet he was terrified of his own words.
The waiter brought them the two brandies: "Are you really Mister Klima, the trumpet player?"
"Yes," said Klima.
"The girls in the kitchen recognized you. That's really you on the poster?"
"Yes," said Klima.
"It seems you're the idol of all the women between twelve and seventy!" said the waiter, adding for
Ruzena's benefit: "All the women are so envious they want to scratch your eyes out!" As he left he turned around several times to smile at them with impertinent familiarity.
"No, I'll never agree to get rid of it," Ruzena repeated. "And you too, someday, you'll be happy to have it. Because, you understand, I'm not asking you for anything at all. I hope you don't imagine I want something from you. You can absolutely set your mind at rest. This concerns only me, and if you wish, you don't have to deal with any of it."
Nothing makes a man more anxious than such reassurances. Klima suddenly felt that he had no strength left to salvage anything at all and that he had better give up the game. He was silent and Ruzena was silent too, and the words she had just spoken became so rooted in the silence that the trumpeter felt more and more miserable and helpless in their presence.
But the image of his wife suddenly came to mind. He realized that he must not give up. He moved his hand on the marble tabletop until it touched Ruzena's fingers. He gripped them and said: "Forget about the child for a minute. The child is not at all the most important thing. Do you think we don't have anything to say to each other about the two of us? Do you think I came to see you only because of the child?"
Ruzena shrugged.
"The most important thing is that I feel sad without you. We saw each other only for a brief moment. And yet there wasn't a single day that I didn't think of you."
He paused, and Ruzena remarked: "I never heard from you for two months, and I wrote to you twice."
"Don't hold it against me," said the trumpeter. "It was on purpose that you didn't hear from me. I didn't want to be in touch with you. I was afraid of what was happening inside me. I was resisting love. I wished to write you a long letter, I actually filled pages and pages, but I finally threw them all away. I was never so in love before, and it scared me. And why not admit it? I also wanted to make sure that my feelings were something other than a passing enchantment. I told myself: If I go on being like this for another month, what I'm feeling for her isn't an illusion, it's a reality."
Ruzena said softly: "And what do you think now? Is it only an illusion?"
When Ruzena said this, the trumpeter realized that his plan was beginning to work. So he kept holding her hand and went on talking, the words coming more and more easily to him: Now that he was here looking at her, he said, he realized it wouldn't be necessary to submit his feelings to any more tests because everything was clear. And he didn't wish to speak of the child because most important to him was not the child but Ruzena. The significance of the child she was carrying was precisely that of having called him, Klima, to Ruzena's side. Yes, the child she was carrying inside her had called him here to this small spa and made him see how much he loved Ruzena, and that was why (he raised his glass of brandy) they were going to drink to the child's health.
Of course he was instantly frightened by the appalling toast to which his verbal exhilaration had brought him. But the words had been uttered. Ruzena raised her glass and whispered: "Yes, to our child," and downed her brandy in one gulp.
The trumpeter quickly did his best to make her forget this inept toast by changing the subject, asserting yet again that he had been thinking of Ruzena every hour of every day.
She said that in the capital the trumpeter was surely surrounded by women more interesting than she.
He responded that he was fed up with their refinement and pretentiousness. He preferred Ruzena to all other women, regretting only that he lived so far from her. Didn't she want to come to work in the capital?
She replied that she would like to live in the capital. But it was not easy to find a job there.
He smiled condescendingly and said that he had many connections in the hospitals there and could with no difficulty get her a job.
He talked to her this way for a long time, continuing to hold her hand, and thus didn't notice when a girl approached them. Unafraid of intruding, she said enthusiastically: "You're Mister Klima! I recognized you right away! I just want your autograph!''
Klima blushed. He was holding Ruzena's hand and had made a declaration of love to her in a public place in front of everyone present. He thought that it was as if he were in an ancient arena and that the whole world had been transformed into amused spectators observ-
ing with malicious laughter his struggle for life.
The girl handed him a piece of paper, and Klima wanted to sign it as quickly as possible, but he had no pen and neither did she.
"Do you have a pen?" he asked Ruzena, whispering because he feared the girl would notice his use of the familiar pronoun. But he instantly realized that the familiar was far less intimate than his hand in Ruzena's, and he repeated his question more loudly: "Do you have a pen?"
Ruzena shook her head, and the girl went back to her table, where several boys and girls instantly took advantage of the opportunity and with the girl rushed over to Klima. They handed him a pen and from a notepad tore sheets of paper for him to sign.
From the standpoint of the plan, this was all to the good. Ruzena would be all the more easily convinced that he loved her if there were numerous witnesses to their intimacy. But however rational he was, anxiety's irrationality threw the trumpeter into a panic. The idea came to him that Ruzena was conniving with all these people. In a confused vision he imagined them all testifying against him in a paternity case: "Yes, we saw them, they were sitting facing each other like lovers, he was caressing her hand and gazing lovingly into her eyes…
The anxiety was further aggravated by the trumpeter's vanity; he actually considered Ruzena not beautiful enough for him to hold her hand in public. That was a bit unjust to Ruzena. She was much prettier than
she seemed to him at this moment. Just as love makes the beloved woman more beautiful, anxiety inspired by a woman one fears brings her smallest flaws into disproportionate relief…
"I don't like this place," said Klima when they were finally alone again. "Do you want to go for a drive?"
She was eager to see his car, and she agreed. Klima paid the check, and they left the brasserie. Opposite them was a broad, yellow sand path. Some ten men were lined up there, facing the brasserie. For the most part they were old men, wearing red armbands on the sleeves of their wrinkled jackets and holding long poles in their hands.
Klima was dumbfounded: "What is that?"
Ruzena responded: "It's nothing, show me your car," and she quickly started to drag him away.
But Klima was unable to take his eyes off the men. He could not fathom the purpose of the long poles with wire loops at the ends. The men were like lamplighters, like fishermen in search of flying fish, like militiamen with a secret weapon.
While he was scrutinizing them, he thought one of them was smiling at him. He was afraid, even afraid for himself, thinking that he was beginning to hallucinate and seeing everyone as following and watching him. He let Ruzena drag him away to the parking lot.
"I'd like to go somewhere far away with you," he said. He had his right arm around Ruzena's shoulders and his left hand on the steering wheel. "Somewhere south. Where you drive for hours on a corniche along the sea. Have you been to Italy?"
"No."
"Well then, promise you'll come with me."
"Aren't you overdoing it a bit?"
Ruzena had said it only out of modesty, but the trumpeter was instantly on guard, as if that "overdoing it" applied to all of his demagogy, which she had suddenly seen through. But he could no longer back out: "Yes, I'm overdoing it. I always have crazy ideas. That's how I am. But unlike other people, I carry out my crazy ideas. Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea. I'd like us not to go back to the spa, I'd like us to go on driving nonstop until we get to the sea. Down there I'd find a job in a band, and we'd go along the coast from one resort to another."
He stopped the sedan at a spot with a scenic view. They got out, and he suggested they take a walk in the forest. They walked a few minutes and then sat down on a wooden bench dating from the time when people went by car less and appreciated excursions in the forest more. He kept his arm around Ruzena's shoulders and suddenly said in a sad voice: "Everybody imagines
I have a very happy life. That's a big mistake. I'm really very unhappy. Not only these last few months, but for several years now."
If Ruzena regarded the idea of a trip to Italy excessive and thought about it with vague suspicion (very few of their fellow citizens were allowed to travel abroad), the sadness that emanated from these words of Klima's had for her a pleasant odor. She sniffed it as if it were roast pork.
"How can you be unhappy?"
"How I can be unhappy…" said the trumpeter with a sigh.
"You're famous, you've got a beautiful car, you've got money, you've got a pretty wife…"
"Maybe pretty, yes…" the trumpeter said bitterly.
"I know," said Ruzena. "She's not young anymore. She's your age, right?"
The trumpeter saw that Ruzena was probably fully informed on the subject of his wife, and this angered him. But he went on: "Yes, she's my age."
"You're not old. You look like a kid," said Ruzena.
"But a man needs a woman younger than he is," said Klima. "And an artist more than anyone else. I need youth, you can't imagine, Ruzena, how much I appreciate your youth. I sometimes think I can't go on like this. I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way. Ruzena, your phone call-suddenly I was sure it was a message sent by fate."
"Really?" she asked softly.
"Why do you think I called you back right away? All at once I felt that I couldn't lose any more time. That I had to see you right now, right now, right now…" He fell silent and gazed into her eyes for a long while: "Do you love me?"
"Yes. And you?"
"I love you madly," he said.
"Me too."
He leaned over her and put his mouth against hers. It was a healthy mouth, a young mouth, a pretty mouth with prettily shaped soft lips and carefully brushed teeth, with everything in place, and the fact is that two months earlier he had yielded to the temptation of kissing these lips. But precisely because that mouth had charmed him, he had seen it at the time through a mist of desire and knew nothing of it in reality: the tongue had been like a flame and the saliva had been an intoxicating liqueur. Only now, having lost its charm, was the mouth suddenly what it was, a real mouth, an industrious orifice through which the young woman had already taken in cubic meters of dumplings, potatoes, and soups, a mouth containing teeth pocked with fillings and saliva that was no longer an intoxicating liqueur but the cousin of a glob of spit. The tongue in the trumpeter's mouth had the effect of an unappetizing mouthful impossible to swallow and unseemly to remove.
The kiss finally over, they got up and set off again. Ruzena was almost happy, but she was well aware that the reason she had telephoned the trumpeter and had
compelled him to come here was oddly being avoided in their conversation. She had no desire to discuss it at length. On the contrary, what they were talking about now seemed more pleasant and more important to her. Yet she wished that this reason, now being passed over in silence, were present, even if only discreetly and modestly. And so when Klima, after various declarations of love, announced that he would do everything he could to live with Ruzena, she pointed out: "You're very sweet, but we have to remember that I'm no longer all alone."
"Yes," said Klima, and he knew that this was the moment he had dreaded from the very first, the weakest link in his demagogy.
"Yes, you're right," he said. "You're not alone. But that's not really the main thing. I want to be with you because I love you, and not because you're pregnant."
"Yes," said Ruzena.
"Nothing's more horrible than a marriage that has no other reason than a child conceived by mistake. And actually, darling, if I may speak frankly, I want you to be the way you were before. There should be just the two of us, and nobody else in between. Do you understand me?"
"Oh no, that's not possible, I can't agree to that, I never could," Ruzena protested.
She said this not because she was convinced of it deep down. The definitive word she had gotten from Dr. Skreta two days earlier was so fresh that she was still disconcerted. She was not following a minutely
calculated plan but was completely absorbed by the idea of her pregnancy, which she was experiencing as a great event and still more as a stroke of luck and an opportunity that would not so easily come again. She was like a pawn reaching the end of the chessboard and becoming a queen. She was delighted by the thought of her unexpected, unprecedented power. She saw that at her summons things had been set in motion, the famous trumpeter coming from the capital to see her, to take her for a drive in a magnificent car, to make declarations of love to her. No doubt there was a connection between her pregnancy and that sudden power. If she did not wish to give up her power, she could not give up her pregnancy.
That is why the trumpeter had to go on rolling his heavy stone uphill. "Darling, it's not a family I want, it's love. For me, you are love, and when there's a child, love gives way to family. To boredom. To worries. To monotony. Lover gives way to mother. For me, you're not a mother but a lover, and I don't want to share you with anyone. Even with a child.''
These were beautiful words, and Ruzena heard them with pleasure but shook her head: "No, I couldn't. It's just as much your child. I couldn't get rid of your child."
Unable to find new arguments, he kept repeating the same words and dreading that she would finally see through their hypocrisy.
"You're over thirty. Haven't you ever wanted a child?"
True, he had never wanted a child. He loved Kamila too much for her to be hampered by the presence of a child. What he had just asserted to Ruzena was not pure invention. He had in fact been uttering exactly the same words to his wife for years, sincerely, without deceit.
"You've been married six years and don't have a child. It thrills me so to think of giving you a child."
He saw that everything was going against him. The exceptional nature of his love for Kamila convinced Ruzena of his wife's infertility and inspired misplaced audacity in the nurse.
It began to grow chilly, the sun was sinking toward the horizon, time was passing, Klima went on repeating what he had already said, and Ruzena repeated her "No, no, I couldn't." He felt that he was at a dead end; he no longer knew what to do and thought he was going to lose everything. He was so nervous he forgot to hold her hand, forgot to kiss her, forgot to put tenderness into his voice. He realized this with dread and tried hard to pull himself together. He stopped, smiled at her, and took her in his arms. It was a tired embrace of fatigue. He clasped her to him, his head pressed against her face, and it was actually a way of leaning on her, of resting, catching his breath, because it seemed to him that he lacked strength for the long road still ahead.
But Ruzena too had her back against the wall. Like him she had run out of arguments, and she felt you could not go on for long merely repeating "no" to a man you wanted to win.
The embrace lasted a long while, and when Klima let Ruzena slip out of his arms she lowered her head and said in a resigned tone: "All right, tell me what I should do."
Klima could not believe his ears. These were sudden and unexpected words, and they were an immense relief. So immense that he had to make a great effort to control himself and not show it too clearly. He caressed the young woman's cheek and said that Dr. Skreta was a friend of his and all Ruzena had to do was appear before the committee in three days. He would go with her. She had nothing to be afraid of.
Ruzena didn't protest, and he regained the desire to continue playing his role. He put his arm around her shoulders and again and again stopped talking to kiss her (his joy was so great that the kisses were once more obscured by a veil of mist). He repeated that Ruzena should move to the capital. He even repeated his words about a trip to the seashore.
Then the sun disappeared below the horizon, the darkness deepened in the forest, and a round moon appeared above the tops of the fir trees. They went back to the car. As they were reaching the road they found themselves in a beam of light. For a moment they thought it was the headlights of a passing car, but it became instantly obvious that the light was focused on them. The beam was coming from a motorcycle parked on the other side of the road; a man was on it, watching them.
"Hurry up, let's go. Please!" said Ruzena.
When they were near the car, the man on the motorcycle got off and moved toward them. Klima could only make out a dark silhouette because the parked motorcycle was lighting the man from behind, and the trumpeter had the light in his eyes.
"Come here!" the man shouted, rushing toward Ruzena. "I have to talk to you. We've got things to talk about! A lot of things!" His voice was tense and confused.
The trumpeter too was tense and confused, and all he could feel was a kind of irritation at the lack of respect: "The young lady is with me, not with you," he announced.
"You too, I have to talk to you, you know!" the stranger screamed at the trumpeter. "You think because you're famous you can do anything you want! You figure you're going to play games with her! That you can turn her head! It's very easy for you! I could do the same thing if I were you!"
Ruzena took advantage of the motorcyclist's focus on the trumpeter to slip into the car. The motorcyclist leaped toward the door. But the window was closed and the young woman turned on the radio. The car resounded with loud music. Then the trumpeter also slipped into the car and slammed the door. The music was deafening. Through the windshield they could only make out the silhouette of a screaming man and his gesticulating arms.
"He's a madman who's always following me," said Ruzena. "Quick, please let's get going!"
He parked the car, took Ruzena to Karl Marx House, gave her a kiss, and when she disappeared behind the door, felt as tired as after four sleepless nights. It was getting late. Klima was hungry and didn't feel even strong enough to take the wheel and drive. He yearned to hear soothing words from Bertlef and walked across the park to the Richmond.
Arriving at the entrance, he was struck by the sight of a large poster lit by a street lamp. His name was on it in big, clumsy letters, and below it, in smaller letters, were the names of Dr. Skreta and the piano-playing pharmacist. The poster had been done by hand and included an amateur drawing of a golden trumpet.
The trumpeter considered it a good omen that Dr. Skreta had arranged the concert promotion so quickly, because such speed seemed to indicate that Skreta was a man he could count on. He went up the stairs in a hurry and knocked at Bertlefs door.
There was no answer.
He knocked again, and again there was no answer.
Before he could think whether he was arriving at the wrong time (the American was known for his many relationships with women) his hand pushed down on the door handle. The door was unlocked. The trumpeter went into the room and stopped. He could see nothing. Nothing but a glow coming from a location on
the wall of the room. It was a strange glow; it did not resemble the white light of a fluorescent tube or the yellow one of an electric bulb. It was a bluish light, and it filled the whole room.
Then a belated thought reached his imprudent fingers and suggested to him that he was possibly being indiscreet by intruding, without the slightest invitation, on people at a late hour. Afraid of being rude, he stepped back into the corridor and quickly closed the door.
But he was so confused that instead of leaving he remained standing at the door, striving to understand that strange light. He wondered if the American might be naked in his room and taking a sunbath under an ultraviolet lamp. But then the door opened and Bertlef appeared. He was not naked, he was wearing the same outfit he had worn in the morning. He smiled at the trumpeter: "I am glad you have come by to see me. Come in."
The trumpeter entered with curiosity, but the room was now lit by an ordinary ceiling lamp.
"I'm afraid I've disturbed you," said the trumpeter.
"Not at all!" Bertlef responded, pointing to the window where the trumpeter thought he had seen the source of the blue light. "I was just sitting here thinking. That's all."
"When I came in just before-excuse me for barging in on you like that-I saw an absolutely extraordinary light."
"A light?" said Bertlef, and he laughed. "You should
not take that pregnancy with such seriousness. It is giving you hallucinations."
"Or else maybe it was because I was coming from the very dark corridor."
"That could be," said Bertlef. "But tell me how things turned out!"
The trumpeter began his story, and after a while Bertlef interrupted: "Are you hungry?"
The trumpeter nodded, and Bertlef took a package of crackers and a can of ham out of a cupboard and immediately opened them.
Klima went on talking, greedily downing his dinner and looking inquiringly at Bertlef.
"I believe everything will turn out well," Bertlef comforted him.
"And what do you think about the fellow who was waiting for us by the car?"
Bertlef shrugged: "I don't know. Anyway, it's no longer important."
"That's right. I have to think instead about how to explain to Kamila why that conference took so long."
It was already very late. Comforted and reassured, the trumpeter got into his car and set off for the capital. He was accompanied all the way by an enormous round moon.