Milan Kundera - Farewell Waltz

Skreta hung up. "Well, you heard that. You're going to see her again at noon. Damn, what were we just talking about?"

"About the American."

"Yes," said Skreta. "He's an extremely odd type. I cured his wife. They'd been unable to have children."

"And what's he here for?"

"His heart."

"You said you've got plans for him."

"It's humiliating," said Skreta indignantly, "what a physician is forced to do in this country in order to make a decent living! Klima, the famous trumpeter, is coming here. I have to accompany him on the drums!"

Jakub didn't think Skreta was being serious, but he pretended to be surprised: "What, you play the drums?"

"Yes, my friend! What can I do, now that I'm going to have a family?"

"What?" Jakub exclaimed, this time truly surprised. "A family? Are you telling me you're married?"

"Yes," said Skreta. "To Suzy?"

Suzy was a doctor at the spa who had been Skreta's girlfriend for years, but at the last moment he had always succeeded in avoiding marriage.

"Yes, to Suzy," said Skreta. "You know that every Sunday I used to climb up to the scenic view with her."

"So you're really married," said Jakub with melancholy.

"Every time we climbed up there," Skreta went on, "Suzy tried to convince me we should get married. And I'd be so worn out by the climb that I felt old and that there was nothing left for me but to marry. But in the end I always controlled myself, and when we came back down from the scenic view my strength would come back and I'd no longer want to get married. But one day Suzy made us take a detour, and the climb took so long I agreed to get married even before we got to the top. And now we're expecting a child, and I have to think a bit about money. The American also paints religious pictures. One could make a lot of money from that. What do you think?"

"Do you believe there's a market for religious pictures?"

"A fantastic market! All it takes, old friend, is to put up a stand next to the church on pilgrimage days and, at a hundred crowns apiece, we'd make a fortune! I could sell them for him and we'd split fifty-fifty."

"And what does he say?"

"The fellow has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it, and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to get him to go into business with me," said Skreta with a curse.

Olga clearly saw Nurse Ruzena waving to her from the edge of the pool, but she went on swimming and pretended she had not seen her.

The two women didn't like each other. Dr. Skreta had put Olga in a small room next to Ruzena's. Ruzena was in the habit of playing the radio very loud, and Olga liked quiet. She had rapped on the wall at various times, and the nurse's only response was to turn up the volume.

Ruzena persisted in waving and finally succeeded in telling the patient that a visitor from the capital would be meeting her at noon.

Olga realized that it was Jakub, and she felt immense joy. And instantly she was surprised by this joy: How

can I be feeling such pleasure at the idea of seeing him again?

Olga was actually one of those modern women who readily divide themselves into a person who lives life and a person who observes it.

But even the Olga who observed life was rejoicing. For she understood very well that it was utterly excessive for Olga (the one who lived life) to rejoice so impetuously, and because she (the one who observed life) was mischievous this excessiveness gave her pleasure. She smiled at the idea that Jakub would be frightened if he knew of the fierceness of her joy.

The hands of the clock above the pool showed a quarter to twelve. Olga wondered how Jakub would react if she were to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him passionately. She swam to the edge of the pool, climbed out, and went to a cubicle to change. She regretted a little not having been informed of Jakub's visit earlier in the day. She would have been better dressed. Now she was wearing an uninteresting little gray suit that spoiled her good mood.

There were times, such as a few minutes earlier while swimming in the pool, when she totally forgot her appearance. But now she was planted in front of the cubicle's small mirror and seeing herself in a gray suit. A few minutes earlier she had smiled mischievously at the idea that she could throw her arms around Jakub's neck and kiss him passionately. But she had that idea in the pool, where she had been swimming bodilessly, like a disembodied thought. Now that she had sud-

denly been provided with a body and a suit, she was far away from that joyous fantasy, and she knew that she was exactly what to her great anger Jakub always saw her as: a touching little girl who needed help.

If Olga had been a little more foolish, she would have found herself quite pretty. But since she was an intelligent girl, she considered herself much uglier than she really was, for she was actually neither ugly nor pretty, and any man with normal aesthetic requirements would gladly spend the night with her.

But since Olga delighted in dividing herself in two, the one who observed life now interrupted the one who lived life: What did it matter that she was like this or like that? Why suffer over a reflection in a mirror? Wasn't she something other than an object for men's eyes? Other than merchandise putting herself on the market? Was she incapable of being independent of her appearance, at the very least to the degree that any man can be?

She left the thermal building and saw a good-natured and touching face. She knew that instead of extending his hand to her he was going to pat her on the head like a good little girl. Sure enough, that is what he did.

"Where are we having lunch?" he asked.

She suggested the patients' dining room, where there was a vacant place at her table.

The patients' dining room was immense, filled with tables and people squeezed closely together having lunch. Jakub and Olga sat down and then waited a long

time before a waitress served them soup. Two other people were sitting at their table, and they tried to engage in conversation with Jakub, whom they immediately classified as a member of the sociable family of patients. It was therefore only in snatches during the general talk at the table that Jakub could question Olga about a few practical details: Was she satisfied with the food here, was she satisfied with the doctor, was she satisfied with the treatment? When he asked about her lodgings, she answered that she had a dreadful neighbor. She motioned with her head to a nearby table, where Ruzena was having lunch.

Their table companions took their leave, and looking at Ruzena, Jakub said: "Hegel has a curious reflection on the Grecian profile, whose beauty, according to him, comes from the fact that the nose and the brow form a single line that highlights the upper part of the head, the seat of intelligence and of the mind. Looking at your neighbor, I notice that her whole face, on the other hand, is concentrated on the mouth. Look how intensely she chews, and how she's talking loudly at the same time. Hegel would be disgusted by such importance being attached to the lower part, the animal part, of the face, and yet this girl I dislike is quite pretty."

"Do you think so?" asked Olga, her voice betraying annoyance.

That is why Jakub hastened to say: "At any rate I'd be afraid of being ground up into tiny bits by that ruminant's mouth." And he added: "Hegel would be more satisfied with you. The dominant part of your

face is the brow, which instantly tells everyone about your intelligence."

"Logic like that infuriates me," said Olga sharply. "It tries to show that a human being's physiognomy is imprinted on his soul. It's absolute nonsense. I picture my soul with a strong chin and sensual lips, but my chin is small and so is my mouth. If I'd never seen myself in a mirror and had to describe my outside appearance from what I know of the inside of me, the portrait wouldn't look at all like me! I am not at all the person I look like!"