Milan Kundera - Farewell Waltz

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