Milan Kundera: Farewell Waltz

A New English Translation from the French by Aaron Asher

(Originally published in English as 'The Farewell Party')

Copyright © 1973, 1998 by Milan Kundera. ISBN: 0060997001

Autumn has arrived and the trees are turning yellow, red, brown; the small spa town in its pretty valley seems to be surrounded by flames. Under the colonnades women come and go to lean over the mineral springs. These are women unable to bear children and hoping to gain fertility from the thermal waters.

Men are far fewer among those taking the waters here, though some are to be seen, for beyond their gynecological virtues the waters are apparently good for the heart. Even so, for every male there are nine female patients, and this infuriates the unmarried young nurse who is in charge of the pool used by the women being treated for infertility.

Ruzena was born in the town, and her father and mother still live there. Would she ever escape from this place, from this dreadful multitude of women?

It is Monday, toward the end of her work shift. Only a few more overweight women to wrap in sheets, put to bed, dry the faces of, and smile at.

"Are you going to make that phone call or not?" two of her colleagues keep asking her; one is fortyish and buxom, the other younger and thin.

"Why wouldn't I?" says Ruzena.

"Then do it! Don't be afraid!" the fortyish one responds, leading her behind the changing-room cubicles to where the nurses have their wardrobe, table, and telephone.

"You should call him at home," the thin one remarks wickedly, and all three giggle.

"The theater number is the one I know," says Ruzena when the laughter has subsided.

It was an awful conversation. As soon as he heard Ruzena's voice on the phone he was terrified.

Women had always frightened him, even if none of them had ever believed him when he announced this, considering it a flirtatious joke.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Not very well," she replied.

"What's the matter?"

"I have to talk to you," she said pathetically.

It was exactly the pathetic tone he had been anticipating with terror for years.

"What?" he said in a choked voice.

She repeated: "I absolutely have to talk to you."

"What's the matter?"

"Something that affects both of us."

He was unable to speak. After a moment he repeated: "What's the matter?"

"I'm six weeks late."

Trying hard to control himself, he said: "It's probably nothing. That sometimes happens, and it doesn't mean anything."

"No, this time it's definite."

"It's not possible. It's absolutely impossible. Anyway, it can't be my fault."

She was upset. "What do you take me for, if you please!"

He was afraid of offending her because he was suddenly afraid of everything: "No, I'm not trying to insult you, that's stupid, why would I want to insult you, I'm only saying that it couldn't have happened with me, that you've got nothing to worry about, that it's absolutely impossible, physiologically impossible."

"In that case it's no use talking," she said, increasingly upset. "Pardon me for disturbing you."

He worried she might hang up on him. "No, no, not at all. You were quite right to phone me! I'll be glad to help you, that's certain. Everything can certainly be arranged."

"What do you mean, 'arranged'?"

He was flustered. He didn't dare call the thing by its real name: "Well… you know… arranged."

"I know what you're trying to say, but don't count on it! Forget that idea. I'd never do it, even if I have to ruin my life.''

Again he was paralyzed by fear, but this time he

timidly took the offensive: "Why did you phone me, if you don't want me to talk? Do you want to discuss it with me, or have you already made up your mind?"

"I want to discuss it with you."

"I'll come to see you."

"When?"

"I'll let you know."

"All right."

"Well, see you soon."

"See you soon."

He hung up and returned to his band in the small auditorium.

"Gentlemen, the rehearsal's over," he said. "I can't do any more right now."

When she hung up the receiver she was flushed with anger. The way Klima had taken the news offended her. For that matter, she had been offended for quite a while.

It is two months since they met, one evening when the famous trumpeter was appearing at the spa with his band. After the concert there had been a party to which she had been invited. The trumpeter singled her out and spent the night with her.

Since then he had shown no sign of life. She sent him two postcards with her greetings, to which there was no response. Once, when she was visiting the capital, she phoned him at the theater where, she had learned, he rehearsed with his band. The fellow who answered asked for her name and then told her he would go look for Klima. When he returned a few moments later, he told her the rehearsal was over and the trumpeter had left. She wondered if this was only a way of getting rid of her, and she resented it all the more keenly because she was already afraid she was pregnant.

"He claims it's physiologically impossible! That's marvelous-physiologically impossible! I wonder what he'll say when the little one turns up!"

Her two colleagues fervently agreed with her. When she told them, the morning after in the steam-saturated treatment room, about her indescribable night with the famous man, the trumpeter had immediately become the property of all her colleagues. His phantom accompanied them in the nurses' room, and when his name was mentioned, they giggled up their sleeves as though he were someone they knew intimately. And when they learned that Ruzena was pregnant they were overcome by an odd joy, because now he was physically with them deep inside Ruzena's womb.

The fortyish nurse patted her on the shoulder: "Come, come, dear, calm yourself! I've got something for you." She opened a creased, grubby copy of an illustrated magazine: "Look at this!"

The three of them gazed at a photograph of a young,

pretty brunette standing onstage with a microphone at her lips.

Ruzena tried to make out her destiny in these few square centimeters.

"I didn't know she was so young," she said, filled with apprehension.

"Come on!" said the fortyish nurse, smiling. "This photo is ten years old. They're both the same age. That woman can't begin to match you!"

During the phone conversation with Ruzena, Klima recalled that he had been anticipating such terrifying news for a long time. Of course he had no reasonable grounds for thinking he had impregnated Ruzena after that fateful party (on the contrary, he was certain he was being unjustly accused), but he had been anticipating news of this kind for many years now, long before he ever met Ruzena.

He was twenty-one when an infatuated blonde thought of feigning pregnancy in order to force him into marriage. In those harrowing weeks he suffered stomach cramps and finally fell ill. Ever since, he had known that pregnancy was a blow that could strike anywhere at any time, a blow against which there is

no lightning rod and that announces itself by a pathetic tone of voice on the telephone (yes, the blonde too had initially given him the disastrous news on the phone). That event of his youth always made him approach women with a feeling of anxiety (though with much zeal), and after each amorous rendezvous he was fearful of disastrous consequences. He reasoned that his pathological cautiousness kept the probability of disaster down to barely a thousandth of one percent, but even that thousandth managed to terrify him.