Life Is Elsewhere

  This sentimental farewell to her brother was repellent to him: "Where's your brother going that you have to say such a long goodbye to him and forget everything else? On a job somewhere for a week? Or is he going to the country on Sunday?"

  No, he's going neither to work nor to the country; it's something much more serious, and she can't tell Jaromil about it because she knows that he would be furious.

  "And that's what you call loving me? Hiding things from me that I don't approve of? Keeping secrets from me? "

  Yes, the girl is well aware that to love is to tell each other everything; but Jaromil must understand her: she is afraid, simply afraid. . . .

  "What are you afraid of? Where's your brother going that you're afraid to tell me?"

  Can it be that Jaromil really has no idea? That he really can't guess?

  No, Jaromil can't guess (and at this point his anger is limping far behind his curiosity).

  The girl finally confesses: her brother has decided to go across the border, secretly, illegally; by tomorrow he will be out of the country.

  What? Her brother wants to abandon our young socialist republic? Her brother wants to betray the revolution? Her brother wants to become an emigre? Doesn't she realize what being an emigre means? Doesn't she realize that every emigre automatically becomes an agent of the foreign espionage services that are trying to destroy our country?

  The girl nodded in agreement. Instinct told her that Jaromil would much more readily forgive her brother's treason than her fifteen minutes of tardiness. That's why she kept nodding and said that she agreed with everything Jaromil was saying.

  "What do you mean, you agree with me? You should have talked him out of it! You should have stopped him!"

  Yes, she had tried to dissuade him; she had done everything she could to dissuade him; now Jaromil would probably understand why she had been late; now Jaromil would probably forgive her.

  Curiously Jaromil really did tell her that he forgave her lateness; but he couldn't forgive her brother's leaving the country: "Your brother is on the other side of the barricades. He's my personal enemy. If war broke out, your brother would shoot at me and I at him. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, I understand," said the redheaded girl, and she assured him that she would always be on the same side as he; at his side and never with anyone else.

  "How can you say you're on my side? If you were really on my side, you'd never let your brother leave!"

  "What could I do? Am I strong enough to hold him back?"

  "You should have come to me at once, and I would have known what to do. But instead of that you lied! You claimed you were with a friend! You wanted to mislead me! And you claim to be on my side."

  She swore to him that she really was on his side and that she would stay there whatever happened.

  "If what you're saying were true, you'd call the police!"

  What, the police? She couldn't denounce her own brother to the police! That would be impossible!

  Jaromil couldn't bear to be contradicted: "Impossible? If you don't call the police, I'll call them myself!"

  The girl again maintained that a brother is a brother, and that it was unthinkable that she would denounce him to the police.

  "So your brother is more important to you than I am?"

  Certainly not! But that's no reason to denounce your own brother.

  "Love means all or nothing. Love is total or it doesn't exist. I'm on this side and he's on the other side. You have to be with me and not somewhere in the middle. And if you're with me, you have to want what I want, do what I do. To me the fate of the revolution is my own personal fate. If someone takes action against the revolution he is taking action against me. If my enemies are not your enemies then you are my enemy."

  No, no, she is not his enemy; she wants to be with him in every way; she is well aware that love means all or nothing.

  "Yes, love means all or nothing. Compared to true love everything pales, everything else is nothing."

  Yes, she agrees completely, yes, that is exactly how she feels.

  "True love is completely deaf to what the rest of the world might say, that's precisely how we recognize it. But you're always ready to listen to what people say, you're always so full of consideration for others that you step all over me."

  No, no, certainly not, she doesn't want to step all over him, but she is afraid of doing harm, great harm, to her brother, who would pay dearly.

  "And what if he does? It would only be just if he paid dearly. Or are you afraid of him? Are you afraid of breaking with him? Are you afraid of breaking with your family? Do you want to stay stuck to your family all your life? How I hate your terrible pettiness, your abominable incapacity to love!"

  No, it isn't true that she is incapable of love; she loves him with all her heart.

  "Yes, you love me with all your heart," he replies bitterly, but you don't have the heart to love! You're absolutely incapable of it!"

  Again she swears that it isn't true.

  " Could you live without me?"

  She swears that she couldn't.

  "Could you go on living if I died?"

  No, no, no.

  "Could you go on living if I left you?"

  No, no, no. She shakes her head.

  What more could he ask? His anger subsided, leaving only a great turmoil; suddenly their death was here with them; the sweet, very sweet death they promised each other if some day one were to be abandoned by the other. In a voice choked with emotion, he said: "I couldn't live without you either." And she said that she couldn't and wouldn't live without him, and they repeated these words again and again until a great, nebulous ecstasy took them into its arms; they tore off their clothes and made love; all of a sudden he felt on his hand the wetness of tears rolling down the redhead's face; that was wonderful; that was something that had never before happened to him, a woman crying for love of him; for him tears were the solution into which a man is dissolved when he is discontented with merely being a man and desires to free himself from the limits of his nature; it seemed to him that, with the aid of a tear, a man escapes the limits of his material nature, merges with the distances, and becomes an immensity. He was terribly moved by the wetness of the tears, and suddenly he realized that he too was crying; they made love and their faces and bodies were drenched, they made love and they actually did dissolve, their fluids mingled and flowed together like the waters of two rivers, they cried and made love, and at that moment they were outside the world, they were like a lake that has got loose from the earth and is rising toward the sky.

  Afterward they lay peacefully side by side, caressing each other's faces long and tenderly; the girl's red hair was clumped in comical strands, and her face was red; she was ugly, and Jaromil thought of the poem in which he had written that he wanted to drink down everything she had in her, her former lovers, even her ugliness, even her matted red hair, even the stain of her freckles; he caressed her and gazed at her touching ugliness; he repeated that he loved her, and she repeated the same.

  And because he didn't want to let go of this moment of absolute satisfaction, whose promise of mutual death intoxicated him, he once again said: "It's true, I can't live without you; I can't live without you.''

  "Without you I'd be terribly sad too. Terribly.''

  He was instantly on his guard: "Are you saying that you can imagine going on living without me?"

  The girl didn't perceive the trap behind his words. "I'd be horribly sad."

  "But you could go on living.''

  "What could I do if you left me? But I'd be horribly sad."

  Jaromil realized that he had been the victim of a misunderstanding. The redhead had not promised him her death; and when she said that she couldn't live without him, it was only love trickery, a verbal embellishment, a metaphor. The poor fool, she didn't at all grasp what was going on; she promised him her sadness, he who knew only absolute criteria, all or nothing, life or death. Full of bitter irony, he asked her: "H
ow long would you be sad? A day? Or even a week?"

  "A week?" she said bitterly. "Let's see, my Xavipet, a week. . . . Much more than that!" She pressed close to him to show with the touch of her body that it was not in weeks that she measured her sadness.

  Jaromil reflected on this: What exactly was her love worth? A few weeks of sadness? All right. And what is sadness? A bit of depression, a bit of languishing. And what is a week of sadness? No one is ever sad all the time. She would be sad for a few minutes in the daytime, a few minutes in the evening; how many minutes in all? How many minutes of sadness did her love merit? How many minutes of sadness did he rate?

  Jaromil imagined his death, and he imagined the redhead's subsequent life, a life unconcerned and unchanged, coldly and cheerfully rising up above his nonbeing.

  He had no desire to resume the exacerbated jealousy dialogue; he heard her voice asking why he was sad, and he didn't answer; the tenderness of that voice was an ineffectual balm.

  He got up and dressed; he was no longer angry; she kept asking him why he was sad, and by way of an answer, he melancholically caressed her face. Then, looking closely into her eyes, he said: "Are you going to the police yourself? "

  She thought that their wonderful lovemaking had definitively allayed Jaromil's wrath against her brother; so Jaromil's question caught her off guard, and she didn't know what to say.

  Once again he (sadly and calmly) asked her: "Are you going to the police yourself? "

  She mumbled something; she wanted to persuade him to change his mind, but she was afraid to say so clearly. The evasive meaning of her mumbling was obvious, however, so Jaromil said: "I understand your not wanting to go there. All right! I'll take care of it myself." And again (in a compassionate, sad, disappointed gesture) he caressed her face.

  She was confused and didn't know what to say. They kissed and he left.

  When he woke up the next morning, Mama had already gone out. While he was still sleeping she had laid out on his chair a shirt, tie, trousers, jacket, and, of course, a pair of undershorts. It was impossible to break this twenty-year habit, and Jaromil had always passively accepted it. But that day, when he saw folded on the chair the light-beige undershorts with their long legs and that big opening at the crotch that was a glaring invitation to urinate, he was overcome by a towering rage.

  Yes, he had gotten up that morning as one gets up on a great, decisive day. He held the undershorts in his extended hands and examined them; he examined them with an almost loving hatred; then he put the end of one leg into his mouth and bit down on it; he gripped the leg with his right hand and pulled it violently; he heard the sound of ripping cloth; then he threw the torn under -shorts on the floor. He hoped that Mama would see them there.

  Then he put on a pair of yellow gym shorts and the shirt, tie, trousers, and jacket that had been prepared for him and left the villa.

  11

  He surrendered his identity card in the lobby (as anyone who wished to enter the National Police Building had to do) and climbed up the stairs. Look at the way he climbs, how he gauges every step! He climbs as if he were carrying his entire destiny on his shoulders; he is not climbing to reach a higher level of a building but to a higher level of his own life, from which he is going to see something he has never seen before.

  Everything favored him; when he entered the office, he saw that his old classmate's face was the face of a friend; it greeted him with a happy smile; it was pleasantly surprised; it was cheerful.

  The janitor's son said he was delighted by Jaromil's visit, and Jaromil's soul was blissful. He sat down on the chair that was offered him, and for the first time felt he was facing his friend as man to man; as an equal facing an equal; as one tough man facing another.

  They chatted for a few minutes about this and that, as friends do, but for Jaromil this was merely a piquant overture, during which he waited impatiently for the curtain to rise. "I want to tell you something extremely important," he said very seriously. "I know about a fellow who is getting ready to leave secretly for the West in the next few hours. Something should be done about it."

  The janitor's son was instantly on the alert and asked Jaromil a number of questions. Jaromil answered them quickly and precisely.

  "This is a very serious matter," the janitor's son said at last. "I can't decide what to do on my own."

  He then led Jaromil down a long corridor and into another office, where he introduced him to an older man in civilian clothes; he introduced him as a friend, which caused the man in civilian clothes to smile amicably at Jaromil; they called for a secretary to take down a statement; Jaromil had to be precise about everything: his girlfriend's name; where she worked; her age; how he had come to know her; her family background; where her father, brothers, and sisters worked; when she had told him of her brother's intention to leave for the West; what kind of man her brother was; what Jaromil knew about him.

  Jaromil told them that he knew quite a bit about her brother from his girlfriend; that's precisely why he regarded this matter as extremely grave and had lost no time in informing his comrades, his comrades in arms, his friends before it was too late. Because his girl's brother hated our system of government; how sad that was! His girl's brother came from a very poor, very modest family, but because he had worked for some time as a chauffeur for a bourgeois politician he was now body and soul on the side of people who are plotting against our system; yes, he could affirm this with utter certainty, for his girl had very exactly described her brother's opinions to him; this fellow was ready to shoot at Communists; Jaromil could easily imagine what he would do if he j oined the ranks of the emigres; Jaromil knew that his sole passion was to destroy socialism.

  With manly conciseness the three men finished dictating the statement to the secretary, and the older man told the janitor's son to go quickly and make the necessary arrangements. When they were alone in the office, the man thanked Jaromil for his help. He told him that if the entire populace were as vigilant as he, our socialist country would be invincible. He also said that he hoped this meeting would not be their last. Jaromil was probably aware that our system had enemies everywhere; Jaromil was part of the university environment and perhaps also knew people in the literary milieu. Yes, we know that most of them are decent people, but perhaps there are also quite a few subversive elements among them.

  Jaromil gazed enthusiastically at the policeman's face; it seemed beautiful to him; it was furrowed with deep wrinkles testifying to a hard, manly life. Yes, Jaromil, too, hoped this meeting would not be their last. He wished for nothing else; he knew where he stood.

  They shook hands and exchanged smiles.

  With this smile in his soul (the splendid wrinkled smile of a man), Jaromil left the Police Building. Descending the broad front steps, he looked at the frosty morning sun rising over the city rooftops. He breathed the cold air, felt exuberant with the virility that flowed from his every pore, and felt like singing.

  At first he thought he would go straight home, sit down at his desk, and write poems. But after a few paces he turned around; he didn't want to be alone. It seemed to him that during the past hour his features had hardened, his step become firmer, his voice grown lower, and he wanted to be seen in this transformation. He went over to the university and engaged in conversation with everyone. Of course, no one told him that he was any different, but the sun was still shining, and up above the chimneys an unwritten poem was still floating. He went back home and shut himself into his room. He filled several sheets of paper, but he was not very satisfied.

  So he put down his pen and reflected for a while; he mused about the mysterious threshold an adolescent must cross so as to become a man; he believed he knew the name of that threshold; its name was not love, the threshold was called "duty." It is difficult to write poems about duty. How can this harsh word kindle the imagination? But Jaromil knew that it was precisely the imagination stimulated by this word that would be new, unheard of, surprising; for he wasn't thinki
ng of duty in the former sense of the word, duty assigned and imposed from outside, but duty man himself creates and freely chooses, duty that is voluntary and bold and the glory of man.

  This meditation filled Jaromil with pride, for he was thus sketching an entirely new self-portrait. He once again wanted to be seen in this surprising transformation, and he rushed to his redheaded girl. It was about six in the evening by now, and she should long since have returned from the store. But the landlady told him that she had not yet come home. She said that two gentlemen had been looking for her about half an hour before, and she had had to tell them that her tenant wasn't back yet.

  Jaromil had time to spare, and he walked up and down the redheaded girl's street. After a while he noticed two gentlemen also walking up and down; Jaromil thought they were probably the same ones who had spoken to the landlady; then he saw the redheaded girl coming from the other side of the street. He didn't want her to see him, so he hid in the carriage entrance of a building and saw his girl walking rapidly toward her building and vanishing inside. Then he saw the two gentlemen follow her. He felt uncertain and didn't dare move from his observation post. After about a minute, the three of them left the building; it was only then that he noticed a car parked a short distance from the building. The two gentlemen and the girl got into the car and drove away.

  Jaromil realized that the two men were probably policemen; but the fright that chilled him soon mingled with a feeling of elated amazement at the idea that what he had done that morning was a real act that had set things in motion.

  The next day he hurried over to his girl's place, to surprise her when she came home from work. But the landlady told him that the redhead had not returned since the two gentlemen had taken her away.

  He was very shaken by this. The following morning he went at once to the police. As before, the janitor's son was very friendly, shook his hand, gave him a jovial smile, and when Jaromil asked him what had happened to his girl, who had not yet come home, he told him not to worry. "You put us on a very important trail. We're going to give them a good grilling." His smile was eloquent.