Laughable Loves

by Milan Kundera

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  "Thank you for making me responsible for a suicide," said Havel.

  "Let's be precise," replied the chief physician. "It wasn't a question of suicide but of a demonstration of suicide set up in such a way that a disaster would not occur. My dear Doctor, when someone wants to be asphyxiated by gas, he begins by locking the door. And not only that, he seals up the crevices so that the gas won't be located until as late as possible. Elisabet was not thinking about death, she was thinking about you.

  "God knows how many weeks she's been looking forward to being on night duty with you, and since the beginning of the evening she's been brazenly making advances toward you. But you were hardhearted. And the more hardhearted you were, the more she drank and the more blatant she became. She talked nonsense, danced, wanted to do a striptease.

  "You see, I wonder if after all there's something touching in all this. When she could attract neither your eyes nor your ears she staked everything on your sense of smell and turned on the gas. Before turning it on, she undressed. She knows that she has a beautiful body, and she wanted to force you to discover this. Remember how when she was standing in the doorway she said: If you only knew. You don't know anything. You don't know anything. So now you do know: Elisabet has an ugly face but a beautiful body. You yourself admitted it. You see, she didn't reason so altogether stupidly. I wonder if you'll now finally be prevailed on."

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  "Maybe." Havel shrugged his shoulders. "Certainly," said the chief physician.

  Havel's Theory

  "What you say, Chief, has some plausibility, but there's an error in your reasoning: You overestimate my role in this drama. Because it's not about me. It wasn't only I who refused to go to bed with Elisabet. Nobody wanted to go to bed with Elisabet.

  "When you asked me earlier why I didn't want to go to bed with Elisabet, I told you some rubbish about the beauty of caprice and how I wanted to retain my freedom. But those were only stupid witticisms with which I obscured the truth. For the truth is just the reverse and not at all flattering: I refused Elisabet just because I'm incapable of behaving like a free man. Not to sleep with Elisabet is the fashion. No one sleeps with her, and even if someone did sleep with her, he would never admit it because everyone would laugh at him. Fashion is a terrible martinet, and I've slavishly submitted to it. At the same time, Elisabet is a mature woman and this has dulled her wits. And maybe it's my refusal that's dulled her wits the most, because, it's well known that I go to bed with every-

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  one. But the fashion was dearer to me that Elisabet's wits.

  "And you're right, Chief, she knows that she has a beautiful body, and so she considered her situation sheer absurdity and injustice and was protesting against it. Remember how she never stopped attracing attention to her body all evening. When she talked about the Swedish stripper she saw in Vienna, she stroked her breasts and declared they were more beautiful than the Swede's. Remember how her breasts and her backside filled the room this evening like a mob of demonstrators. Actually, Chief, it really was a demonstration.

  "And remember that striptease of hers, just remember how deeply she was experiencing it! It was the saddest striptease I've ever seen. She was passionately trying to strip and at the same time she still remained in the hated confinement of her nurse's uniform. She was trying to strip and couldn't. And although she knew that she wouldn't strip, she was trying to, because she wanted to communicate to us her sad and unrealizable desire to strip. Chief, she wasn't stripping, she was singing the elegy of stripping, singing about the impossibility of stripping, about the impossibility of making love, about the impossibility of living! And we didn't even want to hear it. We looked at the floor and we were unsympathetic."

  "You romantic womanizer! Do you really believe that she wanted to die?" the chief physician shouted at Havel.

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  "Remember," said Havel, "how while she was dancing, she kept saying to me: I'm still alive! For the time being I'm still alive! Do you remember? From the moment she began to dance, she knew what she was going to do."

  "And why did she want to die naked, eh? What kind of an explanation do you have for that?"

  "She wanted to step into the arms of death as one steps into the arms of a lover. That's why she undressed, did her hair, and put on makeup�"

  "And that's why she left the door unlocked, what about that? Please don't try to persuade yourself that she really wanted to die!"

  "Maybe she didn't know exactly what she wanted. After all, do you know what you want? Which of us knows that? She wanted to die and she didn't. She quite sincerely wanted to die, and at the same time (equally sincerely) she wanted to prolong the act that was leading her to death and making her feel increased in stature. Of course, she didn't want us to see her after she had turned dark and become bad smelling and disfigured by death. She wanted us to see her beautiful, underestimated body that in all its glory was going to copulate with death. She wanted us, at least at so vital a moment as this, to envy death this body and long for it."

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  The Woman Doctor's Theory

  "My dear gentlemen," protested the woman doctor, who had been silently listening attentively to both doctors, "so far as I, as a woman, can judge, you've both spoken logically. Your theories are plausible in themselves and astonishing, because they reveal such a deep knowledge of life. They contain only one little imperfection: there isn't an iota of truth in them. Elisabet didn't want to commit suicide. Not genuine suicide, nor staged. Neither."

  For a moment the woman doctor relished the effect of her words, then she went on. "My dear gentlemen, I detect a bad conscience in you. When we were coming back from the emergency room, you avoided the nurses' small staff room. You no longer even wanted to see it. But I took a good look around while they were giving Elisabet artificial respiration. A small pot was on the range. Elisabet was making herself some coffee and she fell asleep. The water boiled over and put out the flames."

  Both the male doctors hurried with the woman doctor to the nurses' staff room, and there was indeed a pot on the burner with a bit of water still in it.

  "But in that case, why was she naked?" said the astonished chief physician.

  "Look." The woman doctor pointed to the corners of the room: on the floor beneath the window lay a pale blue uniform, up on the white medicine chest hung a

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  bra, and in the opposite corner on the floor was a pair of white underpants. "Elisabet threw her clothes in different directions, bearing witness to the fact that she wanted at least to complete the striptease, even if only for herself alone. The striptease you, cautious Chief, had blocked!

  "When she was naked, she probably felt tired. This didn't suit her, because she hadn't given up her hopes for the night. She knew that we were all going to leave and that Havel would remain here alone. That's surely why she asked for pep pills. She decided to make some coffee for herself and put the pot on the burner. Then once again she caught sight of her body and this aroused her. My dear gentlemen, Elisabet had one advantage over all of you. She couldn't see her head. So to herself she was flawlessly beautiful. She was aroused by this, and she lasciviously lay down on the couch. But sleep obviously overwhelmed her before sensual delight did."

  "Of course,'' Havel said. "Especially since I gave her sleeping pills!"

  "That's just like you," said the woman doctor. "So is anything still unclear to you?"

  "There is," said Havel. "Remember those things she said: I'm not dying! I'm alive. For the time being I'm still alive! And those last words of hers: she said them so pathetically, as if they were words of farewell: If you only knew. You don't know anything. You don't know anything."

  "But Havel," said the woman doctor, "as if you didn't

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  know that ninety-nine percent of all statements are idle talk. Don't you yourself talk mostly just for the sake of talking?''

  The doctors kept talking for a little while longer and then all three went out in front of the pavilion. The chief physician and the woman doctor shook hands with Havel and walked away.

  Through the Summer Night Floated the Fragrance of Flowers

  Flajsman finally arrived at the suburban street where he lived with his parents in a small villa surrounded by a garden. He opened the gate and sat down on a bench, above which twined the roses carefully tended by his mother.

  Through the summer night floated the fragrance of flowers, and the words "guilty," "egotism," "beloved," "death" rose in Flajsman's chest and filled him with uplifting delight, so that he had the impression that he had wings on his back.

  In the first flush of melancholy happiness he realized that he was loved as never before. Certainly several women had expressed their affection for him, but now he had to be soberly truthful with himself: Had it always been love? Hadn't he sometimes been subject to

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  illusions? Hadn't he sometimes talked himself into things? Wasn't Klara perhaps actually more calculating than enamored? Didn't the apartment he was getting for her matter more to her than he himself ? In the light of Elisabet's act, everything paled.

  Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

  Through the night the fragrance floated, and Flajsman wondered: Would anyone ever love him as much as this ugly woman does? But what is beauty or ugliness compared with love? What is the ugliness of a face compared with an emotion in whose greatness the absolute itself is mirrored?

  (The absolute? Yes. This was a young man only recently cast out into the adult world, which is full of uncertainties. However much he ran after girls, above all he was seeking a comforting, boundless, redeeming embrace, which would save him from the horrifying relativity of the freshly discovered world.)

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  ACT FOUR

  The Woman Doctor's Return

  Dr. Havel had been lying on the couch for a while, covered with a light woolen blanket, when he heard a tapping on the window. In the moonlight he caught sight of the woman doctor's face. He opened the window and asked: "What's the matter?"

  "Let me in!" said the woman doctor, and she hurried toward the building entrance.

  Havel buttoned his shirt, heaved a sigh, and left the room.

  When he unlocked the pavilion door, the woman doctor without so much as an explanation rushed into the staff room, and only when she had seated herself in an armchair opposite Havel did she begin to explain that she hadn't been able to go home; only now, she said, did she realize how upset she was. She would be unable to sleep, and she asked Havel to talk to her for a bit, so she could calm down.

  Havel didn't believe a word of what the woman doctor was telling him, and he was ungentlemanly enough (or careless) to let her see this.

  That is why the woman doctor said: "Of course you don't believe me, because you're convinced that I've only come to sleep with you."

  The doctor made a gesture of denial, but the woman doctor continued: "You're a conceited Don Juan! Naturally, all the women who set eyes on you think of noth-

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  ing but that. And you, bored and disgusted, carry out your sad mission."

  Once again Havel made a gesture of denial, but the woman doctor, having lit a cigarette and nonchalantly exhaled smoke, continued: "My poor Don Juan, don't worry. I haven't come to bother you. You're not at all like death. That is just our dear chief physician's little joke. You don't take everything, because not every woman would allow you to take her. I guarantee that I, for example, am absolutely immune to you."

  "Did you come to tell me that?"

  "Perhaps. I came to comfort you, by telling you that you are not like death. That I wouldn't let myself be taken."

  Havel's Morality

  "It's nice of you," said Havel. "It's nice that you wouldn't let yourself be taken and that you came to tell me that. I'm really not like death. Not only won't I take Elisabet, but I wouldn't even take you."

  "Oh!" said the woman doctor.

  "By this I don't mean that I'm not attracted to you. On the contrary."

  "That's better," said the woman doctor.

  "Yes, you do attract me very much."

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  "So why wouldn't you take me? Because I don't care about you?"

  "No, I don't think it has anything to do with that," said Havel.

  "Then with what?"

  "You're the chief physician's mistress."

  "So?"

  "The chief physician is jealous. It would hurt him."

  "Do you have moral inhibitions?" said the woman doctor with a laugh.

  "You know," said Havel, "in my life I've had enough affairs with women to teach me to respect friendship between men. Such friendship unblemished by the idiocy of eroticism is the only value I've found in life."

  "Do you consider the chief physician a friend?"

  "He's done a lot for me."

  "More, no doubt, for me," replied the woman doctor.

  "Maybe," said Havel, "but it isn't a question of gratitude. He's a friend, that's all. He's a great guy. And he really cares about you. If I did happen to make a play for you, I would have to consider myself a real bastard."

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  Slander of the Chief Physician

  "I never expected," said the woman doctor, "that I would hear such heartfelt odes to friendship from you! You present me, Doctor, with a new, unexpected image of yourself. Not only do you, contrary to all expectations, have a capacity for emotion, but you bestow it (and this is touching) on an old, bald, gray-haired gentleman, who is noteworthy only because of how funny he is. Did you notice him this evening? How he continuously shows off ? He's always trying to prove things no one can believe.

  "First, he wants to prove that he's witty. Did you notice? He incessantly talked nonsense; he entertained the company; he made cracks about Doctor Havel being like death; he concocted paradoxes about the misfortune of a happy marriage (as if I wasn't hearing it for the fiftieth time!); he took pains to lead Flajsman by the nose (as if it required any brilliance to do that!).

  "Second, he tries to show that he's a friendly man. In reality, of course, he doesn't like anybody with hair on his head, but because of this he tries all the harder. He flattered you, he flattered me, he was kind to Elisabet in a fatherly way, and he even kidded Flajsman so cautiously that he wouldn't notice it.

  "And third, and this is the main thing, he tries to prove that he's an ace. He tries desperately to hide his present appearance beneath his former appearance.

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  Unfortunately it no longer exists, and not one of us remembers it. Surely you noticed how neatly he introduced the incident about the tart who refused him, only so as to evoke his youthful, irresistible face and make us forget his pitiful bald head."

  A Defense of the Chief Physician

  "Everything you say is pretty much true, Doctor," replied Havel. "But that provides even more reasons for me to like the chief physician, because all this is closer to me than you suspect. Why should I mock a bald spot that I won't escape? Why should I mock those earnest efforts of the chief physician not to be who he is?

  "An old man will either make the best of the fact that he is what he is, a lamentable wreck of his former self, or he won't. But what should he do if he doesn't make the best of it? There remains nothing but to pretend not to be what he is. There remains nothing but to recreate, by means of a difficult pretense, everything that he no longer is, that has been lost: to invent, act, and mime his gaiety, vitality, and friendliness
; to evoke his youthful self and to try to merge with it and have it replace what he has become. In the chief physician's game of pretense I see myself, my own future�

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  if, of course, I have enough strength to defy resignation, which is certainly a worse evil than this sad pretense.

  "Maybe you've diagnosed the chief physician correctly. But I like him even better for it and I could never hurt him, so it follows that I could never do anything with you."

  The Woman Doctor's Reply

  "My dear Doctor," replied the woman doctor, "there are fewer differences between us than you suppose. I like him too. I'm also sorry for him�just like you. And I have more to be grateful for from him than you. Without him I wouldn t have such a good position. (Anyhow, you know this, everybody knows this only too well.) Do you think that I lead him by the nose? That I cheat on him? That I have other lovers? With what relish they'd inform him about that! I don't want to hurt him or myself, and that's why I'm more tied down than you can imagine. But I'm glad that we two understand each other now. Because you are the one man with whom I can afford to be unfaithful to the chief physician. You really do like him and you would never hurt him. You will be scrupulously discreet. I can depend on

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  you. I can go to bed with you�" and she sat down on Havel's knee and began to unbutton his clothes.

  What Did Dr. Havel Do?

  Guess . .

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  ACT FIVE

  In a Vortex of Noble Sentiments

  After the night came morning, and Flajsman went into the back garden to cut some roses. Then he took the streetcar to the hospital.

  Elisabet was in a private room in the emergency ward. Flajsman took a seat near her bed, put the flowers on the night table, and her hand to take her pulse.

  "Well now, are you feeling better?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Elisabet.

  And Flajsman said warmly: "You shouldn't have done such a silly thing, my girl."

  "You're right," said Elisabet, "but I fell asleep. I put on the coffee water, and I fell asleep like an idiot."

  Flajsman sat gaping at Elisabet, because he hadn't expected such nobility: Elisabet didn't want to burden him with remorse, she didn't want to burden him with her love, and therefore she was renouncing it!

  He stroked her face, and carried away by emotion, addressed her tenderly: "I know everything. You don't need to lie. But I do thank you for that lie."

  He understood that he wouldn't find such refinement, devotion, and consideration in any other woman, and a terrible desire to give in to this fit of rashness and ask her to become his wife swept over him. At the last moment, however, he regained his self-control (there's always enough time for a marriage proposal), and he said only this: "Elisabet, Elisabet, my girl. I brought these roses for you."

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  Elisabet gaped at Flajsman and said: "For me?"

  "Yes, for you. Because I'm happy to be here with you. Because I'm happy that you exist at all, Elisabet. Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness. I thank you, dear Elisabet, I thank you for existing."