Symposium

by Milan Kundera

of the two new arrivals, explained: "Elisabet is dancing.

  "She's a bit drunk," Havel added.

  Elisabet didn't stop swaying her hips while gyrating the upper part of her body around the lowered head of the seated Havel.

  "Wherever did you learn such a beautiful dance?" asked the chief physician.

  Flajsman, bursting with sarcasm, let out a conspicuous laugh: "Ha-ha-ha! A beautiful dance! Ha-ha-ha!"

  "I saw it at a striptease joint in Vienna," Elisabet replied.

  "Now, now," the chief physician scolded her gently. "Since when do our nurses go to strip joints?"

  "I don't suppose it's forbidden, Chief!" Elisabet gyrated the upper part of her body around the chief physician.

  Bile shot up through Flajsman's body and escaped through his lips: "You should take a bromide," he said, "instead of stripping. You're going to end up raping us!

  "Don't worry. I don't cradle-snatch," Elisabet snapped back, and she gyrated the upper part of her body around Havel.

  "And did you like the striptease?" The chief physician went on questioning her in a fatherly way.

  "Yes, I did!" replied Elisabet. "There was a Swedish girl there with gigantic breasts, bxit see, mine are more beautiful" (with those words she stroked her breasts). "And also there was a girl who pretended to be bathing in soap bubbles in some sort of cardboard tub, and a half-black girl who masturbated right in front of the audience�that was best of all!"

  "Ha-ha!" said Flajsman at the height of his fiendish sarcasm. "Masturbation, that's just the thing for you!"

  Grief in the Shape of a Backside

  Elisabet went on dancing, but her audience was probably far worse than the one at the Vienna strip joint: Havel lowered his head, the woman doctor watched scornfully, Flajsman negatively, and the chief physician with fatherly forbearance. And Elisabet's backside, covered with the white material of a nurse's apron, circled around the room like a beautifully round sun, but an extinct and dead sun (wrapped up in a white shroud), a sun doomed to pitiful redundance by the indifferent and distracted eyes of the doctors present.

  At one moment when it seemed that Elisabet would really begin to throw off her clothing, the chief physician protested in an uneasy voice: "Come, Elisabet dear! I hope you don't want to demonstrate the Vienna show here for us!"

  "What are you afraid of, Chief! At least you'd see how a naked female should really look!" screeched Elisabet, and then she turned again to Havel, threatening him with her breasts: "What is it, Havel my pet? You're acting as if you were at a funeral. Raise your head! Did someone die on you? Did someone die on you? Look at me! I'm alive, at least! I'm not dying! For the time being Fm still alive! Fm alive!" and with these words her backside was no longer a backside, but grief itself, splendidly formed grief dancing around the room.

  "You should quit, Elisabet,'' said Havel, his eyes fixed on the floor.

  "Quit?" said Elisabet. "But it's you I'm dancing for! And now I'll perform a striptease for you! A great striptease!" and she undid her smock, and with a dancing movement cast it onto the desk.

  The chief physician once again protested timidly: "Elisabet, my dear, it would be beautiful if you performed your striptease for us, but somewhere else. You must realize that this is a hospital."

  The Great Striptease

  "Chief, I know what I'm allowed to do!" replied Elisabet. She was now in her pale-blue state uniform with the white collar, and she didn't stop wiggling.

  Then she put her hands on her hips and slid them up both sides of her body and all the way up above her head. Then she ran her right hand along her raised left arm and then her left hand along her right arm, then with both arms made a gesture in Flajsman's direction as if she were tossing him her blouse. It startled Flajs-man, and he jumped. "Mama's boy, you dropped it!" she yelled at him.

  Then she put her hands on her hips again and this time slid them down both legs. When she had bent over, she raised first her right and then her left leg. Then, staring at the chief physician, she flung out her right arm, tossing him an imaginary skirt. At the same time the chief physician extended his hand with the fingers spread out, and immediately clasped them into a fist. Then he put this hand on his knee and with the fingers of the other hand blew Elisabet a kiss.

  After some more wriggling and dancing, Elisabet rose on tiptoe, bent her arms at the elbows, and put them behind her back. Then with dancing movements, she brought her arms forward, stroked her left shoulder with her right palm and her right shoulder with her left palm and again made a gliding movement with her arm, this time in Havel's direction. He also distractedly moved his arm a little.

  Now Elisabet straightened up and began to stride majestically around the room; she went around to all four spectators in turn, thrusting at each of them the symbolic nakedness of the upper part of her body. Eventually she stopped in front of Havel, once again began wiggling her hips, and bending down slightly, slid both her arms down her sides and again (as before) raised first one, then the other leg. After that she triumphantly stood up straight, raising her right hand as if she were holding an invisible slip between her thumb and index finger. With this hand she again waved with a gliding movement in Havel's direction.

  Then she stood on tiptoe again, posing in the full glory of her fictional nakedness. She was no longer looking at anyone, not even at Havel, but with the half-closed eyes of her half-turned head she was staring down at her own twisting body.

  Suddenly her showy posture relaxed, and Elisabet sat down on Dr. Havel's knee. "I'm bushed," she said, yawning. She stretched out her hand for Havel's glass and took a drink. "Doctor," she said to Havel, "you don't have some kind of pep pill, do you? I don't want to go to sleep!"

  "Anything for you, dear Elisabet!" said Havel. He lifted Elisabet off his knees, set her on a chair, and went over to the dispensary. There he found some strong sleeping pills and gave two of them to Elisabet.

  "Will this pick me up?" she asked.

  "Or my name isn't Havel," said Havel.

  Elisabet's Words at Parting

  When Elisabet had swallowed both pills, she wanted to sit on Havel's knee again, but Havel moved his legs aside so that she fell to the floor.

  Havel immediately felt sorry about this, because in fact he hadn't intended to let Elisabet fall in this ignominious way, and if he moved his legs aside, it was an unconscious movement caused by his simple aversion to touching Elisabet's backside with his legs. So he tried now to lift her up again, but Elisabet in pitiful defiance was clinging to the floor with her whole weight.

  At this moment Flajsman stood up in front of her and said: "You're drunk, you should go to bed."

  Elisabet looked up from the floor with boundless scorn and (relishing the masochistic pathos of her being on the floor) said to him: "You beast. You idiot." And once again: "You idiot."

  Havel once more attempted to lift her up, but she broke away from him furiously and began to sob. No one knew what to say, so her sobbing echoed through the silent room like a violin solo. Only a bit later did it occur to the woman doctor to start whistling quietly. Elisabet got up brusquely, went to the door, and as she took hold of the door handle, half-turned toward the room and said: "You beasts. You beasts. If you only knew. You don't know anything. You don't know anything."

  The Chief Physician's Indictment of Flajsman

  After her departure there was silence that the chief physician was the first to break. "You see, Flajsman, my boy. You say you feel sorry for women. But if you are sorry for them, why aren't you sorry for Elisabet?"

  "Why should I care about her?" Flajsman protested.

  "Don't pretend that you don't know anything! We told you about it a little while ago. She's crazy about you."

  "Can I help it?" asked Flajsman.

  "You can't," said the chief physician. "But you can help being rude to her and tormenting her. The whole evening it mattered a great deal to her what you would do, if you would look at her and smile, if you would say something nice to her. And reme
mber what you did say to her!"

  "I didn't say anything so terrible to her," protested Flajsman, but his voice sounded uncertain.

  "Nothing so terrible, eh?" the chief physician said with irony. "You made fun of her dance, even though she was dancing only for your sake, you recommended a bromide for her, you claimed there was nothing for her but masturbation. Nothing terrible? When she was doing her striptease you let her blouse fall on the floor."

  "What blouse?" protested Flajsman.

  "Her blouse," said the physician. "And don't play the fool. In the end you sent her off to bed although a moment before she had taken a pep pill."

  "But it was Havel she was running after, not me!" Flajsman continued to protest.

  "Don't put on an act," said the chief physician sternly. "What could she do if you weren't paying attention to her? She was trying to provoke you. And she was only longing for a few crumbs of jealousy from you. Talk about a gentleman!"

  "Don't torment him anymore," said the woman doctor. "He's cruel, but he's young."

  "He's the avenging archangel," said Havel.

  Mythological Roles

  "Yes, indeed," said the woman doctor, "look at him: a wicked, handsome archangel."

  "We are a real mythological group," the chief physician sleepily observed, "because you are Diana. Cold, athletic, and spiteful."

  "And you are a satyr. Grown old, lecherous, and garrulous," said the woman doctor. "And Havel is Don Juan. He's not old, but he's getting old."

  "Not at all! Havel is death," the chief physician objected, returning to his old thesis.

  The End of the Don Juans

  "If you ask me whether I'm Don Juan or death, I must incline, though unhappily, toward the chief physician's opinion," said Havel, taking a long drink. "Don Juan, after all, was a conqueror. And in capital letters. A Great Conqueror. But I ask you, how can you be a conqueror in a domain where no one refuses you, where everything is possible and everything is permitted? Don Juan's era has come to an end. Today Don Juan's descendant no longer conquers, he only collects. The figure of the Great Collector has taken the place of the Great Conqueror, only the collector has nothing in common with Don Juan. Don Juan was a tragic figure. He was burdened by his guilt. He sinned gaily and laughed at God. He was a blasphemer and ended up in hell.

  "Don Juan bore on his shoulders a dramatic burden that the Great Collector has no idea of, because in his world every burden has lost its weight. Boulders have become feathers. In the conqueror's world, a single glance was as important as ten years of the most ardent love-making in the collector's realm.

  "Don Juan was a master, while the collector is a slave. Don Juan arrogantly transgressed conventions and laws. The Great Collector only obediently, by the sweat of his brow, complies with conventions and the law, because collecting has become good manners, good form, and almost an obligation. After all, if I'm burdened by any guilt, then it's only because I don't take on Elisabet.

  "The Great Collector knows nothing of tragedy or drama. Eroticism, which used to be the greatest instigator of catastrophes, has become, thanks to him, like breakfasts and dinners, like stamp collecting and table tennis, if not like a ride on the streetcar or shopping. He has brought it into the ordinary round of events. He has turned it into a stage on which real drama never takes place. Alas, my friends," rants Havel, "my loves (if I may call them that) are a stage on which nothing is happening.

  "My dear doctor and you, dear Chief. You've put Don Juan and death in opposition to each other. By sheer chance and inadvertence, you've grasped the essence of the matter. Look. Don Juan struggled against the impossible. And that is a very human thing to do. But in the realm of the Great Collector, nothing's impossible, because it is the realm of death. The Great Collector is death looking for tragedy, drama, and love. Death, which came looking for Don Juan. In hellfire, where the Commander sent him, Don Juan is alive. But in the world of the Great Collector, where passions and feelings flutter through space like feathers�in this world he is forever dead.

  "Not at all, my dear Doctor," said Havel sadly, "Don Juan and I, not at all! What would I have given to have seen the Commander and to have felt in my soul the terrible burden of his curse and to have felt the greatness of the tragedy growing within me! Not at all, Doctor, I am at most a figure of comedy, and I do not owe even that to my own efforts, but to Don Juan, because only against the historical background of his tragic gaiety can you to some extent perceive the comic sadness of my womanizing existence, which without this gauge would be nothing but gray banality in a tedious setting."

  Further Signals

  Havel, fatigued by his long speech (in the course of it the sleepy chief physician had almost nodded off twice), fell silent. Only after an appropriate instant full of emotion did the woman doctor break the silence: "I hadn't suspected, Doctor, that you could speak so fluently. You've portrayed yourself as a figure of comedy, gray, dull, a zero in fact. Unfortunately the way you spoke was somewhat too sublime. You're so damned cunning: calling yourself a beggar, but choosing words so majestic that you sound more like a king. You're an old fraud, Havel. Vain even as you vilify yourself. You're simply an old fraud."

  Flajsman laughed loudly, for he believed to his great satisfaction that in the woman doctor's words he could detect scorn for Havel. So, encouraged by her mockery and his own laughter, he went over to the window and said meaningfully: "What a night!"

  "Yes," said the woman doctor, "a gorgeous night. And Havel is playing death! Have you noticed, Havel, what a beautiful night it is?"

  "Of course he hasn't," said Flajsman. "For Havel one woman is like another, one night like another, winter like summer. Doctor Havel refuses to distinguish the secondary characteristics of things."

  "You've seen right through me," said Havel.

  Flajsman concluded that this time his rendezvous with the woman doctor would be successful. The chief physician had drunk a great deal and the sleepiness that had overcome him in the last few minutes had considerably blunted his wariness. That being so, Flajsman inconspicuously remarked: "Oh, this bladder of mine!" and, throwing a glance in the woman doctor's direction, he went out the door.

  Gas

  Walking along the corridor, he recalled that throughout the evening the woman doctor had been ironically making fun of both men, the chief physician and Havel, whom she just now had very aptly called frauds. He was astonished that it was happening once again; he marveled anew each time it happened, because it happened so regularly: Women liked him, they preferred him to experienced men. In the case of the woman doctor, this was a great, new, and unexpected triumph, since she was obviously choosy, intelligent, and a bit (but pleasantly) haughty.

  It was with these pleasant thoughts that Flajsman walked down the long corridor to the exit. When he was almost at the swinging doors leading to the garden, he suddenly smelled the odor of gas. He stopped and sniffed. The smell was concentrated at the door leading to the nurses' small staff room. All at once Flajsman realized that he was terribly frightened.

  First he wanted to run back quickly and bring Havel and the chief physician, but then he decided to take hold of the door handle (perhaps because he assumed that it would be locked, if not barricaded). But surprisingly enough the door was open. In the room a strong ceiling light was on, illuminating a large, naked, female body lying on the couch. Flajsman looked around the room and hurried over to the small range. He turned off the gas jet. Then he ran to the window and flung it wide open.

  A Remark in Parentheses

  (One can say that Flajsman had acted promptly and with great presence of mind. There was one thing, however, that he wasn't able to record with a sufficiently cool head. It is true that for an instant he stood gaping at Elisabet's naked body, but shock had overcome him to such a degree that beneath its veil he did not realize what we from an advantageous distance can fully appreciate:

  Elisabet's body was magnificent. She was lying on her back with her head turned slightly to the side and o
ne shoulder slightly bent inward toward the other, so that her beautiful breasts pressed against each other and showed their full shape. One of her legs was stretched out and the other was slightly bent at the knee, so that it was possible to see the remarkable fullness of her thighs and the exceptionally dense black of her bush.)

  The Call for Help

  Having opened the door and window wide, Flajsman ran out into the corridor and began to call for help. Everything that followed then took place in a brisk and matter-of-fact way: artificial respiration, phoning the emergency room, a gurney for moving the sick woman to the doctor on duty, more artificial respiration, resuscitation, a blood transfusion, and finally a deep sign of relief when it was clear that Elisabet's life had been saved.

  ACT THREE

  Who Said What

  When all four doctors left the emergency room for the courtyard, they looked exhausted.

  The chief physician said: "Poor Elisabet spoiled our symposium."

  The woman doctor said: "Unsatisfied women always bring bad luck."

  Havel said: "It's odd. She had to turn on the gas for us to notice that she has a beautiful body."

  At these words Flajsman gave Havel a (long) look and said: "I'm no longer in the mood for drinking or trying to be witty. Good night." And he headed toward the hospital exit.

  Flajsman's Theory

  His colleagues, words disgusted Flajsman. In them he saw the callousness of aging men and women, the cruelty of their mature years, which rose before his youth like a hostile barrier. For this reason he was glad to be alone, and he purposely went on foot, because he wanted fully to experience and enjoy his agitation. With pleasurable terror he kept repeating that Elisabet had been within moments of death, and that he would have been responsible for this death.

  Of course he knew well that suicide does not have a single cause but, for the most part, a constellation of causes, yet on the other hand he couldn't deny that the one, and probably the decisive cause was he himself through the simple fact of his existence and of his behavior that night.

  Now he emphatically blamed himself. He called himself an egotist, who out of vanity had been engrossed in his own erotic successes. He derided himself for allowing himself to be dazzled by the woman doctor's interest. He blamed himself for turning Elisa-bet into a mere object, a vessel into which he had poured his rage when the jealous chief physician had thwarted his nocturnal rendezvous. By what right had he behaved like this toward an innocent human being?