The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera

He disappeared behind the curtain, and she went over to the bookshelves. One of the books caught her eye at once. It was a translation of Sophocles' Oedipus. How odd to find it here! Years ago, Tomas had given it to her, and after she had read it he went on and on about it. Then he sent his reflections to a newspaper, and the article turned their life upside down. But now, just looking at the spine of the book seemed to calm her. It made her feel as though Tomas had purposely left a trace, a message that her presence here was his doing. She took the book off the shelf and opened it. When the tall engineer came back into the room, she would ask him why he had it, whether he had read it, and what he thought of it. That would be her ruse to turn the conversation away from the hazardous terrain of a stranger's flat to the intimate world of Tomas's thoughts.

  Then she felt his hand on her shoulder. The man took the book out of her hand, put it back on the shelf without a word, and led her over to the daybed.

  Again she recalled the words she had used with the Petrin executioner, and said them aloud: But it wasn't my choice!

  She believed them to be a miraculous formula that would instantly change the situation, but in that room the words lost their magic power. I have a feeling they even strengthened the man in his resolve: he pressed her to himself and put his hand on her breast.

  Oddly enough, the touch of his hand immediately erased what remained of her anxiety. For the engineer's hand referred to her body, and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone. The body that had betrayed her and that she had sent out into the world among other bodies.

  17

  He undid the first button on her blouse and indicated she was to continue. She did not comply. She had sent her body out into the world, and refused to take any responsibility for it. She neither resisted nor assisted him, her soul thereby announcing that it did not condone what was happening but had decided to remain neutral.

  She was nearly immobile while he undressed her. When he kissed her, her lips failed to react. But suddenly she felt her groin becoming moist, and she was afraid.

  The excitement she felt was all the greater because she was excited against her will. In other words, her soul did condone the proceedings, albeit covertly. But she also knew that if the feeling of excitement was to continue, her soul's approval would have to keep mute. The moment it said its yes aloud, the moment it tried to take an active part in the love scene, the excitement would subside. For what made the soul so excited was that the body was acting against its will; the body was betraying it, and the soul was looking on.

  Then he pulled off her panties and she was completely naked. When her soul saw her naked body in the arms of a stranger, it was so incredulous that it might as well have been watching the planet Mars at close range. In the light of the incredible, the soul for the first time saw the body as something other than banal; for the first time it looked on the body with fascination: all the body's matchless, inimitable, unique qualities had suddenly come to the fore. This was not the most ordinary of bodies (as the soul had regarded it until then); this was the most extraordinary body. The soul could not tear its eyes away from the body's birthmark, the round brown blemish above its hairy triangle. It looked upon that mark as its seal, a holy seal it had imprinted on the body, and now a stranger's penis was moving blasphemously close to it.

  Peering into the engineer's face, she realized that she would never allow her body, on which her soul had left its mark, to take pleasure in the embrace of someone she neither knew nor wished to know. She was filled with an intoxicating hatred. She collected a gob of saliva to spit in the stranger's face. He was observing her with as much eagerness as she him, and noting her rage, he quickened the pace of his movements on her body. Tereza could feel orgasm advancing from afar, and shouted No, no, no! to resist it, but resisted, constrained, deprived of an outlet, the ecstasy lingered all the longer in her body, flowing through her veins like a shot of morphine. She thrashed in his arms, swung her fists in the air, and spat in his face.

  18

  Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like white water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.

  The bathroom in the old working-class flat on the outskirts of Prague was less hypocritical: the floor was covered with gray tile and the toilet rising up from it was broad, squat, and pitiful. It did not look like a white water lily; it looked like what it was: the enlarged end of a sewer pipe. And since it lacked even a wooden seat, Tereza had to perch on the cold enamel rim.

  She was sitting there on the toilet, and her sudden desire to void her bowels was in fact a desire to go to the extreme of humiliation, to become only and utterly a body, the body her mother used to say was good for nothing but digesting and excreting. And as she voided her bowels, Tereza was overcome by a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness. Nothing could be more miserable than her naked body perched on the enlarged end of a sewer pipe.

  Her soul had lost its onlooker's curiosity, its malice and pride; it had retreated deep into the body again, to the farthest gut, waiting desperately for someone to call it out.

  19

  She stood up from the toilet, flushed it, and went into the anteroom. The soul trembled in her body, her naked, spurned body. She still felt on her anus the touch of the paper she had used to wipe herself.

  And suddenly something unforgettable occurred: suddenly she felt a desire to go in to him and hear his voice, his words. If he spoke to her in a soft, deep voice, her soul would take courage and rise to the surface of her body, and she would burst out crying. She would put her arms around him the way she had put her arms around the chestnut tree's thick trunk in her dream.

  Standing there in the anteroom, she tried to withstand the strong desire to burst out crying in his presence. She knew that her failure to withstand it would have ruinous consequences. She would fall in love with him.

  Just then, his voice called to her from the inner room. Now that she heard that voice by itself (divorced from the engineer's tall stature), it amazed her: it was high-pitched and thin. How could she have ignored it all this time?

  Perhaps the surprise of that unpleasant voice was what saved her from temptation. She went inside, picked up her clothes from the floor, threw them on, and left.

  20

  She had done her shopping and was on her way home. Karenin had the usual roll in his mouth. It was a cold morning; there was a slight frost. They were passing a housing development, where in the spaces between buildings the tenants maintained small flower and vegetable gardens, when Karenin suddenly stood stock still and riveted his eyes on something. She looked over, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Karenin gave a tug, and she followed along behind. Only then did she notice the black head and large beak of a crow lying on the cold dirt of a barren plot. The bodiless head bobbed slowly up and down, and the beak gave out an occasional hoarse and mournful croak.

  Karenin was so excited he dropped his roll. Tereza tied him to a tree to prevent him from hurting the crow. Then she knelt down and tried to dig up the soil that had been stamped down around the bird to bury it alive. It was not easy. She broke a nail. The blood began to flow.

  All at once a rock landed nearby. She turned and caught sight of two nine- or ten-year-old boys peeking out from behind a wall. She stood up. They saw her move, saw the dog by the tree, and ran off.

  Once more she knelt down and scratched away at the dirt. At last she succeeded in pulling the crow out of its grave. But the crow was lame and could neither walk nor fly. She wrapped it up in the red scarf she had been wearing around her neck, and pressed it to her body with her left hand. With
her right hand she untied Karenin from the tree. It took all the strength she could muster to quiet him down and make him heel.

  She rang the doorbell, not having a free hand for the key. Tomas opened the door. She handed him the leash, and with the words Hold him! took the crow into the bathroom. She laid it on the floor under the washbasin. It flapped its wings a little, but could move no more than that. There was a thick yellow liquid oozing from it. She made a bed of old rags to protect it from the cold tiles. From time to time the bird would give a hopeless flap of its lame wing and raise its beak as a reproach.

  She sat transfixed on the edge of the bath, unable to take her eyes off the dying crow. In its solitude and desolation she saw a reflection of her own fate, and she repeated several times to herself, I have no one left in the world but Tomas.

  Did her adventure with the engineer teach her that casual sex has nothing to do with love? That it is light, weightless? Was she calmer now?

  Not in the least.

  She kept picturing the following scene: She had come out of the toilet and her body was standing in the anteroom naked and spurned. Her soul was trembling, terrified, buried in the depths of her bowels. If at that moment the man in the inner room had addressed her soul, she would have burst out crying and fallen into his arms.

  She imagined what it would have been like if the woman standing in the anteroom had been one of Tomas's mistresses and if the man inside had been Tomas. All he would have had to do was say one word, a single word, and the girl would have thrown her arms around him and wept.

  Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice. Tomas had no defense against the lure of love, and Tereza feared for him every minute of every hour.

  What weapons did she have at her disposal? None but her fidelity. And she offered him that at the very outset, the very first day, as if aware she had nothing more to give. Their love was an oddly asymmetrical construction: it was supported by the absolute certainty of her fidelity like a gigantic edifice supported by a single column.

  Before long, the crow stopped flapping its wings, and gave no more than the twitch of a broken, mangled leg. Tereza refused to be separated from it. She could have been keeping vigil over a dying sister. In the end, however, she did step into the kitchen for a bite to eat.

  When she returned, the crow was dead.

  22

  In the first year of her love, Tereza would cry out during intercourse. Screaming, as I have pointed out, was meant to blind and deafen the senses. With time she screamed less, but her soul was still blinded by love, and saw nothing. Making love with the engineer in the absence of love was what finally restored her soul's sight.

  During her next visit to the sauna, she stood before the mirror again and, looking at herself, reviewed the scene of physical love that had taken place in the engineer's flat. It was not her lover she remembered. In fact, she would have been hard put to describe him. She may not even have noticed what he looked like naked. What she did remember (and what she now observed, aroused, in the mirror) was her own body: her pubic triangle and the circular blotch located just above it. The blotch, which until then she had regarded as the most prosaic of skin blemishes, had become an obsession. She longed to see it again and again in that implausible proximity to an alien penis.

  Here I must stress again: She had no desire to see another man's organs. She wished to see her own private parts in close proximity to an alien penis. She did not desire her lover's body. She desired her own body, newly discovered, intimate and alien beyond all others, incomparably exciting.

  Looking at her body speckled with droplets of shower water, she imagined the engineer dropping in at the bar. Oh, how she longed for him to come, longed for him to invite her back! Oh, how she yearned for it!

  23

  Every day she feared that the engineer would make his appearance and she would be unable to say no. But the days passed, and the fear that he would come merged gradually into the dread that he would not.

  A month had gone by, and still the engineer stayed away. Tereza found it inexplicable. Her frustrated desire receded and turned into a troublesome question: Why did he fail to come?

  Waiting on customers one day, she came upon the bald-headed man who had attacked her for serving alcohol to a minor. He was telling a dirty joke in a loud voice. It was a joke she had heard a hundred times before from the drunks in the small town where she had once served beer. Once more, she had the feeling that her mother's world was intruding on her. She curtly interrupted the bald man.

  I don't take orders from you, the man responded in a huff. You ought to thank your lucky stars we let you stay here in the bar.

  We? Who do you mean by we?

  Us, said the man, holding up his glass for another vodka. I won't have any more insults out of you, is that clear? Oh, and by the way, he added, pointing to Tereza's neck, which was wound round with a strand of cheap pearls, where did you get those from? You can't tell me your husband gave them to you. A window washer! He can't afford gifts like that. It's your customers, isn't it? I wonder what you give them in exchange?

  You shut your mouth this instant! she hissed.

  Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense, he went on, trying to grab hold of the necklace.

  Suddenly Karenin jumped up, leaned his front paws on the bar, and began to snarl.

  24

  The ambassador said: He's with the secret police.

  Then why is he so open about it? What good is a secret police that can't keep its secrets?

  The ambassador positioned himself on the cot by folding his legs under his body, as he had learned to do in yoga class. Kennedy, beaming down on him from the frame on the wall, gave his words a special consecration.

  The secret police have several functions, my dear, he began in an avuncular tone. The first is the classical one. They keep an ear out for what people are saying and report it to their superiors.

  The second function is intimidatory. They want to make it seem as if they have us in their power; they want us to be afraid. That is what your bald-headed friend was after.

  The third function consists of staging situations that will compromise us. Gone are the days when they tried to accuse us of plotting the downfall of the state. That would only increase our popularity. Now they slip hashish in our pockets or claim we've raped a twelve-year-old girl. They can always dig up some girl to back them.

  The engineer immediately popped back into Tereza's mind. Why had he never come?

  They need to trap people, the ambassador went on, to force them to collaborate and set other traps for other people, so that gradually they can turn the whole nation into a single organization of informers.

  Tereza could think of nothing but the possibility that the engineer had been sent by the police. And who was that strange boy who drank himself silly and told her he loved her? It was because of him that the bald police spy had launched into her and the engineer stood up for her. So all three had been playing parts in a prearranged scenario meant to soften her up for the seduction!

  How could she have missed it? The flat was so odd, and he didn't belong there at all! Why would an elegantly dressed engineer live in a miserable place like that? Was he an engineer? And if so, how could he leave work at two in the afternoon? Besides, how many engineers read Sophocles? No, that was no engineer's library! The whole place had more the flavor of a flat confiscated from a poor imprisoned intellectual. Her father was put in prison when she was ten, and the state had confiscated their flat and all her father's books. Who knows to what use the flat had then been put?

  Now she saw clearly why the engineer had never returned: he had accomplished his mission. What mission? The drunken undercover agent had inadvertently given it away when he said, Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense. Now that self-styled engineer would testify that she had sle
pt with him and demanded to be paid! They would threaten to blow it up into a scandal unless she agreed to report on the people who got drunk in her bar.

  Don't worry, the ambassador comforted her. Your story doesn't sound the least bit dangerous.

  I suppose it doesn't, she said in a tight voice, as she walked out into the Prague night with Karenin.

  25

  People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits of Prague.

  Tomas was at the wheel, Tereza next to him, and Karenin in the back, occasionally leaning over to lick their ears. After two hours, they came to a small town known for its spa where they had been for several days six years earlier. They wanted to spend the night there.

  They pulled into the square and got out of the car. Nothing had changed. They stood facing the hotel they had stayed at. The same old linden trees rose up before it. Off to the left ran an old wooden colonnade culminating in a stream spouting its medicinal water into a marble bowl. People were bending over it, the same small glasses in hand.

  When Tomas looked back at the hotel, he noticed that something had in fact changed. What had once been the Grand now bore the name Baikal. He looked at the street sign on the corner of the building: Moscow Square. Then they took a walk (Karenin tagged along on his own, without a leash) through all the streets they had known, and examined all their names: Stalingrad Street, Leningrad Street, Rostov Street, Novosibirsk Street, Kiev Street, Odessa Street. There was a Tchaikovsky Sanatorium, a Tolstoy Sanatorium, a Rimsky-Korsakov Sanatorium; there was a Hotel Suvorov, a Gorky Cinema, and a Cafe Pushkin. All the names were taken from Russian geography, from Russian history.