Immortality

by Milan Kundera

  237

  MILAN KUNDERA

  cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold."

  He disagreed: "I can retell the story of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas with the greatest of pleasure, anytime you ask me, from beginning to end!"

  "I feel the same way, and I love Alexandre Dumas," I said. "All the same, I regret that almost all novels ever written are much too obedient to the rules of unity of action. What I mean to say is that at their core is one single chain of causally related acts and events. These novels are like a narrow street along which someone drives his characters with a whip. Dramatic tension is the real curse of the novel, because it transforms everything, even the most beautiful pages, even the most surprising, scenes and observations merely into steps leading to the final resolution, in which the meaning of everything that preceded is concentrated. The novel is consumed in the fire of its own tension like a bale of straw."

  "When I hear you," Professor Avenarius said uneasily, "I just hope that your novel won't turn out to be a bore."

  "Do you think that everything that is not a mad chase after a final resolution is a bore? As you eat this wonderful duck, are you bored? Are you rushing toward a goal? On the contrary, you want the duck to enter into you as slowly as possible and you never want its taste to end. A novel shouldn't be like a bicycle race but a feast of many courses. I am really looking forward to Part Six. A completely new character will enter the novel. And at the end of that part he will disappear without a trace. He causes nothing and leaves no effects. That is precisely what I like about him. Part Six will be a novel within a novel, as well as the saddest erotic story I have ever written. It will make you sad, too."

  Avenarius lapsed into a perplexed silence. After a while, he asked me in a kindly voice, "And what will your novel be called?"

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

  "I think somebody has already written that."

  "I did! But I was wrong about the title then. That title was supposed to belong to the novel I'm writing right now."

  238

  Immortality

  We stopped talking and concentrated on the taste of the wine and the duck.

  In the midst of eating, Avenarius said, "You work too hard. You should think of your health."

  I knew very well what Avenarius was trying to suggest, but I pretended not to notice and silently tasted my wine.

  239

  10

  A

  fter A lengthy pause, Avenarius repeated, "It seems to me you work too hard. You should think of your health."

  I said, "I do think of my health. I lift weights regularly."

  "That's dangerous. You might have a stroke."

  'That is precisely what I'm afraid of," I said, thinking of Robert Musil.

  "What you need is jogging. Night jogging. I'll show you something," he said mysteriously, unbuttoning his jacket. Around his chest and his imposing belly I saw a peculiar system of belts, vaguely suggestive of a horse's harness. Attached on the lower right-hand side was a sheath containing a terrifyingly large kitchen knife.

  I praised his equipment, but because I wanted to shift the conversa-tion from a topic I knew all too well, I changed the subject; I wanted him to tell me about the only thing that was important to me and that I was eager to have explained: "When you saw Laura in the Metro station, she recognized you and you recognized her."

  "Yes," Avenarius said.

  "I am interested in learning how you had come to know each other.'1

  "You are interested in trivia and serious things bore you," he said with some disappointment, buttoning up his jacket. "You're like an old concierge."

  I shrugged.

  He continued, 'There is nothing interesting about it. Before I awarded the complete ass his diploma, his picture appeared all over town. I waited in the lobby of the radio station to see him in person. As he got out of the elevator, a woman ran up to him and kissed him. After that, I followed them fairly often and several times my glance met hers,

  240

  Immortality

  so that my face must have seemed familiar to her even though she didn't know who I was."

  "Did she appeal to you?"

  Avenarius lowered his voice. "I admit to you that if it hadn't been for her, I probably would never have carried out my plan with the diploma. I have thousands of such plans, but for the most part they remain just dreams."

  "Yes, I know," I agreed.

  "But when a man is fascinated by a woman, he does everything to come in contact with her, even if only indirectly and in a roundabout way, to touch her world, even from afar, and set it in motion." "So Bernard became a complete ass because you liked Laura." "You may not be wrong," Avenarius remarked thoughtfully, and added, 'There is something in that woman that preordains her to be a victim. That's just what attracted me to her. I was overjoyed when I saw her in the arms of two drunken, stinking clochards! An unforgettable moment!"

  "Yes, I know your story up to that point. But I want to know what happened next."

  "She has quite an extraordinary behind," continued Avenarius, ignoring my question. 'When she went to school, her friends must have wanted to pinch it. In my imagination I can hear her squeal each time, in a high soprano voice. That voice was a sweet promise of their future bliss."

  "Yes, let's talk about that. Tell me what happened next, after you led her out of the Metro as her providential savior."

  Avenarius pretended not to have heard me. "An aesthete might say," he continued, "that her behind is too bulky and a bit too low, which is all the more disturbing as her soul longs for the heights. But it is precisely in this contradiction that I find the crux of the human condition: our heads are full of dreams, but our behinds drag us down like an anchor."

  God knows why, the last words of Avenarius sounded melancholy, perhaps because our plates were empty and every trace of the duck had gone. The waiter leaned over us again to take away the dishes. Avenarius looked up at him: "Do you have a piece of paper?"

  241

  The waiter handed him a blank bill. Avenarius pulled out his pen and made the following drawing:

  Then he said, "That's Laura: full of dreams, her head looks up at heaven, and her body is drawn to earth: her behind and her breasts, also rather heavy, look downward."

  That's odd," I said, and I made my own drawing next to his.

  "Who is that?" Avenarius asked.

  "Her sister, Agnes: her body rises like a flame. And her head is always slightly bowed: a skeptical head looking at the ground."

  "I prefer Laura," Avenarius replied firmly, adding, "Above all, however, I prefer jogging at night. Do you like the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres?"

  I nodded.

  "Yet youVe never really seen it."

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "I was recendy walking down the Rue de Rennes toward the boulevard, and I counted how many times I was able to look at the church without being bumped into by a hurrying passerby or nearly run over by a car. I counted seven very short glances, which cost me a bruised left

  arm because an impatient young man struck me with his elbow. I was allowed an eighth glance when I stopped in front of the church door and lifted my head. But I saw only the facade, in a highly distorted fish-

  eye perspective. From such fleeting and deformed views my mind had put together some sort of rough representation that has no more in common with that church than Laura does with my drawing of two arrows. The church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres has disappeared and all the churches in towns have disappeared in the same way, like the moon when it enters an eclipse. The cars that fill the streets have narrowed the sidewalks, which are crowded with pedestrians. If they want to look at each other, they see cars in the background; if they want to look at the building across the street, they see cars in the foreground; there isn't a

  single angle of view from which cars will not be visible, from the back, in front, on both sides. Their om
nipresent noise corrodes every moment of contemplation like an acid. Cars have made the former beauty of cities invisible. I am not like those stupid moralists who are incensed that ten thousand people are killed each year on the highways. At least there are that many fewer drivers. But I protest that cars have led to the eclipse of cathedrals."

  After a moment of silence, Professor Avenarius said, "I feel like ordering some cheese."

  II

  T

  He cheeses gradually made me forget the church, and the wine called to my mind the sensuous image of one arrow on top of another: "It's clear to me that you walked her home and she asked you up to her place. She confessed to you that she was the unhappiest woman in the world. At the same time her body was dissolving under your touch, it was defenseless, it was unable to hold back either tears or urine."

  "Tears or urine!" Avenarius exclaimed. "A splendid image!"

  "And then you made love to her and she kept looking at your face, shaking her head and repeating, 'You're not the one I love! You're not the one I love!'"

  "What you're saying is terribly exciting," said Avenarius, "but whom are you talking about?"

  "About Laura!"

  He interrupted me: "It is absolutely essential that you exercise. Jogging at night is the only thing that can take your mind off your erotic fantasies."

  "I am not as well equipped as you," I said, hinting at his harness. "You know perfectly well that without a proper outfit you can't get involved in such an undertaking."

  "Don't worry. The outfit is not so important. At first I used to jog without it, too. This," he touched his chest, "is a refinement I developed only after a few years, and it wasn't so much a practical need that led me to it as a kind of purely aesthetic, almost impractical longing for perfection. For the time being you can manage perfectly well with a knife in your pocket. The only thing that's important is that you obey the following rule: first car, right front; second car, left front; third, right rear; fourth..."

  "Leftrear..."

  244

  Immortality

  "Wrong!" Avenarius laughed like a cruel teacher pleased by a pupil's incorrect answer. "On the fourth car, all four!"

  We laughed, and Avenarius continued, "I know that lately you've been obsessed by mathematics, so you should appreciate this geometric regularity. I insist on it as an unconditional rule, which has a double significance: first of all, it throws the police off the track, because they see in the special arrangement of punctured tires some kind of a meaning, a message, a code that they try in vain to solve; but more important, the maintenance of this geometric pattern introduces into our destructive act a principle of mathematical beauty that radically distinguishes us from vandals who scratch a car with nails or shit on its roof. I elaborated all the details of my method many years ago in Germany, when I still believed in the possibility of organized resistance against Diabolum. I attended meetings of an ecological group. Those people see the main evil of Diabolum in the destruction of nature. Why not? That's also one way of understanding Diabolum. I sympathized with them. I worked out a plan for the organization of commandos who would puncture tires at night. If the plan had been put into effect,

  I assure you that cars would cease to exist. Five commando units, three men each, would, in one month, have sufficed to make the use of cars in a city of average size impossible! I presented my plan to them in all its details, and they could have learned from me how to perform a perfect subversive act, effective and yet safe from discovery by the police. But

  those idiots considered me a provocateur! They booed me and threatened me with their fists! Two weeks later they took off on huge motorcycles and in tiny cars to a protest demonstration somewhere in the woods where a nuclear power plant was about to be built. They destroyed a lot of trees and they left behind them, in the course of four months, a terrible stench. Then I realized that they had long ago become a part of Diabolum, and I decided this was my last attempt to change the world. Nowadays I am using my old revolutionary tactics only for my own, quite egotistical pleasure. Jogging through the streets at night and puncturing tires is a great joy for the soul and excellent training for the body. Once again I urge you to do it. You'll sleep better. And you'll stop thinking about Laura."

  245

  "Just tell me one thing. Does your wife really believe that you leave the house at night in order to puncture tires? Doesn't she suspect that this is only a pretext to hide other kinds of nocturnal adventure?"

  "One detail escapes you. I snore. That has earned me the right to sleep in the most remote room of the house. I am the complete master of my night."

  He smiled, and I had a strong urge to accept his challenge and agree to go with him: for one thing, the undertaking seemed praiseworthy to me, and then, too, I was fond of my friend and wanted to please him. But before I was able to say anything, he called loudly to the waiter to bring us our bill, the thread of the conversation was broken, and we became involved in other topics.

  12

  None of the highway restaurants appealed to Agnes; she kept passing one after another, and her hunger and fatigue grew. It was already quite late when she stopped in front of a motel. There was nobody in the dining room except a mother with a six-year-old boy who was one minute sitting down and the next boister- ously running around the room.

  She ordered a simple supper and examined the toy in the middle of the table. It was a small rubber statuette, advertising some sort of product. It had a huge body, short legs, and a monstrous green nose reaching all the way down to its navel. Quite amusing, she said to herself; she picked up the toy and looked at it more closely. She imagined somebody bringing the figurine to life. Once it had a soul, it would probably feel intense pain if somebody tweaked its green rubber nose as Agnes was now doing. It would quickly learn to fear people, because everybody would want to play with its nose and its life would be nothing but constant fear and suffering.

  Would the toy perhaps feel sacred respect for its Creator? Would it thank him for its life? Would it pray to him? One day someone might hold a mirror up to it, and from that time on it would yearn to hide its face from people by covering it with its hands, because it would be dreadfully ashamed. But it couldn't cover its face that way, because its Creator did not make the hands movable.

  How odd, Agnes told herself, to think that the little man might feel shame. Is he responsible for his green nose? Wouldn't he be more likely just to shrug his shoulders? No, he wouldn't shrug his shoulders. He would be ashamed. When someone discovers his physical self for the first time, the first and most important feeling that comes over him is

  MILAN KUNDERA

  neither indifference nor anger, but shame: basic shame, which will accompany him all his life, sometimes intense and sometimes milder, dulled by time.

  When Agnes was sixteen, she visited some friends of her parents; in the middle of the night she menstruated and bloodied the sheets. When she noticed it early next morning, she was seized by panic. She slipped stealthily into the bathroom, got a piece of soap, and began to rub the sheet with a wet cloth; the spot not only grew bigger but soiled the mattress as well; she was mortally ashamed.

  Why was she so ashamed? Don't all women suffer from monthly bleeding? Did she invent women's genitals? Was she responsible for them? No. But responsibility has nothing to do with shame. If she hail spilled some ink, for example, and ruined her hosts' carpet and tablecloth, it would have been unpleasant and painful, but she wouldn't have felt shame. The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

  No wonder that the toy with the long green nose was ashamed of its face. But what about Father? He was handsome, after all!

  Yes, he was. But what is beauty, mathematically speaking? Beauty means that a particular specimen closely resembles the original prototype. Let us imagine that the maximum and minimum dimensions of
all body parts were put into a computer: length of nose, three to seven centimeters; height of forehead, three to eight centimeters; and so on. An ugly person has a forehead eight centimeters high and a nose only three centimeters long. Ugliness: the poetic capriciousness of coinci" dence. In the case of a beautiful person, the play of coincidence hap-pened to select an average of all the dimensions. Beauty: the unpoetic average. Beauty, more than ugliness, reveals the nonindividuality, the impersonality of a face. A beautiful person sees in his face the original blueprint drawn up by the designer of the prototype and finds it difficult to believe that what he is seeing is an inimitable self. He is therefore as ashamed as a toy with a long green nose, that is suddenly brought to life.

  248

  Immortality

  When Father was dying, she sat on the edge of his bed. Before he rntcred the last phase of his death agony, he said to her, "Don't look at me anymore," and these were the last words she ever heard from his mouth, his last message.

  She obeyed him; she bowed her head toward the floor, closed her eyes, and kept holding on to his hand; she let him leave slowly, unseen, for a world without faces.

  249

  13

  S

  he paid the bill and walked out to her car. The boy who had been so noisy in the restaurant came running toward her. He squatted down and stretched out his arms as if holding an automatic pistol. He imi tated the sound of gunfire, "Boom, boom, boom," and riddled her with imaginary bullets.

  She stopped, bent over him, and said in a mild voice, "Why are you behaving like an idiot?"

  He stopped shooting and gazed at her with big, childish eyes. She repeated, "Yes, you must be an idiot."

  The boy made a sniveling face: "I'll tell my mom!" "Go ahead! Go and tell tales!" said Agnes. She got into the car and promptly drove off.

  She was glad not to have met the boy's mother. She imagined the woman shouting at her, shaking her head with short horizontal mo tions while lifting her shoulders and eyebrows, to defend her insulted child. Of course, the child's rights are above all other rights. Why did their mother give preference to Laura over Agnes when the enemy commander allowed her to save just one out of the three members of the family? The answer was quite clear: she gave preference to Laura because she was younger. In the hierarchy of age the baby has the highest rank, then the child, then the adolescent, and only then the adult. As for the old, they are virtually at ground level, at the very bottom of this pyramid of values.