Eduard & God

by Milan Kundera

  Eduard and God

  by Milan Kundera

  from Laughable Loves

  This translation 1999 Aaron Asher

  1

  Let me begin Eduard's story in his older brother's little house in the country. His brother was lying on the couch and saying to Eduard: "Ask the old hag. Never mind, just go and talk to her. Of course she's a pig, but I believe that even in such creatures a conscience exists. Just because she once did me dirt, now maybe she'll be glad if you'll let her make up for her past misdeed."

  Eduard's brother was always the same: a good-natured guy and a lazy one. He probably had been lolling on the couch this way in his student attic when, quite a few years ago (Eduard was still a little boy then), he had lazed and snored away the day of Stalin's death. The next day, still unaware of the news, he had turned up at the university and caught sight of his fellow student, Comrade Cechac-kova, standing in ostentatious rigidity in the middle of the hall like a statue of grief. Three times he circled her and then began to roar with laughter. The offended girl denounced her fellow student's laughter as political provocation, and Eduard's brother had to abandon his studies and go to work in a village, where since that time he had acquired a house, a dog, a wife, two children, and even a weekend cottage.

  In this village house, then, he was now lying on the couch and explaining to Eduard: "We used to call her the chastising working-class whip. But that shouldn't intimidate you. Nowadays she's an aging woman, and she always had a weakness for young men, so she'll be helpful."

  Eduard was at that time very young. He had just graduated from teachers college (the course from which his brother had been expelled) and was looking for a position. The next day, following his brother's advice, he knocked on the directress's office door. She was a tall, bony woman with greasy black hair, black eyes, and black fuzz under her nose. Her ugliness relieved him of the shyness to which feminine beauty still always reduced him, so that he managed to talk to her in a relaxed manner, amiably, even courteously. The directress was evidently delighted by his approach, and several times she said with perceptible elation: "We need young people here." She promised to find a place for him.

  2

  And so Eduard became a teacher in a small Bohemian town. This made him neither happy nor sad. He always tried hard to distinguish between the serious and the unserious, and he put his teaching career into the category of unserious. Not that teaching itself was unserious (in fact he was deeply attached to it, because he knew that he would not be able to earn a living any other way), but he considered it unserious in terms of his true nature. He hadn't chosen it. Society's requirements, his party record, his high school diploma, and his entrance examinations had imposed it on him. The interlocking conjunction of all these forces eventually dumped him (as a crane drops a sack onto a truck) from high school into teachers college. He didn't want to go there (his brother's failure was a bad omen), but eventually he acquiesced. He understood, however, that his occupation would be among the fortuitous aspects of his life. It would be attached to him like a false mustache, which is something laughable.

  But if what is obligatory is unserious (laughable), what is serious is probably optional: in his new abode Eduard soon found a girl who struck him as beautiful, and he began to pursue her with a seriousness that was almost sincere. Her name was Alice and she was, as he discovered to his great sorrow on their first dates, very reserved and virtuous.

  Many times during their evening walks he had tried to put his arm around her so that he could touch the region of her right breast from behind, and each time she had seized his hand and pushed it away. One evening when he was trying this once again and she (once again) was pushing his hand away, she stopped and asked: "Do you believe in God?" With his sensitive ears Eduard caught a discreet insistence in this question, and he immediately forgot about the breast.

  "Do you?" Alice repeated her question, and Eduard didn't dare answer. Let us not condemn him for fearing to be frank; as a newcomer in this town he felt lonely, and he was too attracted to Alice to risk losing her favor over a single simple answer.

  "And you?" he asked in order to gain time.

  "Yes, I do." And once again she urged him to answer her.

  Until this time it had never occurred to him to believe in God. He understood, however, that he must not admit this. On the contrary, he saw that he should take advantage of the opportunity and knock together from faith in God a nice Trojan horse, within whose belly, according to the ancient example, he would slip into the girl's heart unobserved. Only it wasn't so easy for Eduard simply to say to Alice, "I believe in God"; he wasn't at all impudent, and he was ashamed to lie; the simplicity of lying repelled him; if a lie was absolutely necessary, he wanted it to remain as close as possible to the truth. For that reason he replied in an exceptionally thoughtful voice:

  "I don't really know, Alice, what I should say to you about this. Certainly I believe in God. But ..." He paused and Alice glanced up at him in surprise. "But I want to be completely frank with you. May I?"

  "You must be frank," she said. "Otherwise surely there wouldn't be any sense in our being together."

  "Really?"

  "Really," said Alice.

  "Sometimes I'm troubled by doubts," said Eduard in a choked voice. "Sometimes I wonder whether he really exists."

  "But how can you doubt that?" Alice nearly shouted.

  Eduard was silent, and after a moment's reflection a familiar thought struck him: "When I see so much evil around me, I often wonder how it is possible that a God exists who would permit all that."

  That sounded so sad that Alice seized his hand: "Yes, the world is indeed full of evil. I know this only too well. But for that reason you must believe in God. Without him all this suffering would be in vain. Nothing would have any meaning. And if that were so, I couldn't live at all."

  "Perhaps you're right," said Eduard thoughtfully, and on Sunday he went to church with her. He dipped his fingers in the font and crossed himself. Then there was the Mass and people sang, and with the others he sang a hymn whose tune was familiar, but to which he didn't know the words. Instead of the prescribed words he chose only various vowels, and he always hit each note a fraction of a second behind the others, because he only dimly recollected even the tune. Yet the moment he became certain of the note, he let his voice ring out fully, so that for the first time in his life he realized that he had a beautiful bass. Then they all began to recite the Lord's Prayer, and some old ladies knelt. He could not hold back a compelling desire to kneel too on the stone floor. He crossed himself with impressive arm movements and experienced the marvelous feeling of being able to do something that he had never done in his life, neither in the classroom nor on the street nor anywhere. He felt marvelously free.

  When it was all over, Alice looked at him with a radiant expression in her eyes. "Can you still say that you doubt he exists ? "

  "No."

  And Alice said: "I would like to teach you to love him just as I do."

  They were standing on the broad steps of the church and Eduards soul was full of laughter. Unfortunately, just at that moment the directress was walking by, and she saw them.

  3

  This was bad. We must recall (for those at risk of losing the historical background) that although it is true that people weren't forbidden to go to church, nonetheless churchgoing was not without a certain danger.

  This is not so difficult to understand. Those who had fought for what they called the revolution maintained a great pride: the pride of being on the correct side of the front lines. Ten or twelve years later (around the time of our story) the front lines began to melt away, and with them the correct side. No wonder the former supporters of the revolution feel cheated and are quick to seek subst
itute fronts; thanks to religion they can (in their role as atheists struggling against believers) stand again on the correct side and retain their habitual and precious sense of their own superiority.

  But to tell the truth, the substitute front was also useful to others, and it will perhaps not be too premature to disclose that Alice was one of them. Just as the directress wanted to be on the correct side, Alice wanted to be on the opposite side. During the revolution they had nationalized her papa's shop, and Alice hated those who had done this to him. But how should she show her hatred? Perhaps by taking a knife and avenging her father? But this sort of thing is not the custom in Bohemia. Alice had a better means for expressing her opposition: she began to believe in God.

  Thus the Lord came to the aid of both sides, and, thanks to him, Eduard found himself between two fires.

  When on Monday morning the directress came up to Eduard in the staff room, he felt very ill at ease. There was no way he could invoke the friendly atmosphere of their first interview, because since that time (whether through artlessness or carelessness), he had never again engaged in flirtatious conversation with her. The directress therefore had good reason to address him with a conspicuously cold smile: "We saw each other yesterday, didn't we?"

  "Yes, we did," said Eduard.

  The directress went on: "I can't understand how a young man can go to church.'' Eduard shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably, and the directress shook her head. "A young man like you."

  "I went to see the baroque interior of the cathedral," said Eduard by way of an excuse.

  "Ah, so that's it," said the directress ironically. "I didn't know you were interested in architecture."

  This conversation was not at all pleasant for Eduard. He remembered that his brother had circled his fellow student three times and then roared with laughter. It seemed to him that family history was repeating itself, and he felt afraid. On Saturday he made his excuses over the telephone to Alice, saying that he wouldn't be going to church because he had a cold.

  "You're a real sissy," Alice rebuked him when they saw each other again during the week, and it seemed to Eduard that her words sounded cold. So he began to tell her (enigmatically and vaguely, because he was ashamed to admit his fear and his real reasons) about the wrongs being done him at school, and about the horrible directress who was persecuting him without cause. He wanted to arouse her compassion, but Alice said: "My woman boss, on the contrary, isn't bad at all," and, giggling, she began to relate stories about her work. Eduard listened to her merry voice and became more and more gloomy.

  4

  Ladies and gentlemen, those were weeks of torment! Eduard longed hellishly for Alice. Her body fired him up, and yet this very body was utterly inaccessible to him. The settings in which their dates took place were also tormenting; either they wandered for an hour or two in the streets after dark or they went to the movies; the banality and the negligible erotic possibilities of these two variants (there weren't any others) prompted Eduard to think that perhaps he would achieve more success if they could meet in a different environment. Once, with an ingenuous face, he proposed that for the weekend they go to the country and visit his brother, who had a cottage in a wooded valley by a river. He excitedly described the innocent beauties of nature, but Alice (naive and credulous in every other respect) swiftly saw through him and categorically refused. It wasn't Alice alone who was resisting him. It was Alice's (eternally vigilant and wary) God himself.

  This God embodied a single idea (he had no other wishes or concerns): he forbade extramarital sex. He was therefore a rather comical God, but let's not laugh at Alice for that. Of the Ten Commandments Moses gave to the people, fully nine didn't endanger her soul at all; she didn't feel like killing or not honoring her father, or coveting her neighbor's wife; only one commandment she felt to be not self-evident and therefore posed a genuine challenge: the famous seventh, which forbids fornication. In order to practice, show, and prove her religious faith, she had to devote her entire attention to this single commandment. And so out of a vague, diffuse, and abstract God, she created a God who was specific, comprehensible, and concrete: God Antifornicator.

  I ask you where in fact does fornication begin? Every woman fixes this boundary for herself according to totally mysterious criteria. Alice quite happily allowed Eduard to kiss her, and after many, many attempts she eventually became reconciled to letting him stroke her breasts. However, at the middle of her body, let's say at her navel, she drew a strict and uncompromising line, below which lay the area of sacred prohibitions, the area of Moses's denial and the anger of the Lord.

  Eduard began to read the Bible and to study basic theological literature. He had decided to fight Alice with her own weapons.

  "Alice dear," he then said to her, "if we love God, nothing is forbidden. If we long for something, it's because of his will. Christ wanted nothing but that we should all be ruled by love.''

  "Yes," said Alice, "but a different love from the one you're thinking of."

  "There s only one love," said Eduard.

  "That would certainly suit you," she said, "Only God set down certain commandments, and we must abide by them."

  "Yes, the Old Testament God," said Eduard, "but not the Christian God."

  "How's that? Surely there's only one God," objected Alice.

  "Yes," said Eduard, "only the Jews of the Old Testament understood him a little differently from the way we do. Before the coming of Christ, men had to abide above all by a specific system of God's commandments and laws. What went on in a man's soul was not so important. But Christ considered some of these prohibitions and regulations to be something external. For him the most important thing was what a man was like deep down. When a man is true to his own ardent, believing heart, everything he does is good and pleasing to God. That's why St. Paul said: 'Everything is pure to the man who is pure at heart."

  "But I wonder if you are pure at heart."

  "And Saint Augustine," continued Eduard, "said: 'Love God and do what it pleases you to do.' Do you understand, Alice? Love God, and do what it pleases you to do."

  "But what pleases you will never please me," she replied, and Eduard understood that his theological assault had foundered completely; therefore he said:

  "You don't love me."

  "I do," said Alice in a terribly matter-of-fact way. "And that's why I don't want us to do anything we shouldn't do."

  As I have already mentioned, these were weeks of torment. And the torment was that much greater because Eduard's desire for Alice was not only the desire of a body for a body; on the contrary, the more she refused him her body, the more lonesome and afflicted he became and the more he coveted her heart as well. However, neither her body nor her heart wanted to do anything about it; they were equally cold, equally wrapped up in themselves and self-satisfied.

  It was precisely this unruffled moderation of hers that exasperated Eduard most. Although in other respects he was quite a sober young man, he began to long for some extreme action through which he could drive Alice out of her unruffled state. And because it was too risky to provoke her through blasphemy or cynicism (to which by nature he was attracted), he had to go to the opposite (and therefore far more difficult) extreme, which would coincide with Alice's own position but would be so overdone as to put her to shame. In other words Eduard began to exaggerate his religiousness. He didn't miss a single visit to church (his desire for Alice was greater than his fear of boredom), and once there he behaved with eccentric humility: he knelt at every opportunity, while Alice prayed beside him and crossed herself standing, because she was afraid to get a run in her stockings.

  One day he criticized her for her lukewarm religiosity. He reminded her of Jesus' words: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven." He criticized her, saying that her faith was formal, external, shallow. He criticized her for being too pleased with herself. He criticized her for being unaware of anyone but herself.

  As he was say
ing all this (Alice was not prepared for his attack and defended herself feebly), he suddenly caught sight of an old, roadwide cross with a rusty Christ on it. He briskly withdrew his arm from Alice's, stopped (as a protest against the girl's indifference and as a sign of his new offensive), and crossed himself ostentatiously. But he did not really to see how this affected Alice, because at that moment he spied on the other side of the street the woman janitor of the school. She was looking at him. Eduard realized that he was lost.

  5

  His fears were confirmed when two days later the woman janitor stopped him in the corridor and loudly informed him that he was to present himself the next day at twelve o'clock at the directress's office: "We have something to talk to you about, comrade."

  Eduard was overcome by anxiety. In the evening he met Alice so that, as usual, they could stroll in the streets for an hour or two, but Eduard had abandoned his religious fervor. He was downcast and longed to confide to Alice what had happened to him, but he didn't dare, because he knew that in order to save his unloved (but indispensable) job, he was ready to betray the good Lord without hesitation. For this reason he preferred not to say a word about the inauspicious summons, so he couldn't even get any consolation. The following day he entered the directress's office in a mood of utter dejection.

  In the room four judges awaited him: the directress, the woman janitor, one of Eduard's colleagues (a tiny man with glasses), and an unknown (gray-haired) gentleman, whom the others called "Comrade Inspector." The directress asked Eduard to be seated, and told him they had invited him for just a friendly and unofficial talk. For, she said, the manner in which Eduard had been conducting himself in his life outside the school was making them all uneasy. As she said this she looked at the inspector, who nodded his head in agreement, then at the bespectacled teacher, who had been watching her attentively the whole time and who now, intercepting her glance, launched into a long speech. He said that we wanted to educate healthy young people without prejudices and that we had complete responsibility for them because we (the teachers) served as models for them. Precisely for this reason, he said, we could not countenance a religious person within our walls. He developed this idea at length and finally declared that Eduard's behavior was a disgrace to the whole school.

  A few minutes earlier Eduard had been convinced that he would deny his recently acquired God and admit that his church attendance and his crossing himself in public were only jokes. Now, however, faced with the situation, he felt that it was impossible to tell the truth. He could not, after all, say to these four people, so serious and so passionate, that they were impassioned about a misunderstanding, a bit of foolishness. He understood that to do that would be involuntarily to mock their seriousness, and he also realized that what they were expecting from him were only quibbles and excuses, which they were prepared in advance to reject. He understood (in a flash, there wasn't time for lengthy reflection) that at that moment the most important thing was for him to appear truthful or, more precisely, that his statements should resemble the idea of him they had constructed; if he wanted, to a degree, to correct that idea, he also, to a degree, had to accept it.