Life Is Elsewhere

by Milan Kundera

  Unfortunately, she was so happy with her body that she neglected it; one day she realized that it was already too late, that she had a wrinkled belly with whitish streaks, a skin that didn't adhere firmly to the flesh beneath but looked like a loosely sewn wrap. The strange thing is that she wasn't in despair about this. Even with the wrinkled belly, Mama's body was happy because it was a body for eyes that still only perceived the world in vague outline and knew nothing (weren't they Edenic eyes?) of the cruel world where bodies were divided into the beautiful and the ugly.

  Though the distinction was unseen by the eyes of the infant, the eyes of the husband, who had tried to make peace with his wife after Jaromil's birth, saw them all too well. After a very long interval, they began again to make love; but it was not what it had been: for their embraces they chose covert and ordinary moments, making love in darkness and with moderation. This surely suited Mama: she knew that her body had become ugly, and she feared that caresses too intense and passionate would quickly lose her the delectable inner peace her son gave her.

  No, no, she would never forget that her husband had given her pleasure filled with uncertainties and her son serenity filled with bliss; and so she continued to search nearby (he was already crawling, walking, talking) for comfort. He fell seriously ill, and for two weeks she barely closed her eyes while she tended the burning little body convulsed with pain; this period, too, passed for her in a kind of delirium; when the illness began to subside, she thought that she had crossed through the realm of the dead with her son's body in her arms and had brought him back; she also thought that after this ordeal together nothing could ever separate them.

  The husband's body, swathed in a suit or in pajamas, reserved and self-enclosed, was withdrawing from her and day by day losing its intimacy, but the son's body at every moment depended on her; she no longer suckled him, but she taught him to use the toilet, she dressed and undressed him, arranged his hair and his clothes, was in daily contact with his gut through the dishes she lovingly prepared. When he began, at the age of four, to suffer from a lack of appetite, she became strict; she forced him to eat and for the first time felt that she was not only the friend but also the sovereign of that body; that body rebelled, defended itself, refused to swallow, but it had to give in; with an odd satisfaction she watched this vain resistance, this capitulation, this slender neck through which one could follow the course of the reluctantly swallowed mouthful.

  Ah, her son's body, her home and her paradise, her realm . . .

  3

  And her son's soul? Was that not her realm? Oh, yes, yes! When Jaromil uttered his first word and the word was "Mama," she was wildly happy; she thought that her sons intellect, still consisting of only a single concept, was taken up with her alone, and that although his intellect would grow, branch out, and bloom, she would always remain its root. Pleasantly inspired, she meticulously followed all of her sons attempts to use words, and knowing that life is long and memory fragile, she bought a date book bound in dark red and recorded everything that came from her son's mouth.

  So if we were to look at Mama's diary we would notice that the word "Mama" was soon followed by other words, and that "Papa" was seventh, after "Grandma," "Grandpa," "Doggie," "You-you," "Wah-wah," and "Pee-pee." After these simple words (in Mama's diary the date and word were always accompanied by a brief commentary) we find the first tries at sentences. We learn that well before his second birthday he proclaimed: "Mama nice." A few weeks later he said: "Mama naughty." For this remark, made after Mama had refused to give him a raspberry drink before lunch, he was smacked on the behind, upon which he shouted, in tears: "I want other Mama!" A week later, however, he gave his mother great joy by proclaiming: "I have pretty Mama." Another time he said: "Mama, I give lollipop kiss," by which he meant that he would stick out his tongue and lick her entire face.

  Skipping a few pages, we come upon a remark that catches our attention with its rhythm. His grandmother had promised Jaromil a pear, but she forgot and ate it herself; Jaromil felt cheated, became angry, and kept repeating: "Grandmama not fair, ate my pear." In a certain sense, this phrase is like the previously cited "Mama naughty," but this time no one smacked his behind because everyone laughed, including Grand-mama, and these words were often repeated in the family with amusement, a fact that of course didn't escape JaromiFs perspicacity. He probably didn't understand the reason for his success, but we can be certain that it was rhyme that saved him from a spanking, and that this was how the magical power of poetry was first revealed to him.

  More such rhymed reflections appear in the following pages of Mama's diary, and her comments on them clearly show that they were a source of joy and satisfaction to the whole family. This, it seems, is a terse portrait: "Maid Hana bends like a banana." A bit farther we read: "Walk in wood, very good." Mama thought that this poetic activity arose not only from JaromiFs utterly original talent but also from the influence of the children's poetry she read to him in such great quantities that he could easily have come to believe that the Czech language was composed exclusively of trochees. But we need to correct Mamas opinion on this point: more important here than talent or literary models was the role of Grandpapa, a sober, practical man and fervent foe of poetry, who intentionally invented the most stupid couplets and secretly taught them to his grandson.

  It didn't take long for Jaromil to notice that his words commanded great attention, and he began to behave accordingly; at first he had used speech to make himself understood, but now he spoke in order to elicit approval, admiration, or laughter. He looked forward to the effect his words would produce, and since it often happened that he didn't obtain the expected response, he tried to call attention to himself with outrageous remarks. This didn't always pay off; when he said to his father and mother: "You're pricks" (he had heard the word from the kid next door, and he remembered that all the other kids laughed loudly), his father smacked him in the face.

  After that he carefully observed what the grown-ups appreciated in his words, what they approved of, what they disapproved of, what astonished them; thus he was equipped, when he was in the garden with Mama one day, to utter a sentence imbued with the melancholy of his grandmother's lamentations: "Life is like weeds."

  It's hard to say what he meant by this; what is certain is that he wasn't thinking of the hardy worthlessness and worthless hardiness that is the distinctive feature of self-propagating plants but that he probably wanted to express the rather vague notion that, when all is said and done, life is sad and futile. Even though he had said something other than what he wanted to, the effect of his words was splendid; Mama silently stroked his hair and looked into his face with moist eyes. Jaromil was so carried away by this look, which he perceived as emotional praise, that he had a craving to see it again. During a walk he kicked a stone and said to his mother: "Mama, I just kicked a stone, and now I feel so sorry for it I want to stroke it," and he really bent down and did so.

  Mama was convinced that her son was not only gifted (he had learned to read when he was five) but also that he was exceptionally sensitive in a way different from other children. She often expressed this opinion to Grandpapa and Grandmama while Jaromil, unobtrusively playing with his tin soldiers or on his rocking horse, listened with great interest. He would look deeply into the eyes of guests, imagining rapturously that their eyes were looking at him as a singular, exceptional child, one who might not be a child at all.

  When his sixth birthday was approaching and he was a few months from entering school, the family insisted that he have his own room and sleep by himself. Mama looked upon the passage of time with regret, but she agreed. She and her husband agreed to give their son the third and smallest room on their floor as a birthday present, and to buy him a bed and other furniture for a child's room: a small bookcase, a mirror to encourage cleanliness, and a small desk.

  Papa suggested decorating the room with Jaromil's own drawings, and he soon set about framing the childish scrawls of apples and
gardens. Then Mama went over to Papa and said: "I want to ask you for something." He looked at her, and Mama's voice, at once shy and forceful, went on: "I'd like some sheets of paper and paints." Then she sat down at a table in her room, laid a sheet of paper in front of her, and on it started to draw letters in pencil; finally she dipped a brush in red paint and redid the penciled letters in that color, the first a capital L. It was followed by a small i and an/, and went on to form this line: "Life is like weeds." She examined her work with satisfaction: the letters were straight and well shaped; and yet she picked up a new sheet of paper, again wrote the line in pencil, and colored it in dark blue this time, for that seemed to her much better suited to the ineffable sadness of her son's maxim.

  Then she remembered that Jaromil had said, "Grandmama not fair, ate my pear," and with a happy smile she started to write (in bright red), "Grandmama fair, loves her pear." And after that, with a hidden smile, she again remembered "You're pricks," but she refrained from copying this thought and instead penciled and colored (in green), "We'll dance in the wood, our hearts feeling good," and then (in purple), "Dear Hana bends like a banana" (Jaromil had actually said "Maid Hana," but Mama found the word offensive), then she remembered Jaromil bending down to stroke a stone, and after a moment's thought she wrote and painted (in sky blue), "I can't harm or even alarm a rock," and with a bit of embarrassment but with all the more pleasure (in orange), "Mama, I give you a lollipop kiss," and finally (in gold), "My mama is the most beautiful in the world."

  The day before his birthday his parents sent the overexcited Jaromil down to sleep with his grandmother while they moved the furniture amd decorated the walls. The next morning, when they brought the child into the renovated room, Mama was tense, and Jaromil did nothing to dispel her agitation; he was dumbfounded and silent; the main object of his interest (which he showed only feebly and shyly) was the desk; it was an odd-looking piece of furniture resembling a school desk, with the slanted desktop (its hinged lid covering a space for books and notebooks) attached to the seat.

  "Well, what do you say? Do you like it?" asked Mama impatiently.

  "Yes, I like it," the child responded.

  "And what do you like best?" inquired Grandpapa, who with Grandmama was watching the long-awaited scene from the room's doorway.

  "The desk," said the child. He sat down and began raising and lowering the lid. "And what do you say about the pictures?" Papa asked, pointing to the framed drawings.

  The child raised his head and smiled. "I know them."

  "And how do you like them hanging on the wall?"

  The child, still sitting at his little desk, nodded to indicate he liked the drawings on the wall.

  Mama was heartbroken and wanted to vanish from the room. But there she was, and she couldn't allow the framed, colored inscriptions on the wall to be passed over in silence, for she would have taken such silence for condemnation. That is why she said: "And look at this writing."

  The child lowered his head and looked inside the little desk.

  "You know, I wanted . . . ," she went on in great confusion, "I wanted you to be able to remember how you grew up, from cradle to school, because you were a bright little boy and a joy to us all. ..." She said this as if in apology, and since she was nervous, she repeated the same thing several times. At last, not knowing what to say, she was silent.

  But she was wrong to think that Jaromil was not pleased by his gift. He didn't know what to say, but he wasn't disappointed; he had always been proud of his words, and he didn't want to utter them into the void; now that he saw them carefully copied in color and transformed into pictures, he experienced a feeling of success, a success so great and unexpected that he didn't know how to respond, and it gave him stage fright; he understood that he was a child who uttered striking words, and he knew that this child should at this moment say something striking, yet nothing striking came to mind, and so he lowered his head. But when he saw out of the corner of his eye his own words on the walls, set, fixed, more durable and bigger than himself, he was carried away; he had the impression of being surrounded by his own self, of being vast, of filling the entire room, of filling the entire house.

  4

  Jaromil already knew how to read and write before he started school, and Mama decided that he could go directly into second grade; she obtained special authorization from the ministry, and after passing an examination before a committee, Jaromil was permitted to take a place among pupils a year older than he. Because everyone in school admired him, the classroom seemed to him merely a reflection of the family house. On Mother's Day the pupils performed at the school celebration. Jaromil was the last to step up on the podium, and he recited a touching little poem that was much applauded by the audience of parents.

  But he soon realized that behind the audience that applauded him there was another that was slyly and antagonistically on the lookout for him. In the dentist's crowded waiting room one day, he ran into one of his schoolmates. As the boys stood side by side with their backs to the window, Jaromil saw an old gentleman listening with a kindly smile to what they were saying. Encouraged by this sign of interest, Jaromil asked his fellow pupil (raising his voice a bit so that the question would be heard by all) what he would do if he were the country's minister of education. Since the boy didn't know what to say, Jaromil began to elaborate his own thoughts, which was not very difficult because all he needed was to repeat the speech with which his grandfather regularly entertained him. And so if Jaromil were minister of education, there would be two months of school and ten months of vacation, the teacher would have to obey the children and bring them their snacks from the bakery, and there would be all kinds of other remarkable reforms, all of which Jaromil loudly and clearly put forward.

  Then the door to the treatment room opened, and a patient came out, accompanied by the nurse. A woman holding a book with her finger in it to mark the place turned to the nurse and asked, almost pleading: "Please say something to that child! It's dreadful the way he's showing off!"

  After Christmas the teacher had the pupils come to the front of the room one by one to tell what they had found under the tree. Jaromil began to enumerate a construction set, skis, ice skates, books, but he quickly noticed that the children didn't share his fervor, that, on the contrary, some of them were looking indifferent, indeed hostile. He stopped without breathing a word about the rest of his presents.

  No, no, don't worry, I don't intend to retell the tired old story of the rich kid his poor schoolmates hate; in Jaromil's class there were in fact children from families better off than his, and yet they got along well with the others, and no one resented their affluence. What was it about Jaromil that annoyed his schoolmates; what was it that got on their nerves, that made him different?

  I almost hesitate to say it: it was not wealth, it was his mama's love. That love left its traces on everything; it was recorded on his shirt, on his hair, on the words he used, on the schoolbag in which he carried his notebooks, and on the books he read at home for pleasure. Everything was specially chosen and arranged for him. The shirts made for him by his frugal grandmother resembled, God knows why, girls' blouses more than boys' shirts. He had to keep his long hair off his brow and out of his eyes with one of his mother's barrettes. When it rained Mama waited for him in front of the school with a large umbrella, while his friends took off their shoes and waded through the puddles.

  Mother love imprints a mark on boys' brows that rebuffs the friendliness of schoolmates. Eventually Jaromil gained the skill to hide that stigma, but after his glorious arrival at school he experienced a difficult time (lasting a year or two) during which his schoolmates, who taunted him with a passion, also beat him up several times just for the fun of it. But even during that worst time he had some friends to whom he would remain grateful throughout his life; a few words need to be said about them:

  His number one friend was his father: sometimes he would go out into the yard with a soccer ball (he had played soccer
as a student), and Jaromil would plant himself between two trees; his father kicked the ball toward Jaromil, who pretended that he was the goalkeeper of the Czech national team.

  His number two friend was his grandfather. He would take Jaromil to his two businesses—a large housewares store that Jaromil's father was now running, and a cosmetics shop, where the salesgirl was a young woman who greeted the boy with a friendly smile and let him sniff all the perfumes, soon enabling him to recognize the various brands; he would close his eyes and make his grandfather test him by holding the little bottles under his nose. "You're a genius of smell," his grandfather would congratulate him, and Jaromil dreamed of becoming the inventor of new perfumes.

  His number three friend was Alik. Alik was a wild little dog that had been living in the villa for some time; even though it was untrained and unruly, the dog provided Jaromil with fine daydreams of a faithful friend who waited for him in the corridor outside the classroom and, to the envy of his schoolmates, accompanied him home after school.

  Daydreaming about dogs became the passion of his solitude, even leading him into a peculiar Manicheism: for him dogs represented the goodness of the animal world, the sum total of all natural virtues; he imagined great wars of dogs against cats (wars with generals, officers, and all the tactics he had learned while playing with his tin soldiers) and was always on the side of the dogs, in the same way as a man should always be on the side of justice.