Life Is Elsewhere

by Milan Kundera

  But when he finished, one of the poets smiled ironically and said: "Do you really believe that the emotion of love is more powerful in your poems than in the poems of Heinrich Heine? Or that the loves of Victor Hugo are too petty for you? Was love in Macha or in Neruda* crippled by money and prejudice?"

  *The nineteenth-century Czech poets Karel Hynek Macha and Jan Neruda.

  That was a blow. Jaromil didn't know what to say; he blushed and saw a pair of large dark eyes witnessing his debacle.

  The fiftyish woman was pleased by the sarcastic questions of Jaromil's colleague, saying: "Why do you want to transform love, comrades? Love will be the same until the end of time."

  Once more the organizer intervened: "Oh, no, comrade. Certainly not!"

  "No, that's not what I meant to say," the poet quickly said. "But the difference between the love poetry of yesterday and that of today has nothing to do with the intensity of the emotion."

  "Then what does it have to do with?" asked the fiftyish woman.

  "With the fact that in the past even the greatest love was always a means of escape from social life, which was loathsome. Today love is bound up with our social duties, our work, our struggle, with which it forms an entirety. That is where its new beauty lies."

  The facing row expressed its agreement with Jaromil's colleague, but Jaromil gave a scornful laugh: "That kind of beauty, my dear friend, is nothing new. Didn't the great poets of the past lead lives in which love was in perfect harmony with their social struggle? The lovers in Shelley's poem The Revolt of Islam are revolutionaries who perish together on a pyre. Is that what you call love cut off from social life?"

  Worst of all, just as Jaromil a few moments earlier hadn't known how to answer his colleague's objections, his colleague was stumped in turn, which risked causing the impression (an inadmissible impression) that there was no difference between the past and the present and that the new world did not exist. Besides, the liftyish woman got up and asked with an interrogator's smile: "So tell me, what is the difference between love today and love in the past?"

  At that decisive moment, when everyone was at an impasse, the man with the wooden leg and crutch intervened; he had been following the debate attentively, though with visible impatience; now he got up and leaned firmly against a chair: "Dear comrades, allow me to introduce myself," and the people in his row quickly protested, shouting that it wasn't necessary, that they knew him very well. But he interrupted them: "I'm not introducing myself to you but to the comrades we've invited here," and as he knew that his name would mean nothing to the poets, he gave them a brief account of his life: he had been the caretaker of this villa for thirty years; he was already here in the time of the industrialist Kocvara, whose summer house this was; he was also here during the war, when the industrialist was arrested and the villa became a Gestapo vacation house; after the war the villa was confiscated by the Christian Party, and now the police were installed here. "Well, from what I've seen, I can say that no government takes such good care of working people as the Communist government." Of course, even these days not everything was perfect: "In Kocvara's time, in the Gestapo's time, and in the Christians' time, the bus stop was always right across from the villa." Yes, that was very convenient, it was only ten steps from his basement room in the villa to the bus stop. Then they moved the bus stop two hundred meters away! He had already complained wherever he could. It was absolutely useless. "Tell me," he said, thumping the floor with his crutch, "now that the villa belongs to the workers, why does the bus stop have to be so far away?"

  The people in the first row answered (partly with impatience, partly with a certain amusement) that he had already been told a hundred times that the bus now stopped in front of a recently built factory.

  The man with the wooden leg replied that he knew this very well, and that he had suggested that the bus should stop at both places.

  The people in the first row said that it would be stupid for the bus to stop every two hundred meters.

  The word "stupid" offended the man with the wooden leg; he declared that no one had the right to talk to him like that; he thumped the floor with his crutch and turned crimson. Besides, it wasn't true that buses couldn't stop every two hundred meters. He was well aware that on other bus routes the stops were closer together.

  One of the organizers stood up and quoted word for word (it was not the first time he had had to do so) the Czechoslovak Transportation Department's decree expressly prohibiting bus stops so close together.

  The man with the wooden leg replied that he had suggested a compromise solution: it would be possible to place the stop midway between the villa and the factory.

  But it was pointed out to him that then the bus stop would be far away both for the factory workers and the policemen.

  The dispute had lasted for twenty minutes, and the poets were vainly trying to join in the debate; the audience was impassioned about a subject it knew in depth and didn't allow the poets to speak. Only when the man with the wooden leg, disheartened by the resistance of his fellow employees, sat down again in exasperation did the room at last lapse into a silence that was immediately broken by the band music coming from the room next door.

  Nobody said anything for a while, and then one of the organizers finally got up and thanked the poets for their visit and for the interesting discussion. On behalf of the visitors, the poet in his sixties got up and said that the discussion (as, by the way, was always the case) had certainly been more rewarding for them, the poets, than for their hosts, whom he and his colleagues thanked.

  The voice of a male singer came from the next room, the audience gathered around the man with the wooden leg to soothe his anger, and the poets found themselves alone. Then, after a minute or two, the janitor's son along with the two organizers joined them and took them to the minibus.

  8

  The beautiful filmmaker was in the minibus taking them back to Prague. The poets surrounded her, each one doing his best to attract her attention. Jaromil's seat was unfortunately too far from hers to enable him to participate in the game; he thought of his redhead, and he realized with conclusive certainty that she was irremediably ugly.

  The minibus stopped somewhere in the middle of Prague, and some of the poets decided to go into a tavern. Jaromil and the filmmaker went with them; they sat down at a large table, talked, drank, and as they were leaving the tavern the filmmaker suggested they go to her place. Only a handful of poets remained: Jaromil, the poet in his sixties, and the publishing house editor. They settled into armchairs in a handsome room on the second floor of a modern villa the young woman was subletting, and they started drinking again.

  The old poet devoted himself to the filmmaker with matchless ardor. He sat beside her praising her beauty, reciting poems to her, improvising odes in honor of her charms, at moments kneeling at her feet and holding her hands. The editor, with almost equal ardor, devoted himself to Jaromil; to be sure, he. didn't praise his beauty, but he repeated an incalculable number of times: "You are a poet, you are a poet!" (Let me note in passing that when a poet calls someone a poet, it is not the same thing as an engineer calling someone an engineer or a farmer calling someone a farmer, because a farmer is someone who cultivates the earth while a poet is not merely someone who writes verse but someone— let's recall the word!—who is elected to write verse, and only a poet can with certainty recognize in another poet that touch of grace, for—let's recall Rimbaud's letter— all "poets are brothers," and only a brother can recognize the secret family sign.)

  The filmmaker, before whom the poet in his sixties was kneeling and whose hands were victims of his assiduous fondling, never stopped looking into Jaromil's eyes. He soon noticed this, was enchanted, and looked into hers. It was a pretty rectangle! The old poet gazed at the filmmaker, the editor gazed at Jaromil, and Jaromil and the filmmaker gazed at each other.

  This geometry of gazes was only broken once, when the editor took Jaromil by the arm and led him to the adjacent
balcony; he invited Jaromil to urinate with him onto the courtyard below the railing. Jaromil gladly obliged, for he wanted the editor to remember his promise to publish a selection of his poems.

  When the two of them returned from the balcony, the old poet got up from his knees and said it was time to go; he was well aware that he was not the one the young woman desired. Then he suggested to the editor (who was much less discerning and considerate) that they leave alone those who wanted and deserved to be, for, as the old poet labeled them, they were the prince and princess of the evening.

  The editor finally realized what was going on and was ready to leave, the old poet took him by the arm and led him to the door, and Jaromil saw that he was about to be alone with the young woman, who was sitting in a wide armchair with her legs crossed under her, her dark hair disheveled, and her motionless eyes fixed on him. . . .

  The story of two people who are on the verge of becoming lovers is so eternal that we can almost forget the era in which it is taking place. How pleasant it is to recount such love affairs! How delightful it would be to forget what it is that dries up the sap of our brief lives so as to enslave them to its useless work, how beautiful it would be to forget History!

  But here is its specter knocking at the door and entering the story. It is not entering in the guise of the secret police or in the guise of a sudden revolution; History does not make its way only on the dramatic peaks of our lives but also soaks into everyday life like dirty water; it enters our story in the guise of underwear.

  In Jaromil's country in the era I am speaking of, elegance was a political offense; the clothes worn at the time were very ugly (besides, the war had ended only a few years before, and there were still shortages); and in that austere era elegant underwear was considered a downright reprehensible luxury! Men who were embarrassed by the ugliness of the underwear then being sold (wide shorts that came down to the knees and had the amenity of a comical opening at the crotch) instead wore short pants intended for sports use, that is, for stadiums and gymnasiums. This was strange: everywhere in Bohemia in that era men climbed into their women's beds dressed like soccer players, going to their women as though they were entering the stadium, but from the viewpoint of elegance it was not so bad: the gym shorts had a certain athletic elegance and came in lively colors—blue, green, red, yellow.

  Jaromil paid no attention to his clothing, for Mama took care of it; she chose his clothes for him, she chose his underwear, she made sure that he didn't catch cold by seeing to it that he wore warm undershorts. She knew exactly how many pairs of undershorts were stacked in his linen drawer, and she had merely to glance into the linen closet to know which one Jaromil was wearing that day. When she saw that not a single pair of undershorts was missing from the drawer, she immediately

  became angry; she didn't like Jaromil to wear gym shorts, for she believed that gym shorts were not undershorts and should be worn only for sports. When Jaromil protested that the undershorts were ugly, she answered with concealed irritation that he probably didn't display himself to anyone in his underwear. So whenever Jaromil went to see the redheaded girl, he always took a pair of undershorts out of the linen drawer, hid it in one of his desk drawers, and then put on a pair of gym shorts.

  But that day he had not known what the evening would bring, and he wore a pair of hideously ugly, bulky, threadbare, dirty gray undershorts!

  You might say that this was just a slight complication, that he could, for example, turn off the light so as not to be seen. Alas, there was a bedside lamp with a pink shade in the room, the lamp was on and seemed impatiently waiting to illuminate the caresses of the two lovers, and Jaromil couldn't imagine what he might say to induce the young woman to turn it off.

  Or you might perhaps remark that Jaromil could take off his bad-looking undershorts together with his trousers. But Jaromil didn't even think of taking off his undershorts and his trousers at the same time, because he had never undressed in this way; such a sudden leap into nakedness frightened him; he always undressed piecemeal and caressed the redhead for a long time while still in his gym shorts, which he removed only under cover of arousal.

  And so he stood terrified before the large dark eyes and announced that he too had to leave.

  The old poet was almost in a rage; he told Jaromil that he must not insult a woman, and he lowered his voice to depict the pleasures that awaited him; but his words merely convinced Jaromil all the more of the wretchedness of his undershorts. Looking at the wonderful dark eyes, his heart breaking, he retreated toward the door.

  When he reached the street he was overcome by regret; he couldn't get rid of the image of that splendid girl. And the old poet (they had taken leave of the editor at the streetcar stop and were now walking alone through the dark streets) was tormenting him by continuing to reproach him for insulting the young woman and behaving stupidly.

  Jaromil told the poet that he hadn't wanted to insult the young woman, but that he loved his girlfriend, who was madly in love with him.

  You're naive, said the old poet. You're a poet, you're a lover of life, you wouldn't harm your girlfriend by going to bed with someone else; life is short, and lost opportunities don't recur.

  That was painful to hear. Jaromil replied that in his opinion a single great love to which we devote everything we have within us is worth more than a thousand fleeting affairs; that having his girlfriend was having all women; that his girlfriend was so protean, her love so infinite, that he could experience with her more unexpected adventures than a Don Juan with his 1,003 women.

  The old poet stopped walking; Jaromil's words had visibly touched him: "You may be right," he said. "But I'm an old man and belong to the old world. I admit that even though I'm married, I'd have loved to stay with that woman."

  As Jaromil went on with his reflections on the greatness of monogamous love, the old poet tilted his head back: "Ah, you may be right, my friend, you're certainly right. Didn't I too dream about a great love? About a single, unique love? About a love as boundless as the universe? But I squandered my chance for it, my friend, because in that old world, the world of money and whores, great love was belittled."

  Both of them were drunk, the old poet put his arm around the young poet's shoulders, and now they stopped in the middle of the street between the streetcar tracks. The old man raised his arms high and shouted: "Death to the old world! Long live great love!"

  Jaromil found this impressive, bohemian, and poetic, and the two of them shouted long and enthusiastically in the dark streets of Prague: "Death to the old world! Long live great love!"

  Then the poet knelt before Jaromil on the cobblestones and kissed his hand: "My friend, I pay homage to your youth! My age pays homage to your youth, because only youth will save the world!" He was silent for a moment, and then, his bare head touching Jaromil's knees, he added in a very melancholy voice: "And I pay homage to your great love."

  They finally parted, and Jaromil soon found himself back home in his room. Before his eyes he again saw the image of the beautiful woman he had forgone. Driven by an urge for self-punishment, he looked at himself in the mirror. He took off his trousers so as to see himself in his hideous, threadbare undershorts; for a long time he contemplated his comical ugliness with hatred.

  Then he realized that it was not he himself he was thinking about with hatred. He was thinking about his mother; his mother, who chose his underwear; his mother, who made him secretly put on gym shorts and hide his undershorts in his desk; he was thinking about his mother, who knew every one of his shirts and socks. He thought with hatred about his mother, who was holding him by the end of a long leash whose collar was embedded in his neck.

  9

  From that evening on he became still more cruel to the redheaded girl; it was, of course, cruelty ceremoniously cloaked in love: How can she not understand what is preoccupying him just now? How can she not know what mood he is in? Has she become such a stranger that she has no idea what is happening to him deep down? I
f she really loves him, as he loves her, she should at least be able to guess! How can she be interested in things that don't interest him? How can she always be talking about her brother and still another brother and about a sister and still another sister? Isn't she aware that Jaromil has serious worries, that he needs her involvement and understanding instead of this eternal egocentric chatter?

  Of course, the girl defended herself. Why, for example, can't she talk about her family? Doesn't Jaromil talk about his? Is her mother worse than Jaromil's? And she reminded him (for the first time since that day) that his mother had barged into Jaromil's room and shoved a sugar cube with drops on it into her mouth.

  Jaromil loved and hated his mother; confronting the redhead, he quickly came to her defense: Had Mama harmed her by wanting to take care of her? That only showed how much she liked her, that she had accepted her as a member of the family!

  The redhead laughed: Jaromil's mother wasn't so stupid as to confuse the moans of love with the groans of someone with an upset stomach! Jaromil was offended, fell into silence, and the girl had to ask his forgiveness.

  As he and the redhead walked down the street one day, arm in arm and stubbornly silent (when they weren't reproaching each other they were silent, and when they weren't silent they were reproaching each other), Jaromil suddenly noticed two good-looking women coming toward them. One was younger, the other older; the younger one was prettier and more elegant, but (to Jaromil's great surprise) the older one too was very elegant and amazingly pretty. Jaromil knew them both: the younger one was the filmmaker and the older one was his mama.

  He blushed and greeted them. Both women returned the greeting (Mama with conspicuous gaiety), and for Jaromil being seen with this unattractive girl was as if the beautiful filmmaker had surprised him in his hideous undershorts.