Life Is Elsewhere

by Milan Kundera

  He thought of Xavier:

  In the beginning there was only Jaromil.

  Then Jaromil created Xavier, his double, and with him his other life, dreamlike and adventurous.

  And now the moment has come to end the contradiction between dream and waking, between poetry and life, between action and thought. At the same time the contradiction between Xavier and Jaromil has also vanished. Both have merged into a single creature. The man of daydreams has become the man of action, the adventure of dreams has become the adventure of life.

  He approached the villa and felt the return of his old timidity, heightened by a sore throat (Mama had not wanted to let him go to the party; he would have been better off listening to her and staying in bed).

  He hesitated at the door, and to give himself courage he had to summon up all the big days he had recently experienced. He thought of the redhead, he thought of the interrogation she had undergone, he thought of the police and of the train of events he had set in motion by his own strength and his own will. . . .

  "I am Xavier, I am Xavier . . . ," he told himself, and he rang the bell.

  4

  The people at the party were young actors and actresses, painters, and art students; the owner of the villa was present, and he had made all the rooms available for the evening. The filmmaker introduced Jaromil to a few people, put a glass in his hand, asked him to serve himself from any of the many bottles of wine, and left him.

  Jaromil felt ridiculously stiff in his dark suit, white shirt, and tie; everyone around him was dressed casually, and a number of the guests were in sweaters. He squirmed in his chair and finally came to a decision; he took off his jacket and put it over the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt collar; after that he felt a bit more at ease.

  The guests were surpassing one another in calling attention to themselves. The young actors were behaving as if they were on stage, speaking loudly and unnaturally, and all were trying to impress with their wit or the originality of their opinions. Jaromil, too, after having emptied several glasses of wine, tried to raise his head above the surface of the conversation; he managed a number of times to utter remarks that he considered audaciously witty and that attracted the attention of the others for a few seconds.

  5

  She hears noisy dance music coming from a radio on the other side of the wall; not long ago the authorities had assigned the third room on the floor to the tenant family; the two rooms left to the widow and her son are a shell of silence besieged on all sides by noise.

  Mama hears the music, she is alone, and she is thinking about the filmmaker. From the very first time she saw her, she had sensed the far-off danger of love between her and Jaromil. She tried to become friends with her solely in order to occupy a favorable position in the impending battle to keep her son. And now she realizes with humiliation that her efforts had been in vain. The filmmaker had not even thought of inviting her to her party. They had shoved her aside.

  One day the filmmaker had confided to her that she worked at the National Police film club because she came from a wealthy family and needed political protection to enable her to pursue her studies. And now it occurs to Mama that this unscrupulous girl knows how to exploit everything in her own interest; to her, Mama had merely been a stepping stone to get to Jaromil.

  6

  The competition continued: everyone tried to be the center of attention. Someone played the piano, couples danced, adjacent groups loudly laughed and talked; people tried to outdo each other in wit, everyone tried to surpass the others and be seen.

  Martynov was there, too; tall, handsome, almost operetta elegant in his uniform and with a large dagger, surrounded by women. Oh, how much he irritated Lermontov! God was unjust to give such a handsome face to that idiot and short legs to Lermontov. But if the poet lacked long legs, he had a sarcastic wit that had lifted him high.

  He approached Martynov's group and awaited his opportunity. Then he made an insolent remark and watched the stunned faces near him.

  7

  At last (after a long absence) the filmmaker reappeared in the room. She came over toward him and gazed at him with her large dark eyes. "Are you having a good time?"

  It seemed to Jaromil that he was going to relive the beautiful moment they had experienced together in her room, when they had sat gazing at each other.

  "No," he answered, looking into her eyes.

  "Are you bored?"

  "I came here because of you, and you're always off somewhere. Why did you invite me if I can't be with you?"

  "But there are a lot of interesting people here."

  "But for me they're only a pretext to be near you. For me they're only steps I'd climb to get to you."

  He felt bold and pleased with his eloquence.

  She laughed: "This evening there are many of those steps here!"

  "Instead of steps, perhaps you could show me a secret staircase that would bring me to you more quickly."

  The filmmaker smiled: "We're going to try," she said. She took him by the hand and led him away. She took him upstairs to the door of her room, and Jaromil's heart began to pound.

  In vain. The room he was familiar with was filled with still more guests.

  8

  The radio in the adjoining room has long since been turned off; it's dark, and Mama waits for her son and thinks about her defeat. But then she tells herself that although she has lost this battle, she will go on fighting. Yes, that is exactly how she feels: she will fight, she will not permit anyone to take him away, she will not allow herself to be separated from him, she will be with him always, she will follow him always. She is sitting in an armchair, but she has the feeling of being on the move; she is on the move through a long night, to rejoin him, to regain him.

  9

  The filmmaker's room is filled with talk and smoke, through which one of the guests (a man of thirty or so) has for a while been watching Jaromil attentively. "I believe I've heard about you," he says at last.

  "About me?" says Jaromil, pleased.

  The man asks Jaromil if he wasn't the boy who used to visit the painter.

  Jaromil was glad that a mutual acquaintance tied him more firmly to this gathering of strangers, and he hastened to nod his head.

  "But you haven't been to see him for a long time," the man said.

  "Yes, not for a long time."

  "And why is that?"

  Jaromil didn't know how to answer, and he shrugged his shoulders.

  "I know why. It would jeopardize your career."

  Jaromil tried to laugh: "My career?"

  "You publish poetry, you recite your work in public, our hostess has made a film about you for the good of her political reputation. Whereas the painter doesn't have the right to show his work. Don't you know that he's been called an enemy of the people in the press?"

  Jaromil was silent.

  "Do you know it—yes or no?"

  "Yes, I've heard about it."

  "Apparently his paintings are contemptibly bourgeois."

  Jaromil was silent.

  "Do you know what the painter is doing now?"

  Jaromil shrugged his shoulders.

  "They fired him from his teaching job, and he's working as a construction laborer. Because he doesn't want to give up his ideas. He can only paint evenings, by artificial light. But he's painting beautiful canvases, while you're writing beautiful shit!"

  10

  And still another insolent remark, and then another, so that the handsome Martynov is insulted at last. He reprimands Lermontov before the entire company.

  What? Should Lermontov take back his witty remarks? Should he apologize? Never! His friends warn him. It's insane to risk a duel over foolishness. It's best to calm things down. Your life, Lermontov, is more precious than that laughable will-o'-the-wisp, honor!

  What? Is there something more precious than honor?

  Yes, Lermontov, your life, your work.

  No, there is noth
ing more precious than honor!

  Honor is merely the hunger of your vanity, Lermontov. Honor is a mirror illusion, honor is merely a spectacle for this insignificant audience, which will no longer be here tombrrow!

  But Lermontov and the moments in which he is living are as immense as eternity, and the ladies and gentlemen watching him are the world's amphitheater! Either he will cross this amphitheater with a firm and virile step, or he will not deserve to live!

  11

  He felt the mud of humiliation running down his cheek, and he knew that with such a dirtied face he could not stay there a minute longer. They tried in vain to calm him, to soothe him.

  "It's no use trying to make peace between us," he said. "Sometimes reconciliation is impossible." Then he stood up and turned tensely toward the man he had been speaking with: "Personally I regret that the painter is a laborer and has to paint by artificial light. But looking at things objectively, it makes absolutely no difference if he paints by candlelight or doesn't paint at all. The whole world of his paintings has been dead for a long time. Real life is elsewhere! Entirely elsewhere! And that's why I stopped seeing the painter. I'm not interested in discussing nonexistent problems with him. I wish him well! I've got nothing against the dead! May the earth cover them gently. And I say that to you, too," he added, pointing at the man. "May the earth cover you gently. You're dead and don't even know it."

  The man stood up, too, and said: "It might be interesting to see a fight between a poet and a corpse."

  Jaromil felt the blood rise to his head: "Let's try it," he said, and he raised his fist at the man, who caught Jaromil's arm, violently twisted him around, then seized him by the collar with one hand and by the seat of the pants with the other and lifted him off the ground.

  ''Where shall I take Mister Poet?" he asked.

  The young men and women who a few moments earlier had tried to reconcile the two opponents could not resist laughing. The man went across the room carrying Jaromil, who struggled high in the air like a tender, desperate fish. The man brought him to the balcony doors. He opened them, set the poet down on the balcony, and gave him a kick.

  12

  A shot rings out, Lermontov clutches his chest, and Jaromil falls to the icy concrete floor of the balcony.

  O my Bohemia, how easily you transform the glory of a pistol shot into the buffoonery of a kick in the pants!

  And yet, should we laugh at Jaromil because he is merely a parody of Lermontov? Should we laugh at the painter because he imitated Andre Breton with his leather coat and his German shepherd? Was Andre Breton not himself an imitation of something noble he wished to resemble? Is not parody the eternal destiny of man? Besides, nothing is easier than to reverse the situation:

  13

  A shot rings out, Jaromil clutches his chest, and Ler-montov falls to the icy concrete floor of the balcony.

  He is strapped up tight in the dress uniform of a czarist officer, and he rises to his feet. He is terribly alone. There is no literary history with its balms that could give a dignified meaning to his fall. There is no pistol whose firing would obliterate his childish humiliation. There is only the laughter that reaches him through the balcony doors and dishonors him forever.

  He goes over to the railing and looks down. Alas, the balcony is not high enough for him to be certain of killing himself if he jumped. It's cold, his ears are frozen, his feet are frozen, he hops from one foot to another and doesn't know what to do. He is afraid that the balcony doors will open, afraid that mocking faces will appear. He is trapped. He is trapped in a farce.

  Lermontov isn't afraid of death, but he's afraid of ridicule. He would like to jump, but he doesn't jump, for he knows that while suicide is tragic, failed suicide is laughable.

  (But how's that? How's that? What an odd sentence! Whether a suicide succeeds or fails, it is always still the same act, to which we are led by the same reasons and by the same courage! What, then, distinguishes the tragic here from the ridiculous? Merely the accident of success? What distinguishes pettiness from greatness?

  Tell us, Lermontov! Merely the stage props? A pistol or a kick in the pants? Merely the scenery History imposes on a human adventure?)

  Enough! It is Jaromil who is on the balcony, in a white shirt and loosened necktie, shivering with cold.

  14

  All revolutionaries love fire. Percy Shelley, too, dreamed of a death by fire. The lovers in his famous poem perish together on a pyre.

  Shelley cast them in his own and his wife's image, and yet he died by water. But his friends, as if trying to correct death's semantic error, erected a large funeral pyre on the seashore and incinerated his fish-nibbled body.

  Is death, too, trying to mock Jaromil, by assaulting him with ice instead of fire?

  For Jaromil wants to die; the idea of suicide attracts him like a nightingale's song. He knows he has the flu, he knows he is falling ill, but he does not go back into the room, he cannot bear the humiliation. He knows that only the embrace of death can soothe him, an embrace that would entirely fill his body and soul and in which he would at last achieve greatness; he knows that only death could revenge him and indict for murder those who had snickered at him.

  He decides to lie down in front of the balcony doors and let the cold roast him from below so as to make death's work easier. He sits down on the floor; the concrete is so frozen that in a few minutes he can no longer feel his bottom; he wants to lie down, but he lacks the courage to press his back against the icy floor, and he stands up again.

  Frost completely gripped him: it was inside his thin socks, it was under his trousers and gym shorts, it slid its hand under his shirt. Jaromil's teeth chattered, his throat hurt, he couldn't swallow, he sneezed, and he had to piss. He unbuttoned his fly with numb fingers; then he urinated on the ground below, and he saw that the hand holding his member was trembling with cold.

  15

  He was doubled up with pain on the concrete floor, but nothing in the world could induce him to open the balcony doors and rejoin those who had snickered at him. But what were they doing? Why weren't they coming out to get him? Were they so malevolent? Or so drunk? And how long had he been out here shivering in the icy cold?

  The overhead light in the room suddenly went out, leaving only a subdued glow.

  Jaromil approached the balcony doors and saw a small lamp with a pink lampshade shedding a dim light onto the couch; after a while he was able to discern two naked bodies embracing.

  His teeth chattering, his body shivering, he went on looking; the half-drawn curtain prevented him from being certain whether the woman's body covered by the man's was that of the filmmaker, but everything indicated that it was she: the woman's hair was long and dark.

  But who is the man? My God! Jaromil knows him well! For he has already observed this scene! Cold, snow, a mountain chalet, and at an illuminated window, Xavier with a woman! Starting today, however, Xavier and Jaromil were to become one and the same person! How can Xavier betray him like this? My God, how can Xavier make love to Jaromil's beloved under his very eyes?

  16

  Now the room was dark. Nothing could be seen or heard. And in his mind, too, there was no longer anything: neither anger, nor regret, nor humiliation; in his mind there was no longer anything but terrible cold.

  And then he couldn't bear to stay here any longer; he opened the balcony doors and went inside; not wanting to see anything, he looked neither left nor right, and he quickly crossed the room.

  A light was on in the hall. He went down the stairs and opened the door to the room where he had left his jacket; it was dark, except for the glow from the hall faintly illuminating some heavily breathing sleepers. He kept shivering with cold. He felt around on the chairs for his jacket, but he couldn't find it. He sneezed; one of the sleepers awoke and mumbled a complaint.

  He went into the vestibule. His overcoat was hanging on the coat rack. He put it on over his shirt, picked up his hat, and rushed out of the villa.


  17

  The procession has already started. At the head of it, a horse is pulling the hearse. Walking behind the hearse is Mrs. Wolker, who notices that a corner of white pillow is sticking out of the coffin's black lid; this pinched tip of fabric is like a reproach, the last bed of her little boy (he is only twenty-four years old!) has been badly made; she feels an overwhelming desire to rearrange the pillow under his head.

  Then the coffin, surrounded by wreaths, is set down in the church. Grandmother has had a stroke and must raise her eyelid with her finger in order to see. She examines the coffin, she examines the wreaths; one of them has a ribbon with the name Martynov. "Throw that away," she orders. Her aged eye, its paralyzed lid held up by her finger, faithfully watches over the last journey of Lermontov, who is only twenty-six years old.

  18

  Jaromil (he is not yet twenty years old) is lying in his room with a high fever. The doctor has diagnosed pneumonia.

  On the other side of the wall the tenants are noisily quarreling, and the two rooms occupied by the widow and her son are a small island of silence, an island under siege. But Mama doesn't hear the racket from the adjoining apartment. She is only thinking about medicines, hot herbal teas, and cold compresses. When he was small, she had spent day after day by his side to bring him back, red and hot, from the realm of the dead. Now she is watching over him again, just as passionately, just as faithfully.

  Jaromil sleeps, is delirious, wakes up, goes on being delirious; fever's fire licks at his body.

  Really fire, then? Will he, after all, be transformed into heat and light?