Farewell Waltz

finally over, they got up and set off again. Ruzena was almost happy, but she was well aware that the reason she had telephoned the trumpeter and had compelled him to come here was oddly being avoided in their conversation. She had no desire to discuss it at length. On the contrary, what they were talking about now seemed more pleasant and more important to her. Yet she wished that this reason, now being passed over in silence, were present, even if only discreetly and modestly. And so when Klima, after various declarations of love, announced that he would do everything he could to live with Ruzena, she pointed out: “You’re very sweet, but we have to remember that I’m no longer all alone.”
“Yes,” said Klima, and he knew that this was the moment he had dreaded from the very first, the weakest link in his demagogy.
“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “You’re not alone. But that’s not really the main thing. I want to be with you because I love you, and not because you’re pregnant.”
“Yes,” said Ruzena.
“Nothing’s more horrible than a marriage that has no other reason than a child conceived by mistake. And actually, darling, if I may speak frankly, I want you to be the way you were before. There should be just the two of us, and nobody else in between. Do you understand me?”
“Oh no, that’s not possible, I can’t agree to that, I never could,” Ruzena protested.
She said this not because she was convinced of it deep down. The definitive word she had gotten from Dr. Skreta two days earlier was so fresh that she was still disconcerted. She was not following a minutely calculated plan but was completely absorbed by the idea of her pregnancy, which she was experiencing as a great event and still more as a stroke of luck and an opportunity that would not so easily come again. She was like a pawn reaching the end of the chessboard and becoming a queen. She was delighted by the thought of her unexpected, unprecedented power. She saw that at her summons things had been set in motion, the famous trumpeter coming from the capital to see her, to take her for a drive in a magnificent car, to make declarations of love to her. No doubt there was a connection between her pregnancy and that sudden power. If she did not wish to give up her power, she could not give up her pregnancy.
That is why the trumpeter had to go on rolling his heavy stone uphill. “Darling, it’s not a family I want, it’s love. For me, you are love, and when there’s a child, love gives way to family. To boredom. To worries. To monotony. Lover gives way to mother. For me, you’re not a mother but a lover, and I don’t want to share you with anyone. Even with a child.”
These were beautiful words, and Ruzena heard them with pleasure but shook her head: “No, I couldn’t. It’s just as much your child. I couldn’t get rid of your child.”
Unable to find new arguments, he kept repeating the same words and dreading that she would finally see through their hypocrisy.
“You’re over thirty. Haven’t you ever wanted a child?”
True, he had never wanted a child. He loved Kamila too much for her to be hampered by the presence of a child. What he had just asserted to Ruzena was not pure invention. He had in fact been uttering exactly the same words to his wife for years, sincerely, without deceit.
“You’ve been married six years and don’t have a child. It thrills me so to think of giving you a child.”
He saw that everything was going against him. The exceptional nature of his love for Kamila convinced Ruzena of his wife’s infertility and inspired misplaced audacity in the nurse.
It began to grow chilly, the sun was sinking toward the horizon, time was passing, Klima went on repeating what he had already said, and Ruzena repeated her “No, no, I couldn’t.” He felt that he was at a dead end; he no longer knew what to do and thought he was going to lose everything. He was so nervous he forgot to hold her hand, forgot to kiss her, forgot to put tenderness into his voice. He realized this with dread and tried hard to pull himself together. He stopped, smiled at her, and took her in his arms. It was a tired embrace of fatigue. He clasped her to him, his head pressed against her face, and it was actually a way of leaning on her, of resting, catching his breath, because it seemed to him that he lacked strength for the long road still ahead.
But Ruzena too had her back against the wall. Like him she had run out of arguments, and she felt you could not go on for long merely repeating “no” to a man you wanted to win.
The embrace lasted a long while, and when Klima let Ruzena slip out of his arms she lowered her head and said in a resigned tone: “All right, tell me what I should do.”
Klima could not believe his ears. These were sudden and unexpected words, and they were an immense relief. So immense that he had to make a great effort to control himself and not show it too clearly. He caressed the young woman’s cheek and said that Dr. Skreta was a friend of his and all Ruzena had to do was appear before the committee in three days. He would go with her. She had nothing to be afraid of.
Ruzena didn’t protest, and he regained the desire to continue playing his role. He put his arm around her shoulders and again and again stopped talking to kiss her (his joy was so great that the kisses were once more obscured by a veil of mist). He repeated that Ruzena should move to the capital. He even repeated his words about a trip to the seashore.
Then the sun