Farewell Waltz

down that she was neither cunning nor stubborn enough to win him.
Apathetically she tore open the package Frantisek had given her. Inside was something made of pale-blue fabric, and Ruzena realized he had made her a present of a nightgown; a nightgown he wished to see her in every day; every day, a great many days, for the rest of his life. She gazed at the pale-blue fabric and thought she saw that patch of blue run and expand, turn into a pond, a pond of goodness and devotion, a pond of abject love which would end up engulfing her.
Whom did she hate more? The one who did not want her or the one who did?
So she sat rooted to the bench by these two hatreds, oblivious to what was going on around her. A minibus pulled up at the edge of the park, followed by a small green truck from which Ruzena heard dogs howling and barking. The minibus doors opened and out came an old man wearing a red armband on his sleeve. Ruzena was looking straight ahead in a daze, and it was a moment before she was aware of what she was looking at.
The old gentleman shouted an order at the minibus and another old man got out, he too wearing a red armband but also holding a three-meter pole with a wire loop attached to the end. More men got out and lined up in front of the minibus. They were all old men, all with red armbands and holding long poles equipped with wire loops at the tips.
The first man to get out had no pole and gave orders; the old gentlemen, like a squad of bizarre lancers, came to attention and then to at ease a few times. Then the man shouted another order, and the squad of old men headed into the park at a run. There they broke ranks, each one running in a different direction, some along the paths, others on the grass. The patients strolling in the park, the children playing, everyone abruptly stopped to look in amazement at the old gentlemen, armed with long poles, launching an attack.
Ruzena too came out of her meditative stupor to watch what was happening. She recognized her father among the old gentlemen and watched him with disgust but without surprise.
A mutt was scampering on the grass around a birch tree. One of the old gentlemen started to run toward it, and the dog looked at him with surprise. The old man brandished the pole, trying to get the wire loop in front of the dog’s head. But the pole was long, the old hands were feeble, and the old man missed his objective. The wire loop wavered around the dog’s head while the dog watched curiously.
But another pensioner, one with stronger arms, was already rushing to the old man’s aid, and the little dog finally found himself prisoner in the wire loop. The old man pulled on the pole, the wire loop dug into the furry neck, and the dog let out a howl. The two pensioners laughed loudly as they dragged the dog along the lawn toward the parked vehicles. They opened the truck’s large door, from which a wave of barking rang out; then they threw the mutt in.
For Ruzena what she was seeing was merely a component of her own story: she was an unhappy woman caught between two worlds: Klima’s world rejected her, and Frantisek’s world, from which she wanted to escape (the world of banality and boredom, the world of failure and capitulation), had come to look for her here in the guise of this assault team as if it were trying to drag her away by a wire loop.
On a sand path a small boy of about ten was desperately calling his dog, which had strayed into the bushes. Running over to the boy came not the dog but Ruzena’s father, armed with a pole. The boy instantly fell silent. He was afraid to call his dog, knowing that the old man was going to take him away. He rushed down the path to escape him, but the old man too started to run. Now they were running side by side, Ruzena’s father armed with his pole and the small boy sobbing as he ran. And then the boy turned around and, still running, retraced his steps. Ruzena’s father followed suit. Again they were running side by side.
A dachshund came out of the bushes. Ruzena’s father extended his pole toward him, but the dog alertly evaded it and ran over to the boy, who lifted him up and hugged him. Other old men rushed over to help Ruzena’s father and tear the dachshund out of the boy’s arms. The boy was crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the old men had to twist his arms and put a hand over his mouth because his cries were attracting too much attention from the passersby, who were turning to look but not daring to intervene.
Ruzena didn’t want to see any more of her father and his companions. But where to go? Into her little room, where there was a detective novel that she had not finished and that didn’t interest her; to the movies, where there was a film she had already seen; to the lobby of the Richmond, where there was a television set on all the time? She opted for television. She got up from her bench, and amid the clamor of the old men, which was continuing from all sides, she was again intensely conscious of what she had in her womb, and she told herself that it was something sacred. It transformed and ennobled her. It distinguished her from these fanatics who were chasing dogs. She told herself that she did not have the right to give up, did not have the right to capitulate, because in her belly she was carrying her only hope; her only admission ticket to the future.
When