Farewell Waltz

would expose him to great danger.”
“You see, I was right. All his hints about women are just bluster.”
“My dear young woman,” said Dr. Skreta, “I’m his physician and his friend, and yet I’m not so sure. I don’t know.”
“Is he really so ill?” asked Jakub.
“Why do you think he’s been staying here for nearly a year now, and his young wife, to whom he’s very attached, comes to see him only now and again?”
“And all of a sudden it’s a bit dreary here without him,” said Jakub.
True, all three suddenly felt orphaned and not at home in the room, and they had no wish to stay any longer.
Skreta got up from his chair: “You and I are going to take Miss Olga home, and then we’ll go for a walk. We’ve got a lot of things to discuss.”
Olga protested: “I don’t want to go to sleep yet!”
“On the contrary, it’s high time. I’m ordering you to as your physician,” Skreta said sternly.
They left the Richmond and headed across the park. On the way Olga found an opportunity to say softly to Jakub: “I wanted to spend the evening with you …”
But Jakub merely shrugged his shoulders, for Skreta was imperiously imposing his will. They escorted the young woman to Karl Marx House, and in his friend’s presence Jakub did not even pat her on the head, as he usually did. The doctor’s antipathy toward her plumlike breasts had deterred him. He saw the disappointment in Olga’s face and was annoyed with himself for distressing her.
“So what do you think?” asked Skreta when he found himself alone with his friend on the path. “You heard me say I need a father. It would have wrung tears from a stone. But he started talking about Saint Paul! Is it really so hard for him to understand? For two years now I’ve been telling him I’m an orphan, two years praising the advantages of an American passport. I’ve alluded a thousand times in passing to various adoption cases. I figured all these allusions would have given him the idea of adopting me long ago.”
“He’s too absorbed in himself,” said Jakub.
“That’s so,” Skreta agreed.
“If he’s seriously ill, that’s not surprising,” said Jakub. “Is he really as sick as you said he is?”
“It’s really worse,” said Skreta. “Six months ago he had his second and very serious heart attack, and since then he hasn’t been allowed to travel far, and he lives here like a prisoner. His life hangs by a thread. And he knows it.”
“You see,” said Jakub, “in that case you should have realized a long time ago that the allusions method is no good, because any allusion only causes him to think about himself. You should make your request directly. He certainly will agree, because he likes to please people. It fits with his idea of himself. He wants to give people pleasure.”
“You’re a genius!” Skreta exclaimed, coming to a stop. “It’s simple once you think of it, and exactly right! Like an idiot I’ve wasted two years of my life because I didn’t know how to figure him out! I’ve spent two years of my life going about it in roundabout ways! And it’s your fault, because you should have advised me long ago.”
“You should have asked me long ago!”
“You haven’t come to see me for two years!”
The two friends strolled on in the dark park, breathing in the crisp early autumn air.
“I made him a father,” said Skreta, “so maybe I deserve his making me his son!”
Jakub agreed.
“What’s unfortunate,” Skreta went on after a long silence, “is that one is surrounded by idiots. Is there anyone in this town I can ask for advice? Merely by being born intelligent, you right away find yourself in absolute exile. I don’t think about anything else, because it’s my specialty: mankind produces an incredible quantity of idiots. The more stupid the individual, the more he wants to procreate. The perfect creatures at most engender a single child, and the best of them, like you, decide not to procreate at all. That’s a disaster. And I spend my time dreaming of a world a man would come into not among strangers but among brothers.”
Jakub listened to Skreta’s speech without finding much of interest in it.
Skreta went on: “Don’t think those are just words! I’m not a politician but a physician, and the word ‘brother’ has an exact meaning for me. Brothers are those who have at least a mother or a father in common. All of Solomon’s sons, even though they had a hundred different mothers, were brothers. That must have been marvelous! What do you think?”
Jakub breathed the crisp air and could not think of anything to say.
“Of course,” Skreta went on, “it’s very hard to force people while they’re having sex to take an interest in future generations. But that’s not what it’s about. In our century there should really be other ways of solving the problem of rational procreation of children. We can’t go on forever mixing up love and procreation.”
Jakub approved of that idea.
“But you’re only interested in detaching love from procreation,” said Skreta. “For me, instead, it’s a matter of detaching procreation from love. I want to initiate you into my project. It was my semen in that test tube.”
This time he got Jakub’s attention.
“What do you say to that?”
“It’s a marvelous idea,” said Jakub.
“It’s extraordinary!” said Skreta. “By this procedure I’ve already cured quite a few women. Don’t forget that many women can’t have children only because it’s the husbands who are sterile. I have a large clientele from all over the country, and for the last four years I’ve been in charge of gynecological examinations at the town clinic. It’s no big deal to fill a syringe from a test tube and then deposit the seminal fluid into a woman being examined.”
“So how many children do you have?”
“I’ve been doing this for several years, but I can only make a very approximate tally. I can’t always be