Farewell Waltz

consumed in those glorious and unfeeling flames. Should he hurt for not hurting? Should he be sad for not being sad?
He felt no sadness, but neither was he in any hurry. According to his arrangements with his friends abroad, he should already have crossed the border by now, but he felt he was again prey to that indecisive lethargy so well known and so much derided in his circle because he succumbed to it exactly when circumstances demanded energetic and resolute behavior. He knew that he was going to maintain to the last moment that he was leaving today, but he was also aware that since the morning he had done all he could to delay the moment of departure from this charming spa town where for years he had been coming to see his friend, sometimes after long intervals but always with pleasure.
He parked the car (yes, the trumpeter’s white sedan and Frantisek’s motorcycle were already there) and went into the brasserie, where Olga would be joining him in half an hour. He saw a table he liked, next to the bay window in back looking out at the park’s flaming trees, but unfortunately it was already occupied by a man in his thirties. Jakub sat down nearby. He could not see the trees from there; he was fascinated instead by the man, who was visibly nervous, never taking his eyes off the door as he tapped his foot.
7
She finally arrived. Klima sprang up from his chair, went forward to meet her, and led her to the window table. He smiled at her as if trying by that smile to show that their agreement was still valid, that they were calm and in alliance, and that they had confidence in each other. He searched the young woman’s expression for a positive response to his smile, but he didn’t find it. That alarmed him. He didn’t dare talk about what preoccupied him, and he engaged the young woman in a meaningless conversation that ought to have created a carefree atmosphere. Nonetheless his words echoed off the young woman’s silence as though off a stone wall.
Then she interrupted him: “I’ve changed my mind. It would be a crime. You might be capable of something like that, but not me.”
The trumpeter felt everything in him collapse. He fixed an expressionless look on Ruzena and no longer knew what to say. There was nothing in him but hopeless fatigue. And Ruzena repeated: “It would be a crime.”
He looked at her, and she seemed unreal to him. This woman, whose face he was unable to recall when he was away from her, now presented herself to him as his life sentence. (Like all of us, Klima considered reality to be only what entered his life from inside, gradually and organically, whereas what came from outside, suddenly and randomly, he perceived as an invasion of unreality. Alas, nothing is more real than that unreality.)
Then the waiter who had recognized the trumpeter two days before appeared at their table. He brought them a tray with two brandies, and said jovially: “You see, I can read your wishes in your eyes.” And to Ruzena he made the same remark as the last time: “Watch out! All the girls want to scratch your eyes out!” And he laughed very loudly.
This time Klima was too absorbed in his fear to pay attention to the waiter’s words. He drank a mouthful of brandy and leaned toward Ruzena: “What’s going on? I thought we agreed. It was all settled between us. Why did you suddenly change your mind? Just like me, you think we need a few years to devote ourselves entirely to each other. Ruzena! We’re doing it only because of our love and to have a child together when both of us really want one.”
8
Jakub instantly recognized the nurse who had wanted to turn Bob over to the old men. He looked at her, fascinated, very curious to know what she and the man with her were talking about. He could not distinguish a single word, but he saw clearly that the conversation was extremely fraught.
From the man’s expression it soon became obvious that he had just heard distressing news. He needed a while to find his tongue. His gestures showed that he was trying to persuade the young woman, that he was imploring her. But the young woman remained obstinately silent.
Jakub could not keep from thinking that a life was at stake. The blonde young woman still seemed to him like someone ready to restrain the victim during an execution, and he didn’t for a moment doubt that the man was on the side of life and that she was on the side of death. The man wanted to save someone’s life, he was asking for help, but the blonde was refusing it and because of her someone was going to die.
And then he noticed that the man had stopped insisting, that he was smiling and was not hesitating to caress the young woman’s cheek. Had they reached an agreement? Not at all. Under the yellow hair the face looked obstinately into the distance, avoiding the man’s look.
Jakub was powerless to tear his eyes away from the young woman, whom he was unable since the day before to imagine other than as a hangman’s assistant. She had a pretty and vacant face. Pretty enough to attract a man and vacant enough to make all his pleas vanish in it. That face was proud and, Jakub knew, proud not of its prettiness but of its vacuity.
He thought that he saw in that face thousands of other faces he knew well. He thought that his entire life had been an unbroken dialogue with that face. Whenever he had tried to explain something to it, that face had turned away, offended, responding to his arguments by talking about something else; whenever he had smiled at it, that face had reproached him for his superficiality; whenever he had implored it