Farewell Waltz

that all was lost, that there was nothing more to do but close his eyes, give up, and let himself be crushed under the wheels of fate.
22
On a small table in Bertlef’s suite stood bottles adorned with splendid labels bearing exotic names. Ruzena knew nothing about luxury drinks, and, unable to specify anything else, she asked for whisky.
Her mind, meanwhile, was trying hard to penetrate the veil of giddiness and to understand the situation. She asked Bertlef several times why he had been looking for her today in particular, though he barely knew her. “I want to know,” she kept repeating, “I want to know why you thought about me.”
“I have been wanting to for a long time,” Bertlef answered, gazing steadily into her eyes.
“But why today instead of some other day?”
“Because there is a time for everything. And our time is now.”
These words were puzzling, but Ruzena felt they were sincere. The insolubility of her situation had become so intolerable today that something had to happen.
“Yes,” she said pensively, “it’s been a very strange day.”
“You see, you yourself know that I arrived at the right time,” Bertlef said in a velvety voice.
Ruzena was overcome by a confused but delightful feeling of relief: Bertlef’s appearing precisely today meant that everything that happened had been ordained elsewhere, and she could relax and put herself in the hands of that higher power.
“Yes, it’s true, you came at the right time,” she said.
“I know it.”
And yet there was still something that escaped her: “But why? Why were you looking for me?”
“Because I love you.”
The word “love” was uttered very softly, but the room was suddenly filled with it.
Ruzena lowered her voice: “You love me?”
“Yes, I love you.”
Frantisek and Klima had already said the word to her, but only now did she see it as it really is when it comes unasked for, unexpected, naked. The word entered the room like a miracle. It was totally inexplicable, but to Ruzena it seemed all the more real, for the most basic things in this world exist without explanation and without motive, drawing from within themselves their reason for being.
“Really?” she asked, and her voice, usually too loud, was only a whisper.
“Yes, really.”
“But I’m a very ordinary girl.”
“Not at all”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are beautiful.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are tender.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“You radiate kindness and goodness.”
She shook her head: “No, no, no.”
“I know what you are. I know it better than you do.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Yes, I do.”
The confidence in her that was emanating from Bertlef’s eyes was like a magical bath, and Ruzena wished that gaze, which flooded over and caressed her, to go on for as long as possible.
“Is it true? That I’m like that?”
“Yes. I know you are.”
It was as beautiful as a vertigo: in Bertlef’s eyes she felt herself delicate, tender, pure, she felt as noble as a queen. It was like being suddenly gorged with honey and fragrant herbs. She found herself adorable. (My God, she had never before found herself so delightfully adorable!)
She continued to protest: “But you hardly know me.”
“I have known you for a long time. I have been watching you for a long time, and you never even suspected it. I know you by heart,” he said, running his fingers over her face. “Your nose, your delicately drawn smile, your hair …”
Then he started to unbutton her clothes, and she did not resist at all, she merely looked deeply into his eyes, into that gaze that enveloped her like water, like velvety water. She was sitting facing him, her bare breasts rising under his gaze and desiring to be seen and praised. Her whole body was turned toward his eyes like a sunflower toward the sun.
23
They were in Jakub’s room, Olga talking and Jakub repeating to himself that there was still time. He could return to Karl Marx House, and if she was not there he could disturb Bertlef in the suite next door and ask him if he knew where the young woman had gone.
Olga chattered on, and he went on to imagine the painful scene in which, having found the nurse, he was telling her something or other, stammering, making excuses, apologizing, and trying to get her to give him the tube of tablets. Then, all of a sudden, as if wearied by these visions that for several hours had been confronting him, he felt gripped by an intense indifference.
This was not merely the indifference of weariness, it was a deliberate and combative indifference. Jakub came to realize that it was absolutely all the same to him whether the creature with the yellow hair lived or died, and that it would in fact be hypocrisy and shameful playacting if he tried to save her. That he would actually be deceiving the One who was testing him. For the One who was testing him (God, who did not exist) wished to know Jakub as he really was, not as he pretended to be. And Jakub resolved to be honest with Him; to be who he really was.
They were sitting in facing armchairs, with a small table between them. Jakub saw Olga leaning toward him over that small table and heard her voice: “I want to kiss you. How can we have known each other such a long time and never kissed?”
24
With a forced smile on her face and anxiety deep down within her, Mrs. Klima slipped into the artists’ room behind her husband. She was afraid of seeing the actual face of Klima’s mistress. But there was no mistress at all. There were several girls flittering around Klima asking for autographs, and she discerned (she had an eagle eye) that none of them knew him personally.
All the same she was certain that the mistress was somewhere nearby. She could see it on Klima’s face, which was pale and absent. He smiled at his wife as falsely as she smiled at him.
Dr. Skreta, the pharmacist, and some others, probably physicians and