Farewell Waltz

their spouses, introduced themselves to Mrs. Klima with nods. Someone suggested they go to the only bar in town. Klima excused himself, claiming fatigue. Mrs. Klima thought that the mistress must be waiting in the bar; that was why Klima was refusing to go there. And because calamity attracted her like a magnet, she asked him to please her by overcoming his fatigue.
But in the bar, too, there was no woman she might suspect of having an affair with Klima. They sat down at a large table. Dr. Skreta was garrulously praising the trumpeter. The pharmacist was filled with shy happiness he was unable to express. Mrs. Klima tried to be charming and cheerfully talkative: “Doctor, you were magnificent,” she said to Skreta, “and you, too, my dear pharmacist. And the atmosphere was genuine, cheerful, carefree, a thousand times better than at the concerts in the capital.”
Without staring at Klima, she did not for a second stop observing him. She felt that he was hiding his nervousness only with great effort, and that he was uttering a word now and again only to avoid showing that his mind was elsewhere. It was obvious that she had spoiled something for him, something out of the ordinary. If it had been only a matter of some ordinary adventure (Klima always swore up and down to her that he could never fall in love with another woman), he would not have gone into such a deep depression. Admittedly she had not seen the mistress, but she believed she was seeing the love; the love in his face (suffering, desperate love), and that sight was perhaps still more painful.
“What’s the matter, Mister Klima?” suddenly asked the pharmacist, who was all the more friendly and perceptive for being so quiet.
“Nothing. Nothing at all!” said Klima, struck by fear. “I’ve got a little headache.”
“Do you want an aspirin?” the pharmacist asked.
“No, no,” said the trumpeter, shaking his head. “But please excuse us if we leave a bit early. I’m really very tired.”
25
How had she finally dared to do it?
From the moment she had joined Jakub in the brasserie, she found him not as he had been. He was quiet yet pleasant, unable to focus attention yet docile, was mentally elsewhere yet did whatever she wished. The lack of concentration (she attributed it to his approaching departure) was agreeable to her: she was speaking to an absent face, and it seemed to her that she was speaking into distances where she could not be heard. She could thus say to him what she had never said before.
Now, in asking him for a kiss, she had the impression that she had disturbed him, troubled him. But this did not discourage her at all, on the contrary, it pleased her: she felt she had finally become the bold, provocative woman she had always hoped to be, the woman who dominates the situation, sets it in motion, watches her partner with curiosity, and puts him into a quandary.
She continued to look him firmly in the eye and said with a smile: “But not here. It would be ridiculous for us to lean over the table to kiss. Come.”
She took his hand, led him to the daybed, and savored the finesse, elegance, and quiet authority of her behavior. Then she kissed him and was stirred by a passion she had never known before. And yet it was not the spontaneous passion of a body unable to control itself, it was a passion of the brain, a passion conscious and deliberate. She wanted to tear away from Jakub the disguise of his paternal role, wanted to shock him and arouse herself with the sight of his confusion, wanted to rape him and watch herself raping him, wanted to know the taste of his tongue and feel his paternal hands become bit by bit bolder and cover her with caresses.
She unbuttoned his jacket and took it off.
26
He never took his eyes off him throughout the concert, and then he mingled with the fans who rushed behind the bandstand to get the artists to scribble an autograph for them. But Ruzena was not there. He followed a small group of people leading the trumpeter to the spa town’s bar. He went in behind them, convinced that Ruzena was already waiting there for the trumpeter. But he was wrong. He went out and for a long time kept watch in front of the entrance.
A sudden pang went through him. The trumpeter had come out of the bar with a female figure pressed against him. At first he thought it was Ruzena, but it was not she.
He followed them to the Hotel Richmond, and Klima and the woman vanished inside.
He quickly went across the park to Karl Marx House. The door was still unlocked. He asked the doorkeeper if Ruzena was at home. She was not.
He ran back to the Richmond, fearing that Ruzena in the meantime had joined Klima there. He paced back and forth on the park path, keeping his eyes fixed on the entrance. He didn’t understand what was happening. Several possibilities came to his mind, but they didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here and that he was keeping watch, and he knew that he would keep watch until he saw them.
Why? What good would it do? Would it not be better to go home to sleep?
He repeated to himself that he finally had to find out the whole truth.
But did he really want to know the truth? Did he really wish so strongly to make sure that Ruzena was going to bed with Klima? Was he not waiting instead for some proof of Ruzena’s innocence? And yet, suspicious as he was, would he lend credence to such proof?
He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He knew only that he would wait a long time, all night if he had to, and even several nights. For time spurred on by jealousy passes with amazing speed. Jealousy occupies