Farewell Waltz

giving their names. Jakub stopped to listen because he did not know much botany and always forgot that a maple was called a maple and a hornbeam a hornbeam.
The teacher pointed at a tree thick with yellowing leaves: “This is a linden.”
Jakub looked at the children. They all wore little blue coats and red berets. You could take them for little brothers and sisters. He looked at their faces and found that they resembled one another not only because of their clothes but also because of their features. He counted seven among them with markedly big noses and wide mouths. They looked like Dr. Skreta.
He remembered the big-nosed toddler at the forest inn. Could the doctor’s eugenic dream be more than just a fantasy? Could it really be that children were coming into the world in this country from the great begetter Skreta?
Jakub found this ridiculous. All these kids looked alike because all children in the world look alike.
And yet he couldn’t help but think: What if Skreta really was carrying out his remarkable project? Why can’t bizarre projects be carried out?
“And what’s this one, children?”
“It’s a birch!” answered a little Skreta; yes, he was the picture of Skreta; he not only had the big nose and wide mouth but also wore little eyeglasses and spoke with the nasal voice that made Dr. Skreta’s speech so touchingly comical.
“Very good, Oldrich!” said the teacher.
Jakub thought: In ten or twenty years this country will have thousands of Skretas. And once more he had the strange feeling of having lived in his own country without knowing what was happening in it. He had lived, so to speak, at the center of the action. He had lived through all the current events. He had got involved in politics, and it had nearly cost him his life, and even when he was pushed out, politics remained his main concern. He always believed he was hearing the heartbeat of the country. But who knows what he was really hearing? Was it a heart? Or was it an old alarm clock? An old discarded alarm clock that gives the wrong time? Had all his political struggles been anything more than will-o’-the wisps distracting him from what really mattered?
The teacher led the children down the broad path, and Jakub still felt pervaded by the image of the beautiful woman. The recollection of her beauty incessantly brought a question back to mind: What if he had been living in a world entirely different from what he imagined? What if he had been seeing everything upside down? What if beauty meant more than truth, and what if it really had been an angel, the other day, who gave Bertlef a dahlia?
He heard the teacher’s voice: “And what’s this one?”
The little Skreta in eyeglasses answered: “It’s a maple!”
14
Ruzena rushed up the stairs two at a time, trying not to look back. She slammed the door to her section and hurried to the changing room. She slipped her white nurse’s smock over her bare body and gave a sigh of relief. The scene with Frantisek had disturbed her, but at the same time, oddly, it had calmed her. She felt that both Frantisek and Klima were now alien and distant.
She left the cubicle and went into the huge treatment room, where women rested after their baths in beds lined up against the walls.
The fortyish nurse was sitting at the small table near the door. “Well, did they authorize it?” she asked her coldly.
“Yes. Thanks for taking my place,” said Ruzena, handing a new patient a key and a large white sheet.
As soon as the fortyish nurse left, the door opened and Frantisek’s head appeared.
“It’s not true that it’s none of my business. It’s both of our business. I’ve got something to say about it too!”
“Will you please shove off!” she answered. “This is the women’s section, men aren’t supposed to be here! Get going this minute or I’ll have you thrown out!”
Frantisek’s face flushed, and Ruzena’s threat made him so furious that he advanced into the room and slammed the door behind him. “I don’t care if you have me thrown out! I don’t care!” he shouted.
“I’m telling you to get going this minute!” said Ruzena.
“I can see right through both of you! It’s that trumpeter character! It’s all lies and pulling strings! He arranged everything for you with the doctor; yesterday they gave a concert together! I see it all clearly, and I’m going to stop you from killing my child! I’m the father, and I’ve got something to say about it! I forbid you to kill my child!”
Frantisek was yelling, and the women lying on the beds under their blankets lifted their heads with curiosity.
By this time Ruzena, too, was completely unnerved because Frantisek was yelling and she didn’t know how to calm things down.
“It’s not your child,” she said. “You’ve made that up. The child isn’t yours.”
“What?” yelled Frantisek and, advancing farther into the room, went around the table to come nearer to Ruzena: “What do you mean, not my child! I’m in a pretty good position to know it is! And I know it is!”
Just then a woman, naked and wet, came in from the pool toward Ruzena to be wrapped in a sheet and led to a bed. The woman was startled when she saw Frantisek staring at her unseeingly a few yards away.
For Ruzena it was a moment of respite; she went over to the woman, wrapped her in a sheet, and led her to a bed.
“What’s that fellow doing here?” the woman asked, looking back at Frantisek.
“He’s a madman! He’s gone out of his mind and I don’t know how to get him out of here. I don’t know what to do with him!” said Ruzena, covering the woman with a warm blanket.
A woman in another bed shouted at Frantisek: “Hey, there! You’re not supposed to be here! Get out!”
“I’m supposed to be here, all right!” Frantisek retorted stubbornly and refused to budge. When