Milan kundera

disarmed:
deprived of the apparatus she 
had been using to cover her face and aim at Sabina like a weapon. She was completely 
at the mercy of Tomas's mistress. This beautiful submission intoxicated Tereza. She 
wished that the moments she stood naked opposite Sabina would never end. 
I think that Sabina, too, felt the strange enchantment of the situation: her lover's wife 
standing oddly compliant and timorous before her. But after clicking the shutter two or 
three times, almost frightened by the enchantment and eager to dispel it, she burst into 
loud laughter. 
Tereza followed suit, and the two of them got dressed. 
All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a 
discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of 
thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no 
photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as 
fabrications. Not so the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, of which both stills and 
motion pictures are stored in archives throughout the world. 
Czech photographers and cameramen were acutely aware that they were the ones who 
could best do the only thing left to do: preserve the face of violence for the distant 
future. Seven days in a row, Tereza roamed the streets, photographing Russian 
soldiers and officers in compromising situations. The Russians did not know what to do. 
They had been carefully briefed about how to behave if someone fired at them or threw 
stones, but they had received no directives about what to do when someone aimed a 
lens. 
She shot roll after roll and gave about half of them, undeveloped, to foreign journalists 
(the borders were still open, and reporters passing through were grateful for any kind of 
document). Many of her photographs turned up in the Western press. They were 
pictures of tanks, of threatening fists, of houses destroyed, of corpses covered with 
bloodstained red-white-and-blue Czech flags, of young men on motorcycles racing full 
speed around the tanks and waving Czech flags on long staffs, of young girls in 
unbelievably short skirts provoking the miserable sexually famished Russian soldiers by 
kissing random passersby before their eyes. As I have said, the Russian invasion was 
not only a tragedy; it was a carnival of hate filled with a curious (and no longer 
explicable) euphoria. 
She took some fifty prints with her to Switzerland, prints she had made herself with all 
the care and skill she could muster. She offered them to a high-circulation illustrated 
magazine. The editor gave her a kind reception (all Czechs still wore the halo of their 
misfortune, and the good Swiss were touched); he offered her a seat, looked through 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
34
the prints, praised them, and explained that because a certain time had elapsed since 
the events, they hadn't the slightest chance ( not that they aren't very beautiful! ) of 
being published. 
But it's not over yet in Prague! she protested, and tried to explain to him in her bad 
German that at this very moment, even with the country occupied, with everything 
against them, workers' councils were forming in the factories, the students were going 
out on strike demanding the departure of the Russians, and the whole country was 
saying aloud what it thought. That's what's so unbelievable! And nobody here cares 
anymore.
The editor was glad when an energetic woman came into the office and interrupted the 
conversation. The woman handed him a folder and said, Here's the nudist beach 
article.
The editor was delicate enough to fear that a Czech who photographed tanks would 
find pictures of naked people on a beach frivolous. He laid the folder at the far end of 
the desk and quickly said to the woman, How would you like to meet a Czech colleague 
of yours? She's brought me some marvelous pictures.
The woman shook Tereza's hand and picked up her photographs. Have a look at mine 
in the meantime, she said. 
Tereza leaned over to the folder and took out the pictures. 
Almost apologetically the editor said to Tereza, Of course they're completely different 
from your pictures.
Not at all, said Tereza. They're the same.
Neither the editor nor the photographer understood her, and even I find it difficult to 
explain what she had in mind when she compared a nude beach to the Russian 
invasion. Looking through the pictures, she stopped for a time at one that showed a 
family of four standing in a circle: a naked mother leaning over her children, her giant 
tits hanging low like a goat's or cow's, and the husband leaning the same way on the 
other side, his penis and scrotum looking very much like an udder in miniature. 
You don't like them, do you? asked the editor. 
They're good photographs.
She's shocked by the subject matter, said the woman. I can tell just by looking at you 
that you've never set foot on a nude beach.
No, said Tereza. 
The editor smiled. You see how easy it is to guess where you're from? The Communist 
countries are awfully puritanical.

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
35
There's nothing wrong with the naked body, the woman said with maternal affection. It's 
normal. And everything normal is beautiful!
The image of her mother marching through the flat naked flashed through Tereza's 
mind. She could still hear the laughter behind her back when she ran and pulled the 
curtains to stop the neighbors from seeing her naked mother. 
The woman photographer invited Tereza to the magazine's cafeteria for a cup of coffee. 
Those pictures of yours, they're very interesting. I couldn't help noticing what a terrific 
sense of the female body you have. You know what I mean. The girls with the 
provocative poses!
The ones kissing passersby in front of the Russian tanks?
Yes. You'd be a top-notch fashion photographer, you know? You'd have to get yourself 
a model first, someone like you who's looking for a break. Then you could make a 
portfolio of photographs and show them to the agencies. It would take some time before 
you made a name for yourself, naturally, but I can do one thing for you here and now: 
introduce you to the editor in charge of our garden section. He might need some shots 
of cactuses and roses and things.
Thank you very much, Tereza said sincerely, because it was clear that the woman 
sitting opposite her was full of good will. 
But then she said to herself, Why take pictures of cactuses? She had no desire to go 
through in Zurich what she'd been through in Prague: battles over job and career, over 
every picture published. She had never been ambitious out of vanity. All she had ever 
wanted was to escape from her mother's world. Yes, she saw it with absolute clarity: no 
matter how enthusiastic she was about taking pictures, she could just as easily have 
turned her enthusiasm to any other endeavor. Photography was nothing but a way of 
getting at something higher and living beside Tomas. 
She said, My husband is a doctor. He can support me. I don't need to take pictures.
The woman photographer replied, I don't see how you can give it up after the beautiful 
work you've done.
Yes, the pictures of the invasion were something else again. She had not done them for 
Tomas. She had done them out of passion. But not passion for photography. She had 
done them out of passionate hatred. The situation would never recur. And these 
photographs, which she had made out of passion, were the ones nobody wanted 
because they were out of date. Only cactuses had perennial appeal. And cactuses 
were of no interest to her. 
She said, You're too kind, really, but I'd rather stay at home. I don't need a job.
The woman said, But will you be fulfilled sitting at home?
Tereza said, More fulfilled than by taking pictures of cactuses.

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera