Milan kundera

a
troublesome question: 
Why
did he fail 
to come? 
Waiting on customers one day, she came upon the bald-headed man who had attacked 
her for serving alcohol to a minor. He was telling a dirty joke in a loud voice. It was a 
joke she had heard a hundred times before from the drunks in the small town where 
she had once served beer. Once more, she had the feeling that her mother's world was 
intruding on her. She curtly interrupted the bald man. 
I don't take orders from you, the man responded in a huff. You ought to thank your 
lucky stars we let you stay here in the bar.
We?
Who do you mean by 
we? 
Us, said the man, holding up his glass for another vodka. I won't have any more insults 
out of you, is that clear? Oh, and by the way, he added, pointing to Tereza's neck, 
which was wound round with a strand of cheap pearls, where did you get those from? 
You can't tell me your husband gave them to you. A window washer! He can't afford 
gifts like that. It's your customers, isn't it? I wonder what you give them in exchange?
You shut your mouth this instant! she hissed. 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
84
Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense, he went on, trying to grab hold of 
the necklace. 
Suddenly Karenin jumped up, leaned his front paws on the bar, and began to snarl. 
The ambassador said: He's with the secret police.
Then why is he so open about it? What good is a secret police that can't keep its 
secrets?
The ambassador positioned himself on the cot by folding his legs under his body, as he 
had learned to do in yoga class. Kennedy, beaming down on him from the frame on the 
wall, gave his words a special consecration. 
The secret police have several functions, my dear, he began in an avuncular tone. The 
first is the classical one. They keep an ear out for what people are saying and report it 
to their superiors. 
The second function is intimidatory. They want to make it seem as if they have us in 
their power; they want us to be afraid. That is what your bald-headed friend was after. 
The third function consists of staging situations that will compromise us. Gone are the 
days when they tried to accuse us of plotting the downfall of the state. That would only 
increase our popularity. Now they slip hashish in our pockets or claim we've raped a 
twelve-year-old girl. They can always dig up some girl to back them.
The engineer immediately popped back into Tereza's mind. Why had he never come? 
They need to trap people, the ambassador went on, to force them to collaborate and 
set other traps for other people, so that gradually they can turn the whole nation into a 
single organization of informers.
Tereza could think of nothing but the possibility that the engineer had been sent by the 
police. And who was that strange boy who drank himself silly and told her he loved her? 
It was because of him that the bald police spy had launched into her and the engineer 
stood up for her. So all three had been playing parts in a prearranged scenario meant 
to soften her up for the seduction! 
How could she have missed it? The flat was so odd, and he didn't belong there at all! 
Why would an elegantly dressed engineer live in a miserable place like that? 
Was
he 
an engineer? And if so, how could he leave work at two in the afternoon? Besides, how 
many engineers read Sophocles? No, that was no engineer's library! The whole place 
had more the flavor of a flat confiscated from a poor imprisoned intellectual. Her father 
was put in prison when she was ten, and the state had confiscated their flat and all her 
father's books. Who knows to what use the flat had then been put? 
Now she saw clearly why the engineer had never returned: he had accomplished his 
mission. What mission? The drunken undercover agent had inadvertently given it away 
when he said, Just remember that prostitution is a criminal offense. Now that self-styled 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
85
engineer would testify that she had slept with him and demanded to be paid! They 
would threaten to blow it up into a scandal unless she agreed to report on the people 
who got drunk in her bar. 
Don't worry, the ambassador comforted her. Your story doesn't sound the least bit 
dangerous.
I suppose it doesn't, she said in a tight voice, as she walked out into the Prague night 
with Karenin. 
People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line 
across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. 
But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her 
consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits 
of Prague. 
Tomas was at the wheel, Tereza next to him, and Karenin in the back, occasionally 
leaning over to lick their ears. After two hours, they came to a small town known for its 
spa where they had been for several days six years earlier. They wanted to spend the 
night there. 
They pulled into the square and got out of the car. Nothing had changed. They stood 
facing the hotel they had stayed at. The same old linden trees rose up before it. Off to 
the left ran an old wooden colonnade culminating in a stream spouting its medicinal 
water into a marble bowl. People were bending over it, the same small glasses in hand. 
When Tomas looked back at the hotel, he noticed that something had in fact changed. 
What had once been the Grand now bore the name Baikal. He looked at the street sign 
on the corner of the building: Moscow Square. Then they took a walk (Karenin tagged 
along on his own, without a leash) through all the streets they had known, and 
examined all their names: Stalingrad Street, Leningrad Street, Rostov Street, 
Novosibirsk Street, Kiev Street, Odessa Street. There was a Tchaikovsky Sanatorium, 
a Tolstoy Sanatorium, a Rimsky-Korsakov Sanatorium; there was a Hotel Suvorov, a 
Gorky Cinema, and a Cafe Pushkin. All the names were taken from Russian 
geography, from Russian history. 
Tereza suddenly recalled the first days of the invasion. People in every city and town 
had pulled down the street signs; sign posts had disappeared. Overnight, the country 
had become nameless. For seven days, Russian troops wandered the countryside, not 
knowing where they were. The officers searched for newspaper offices, for television 
and radio stations to occupy, but could not find them. Whenever they asked, they would 
get either a shrug of the shoulders or false names and directions. 
Hindsight now made that anonymity seem quite dangerous to the country. The streets 
and buildings could no longer return to their original names. As a result, a Czech spa 
had suddenly metamorphosed into a miniature imaginary Russia, and the past that 
Tereza had gone there to find had turned out to be confiscated. It would be impossible 
for them to spend the night. 

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"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
86
They started back to the car in silence. She was thinking about how all things and 
people seemed to go about in disguise. An old Czech town was covered with Russian 
names. Czechs taking pictures of the invasion had unconsciously worked for the secret 
police. The man who sent her to die had worn a mask of Tomas's face over his own. 
The spy played the part of an engineer, and the engineer tried to play the part of the 
man from Petrin. The emblem of the book in his flat proved a sham designed to lead 
her astray. 
Recalling the book she had held in her hand there, she had a sudden flash of insight 
that made her cheeks burn red. What had been the sequence of events? The engineer 
announced he would bring in some coffee. She walked over to the bookshelves and 
took down Sophocles'