Milan kundera

Einmal ist keinmal,
says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German 
adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live,we might 
as well not have lived at all. 
But then one day at the hospital, during a break between operations, a nurse called him 
to the telephone. He heard Tereza's voice coming from the receiver. She had phoned 
him from the railway station. He was overjoyed. Unfortunately, he had something on 
that evening and could not invite her to his place until the next day. The moment he 
hung up, he reproached himself for not telling her to go straight there. He had time 
enough to cancel his plans, after all! He tried to imagine what Tereza would do in 
Prague during the thirty-six long hours before they were to meet, and had half a mind to 
jump into his car and drive through the streets looking for her. 
She arrived the next evening, a handbag dangling from her shoulder, looking more 
elegant than before. She had a thick book under her arm. It was 
Anna Karenina.
She 
seemed in a good mood, even a little boisterous, and tried to make him think she had 
just happened to drop in, things had just worked out that way: she was in Prague on 
business, perhaps (at this point she became rather vague) to find a job. 
Later, as they lay naked and spent side by side on the bed, he asked her where she 
was staying. It was night by then, and he offered to drive her there. Embarrassed, she 
answered that she still had to find a hotel and had left her suitcase at the station. 
Only two days ago, he had feared that if he invited her to Prague she would offer him 
up her life. When she told him her suitcase was at the station, he immediately realized 
that the suitcase contained her life and that she had left it at the station only until she 
could offer it up to him. 
The two of them got into his car, which was parked in front of the house, and drove to 
the station. There he claimed the suitcase (it was large and enormously heavy) and 
took it and her home. 
How had he come to make such a sudden decision when for nearly a fortnight he had 
wavered so much that he could not even bring himself to send a postcard asking her 
how she was? 

---

"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
6
He himself was surprised. He had acted against his principles. Ten years earlier, when 
he had divorced his wife, he celebrated the event the way others celebrate a marriage. 
He understood he was not born to live side by side with any woman and could be fully 
himself only as a bachelor. He tried to design his life in such a way that no woman 
could move in with a suitcase. That was why his flat had only the one bed. Even though 
it was wide enough, Tomas would tell his mistresses that he was unable to fall asleep 
with anyone next to him, and drive them home after midnight. And so it was not the flu 
that kept him from sleeping with Tereza on her first visit. The first night he had slept in 
his large armchair, and the rest of that week he drove each night to the hospital, where 
he had a cot in his office. 
But this time he fell asleep by her side. When he woke up the next morning, he found 
Tereza, who was still asleep, holding his hand. Could they have been hand in hand all 
night? It was hard to believe. 
And while she breathed the deep breath of sleep and held his hand (firmly: he was 
unable to disengage it from her grip), the enormously heavy suitcase stood by the bed. 
He refrained from loosening his hand from her grip for fear of waking her, and turned 
carefully on his side to observe her better. 
Again it occurred to him that Tereza was a child put in a pitch-daubed bulrush basket 
and sent downstream. He couldn't very well let a basket with a child in it float down a 
stormy river! If the Pharaoh's daughter hadn't snatched the basket carrying little Moses 
from the waves, there would have been no Old Testament, no civilization as we now 
know it! How many ancient myths begin with the rescue of an abandoned child! If 
Polybus hadn't taken in the young Oedipus, Sophocles wouldn't have written his most 
beautiful tragedy! 
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to 
be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love. 
He lived a scant two years with his wife, and they had a son. At the divorce 
proceedings, the judge awarded the infant to its mother and ordered Tomas to pay a 
third of his salary for its support. He also granted him the right to visit the boy every 
other week. 
But each time Tomas was supposed to see him, the boy's mother found an excuse to 
keep him away. He soon realized that bringing them expensive gifts would make things 
a good deal easier, that he was expected to bribe the mother for the son's love. He saw 
a future of quixotic attempts to inculcate his views in the boy, views opposed in every 
way to the mother's. The very thought of it exhausted him. When, one Sunday, the 
boy's mother again canceled a scheduled visit, Tomas decided on the spur of the 
moment never to see him again. 
Why should he feel more for that child, to whom he was bound by nothing but a single 
improvident night, than for any other? He would be scrupulous about paying support; he 

---

"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
7
just didn't want anybody making him fight for his son in the name of paternal 
sentiments! 
Needless to say, he found no sympathizers. His own parents condemned him roundly: 
if Tomas refused to take an interest in his son, then they, Tomas's parents, would no 
longer take an interest in theirs. They made a great show of maintaining good relations 
with their daughter-in-law and trumpeted their exemplary stance and sense of justice. 
Thus in practically no time he managed to rid himself of wife, son, mother, and father. 
The only thing they bequeathed to him was a fear of women. Tomas desired but feared 
them. Needing to create a compromise between fear and desire, he devised what he 
called erotic friendship. He would tell his mistresses: the only relationship that can 
make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither