Milan kundera
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condemned
to playact. Their struggle with mute power (the mute power across the river, a police transmogrified into mute microphones in the wall) is the struggle of a theater company that has attacked an army. Franz watched his friend from the Sorbonne lift his fist and threaten the silence on the other side. For the third time the interpreter shouted her challenge into the megaphone. The silence she again received in response suddenly turned Franz's depression into rage. Here he was, standing only a few steps from the bridge joining Thailand to Cambodia, and he felt an overwhelming desire to run out onto it, scream bloodcurdling curses to the skies, and die in a great clatter of gunfire. That sudden desire of Franz's reminds us of something; yes, it reminds us of Stalin's son, who ran to electrocute himself on the barbed wire when he could no longer stand to watch the poles of human existence come so close to each other as to touch, when there was no longer any difference between sublime and squalid, angel and fly. God and shit. Franz could not accept the fact that the glory of the Grand March was equal to the comic vanity of its marchers, that the exquisite noise of European history was lost in an infinite silence and that there was no longer any difference between history and silence. "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera 141 He felt like placing his own life on the scales; he wanted to prove that the Grand March weighed more than shit. But man can prove nothing of the sort. One pan of the scales held shit; on the other, Stalin's son put his entire body. And the scales did not move. Instead of getting himself shot, Franz merely hung his head and went back with the others, single file, to the buses. We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American actress, and even the tall, stooped editor with the big chin. He was accustomed to his readers, and when one day the Russians banned his newspaper, he had the feeling that the atmosphere was suddenly a hundred times thinner. Nothing could replace the look of unknown eyes. He thought he would suffocate. Then one day he realized that he was constantly being followed, bugged, and surreptitiously photographed in the street. Suddenly he had anonymous eyes on him and he could breathe again! He began making theatrical speeches to the microphones in his wall. In the police, he had found his lost public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Marie-Claude and her daughter belong in the second category. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. Tereza and Tomas belong in the third category. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. Franz, for example. He traveled to the borders of Cambodia only for Sabina. As the bus bumped along the Thai road, he could feel her eyes fixed on him in a long stare. Tomas's son belongs in the same category. Let me call him Simon. (He will be glad to have a Biblical name, like his father's.) The eyes he longed for were Tomas's. As a result of his embroilment in the petition campaign, he was expelled from the university. The girl he had been going out with was the niece of a village priest. He married her, became a tractor driver on a collective farm, a practicing Catholic, and a father. When he learned that Tomas, too, was living in the country, he was thrilled: fate had made their lives symmetrical! This encouraged him to write Tomas a letter. He did not ask him to write back. He only wanted him to focus his eyes on his life. "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera 142 Franz and Simon are the dreamers of this novel. Unlike Franz, Simon never liked his mother. From childhood he searched for his father. He was willing to believe his father the victim of some sort of injustice that predated and explained the injustice his father had perpetrated on him. He never felt angry with his father, because he did not wish to ally himself with his mother, who continually maligned the man. He lived with her until he was eighteen and had finished secondary school; then he went off to Prague and the university. By that time Tomas was washing windows. Often Simon would wait long hours to arrange an accidental encounter with Tomas. But Tomas never stopped to talk to him. The only reason he became involved with the big-chinned former editor was that the editor's fate reminded him of his father's. The editor had never heard of Tomas. The Oedipus article had been forgotten. It was Simon who told him about it and asked him to persuade Tomas to sign the petition. The only reason the editor agreed was that he wanted to do something nice for the boy, whom he liked. Whenever Simon thought back to the day when they had met, he was ashamed of his stage fright. His father couldn't have liked him. He, on the other hand, liked his father. He remembered his every word, and as time went on he saw how true they were. The words that made the biggest impression on him were Punishing people who don't know what they've done is barbaric. When his girlfriend's uncle put a Bible in his hands, he was particularly struck by Jesus' words Forgive them, for they know not what they do. He knew that his father was a nonbeliever, but in the similarity of the two phrases he saw a secret sign: his father agreed with the path he had taken. During approximately his third year in the country, he received a letter from Tomas asking him to come and visit. Their meeting was a friendly one. Simon felt relaxed and did not stammer a bit. He probably did not realize that they did not understand each other very well. About four months later, he received a telegram saying that Tomas and his wife had been crushed to death under a truck. At about that time, he learned about a woman who had once been his father's mistress and was living in France. He found out her address. Because he desperately needed an imaginary eye to follow his life, he would occasionally write her long letters. Sabina continued to receive letters from her sad village correspondent till the end of her life. Many of them would remain unread, because she took less and less interest in her native land. The old man died, and Sabina moved to California. Farther west, farther away from the country where she had been born. She had no trouble selling her paintings, and liked America. But only on the surface. Everything beneath the surface was alien to her. Down below, there was no grandpa or uncle. She was afraid of shutting herself into a grave and sinking into American earth. And so one day she composed a will in which she requested that her dead body be cremated and its ashes thrown to the winds. Tereza and Tomas had died under the "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera 143 sign of weight. She wanted to die under the sign of lightness. She would be lighter than air. As Parmenides would put it, the negative would change into the positive. The bus stopped in front of the Bangkok hotel. No one any longer felt like holding meetings. People drifted off in groups to sightsee; some set off for temples, others for brothels. Franz's friend from the Sorbonne suggested they spend the evening together, but he preferred to be alone. It was nearly dark when he went out into the streets. He kept thinking about Sabina, feeling her eyes on him. Whenever he felt her long stare, he began to doubt himself: he had never known quite what Sabina thought. It made him uncomfortable now as well. Could she be mocking him? Did she consider the cult he made of her silly? Could she be trying to tell him it was time for him to grow up and devote himself fully to the mistress she herself had sent to him? Picturing the face with big round glasses, he suddenly realized how happy he was with his student-mistress. All at once, the Cambodia venture struck him as meaningless, laughable. Why had he come? Only now did he know. He had come to find out once and for all that neither parades nor Sabina but rather the girl with the glasses was his real life, his only real life! He had come to find out that reality was more than a dream, much more than a dream! Suddenly a figure emerged out of the semi-darkness and said something to him in a language he did not know. He gave the intruder a look that was startled but sympathetic. The man bowed and smiled and muttered something with great urgency. What was he trying to say? He seemed to be inviting him somewhere. The man took him by the hand and started leading him away. Franz decided that someone needed his help. Maybe there was some sense in his coming all that distance. Wasn't he being called to help somebody? Suddenly there were two other men next to the first, and one of them asked him in English for his money. At that point, the girl with the glasses vanished from his thoughts and Sabina fixed her eyes on him, unreal Sabina with her grand fate, Sabina who had made him feel so small. Her wrathful eyes bored into him, angry and dissatisfied: Had he been had once again? Had someone else abused his idiotic goodness? He tore his arm away from the man, who was now holding on to his sleeve. He remembered that Sabina had always admired his strength. He seized the arm one of the other men was lifting against him, and, tightening his grip, tossed him over his shoulder in a perfect judo flip. Now he was satisfied with himself. Sabina's eyes were still on him. She would never see him humiliate himself again! She would never see him retreat! Franz was through with being soft and sentimental! He felt what was almost a cheerful hatred for these men. They had thought to have a good laugh at him and his naivete! He stood there with his shoulders slightly hunched "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera 144 and his eyes darting back and forth between the two remaining men. Suddenly, he felt a heavy blow on his head, and he crumpled immediately. He vaguely sensed being carried somewhere. Then he was thrown into emptiness and felt himself falling. A violent crack, and he lost consciousness. He woke up in a hospital in Geneva. Marie-Claude was leaning over his bed. He wanted to tell her she had no right to be there. He wanted them to send immediately for the girl with the glasses. All his thoughts were with her. He wanted to shout that he couldn't stand having anyone but her at his side. But he realized with horror that he could not speak. He looked up at Marie-Claude with infinite hatred and tried to turn away from her. But he could not move his body. His head, perhaps? No, he could not even move his head. He closed his eyes so as not to see her. In death, Franz at last belonged to his wife. He belonged to her as he had never belonged to her before. Marie-Claude took care of everything: she saw to the funeral, sent out the announcements, bought the wreaths, and had a black dress made—a wedding dress, in reality. Yes, a husband's funeral is a wife's true wedding! The climax of her life's work! The reward for her sufferings! The pastor understood this very well. His funeral oration was about a true conjugal love that had withstood many tests to remain a haven of peace for the deceased, a haven to which he had returned at the end of his days. The colleague of Franz's whom Marie- Claude asked to speak at the graveside services also paid homage primarily to the deceased's brave wife. Somewhere in the back, supported by a friend, stood the girl with the big glasses. The combination of many pills and suppressed sobs gave her an attack of cramps before the ceremony came to an end. She lurched forward, clutching her stomach, and her friend had to take her away from the cemetery. The moment he received the telegram from the chairman of the collective farm, he jumped on his motorcycle. He arrived in time to arrange for the funeral. The inscription he chose to go under his father's name on the gravestone read: HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. He was well aware that his father would not have said it in those words, but he was certain they expressed what his father actually thought. The kingdom of God means justice. Tomas had longed for a world in which justice would reign. Hadn't Simon the right to express his father's life in his own vocabulary? Of course he had: haven't all heirs had that right from time immemorial? A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS was the inscription adorning the stone above Franz's grave. It can be interpreted in religious terms: the wanderings being our earthly existence, the return our return to God's embrace. But the insiders knew that it had a perfectly secular meaning as well. Indeed, Marie-Claude talked about it every day: "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera 145 Franz, dear, sweet Franz! The mid-life crisis was just too much for him. And that pitiful little girl who caught him in her net! Why, she wasn't even pretty! (Did you see those enormous glasses she tried to hide behind?) But when they start pushing fifty (don't we know it!), they'll sell their souls for a fresh piece of flesh. Only his wife knows how it made him suffer! It was pure moral torture! Because, deep down, Franz was a kind and decent man. How else can you explain that crazy, desperate trip to wherever it was in Asia? He went there to find death. Yes, Marie-Claude knew it for an absolute fact: Franz had consciously sought out death. In his last days, when he was dying and had no need to lie, she was the only person he asked for. He couldn't talk, but how he'd thanked her with his eyes! He'd fixed his eyes on her and begged to be forgiven. And she forgave him. What remains of the dying population of Cambodia? One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms. What remains of Tomas? An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. What remains of Beethoven? A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning Yüklə 0,64 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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