Milan kundera

parties and he would have to make friends with them. 
The second type of reaction came from people who themselves (they or their intimates) 
had been persecuted, who had refused to compromise with the occupation powers or 
were convinced they would refuse to compromise (to sign a statement) even though no 
one had requested it of them (for instance, because they were too young to be 
seriously involved). 
One of the latter, Doctor S., a talented young physician, asked Tomas one day, Well, 
have you written it up for them?
What in the world are you talking about? Tomas asked in return. 
Why, your retraction, he said. There was no malice in his voice. He even smiled. One 
more smile from that thick herbal of smiles: the smile of smug moral superiority. 
Tell me, what do you know about my retraction? said Tomas. Have you read it?
No, said S. 
Then what are you babbling about?
Still smug, still smiling, S. replied, Look, we know how it goes. You incorporate it into a 
letter to the chief surgeon or to some minister or somebody, and he promises it won't 
leak out and humiliate the author. Isn't that right?
Tomas shrugged his shoulders and let S. go on. 

---

"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
93
But even after the statement is safely filed away, the author knows that it can be made 
public at any moment. So from then on he doesn't open his mouth, never criticizes a 
thing, never makes the slightest protest. The first peep out of him and into print it goes, 
sullying his good name far and wide. On the whole, it's rather a nice method. One could 
imagine worse.
Yes, it's a very nice method, said Tomas, but would you mind telling me who gave you 
the idea I'd agreed to go along with it?
S. shrugged his shoulders, but the smile did not disappear from his face. 
And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact: 
everyone
was smiling at him, 
everyone
wanted him to write the retraction; it would make 
everyone
happy! The people with the 
first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make 
their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The 
people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a 
special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured a secret love for the cowards, for without 
them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no 
one. 
Tomas could not bear the smiles. He thought he saw them everywhere, even on the 
faces of strangers in the street. He began losing sleep. Could it be? Did he really hold 
those people in such high esteem? No. He had nothing good to say about them and 
was angry with himself for letting their glances upset him so. It was completely illogical. 
How could someone who had so little respect for people be so dependent on what they 
thought of him? 
Perhaps his deep-seated mistrust of people (his doubts as to their right to decide his 
destiny and to judge him) had played its part in his choice of profession, a profession 
that excluded him from public display. A man who chooses to be a politician, say, 
voluntarily makes the public his judge, with the naive assurance that he will gain its 
favor. And if the crowd does express its disapproval, it merely goads him on to bigger 
and better things, much in the way Tomas was spurred on by the difficulty of a 
diagnosis. 
A doctor (unlike a politician or an actor) is judged only by his patients and immediate 
colleagues, that is, behind closed doors, man to man. Confronted by the looks of those 
who judge him, he can respond at once with his own look, to explain or defend himself. 
Now (for the first time in his life) Tomas found himself in a situation where the looks 
fixed on him were so numerous that he was unable to register them. He could answer 
them neither with his own look nor with words. He was at everyone's mercy. People 
talked about him inside and outside the hospital (it was a time when news about who 
betrayed, who denounced, and who collaborated spread through nervous Prague with 
the uncanny speed of a bush telegraph); although he knew about it, he could do 
nothing to stop it. He was surprised at how unbearable he found it, how panic-stricken it 
made him feel. The interest they showed in him was as unpleasant as an elbowing 
crowd or the pawings of the people who tear our clothes off in nightmares. 

---

"The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera
 
94
He went to the chief surgeon and told him he would not write a word. 
The chief surgeon shook his hand with greater energy than usual and said that he had 
anticipated Tomas's decision. 
Perhaps you can find a way to keep me on even without a statement, said Tomas, 
trying to hint that a threat by all his colleagues to resign upon his dismissal would 
suffice. 
But his colleagues never dreamed of threatening to resign, and so before long (the 
chief surgeon shook his hand even more energetically than the previous time—it was 
black and blue for days), he was forced to leave the hospital. 
First he went to work in a country clinic about fifty miles from Prague. He commuted 
daily by train and came home exhausted. A year later, he managed to find a more 
advantageous but much inferior position at a clinic on the outskirts of Prague. There, he 
could no longer practice surgery, and became a general practitioner. The waiting room 
was jammed, and he had scarcely five minutes for each patient; he told them how much 
aspirin to take, signed their sick-leave documents, and referred them to specialists. He 
considered himself more civil servant than doctor. 
One day, at the end of office hours, he was visited by a man of about fifty whose 
portliness added to his dignity. He introduced himself as representing the Ministry of the 
Interior, and invited Tomas to join him for a drink across the street. 
He ordered a bottle of wine. I have to drive home, said Tomas by way of refusal. I'll lose 
my license if they find I've been drinking. The man from the Ministry of the Interior 
smiled. If anything happens, just show them this. And he handed Tomas a card 
engraved with his name (though clearly not his real name) and the telephone number of 
the Ministry. 
He then went into a long speech about how much he admired Tomas and how the 
whole Ministry was distressed at the thought of so respected a surgeon dispensing 
aspirin at an outlying clinic. He gave Tomas to understand that although he couldn't 
come out and say it, the police did not agree with drastic tactics like removing 
specialists from their posts. 
Since no one had thought to praise Tomas in quite some time, he listened to the plump 
official very carefully, and he was surprised by the precision and detail of the man's 
knowledge of his professional career. How defenseless we are in the face of flattery! 
Tomas was unable to prevent himself from taking seriously what the Ministry official 
said. 
But it was not out of mere vanity. More important was Tomas's lack of experience. 
When you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful, and polite, you 
have a hard time reminding yourself that