The unbearable lightness of being (13 page)

109

dividing two empires, stretches an intense smell of urine.

Inside the Old
Church, all that is left of the Gothic style is the high, bare, white walls,
the columns, the vaulting, and the windows. There is not a single image on the
walls, not a single piece of statuary anywhere. The church is as empty as a gymnasium,
except in the very center, where several rows of chairs have been arranged in a
large square around a miniature podium for the minister. Behind the chairs are
wooden booths, stalls for wealthy burghers.

The chairs and
stalls seem to have been placed there without the slightest concern for the
shape of the walls or position of the columns, as if wishing to express their
indifference to or disdain for Gothic architecture. Centuries ago Calvinist
faith turned the cathedral into a hangar, its only function being to keep the
prayers of the faithful safe from rain and snow.

Franz was
fascinated by it: the Grand March of History had passed through this gigantic
hall!

Sabina recalled
how after the Communist coup all the castles in Bohemia were nationalized and
turned into manual training centers, retirement homes, and also cow sheds. She
had visited one of the cow sheds: hooks for iron rings had been hammered into
the stucco walls, and cows tied to the rings gazed dreamily out of the windows
at the castle grounds, now overrun with chickens.

"It's the
emptiness of it that fascinates me," said Franz. "People collect
altars, statues, paintings, chairs, carpets, and books, and then comes a time
of joyful relief and they throw it all out like so much refuse from yesterday's
dinner table. Can't you just picture Hercules' broom sweeping out this
cathedral?"

"The poor
had to stand, while the rich had stalls," said Sabina, pointing to them.
"But there was something that bound the bankers to beggars: a hatred of
beauty."

"What
is beauty?" said Franz, and he saw himself attend-

110

ing
a recent gallery preview at his wife's side, and at her insistence. The
endless vanity of speeches and words, the vanity of culture, the vanity of art.

When Sabina was
working in the student brigade, her soul poisoned by the cheerful marches
issuing incessantly from the loudspeakers, she borrowed a motorcycle one Sunday
and headed for the hills. She stopped at a tiny remote village she had never
seen before, leaned the motorcycle against the church, and went in. A mass
happened to be in progress. Religion was persecuted by the regime, and most
people gave the church a wide berth. The only people in the pews were old men
and old women, because they did not fear the regime. They feared only death.

The priest
intoned words in a singsong voice, and the people repeated them after him in
unison. It was a litany. The same words kept coming back, like a wanderer who
cannot tear his eyes away from the countryside or like a man who cannot take
leave of life. She sat in one of the last pews, closing her eyes to hear the
music of the words, opening them to stare up at the blue vault dotted with
large gold stars. She was entranced.

What she had
unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She
knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and
of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she
spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it
appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed.

From that time
on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter
it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the
scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the
scenery.

111

"This is
the first time I've ever been fascinated by a church," said Franz.

It was neither
Protestantism nor asceticism that made him so enthusiastic; it was something
else, something highly personal, something he did not dare discuss with
Sabina. He thought he heard a voice telling him to seize Hercules' broom and
sweep all of Marie-Claude's previews, all of Marie-Anne's singers, all lectures
and symposia, all useless speeches and vain words—sweep them out of his life.
The great empty space of Amsterdam's Old Church had appeared to him in a sudden
and mysterious revelation as the image of his own liberation.

STRENGTH

Stroking
Franz's arms in bed in one of the many hotels where they made love, Sabina
said, "The muscles you have! They're unbelievable!"

Franz took pleasure in her praise. He climbed out of bed, got down on his
haunches, grabbed a heavy oak chair by one leg, and lifted it slowly into the
air. "You never have to be afraid," he said. "I can protect you
no matter what. I used to be a judo champion."

When he raised the hand with the heavy chair above his head, Sabina said,
"It's good to know you're so strong."

But deep down she said to herself, Franz may be strong, but his strength
is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he
loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give
Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on
the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he
simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be
accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

Sabina
watched Franz walk across the room with the chair

112

above
his head; the scene struck her as grotesque and filled her with an odd sadness.

Franz set the
chair down on the floor opposite Sabina and sat in it. "I enjoy being
strong, of course," he said, "but what good do these muscles do me in
Geneva? They're like an ornament, a peacock feather. I've never fought anyone
in my life."

Sabina proceeded
with her melancholy musings: What if she had a man who ordered her about? A man
who wanted to master her? How long would she put up with him? Not five minutes!
From which it follows that no man was right for her. Strong or weak.

"Why don't you
ever use your strength on me?" she said.

"Because
love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

Sabina realized
two things: first, that Franz's words were noble and just; second, that they
disqualified him from her love life.

LIVING
IN TRUTH

Such
is the formula set forth by Kafka somewhere in the diaries or letters. Franz
couldn't quite remember where. But it captivated him. What does it mean to
live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not
hiding, and not dissimulating. From the time he met Sabina, however, Franz had
been living in lies. He told his wife about nonexistent congresses in Amsterdam
and lectures in Madrid; he was afraid to walk with Sabina through the streets
of Geneva. And he enjoyed the lying and hiding: it was all so new to him. He
was as excited as a teacher's pet who has plucked up the courage to play
truant.

For Sabina,
living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only
away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we
involuntarily make

113

allowances for that
eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind,
means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all
kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses
his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up of his
own free will is a monster. That was why Sabina did not suffer in the least
from having to keep her love secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could
she live in truth.

Franz, on the
other hand, was certain that the division of life into private and public
spheres is the source of all lies: a person is one thing in private and
something quite different in public. For Franz, living in truth meant breaking
down the barriers between the private and the public. He was fond of quoting
Andre Breton on the desirability of living "in a glass house" into
which everyone can look and there are no secrets.

When he heard
his wife telling Sabina, "That pendant is ugly!" he knew he could no
longer live in lies and had to stand up for Sabina. He had not done so only
because he was afraid of betraying their secret love.

The day after
the cocktail party, he was supposed to go to Rome with Sabina for the weekend.
He could not get "That pendant is ugly!" out of his mind, and it made
him see Marie-Claude in a completely new light. Her aggressiveness—invulnerable,
noisy, and full of vitality—relieved him of the burden of goodness he had
patiently borne all twenty-three years of their marriage. He recalled the
enormous inner space of the Old Church in Amsterdam and felt the strange
incomprehensible ecstasy that void had evoked in him.

He was packing his overnight bag when Marie-Claude
came into the room, chatting about the guests at the party, energetically
endorsing the views of some and laughing off the views of others.

114

Franz looked at her for a long time and said, "There isn't any
conference in Rome."

She
did not see the point. "Then why are you going?" "I've had a
mistress for nine months," he said. "I don't want to meet her in
Geneva. That's why I've been traveling so much. I thought it was time you knew
about it."

After the first few words he lost his nerve. He turned away so as not to
see the despair on Marie-Claude's face, the despair he expected his words to
produce.

After a short
pause he heard her say, "Yes, I think it's time I knew about it."

Her voice was so
firm that Franz turned in her direction. She did not look at all disturbed; in
fact, she looked like the very same woman who had said the day before in a
raucous voice, "That pendant is ugly!"

She continued:
"Now that you've plucked up the courage to tell me you've been deceiving
me for nine months, do you think you can tell me who she is?"

He had always
told himself he had no right to hurt Marie-Claude and should respect the woman
in her. But where had the woman in her gone? In other words, what had happened
to the mother image he mentally linked with his wife? His mother, sad and
wounded, his mother, wearing unmatched shoes, had departed from Marie-Claude—or
perhaps not, perhaps she had never been inside Marie-Claude at all. The whole
thing came to him in a flash of hatred.

"I have no
reason to hide it from you," he said. If he had not succeeded in wounding
her with his infidelity, he was certain the revelation of her rival would do
the trick. Looking her straight in the eye, he told her about Sabina.

A while later he
met Sabina at the airport. As the plane gained altitude, he felt lighter and
lighter. At last, he said to himself, after nine months he was living in truth.

Sabina felt as though
Franz had pried open the door of their privacy. As though she were peering into
the heads of Marie-Claude, of Marie-Anne, of Alain the painter, of the sculptor
who held on to his finger—of all the people she knew in Geneva. Now she would
willy-nilly become the rival of a woman who did not interest her in the least.
Franz would ask for a divorce, and she would take Marie-Claude's place in his
large conjugal bed. Everyone would follow the process from a greater or lesser
distance, and she would be forced to playact before them all; instead of being
Sabina, she would have to act the role of Sabina, decide how best to act the
role. Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.
Sabina cringed at the very thought of it.

They had supper at a restaurant in Rome. She drank her wine in silence.

"You're
not angry, are you?" Franz asked.

She assured him she was not. She was still confused and unsure whether to
be happy or not. She recalled the time they met in the sleeping compartment of
the Amsterdam express, the time she had wanted to go down on her knees before
him and beg him to hold her, squeeze her, never let her go. She had longed to
come to the end of the dangerous road of betrayals. She had longed to call a
halt to it all.

Try as she might to intensify that longing, summon it to her aid, lean on
it, the feeling of distaste only grew stronger.

They walked back to the hotel through the streets of Rome. Because the
Italians around them were making a racket, shouting and gesticulating, they
could walk along in silence without hearing their silence.

Sabina
spent a long time washing in the bathroom; Franz

115

116

waited
for her under the blanket. As always, the small lamp was lit.

When she came out, she turned it
off. It was the first time she had done so. Franz should have paid better
attention. He did not notice it, because light did not mean anything to him. As
we know, he made love with his eyes shut.

In fact, it was his closed eyes
that made Sabina turn out the light. She could not stand those lowered eyelids
a moment longer. The eyes, as the saying goes, are windows to the soul. Franz's
body, which thrashed about on top of hers with closed eyes, was therefore a
body without a soul. It was like a newborn animal, still blind and whimpering
for the dug. Muscular Franz in coitus was like a gigantic puppy suckling at her
breasts. He actually had her nipple in his mouth as if he were sucking milk!
The idea that he was a mature man below and a suckling infant above, that she
was therefore having intercourse with a baby, bordered on the disgusting. No,
she would never again see his body moving desperately over hers, would never
again offer him her breast, bitch to whelp, today was the last time, irrevocably
the last time!

She knew, of course, that she was
being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she had ever had—he was
intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good—but the
more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence,
defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength.

That night, she made love to him
with greater frenzy than ever before, aroused by the realization that this was
the last time. Making love, she was far, far away. Once more she heard the
golden horn of betrayal beckoning her in the distance, and she knew she would
not hold out. She sensed an expanse of freedom before her, and the
boundlessness of it excited her. She made mad, unrestrained love to Franz as
she never had before.