E-Book, Englisch, 223 Seiten
Kundera The Joke
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-36765-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
'A very beautiful novel.' (Salman Rushdie)
E-Book, Englisch, 223 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-36765-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. He died in Paris in 2023.
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SO HERE I WAS, home again after all those years. Standing in the main square (which I had crossed countless times as a child, as a boy, as a young man), I felt no emotion whatsoever; all I could think was that the flat space, with the spire of the town hall (like a soldier in an ancient helmet) rising above the rooftops, looked like a huge parade ground and that the military past of the Moravian town, once a bastion against Magyar and Turk invaders, had engraved an irrevocable ugliness on its face.
During those years, there was nothing to attract me to my hometown; I told myself that I had grown indifferent to it, which seemed natural: I had been away for fifteen years, had almost no friends or acquaintances left here (and wished to avoid the ones I did have), my mother was buried among strangers in a grave I had never tended. But I had been deceiving myself: what I had called indifference was in fact rancor; the reasons for it had escaped me, because here as elsewhere I had had both good and bad experiences, but the rancor was there, and it was this journey that had made me conscious of it: the mission that had brought me here could easily have been accomplished in Prague, after all, but I had suddenly begun to feel an irresistible attraction to the prospect of carrying it out here in my hometown precisely because this was a mission so cynical and low as to mock any suspicion that I was returning out of some maudlin attachment to things past.
I gave the unsightly square a final knowing look and, turning my back on it, set off for the hotel where I had booked a room for the night. The porter handed me a key hanging from a wooden pear and said, “Third floor.” The room was not attractive: a bed along one wall, a small table and chair in the middle, an ostentatious mahogany chest of drawers with mirror next to the bed, and a tiny cracked sink by the door. I put my briefcase down on the table and opened the window: it looked out onto a courtyard and the bare grubby backs of neighboring buildings. I closed the window, drew the curtains, and went over to the sink, which had two faucets—one blue, the other red; I turned them on; cold water trickled out of both. I looked over at the table, which at least had room for a bottle and two glasses; the trouble was, only one person could sit at it: there was only one chair. I pushed the table up to the bed and tried sitting at it, but the bed was too low and the table too high; besides, the bed sank so much under my weight that it was obviously not only unsatisfactory as a seat but equally unlikely to perform its function as a bed. I pushed it with my fists, then lay down on it, carefully lifting my legs so as not to dirty the blanket. The bed sagged so badly I felt I was in a hammock; it was impossible to imagine anyone else in that bed with me.
I sat down on the chair, stared at the translucent curtains, and began to think. Just then the sound of steps and voices penetrated the room from the corridor; two people, a man and a woman, were having a conversation, and I could understand their every word: it was about a boy named Petr, who had run away from home, and his Aunt Klara, who was a fool and spoiled the boy. Then a key turned in a lock, a door opened, and the voices went on talking in the next room; I heard the woman sighing (yes, even sighs were audible!) and the man resolving to have a few words with Klara.
I stood up, my decision firm; I washed my hands in the sink, dried them on the towel, and left the hotel, though I had no clear idea of where to go. All I knew was that if I didn’t wish to jeopardize the success of my journey (my long, arduous journey) with this unsuitable hotel room, I would have no choice, much as I disliked it, but to ask a discreet favor of some local acquaintance. I ran through all the old faces from my youth, rejecting each in turn, if only because the confidential nature of the service to be rendered would require me laboriously to bridge the gap, account for my long years of absence—something I had no desire to do. But then I remembered a man here whom I’d helped to find a job and who would be only too glad, if I knew him at all, to repay one good turn with another. He was a strange character, at once scrupulously moral and oddly unsettled and unstable, whose wife, as far as I could tell, had divorced him years before for living anywhere and everywhere but with her and their son. I was a little nervous: if he had remarried, it would complicate my request; I walked as fast as I could in the direction of the hospital.
The local hospital is a complex of buildings and pavilions scattered over a large landscaped area; I went into the booth at the gate and asked the guard to connect me with Virology; he shoved the telephone over to the edge of his desk and said, “02.” I dialed 02, only to learn that Mr. Kostka had just left and was on his way out. I sat down on a bench near the gate so as not to miss him, and watched men wandering here and there in blue-and-white-striped hospital gowns. Then I saw him: he was walking along deep in thought, tall, thin, likeably unattractive, yes, it was clearly he. I stood up and headed straight towards him, as if meaning to bump into him; first he gave me an irritated look, but then he recognized me and opened his arms. I had the feeling he was pleasantly surprised, and the spontaneity of his welcome delighted me.
I explained that I’d arrived less than an hour before and was here on some unimportant business that would last two or three days; he immediately told me how surprised and gratified he was that my first thought had been to see him. Suddenly I felt bad that I had not come to him disinterestedly, for himself alone, and that my question (I asked him lightly if he had remarried) only appeared to be sincere, though it was actually based on a low calculation. He told me (to my relief) that he was still on his own. I said we had a lot to talk about. He agreed and regretted that he had only a little over an hour before he was due back at the hospital and in the evening he was leaving town. “You mean you don’t live here?” I asked in dismay. He assured me that he did, that he had a one-room flat in a new building, but that “it’s no good living alone.” It turned out that Kostka had a fiancée in another town fifteen miles away, a schoolteacher with a two-room flat of her own. “So you’ll be moving in with her eventually?’’ I asked. He said he was unlikely to find as interesting a job there as the one I had helped him to find and his fiancée would have trouble finding a job here. I began (quite sincerely) to curse the ineptitude of a bureaucracy unable to arrange for a man and a woman to live together. “Calm down, Ludvik,” he said with gentle indulgence. “It’s not as bad as all that. Traveling back and forth does cost time and money, but my solitude remains intact and I am free.” “Why is your freedom so important to you?” I asked him. “And why is it so important to you?” he countered. “I’m a skirt chaser,” I replied. “I don’t need freedom for women, I need it for myself,” he said, and went on: “Say, how about coming to my place for a while, until I have to leave?” I could not have wished for anything better.
Soon after leaving the hospital grounds, we came to a group of new buildings jutting up fitfully one after the next from an unleveled, dust-laden plot of land (without lawns, paths, or roads) and forming a pitiful scene at the town’s edge, where it bordered on the empty flatness of farflung fields. We went in one of the doors and climbed a narrow staircase (the elevator was out of order) to the fourth floor, where I saw Kostka’s card. As we walked from the entrance hall into the room, I was greatly pleased: in the corner stood a wide, comfortable divan; the room also had a table, an easy chair, a large collection of books, a record player, and a radio.
I praised the setup and asked about the bathroom. “Nothing luxurious,” said Kostka, pleased by my interest. He took me back to the entrance hall and opened the door to a small but pleasant bathroom complete with tub, shower, and sink. “Seeing this nice place of yours gives me an idea,” I said. “What are you doing tomorrow afternoon and evening?” “Unfortunately I have to work late tomorrow,” he answered apologetically. “I won’t be back until seven or so. Are you free in the evening?” “Possibly,” I answered, “but do you think you could lend me the place for the afternoon?”
My question surprised him, but he replied immediately (as if worried I might think him unwilling), “I’d be only too glad to share it with you.” Then, deliberately trying not to pry into my plans, he added, “And if you need a place to sleep tonight, you’re welcome to stay here. I won’t be back until morning. No, not even then. I’ll be going straight to the hospital.” “No, there’s no need. I have a room at the hotel. The thing is, it isn’t very pleasant, and tomorrow afternoon I need a pleasant atmosphere. Not just for myself, of course.” “Of course,” said Kostka, lowering his eyes, “I thought as much.” He paused, then added, “I’m glad to be able to do you a favor.” And after another pause: “Providing it really is a favor.”
Then we sat down at the table (Kostka had made coffee) and had a short chat (I tested the divan and found to my delight that it was firm and neither sagged nor creaked). Before long Kostka announced that it was time for him to be getting back to the hospital and quickly...
