Don't be such a child, Tomas! said Tereza. It's ancient history, after all, you and your first wife. What's it to him? What's he got to do with it? Why hurt the boy just because you had bad taste when you were young?
Frankly, I have stage fright at the thought of meeting him. That's the main reason I haven't done anything about it. I don't know what's made me so headstrong and kept me from seeing him. Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.
Invite him, she said.
That afternoon she was on her way back from the cow sheds when she heard voices from the road. Coming closer, she saw Tomas's pickup. Tomas was bent over, changing a tire, while some of the men stood about looking on and waiting for him to finish.
She could not tear her eyes away from him: he looked like an old man. His hair had gone gray, and his lack of coordination was not that of a surgeon turned driver but of a man no longer young.
She recalled a recent talk with the chairman of the collective farm. He had told her that Tomas's pickup was in miserable condition. He said it as a joke, not a complaint, but she could tell he was concerned. Tomas knows the insides of the body better than the insides of an engine, he said with a laugh. He then confessed that he had made several visits to the authorities to request permission for Tomas to resume his medical practice, if only locally. He had learned that the police would never grant it.
She had stepped behind a tree trunk so that none of the men by the pickup could see her. Standing there observing him, she suffered a bout of self-recrimination: It was her fault that he had come back to Prague from Zurich, her fault that he had left Prague, and even here she could not leave him in peace, torturing him with her secret suspicions while Karenin lay dying.
She had always secretly reproached him for not loving her enough. Her own love she considered above reproach, while his seemed mere condescension.
Now she saw that she had been unfair: If she had really loved Tomas with a great love, she would have stuck it out with him abroad! Tomas had been happy there; a new life was opening for him! And she had left him! True, at the time she had convinced herself she was being magnanimous, giving him his freedom. But hadn't her magnanimity been merely an excuse? She knew all along that he would come home to her! She had summoned him farther and farther down after her like the nymphs who lured unsuspecting villagers to the marshes and left them there to drown. She had taken advantage of a night of stomach cramps to inveigle him into moving to the country! How cunning she could be! She had summoned him to follow her as if wishing to test him again and again, to test his love for her; she had summoned him persistently, and here he was, tired and gray, with stiffened fingers that would never again be capable of holding a scalpel.
Now they were in a place that led nowhere. Where could they go from here? They would never be allowed abroad. They would never find a way back to Prague: no one would give them work. They didn't even have a reason to move to another village.
Good God, had they had to cover all that distance just to make her believe he loved her?
At last Tomas succeeded in getting the tire back on. He climbed in behind the wheel, the men jumped in the back, and the engine roared.
She went home and drew a bath. Lying in the hot water, she kept telling herself that she had set a lifetime of her weaknesses against Tomas. We all have a tendency to consider strength the culprit and weakness the innocent victim. But now Tereza realized that in her case the opposite was true! Even her dreams, as if aware of the single weakness in a man otherwise strong, made a display of her suffering to him, thereby forcing him to retreat. Her weakness was aggressive and kept forcing him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed into the rabbit in her arms. She could not get that dream out of her mind.
She stood up from her bath and went to put on some nice clothes. She wanted to look her best to please him, make him happy.
Just as she buttoned the last button, in burst Tomas with the chairman of the collective farm and an unusually pale young farm worker.
Quick! shouted Tomas. Something strong to drink! Tereza ran out and came back with a bottle of slivovitz. She poured some into a liqueur glass, and the young man downed it in one gulp.
Then they told her what had happened. The man had dislocated his shoulder and started bellowing with pain. No one knew what to do, so they called Tomas, who with one jerk set it back in its socket.
After downing another glass of slivovitz, the man said to Tomas, Your wife's looking awfully pretty today.
You idiot, said the chairman. Tereza is always pretty.
I know she's always pretty, said the young man, but today she has such pretty clothes on, too. I've never seen you in that dress. Are you going out somewhere?
No, I'm not. I put it on for Tomas.
You lucky devil! said the chairman, laughing. My old woman wouldn't dream of dressing up just for me.
So that's why you go out walking with your pig instead of your wife, said the young man, and he started laughing, too.
How is Mefisto, anyway? asked Tomas. I haven't seen him for at least -he thought a bit- at least an hour.
He must be missing me, said the chairman.
Seeing you in that dress makes me want to dance, the young man said to Tereza. And turning to Tomas, he asked, Would you let me dance with her?
Let's all go and dance, said Tereza.
Would you come along? the young man asked Tomas.
Where do you plan to go? asked Tomas.
The young man named a nearby town where the hotel bar had a dance floor.
You come too, said the young man in an imperative tone of voice to the chairman of the collective farm, and because by then he had downed a third glass of slivovitz, he added, If Mefisto misses you so much, we'll take him along. Then we'll have both little pigs to show off. The women will come begging when they get an eyeful of those two together! And again he laughed and laughed.
If you're not ashamed of Mefisto, I'm all yours. And they piled into Tomas's pickup-Tomas behind the wheel, Tereza next to him, and the two men in the back with the half-empty bottle of slivovitz. Not until they had left the village behind did the chairman realize that they had forgotten Mefisto. He shouted up to Tomas to turn back.
Never mind, said the young man. One little pig will do the trick. That calmed the chairman down.
It was growing dark. The road started climbing in hairpin curves.
When they reached the town, they drove straight to the hotel. Tereza and Tomas had never been there before. They went downstairs to the basement, where they found the bar, the dance floor, and some tables. A man of about sixty was playing the piano, a woman of the same age the violin. The hits they played were forty years old. There were five or so couples out on the floor.
Nothing here for me, said the young man after surveying the situation, and immediately asked Tereza to dance.
The collective farm chairman sat down at an empty table with Tomas and ordered a bottle of wine.
I can't drink, Tomas reminded him. I'm driving.
Don't be silly, he said. We're staying the night. And he went off to the reception desk to book two rooms.
When Tereza came back from the dance floor with the young man, the chairman asked her to dance, and finally Tomas had a turn with her, too.
Tomas, she said to him out on the floor, everything bad that's happened in your life is my fault. It's my fault you ended up here, as low as you could possibly go.
Low? What are you talking about?
If we had stayed in Zurich, you'd still be a surgeon.
And you'd be a photographer.
That's a silly comparison to make, said Tereza. Your work meant everything to you; I don't care what I do, I can do anything, I haven't lost a thing; you've lost everything.