The JOKE (32 page)

The message of my defeat had been trailing me for fifteen years, and now it had caught up with me. Kostka the eccentric (whom I'd never taken more than half seriously) had meant more to her, had done more

for her, known more about her, and loved her
better
(not more, because the strength of my love could scarcely have been greater): to him she had confided everything—to me nothing; he had made her happy—I had made her unhappy; he had known her physically

—I had not. And yet all I needed in order to possess the body I so desperately desired was one simple thing: to understand her, to know her, to love her not only for what she was to me but for everything in her that did not immediately concern me, for what she was in and to herself. I had been unable to do that and so had hurt myself and her. A wave of anger washed over me, anger against myself, at my age at the time, that stupid
lyrical age,
when a man is too great a riddle to himself to be interested in the riddles outside himself and when other people (no matter how dear) are mere walking mirrors in which he is amazed to find his own emotions, his own worth. Yes, for fifteen years I'd thought of Lucie only as the mirror that preserved my image of those days!

Again I saw the bleak room with its single bed and the streetlamp shining in through the grimy glass, again I saw Lucie's ferocious resistance. It was all like a bad joke: I had thought she was a virgin, and she had fought me precisely because she was not a virgin and was probably afraid of the moment when I would discover the truth. Or there is another explanation (which corresponds to Kostka's view of Lucie): her initial sexual experiences had marked her deeply and had deprived the act of love of the meanings most people give it; they had emptied it entirely of tenderness and affection; for Lucie, the body was something ugly and love was something incorporeal; the soul engaged the body in a silent, dogged war.

This interpretation (so melodramatic and yet so plausible) reminded me of the painful rupture (I had known it well in many different forms) between the soul and the body, and recalled (because here the painful was continually shouted down by the ridiculous) a story that made me laugh: a good friend of mine, a woman of rather flexible morals (of which I had myself taken advantage), became engaged to a physicist and firmly resolved, this time, really to fall in
love;
but in order to feel it as a
real
love (distinct from the dozens of love affairs she'd had), she refused her fiance any physical contact until the wedding night, she

walked with him under the trees in the evening, she squeezed his hand, she kissed him under the streetlamps, and so allowed her soul (unburdened by the body) to soar into the clouds and give itself up to vertigo. A month after the wedding she divorced him, complaining bitterly that he had failed to match her great emotion because he had turned out to be a bad, nearly impotent lover.

The drunken plaint of the drawn-out Moravian song in the distance now mingled with the grotesque aftertaste of this story, with the dusty emptiness of the town, and with my sadness, to which was joined the hunger clamoring in my entrails. By now I was only a few steps from the milk bar; I tried the door, but it was shut. A passerby told me: 'They're all at the festival today." "At the Ride of the Kings?" "Right. They've got a stand there."

I cursed, but there was nothing I could do about it; I set off in the direction of the song.

My hunger pangs were leading me to the folklore festival that I had fled like the plague.

2

Fatigue. Fatigue since early morning. As if I'd been carousing all night. Yet I slept all night. Except that my sleep is only a skimmed milk of sleep. I had to struggle to suppress my yawns at breakfast. Soon people began drifting in. Vladimir's friends and some onlookers. Then a boy from the farm cooperative brought the horse for Vladimir to our yard. In the midst of it all appeared Kalasek, the cultural adviser of the District National Committee. For two years now we've been at loggerheads. He was dressed in black and had a ceremonial air. With him was an elegant-looking woman. A Prague radio reporter. I was going to be their guide, she said. The lady wanted to record interviews for a program about the Ride of the Kings.

Leave me out of it! I'm not going to play the fool. The radio reporter went on about how thrilled she was to meet me in person, and of course Kalasek started in too. He said it was my political duty to go. The buffoon. I almost had my way. I told them my son was to be king today and that I wanted to be there while he got ready. But Vlasta stabbed me in the back. She said it was her job to get him ready. I should go and speak on the radio.

So in the end I went obediently. The radio lady was working out of a room in the local District Committee building. Besides her tape recorder she had brought along a young man to run errands for her. She didn't stop talking for a minute, except to laugh. Finally she put the microphone to her mouth and asked Kalasek the first question.

Kalasek gave a little cough and began. The cultivation of folk art was an integral part of Communist education. The District Committee was fully aware. That was why it fully supported. It wished them every success and fully shared. It thanked all those who took part. The

enthusiastic organizers and the enthusiastic schoolchildren, whom it fully.

Fatigue. Fatigue. Always the same words. Fifteen years of hearing the same old words.

And now to hear them from Kalasek, who didn't give a damn about folk art. For him folk art is only a means. A means of boasting of a new activity. A means of fulfilling a directive. A means of boosting his prestige. He hadn't lifted a finger for the Ride of the Kings and had cut our budget down to the bone. Yet he is the one who will get the credit.

He is the master of District culture. A former shop clerk who doesn't know a violin from a guitar.

The radio lady put the microphone to her lips. Was I satisfied with this year's Ride of the Kings? I felt like laughing in her face: the Ride hadn't even started yet! But she laughed at me instead: I was such an experienced folk expert that surely I knew how it would turn out. That's the way they are, they know everything in advance. The unfolding of things to come is already known to them. The future has already happened, and for them, it will just go on repeating itself.

I had an impulse to tell her exactly what I thought. That the Ride would be worse than in past years. That every year folk art loses more supporters. That the authorities had lost interest as well. That it was nearly dead. The fact that something like folk music was constantly on the radio should not delude us. What all those folk instrument bands and folk song and dance ensembles play is more like opera or operetta or light music, not folk music. A folk instrument band with a conductor, a score, and music stands! Almost symphonic orchestration! What bastardization! The music that serves you, those bands and ensembles, my dear radio reporter, is just old-style romanticism with borrowed folk melodies! Real folk art is dead, dear lady, dead.

That is what I would have liked to disgorge into the microphone, but in the end I said something completely different. The Ride of the Kings was splendid. The vigor of folk art. The blaze of color. I fully share. I thank everyone who has taken part. The enthusiastic organizers and schoolchildren, whom I fully.

I felt ashamed for talking the way they wanted me to. Am I such a coward? Or so well trained? Or so fatigued?

I was glad to be done with it and made a hasty exit. I was anxious to get home. There were a lot of people in the yard, some just standing there, others decorating the horse with bows and ribbons. I wanted to see Vladimir getting ready. I went into the house, but the door to the living room, where they were dressing him, was locked. I knocked and called out. Vlasta answered from inside. You shouldn't be here, the king is being robed. Damn it, I said, why shouldn't I be there? It's against the tradition, Vlasta's voice answered. I don't see how it's against the tradition for a father to be present while the king is being robed, but I didn't say so. I heard the concern in her voice and I was pleased. I was pleased that they were concerned with my world. My poor and orphaned world.

So I went back into the yard and chatted with the people who were decorating the horse.

It was a heavy draft horse lent by the cooperative farm. Patient and placid.

Then I heard a hubbub of voices coming over the closed gate from the street. There was shouting and banging. My moment had come. I was excited. I opened the gate and went out. The Ride of the Kings was marshaled in front of our house. Horses adorned with ribbons and streamers. Young riders in colorful costumes. It was just like twenty years ago. Like twenty years ago, when they came for me. When they asked my father to give them his son to be king.

Near the gate were two pages on horseback, disguised as women, with sabers in hand.

They were waiting for Vladimir, to accompany and guard him all day. Now a young man rode out from the band of riders, halted his horse right in front of me, and recited:
Hear ye, hear ye, one and all! Noble papa, suffer us in great array To lead your son as
king away!

Then he promised that their king would be well guarded. That they would conduct him safely through hostile armies. That they would not deliver him up into enemy hands. That they were ready for the fray. Hear ye, hear ye!

I looked back. In the shadow of our gateway sat a figure on a beribboned horse, in woman's costume, with puckered sleeves and colored ribbons across the face. The king.

Vladimir. Suddenly I forgot my fatigue and dejection and felt at ease. The old king was sending the young one out into the world. I went over to him. I was standing right by the horse and on tiptoe so that my mouth was as near as possible to his hidden face. "Good luck, Vladimir," I whispered to him. He didn't reply. He didn't move. And Vlasta told me with a smile: He's not allowed to answer you. He must not say a word till evening.

3

It took me barely a quarter of an hour to reach the village (in my youth it had been separated from the town by a belt of fields, but now the two were virtually merged); the singing I'd heard from the town (there it had sounded distant and nostalgic) here resounded in full force from loudspeakers attached to houses and telephone poles (eternal dupe, I'd allowed myself a short time ago to be saddened by the melancholy and apparent tipsiness of the distant voice, and it turned out to be only a recorded singer on the sound equipment and the two scratchy discs provided by the District Committee!); just outside the village they had erected a triumphal arch with a large paper banner bearing the inscription welcome in red ornamental letters; the crowd was quite dense, and while most wore everyday clothes, here and there a few old men were in folk costume: high boots, white linen trousers, and embroidered shirts. Here the street widened into the village green: between the road and the nearest row of houses there was a wide swath of grass dotted with trees, and among them a few stands had been set up (for today's festival) to sell beer, soft drinks, peanuts, chocolate, gingerbread, sausages with mustard, and waffles; the town milk bar's stand had milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and sour cream; none of the stands served hard liquor, but nearly everyone seemed to me drunk; people were crowding around the stands, getting in each other's way, gaping vacantly; now and then someone would break into loud song, but this was always a false start (accompanied by a drunken raising of the hand), two or three bars of a song immediately drowned out by the din of the crowd and the invincible blast of the recorded folk song from the loudspeakers.

The green was littered (though it was still early and the Ride had not yet begun) with paper beer cups and paper plates smeared with mustard.

With its reek of abstinence, the milk and yogurt stand repelled people; I bought a cup of milk and a roll without having to wait, and moved off to a less crowded spot to sip my milk in peace. Just then I heard a commotion coming from the other end of the green: the Ride of the Kings had arrived.

Small hats with cockerel feathers, white shirts with full pleated sleeves, blue vests with tufts of red wool, and colored paper ribbons fluttering from the horses' bodies filled the entire area; and immediately the buzz of people and the song from the loudspeakers were joined by new sounds: the whinnying of horses and the call of horsemen:
Hear ye, hear ye, one and all, From hill and dak, from near and far, Hear, hear what
comes to be this Whitsun. Our pauper king, a righteous one, Has lost to thieves a
thousand head, Cattle from his empty castle led....

Ear and eye alike were assaulted by confusion, everything clashed: the folklore from the loudspeakers with the folklore on horseback; the colors of the costumes and horses with the ugly browns and grays of the badly cut clothes of the spectators; the laborious spontaneity of the costumed riders with the laborious officiousness of the organizers, running around in their red armbands among the horses and people, trying to keep the chaos within bounds, which was by no means a simple task, not only because of the unruliness of the spectators (luckily not too numerous) but also because the road hadn't been closed to traffic, the organizers were merely standing at either end of the troop of riders and signaling the cars to slow down; so cars and trucks and roaring motorcycles squeezed their way between the horses, making them uneasy and the riders unsure.

To be frank, in trying so stubbornly to avoid this (and any other) folklore event I had dreaded something quite different from what I now saw. I had expected the lack of taste, expected the blend of real folk

art and kitsch, expected opening speeches by cretinous orators, yes, I had expected the worst bombast and falsity, but I hadn't expected this sad, almost moving
forlornness;
it pervaded everything: the handful of stands, the scanty but thoroughly unruly and inattentive spectators, the battle between the everyday traffic and the anachronistic festival, the frightened horses, the loudspeakers inertly bellowing their two unchanging folk songs and completely overpowering (along with the roar of the motorcycles) the young horsemen as they shouted their lines, the veins standing out on their necks.