laughable loves by Milan Kundera

Author:Milan Kundera [Kundera, Milan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-22T18:30:00+00:00

Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

Through the night the fragrance floated, and Flajsman wondered: Would anyone ever love him as much as this ugly woman does? But what is beauty or ugliness compared with love? What is the ugliness of a face compared with an emotion in whose greatness the absolute itself is mirrored?

(The absolute? Yes. This was a young man only recently cast out into the adult world, which is full of uncertainties. However much he ran after girls, above all he was seeking a comforting, boundless, redeeming embrace, which would save him from the horrifying relativity of the freshly discovered world.)

ACT FOUR

The Woman Doctor's Return

Dr. Havel had been lying on the couch for a while, covered with a light woolen blanket, when he heard a tapping on the window. In the moonlight he caught sight of the woman doctor's face. He opened the window and asked: "What's the matter?"

"Let me in!" said the woman doctor, and she hurried toward the building entrance.

Havel buttoned his shirt, heaved a sigh, and left the room.

When he unlocked the pavilion door, the woman doctor without so much as an explanation rushed into the staff room, and only when she had seated herself in an armchair opposite Havel did she begin to explain that she hadn't been able to go home; only now, she said, did she realize how upset she was. She would be unable to sleep, and she asked Havel to talk to her for a bit, so she could calm down.

Havel didn't believe a word of what the woman doctor was telling him, and he was ungentlemanly enough (or careless) to let her see this.

That is why the woman doctor said: "Of course you don't believe me, because you're convinced that I've only come to sleep with you."

The doctor made a gesture of denial, but the woman doctor continued: "You're a conceited Don Juan! Naturally, all the women who set eyes on you think of nothing but that. And you, bored and disgusted, carry out your sad mission."

Once again Havel made a gesture of denial, but the woman doctor, having lit a cigarette and nonchalantly exhaled smoke, continued: "My poor Don Juan, don't worry. I haven't come to bother you. You're not at all like death. That is just our dear chief physician's little joke. You don't take everything, because not every woman would allow you to take her. I guarantee that I, for example, am absolutely immune to you."

"Did you come to tell me that?"

"Perhaps. I came to comfort you, by telling you that you are not like death. That I wouldn't let myself be taken."

Havel's Morality

"It's nice of you," said Havel. "It's nice that you wouldn't let yourself be taken and that you came to tell me that. I'm really not like death. Not only won't I take Elisabet, but I wouldn't even take you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.