painter. He continued sullenly dabbing at the canvas, several times giving her a baleful look. Then she tore the brush from the painter's hand, put it between her teeth, said a word to him she had never said to anyone, a vulgar, obscene word, repeating it in an undertone several times in a row until she saw that the painter's anger had turned into erotic desire.
No, she had never before behaved this way, and she was nervous and strained; but she had realized from the beginning of their intimacy that the painter demanded from her free and astonishing types of erotic expression, that he wanted her to feel entirely free with him, released from everything, from all convention, from all shame, from all inhibition; he liked to say to her: "I don't want anything except that you give me your freedom, the totality of your freedom!" and he wanted at every moment to be convinced of this freedom. Mama had more or less come to understand that such uninhibited behavior was probably something beautiful, but she was all the more afraid that she would never be capable of it. And the harder she tried to know her freedom, the more this freedom became an arduous task, an obligation, something she had to prepare for at home (to consider what word, what desire, what gesture she was going to surprise the painter with to show him her spontaneity), so that she sagged under the imperative of freedom as if under a heavy burden.
"The worst thing isn't that the world isn't free, but that people have unlearned their freedom," the painter told her, and this remark seemed deliberately directed at her belonging so completely to that old world that the painter maintained had to be totally rejected. "If we can't change the world, let's at least change our own lives and live them freely," he said. "If every life is unique, let's draw the conclusion; let's reject everything that isn't new." And then, quoting Rimbaud: "It is necessary to be absolutely modern," and she listened to him religiously, full of trust in his words and full of mistrust toward herself.
It occurred to her that the love the painter felt for her could only be the result of a misunderstanding, and she sometimes asked him why exactly he loved her. He would answer that he loved her as a prizefighter loves a fragile forget-me-not, as a singer loves silence, as an outlaw loves a village schoolteacher; he would tell her that he loved her as a butcher loves the timorous eyes of a heifer or lightning the idyll of rooftops; he would tell her that he loved her as a beloved woman stolen away from a stupid habitat.
She listened to him enraptured and went to see him whenever she could spare a moment. She felt like a tourist who has before her the most beautiful landscapes but is too worn out to perceive their beauty; she gained no joy from her love, but she knew that it was grand and beautiful and that she must not lose it.
And Jaromil? He was proud that the painter lent him books from his library (the painter had told him more than once that he had never lent anyone books, that Jaromil was the only one with that privilege), and since he had a lot of free time, he dreamily lingered over their pages. At that time, modern art had not yet become the property of the bourgeois multitude, retaining the spellbinding allure of a sect, that allure so easily understood by a child still at an age when one dreams of the romance of clans and brotherhoods. Jaromil felt that allure deeply, and he read the books in a way entirely different from that of Mama, who read them from A to Z like textbooks on which she would be examined. Jaromil, who ran no risk of being examined, never really read the painter's books; he scanned them, strolled through them, leafed through them, lingered over a page, and stopped at one line of verse or another, unconcerned whether or not the poem as a whole had something to say to him. A single line of verse or a single paragraph of prose was enough to make him happy, not only because of
No, she had never before behaved this way, and she was nervous and strained; but she had realized from the beginning of their intimacy that the painter demanded from her free and astonishing types of erotic expression, that he wanted her to feel entirely free with him, released from everything, from all convention, from all shame, from all inhibition; he liked to say to her: "I don't want anything except that you give me your freedom, the totality of your freedom!" and he wanted at every moment to be convinced of this freedom. Mama had more or less come to understand that such uninhibited behavior was probably something beautiful, but she was all the more afraid that she would never be capable of it. And the harder she tried to know her freedom, the more this freedom became an arduous task, an obligation, something she had to prepare for at home (to consider what word, what desire, what gesture she was going to surprise the painter with to show him her spontaneity), so that she sagged under the imperative of freedom as if under a heavy burden.
"The worst thing isn't that the world isn't free, but that people have unlearned their freedom," the painter told her, and this remark seemed deliberately directed at her belonging so completely to that old world that the painter maintained had to be totally rejected. "If we can't change the world, let's at least change our own lives and live them freely," he said. "If every life is unique, let's draw the conclusion; let's reject everything that isn't new." And then, quoting Rimbaud: "It is necessary to be absolutely modern," and she listened to him religiously, full of trust in his words and full of mistrust toward herself.
It occurred to her that the love the painter felt for her could only be the result of a misunderstanding, and she sometimes asked him why exactly he loved her. He would answer that he loved her as a prizefighter loves a fragile forget-me-not, as a singer loves silence, as an outlaw loves a village schoolteacher; he would tell her that he loved her as a butcher loves the timorous eyes of a heifer or lightning the idyll of rooftops; he would tell her that he loved her as a beloved woman stolen away from a stupid habitat.
She listened to him enraptured and went to see him whenever she could spare a moment. She felt like a tourist who has before her the most beautiful landscapes but is too worn out to perceive their beauty; she gained no joy from her love, but she knew that it was grand and beautiful and that she must not lose it.
And Jaromil? He was proud that the painter lent him books from his library (the painter had told him more than once that he had never lent anyone books, that Jaromil was the only one with that privilege), and since he had a lot of free time, he dreamily lingered over their pages. At that time, modern art had not yet become the property of the bourgeois multitude, retaining the spellbinding allure of a sect, that allure so easily understood by a child still at an age when one dreams of the romance of clans and brotherhoods. Jaromil felt that allure deeply, and he read the books in a way entirely different from that of Mama, who read them from A to Z like textbooks on which she would be examined. Jaromil, who ran no risk of being examined, never really read the painter's books; he scanned them, strolled through them, leafed through them, lingered over a page, and stopped at one line of verse or another, unconcerned whether or not the poem as a whole had something to say to him. A single line of verse or a single paragraph of prose was enough to make him happy, not only because of
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