After waiting a while, Klima knocked on the door; a nurse came out and Klima dropped Dr. Skreta's name. In a moment the doctor arrived and handed Klima a form, asking him to fill it out and wait patiently a while longer.
Klima held the form against the wall and started to fill it out: name, date of birth, place of birth. Ruzena whispered her responses. Then he came to FATHER'S NAME, and he hesitated. It was horrifying to see this infamous title in black and white, and to put his name next to it.
Ruzena noticed that Klima's hand was trembling. That gave her great satisfaction: "Go on, write!" she said.
"What name should I put down?" Klima whispered.
She found him spineless and cowardly, and she was filled with contempt for him. He was afraid of everything, afraid of responsibility, afraid of his own signature on an official form.
"Come on! I think you know who the father is!" she said.
"I thought it wasn't important," said Klima.
She no longer cared about him, but deep down she was convinced that this spineless fellow was guilty of doing her harm; it delighted her to punish him: "If you're going to keep on lying, we're not going to get along." After he had written his name in the space, she added with a sigh: "Anyway, I still don't know what I'm going to do…"
"What?"
She looked at his terrified face: "Until they take it away from me, I can still change my mind."
8
She was sitting in an armchair with her legs extended on the table, and she was skimming the detective novel she had bought for all the dreary days in the spa town. But she could not concentrate because the situations and words of the evening before kept coming to mind. Everything had pleased her yesterday, particu-
larly she herself. At last she was what she had always wished to be: no longer the victim of male intentions but the author of her own adventure. She had definitively rejected the role of innocent ward which Jakub had made her play, and, on the contrary, she had remodeled him in accord with her own wishes.
She now felt elegant, independent, and bold. She looked at her legs up on the table, sheathed in tight white jeans, and when she heard a knock on the door she shouted cheerfully: "Come in, I'm waiting for you!
Jakub entered, looking distressed.
"Hello!" she said, keeping her legs on the table for a moment. Jakub seemed perplexed, and that pleased her. She got up, went over to him, and lightly kissed him on the cheek: "Will you stay a while?"
"No," said Jakub sadly. "This time I've come to say goodbye for good. I'm leaving very soon. I thought I'd take you to the baths one last time."
"Sure!" said Olga cheerfully. "Let's go for a walk."
9
Jakub was filled to overflowing with the image of the beautiful Mrs. Klima, and he needed to overcome a kind of aversion to come and say goodbye to Olga,
who the day before had left his soul uneasy and blemished. But not for anything would he let her see this. He enjoined himself to behave with extraordinary tact, that she must not suspect how little pleasure and joy their lovemaking had brought him, that her memory of him should remain unspoiled. He put on a serious air, uttered insignificant phrases in a melancholy tone, vaguely touched her hand and caressed her hair, and, when she looked into his eyes, tried to appear sad.
On the way she suggested that they stop for a glass of wine, but Jakub wanted to keep their last meeting, which he found difficult, as brief as possible. "Saying farewell hurts too much. I don't want to prolong it," he said.
In front of the thermal building he took both of her hands and looked into her eyes for a long while.
Olga said: "Jakub, it was very good of you to have come here. I spent a delightful evening yesterday. I'm glad that you've finally stopped playing papa and become Jakub. Yesterday was fantastic. Wasn't it fantastic?"
Jakub understood that he understood nothing. Did this sensitive girl see last evening's lovemaking simply as entertainment? Was she driven toward him by a sensuality free from all feelings? Did the pleasant memory of a single night of love outweigh for her the sadness of final separation?
He gave her a kiss. She wished him a pleasant journey and vanished through the building's grand entrance.
10
He had been pacing back and forth in front of the clinic building for two hours, and he was starting to lose patience. He kept reminding himself that he must not make a scene, but he felt that his self-control was waning.
He went inside. The spa was a small place, and everyone knew him. He asked the doorkeeper if he had seen Ruzena. The doorkeeper nodded and said that she had gone up in the elevator. Since the elevator only stopped at the fourth floor and all the lower floors were reached by stairs, Frantisek could narrow his suspicions to the two corridors on the top floor. In one were offices, in the other was the gynecology clinic. He tried the former first (it was deserted) and then entered the latter, with the unpleasant feeling that men were not allowed here. He saw a nurse he knew by sight. He asked her about Ruzena. She pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. The door was open, and some women and men stood waiting at the threshold. Frantisek went in and saw more women sitting, but neither Ruzena nor the trumpeter was there. "Did anybody see a young woman, a blonde?" A woman pointed to the office door: "They're inside." Frantisek looked up: MAMA, WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME? And on the other posters he saw the photographs of newborns and little boys urinating. He began to understand what was going on.
11
There was a long table in the room. Klima sat beside Ruzena, and facing them Dr. Skreta sat enthroned, flanked by two ample ladies.
Dr. Skreta lifted his eyes to the applicants and shook his head with disgust: "It makes me sick even to look at you. Do you know how much trouble we go to here to restore fertility to unfortunate women who can't have children? And then healthy, well-built young people like you of their own accord want to get rid of the most precious gift life can offer us. I warn you categorically that this committee is not here to encourage abortions but to regulate them."
The two women emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on giving his moral lesson for the benefit of the two applicants. Klima's heart was pounding. He guessed that the doctor's words were not addressed to him but to the two judges, who with all the strength of their maternal bellies hated young women who refused to give birth, yet he feared that Ruzena might allow herself to be swayed by this speech. Had she not told him a few minutes earlier that she still didn't know what she was going to do?
"What are you living for?" Dr. Skreta resumed. "Life without children is like a tree without leaves. If I had the power I would prohibit abortion. Aren't you distressed by the thought that our population is going down each year? Here in this country where mothers
and children are better protected than anywhere else in the world! In this country where no one has to fear for his future?"
The two women once again emitted grunts of approval, and Dr. Skreta went on: "The comrade is married and afraid of assuming all the consequences of an irresponsible sexual relationship. But you should have thought of that before, comrade!"
Dr. Skreta paused, and then he addressed Klima once more: "You have no children. Are you really unable to get a divorce for the sake of this fetus's future?"
"It's impossible," said Klima.
"I know," said Dr. Skreta with a sigh. "I've received a psychiatric report saying that Mrs. Klima suffers from suicidal tendencies. The birth of this child would endanger her life and destroy her home, and Nurse Ruzena would be a single mother. What can we do?" he said with another sigh, and then pushed the form toward one and then the other of the two women, each one sighing too as she signed her name in the proper space.