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  Farewell Waltz

  Milan Kundera

  "It is hard to imagine anything more chilling and profound than Kundera’s apparent lightheartedness." – Elizabeth Pochoda

  IN this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central Euroepean spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich Amrican (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera’s novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this book was first published (in 1976) in France under the title La valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz), and later in thirty-four other countries. This beautiful new translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer’s works."Kundera remains faithful to this subtle, wily, devious talent for a fiction of 'erotic possibilities. ”New York Times Book Review"Farewell Waltz shocks. Black humor. Farcical ferocity. Admirably tender portraits of women." “Le Point (Paris)" After Farewell Waltz there cannot be any doubt. Kundera is a master of contemporary literature. This novel is both an example of virtuosity and a descent into the human soul."

  Milan Kundera

  Farewell Waltz

  A New English Translation from the French by Aaron Asher

  (Originally published in English as 'The Farewell Party')

  Copyright © 1973, 1998 by Milan Kundera. ISBN: 0060997001

  First Day

  1

  Autumn has arrived and the trees are turning yellow, red, brown; the small spa town in its pretty valley seems to be surrounded by flames. Under the colonnades women come and go to lean over the mineral springs. These are women unable to bear children and hoping to gain fertility from the thermal waters.

  Men are far fewer among those taking the waters here, though some are to be seen, for beyond their gynecological virtues the waters are apparently good for the heart. Even so, for every male there are nine female patients, and this infuriates the unmarried young nurse who is in charge of the pool used by the women being treated for infertility.

  Ruzena was born in the town, and her father and mother still live there. Would she ever escape from this place, from this dreadful multitude of women?

  It is Monday, toward the end of her work shift. Only a few more overweight women to wrap in sheets, put to bed, dry the faces of, and smile at.

  "Are you going to make that phone call or not?" two of her colleagues keep asking her; one is fortyish and buxom, the other younger and thin.

  "Why wouldn't I?" says Ruzena.

  "Then do it! Don't be afraid!" the fortyish one responds, leading her behind the changing-room cubicles to where the nurses have their wardrobe, table, and telephone.

  "You should call him at home," the thin one remarks wickedly, and all three giggle.

  "The theater number is the one I know," says Ruzena when the laughter has subsided.

  2

  It was an awful conversation. As soon as he heard Ruzena's voice on the phone he was terrified.

  Women had always frightened him, even if none of them had ever believed him when he announced this, considering it a flirtatious joke.

  "How are you?" he asked.

  "Not very well," she replied.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I have to talk to you," she said pathetically.

  It was exactly the pathetic tone he had been anticipating with terror for years.

  "What?" he said in a choked voice.

  She repeated: "I absolutely have to talk to you."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Something that affects both of us."

  He was unable to speak. After a moment he repeated: "What's the matter?"

  "I'm six weeks late."

  Trying hard to control himself, he said: "It's probably nothing. That sometimes happens, and it doesn't mean anything."

  "No, this time it's definite."

  "It's not possible. It's absolutely impossible. Anyway, it can't be my fault."

  She was upset. "What do you take me for, if you please!"

  He was afraid of offending her because he was suddenly afraid of everything: "No, I'm not trying to insult you, that's stupid, why would I want to insult you, I'm only saying that it couldn't have happened with me, that you've got nothing to worry about, that it's absolutely impossible, physiologically impossible."

  "In that case it's no use talking," she said, increasingly upset. "Pardon me for disturbing you."

  He worried she might hang up on him. "No, no, not at all. You were quite right to phone me! I'll be glad to help you, that's certain. Everything can certainly be arranged."

  "What do you mean, 'arranged'?"

  He was flustered. He didn't dare call the thing by its real name: "Well… you know… arranged."

  "I know what you're trying to say, but don't count on it! Forget that idea. I'd never do it, even if I have to ruin my life.''

  Again he was paralyzed by fear, but this time he

  timidly took the offensive: "Why did you phone me, if you don't want me to talk? Do you want to discuss it with me, or have you already made up your mind?"

  "I want to discuss it with you."

  "I'll come to see you."

  "When?"

  "I'll let you know."

  "All right."

  "Well, see you soon."

  "See you soon."

  He hung up and returned to his band in the small auditorium.

  "Gentlemen, the rehearsal's over," he said. "I can't do any more right now."

  3

  When she hung up the receiver she was flushed with anger. The way Klima had taken the news offended her. For that matter, she had been offended for quite a while.

  It is two months since they met, one evening when the famous trumpeter was appearing at the spa with his band. After the concert there had been a party to which she had been invited. The trumpeter singled her out and spent the night with her.

  Since then he had shown no sign of life. She sent him two postcards with her greetings, to which there was no response. Once, when she was visiting the capital, she phoned him at the theater where, she had learned, he rehearsed with his band. The fellow who answered asked for her name and then told her he would go look for Klima. When he returned a few moments later, he told her the rehearsal was over and the trumpeter had left. She wondered if this was only a way of getting rid of her, and she resented it all the more keenly because she was already afraid she was pregnant.

  "He claims it's physiologically impossible! That's marvelous-physiologically impossible! I wonder what he'll say when the little one turns up!"

  Her two colleagues fervently agreed with her. When she told them, the morning after in the steam-saturated treatment room, about her indescribable night with the famous man, the trumpeter had immediately become the property of all her colleagues. His phantom accompanied them in the nurses' room, and when his name was mentioned, they giggled up their sleeves as though he were someone they knew intimately. And when they learned that Ruzena was pregnant they were overcome by an odd joy, because now he was physically with them deep inside Ruzena's womb.

  The fortyish nurse patted her on the shoulder: "Come, come, dear, calm yourself! I've got something for you." She opened a creased, grubby copy of an illustrated magazine: "Look at this!"

  The three of them gaze
d at a photograph of a young,

  pretty brunette standing onstage with a microphone at her lips.

  Ruzena tried to make out her destiny in these few square centimeters.

  "I didn't know she was so young," she said, filled with apprehension.

  "Come on!" said the fortyish nurse, smiling. "This photo is ten years old. They're both the same age. That woman can't begin to match you!"

  4

  During the phone conversation with Ruzena, Klima recalled that he had been anticipating such terrifying news for a long time. Of course he had no reasonable grounds for thinking he had impregnated Ruzena after that fateful party (on the contrary, he was certain he was being unjustly accused), but he had been anticipating news of this kind for many years now, long before he ever met Ruzena.

  He was twenty-one when an infatuated blonde thought of feigning pregnancy in order to force him into marriage. In those harrowing weeks he suffered stomach cramps and finally fell ill. Ever since, he had known that pregnancy was a blow that could strike anywhere at any time, a blow against which there is

  no lightning rod and that announces itself by a pathetic tone of voice on the telephone (yes, the blonde too had initially given him the disastrous news on the phone). That event of his youth always made him approach women with a feeling of anxiety (though with much zeal), and after each amorous rendezvous he was fearful of disastrous consequences. He reasoned that his pathological cautiousness kept the probability of disaster down to barely a thousandth of one percent, but even that thousandth managed to terrify him.

  Once, tempted by a free evening, he phoned a young woman he had not seen for two months. When she recognized his voice she cried out: "My God, it's you! I've been waiting and waiting for you to call! I really needed you to call me!" and she said this so insistently, so pathetically, that the familiar anxiety clutched Klima's heart, and he felt in his whole being that the dreaded moment had now arrived. And because he wanted to confront the truth as quickly as possible, he went on the attack: "Why are you saying that in such a tragic tone of voice?" "Mama died yesterday," the young woman replied, and he was relieved, though he knew that someday he would not escape the misfortune he dreaded.

  5

  "All right, what's this all about?" said the drummer, and Klima finally returned to his senses. He looked around at the musicians' worried faces and told them what had happened to him. They laid down their instruments and tried to help him with advice.

  The first piece of advice was radical: it came from the eighteen-year-old guitarist, who declared that the kind of woman who had just phoned their leader and trumpeter has to be brushed off. "Tell her she can do whatever she wants. The brat isn't yours, it's got nothing to do with you. If she keeps insisting, a blood test will show who the father is."

  Klima pointed out that blood tests mostly prove nothing, and therefore the woman's accusation prevails.

  The guitarist replied that there wouldn't have to be any blood test. When you fend off a young woman, she's very careful to avoid taking useless steps, and when she realizes that the man she accused is no pushover, she gets rid of the kid at her own expense. "And even if she ends up having it, we'll all go, all of us in the band, and testify in court that we'd all been to bed with her. Let them try to find out which one of us is the father!"

  But Klima responded: "I'm sure you'd do that for me. But by then I'd already have gone out of my mind with uncertainty and fear. In this kind of thing I'm the

  biggest coward, and what I need most of all is certainty."

  They all agreed with this. The guitarist's proposal was good in principle, but it was not for everyone. It was especially not advisable for a man with weak nerves. Nor was it recommended for a famous, rich man whom women considered worth the trouble of rushing into a very risky venture. So the band shifted to the opinion that, instead of brushing off the young woman, he should persuade her to have an abortion. But what arguments should he use? They considered three basic possibilities:

  The first method was to appeal to the young woman's compassionate heart: Klima would talk to the nurse as to his closest friend; he would confide in her sincerely; he would tell her his wife was seriously ill and would die if she were to learn that her husband had a child by another woman; that both from the moral point of view and because of the state of his nerves, he would be unable to bear such a situation; and he would beg the nurse for mercy.

  This method came up against an objection in principle. You could not base an entire strategy on something as dubious, as uncertain, as the nurse's kindliness. Unless she had a really good and compassionate heart, the maneuver would backfire. She would be all the more aggressive because of the insult of the elected father of her child showing such excessive regard for another woman.

  A second method was to appeal to the young

  woman's good sense: Klima would try to explain to her that he was not and never could be certain the child was really his. He had met the nurse only that one time and knew absolutely nothing about her. He had no idea what other men she was seeing. No, no, he didn't suspect her of deliberately deceiving him, but surely she couldn't insist she wasn't seeing other men! And if she were to insist on this, how could Klima be sure she was telling the truth? And would it make sense to bring into the world a child whose father would always be in doubt about its paternity? Could Klima leave his wife for a child he didn't even know was his? And did Ruzena want a child who would never be allowed to know its father?

  This method also proved to be dubious: the bass player (the oldest man in the group) pointed out that it was even more naive to count on the young woman's good sense than to rely on her compassion. The logic of the argument would be wide of the mark, while the young woman's heart would be shattered by her beloved's refusal to believe her. This would incite her, with tearful determination, to persist still more obstinately in her assertions and her schemes.

  There remained the third method: Klima could swear to the expectant mother that he had loved her once and loved her still. He should not make the slightest allusion to the chance that it was another man's child. On the contrary, Klima would bathe her in trust, tenderness, and love. He would promise her everything, including a divorce from his wife. He would

  depict their marvelous future together. And in behalf of that future he would then urge her to terminate the pregnancy. He would explain that this was not yet the time to have a child, that its birth would deprive them of the first, most beautiful years of their love.

  This line of argument lacked what the preceding ones had in abundance: logic. How could Klima be so smitten with the nurse if he had been avoiding her for two months? But the bass player maintained that lovers always behaved illogically and that there was nothing simpler than explaining this, one way or another, to the young woman. Eventually they all agreed that the third method was probably the most satisfactory, for it would appeal to the young woman's love for him, the only relative certainty in the situation.

  6

  They left the theater and scattered at the street corner, but the guitarist accompanied Klima to his door. He was the only one to disapprove of the proposed plan. This plan seemed to him unworthy of the bandleader he revered: "When you go to see a woman, arm yourself with a whip!" said he, quoting the one sentence he knew of Nietzsche's collected works.

  "My boy," Klima lamented, "she's the one with the whip."

  The guitarist offered to go with Klima to the spa, lure the young woman out onto the road, and run her over: "Nobody could prove she didn't throw herself under my wheels."

  The guitarist, the youngest musician in the group, greatly loved Klima, who was touched by his words: "That's very kind of you," he said to him.

  The guitarist set out his plan in detail and with burning cheeks.

  "That's very kind, but it's not possible," said Klima.

  "Why are you hesitating? She's a slut!"

  "You're really very kind, but it's not possible," said Klima, taking leave of the guitarist
.

  7

  When he found himself alone, he thought about the young man's proposal and the reasons that had led him to reject it. It was not that he was more virtuous than the guitarist, but that he was more fearful. The fear of being accused as an accessory to murder was not less than the fear of being declared a father. He saw Ruzena run over by the car, he saw Ruzena stretched out on the road in a pool of blood, and he

  had a momentary feeling of relief that filled him with joy. But he knew it was useless to indulge in illusions. And he had a serious concern now. He thought of his wife. My God, tomorrow is her birthday!

  It was a few minutes before six, and the shops would close at six exactly. He rushed into a florist's to buy a gigantic bouquet of roses. What a difficult celebration he expected! He would have to pretend to be near her in heart and mind, would have to give himself over to her, show tenderness to her, amuse her, laugh with her, and never for a moment stop thinking about a faraway belly. He would make an effort to utter affectionate words, but his mind would be far away, imprisoned in the dark cell of a stranger's womb.

  He realized that it would be too much for him to spend this birthday at home, and he decided no longer to delay going to see Ruzena.

  But this was not an agreeable prospect either. The mountain spa seemed like a desert to him. He knew no one there. Except perhaps for that American taking the waters, who, behaving like a rich bourgeois of the old days, had invited the whole group to his hotel suite after the concert. He had plied them with excellent drink and with women chosen from among the resort's staff, so that he was indirectly responsible for what happened afterward between Ruzena and Klima. Ah, if only that man, who had shown him such unreserved warmth, were still at the spa! Klima clung to his image as if to a last hope, for in moments such as those he was about to experience a man needs nothing