Symposium Page 4

  ACT FIVE

  In a Vortex of Noble Sentiments

  After the night came morning, and Flajsman went into the back garden to cut some roses. Then he took the streetcar to the hospital.

  Elisabet was in a private room in the emergency ward. Flajsman took a seat near her bed, put the flowers on the night table, and her hand to take her pulse.

  "Well now, are you feeling better?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Elisabet.

  And Flajsman said warmly: "You shouldn't have done such a silly thing, my girl."

  "You're right," said Elisabet, "but I fell asleep. I put on the coffee water, and I fell asleep like an idiot."

  Flajsman sat gaping at Elisabet, because he hadn't expected such nobility: Elisabet didn't want to burden him with remorse, she didn't want to burden him with her love, and therefore she was renouncing it!

  He stroked her face, and carried away by emotion, addressed her tenderly: "I know everything. You don't need to lie. But I do thank you for that lie."

  He understood that he wouldn't find such refinement, devotion, and consideration in any other woman, and a terrible desire to give in to this fit of rashness and ask her to become his wife swept over him. At the last moment, however, he regained his self-control (there's always enough time for a marriage proposal), and he said only this: "Elisabet, Elisabet, my girl. I brought these roses for you."

  Elisabet gaped at Flajsman and said: "For me?"

  "Yes, for you. Because I'm happy to be here with you. Because I'm happy that you exist at all, Elisabet. Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness. I thank you, dear Elisabet, I thank you for existing."

  Elisabet didn't understand any of it, but a foolish, blissful smile full of vague happiness and indistinct hope spread across her face.

  Then Flajsman got up, squeezed Elisabet's shoulder (as a sign of discreet, self-restrained love), turned around, and left.

  The Uncertainty of All Things

  "Our beautiful female colleague, who looks absolutely radiant with youth today, has perhaps actually offered the most correct interpretation of the events," said the chief physician to the woman doctor and to Havel, when all three of them met in the ward. "Elisabet was making some coffee and fell asleep. At least that's what she claims."

  "You see," said the woman doctor.

  "I don't see anything," objected the chief physician. "As a matter of fact no one knows anything about how it really was. The pot could have been on the range already. If Elisabet wanted to turn the gas on herself, why would she take off the pot?"

  "But she herself explains it that way!" argued the woman doctor.

  "After she performed for us and scared us, don't be surprised that she put the blame on a pot. Don't forget that in this country would-be suicides are sent to an asylum for treatment. No one wants to go there."

  "Do you like suicide stories, Chief?" asked the woman doctor.

  "For once I'd like Havel to be tortured by remorse," the chief physician said, laughing.

  Havel's Repentance

  Havel's bad conscience heard in the chief physician's insignificant words a reproach in code, by means of which the heavens were discreetly admonishing him, and he said: "The chief physician is right. This wasn't necessarily a suicide attempt, but it could have been.

  Besides, if I am to speak frankly, I wouldn't hold it against Elisabet. Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee you that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love, and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wash it were possible," Havel now said almost ardently, and it sounded like repentance. "But, Chief, I swear to you that I don't like myself at all.''

  "My dear gentlemen,'' said the woman doctor smiling, "if it will make the world more beautiful for you and will save your souls, please let's agree that Elisabet really did want to commit suicide. Agreed?"

  A Happy Ending

  "Nonsense," said the chief physician. "Quit it. Havel, don't pollute the beautiful morning air with your speeches! I'm fifteen years older than you. I am an unhappy man because I have a happy marriage, and consequently I cannot divorce. And I have an unhappy love, because the woman I love is unfortunately this doctor here! Yet all the same I like being alive!"

  "That's right, that's right," said the woman doctor to the chief physician with unusual tenderness, seizing him by the hand. "I too like being alive!"

  At this moment, Flajsman came up to the trio of doctors and said: "I've been to see Elisabet. She's an astonishingly honorable woman. She denied everything. She's taken it all on herself."

  "You see," said the chief physician, laughing. "And Havel here was pushing us all to suicide."

  "Of course," said the woman doctor. She went over to the window. "It will be a beautiful day again. The sky is so blue. What do you say about that, my dear Flajsman?"

  Only a moment before Flajsman had been almost reproaching himself for having acted cunningly when he had settled everything with a bunch of roses and some nice words, but now he was glad that he hadn't rushed into anything. He heard the woman doctor's signal, and he understood it perfectly. The thread of the romance was being resumed where it had been broken off yesterday, when the odor of gas had thwarted his rendezvous with the woman doctor. He couldn't help smiling at the woman doctor even in front of the jealous chief physician.

  So the story picks up from where it finished yesterday, but it seems to Flajsman that he is reentering it a far older and far stronger man. He has known a love as great as death. His chest swells, and it is the most beautiful and powerful swelling he has ever experienced. For what is inflating him so pleasurably is death: the death that has been given him as a present; splendid and comforting death.