Funny Love -- Works Series by Milan Kundera

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Let the dead yield to the living. Their arguments did not anger him; on the contrary, in her opposition to his own pessimistic thoughts (was it not first and foremost against ugliness and vulgarity?), he recognized the woman he had once known. Thus, this person and their past romance filled his thoughts more and more. He only hoped for one thing: that nothing would break the favorable mood for conversation so conducive to melancholy (hence why he stroked her hand and called himself a fool). He could even talk to her about what he now considered important: their shared romance; because he believed that together, they had experienced something completely extraordinary that she was unaware of, and he was determined to find and express the right words for it. He couldn’t even remember how they met—she might have come to visit a group of university friends, but he still vividly remembered their first date at an unassuming Prague bar: in a small room decorated with red velvet, he sat opposite her, restless and silent, yet at the same time, her elegant gestures, which showed her affection, excited him. He tried to imagine (though he dared not hope to realize these dreams) what she would be like if he kissed her, undressed her, and had sex with her, but he couldn’t. Yes, it was strange: he had tried countless times to imagine her during sex, but in vain: her face remained the same, calm and gently smiling, and he couldn’t (not even with prolonged imagination) see the expression of pleasure in sex. She completely escaped his imagination. It was a state he would never experience again in his life: he felt as though he were confronting the unimaginable. He had just experienced a period too brief in his life (a heavenly period), when imagination had not yet been filled with experience, had not become routine. People knew and understood little at that time, and thus the unimaginable still existed; but if the unimaginable were about to turn into the real, people would panic and feel dizzy. After a few more meetings where he couldn’t make any decisions, he indeed felt dizzy. She then began to ask him in detail, with a very telling curiosity, about his student dorm in the university town, almost forcing him to invite her. That university town dorm—where his roommate, in exchange for a glass of rum, promised not to come back before midnight that night—had nothing in common with his apartment today: two iron beds, two chairs, a closet, a dazzling lamp without a shade, and utter chaos. He tidied the room, and at exactly seven (she was always on time, which was part of her elegance), she knocked on the door. It was September, and dusk was slowly settling in. They sat on the edge of one iron bed and began to hug. As it got darker and darker, he didn’t want to turn on the light, because he was happy that no one could see him. He hoped that the darkness would ease the awkwardness he always felt when he undressed in front of her (if he could at least undo a woman’s blouse, he would rush to undress in front of women out of embarrassment). But that time, before unbuttoning the first button of her short-sleeved shirt, he hesitated for a long time (he thought that the first movement of undressing must be an elegant and delicate one that only experienced men could make, and he feared revealing his inexperience), and so she stood up herself, smiled, and said to him, “Wouldn’t it be better if I took off this armor?” So she began to undress, but it was dark, and he could only see the shadows of her movements. He quickly took off his clothes, and only when they began (thanks to her patience) to have sex did he feel some confidence. He looked at her face, but in the darkness, her expression escaped him, and he couldn’t even make out her facial features. He regretted not turning on the light, but felt it was impossible to get up, walk to the door, and turn it on at this point; so he continued to strain his eyes in vain: he didn’t recognize her; he felt as though he were having sex with someone else—a fake, abstract, and impersonal person. Later, she sat on top of him (even then, he could only see her upright shadow), rocking her hips, panting softly, and saying something, but it was hard to tell if she was speaking to him or to herself. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, so he asked her what it was. She continued whispering, and even when he held her tightly again, he couldn’t understand what she was saying.