Life Is Elsewhere Read Online Free PDF Page A

son never took his eyes off him, and Jaromil was proud.
    It seemed like a comical friendship: Jaromil always carefully dressed, the janitor's son threadbare; Jaromil with his homework carefully prepared, the janitor's son a poor student. All the same Jaromil was contented with this faithful companion at his side, for the janitor's son was extraordinarily strong; one winter day some classmates attacked them, but the attackers got more than they bargained for; though Jaromil was exhilarated by this triumph over superior numbers, the prestige of successful defense cannot compare with the prestige of attack:
    One day, as they were taking a walk through the suburb's vacant lots, they encountered a boy so clean and well-dressed that he could have been coming from some children's tea dance. "Mama's darling!" said the janitor's son, barring the way. They asked him mocking questions and were delighted by his fright. Finally the boy grew bold and tried to push them aside. "How dare you! You'll pay for this!" Jaromil shouted, cut to the quick by this insolent contact; the janitor's son took these words as a signal and hit the boy in the face.
    Intellect and physical force can sometimes complement each other remarkably. Didn't Byron feel great affection for the boxer Jackson, who trained the discriminating aristocrat in all kinds of sports? "Don't hit him, just hold him!" said Jaromil to his friend as he pulled up some stinging nettles; then they made the boy undress and flogged him with the nettles from head to toe. "Your mama'll be glad to see her darling little red crayfish," said Jaromil, experiencing a great feeling of fervent friendship for his companion and fervent hatred for all the mama's darlings of the world.
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    But exactly why did Jaromil remain an only child? Did Mama simply not want another one?
    On the contrary: she very much hoped to regain the blissful time of her first years as a mother, but her husband always found reasons to put her off. To be sure, the yearning she had for another child didn't lessen, but she no longer dared to be insistent, fearing the humiliation of further refusal.
    But the more she refrained from talking about her maternal yearning, the more she thought about it; she thought about it as an illicit, clandestine, and thus forbidden thing; the idea that her husband could make a child for her attracted her not only because of the child itself but because it had taken on a lasciviously ambiguous tone; "Come here and make me a little daughter," she would imagine saying to her husband, and the words seemed arousing to her.
    Late one evening, when the couple had come home a bit tipsy from the house of friends, Jaromil's father, having stretched out beside his wife and turned off the light (let me note that, ever since their wedding, he had always taken her blindly, letting his desire be guided not by sight but by touch), threw off the blanket, and coupled with her. The rarity of their erotic relations and the influence of wine made her give herself to him with a voluptuous sensuality she had not felt for a long time. The idea that they were making a child together again filled her mind, and when she sensed that her husband was approaching his spasm of pleasure she stopped controlling herself and began to shout ecstatically at him to abandon his usual caution, to stay inside her, to make her a child, to make her a pretty little daughter, and she clutched him so firmly and convulsively that he had to struggle to free himself so as to make sure that his wife's wish would not be granted.
    Then, as they lay exhausted side by side, Mama moved closer to him and, now whispering in his ear, again said that she wanted to have another child with him; no, she no longer wanted to insist on it, she only wanted to explain why a few moments ago she had shown her desire so abruptly and emphatically (and maybe improperly, she was willing to admit); she added that this time they would surely have a little daughter in