Life Is Elsewhere Read Online Free PDF

whom he would see himself just as she saw herself in Jaromil.
    The engineer then told her (it was the first time since their wedding that he had reminded her of it) that he had never wanted to have a child with her; that he had been forced to give in regarding the one child, and that now it was her turn to give in; that if she wanted him to see himself in a child, he could assure her that he would see the most accurate image of himself in a child that had never been born.
    They lay side by side, silent for a moment, and then Mama began to sob and she sobbed all night, her husband not even touching her and saying barely a few soothing words that couldn't even get through the outer wave of her tears; she felt that she understood everything at last: the man she lived with had never loved her.
    The sadness into which she had sunk was the deepest of all the sorrows she had ever known. Fortunately the consolation her husband had refused her was provided by another creature: History. Three weeks after the night I've just described, her husband was called up for active duty in the military, and he took his gear and left for the country's border. War was about to break out at any moment, people were buying gas masks and preparing air-raid shelters in their cellars. And Mama clutched the misfortune of her country like a saving hand; she experienced it with emotion and spent long hours with her son colorfully describing the events for him.
    Then the Great Powers reached an agreement in Munich, and Jaromil's father came home from one of the fortifications now occupied by the German army. After that the whole family would sit downstairs in Grandpapa's room evening after evening to go over the various moves of History, which until recently they had believed to be dozing (maybe, since it was watchful, pretending to be asleep) but which had now suddenly leaped out of its lair and overshadowed everything with its great bulk. Oh, how good Mama felt to be protected by this shadow! Czechs were fleeing the Sudeten region en masse, Bohemia was left defenseless in the center of Europe like a peeled orange, and six months later, early in the morning, German tanks swept into the streets of Prague, and during that time Jaromil's mother was always close to the soldier who had been prevented from defending his homeland, completely forgetting that he was a man who had never loved her.
    But even during periods when History impetuously rages, everyday life sooner or later emerges from its shadow and the conjugal bed shows all its monumental triviality and astounding permanence. One evening, when Jaromil's father again put his hand on Mama's breast, she realized that the man who was touching her was the same man who had brought her down. She pushed his hand away, subtly reminding him of the harsh words he had said to her some time before.
    She didn't want to be spiteful; she only wanted to signify by this refusal that the great matters of nations cannot make us forget the modest matters of the heart; she wanted to give her husband the opportunity to rectify today the words of yesterday and to raise up the person he had brought down. She believed that the nation's tragedy had made him more sensitive, and she was ready to greet with gratitude even a furtive caress as a sign of repentance and the beginning of a new chapter in their love. Alas, the husband whose hand had just been pushed away from his wife's breast turned over and quickly fell asleep.
    After the great student demonstration in Prague, the Germans closed the Czech universities, and Mama waited in vain for her husband again to slip his hand under the blanket and put his hand on her breast. Grandpapa, having discovered that the pretty salesgirl in the cosmetics shop had been stealing from him for ten years, went into a rage and died of a stroke. Czech students were taken away in cattle cars to concentration camps, and Mama consulted a doctor, who deplored the bad state of her nerves and