The JOKE Read Online Free PDF Page A

was my Achilles' heel, no woman can live without feelings, she wouldn't be a woman if she did, so why deny it? Since I didn't have love at home, I sought it elsewhere, not that I found any, but they laid into me at a public meeting, called me a hypocrite, trying to pillory others for breaking up marriages, trying to expel, dismiss, destroy, when I myself was unfaithful to my husband at every opportunity, that was how they put it at the meeting, but behind my back they were even more vicious, they said I was a nun in public and a whore in private, as if they couldn't see that the only reason I was so hard on others was that I knew what an unhappy marriage meant, it wasn't hate that made me do what I did, it was love, love of love, love of their house and home, love of their children, I wanted to help them, I too have a child, a home, and I tremble for them!
    Though maybe they're right, maybe I am just a bitter old witch and people should be free to do as they please and no one has the right to go sticking his nose into their private lives, maybe this world we've thought up is wrong and I really am a dirty commissar and won't mind my own business, but that's what I'm like and I can only act as I feel, it's too late now, I've always believed that man is one and indivisible and that only the petty bourgeois divides him hypocritically into public self and private self, such is my credo, I've always lived by it, and that time was no exception.
    As for my being bitter, I'm willing to admit I hate those young girls, those little bitches, so sure of themselves and their youth and so lacking in solidarity with older women, they'll be thirty some day, too, and thirty-five, and forty, and don't try to tell me she loved him, what does she know about love, she'll sleep with any man the first night, no inhibitions, no sense of shame, I'm mortified when they compare me to girls like her just because I, a married woman, have had a few affairs with other men, the difference is I was always looking for love, and if I made a mistake, if I didn't find it, I'd turn away in horror and look elsewhere, even though it would have been much simpler to forget my girlish dreams of love, forget them and cross the border into the realm of that monstrous freedom where shame, inhibitions, and morals have ceased to exist, that vile, monstrous freedom where everything is
    permitted, where deep inside all you need to understand is the throb of sex, that beast.
    And I know, too, that if I crossed that border, I would stop being myself, I'd be somebody else, I don't know who, and I'm terrified of that awful transformation, so I keep looking for love, desperately looking for love, a love I can embrace just as I am, with all my old dreams and ideals, because I don't want my life to split down the middle, I want it to remain whole from beginning to end, that's why I was so fascinated when I met you, Ludvik, oh Ludvik ...
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    It was really awfully funny the first time I went to his office, he didn't even make much of an impression on me, I got right down to business, telling him about my concept of the radio broadcast and explaining what information I needed from him for it, but when he started talking to me I suddenly felt confused, tongue-tied, inarticulate, and when he noticed how uncomfortable I was he immediately switched to more general topics, asked whether I was married, whether I had any children, where I spent my vacation, and he also told me how young I looked, how pretty, it was nice of him, he wanted to get me over my stage fright, when I think of all the braggarts I meet, never let you get a word in edgeways and can't hold a candle to Ludvik, Pavel would have talked about himself the whole time, but it was really funny, I spent a full hour with him and didn't know any more about his institute than when I came, back home I quickly put something down on paper, but it just wasn't right, maybe I was glad, it gave me an excuse to phone him and ask if he