"Haven't you noticed I've been happy here, Tereza?' Tomas said. "Surgery was your mission,' she said. 'Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions.' There was no doubting that forthright voice of his. She recalled the scene she had witnessed earlier in the day when he had been repairing the pick-up and looked so old. She had reached her goal: she had always wanted him to be old. Again she thought of the rabbit she had pressed to her face in her childhood room. What does it mean to turn into a rabbit? It means losing all strength. It means that one is no stronger than the other any more. On they danced to the strains of the piano and violin. Tereza leaned her head on Tomas's shoulder. Just as she had when they flew together in the aeroplane through the storm clouds. She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness. They went back to their table. She danced twice more with the collective farm chairman and once with the young man, who was so drunk he fell with her on the dance floor. Then they all went upstairs and to their separate rooms. Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light, Tereza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.

Here he was, doing things he didn't care a damn about, and enjoying it. Now he understood what made people (people he always pitied) happy when they took a job without feeling the compulsion of an internal 'Es muss sein!' and forgot it the moment they left for home every evening. This was the first time he had felt that blissful indifference. Whenever anything went wrong on the operating table, he would be despondent and unable to sleep. He would even lose his taste for women. The 'Es muss sein!' of his profession had been like a vampire sucking his blood. Now he roamed the streets of Prague with brush and pole, feeling ten years younger.

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. We do not know how to lie. The Tell the truth!' imperative drummed into us by our mamas and papas functions so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman during an interrogation. It is simpler for us to argue with him or insult him (which makes no sense whatever) than to lie to his face (which is the only thing to do). When the man from the Ministry accused him of insincerity, Tomas nearly felt guilty; he had to surmount a moral barrier to be able to persevere in his lie: I suppose he did introduce himself,' he said, 'but because his name didn't ring a bell, I immediately forgot it.

Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers. Then everyone took to shouting at the Communists: You're the ones responsible for our country's misfortunes (it had grown poor and desolate), for its loss of independence (it had fallen into the hands of the Russians), for its judicial murders! And the accused responded: We didn't know! We were deceived! We were true believers! Deep in our hearts we are innocent! In the end, the dispute narrowed down to a single question: Did they really not know or were they merely making believe, Tomas followed the dispute closely (as did his ten milion tellow Czechs) and was of the opinion that while there had definitely been Communists who were not completely unaware of the atrocities (they could not have been ignorant of the horrors that had been perpetrated and were still bens perpetrated in post-revolutionary Russia), it was probabe. that the majority of the Comounists hasino in fact known of But, he said to himself, whether they knew or didnt kor is not the main issue; the main issue is whethet a man is innocent because he didn't know. Is a fool on the throne relieved of all responsibility merely because he is a fool? Let us concede that a Czech public prosecutor in the early fifties who called for the death of an innocent man was deceived by the Russian secret police and the government of his own country. But now that we all know the accusations to have been absurd and the executed to have been innocent, how can that selfsame public prosecutor defend his purity of heart by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, My conscience is clear! I didn't know! I was a believer! Isn't his I didn't know! I was a believer!' at the very root of his irreparable guilt? It was in this connection that Tomas recalled the tale of Oedipus: Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent. Unable to stand the sight of the misfortunes he had wrought by 'not knowing', he put out his eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes. When Tomas heard Communists shouting in defence of their inner purity, he said to himself, As a result of your 'not knowing, this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt? How can you stand the sight of what you've done? How is it you aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see? If you had eyes, you would have to put them out and wander away from Thebes! The analogy so pleased him that he often used it in conversation with friends, and his formulation grew increasingly precise and elegant.

For that edifice rested on the single column of her fidelity, and loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

CEMETERY Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby. For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.