Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera Page A

neck was magnificently withered, that the skin around her eyes was magnificently wrinkled, and that two magnificently deep wrinkles made furrows at her mouth; he was happy to have so many years of life in his arms, happy that a high school student could have in his arms a life that was almost completed. He was proud to be dancing with her, and he thought that the blond girl could come in any minute and see him high above her, as if the age of his partner were a towering mountain and the youth of the adolescent girl stood at the foot of this mountain like a lowly blade of grass.
    And so it was: the dining room began to fill with boys and girls, who had changed their ski pants for skirts, and they were sitting down at the free tables so that a large audience now surrounded Xavier as he danced with the woman in dark red; he noticed the blond girl, and he was satisfied; she was dressed with much greater care than the others; she was wearing a pretty dress totally inappropriate to the grubby room, a thin white dress in which she looked even more frail and vulnerable. Xavier knew that she had put it on for his sake, and he firmly decided that he must not lose her, that he must live this evening with her and for her.
     
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    He told the woman in the dark red sweater that he didn't want to dance anymore; that he was disgusted by those oafs staring at them from behind their beer steins. The woman agreed with a laugh; and even though the band was still playing and they were alone on the dance floor, they stopped dancing (everyone could see this) and went off hand in hand, passing along the tables and out onto the snow-covered plain.
    They felt the icy air, and Xavier thought that the frail, sickly girl in the white dress would soon come out to join them in the cold. He seized the woman in dark red by the arm and led her across the sparkling plain, and he thought of himself as the legendary Pied Piper and of the woman beside him as the fife he was playing.
    In a moment the door of the restaurant opened, and the blond girl emerged. She was even more frail than she had been before, her white dress merging with the snow so that it was like snow moving through snow. Xavier pressed the woman in the dark red sweater— who was warmly clothed and magnificently old—to himself, he kissed her, put his hands under the sweater, and out of the corner of his eye watched the snowlike girl gazing at them in torment.
    Then he tipped the old woman over onto the snow, and he sprawled on top of her and knew that time was passing and that it was getting cold, that the girl's dress was thin, and that the frost was touching her calves and knees and reaching up to her thighs and caressing her higher and higher to touch her groin and belly. Then they got up, and the old woman led him to one of the chalets, where she had a room.
    The room was on the first floor and the window, a meter above the snow-covered plain, allowed Xavier to see the blond girl only a few steps away and watching him through it; not wanting to leave this girl whose image filled him entirely, he turned on the light (the old woman greeted his need for light with a lascivious laugh), took the woman by the hand, and went with her to the window, where he embraced her, lifted the plush sweater (a warm sweater for a senile body), and thought about the girl, who must have been so chilled that she could no longer feel her own body, that she was no more than a soul, a sad, sorrowful soul barely afloat in a body so frozen that it felt nothing, had already lost the sense of touch, and was merely a dead envelope for the floating soul Xavier boundlessly loved, ah, yes! he boundlessly loved.
    But who could bear such boundless love? Xavier felt his hands grow weak, no longer strong enough even to lift the plush sweater high enough to bare the old woman's breasts, and he felt a torpor throughout his body and sat down on the bed. It's hard to describe how good he felt, how satisfied and happy. When a man