The Last Bullet Is for You Read Free

crime against the nation, you wouldn’t be guilty of treason because never ever would you betray your country. You seemed to be afraid that it would be drawn out of you the way patients used to be bled, that with an eraser you would be eliminated from the map, you and your country and all it represented, not only Prague and its mythology but also that murderous mother Russia, that motherland that had made people from your country suffer by dragging them off to an intoxicating feast of hatred, and that some continued to love, like you, who kept endlessly turning to her as you wondered what you would do without that culture, if something would remain inside you once the wheat was separated from the chaff. What better fetish than this mixture of Kremlin and Kafka that had the power to protect you against love, and distance you from me?
    You told me about the countries of the Eastern Bloc as if they were the Holy Grail, and Russia, despite the tanks of springtime invading your country, remained the land of a great culture that you cherished, a culture inherited from your mother who, out of spite, married a young Czech man she’d met one drunken night in front of the astronomical clock. You were faithful to your mother and her contempt. Your father, the young rebel, grew up with Jan Palach, he had watched him set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square to protest the occupation. You took your mother’s side when she said, “All the Czechs need is a good red boot in the ass!”
    Buying you your non-alcoholic beers. Making you coffee at the end of the afternoon and setting it on the table in front of you, making sure to add sugar. Walking with you arm in arm, feeling our bodies in perfect harmony. Giving you a record you won’t listen to, a book you won’t read. Setting the table for a meal I planned, thinking of you. Making breakfast, coffee, oranges, a grilled cheese sandwich. Turning up the heat in the bedroom because you get chilly even if I don’t. Pretending to be sleeping when you come home late at night for the pleasure of you taking me without me waking. Nestling my head in the crook of your arm. Stroking your hair as you sleep. Watching you come to bed in your pyjamas. Kissing your shoulder softly when I awake in the morning curled against your back. Thinking that today you’ll be happy, there will be no more anger at the world, no anger at me.
    I wait for the time when my heart will stop seizing up when I think of you. I wait for the headaches to leave me alone, for my eyes to linger with desire over a face other than yours. I wait for the moment when I will emerge from my state of paralysis and the feeling that life is over. I wait for my mind to stop turning in your direction like flowers instinctively seeking the sun. I wait for the desire to hold another body in my arms, to stop adding up the pros and cons in a two-column list, and surrender the illusion like a puff of smoke. I wait for a time when tears won’t catch me by surprise in the middle of a conversation, when I’ll stop struggling against myself, divided between one woman who wants to go on loving, and another who knows that common sense forbids it, one who clings to hope and the other who is desperate, one who thinks she understands and the other whose vision is blurry, one who goes on fighting and the other who gives up. I wait to get back the woman I was before I fell in love with you.
    The next evening, on the day after you left, I walked down the Main toward the river. I was wearing a black dress, lipstick and eyeshadow, the trace of my tears hidden. I was going to watch Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies, Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra on the stage of the Monument national. An empire opening before me, from which you were absent.
    For six hours, I did my best to forget you, in a state of wonderment at this theatre of ancient passions that reminded me of my own, my passion, my calvary, the price I paid for loving you