For some reason I find myself misplacing Tomas, Franz, and Sabina in time. While it’s approximately taking place in the late 60s, I get the feeling from the emotional state of the characters that it takes place in an earlier era, perhaps decades prior.
Kundera’s writing reminds me a bit of Marquez in the focus of relationships in conflict against a background of a more major conflict of war. As Marquez, he makes the war a defining force and yet it does not become an active part of the story aside from how it affects the characters and their physical place just beyond it.
But what gets me more out of touch with the characters is that while they are of my own era, I do not relate to them at all, particularly in their relationships of love. Perhaps it’s the European versus American lifestyle and setting. Perhaps it is Kundera’s choice of words.
That night, she made love to him with greater frenzy than ever before, aroused by the realization that this was the last time. Making love, she was far, far away. Once more she heard the golden horn of betrayal beckoning her in the distance, and she knew she would not hold out. She sensed an expanse of freedom before her, and the boundlessness of it excited her. She made mad, unrestrained love to Franz as she never had before. (p. 116)
Sabina’s response to Franz’s leaving of his wife represents a burden to her that she is unwilling to carry. In her decision to betray him, she may indeed be betraying herself, making sure that she does not attain that state of contentment and stability she seems to both want and despise.
But Kundera has set up his characters to clearly show that their experience and needs give them very different views of their time together. This, then, is not too surprising:
Franz sobbed as he lay on top of her; he was certain he understood: Sabina had been quiet all through dinner and said not a word about his decision, but this was her answer. She had made a clear show of her joy, her passion, her consent, her desire to live with him forever. (p. 117)
This seems to be the complicated love affair of an era in which people were not as honest in their feelings as the 60s seemed to have encouraged. It is the silent admiration, the steady pursuit of Marquez’s lovers that I see in the affair of Franz and Sabina. I picture Franz with a goatee; Sabina with the off-shouldered blouse and bare feet. The name Sabina has ties for me that are buried in the long ago past.
Perhaps it is me, as reader, writing a different story.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology