I’ve reread the last few pages and must admit that I don’t think I’m getting the idea behind Kundera’s choice in closing the story.
On the one hand, it doesn’t seem to really provide resolution in the final scenario, where Tomas, Tereza, the chairman and a young man whose dislocated shoulder Tomas has easily set, go out to a bar. They spend the night–knowing that they’d be drinking and upstairs in the room, Tereza notes that once again her dream was a portent and she realizes that she’s found happiness.
On the other, Kundera has let us know several times that Tomas and Tereza were killed in a drunk driving accident. In my mind, affected by a tad of experience with hypertext story, I begin to wonder if somehow we didn’t unknowingly make a choice that brought them safely upstairs at the inn rather than out on the road heading for a deadly crash.
Possible? Sure. And when I say "we" made a choice, I mean just that.
Otherwise, I would think that the resolution of the story itself is when Tereza sees Tomas and realizes that they have aged. When she tells him of her own burden of feeling that she has manipulated him into staying with her, he tells her that he is happy. Maybe the paths they have taken have indeed brought them to a point of meaning.
But if Kundera’s ending of the story is just short of the ending of Tomas and Tereza, then I am wrong. I suspect, however, that he just might have considered the difference.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology