the land of the weak

She realized that she belonged among the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of the sentences.

She felt attracted by their weakness as by vertigo. She felt attracted by it because she felt weak herself. Again she feel jealous and again her hands shook. When Tomas noticed it, he took her hand in his and tried to calm them by pressing them hard. She tore them away from him.

'What's the matter?,' he asked
'Nothing.'
'What do you want me to do for you?'
'I want you to be old. Ten years older. Twenty years older.'

What she meant was: I want you to be weak. As weak as i am.

***

One day when they came back from a walk, the phone was ringing. She picked up the receiver and asked who it was.

It was a woman's voice speaking German and asking for Tomas. It was a impatient voice, and Tereza felt there was a hint of derision in it. When she said that Tomas wasn't there and she didn't know when he'd be back, the woman on the other end of the line started laughing and, without saying goodbye, hung up.

Tereza knew it didn't mean a thing. It could have been a nurse from the hospital, a patient, a secretary, anyone. But still she was upset and unable to concentrate on anything. It was then that she realized she had lost the last bit of strength she had had at home: she was absolutely incapable of tolerating this absolutely insignificant incident.

In Prague she was dependent on Tomas only when it came to the heart: here she was dependent on him for everything. What would happen to her here if he abandoned her? Would she have to live her whole life in fear of losing him?

She told herself: Their acquaintance had been based on an error from the start. In spite of their love, they had made each other's life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak. She was like her country, which stuttered, gasped for breath, could not speak.

But when the the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

***

She longed to do something that would prevent her from turning back to Tomas. She longed to destroy brutally the past seven years of her life. It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall.

We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

(excerpt from 'unbearable lightness of being' by milan kundera)

When Tereza, the character in Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, decided to packed her bag and moved back to Prague from Switzerland, leaving Tomas, i can understand that. When you love someone, you want to give all of the best thing in the world to your loved one. And when you think that yourself doesn't belong to the best thing 'package', you got hurt. Tereza got hurt. It is not about how Tomas convince Tereza that she meant everything to him, it was her inability to convince herself that she's enough for him. And it hurts more than anything. and the weak people, in spite of fighting, they gave in.

and me, i belong to the land of the weak too. i gasp for breath. and i gave in...


Wrap myself in a bag
I'm all wrapped up in Prague...