Life in the country was the only escape open to them, because only in the country was there a constant deficit of people and a surplus of living accommodations. No one bothered to look into the political past of people willing to go off and work in the fields or woods; no one envied them.
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The window looked out on a slope overgrown with the crooked bodies of apple trees. The woods cut off the view above the slope, and a crooked line of hills stretched into the distance. When, towards evening, a white moon made its way into the pale sky, Tereza would go and stand on the threshold. The sphere hanging in the not yet darkened sky seemed like a lamp they had forgotten to turn off in the morning, a lamp that had burned all day in the room of the dead.
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None of the crooked apple trees growing along the slope could ever leave the spot where it had put down its roots, just as neither Tereza nor Tomas could ever leave their village. They had sold their car, their television set, and their radio to buy a tiny cottage and garden from a farmer who was moving to town.
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Tereza was happy to abandon the city, the drunken barflies molesting her, and the anonymous women leaving the smell of their groins in Tomas's hair. The police stopped pestering them, and the incident with the engineer so merged with the scene on Petrin Hill that she was hard put to tell which was a dream and which the truth. (Was the engineer in fact employed by the secret police? Perhaps he was, perhaps not. Men who use borrowed flats for rendezvous and never make love to the same woman twice are not so rare.)
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In any case, Tereza was happy and felt that she had at last reached her goal: she and Tomas were together and alone. Alone? Let me be more precise: living alone meant breaking with all their former friends and acquaintances, cutting their life in two like a ribbon; however, they felt perfectly at home in the company of the country people they worked with, and they sometimes exchanged visits with them.
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The day they met the chairman of the local collective farm at the spa that had Russian street names, Tereza discovered in herself a picture of country life originating in memories of books she had read or in her ancestors. It was a harmonious world; everyone came together in one big happy family with common interests and routines: church services on Sundays, a tavern where the men could get away from their womenfolk, and a hall in the tavern where a band played on Saturdays and the villagers danced.
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Under Communism, however, village life no longer fit the age-old pattern. The church was in the neighboring village, and no one went there; the tavern had been turned into offices, so the men had nowhere to meet and drink beer, the young people nowhere to dance. Celebrating church holidays was forbidden, and no one cared about their secular replacements. The nearest cinema was in a town fifteen miles away. So, at the end of a day's work filled with boisterous shouting and relaxed chatter, they would all shut themselves up within their four walls and, surrounded by contemporary furniture emanating bad taste like a cold draft, stare at the refulgent television screen. They never paid one another visits besides dropping in on a neighbor for a word or two before supper. They all dreamed of moving into town. The country offered them nothing in the way of even a minimally interesting life.
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Perhaps it was the fact that no one wished to settle there that caused the state to lose its power over the countryside. A farmer who no longer owns his own land and is merely a laborer tilling the soil forms no allegiance to either region or work; he has nothing to lose, nothing to fear for. As a result of such apathy, the countryside had maintained more than a modicum of autonomy and freedom. The chairman of the collective farm was not brought in from outside (as were all high-level managers in the city); he was elected by the villagers from among themselves.
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The collective farm chairman became a truly close friend. He had a wife, four children, and a pig he raised like a dog. The pig's name was Mefisto, and he was the pride and main attraction of the village. He would answer his master's call and was always clean and pink; he paraded about on his hoofs like a heavy-thighed woman in high heels.
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When Karenin first saw Mefisto, he was very upset and circled him, sniffing, for a long time. But he soon made friends with him, even to the point of preferring him to the village dogs. Indeed, he had nothing but scorn for the dogs, because they were all chained to their doghouses and never stopped their silly, unmotivated barking. Karenin correctly assessed the value of being one of a kind, and I can state without compunction that he greatly appreciated his friendship with the pig.
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Because everyone wanted to leave, Tereza and Tomas were in an exceptional position: they had come voluntarily. If the other villagers took advantage of every opportunity to make day trips to the surrounding towns, Tereza and Tomas were content to remain where they were, which meant that before long they knew the villagers better than the villagers knew one another.
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Karenin always kept her company. He learned to bark at the young cows when they got too frisky and tried to go off on their own; he did so with obvious zest. He was definitely the happiest of the three. Never before had his position as keeper of the clock been so respected. The country was no place for improvisation; the time in which Tereza and Tomas lived was growing closer to the regularity of his time.
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The collective farm had four large cow sheds as well as a small stable of forty heifers. Tereza was charged with looking after them and taking them out to pasture twice a day. Because the closer, easily accessible meadows would eventually be mowed, she had to take her herd into the surrounding hills for grazing, gradually moving farther and farther out and, in the course of the year, covering all the pastureland round about. As in her small-town youth, she was never without a book, and the minute she reached the day's pasture she would open it and read.
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The chairman was glad to be able to help his former surgeon, though at the same time sad that he could do nothing more. Tomas became the driver of the pickup truck that took the farm workers out to the fields and hauled equipment.
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One day, after lunch (a time when they both had an hour to themselves), they took a walk with Karenin up the slope behind their cottage.
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Karenin was limping on a hind leg. Tomas bent down and carefully felt all along it. Near the hock he found a small bump.
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I don't like the way he's running, said Tereza.
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Within three days, Tomas himself, with the vet in attendance, had operated on him. When Tomas brought him home, Karenin had not quite come out of the anesthesia. He lay on the rug next to their bed with his eyes open, whimpering, his thigh shaved bare and the incision and six stitches painfully visible.
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The next day he sat him in the front seat of the pickup and drove, during his rounds, to the neighboring village, where the local veterinarian lived. A week later, he paid him another visit. He came home with the news that Karenin had cancer.
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At last he tried to stand up. He failed.
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Don't worry, said Tomas. He's still under the anesthetic.
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She tried to pick him up, but he snapped at her. It was the first time he'd ever tried to bite Tereza!
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Tereza was terrified that he would never walk again.
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It was the first time he'd ever got them up, too! He had always waited until one of them woke up before he dared jump on them.
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At three o'clock that morning, he suddenly woke them up, wagging his tail and climbing all over them, cuddling up to them, unable to have his fill.
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He doesn't know who you are, said Tomas. He doesn't recognize you.
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But when he suddenly came to in the middle of the night, he could not control himself. Who can tell what distances he covered on his way back? Who knows what phantoms he battled? And now that he was at home with his dear ones, he felt compelled to share his overwhelming joy, a joy of return and rebirth.
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They lifted him onto their bed, where he quickly fell asleep, as did they.
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