At that time the beaches in the west of Europe were covered in summer with women who wore no tops to the bathing suits, and the population was divided between partisans and adversaries of bare breasts. The Clevis family—father, mother, and fourteen-year-old daughter—sat in front of the television set, watching a debate in which representatives of every intellectual current of the day developed their arguments for and against tops. The psychoanalyst fervently defended bare breasts and spoke of the liberation from convention that has delivered us from the omnipotence of erotic fantasies. The Marxist, without giving a verdict on toplessness (the Communist Party had both puritans and libertines among its members, and it was impolitic to take either side), cleverly diverted the debate to the more basic problems of the hypocritical morality of bourgeois society, which was doomed. The representative of Christian thinking felt obliged to defend the top, but he did it very timidly, because he too could not escape the omnipresent spirit of the time; he could find only one argument in the top’s favour, the innocence of children, which everyone had the duty to respect and protect. He was taken to task by an energetic woman who declared that getting rid of the hypocritical taboo against nudity should begin in childhood and recommended that parents walk around the house naked,
Jan arrived at the Clevises’ just as the woman moderator was ending the debate, but the enthusiasm it had generated persisted in the apartment for quite a while. The Clevises were forward-thinking people and therefore against tops. To them, the imposing gesture of millions of women throwing away that infamous piece of clothing as if on command symbolised humanity shaking off the bonds of slavery. Bare-breasted women paraded through the Clevises’ apartment like an invisible battalion of liberators.
As I have said, the Clevises were forward-looking, and they held progressive ideas. There are many kinds of progressive ideas, and the Clevises always supported the best possible progressive ideas. The best progressive ideas are those that include a strong enough dose of provocation to make its supporters feel proud of being original, but at the same time attract so many adherents that the risk of being an isolated exception is immediately averted by the noisy approval of a triumphant crowd. If, for instance, the Clevises were not only against tops but against clothing in general, if they announced that people should walk the city streets naked they would surely still be supporting a progressive idea, but certainly not the best possible one. That idea would be embarrassing because there is something excessive about it, it would take too much energy to defend (while the best possible progressive idea, so to speak, defends itself), and its supporters would never have the satisfaction of seeing their thoroughly nonconformist position suddenly become everyone’s position.
Listening to them fulminate against tops, Jan remembered the small wooden instrument called a level that his grandfather, a bricklayer, would place on the top layer of a wall under construction. At the center of the instrument was a glass tube of liquid with an air bubble whose position indicated whether the row of bricks was horizontal or not. The Clevis family could serve as an intellectual air bubble. Placed on some idea or other, it would indicate precisely whether or not that was the best progressive idea possible.
When the Clevises, talking all at once, had repeated to Jan the whole of the television debate, Papa Clevis leaned over to him and said banteringly: “Don’t you think that, as long as the breasts are good-looking, this is a reform one can easily approve of?”
Why did Papa Clevis express his thinking in such terms? He was a perfect host and always tried to find remarks suitable to all those present. Since Jan had the reputation of a womanizer, Clevis formulated his approval of bare breasts not in terms of its right and profound meaning, that is, as an ethical enthusiasm for the abolition of an age-old servitude, but in the way of a compromise (with regard for Jan’s supposed tastes and contrary to his own convictions), as an aesthetic agreement on the beauty of breasts.
As the same time, he was trying to be as precise and prudent as a diplomat: he did not dare say straight out that ugly breasts should remain hidden. Yet, without it being said, that absolutely unacceptable idea followed all too clearly from his spoken words and was an easy target for a fourteen-year-old.
“And what about your stomachs? What about those huge bellies you’re always shamelessly parading around the beaches!”
Mama Clevis burst into laughter and applauded her daughter: “Bravo!”
Papa Clevis joined in the applause. He immediately understood that his daughter was right and that he had once again fallen victim to the unfortunate propensity for compromise his wife and daughter always reproached him for. He was a man so deeply conciliatory that he defended his moderate opinions with great moderation and immediately agreed with his extremist child. Moreover, the incriminatory words expressed not his own thinking but rather Jan’s supposed viewpoint; so he could readily stand by his daughter, unhesitatingly and with paternal satisfaction.
Encouraged by her parents’ applause, the girl went on: “Do you think we take off our tops to give you pleasure? We do it for ourselves, because we like it, because it feels better, because it brings our bodies nearer to the sun! You’re only capable of seeing us as sex objects!”
Again Papa and Mama Clevis applauded, but this time their bravos had a somewhat different tone. Their daughter’s words were indeed right, but also somewhat inappropriate for a fourteen-year-old. It was like an eight-year-old boy saying: “If there’s a holdup, Mama, I’ll defend you.” Then too the parents applaud, because their son’s statement is clearly praiseworthy. But since it also shows excessive self-assurance, the praise is rightly shaded by a certain smile. With such a smile the Clevis parents had tinged their second bravos, and their daughter, who had heard that smile in their voices and did not approve of it, repeated with irritated obstinacy: “That’s over and done with. I’m not anybody’s sex object.”
Without smiling, the parents merely nodded, not wanting to incite their daughter any further.
Jan, however, could not resist saying:
“My dear girl, if you only knew how easy it is not to be a sex object.”
He uttered these words softly, but with such sincere sorrow that they resounded in the room for a long while. They were words difficult to pass over in silence, but it was not possible to respond to them either. They did not deserve approval, not being progressive, but neither did they deserve argument, because they were not obviously against progress. There were the worst words possible, because they were situated outside the debate conducted by the spirit of the time. They were words beyond good and evil, perfectly incongruous words.
There was a pause during which Jan smiled an embarrassed smile as if to apologise for what he had said, and then Papa Clevis, past master of the art of bridging gaps between his fellow creatures, started to talk about Passer, their friend in common.
- Kundera, Milan (tr. 1996), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Faber, p272-6.
All artist statements should be little stories with at least three characters. This little vignette solves so many personal problems that I’d like to buy it a Chinese vase.
Posted 2 years ago
