Notes From Underground Read Online Free Page A

there was a fresh-faced girl who got on at Holešovice each day just after two, and who traveled the Red Line to Muzeum; she wore a loose corduroy jacket that concealed the contours of her body and created a kind of softness around her. Her hands were smooth, tanned, with long fingers that held open the pages of a book—usually a novel; and her clear grey eyes would sometimes look up from the page and address the world, as though in search of the person who would answer to the words that she read. And this was the important point: it was only those eyes that still sought for contact, eyes which had not been sprayed with the official lacquer of sightlessness, that could arouse true desire.
    After a while I managed to catch her glance. She looked at me curiously for several seconds before returning to her book. When she glanced up again it was in my direction, and her gaze rested for a moment on the book that I held before me, as though wishing meto know that this, at least, we had in common, that both of us lived in books, and sought in books for the things that had been erased from the daylight world. At Muzeum, she got up quickly and went out, vanishing into the crowd. But the next day she was back in the same seat, and when her eyes met mine they made a slight flutter of recognition before turning to her book. And then, at Hlavní nádraží, just one stop before her usual destination, she suddenly twisted in her seat, so that the corduroy jacket fell open, revealing the smooth line of her breasts, and a long, taut body on whose contours I allowed my eyes to dwell. She got up without a glance in my direction and left; the automated voice announced the closing doors, and the doors opened wide within me.
    This game continued, with variations, to the point where we knew to the minute which train we should catch and which carriage we should sit in, contriving to arrive unnoticed in the foreseen place. It dawned on us simultaneously that the moment of consummation could no longer be postponed. We had positioned ourselves opposite each other, our books open in trembling hands. Her jacket was loose, and the top two buttons of her blouse were undone. I could see the rhythmic breathing of her breast, and feel the hot light of her eyes that watched me when I looked away, and looked away when I watched. We remained like this, gripped by the invisible vise that united us, until we reached her usual stop at Muzeum. To my surprise, she did not get out, but stayed sitting in the same pose, avoiding eyes only to provoke them, until my own stop of Gottwaldova. It was there that she acknowledged the imagined space in which we stood together, naked and aroused. For a long moment we stared deep into that strange metaphysical emptiness which is the source and the target of desire. Those grey eyes were translucent, and through their hazy screen I glimpsed the prowling animal as it fastened its will to mine. Her lips were parted in a kiss, and our two bodies trembled in unison; in a single moment our books slippedfrom our laps to the floor of the carriage and the voice told us that the doors were closing.
    She reached down quickly, seized the book, and was instantly out of the carriage. A second later the train was moving. The next day I took the red line to HoleÅ¡ovice, and crossed the platform at the usual time, onto the train back into town. I did not expect her to appear, nor did she. The affair was over, and I never saw her again.

CHAPTER 4
    IT WAS ABOUT the time of that episode that life at home began to change. Through the under-manager, Mother had obtained a typewriter, together with a supply of thin blue paper and carbon sheets that enabled her to make copies, nine at a time. Each evening after supper she would clear the table and begin to type, usually from hand-written manuscripts that appeared while I was journeying underground. The little room that we shared became a samizdat publishing house, for which Mother chose