Remembering Milan Kundera

 

The first time I heard about Milan Kundera was while catching the S2 train to Au-Waedenswil. The invitation came as an ominous warning: 'Come or you will miss something.' There were only few tickets left for a seat at a theater adaptation of Kundera's work. They promised to treat me to dinner in Niederdorf. Huh! Two classmates asking me out on a date? I was taken aback when one of them quipped, 'So you can take a break from your Hemingway or Akutagawa. Both ceremoniously ended their lives in a meaningless mess.'

I retorted, 'People might think I'm your male Asian servant!' One of them replied, 'Aren't you?'

The next evening, my two lady companions began recounting stories of Prague. 'It also rains in Prague, you know, especially in July,' one of them told me. The other turned to me and said, 'You were funny when you shared the story of how you discovered Kafka in the professor's area at your university... with an exhibition posted on the wall. Haha!'

I maintained my composure. She didn't know what it was like for me back then, walking through the faculty center and stumbling upon that Kafka exhibition posted on the wall. It was 1983, and I was living like a dog—dirt poor and always hungry.

I responded, 'Julia, I had no money to buy books at that time. I borrowed from the library. I practically lived there. People didn't even think I was majoring in music.'

'Enough!' she exclaimed. 'You're getting under my skin! Soon you'll experience Kundera.'

The play bored me. God, I struggled with the German lines. Anezka, the other girl, complained about the translation from Czech. She claimed to know the lines by heart. Julia smacked me on the head when I kept complaining that the play was torture.

Then the other said, 'Let's have dinner and pay this guy with beer.'

'There's no San Mig in Niederdorf!' The girls followed up with an insult. 'Surely it tastes like urine!' I never took their ironic remarks seriously, but they always sought my company. Once I asked them, 'Are you two lovers? Or does one of you have a crush on me?' No answer, just a dirty finger.

Finally, dinner and Kundera—I had so many questions, so much to learn. I couldn't believe I was sitting at a table with possibly two of the finest scholars of Central European literature. I still get goosebumps when I recall that evening. But honestly, I didn't understand a thing.

At our next meeting, they gave me a book, accompanied by another warning. 'Psst... das schwerste Gewicht... Hey Filipino, that's heavy,' with a wink. Damn it, it was a Kundera book, not in English translation but in German. Who needs this garbage?

Without their knowledge, I visited the Central Library and searched for an English translation. The first sentence captivated me—'This curse of constant repetition, like Nietzsche resurrecting.' Then I pondered, 'Was I ever content? Will the memories of many past summers remain joyful? What about getting drunk during Basel carnival? Or swimming in Lake Zurich, stealing glances at naked people? Will my life return to struggle or to this never-ending cycle of searching without finding, this void? Writing and hiding. Will I ever forget the taste of bibingka? Or will the beer ever run dry? Will the bomba films in Quiapo cinemas reappear in their full 1970s glory, with the audience shouting 'Harang'?'

I flew back to Manila and never left again. Anezka married another classmate, Italian Giuseppe. The last time I spoke to them was a decade ago. They didn't believe I was performing again. Julia is now a professor of German literature, divorced, and a single mother to a daughter who competes on her country's national skiing team. And me? Well, I have these Kundera books on my shelf. If I were to have dinner with these ladies again, I would probably declare, 'I despise recurrence and the thousand repetitions.

Requiescat in pace Milan...

POSCRIPT

"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. .." ~ The Unbearable Lightness of Being