Free The JOKE by Milan Kundera Page B

could act like a rich man and make up for the chronic frustration of all the other endless days.
    Up on the platform a miserable band oompahpahed its way between polka and waltz for the few couples on the floor while we coolly eyed the girls and sipped our drinks, whose alcoholic content soon lifted us far above anyone else in the hall; we were in a fine mood; I could feel a heady conviviality taking hold of me, a sense of companionship I had not experienced since the last time I played with Jaroslav and the other fellows in the cimbalom band. In the meantime, Honza had come up with a plan to whisk as many girls as possible away from the artillerymen. The plan was admirable in its simplicity, and we lost no time putting it into action. Cenek proved most resolute for the job and undertook to entertain us, braggart and ham that he was, by accomplishing his mission with the greatest ostentation: after dancing with a dark-haired, heavily made-up girl, he brought her over to our table and poured a rum lemonade for himself and another for her, saying to her significantly: "Let's drink to it!" The girl nodded, and they clinked glasses. At that moment a runt wearing the two stripes of an artillery noncom walked up to the girl and said to Cenek in the rudest tone he could muster, "She free?" "Why, of course, dear boy," said Cenek. "She's all yours." And while the girl hopped and skipped with the impassioned corporal to the inane rhythm of a polka, Honza was off phoning for a taxi; as soon as it arrived, Cenek went over and stood by the exit; when the girl finished the dance, she told the corporal she had to go to the ladies' room, and a few seconds later we heard the taxi pull away.
    The next to score was old Ambroz from the Second Company, who found himself a woman both too old and shabby (which hadn't prevented four artillerymen from desperately hovering over her); ten minutes later, Ambroz, the woman, and Varga (who was sure no girl would go with him) climbed into a cab and sped off to meet Cenek in a bar at the other end of Ostrava. Before long two more of our group had persuaded another girl to go with them, and that left only Stana, Honza, and me. By now the artillerymen were eyeing us more and more ominously because the connection between our diminishing numbers and the disappearance of the three women from their lair had finally begun to dawn on them. We tried to look innocent, but it was clear a fight was brewing.
    "How about one more taxi and an honorable retreat," I said, looking wistfully at a blonde I had managed to dance with once early in the evening without plucking up the courage to suggest we leave together; I had hoped to have another chance later on, but the artillerymen had guarded her so zealously that I never got near her again. "Nothing else we can do," said Honza, starting off to the phone. But as he walked across the floor, the artillerymen all stood up from their tables and moved quickly to surround him. The fight now seemed imminent, and Stana and I had no choice but to get up from our table and make our way over to our threatened companion. For a while the group of artillerymen simply stood there in ominous silence, but suddenly one drunken noncom (he probably had his own bottle under the table) launched into a long tirade about how his father had been unemployed under capitalism and it made him sick to stand by and watch these bourgeois brats with their black insignia lord it over them, it made him sick, so if his comrades didn't hold him back, he might just give that bastard (meaning Honza) a good sock in the jaw. At the first pause in the noncom's tirade Honza inquired civilly what the Comrades from the artillery wanted of him. We want you out of here, and on the double, they said, to which Honza replied that that was exactly what we wanted and would they please let him call a taxi. By this point the noncom looked ready to have a fit: the bastards, he screamed in a high-pitched voice, the fucking