Lost Letters
- Kundera introduces us to 33-year-old Tamina—waitress in Western Europe, former resident of Prague.
- Customers—what few of them there are—love Tamina because she knows how to listen. She never, ever talks about herself.
- Tamina doesn't engage in the kind of competitive convos that most of us do. You know, the kind when one person tells something about him- or herself, and the other butts in to tell about a similar experience.
- Bibi is a customer at the café where Tamina works. She tells Tamina that she's been planning to go to Prague that summer on vacay with her hubby.
- Suddenly, Tamina is interested in the conversation—there's something she wants Bibi to pick up for her in Prague.
- Bibi agrees to help and then tells Tamina that she's going to write a book. Since Tamina wants to stay on Bibi's good side, she encourages her to talk about it.
- Bibi says she wants to meet Banaka, a local author who might be able to help her get started on her new project.
- Tamina phones her mother-in-law, who lives back in Czechoslovakia. Mom-in-law is irritated because Tamina never calls, but the phone rates are super expensive for Tamina.
- Tamina asks her mother-in-law to retrieve a parcel that her late husband, Pavel, had locked in his father's desk drawer.
- Mom-in-law doesn't want to comply unless she knows Tamina's motive. She starts to cry. As moms-in-law do.
- Tamina can only see dollar signs: this call's going to be expensive.
- Tamina promises to call her mother-in-law again soon, but by the time she hangs up, she has spent most of her disposable income for that payday.
- We get some backstory on Tamina and her husband, Pavel. They left Bohemia on the sly, bolting for the West while on a state-sanctioned vacay to Yugoslavia.
- But because they were doing something illegal, Tamina and Pavel tried to draw as little attention to themselves as possible—and that meant leaving most of their belongings behind in Prague.
- The parcel in her father-in-law's desk holds letters between Tamina and her husband, along with some of Tamina's personal notebooks.
- Pavel dies after he and Tamina emigrate, and Tamina has his ashes scattered because she doesn't know where she'll wind up. All she really has left are her memories of their life together. And that's fine—until she begins to forget important details. Over time, everything has begun to fade.
- Tamina practices visualization techniques to keep the memory of her husband's face strong. But the details slip away.
- Tamina even uses the faces of men in her daily life to strengthen her powers of recollection: she practices turning their faces into Pavel's face. Mentally, of course.
- While they were married, Pavel wanted Tamina to keep a diary of their life together, but she resisted. How could she forget something that she loved so much? That's what she thought, anyway.
- So Tamina didn't do a good job of keeping up those notebooks—and now, she regrets it.
- We get some more of Tamina's backstory. She and her husband lived in Bohemia for 11 years. She had left behind 11 notebooks at her mom-in-law's house—one for every year that she and her husband were together. When he died, Tamina decided to recreate the notebooks from memory.
- But it turns out that Tamina's memory of those days is pretty spotty. While she half-remembers things, she can't always remember when they happened.
- Tamina thinks that remembering her vacations with Pavel (one every year) will help her piece things together, but two of them are completely missing from her memory.
- Tamina even tries to recall all the pet names that her husband gave her—new ones cropped up over time—but she can't.
- Why is it so important for Tamina to remember her time with her husband? Kundera says it's because the past is all she has. It's the only thing that defines and anchors her.
- Without the past, she has only the present—and there's not much for her there.
- Tamina hasn't asked for her mom-in-law to send her the notebooks by mail because she fears that the secret police will intercept them. After all, she and Pavel did leave the country illegally.
- Tamina needs her friend Bibi to physically retrieve the notebooks for her, so Tamina decides to do something that will keep her on Bibi's friend list.
- Tamina wants to help Bibi along with her book-writing project by introducing her to the local author, Banaka. Tamina asks another customer, Hugo, about Banaka's books.
- But Hugo tells Tamina that Banaka is not the best role model for an author. His books stink. Tamina decides that Bibi doesn't really need to read Banaka's books—a meeting should be enough.
- Tamina arranges the meeting through a philosophy professor who knows Banaka. Tamina knows the professor because she lends him her apartment so that he can carry on an affair.
- Bibi is excited about meeting Banaka and thinks that perhaps Tamina can hook up with the author if he's sexy enough.
- Bibi's comment about Tamina possibly hooking up with Banaka leads to some important info about Tamina's love life: she hasn't had a lover since her husband died.
- It's not that Tamina thinks that her dead husband will be angry with her from someplace in the afterlife (because she doesn't believe in all that). She just knows that no matter who she's with, she'll always imagine that she's with her husband.
- Tamina also feels that being with a new man now—when her husband can't defend his past claim to her—is somehow wrong. She knows this is weird, but she can't help it.
- So, whenever she thinks about making love to someone else, the image of her husband returns to haunt her.
- Thankfully for Tamina, Banaka is hideous. He's also not charismatic in any way.
- Banaka visits with Bibi and Tamina at Tamina's apartment and tries to discuss the book that Bibi plans to write. But of course, Bibi has no idea—or, at least, she's super vague about it.
- Banaka convinces Bibi that she's not really interested in writing a novel. (Who has time to develop all those characters?)
- Banaka claims that the only proper kind of writing involves truthful reporting of the author's point of view. Everything else is lies and illusion.
- It doesn't matter that Bibi has nothing special to offer by way of experience or original thought, claims Banaka.
- Bibi ecstatically agrees with everything that ugly Banaka has to say, and Tamina is pleased that everything is going so well. Bibi is sure to help her get her notebooks now.
- Bibi ends the discussion by claiming to have so much to say that she feels like she's going to burst—and then she makes the mistake of praising Banaka's books, which are awful.
- Back to Kundera. He tells the story of meeting a taxi driver in Paris who had been a sailor. And of course, the driver-sailor is writing his life story—but not for the sake of his children or family. He thinks that telling his story might help other people.
- Kundera has an epiphany: writers write because their own wives and children aren't interested in them. They have to make their life story valuable to other people instead.
- Kundera says that the taxi driver is a "graphomaniac": he's driven to write books for an anonymous audience.
- Kundera says that graphomania becomes a real social problem under certain conditions. For example, when people 1) have time for useless activities, 2) feel isolated, and 3) live in a nation without social upheaval.
- Sadly, graphomania makes isolation worse. Kundera says that while the printing press used to make us feel more connected to each other, graphomania is a buzzkill.
- Instead of opening us up to the ideas of others, graphomania suffocates us in our own thoughts and words. No one can get a word in edgewise.
- Anyway, Hugo decides he has a thing for Tamina, even though he knows he's doomed to failure with her. But that doesn't stop him from trying—he asks her out on a date.
- Tamina has a lot on her mind: she has to convince her mom-in-law to hand over her notebooks to her father, who will have to travel to pick them up. This will take a lot of telephone diplomacy, and that's expensive. So when Hugo asks Tamina over for lunch, she sees an opportunity: Hugo has a telephone.
- Hugo tries hard to impress Tamina. He drives her to the zoo to see the animals.
- Tamina is taken by six noiseless ostriches that move their beaks like they're actually talking. It kind of breaks Tamina's heart—and makes her feel like the ostriches are trying to warn her about something.
- While Tamina is freaked out by the distressing behavior of the ostriches, Hugo explains it away: they're young. They always do that.
- Tamina tells Hugo about her notebooks and about how Bibi is going to carry them over the border for her. Hugo wonders if the notebooks have any political content.
- Tamina doesn't know how to explain why she fears the secret police opening her notebooks, so she just tells Hugo that they are political in nature.
- Hugo advises Tamina not to tell Bibi that she's going to be carrying sensitive documents. She should think she's carrying something insignificant, like love letters.
- Hugo has no idea how close to the truth he's come with that description. Tamina is pretty miffed at his thinking: how are love letters insignificant?
- Hugo redeems himself by offering to fetch them if Bibi fails to do it.
- At Hugo's house, Tamina makes a call to her mom-in-law about the notebooks, but she gets nowhere. Mom-in-law insists that Tamina never gave her the key to the desk.
- Kundera says that Tamina should just go back and retrieve her notebooks herself. She's not important enough to attract the attention of the secret police.
- But Tamina thinks that she can't go back because it would be a betrayal of her husband: they left because he'd been denounced by his own countrymen. Pavel had gotten on the wrong side of the government (so easy to do), and pretty soon, he'd been demoted at his job. Even his friends wouldn't go near him out of fear.
- For Tamina, going back to Czechoslovakia would be like forgiving all the former friends and colleagues who had turned their backs on Pavel.
- Tamina remembers the flight from Bohemia and her first morning waking up as a free person. It was completely silent in the little Alpine village where she and Pavel had landed.
- After Pavel died, Tamina tried to contact some friends with the news, but no one responded. She took a trip to the seaside and tried to drown herself—but it didn't work.
- Tamina reached a kind of peace with her life then, but it was a tough truce. She decided to retreat within herself.
- Tamina is hanging out with Bibi and some friends at Bibi's house. They are watching a creepy author on TV talk about his latest book, which has to do with his sex life.
- Everybody gets hooked on the author's discussion of orgasms and starts to discuss the importance of them. The writer goes on about his early life, as written in the book.
- Tamina breaks away to use Bibi's telephone.
- Tamina calls her father and tries to convince him to pick up her notebooks from her mom-in-law. Problem? He doesn't like Tamina's mother-in-law.
- Her dad tries to convince Tamina to take a fur coat that he's been saving for her instead. Much better than some old notebooks, right?
- Dad tells Tamina to get her brother to go out there and pick up the parcel for her. Tamina realizes that this is a good idea and asks her father to do the phoning for her.
- Tamina's dad never liked Pavel, and she worries that he might have done something to harm the notebooks that were a chronicle of her married life.
- Tamina understands that the notebooks are only important to her if she has exclusive rights over them—she can't bear the thought of any hostile person looking into them.
- Bibi casually drops a bomb on Tamina: her husband has decided that they are not going to Prague for vacation. Tamina's hopes for her notebooks vanish.
- When Tamina goes to sleep, she dreams of those freaky ostriches. She has a golden ring in her mouth and has to keep it shut, or she'll lose it.
- What's with the golden ring, anyway? Well, Kundera is going to tell us. He gets it from a work by Thomas Mann called Death in Venice. There, the ring is related to death, specifically to a deathly ill young man. This character rents rooms from an old woman and hears a sound that reminds him of a "golden ring falling into a silver basin."
- Kundera interprets that sound to emphasize silence; the sound makes the silence beautiful. Kundera links beauty to silence: in order to perceive it, we need silence.
- This is the silence that Tamina experienced when she first woke up in a free country. She also experienced it in the sea when she tried to kill herself.
- And this is why Kundera puts that golden ring into Tamina's mouth in the dream.
- Tamina is horribly upset by those mute ostriches because she thinks they are trying to warn her of something.
- But Kundera says no: they just want to tell her about themselves. He links this back to the desire of people to write their life stories for others to read—to that isolating graphomania.
- Banaka shows up at Tamina's café drunk as a skunk. He's having a pity party because he's had a bad review of his books. He tells Tamina that he doesn't exist.
- Kundera explains this claim of non-existence: when a man writes, he becomes his own universe. When someone intrudes on this universe, that person destroys it.
- That's exactly what Tamina feels about her notebooks. If an outsider looks at them, that person will devalue them. It would ruin everything that Tamina feels about those writings.
- Kundera says that a writer is either everything or nothing. Nothing in-between. And since no one can be everything...well, you get the drift.
- Kundera says that everyone wants to be a writer, and everybody has the potential. Also, everyone wants to convert their experiences into words before they die so that these experiences aren't lost.
- And yet, by turning ourselves into people with something to say, we become deaf to others. It's a tragic paradox.
- Tamina realizes that Hugo is now the only one who can get her notebooks for her. Hugo really wants to impress her (translation: sleep with her), so he keeps trying.
- Hugo shows Tamina an article that he's had published in a magazine. He talks and talks about his work, trying to impress. Tamina does that thing where she tries to turn his face into her husband's.
- Hugo's not sure how to interpret Tamina's stare, but it makes him nervous.
- But Hugo's bad breath breaks Tamina's concentration, and she loses the image of her husband. Hugo's just Hugo again.
- Hugo repeats his promise to go to Prague and retrieve Tamina's notebooks.
- Tamina's father has got her brother to agree to pick up her notebooks from her mother-in-law and take them to Prague.
- Hugo tells Tamina that she can use his phone whenever she wants to call her family in Bohemia. He also tells her that he knows they'll never have sex. But still, he likes being with her.
- And that declaration doesn't stop Hugo from trying to put the moves on Tamina. She doesn't try to escape, but she's clearly not into it.
- Hugo is not deterred: Tamina's hesitance actually turns him on even more.
- Tamina knew that this moment would come, so she kind of gives up. But she still sees her husband's image before her.
- Hugo takes Tamina's silence and stillness to mean that she wants him (what?), so he's surprised to find that she's not physically aroused.
- Though Hugo thinks things are going really well in bed with Tamina, she's about a million miles away. She's thinking about her notebooks to take her mind off the sex.
- Tamina can tell that Hugo is getting the message that she's not into it, though it takes him a while to get it.
- But that doesn't stop Hugo. Instead, he tries to impress Tamina with his sexual prowess. She knows what he's up to, and it's not working.
- In the end, Hugo and Tamina both wind up thinking of other things to "get through it." Hugo, however, definitely gets more out of the experience than Tamina.
- Tamina's brother retrieves her papers from the desk in her mom-in-law's home—which turned out to be unlocked. He takes them to their dad's house in Prague.
- Tamina makes her brother and father promise not to read any of it—but she knows that they will. Of course.
- It makes Tamina feel icky to think that they will know all of her intimate thoughts from back in the day, but she still wants her stuff back.
- However, Tamina realizes that she will never be able to go back to her brother and father again. She feels shamed.
- Hugo is disappointed with his sexual encounters with Tamina. He knows that even though she can't deny him, she's not really his.
- Hugo tells Tamina that he wants to write a book about their love. Tamina stares at him the way that she does when she's turning his face into her husband's in her mind. He can't take it.
- Suddenly, Hugo hates Tamina because he feels that she's milking her tragic past. He knows that she just wants him around so that he'll get her notebooks from Prague. Now he wants to hurt her.
- Hugo tells Tamina that his article is about power in her country, and that he can't possibly travel there without danger. Tamina tries to convince him that nobody there will read his stuff. Ouch.
- Things don't get better between Hugo and Tamina from here on out. Hugo turns the conversation into a political stand: he had to publish his article, he says. He couldn't keep silent about injustice. Blah blah blah.
- Tamina can't stand Hugo anymore. She actually has to run to the bathroom to puke.
- And here's another thing: Tamina can't see her husband's body anymore. She can only visualize Hugo's private bits.
- Tamina goes completely silent on Hugo and walks away. Tamina picks up her old life at the café and never contacts anyone in Prague again.