Study Guide

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Part 5, Chapter 18

By Milan Kundera

Part 5, Chapter 18

This holiday from medicine was also a holiday from Tereza. They really only see each other on Sundays. Tomas worries about her, since he hasn't been around to take care of her.
One Sunday, they go for a drive to the country and find an old town re-labeled with Russian names.
There, he meets with a former patient of his. Tomas feels his old life coming back to him.
Driving home, Tomas considers what a mistake he made coming back to Prague from Zurich.
He's furious with Tereza for being responsible for it, and angry at the fortuities that led to their being together.
A terrible silence grows between them. They don't talk all the way home or during dinner or before they go to bed.
Tereza wakes up crying in the middle of the night.
She tells Tomas she had a dream that she was buried, and that she only came out of the grave each week when Tomas came to see her.
Then he was away for a month to be with another women, and when he came back she was so tired and weary that he didn't like the way she looked.
He told her she needed a holiday, and she knew he meant that he wanted to be with another woman.
Tomas tries to comfort her. "He thought he could not endure his love" (5.18.14).\
The weight of her grief makes him feel as though he is about to have a heart attack.
She goes back to sleep, but he cannot. He can only imagine that Tereza is dead, and that he is unable to wake her.

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