The Joke

After meeting Lucie, Ludvik walks through his now desolate hometown. He passes by the factories along the muddy Morava River and is beset by inescapable memories. He remembers the “first major disaster” that led to his downfall many years earlier (31), when Ludvik knew a credulous woman named Marketa.

The novel uses flashbacks to tell this history. In the aftermath of the communist revolution, Ludvik and other students meet regularly for group sessions about political theory and self-criticism. The other students often accuse Ludvik of individualism due to his wry, inscrutable smile. When he meets Marketa, he tries to seduce her by adopting a mask of detached irony. Marketa is a girl of “trusting simplicity” who often misunderstands jokes (34), even though she is intelligent. She attends a two-week summer training course, and in her letters to Ludvik, she writes about the rewarding nature of the course. Ludvik, who is annoyed by her absence, responds with a joke. On a postcard, he writes, “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” (34).

Marketa does not respond to Ludvik’s following letters, and, other than a brief and awkward meeting in Prague, she disappears from his life. After listlessly drifting through the rest of summer, Ludvik is summoned to a meeting with the District Party Secretariat. There, three Comrades show him the joke he sent to Marketa. They accuse him of being a Trotskyite who does not believe in the communist revolution. They have read all of his letters and refuse to believe that he was joking. He is removed from his post in the Students Union, and his case is escalated. Ludvik collects his possessions from his office, and, while he is inside, the same three Comrades search his office and throw him out. Ludvik believes that he is “innocent.” He decides to find Pavel Zemanek, who also knows Marketa well and who can help resolve the situation.

Ludvik and Zemanek bond over their shared love of folk music. Zemanek promises to see what he can do, and, in the meantime, Ludvik continues his studies. The Party regularly questions him to determine whether he is a Trotskyite, a charge that he denies. One day, Marketa breaks her silence to tell Ludvik how the joke shocked her. Now, even though she still thinks that Ludvik committed “a great crime” (45), she plans to continue to see him if he admits his guilt. Ludvik refuses. Overwhelmed, he begins to worry that the joke might actually contain some anticommunist sentiment as a result of his “traces of individualism” (46). He does not want to be an enemy of the Party, but he accepts that he does deserve some form of punishment. At a final meeting, his friends, teachers, and fellow students agree to expel him. Ludvik travels home, and upon arriving back in his town, he is asked to serve as the best man in his friend Jaroslav’s wedding. As he watches the traditional ceremony deliberately denuded of any religion, Ludvik feels a sense of disgust.

Ludvik’s expulsion from the Party means that he can no longer defer military service. At the end of summer, he is sent to a training camp with other strangers. Since he has been expelled, he is one of the conscripts who is made to wear a black insignia. Rather than military service, he will do “hard labor in the mines” and will attend political instruction (51). Ludvik feels cut off from his life’s purpose.

Unlike most military conscripts, the men with the black insignia can be forced to work indefinitely. His fellow conscripts are from all over Czechoslovakia. They include Bedrich, Varga, Stana, Petran, Pavel Pekny, Cenek, and—Ludvik’s favorite—Honza. The men are occasionally able to escape their “drudgery and fatigue” by attending dances (57). The men chase after women and fight with soldiers. After one particularly sordid night with a woman nicknamed Lamp-post, Ludvik feels despair.

Changing his behavior, Ludvik spends more time alone. He visits a nearby town, and, in the anonymous cinema, he spots a young woman with an “utterly ordinary” appearance. This is Lucie. Ludvik sits next to her in the cinema, and he walks her home afterward. They bid an awkward farewell but agree to meet again.

After meeting Lucie, Ludvik feels reinvigorated. He spends time with her, and her quiet attitude helps him relax. He reads her poems, but his readings make her cry. He becomes increasingly attached to her, so much so that he wants to marry her. She never responds to his letters but routinely buys flowers for him. Ludvik responds by purchasing a “dazzling” dress for her, the cut of which completely changes the way he perceives her.

After nearly a year of hard labor, Ludvik’s experiences begin to feel “habitual and ordinary” (82). In the camp, Stana leaves after hearing rumors that his wife has been disloyal. He attacks her, and, believing he has killed her, he flees. She survives, and he is convicted of desertion. The artist Cenek paints a raunchy mural on the wall of one of the buildings, and a young officer takes offense, deciding to punish the entire unit. One of the new arrivals in the camp is Alexej, a fervent young Communist who refuses to denounce the Party despite his circumstances.

Ludvik acquires a pass to leave the camp and visit Lucie. He plans to have sex with her now that her three roommates are finally out of town. When they are in the room alone together, however, she refuses him. He becomes angry and tries to force himself on her, but she continues to resist. When she says that she is afraid, he promises to find them another place where they can be alone together.

The non-commissioned officers in the camp decide to mock the laborers by challenging them to a relay race. The exhausted laborers turn the mockery around by running at absurdly slow speeds. They all run slowly except for Alexej, who tries to run fast to show his dedication to communism, but his physical weakness makes him slower than everyone else. The young commander forbids them from leaving the camp, so Honza fashions a subtle escape route through the perimeter fence. When this is discovered, however, the entire company is put under “a special disciplinary regime” (99). The men accuse Alexej of betraying them, but Alexej reveals to Ludvik that he did not leak the information. Instead, he has written to the Party to accuse the young commander of betraying the Party’s ideology. Later, Ludvik learns that Alexej informed on his own father and had him arrested.

The men are prevented from leaving the camp, so Ludvik cannot visit Lucie. She meets him every day near the fence instead. The men notice her presence and ask for lurid sexual details. Ludvik shares these with the men, even though he must invent them, as Lucie refuses to have sex with him. He bribes a local man for use of his house and then sneaks out of the camp, arranging to meet Lucie outside. When they are alone together, however, she refuses him again. Ludvik tries to violently force himself on Lucie and then taunts her when she refuses him. Eventually, he relents and returns despondently to the camp.

The next day, Ludvik feels terrible. He discovers the other men lurking around Alexej’s bed. Alexej has a reputation for sleeping deeply, and the other men have decided that he cannot be trusted, so they wish to punish him. Despite Ludvik’s attempt to stop them, they pour water over Alexej. He does not react. A doctor is summoned, and Alexej is pronounced dead; he took enough medicine to kill two people. Alexej’s suicide has an impact on Ludvik. He is desperate to see Lucie, but she has vanished. He sneaks out to search for her, but she is nowhere to be found.

Returning to the camp, Ludvik is caught. He is court-martialed and sentenced to a year in jail. During this year, his mother dies. When he is released, he signs up for another three years in the mining camps to avoid joining the military. He does not see or think about Lucie for another 15 years.