Part 3: Words Misunderstood
Summary
We meet Tomas's lover Sabina again, this time just as she is joined by another of her lovers, Franz, a good-looking and guilt-ridden married professor. He suggests a trip to Palermo, but Sabina refuses. She pours them wine, and removes her clothing; she leads Franz to the mirror, and places the bowler hat on her head. Franz, thinking she is joking, removes the hat. He kisses her, she agrees to go to Palermo, and he leaves the studio.
Alone and disappointed, Sabina remembers the first time the bowler hat entered her lovemaking. In Prague, Tomas put it on her head as a joke, and both looked at her image in the mirror, growing aroused. Sabina thinks the hat undermines her dignity as a woman. She thinks about wearing the hat in her lovemaking with Tomas, and muses it was "far from good clean fun it was humiliation"— a humiliation she provoked and enjoyed.
The bowler originally belonged to Sabina's grandfather, a mayor in a small Czech town, and......
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Approximate Word Count: 5470
Approximate Pages: 22 (260 words per double-spaced page) |