Part 5 of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.

Tomas is the main character in this section and Tereza only plays a small part near the end. This section is basically about how Tomas writes an article and it gets published. His chief surgeon wants Tomas to write a retraction for his article but Tomas doesn’t want to lose the respect of the other doctors so he refused. He gets sacked and gets a new job s a GP at a different surgery. 2 years later a secret policeman ends up talking to Tomas and then tells him to retract the article he wrote. Tomas refuses and then after some time he ends up as a window washer. His ex-patients feel sorry for him as they know he shouldn’t be washing windows so they specially ask him to wash their windows so that he gets work. Luckily for Tomas though, his new job allows him to meet lots more women. He thinks of his window washing job asa holiday as he doesn’t think of it as his real life. He gets contacted by his son and a man with a large chin and asked by them to sign a petition against harsh treatment to political prisoners. Tomas refused to sign it and leaves. The next day Tomas sees the petition published in the paper and everyone who signed it got slated badly. So that was lucky for him that he chose not to sign it.
Tereza and Tomas have become very far apart now and Tereza has another bad dream about Tomas cheating on her when she is dead. Tereza suggest to Tomas that they should both move to the countryside. Tereza explains to Tomas how she has had to put up with the smells of other women in his hair for along time and that she hates it. Tomas wants to stop womanising and he wants to be good to Tereza so he decides that they will move to the countryside together.