In Prague, Tereza arrives home late one night and notices that Tomáš smells of another woman. The next morning, she returns with Karenin from the store and finds him intently listening to a transistor radio. The program, broadcast by the Czech secret police, features secretly recorded conversations of Czech émigrés speaking disparagingly about communism, Czechoslovak government officials, and the Soviet Union.

Tereza, no longer able to work at the weekly paper because of the photographs she took of Russian tanks during the invasion, is once again a waitress. She works long hours at a hotel bar in Prague, but the position is not as demanding as the one she held when she met Tomáš. The atmosphere of political repression that followed the Russian invasion is palpable. Men gather in the bar during her shifts, and although she finds them distasteful, she thinks idly about having an affair with one of them. Tomáš continually tries to explain to her the difference between sex and love, but she does not understand. She thinks she might grasp his meaning better if she were to explore this duality on her own.

One day, there is a verbal confrontation at the bar between a drunk man, an underage boy, a balding man (who is also drunk), and a tall man who is sympathetic to Tereza.