Wild Woman

by Marina Sur Puhlovski

  Home, home and then I’ll get ready to go out, to the disco, it’s still warm, the dancing is still out in the open air, I’ll doll myself up, clothes, make-up, the whole shebang, as if I’m stepping out of a palace and not this wreck of flat, prepared for painting but neither painted nor cleaned.

  Don’t wait up for me, I won’t be back till morning, I say to poor Tanga, who’s sitting, watching me iron my knee-length linen dress on the table, the dress has buttons running all the down the front but the last button is midway down my thigh, and it has a collar, breast pockets and skirt pockets, it’s olive green, like army uniforms, and with it I’m wearing dark brown cork heels. And I’ll wear nothing underneath, except for a dash of perfume, as a joke I remember says, no bra, no knickers, nothing, I say aloud, doubling over with laughter, which echoes in the dining room like a madwoman’s, which is what it is, because I’ve gone berserk, wild. And nobody can do a thing to me anymore.

  I walk down the street pantie-less and bra-less, I’ve gone out without a bra before but never without knickers, and I revel in the freedom of a body with nothing to constrain it, nothing to pinch it, no revealing outlines, that’s something I don’t like, and I calm down as if somebody were whispering jokes in my ear, because nobody but me knows that I have nothing on under my skirt, that I’ve broken the rule. I’m shocked, with only one witness, me, and I feel powerful, I feel as if I’m mocking everybody. If the pavement were made of glass then everybody would see that I have no knickers on, I muse, already feeling very relaxed, I’ve taken off more than just that, I realise, I’ve also shed the self-image they slipped on me like an invisible dress that I’m now going to take off, once and for all, and never wear again.

  So here I am in the street, with no knickers on, looking for somebody who will want to go to bed with me, for a stranger, it’s not that I’m a virgin and don’t know what to expect, this is not going to be my first time where I’m expecting the real thing, there was that Šibenik guy, but I was with him for pleasure not love, though at least I was attracted to him, and that justifies everything. But this evening it’s work, looking for a stud who will ravish me, not pleasure me, somebody I will offer myself to in order to humiliate my husband, who won’t be able to stand it. I know for sure that he won’t, my betrayal will kill him. He’d see through it immediately if I pretended that I’d cheated on him, because I’m bad at lying. No, he has to smell another man’s body on me, like an animal, he has to understand that he’s finally been rejected, and he has to feel that rejection in his bones, down to the last drop of blood in his damaged veins, like a flood that’s going to carry him away and he can’t fight it. Or like a fire that will engulf him. And, more importantly, me with him, because I have to burn so that I can be reborn and rise up from the ashes like a phoenix, I’m flattering myself, because I don’t know if I am a phoenix or if I’ll simply disappear. Like the dream he had, the dream about the Wax Queen, I remember, it was a message that I didn’t understand.

  That’s what I’m thinking as I walk in my sandals with the four-inch cork heels, wearing my tight military dress and no knickers, first down my street, then JNA Street, under the blossoming chestnut trees, and I’m smoking, which isn’t exactly seemly, as if I’m trying to provoke a reaction. But there’s nothing sweeter than smoking in the street, especially when you go out with no knickers on, and you’re a woman, because the very fact that the cigarette is in your hand and lit for you and that you’re taking a drag – makes it alive, providing a form of support, company, rather than being a mere object, says Sartre in its defence, as a constant subject of attack.

  Because I need support for this pathetic, and when I think about it, superfluous sacrifice that I intend to make, in the normal world things like this are resolved differently, you’re a bastard, even if you are sick, you’re a piece of shit, get out, there’s no mercy, but with me there always is, everything is always out in the open, what is and what was, you can always invoke it, I surrender to it, and it’s not because I’m weak. That’s why he has to make the decision to leave himself, he has to have a reason that he can’t ignore, I tell myself as I turn right and past the secondary school I ran away from. You’re so harmless now, but you were so horrible then, I say to the building whenever I see it, how things change, I muse, both good and bad, everything becomes senseless, if that makes sense. I’m walking nicely, my back straight, deliberately swaying my bare butt, a cigarette between the index and middle finger of my right hand, raised to shoulder-level, I’m seductive and it works. A hairy, bearded young man in jeans turns to look at me and stops in his tracks, gawking, saying something, I notice him from the corner of my eye, although I’m not interested, I have my goal, the disco where everything will resolve itself once and for all as soon as Osibisa start singing.

  It takes courage to go to a disco by yourself, and with no knickers on, I say to myself, building up my courage, because it needs support, too, it takes courage to walk in, sit down, light up, stand up, push your way through the crowd to get a drink and then come back again, pretending that you’re not alone, even though you’re carrying your own drink, and then to sit down again, cross your legs and wonder if anything’s showing underneath. The only thing showing is that I’m alone, which at the same time is an invitation, and meanwhile my glass with the sugared slice of lemon wedged on the rim is turning red from the Americano, a lady’s drink, because I need something to protect myself.

  I’d barely touched my not too sugary drink, when a candidate summoned from the underworld appears; where’ve you been, he says, you appeared and then disappeared this time last year, he says, because he remembers precisely, he obviously has certain intentions in my regard. He stands there, cute-looking, a roguish smile on his round face, not sure if it is beardless or shaved, half of him is still a boy; he studies acting. I don’t particularly take to him, but that’s his plus, not minus, because I don’t want to enjoy myself with him, I’m being sacrificed to the heavens to be free of the demons, like in mythology, so I can’t and I shouldn’t enjoy it. The pyre will enjoy me, the flames to which I give myself will enjoy me, and so will the aroused stripling the gods have sent me so that I can give him my body. After that I won’t have to sacrifice myself to my husband, no matter how much my mother whispers into my ear that “the poor man is sick”, the way Jesus probably whispered into her ear that her husband, “poor man, is sick”, you go ahead and sacrifice yourself for him since you took him for better or worse, even though it was never better, you just pretended it was. Because there’s no better in this somnolent world, which doesn’t even know what it is, and there’s no worse, there’s only brutal logic. According to which if you drink a good poison you will die, like Socrates when he was offered poison. And that’s unbearable. So we invent fairy tales to save ourselves, except they won’t. They’ll only put us into a deeper sleep.

  We chat a bit longer, he and I, just to be polite, twirling our glasses, the grape brandy in his as clear as the glass, lounging in our armchairs, looking laid-back, that’s how everybody else looks so I figure I do, too, a good place for our fears and doubts, for murky secret plans.

  Want to dance, he asks, he’s already put down his glass, stood up and given me his hand with its clean, hairless, white pudgy fingers and clipped nails, I hesitate, only slow dances, I say, because I don’t feel like bopping around, I don’t say that I just think it, and I let myself be led onto the dance floor, where the lights swirl in all the colours of the rainbow and the amps are vibrating with the rhythms of Osibisa’s Sunshine Day, there are slow records and fast, something for everybody, and his hand slowly moves down my back, we’re glued to each other. Our faces are pressed together, he holds me tight, not sensing that I feel like that wooden statue of the Virgin Mary who always stands in the invisible corner of the church, her hands folded, her eyes lowered, humble before God and before life, he has no idea whom he’ll be taking to the flat (his flat, as he’s already said) after we grope each other and have one more drink, jus
t to relax ourselves.

  We go on foot, he lives in the city centre, in one of those streets where I always lose my way because they’re all the same, like in those new housing complexes, except here the buildings reflect the century they belong to, the second half of the nineteenth century, before the great wars. How did he come by a flat at his age, I wonder, but I don’t ask, I’m just glad he has one because even if my place weren’t the mess that it is, I wouldn’t take him there, I don’t want him that near. We enter the flat and he takes me through the gloomy hallway into the bedroom, it’s big, with stuccowork on the ceiling, and a bare window overlooking the courtyard. The unmade bed is a square on the floor, with white bedding like our grandmothers’. Embroidered pillow cases and an embroidered duvet cover, I notice for a second, because he’s already undressing, always a sorry spectacle before the advent of the act, the same as dressing afterwards, as if a mask is removed and then put on again, ending all that bliss.

  He’s white, has meat on the bones, his nipples show because his chest is hairless, but his skin is clear, and the boy has an erection, his member standing up, here he does have hair, it’s light red, I see everything because I feel nothing. He embraces me as I unbutton my military dress, still in my shoes, he’s not really embracing he’s grabbing me, my breasts, my ass, he almost bursts when he realises that I’m naked underneath and for a minute he stops. But he doesn’t say anything, he has other things on his mind, my dress is already on the floor, I’ve kicked off my shoes, I’m on my back and he’s on top of me, all white, white, white, and big somehow, he groans and sweats, causing me neither pain nor pleasure, this, too, shall end, I think to myself. And so it does, just before dawn, because he kept coming back for more, as if he couldn’t get enough.

  He says I can use the bathroom to wash myself, but I need the smell of him, I need to take it home with me, I need it on my face and hair, which is matted with sweat and I want to keep it that way, I’ll comb it a little with my fingers, just enough not to look dishevelled when I go out into the street. I wrap the sheet around me and reach for my olive-grey dress on the floor, it’s all creased as it needs to be, and meanwhile he’s smoking a cigarette, the ashtray on the bed linen, sitting and watching me undo all those buttons on my dress.

  You don’t wear underwear, he says, why don’t you wear underwear, he asks. No reason, I say, shrugging, I just don’t, I don’t know why. Such a pretty woman, he says, looking at me thoughtfully, not finishing his sentence, which doesn’t bother me because I’m not interested in what he wanted to say. He’s on the wrong track, whatever he says or thinks, because this isn’t me, this is me as a weapon, as just a device.

  He asks if I want coffee, yes, and, once I’m dressed, I want a cigarette, a little breather before the final battle waiting for me at home. Still naked, he goes to make the coffee, I’m staring at my fingers because I don’t want to look at him, and I hear his footsteps, the shower, the clatter of dishes, that’s all there is between us, these sounds, the whiteness of his torso on top of me, that’s all that will remain.

  He returns, a blue terrycloth towel wrapped around his waist, carrying a silver-plated platter with ornate handles, and on it a smoking hot copper coffee pot and two small, white, gold-rimmed porcelain cups. Here, he says, placing the platter in front of me on the table, it’s square with one single large leg in the middle, like a metal pedestal. Everything here is old, brown Secessionist furniture with flowers etched on the glass doors of the cabinets and cupboards, on the wall a wind-up pendulum clock, dark oil paintings, still-lifes, portraits, everything here is old except for the square bed, which is his.

  His grandmother left him the flat, he says, sitting down, last year when she died. It’s a nice flat, I say, I like old-fashioned apartments, he does, too, he says, but it needs renovation, the woodwork, the bathroom, the kitchen. We chat about apartments, studying, where the jobs are, I see through the uncurtained window that dawn is breaking, as if the day is getting up from the earth, so I get up, too, and say I’ll be going.

  See you, he says, walking me to the door, and I smile and nod, sure, absolutely, and I go down the stairs, watching him watch me, his white torso naked, a towel around his waist. I even wave.

  Outside, the air is crisp, I breathe it in, the chill gives me goose bumps, there’s nobody in the street, just cars, and the chirping birds in the treetops greeting the morning, the new day they have lived to see with a song. It’s two tram stops to my house, counting from Republic Square, which runs parallel to the street I’m on, but I have to cross at least four perpendicular streets to get there so I have to take that into account when I’m calculating how long it will take me to get there. All in all, it’s no more than a brisk fifteen-minute fast walk for me, now that I’m no longer invested in my seductive stroll, and assuming I don’t get lost, which shouldn’t happen, I just have to follow the streets and not stop and think, I tell myself, and be careful. I’m waiting to see the yellow theatre building nestled in the park, because that will be a sign that I’m not lost, that I’m not going in the wrong direction. My sense of direction is so bad that I wouldn’t know where I was even if somebody dropped me in the middle of Republic Square, I’ve been known to say. People answer by saying that most women are like that, they have no sense of space. Interesting, because that means something, except, I wonder, why don’t women have a sense of space, or of time, because time is space, so maybe it’s because they have a sense of eternity, I muse, because eternity is the opposite of time and space, which are dominated by men. However, it’s diamonds, not money, that are forever, Huxley observed, and women immediately recognise the eternity that a glittering diamond promises. I instantly feel better with this eternity inside me where everything has already been resolved, where time and space do not carry the weight they do here, where you have to resolve everything as if it hasn’t been resolved already, because that’s why you’ve come.

  I keep on thinking and thinking, and then I stop because I’ve walked past the theatre and JNA Street, and past the Church of St. Blaise, like Jens Sigsgaard’s Paul is Alone in the World, I dash down the streets because it’s Sunday and only just daybreak, even my beggar hasn’t taken up his post in front of the church yet, and here I am, already in my street, my throat tight, my lungs and stomach going wild, as if I’m going to an execution site. Which is where I’m going, it’s kill or be killed, because that’s the kind of execution site it is, where everybody dies, both the condemned and the executor in one fell swoop of the axe; counter to the violent logic that cuts off the head of only one party, I’m off to finish what I started. I push open the heavy, etched glass door and walk into the hallway, climb the fifteen steps and am back in front of my door, unlocking it... And here I am in the entrance hall, music wafting in from the radio in the dining room, the tender, matinal strains of the violin, Mendelssohn, the first movement of the Concert for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, my favourite, as if coming to my aid. So he’s awake, I think, he’s waiting for me, and I breathe in and breathe out before negotiating the doorknob. He’s sitting at the table, smoking, the coffee’s made, dressed as if he hasn’t changed his clothes, his legs crossed, the top leg swinging, looking at me with both reproach and forgiveness, with hope even when everything is lost, his lips quivering, his face red; it’s over.

  So, is all that he said before walking out, taller than usual, immensely erect somehow, slamming the door in a last act of protest, my darling, my love, my everything, my nothing. Still in my military dress, unwashed, without panties, I danced around the house, I danced like a winner, hey ho, from the dining room into the other rooms, from the other rooms into the dining room, kicking up dust, kicking whatever was in the way, the dog’s red ball, polka-dotted like a mushroom, the elegant slippers Kostje had given him, the newspaper, the wooden measuring tape, the blunt pencil, the red ball of wool that appeared from somewhere because my mother knits, hey ho, until I collapsed at the rock bottom of existence and stayed there for the next three days
. Incapable of parting with my life and the notions that I had already discarded, deadly miserable for no reason, incomprehensible to myself.

  ***

  It’s the morning of day four since he left, the autumnal sun is shining through the lace curtain, it seems I fell asleep sitting up, my head resting on my arm on the table. I stretch and yawn, life is hurting my bones, I’ll go to the toilet first, and then it’s your turn, I say to Tanga, who is also stretching and yawning, because that’s how our bodies are, hers and mine, in that respect there’s no difference. The toilet is in the hallway, and there are insects in the hallway, I realise as soon as I enter, some are already blackening my leg, biting, we’ve got no place else to go, my dog and I, the dining room is their next stop, a fortress conquered in advance.

  We’ll wind up on the street, I say aloud after peeing, just to make things clear, to make myself understand that I’ve reached the end, it’s either the hall or the street. Obviously it’s the hall, I’m not somebody who panics, I’m always calm and collected in a crisis, as I discovered during a tremor, when I pushed visitors paralysed with fear out of the house, even I was surprised by how firm I was.