Goya's Glass

by Monika Zgustova

  Her next medical treatment continued to be as cold and mechanical as that of the day before. Although the palms of his hands woke up previously unknown desires in her, while his fingers made her delirious with pleasure, the doctor’s expression remained abstracted, distant. He touched her belly and she wanted to look him in the eye. She half-opened her eyes: he wasn’t looking at her. As his fingers stroked her body, his eyes focused on something far away, searching for the white light of day, staring at the far side of the river.

  Fräulein Zaleski, do you know anything about . . . No! I’m not talking about the novel The Grandmother. You’ve written us a whole epic poem about this grandmother of hers and I’m fed up with that subject. Do me the favor of not interrupting me from now on. All right? I believe I’ve been too patient with you. Do you know Václav Frič personally?”

  “Nein, Herr von Päumann, not personally.”

  “What do you mean, no! That is a great mistake! Frič is one of the worst enemies of our monarchy, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and of our institutions. He is one of the great revolutionaries who set off the 1848 revolution! Němcová invites him to her home almost every day.”

  “Yes, Herr von Päumann! At Božena Němcová’s I read some of his writings, all of them full of revolutionary fervor.”

  “This man has been released from prison and has had the impertinence to start up a magazine to which the most ardent revolutionary leaders of the Czech movement are supposed to contribute. What do you know about this?”

  “I have been able to find out that, indeed, Němcová is preparing her contribution to this publication. Frič and his group are all good friends of hers. She told me once that she shares her frugal teas with them and laughed, saying that, while they converse, she darns their worn-out underwear.”

  “Prague society cannot accept such insolence.”

  “Mrs Božena is so shameless that the bad things people say are of no importance to her.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Find out if that impudent man Frič is a frequent visitor even when Mrs. Božena is not at home. He may be plotting something with her husband. Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein.”

  “Herr von Päumann . . .”

  “Bitte? Do you have some information for me?”

  “I have started to work on . . .”

  “On what?”

  “You once broached the subject of Božena’s lovers. So I . . . I’ve started to work on . . .”

  “Then by all means get on with it. But please do leave right now, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Do you know,” the doctor said unexpectedly in a changed voice, as he put his medical instruments in his case and she buttoned up her blouse. “You once asked me about my travels. Deep down, I don’t really believe in travel as a way of discovering things. A certain someone has written words that show I am not mistaken: ‘You can know the whole world without leaving your own home. This is why the wise man knows without having travelled, understands without having seen.’ Do you follow me?”

  “Perfectly. What is more, I am in complete agreement. In the evening, when I sit down under the yellow light of this oil lamp, there appear worlds I have never seen. Then I do no more than describe that which I imagine, and from this, novels, stories and, above all, folktales are born. People ask me how I know those immense seas, those cliffs, and sweet fruits from the garden of delights. I cannot answer them because I have not seen these things; or rather I have, but here, in my room. It is under this oil lamp that the branches of the most unusual-looking trees sway and let fall multicolored flowers.”

  “Yes, I understand you. The wise man whose words I have just quoted, also said: ‘If you wish to possess the whole world, own nothing. If you are always busy, you will not take pleasure in the world.’”

  “I feel that way, too. I own only the things you see around me, those books on the shelf, the table, and the oil lamp, and I take most pleasure in the world when I am inventing it.” She broke off, and then added: “Who was the wise man that wrote those magnificent sentences, or rather those marvellous verses?”

  “Legend has it that he was a librarian, whose name in his mother tongue means ‘old master.’ At the end of his life, he reached the conclusion that mankind was a lost cause. So he took his yak—”

  “Yak? Is that an animal?”

  “Yes, it’s a kind of mountain bison. And with it he headed off into the wild and savage world of nature, where reason and logic reign. At the peak of a mountain gorge he decided to record his thoughts on a piece of paper. He lived roughly five centuries before Christ.”

  “What about you? Why are you not a philosopher; why are you a doctor?”

  “For me, both callings are identical. As a philosopher I would help people; as a doctor I can do so in a more direct fashion. I believe that the more one gives to others, the more one acquires personally. I find this to be the case every day.”

  I was received by Božena’s husband. He looked downcast, as was his wont, but when he saw me turn the corner of the staircase, his face expressed the absolute repugnance of someone who has just woken up to find an insect on the pillow. Reluctantly, he invited me in, and without offering me a seat, sat down himself on an old, gutted armchair and lit his pipe. He puffed away in silence and looked at the white wall, just as if I weren’t there. I didn’t even take off my coat; it was so chilly I could have caught my death of cold.

  Božena wasn’t in; her husband was ignoring me; only from time to time did he turn to look at the window from which you could see the building’s interior balconies. I went over to the window and saw a man outside. He spotted me and waved. Then I recognized him: he was Božena’s new friend, or I should say, her doctor. I answered his wave with a nod of the head. Němec, noticing this, leapt over to the window, elbowed me out of the way, looked down, and banged on the window frame so hard he made the glass shake. He was red faced and frightened me. I slipped away to the outside staircase and I leaned on the wall to catch my breath. When I was back home I realized the back of the dark brown coat I’d been wearing was completely covered in white from leaning on the wall.

  I will send Herr von Päumann the notes I have written here. Let him make what he will of it. What does he expect me to write if there are plenty of days when nothing happens? I am halfway through the text that will destroy Božena. Now I must write her biography. Von Päumann has been going on to me about it. It’s as if his life depended on it.

  Yes, I shall destroy Božena. Materially, she is so badly off that things couldn’t get much worse for her. I will ensure that she loses what is left of her reputation. I remember what she said of my lost friend, František: “What is left of an enemy may come back to life, as happens with the remnants of diseases and fires. Which is why they must be exterminated altogether. One must never ignore an enemy, no matter how weak he might be. He can be dangerous at any given moment, like a spark in a haystack.”

  Yes, I’d been wearing my dark brown coat with its back all covered in white. Božena lives precariously; she is even poorer than I am. Her husband’s madness has led her to this point. Is it worth having a husband like Božena’s? Whose solitude is more desolate: mine, living among five younger siblings who need to be fed; or hers, living in the company of someone with whom she has nothing in common?

  The wind at the edge of the Vltava sweeps away the fallen leaves. But what is this young woman doing at the riverbank if she went out to buy a few bread rolls and half a dozen eggs for supper? When she realized her mistake, she laughed and started to walk, but in the opposite direction of home. She skipped like a little girl who can’t walk past a geometrical shape on the pavement without jumping over the corresponding paving stone. She was moving in the same direction as the river’s current, jumping and skipping like a frog, and after one especially long jump, her feet took off from the pavement. Without touching the ground, the woman glided, her feet grazing the fence along the river, until she was
flying over the trees and could see everything that was happening on the first floors of all the houses. Before her appeared a green ravine in which sat an ancient sage with a thin white beard, jotting down his thoughts. She flew over the roofs of the houses, between the chimneys. She looked down into the twisted streets; the sage was sitting there in the shade. Then she, a svelte black figure with her hair blowing, stretched out a hand toward him, who put aside his pen, reached his hand out to her . . . and now the two of them were gliding together over the red roofs, between the spires of the chapel and church towers. As they flew above the bell towers and headed for Charles Bridge, she smoothed down her lace petticoats and her wide, pleated skirt, which the wind kept blowing upward, and the ancient sage kept his left hand on his beard, which flew and fluttered like a silver veil.

  How to begin the biography of Božena, then called Betty? What do writers do when blank pages stare at them, immaculate, mocking, whispering, between grimaces: “You’ll manage it . . . or maybe you won’t!” I will start by describing a specific fact, for example, that it was autumn and the apples were ripe.

  It was the beginning of autumn. A sixteen-year-old girl was sitting in front of her house, eating one apple after another, picking them straight from the tree. Her eyes never ceased wandering over the castle garden, where trees and bushes burned with yellow and red flames. The girl’s name was Betty. She was combing a doll, whose name was Wilhelmine, like the duchess who spent her summers at the castle. Betty imagined the doll was a princess, the most beautiful one in the world, who would one day be rescued by a prince from the dragon that was keeping her in thrall. The doll-princess was she herself; this miracle she dreamed of was supposed to happen to her. Suddenly, she heard footsteps. A tall, swarthy, uniformed man with big ears was approaching her at a military pace. She quickly hid the doll behind her back. The man tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace.

  “Hello, little girl!” he said, or rather shouted, in a hoarse voice.

  Which little girl was he referring to? The man went on.

  “Don’t hide the doll; show it to me!”

  That was when Betty got really frightened and ran off. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her until she got to a friend’s house. In the evening when she returned home, her mother told her that the arrogant, noisy man had come to ask for Betty’s hand in marriage, even though he was the same age as her mother. They had looked all over the park for her so that she could meet her future husband. Where had she been?

  “At Pepinka’s house. Mama, I saw that man. I don’t want him for a husband.”

  “Nonsense, Betty! You have to want him, because I like him. He’s highly eligible.”

  “I don’t want him and that’s that.”

  “Betty, we’re packed like sardines here, eight people in a small flat. Don’t you understand?”

  “I want to earn my own money. I’ll work as a maid or a cook.”

  “Have I made such an effort to turn you into Fräulein Betty, just for that? No, little lady. You will marry Officer Josef Němec.”

  “Mama, I would much rather be a laundrywoman like you!”

  “You will be Josef Němec’s wife. End of story.”

  “No Mama, please, no! Anything, but not that! Please, I beg of you, please!”

  “Don’t beg, it won’t get you anywhere. I have thought everything out. And you know perfectly well that I never go back on my word. Now, go to bed.”

  On the morning of September the twelfth, four carriages with uniformed coachmen belonging to Duchess von Sagan waited in front of Betty’s house. A swarm of curious bystanders surrounded all this aristocratic splendor as they tried to guess the color of the bride’s dress, how the maids of honor would be dressed, who would stand as the witnesses for the bride and who for the bridegroom. The witnesses were already climbing the staircase from the basement apartment and behind them walked the bridesmaids, Helena and Josefa, in pink dresses, with their escorts. Betty’s father, the elegant Josef Pankl, climbed the staircase and turned to see Betty, his Betty, whom he had tried to liberate from the bridegroom, but could not override his wife. Betty walked slowly, making an effort and lowering her veil to conceal her tear-stained face. She stoped at each step; at the top of the staircase she turned, as if wanting to go back home. Her mother grabbed her by the arm and lead her to one of the carriages.

  The bystanders gossiped about it all; some said the bride, in her sky-blue dress and white veil, looked like an angel, while others repeated that blue was not a suitable color for a bride. One woman, who noticed the aversion to the bridegroom stamped on the bride’s face, concluded the debate with an old superstition: “A blue dress will never bring happiness to a marriage.”

  These words were passed on in a trice. Everybody was now convinced of this truth, which sounded like nothing so much as a curse.

  The carriage Betty was sitting in moved forward on the path lined with plane trees; she knew it like the back of her hand. She felt weary, having spent almost the entire night and the early morning crying. She would never have believed herself capable of crying for such a long time. She looked out at the scenery; now, in such changed circumstances, deep in a kind of desperation previously unknown to her, the familiar spots seemed strange to her. Some trees have begun to go yellow, which made her think of the crown of green branches that, according to custom, she had crafted with the help of her friend Josefa. As she made it, she said farewell to those ideals that she had been weaving together for seventeen years. Once the crown was ready, she threw it into the waters of the Úpa, together with her hopes. Now at this moment, she had just one tiny hope left: that some kind of miracle would take place that could separate her from the future, from that terrible time to be, lived by the side of the man to whom she had been allocated, from the future that she saw as an endless grey and windy November day.

  They were now approaching the church. When walking from school to home she always used to think that this cheerful church looked splendid, with its steeple that had a huge onion on its top. Betty loved to look at the clock hung under the belfry, how its golden hands shone even on overcast days, and she liked to imagine that the saint in front of the church was making that gesture with his arm to say, “Goodbye for now, girl, see you tomorrow!” Now it was just the opposite: everything struck her as alien and hostile. The church was full of people who had come to the wedding, spreading out along the pews like a grey avalanche. She was aware only of two side altarpieces, baroque ones, their candles lit, and the altar that reached to the ceiling. She was afraid. That altar covered in ridiculous ornamentation, with two equally absurd puffy-cheeked cherubs that filled her with horror, as if in place of two playful angels the Pope of Rome himself was there, ready to cut off her head. Why the pope? She didn’t really know, in her anguish she could only see the stern papal mitre, a scream and the end. They led her over to the priest. For the first time in her life, she panicked. She lost track of everything that happened afterward . . .

  Later, she was sitting at a table on the terrace of the White Lion restaurant next to that man. She couldn’t eat; she lowered her head down to hide the tears that fell, against her will, like heavy raindrops onto her plate. She glanced sideways at him. He didn’t look happy either. Poor Josef. Poor Josef, she would repeat to herself throughout the night.

  The following day, the dahlia festival was held in the spacious room next to the restaurant. Some fifty growers exhibited their creations, magnificent dahlias of many different colors. There was a banquet, and prizes were given for the most beautiful flower, after which there was a ball. When the music began to play and the bridegroom offered her his arm, Betty started to dance in a vehement fashion—she led that man in the dance so that people should not notice that Josef, her husband, was someone also deserving of compassion. That it was not only she who was unhappy with him, but that he, too, would be unhappy with her. Betty, seemingly happy as a lark, spent the whole night dancing. She realized the extent to which she was exciting
all the men present and to the joy of her uninhibited male partners, threw herself into each dance as if at least for that night she wanted to forget what was coming. When the time came for the Queen of the Festival to be elected, Betty was chosen.

  She said goodbye to her parents as if she never wanted the farewell to end. Everybody else was turning to leave, only she stayed on until her mother gripped her arm and said firmly: “You have to go, daughter, you are no longer mine!”

  She was looking through the window to see if the young doctor was on his way when a group of officers quarrelling in the street reminded her of her husband. On the evening when she came home flying—yes, she flew all the way into the main room, having left the ancient sage sitting on Petřín Mountain—her husband’s expression soon had her putting her feet down on the hard floor of the kitchen. She knew only too well what would follow: recriminations, shouts, fist banging, door banging. By this stage, she was almost indifferent to such scenes; the only thing that mattered to her at that moment was to keep intact the magic that filled her to the brim, that urged her to take flight once again. Her husband, his arms folded and a ferocious expression on his face, had placed himself firmly in front of the window. To get in my way, she thought with a smile.

  She went into her bedroom, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. On the other side somebody started to bang on the wood of the door, but she took no notice; her room was immersed in the orange of a Bengal light, in which the long dying tones of that curious flute could be heard. She made a few movements, as if to dance to its rhythm, and when that shrill instrument went silent, she sat down at her table. She thought about the white-bearded old man, and how right he was that you can know the world without stepping out of your front door. She wrote down: “When I don’t have reality, let dreams make me happy! How many times have I satisfied my longing for the sea in dreams? How many times have I dreamed of joyful landscapes? Dreams have brought me people I love whom I will never see again; in dreams, I can live as I wish and be happy. Why complain about them being only dreams if these feelings will be with me for the rest of the day! I am grateful, deeply grateful for this kind of dream.” She wrote these words down in a notebook, but in fact she knew they were addressed to a specific person, somebody with whom she never ceased to converse in her mind. She wrote more and more, until six o’clock in the morning. She produced folktales because they allowed her to write about a certain type of happy love affair which can only be found in such stories.