My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Chekhov to Munro

by Jeffrey Eugenides

  Now it was she who laughed. “It isn’t that either.”

  “It isn’t that? Well, then, perhaps you have a special liking for darkened rooms, for talking in a whisper, for the smell of medicines, and all that? There are such people too, you know. But I can tell from your face that I haven’t hit it this time either.”

  She shook her head and faintly turned her mouth down at the cor-

  ners—perhaps in shy mockery, perhaps only out of embarrassment.

  But he gave her no peace. “You see how wrong I go, how ridiculous I’m making myself in your eyes by keeping on guessing wrong like this!

  Doesn’t that help you to come out with it? Come on now!”

  And now at least she came out with it. Slowly. Hesitantly. As if

  choosing her words carefully, in order to make intelligible something that was very difficult to understand:

  “You see, I have to earn my living.”

  Ah, how simple it all was!

  What an ass he had been, and what a stony eternity lay in that so ordinary answer!

  And another such time was once when he had secretly gone for a walk with Tonka. They used to go for long walks in the country whenever she had her day off, which was twice a month. It was summer. When eve-

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  ning came, the warmth of the air was exactly the same as that of one ’s face and hands, and, walking for a moment with closed eyes, one felt as though one were dissolving, expanding, floating. . . . He described this to Tonka and, when she laughed, asked her if she knew what he meant.

  Oh, yes!

  But he was still not sure that she did and so he tried to get her to describe it to him in her own words. And this she could not do.

  So then, he said, she didn’t know what he meant.

  Oh, but she did! And suddenly she said: it made you want to sing.

  For heaven’s sake!

  But yes—that was it, she protested.

  They went on wrangling like this for a while. And then after all they both began to sing, rather in the spirit of someone firmly placing the corpus delicti on the table or inspecting the scene of the crime. They sang pretty badly, and something from a musical comedy, at that, but fortunately Tonka sang softly, and he was glad of that little sign of consideration for his feelings. He was positive she had not been to the theatre more than once in her life and that ever since then these trashy tunes summed up her notions of culture and elegance. However, it turned out that she had merely picked them up from the other girls at the shop where she had worked.

  He asked her if she really liked these tunes. It always annoyed him to come across anything still linking her with that shop.

  She did not know what it was, whether this music was beautiful or silly, merely that it made her want to be on the stage herself and put her whole heart into making the people in the audience happy or sorrowful.

  This was perfectly ridiculous, of course, in the light of what poor dear Tonka looked like while she was singing. It depressed him, and his own singing faded out on a sort of growl. Then Tonka suddenly broke off too, as if she felt the same thing, and for a while the two of them walked along in silence.

  Then Tonka stopped and said: “That ’s not what I meant at all, about singing.”

  And since she saw in his eyes a little glint of responsive kindness, she began to sing again, still softly, but this time folk-songs from her

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  own part of the country. So they walked along, with these simple tunes making everything vaguely sad, like the fluttering of cabbage-whites in the sunshine. And so now all at once it turned out, of course, that Tonka was right.

  Now it was he who could not express what was going on in him.

  Because Tonka did not talk the ordinary language that other people used, but some language of the totality of things, she had had to suffer being thought stupid and insensitive. He realised now what it meant if one said: Songs just come into her head. It seemed to him that she was very lonely. If it were not for him, who would understand her? So they both sang. Tonka recited the Slavonic words and translated them into German for him, and then they joined hands and sang together like children. Whenever they had to leave off to regain their breath, there would be a little moment of silence ahead of them too, where the twilight was creeping across the road—and even if the whole thing was foolishness, the dusk itself was at one with their feelings.

  And yet another time they were sitting at the edge of a wood, and he was simply gazing into space through half-shut eyelids, not talking, letting his thoughts roam. Tonka began to be afraid she had offended him again. Several times she took a deep breath, as if about to speak, but then shyness held her back. So for a long time there was no sound but the woodland murmur that is so tormenting, rising and sinking away in a different place at every instant. Once a brown butterfly fluttered past them and settled on a long-stemmed flower, which quivered under the touch, swaying to and fro and then quite suddenly being quite still again, like a conversation broken off. Tonka pressed her fingers hard into the moss on which they were sitting, but after a while the tiny blades stood up again, one after the other, row on row, until there was finally no more trace of the hand that had lain there. It was enough to make one weep, without knowing why. If she had been trained to think, like her companion, at that moment Tonka would have realised that Nature consists of nothing but ugly little things that one hardly notices and which live as sadly far apart from each other as the stars in the night-sky. The beauties of Nature. . . . A wasp was crawling over his shoe. Its head was like a lantern. He watched it, contemplating his

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  shoe, which was sticking up broad and black, oblique against the brown of the earth.

  Tonka had often thought with dread of the moment when a man would stand before her and she would have no way of escape. The stories that the older girls in the shop had told her with such delight gave her a feeling only of a crude, boring frivolity, something that was not love at all, and she was indignant at the way men were always making amorous advances to her after scarcely exchanging more than a few words with her. As she looked at her companion now, she felt a sudden pang. It was the first time since she had been with him that she realised he was a man; for this was something completely different. He was lying back, resting on his elbows, his chin on his chest. Timidly, she tried to see into his eyes.

  What she saw was a peculiar smile. He had one eye shut, and with

  the other he was gazing along the length of his body, as though aiming at something. Doubtless he knew how ugly his shoe looked at that angle, and perhaps too how little it amounted to that he was lying at the edge of a wood with Tonka. But he did nothing to change anything about it.

  Each detail was ugly, and the whole thing was happiness.

  Quietly, Tonka got up. She suddenly felt a burning inside her head, and her heart was thudding. She could not make out what he was thinking, but she read it all in his eye; and all at once she caught herself wanting to take his head in her arms and cover up his eyes.

  “It ’s time to go,” she said. “It ’ll be getting dark soon.”

  As they were walking along the road, he said: “I’m afraid you must have been bored. But you will have to get used to me.” He took her arm, because it was becoming difficult to see the road distinctly, and he tried to excuse himself for his silence and then, almost against his will, for his thoughts too. She did not really know what he was talking about, but in her own way she sensed the meaning of his words, which came so gravely through the rising mist. And when now he went further, even apologising for talking in such a solemn way, she did not know what to do. Even her silent prayer to the Blessed Virgin was of no avail, and so she linked her arm more closely with his, although she felt dreadfully shy of doing so.

  He stroked her hand. “I think we get on well together
, Tonka. But do you really understand me?”

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  After a while Tonka answered: “It doesn’t matter if I know what

  you mean, or not. I couldn’t say anything anyway. But I like you to be so serious.”

  These were all very slight experiences, of course, but the remarkable thing was that they happened all over again, exactly the same. Actually they were always there. And, even more remarkably, later they meant the very opposite of what they had meant in the beginning. Tonka always remained so simply and transparently the same that it was almost like having an hallucination, seeing the most incredible things.

  I I I

  Then came an event: his grandmother died before the expected time.

  Events are, after all, only things that happen untimely and out of place; one is, as it were, mislaid or forgotten, and one is as helpless as an object that nobody bothers to pick up. And even the events that took place much later were only the things that happen thousands of times, all over the world, and the only incomprehensible thing about it was that it should have happened with Tonka.

  Well, and so the doctor came, the undertaker’s men came, the death certificate was signed, and Grandmamma was buried. One thing followed on the other quite smoothly, as is proper in a respectable family.

  The will was read. He was glad not to be in any way involved. There was only one item among the bequests that demanded attention: the provision made for Fräulein Tonka with that dreamlike surname, one of those Czech surnames that mean things like ‘He sang’, or ‘He came across the meadow’. There was a contract. Under the terms of the will the Fräulein was to receive—apart from her wages, which were low—a certain fixed sum for every completed year of service, and since it had been assumed that Grandmamma would linger on for quite a while, and since the sum had been fixed in gradually increasing amounts in accordance with the expected increase in the strain of nursing her, it turned out to be a sum that was bound to seem outrageously small to a young man who weighed out in minutes the months of her youth that Tonka had sacrificed.

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  He was present when Hyacinth reckoned up with her. He was pre-

  tending to read—the book was Novalis’ Fragments—but in reality he was attentively following what was going on. He was ashamed when

  his ‘uncle ’ named the sum. Even his ‘uncle ’ seemed to feel something similar, for he began to explain to the Fräulein, in detail, the terms of the contract that had been made when she entered their service. Tonka listened intently, her lips tightly closed. The solemnity with which she followed the calculations gave her young face a very appealing look.

  “So then that ’s correct, isn’t it?” his uncle said, laying the money on the table.

  It was obvious that she had absolutely no idea what it was all about.

  She pulled out her little purse, folded the notes, and squashed them in; but though they were few, folding them so much made a thick wad of them, and when the little purse had been replaced under her skirt, it made a bulge on her thigh, like a swelling.

  She had only one question to ask. “When do I have to leave?”

  “Well,” his uncle said, “I suppose it will be a few days before the house is shut up. You can certainly stay till then. But you can also go before that, if you like, as you won’t be needed any more.”

  “Thank you,” she said and went off to her little room.

  Meanwhile the others had begun sharing out the old woman’s things among themselves. They were like wolves devouring a dead member

  of the pack, and they were already in a state of general irritation when he asked whether the Fräulein, who had got so little money out of it all, should not at least be given something of some value in memory of Grandmamma.

  “We ’ve decided to give her Grandmamma’s big prayerbook.”

  “Well, yes, but I’m sure something useful would please her more.

  What about this, for instance?” He picked up a brown fur tippet that was lying on the table.

  “That ’s for Emmi”—a cousin of his—“and anyway you must be

  mad, it ’s mink!”

  He laughed. “Is there any law that poor girls can only be given something for the good of their souls? You don’t want to make a miserly impression, do you?”

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  “I’d thank you to leave that to us,” his mother said, and because she did not think he was entirely wrong, she added: “These are things you know nothing about. She won’t be treated unfairly.” And, with a gesture at once lavish and irritable, she put aside for Tonka some of the old woman’s handkerchiefs, chemises, and drawers, and then added a black woollen dress that had scarcely been worn. “There, I think that ’ll do.

  It ’s not as though the Fräulein had been such a treasure, and she can’t exactly be called sentimental, either. She never shed so much as a single tear, either when Granny died or at the funeral. So please don’t let us hear any more about it.”

  “Some people don’t cry easily. I mean, that doesn’t prove anything,”

  he said, not because it seemed important to say it, but because he felt the urge to argue for the sake of arguing.

  “That will do!” his mother said. “Don’t you realise that your remarks are out of place?”

  At this rebuke he fell silent, not because he was in awe of his mother, but because suddenly he felt vastly pleased at the thought that Tonka had shed no tears. His relatives were all talking eagerly, all talking at once, and he noticed how skilfully each of them turned the situation to his or her own advantage. They expressed themselves, if not clearly, at least to some purpose and with the courage of their convictions. In the end each of them got what he or she wanted. For them the ability to talk was not a medium of thought, but a sort of capital, something they wore like jewellery to impress others. As he stood by the table with the heaps of things to be given away on it, he found himself recalling a line of verse, ‘To him Apollo gave the gift of song, and music sweet to hear’, and for the first time he realised that it really was a gift. How inarticulate Tonka was! She could neither talk nor weep. But how is one to define something that neither can speak nor is spoken of, something that dumbly merges with the anonymous mass of mankind, something that is like a little line scratched on the tablets of history? What is one to make of such a life, such a being, which is like a snowflake falling all alone in the midst of a summer’s day? Is it real or imaginary? Is it good, or evil, or indifferent? One senses the fact that here the categories have reached a frontier beyond which they cease to be valid.

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  Without another word he left the room and went to tell Tonka that he would provide for her.

  He found her packing up her things. There was a big cardboard box on a chair, and there were two others on the floor. One of them was already tied up with string. The two others were not big enough for the amount of stuff still scattered about the room, and she was trying to solve the problem by taking things out again and putting them in differently—stockings and handkerchiefs, laced boots and sewing things—

  laying them first this way and then that. However scanty her possessions were, she would never get everything stowed away, for her luggage was still scantier.

  Since the door of her little room was ajar, he was able to watch her for some time without her knowing. When she did notice him, she blushed and quickly stepped in front of the open boxes.

  “So you’re leaving us?” he said, charmed with her embarrassment.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going home to Auntie.”

  “Do you mean to stay there?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I shall look around for something.”

  “Won’t your aunt be vexed?”

  “I’ve got enough for my keep for a few months. In that time I’ll
find a situation.”

  “But that means using up your savings.”

  “Can’t be helped, can it?”

  “And what if you don’t find it so easy to get a new job?”

  “Then I shall just get it served up to me again at every meal.”

  “Get what served up? How do you mean?”

  “Not bringing anything in. That ’s how it was when I was working at the shop. I wasn’t bringing much home, but I couldn’t help that, and she never said anything. Only if she was angry. Then she always did.”

  “And so then you took the job with us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look,” he said abruptly, “you mustn’t go back to your aunt. You’ll find something else. I’ll—I’ll see to that.”

  She did not say yes or no. She did not thank him. But as soon as he

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  had gone she began slowly taking one thing after another out of the boxes and putting them back in their places. She had blushed deeply.

  Now she could not collect her thoughts, and every now and then stood still with something in her hand, gazing blankly ahead of her, simply realising: So this was love.

  But when he had gone back to the room where Novalis’ Fragments was still lying on the table, he was suddenly aghast at the responsibility he had taken on. Quite unexpectedly something had happened that would determine the course of his life, and it was something that did not really concern him intimately enough. At this moment he perhaps even felt slightly suspicious of Tonka because she had accepted his offer without more ado.

  Then he began to wonder: What on earth made me propose such a

  thing? And he did not know the answer to that question any more than why she had accepted. Her face had revealed just the same helplessness and bewilderment that he had been feeling. The situation was painfully comical: he had gone rushing up somewhere as in a dream and now he did not know how to get down again.

  He had another talk with Tonka. He did not want to be anything

  but completely honest with her. He talked of personal independence, of intellectual values, of having a purpose in life, ambition, his distaste for the proverbial idyllic love-nest, his expectation that he would later have affairs with women of higher social standing—talked, in fact, like a very young man who wants a great deal and has experienced very little.