When the Volrabs came back from their nighttime sortie into the yard, after numerous admonitions (“Yes, Uncle,” “Yes, Auntie.”) they checked the bar on the kitchen window and disappeared into their bedroom with all the keys, and when their muttering had finally quieted down, Sonya turned on her flashlight and under the featherbed read on in Armand Lanoux’s novel, When the Ebbtide Comes:
… Naked, fair-haired women with great fixed and watchful eyes were walking … perhaps to some cruel rituals… The hairy pudenda of the beautiful sacrifices betrayed their animality in contrast with the innocent purity of their faces… Flowers growing up through cracks in the polished floors … all this placed these melancholy young ladies in the role of the priestesses of Sigmund Freud, if not Sacher-Masoch, exquisite sleepwalkers flirting with rape, which was emblematized by the young, faultlessly dressed gentlemen, evidently indifferent, buttoned up in their green frock-coats, with derbies on their heads.
I have an inkling that something will happen to me soon. That a man will come. When he comes, something has to happen. The man is supposed to build a house and for this the woman will make him happy.
My prince and my lord, come—
“People are no good, Emil,” Volrab complained to the pig during their sweet early-evening fondling session in the pigsty, and he gave him a good scratching behind the ears, “just when you’re beginning to get somewhere, they pull out their switchblades. Take that engineer Jagr, for example: we serve him all sorts of special dishes and we pamper him all sorts of ways — and then he tries to steal away our Sonya, and threatens to have the law on us in the bargain!”
“Hrr-hrr,” the pig said to that.
“You’re right, he’s nothing but a white-collar clown. But then take that fellow Mach: a day laborer who doesn’t order anything at the bar, and he lies in wait for our Sonya in the corridor. Is it for him we bring her up and cultivate her like a flower?”
“Hrr-hrr.”
“You bet. We’ll wipe the floor with him. Like we did with those other gentlemen, right? And we’ll keep an eye on Sonya, and every Sunday there’ll be a floricultural evening, success after success, and you’ll live to see the day the Hubertus becomes the Grand Hubertus, with neon signs and red coconut matting from the staircase out to the gate… Here, Emil, I’ve brought you sugar, take it and make yum-yum—”
“Keek-keek,” the pig rejoiced, but all of a sudden the blast of a siren as for a fire…
In the middle of the yard Engineer Holy’s luxury sedan was still rocking on its springs, so rapidly had he come to a stop.
“Hey, manager! Your best customer’s here—” the engineer says through the window, lording it over, of course. And beside him sits that old witch Berta Zahnova — pray to God and cross yourself.
“I’ve brought Berta with me in case I need her here. You can charge me as if for an extra bed.”
“Most certainly, sir, that will be eight crowns a day, since your room is first category and de luxe—”
“Ever since that floricultural evening of yours strange things have been happening here. A man doesn’t feel quite safe here!”
“That’s because our customers all run after Sonya. Just last night Mr. Jagr was trying to get at her by climbing through the kitchen window — and it was the second time he tried that!”
“You have to keep a close watch over that girl!”
“We’ve got a bar across the window, but when the customers are all so wild about her—”
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we have Berta sleep in the kitchen with her—for greater security. Just for a couple of days.”
“But after all… that would… There isn’t another bed there.”
“You can work that out somehow. I’ll pay well for it.”
“But we’ll still have to charge the same as for an extra bed in your room, since there aren’t any tariffs for sleeping in the kitchen, and since your room is first category and de luxe, it would still come to eight crowns, since—”
“I’ll pay twenty-five.”
“I ought to talk it over with my wife.”
“Later, I haven’t got the time now. And you can ask her what she’d like me to bring her from London on my next trip.”
London has many things a woman likes (“I’d be quite happy, sir, with a few bottles of that Scottish grape-pomace brandy.”) and so Berta Zahnova (an old acquaintance from the Globus, former citizen of the Third Reich and a large-scale procuress of our poor Protectorate girls, whom no one ever set eyes on again) was bedded down in the kitchen.
Volrabka and Zahnova embraced one another and kissed each other noisily, Sonya was ordered to prepare white coffee, to whip cream, to add fresh vanilla to the finest sugar and to cut slices of marble cake (made in three layers: plain, chocolate, and pink), both ladies recollected in sentimental fashion the delightful war years when they were still called Gnädige Frau and Madame and when business was still booming and there was still some sort of order, until midnight they prattled together (Berta Zahnova was sitting in the corner behind the stove) and over the pots and pans they called to one another:
“…and you remember Emma, that wall-eyed redhead—”
“How could I forget her, she got married to an American Negro. And Oberstleutnant von Goltz—”
“He was killed at Minsk.”
“Dicke Trudi works in Usti now as a shithole hag and she drives a broken-down Opel from East Germany.”
“Is there any chance you know something about our little Lieselotte? She was like a daughter to me…”
“Why, those fellows on the steamship bought her, they sailed around with her for five days, and then she jumped under a train at Decin.”
“Help yourself to another piece of cake, it’s fresh.”
At midnight the ladies opened a bottle of Griotte Morella and in half an hour’s united effort they licked it all up. Then they decided that Berta would sleep in the same bed with Sonya, in the kitchen.
“But that’s really not necessary now,” Berta said when Volrab was placing the bar over the kitchen window.
“You’ll both go beddie-bye better,” said Volrab, forcefully closing the padlock and conspicuously sticking all the keys into his pocket. “Secure is secure.”
“But if something— during the night—” Berta said.
“All you have to do is knock. Wifey and me, we’re light sleepers!” Volrab told Berta, and as soon as he had shut the bedroom door, he hissed at Volrabka: “You hear? She wanted to have the window open!”
“Why would she?” Volrabka was surprised.
“Why, maybe to smuggle Sonya up to No. 2 during the night.”
“That would be a dirty trick — after that marble cake and the Griotte, and I had fresh vanilla added to the sugar … But if anyone’s capable of it, Berta is…”
“She’s capable of anything! Why do you think Mr. Holy’s planted her here with us?”
“Good Lord, how these times corrupt people! Nothing’s the same as it used to be … there’s no style or chic. And charm doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“So long as that witch is here, sleep with one eye open!”
Berta Zahnova sat down in the corner behind the stove and, except when she was spying on people, she stuck it out there all day long. Volrab was uneasy under her keen surveillance, he crammed his pockets with sugar and with an open can of Spanish sardines he walked peevishly around the yard, eating sardines with his fingers straight from the can (unsalted and without lemon they taste like boiled tripe), he fed the sugar to the pig and spoke to him reproachfully.
But Emil soon infected him with his good humor. Volrab stood for a while in the sun, just so, and already “ideas were beginning to come to him”: he resolved to feed Emil fishmeal (so he grows nice and fat) and to give Sonya a bar of his private stock of pink soap (so she smells nice), she shouldn’t use laundry soap any longer or spread lime for the chickens (so their eggshells are nice and thick), and Sonya should make that dress out of the
white material with the canaries on it, like a wedding dress, white has always been the biggest hit, and let in the gray Belgian rabbit.
All of the Volrabs’ merchandise was tender and succulent — Volrab was enthroned behind his beer tap until midnight, he watched Sonya closely while he pondered over marketing, Ranger Sames can pick up over two-and-a-half thousand and whatever else he can manage to steal in the woods, just once he could send me a brace of pheasants or a side of venison, and how would it hurt him if just once he were to send his women out to pick bilberries for the Hubertus—or cranberries! Mmm! “Sonya, serve our forest ranger the strongest beer we’ve got.” Venison is nothing without cranberries.
Mr. and Mrs. Balada from No. 3 are the picture of bureaucratic poverty, you can’t get anything out of them. Petrik Metelka is a fine customer with his daily bottle of champagne, but watch out for the adolescent in him! He’ll go and shoot himself in the head some day, and then there’ll be trouble! “Sonya, offer Mr. Metelka the Parisian salted almonds!” “The peanuts, Uncle?” “I said Parisian almonds, and take him two packs!”
Postmaster Hudlicky is good for nothing, with his sixteen-hundred crowns and his old lady Sarka, demanding as a Turkish princess, for an hour now he’s been sitting over his first pint while the bar’s been filling up, I’ll have to give him a small warning so he won’t be an inconvenience here. But that animal doctor, Srol, knows what makes a good customer, “Another small bottle of that Egyptian, Doctor, what do you say? Sonya, can’t you see the Doctor doesn’t have anything to drink!”
The phone rang, long distance, and Pav, the dentist from Jilemnice, was inquiring if it were really true that the Hubertus was offering kissing evenings and if there were any truth to the rumor that it had booked a belly dancer, “Something like that, Doctor,” Volrab said into the mouthpiece and he promised to reserve a table for Sunday evening, for Dr. Pav “and two other gentlemen.” “But be here at eight o’clock sharp, ‘cause with the crowds we get it’s hard to hold reservations—” said Volrab and, spellbound, he hung up the phone, they were already calling from the district capital…
“Sonya, when you have a free moment bring some cardboard from the kitchen, cut each sheet in four, and write nicely on each one RE-SER-VE in big letters, the final E has a reverse accent, you know, because it’s French!”
And Volrab drew a beer for himself and, touched, gazed at Sonya’s calves, success after success, like way back when at the Globus whenever a train arrived from the front or a boat anchored in the harbor, on each table a sign RESERVÈ.
When, on Wednesday evening, Ruda Mach entered the bar and caught sight of Ziki (for the first time since the day before, the day he had found the cream-colored envelope in his room addressed to Sonya, Engineer Zikmund Holy’s card inside, and on the back of the card: “100 crowns for Room No. 5, the rest for you. A room in Usti is reserved for you until 7/15. Z.” and a hundred-note), the first thing he did was carefully close the door behind him.
Then he walked slowly over to Ziki’s table, unhurriedly he pulled out of his rear trousers pocket his brass-bound wallet, took a hundred-note out of it, and stuck the wallet back in his pocket. Then he unfolded the bill on his palm, cleared his throat with a rumble, and slowly, deliberately, and thoroughly spit on it.
The bar grew noisy and excited. Sonya put her hand to her mouth and turned pale. “What does Mr. Mach want?” Volrab roared from behind the bar.
With icy calm Ziki plunged his spoon into his bouillon, Ruda Mach crumpled the bill into a sharp little ball and hurled it between Ziki’s eyes. “Just so you don’t lose it!” he said, and he continued to tower over Ziki’s table.
The paper ball lay dead on the tablecloth. Ziki made an imperceptible movement with his left shoulder while drawing forth from his briefcase a small pistol, and he aimed it quite visibly at Ruda Mach’s stomach.
The silence in the bar kept growing heavier and heavier. Then Ruda Mach laughed and said: “Are you going to squeeze it or aren’t you? Before my legs start to ache!”
Ziki’s gaze and the barrel of his brown pistol dropped slowly to the tablecloth.
“I don’t have a pistol,” said Ruda Mach, “but come out to the yard if you want to fight it out with me. But you don’t, do you. Well then, tuck your pistol away and make yum-yum with your soup like a nice fellow.”
Ruda Mach went and sat down at his table (the bar was humming, Ziki put the pistol back in his pocket and made yum-yum with his soup, Volrab wiped the sweat from his brow and drew a pint of beer from the tap). Sonya slammed her tray down on the bar and ran to Ruda’s table.
“Give me a beer,” said Ruda Mach, and he smiled handsomely into Sonya’s green, dilated pupils, which flashed with everything a young girl can feel (he made a mental note of this).
“Yes, Mr. Mach—” she sighed, and she smiled at him beautifully.
Where the Cottex meadow ends at the confluence of the millrace and the river, in a wild triangle of never-mown prairie, buried in yard-tall grass, his eyes closed, Ruda Mach was finishing his Thursday lunch (blood sausage wrapped in newsprint), then in a five-square-foot clearing among the stalks he spread out a fascicle of technical documentation from Director Kaska (“Reconstruction of the bleaching room. 4/3, B/6. A battery of rinsing vats.”) and he took his carpenter’s pencil to the blueprints (he didn’t like them) and drew things the way he would like them to be (it looks as if I’ll be staying here a little bit longer).
On his way back to the bleaching room along the river bank, he pulled out of the grass an entire plant of splendidly blooming wild poppy. He sat down on some beams in front of the joiner’s, plucked the firmest bud, cautiously freed it of its silky red petals (these will be the body and the skirt) and with his fingernails he pinched the bud so that less than an inch of stem was left (this will be the neck), then from the middle of the biggest flower he tore away the green seedhead fringed in black and he punctured the stalk beneath it (this will be the head), set the head on the neck, put the finished doll on his palm, and carried it off to the lab.
“Hey, that’s really nice,” said a pretty young lab assistant.
“Keep it down,” said Ruda Mach, he took a matchbox from the table, poured the matches out on the table, and asked for “a swatch of cloth, any cloth, as long as it’s beautiful.”
The lab assistant eagerly brought some swatches, Ruda didn’t care for any of them, only when he leafed through the costly sample book of the firm of Ciba International, bound in leather and printed in gold on wonderful, heavy Bible paper, and came to a page covered with jagged rectangles of silk dyed Victoriablau 2G did he tear one out, make a bed in the matchbox, and carefully place Sonya’s doll in it (for baby clothes he used Silver-grey from Du Pont de Nemours, made of tussah silk).
In the bleaching room he threw off his shirt and, sparkling with sweat, worked mercilessly on his battery of rinsing vats until the end of the shift.
Just before the second shift it started raining. Ruda Mach jumped over puddles on his way to the gate and in pouring rain (how nice the water smells—) he ran to take shelter in the doorway of the pharmacy. From each drop that fell on the granite pavement, a silvery fountain exploded, Ruda Mach breathed deeply, gazed at the shining pavement, and looked forward to having Sonya.
The alarm watch (Ziki’s gift from the London Woolworth’s) on Berta’s wrist, which while she slept lay underneath her head, began on Thursday morning at 5:15 (yesterday Volrabka told her that Sonya wakes up at 5:30 and so she set her watch fifteen minutes earlier) to rattle right in her ear. Berta turned it off right away and lay motionless in the dim light alongside Sonya, who was breathing regularly.
The brightening square of window was barred and padlocked, Volrab had, the night before, conspicuously taken the key together with all the other keys to the kitchen and the bar. Berta grinned (yesterday’s Griotte was still working pleasantly in her veins) as she considered the sequence of today’s tasks.
Sonya stirred in her sleep, embraced a corne
r of the pillow (the little one has pretty elbows), and mumbled something, like lightning Berta put her ear right up against Sonya’s lips, but she couldn’t understand a word, and again Sonya rolled over and faced the wall. Berta looked at her English watch—5:23—so we better get up, we’ve got a lot to do today.
With her knees and elbows (she had to move them only an inch or so) she began to poke Sonya’s body until the girl finally woke up.
“Good morning!” said Sonya (the finest moment to evaluate the girl is the moment of her awakening, and the little one looks good even when she first opens those green eyes of hers).
“Good morning,” Berta Zahnova smiled at her bedmate and then Sonya (lying against the wall) crawled over her to get out of bed; simulating gestures of helping and getting out of the way, Berta felt her over like a true connoisseur (first-class material) and while the naked Sonya was washing herself in the sink, she looked her over like a specialist (a fine piece, Mr. Holy will be most satisfied).
“Your boyfriend must really go for you, Sonya.”
“I don’t have one, Mrs. Zahnova.”
“Don’t tell me, such a beautiful girl—”
“Really I don’t, Mrs. Zahnova.”
“Mr. Holy told me you were the most beautiful girl in the Giant Mountains—”
“Ziki likes to kid around. Why doesn’t he bring along his wife, Aja?”
“Don’t you make out better without her?”
As soon as Sonya had left the kitchen, Berta ran to the door, placed her ear against it, and followed the sound of her footsteps, why isn’t the little one going off to clean up the rooms? Berta rushed to the bolted window, but just as she was bringing up a stool (damn Volrab!), Sonya returned and caught sight of her: she had re-entered the hotel through the garden entrance with a white gladiolus in her hand (come on!).
Four Sonyas Page 8