Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  “They brought all this just for that poor girl…” Mach growled, “but the fact is that there’s a bit too much of that stuff for just a weekend. Why would that scarecrow… that idiot act so idiotically, like in a movie?”

  “He wants to take Sonya away, and she doesn’t want to go.”

  “You bet she doesn’t want to. But these things … they must cost some money, just the two cars…”

  “When somebody makes five thousand a month plus another million a year—”

  “And how do you make that many crowns?”

  “Holy read somewhere that you can purify the refuse water of textile mills biologically by releasing it into a convenient meadow. So he had it patented and now one textile mill after another discharges its water into a meadow. And we’ve got lots of textile mills.”

  “Engineers are all crooks! Every single one of them!”

  “It’s actually a good thing, it saves hundreds of millions in purifying apparati, which we haven’t got in any case, it preserves the purity of the streams, it keeps the ecology pure—”

  “Well, OK, I’ll read up on it sometime. But engineers are still crooks. Anyway, it’s high time we did something here.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Hm… Look, run over to the shed and bring back a few wedges. You know what a wedge is?”

  Jakub brought back a few pieces of wood and meanwhile Mach had ripped two iron poles out of the fence (which was now leaning a bit). Then without a word the young men pounded the wedges in under the right wheels of the car until they had elevated it a bit on that side. Then both of them grabbed the fence poles and, using them as levers, planted them under the right side of the van and pushed on them until the car turned over onto its left side, and the falling glass crashed and clinked.

  “You already know your way around the inside,” Mach said to Jakub, “reach in there and get a screwdriver for the wheels.”

  Then Mach unscrewed the right rear wheel, which was sticking up in the air, and with Jakub he took it off, the work whistled through their fingers (they were both technicians), and while Jakub rolled the dismounted rear wheel toward a ditch, Mach took the screwdriver to the front wheel.

  Honoring the latest winning ticket (No. 13, Ranger Sames and the “pinching” kiss) Sonya moaned with pain when that forest bear buried his claws into her cheeks, claws which, with their bristles, resembled—

  “Uncle, call an intermission or I’ll collapse right here—”

  “Well, well!” said Uncle Volrab, and he gave me a nasty look, “maybe you’re not really made of sugar!” Then he clapped and announced a “brief musical interlude.”

  With burning cheeks I sit down at the piano, what can I play for these gentlemen who haven’t come looking for music? … I can play and sing my favorite aria, Senta’s from The Flying Dutchman (where has Ruda Mach gone?).

  But already during the first bars the gentlemen are buzzing away, if only Uncle would ask them for a bit of silence, I look at them imploringly, at least a little bit of silence for my music—

  “Keep those smoochers to yourself, they hurt my ears—” Uncle screamed at me — he’s already pretty indifferent to me, why must he be cruel as well? — he just joins the crowd, eager to tear me to pieces.

  And “Uncle” (Mr. Volrab is a very distant relative) hawks his demands at me and already he is impatiently starting up my auction again, with one fat, fleshy meat-hook he is handing out carnations, gladiolus, and roses, which I watered all summer long, and with the other fleshy, fat meat-hook he’s sticking five-crown coins and notes into his pocket, the price of my flayed face, the smith buys two carnations, Ranger Sames five irises, then suddenly the mysterious gentleman in the black suit stands up (the one who came from Prague and took our Bridal Suite) and he buys every single one of the sixteen roses, pays Volrab a hundred crowns, and won’t accept the change…

  Who could it be? The mysterious gentleman with the sixteen roses is suddenly standing in front of me, and his silvery tie is glistening.

  “Make him sit down!” yelled the gentlemen in the bar. “Why, they haven’t even called any numbers yet.” “If him, then anyone!—”

  The mysterious gentleman presents me with the bouquet of roses, and when I accept it from him—now I must kiss him sixteen times—he abruptly bends over, touches my hand with his lips, and vanishes from the bar.

  “Now, now, gentlemen, calmly and one at a time. Otherwise there’ll be disorder!” Mr. Volrab calls out.

  “I’m buying all the tickets that are left!” Mr. Ziki calls out.

  “That would be pretty expensive!” Mr. Volrab calls out.

  “I’m paying in dollars!” Mr. Ziki calls out, and he holds up a silver dollar.

  But the gentlemen in the bar aren’t about to put up with this, each tries to outshout the other, they shove Volrab away from the tubs of flowers and take the tickets themselves, a crush and shoving and the struggle begins with the overturning of the tub of gladiolus, black shoes crush the stalks and elbows jab bellies, all of a sudden I find myself in the middle of a circle of men, besieged and taken captive — their eyes are so close to mine that I can see everything in them as in a mirror, Ranger Sames is waving a bowie knife, the kind used to take on a wounded beast, Petrik Metelka is tossing me onto the rear seat of his motorcycle and with a roar of the engine he is heading out into the dark, the smith carries me high over his head into a dark room and toward a roaring fire, Balada is casting Hindu spells on my spine, Mr. Ziki is looking on with a sneer as Zahn and Zahnova drag me to their low, dark automobile, and Volrab is sticking the American coin in his pocket, where is Mr. Ruda Mach?—

  Jakub drags me across the nighttime meadow toward the station and shouts out to me the timetable of train departures, then he shoves me into his room, No. 4. Ziki pulls me by the hair through the corridor on violet sheepskins to room No. 2 and a brass gong rings out over the entire town, all the men from the town run toward the hotel, they come riding in taxicabs from Jilemnice and flying in from Prague, the Hubertus has an endless corridor with a thousand rooms and I am dashing from door to door, they are bargaining, laughing, haggling, and putting me on the block for five crowns, for a roll, for an old newspaper, for a burned-out match, and Volrab and Volrabka are dragging down the stairs a laundry hamper full of silver dollars—WHERE IS RUDA MACH?—the customers are staring at me, biting me all over, cutting flesh from my bones and throwing it away — for this I kiss each of them on the cheek, that’s my job here and my vocation.

  “Run up to my room, I keep the key under the doormat—” Ruda Mach shouted right in my face. — HE’S COME BACK. HE’S COME TO PROTECT ME! — “and double latch it behind you!”

  The next moment Zahn threw him down on the floor and jumped on him with both feet.

  When Ruda Mach and Jakub Jagr (both of them out of breath and with hands a bit besmudged) came back to the bar and saw the crowd surrounding Sonya, they hurled themselves into the battle raging around her.

  Ruda Mach flung aside the veterinarian Srol and told Sonya to run away — the next moment Zahn grabbed him from behind, threw him on the floor, and jumped on him with both feet. Jakub struck the hunchbacked smith with a perfectly executed hook, but the smith merely shook it off, pressed Jakub against the wall, and started to hammer him just the way he worked in his smithy.

  Ranger Sames pushed Volrab onto the piano and his skull came in for some more karate chops from Ziki’s hand, the forester roared with pain and threw himself on Ziki like a maddened buffalo. Ziki defended himself coldbloodedly, alternating Japanese wrestling techniques with English ones, and soon he was back on the attack. Ph.Dr. Berka struck Dr. Pav on the head with a billiard cue, while the provincial intellectual Beda Balada crawled under the table, his wife Lisaveta was slapping one of the gentlemen from Jilemnice, and Petrik Metelka was marking the face of the other with the broken neck of a champagne bottle.

  A bruised Volrab pulled Sonya out of the bar, but the warring horde rushed after
him into the kitchen, Volrab and Volrabka attempted to abscond with Sonya into their bedroom, but spiteful Berta Zahnova inserted her puny leg at just the right moment from behind the not quite closed door, then with her shoulder she opened it wide and the battle poured out over the entire floorplan of the hotel.

  Volrab started hitting his customers with a poker, but they quickly bent it and gave chase after Sonya.

  “Leave our little girl alone!” Volrabka squealed, and she stabbed the customers painfully with her knitting needle.

  “Leave me my daughter!” Volrab shouted with the awesome voice of a tragedian.

  Berta tried to tear Sonya away from Volrabka, and when she failed, she bit Volrabka on the back of her hand, with her needle Volrabka stabbed Berta’s shoulder muscle and hissed: “That’s for my little Lieselotte, the one you bartered away—”

  Ziki trod once more on Ranger Sames’s neck, wiped his hands off with his perfumed handkerchief made of natural chocolate-colored silk, and assessing the entire situation with a glance he called out in his sharp, shrill voice: “IT’S STUFFY IN HERE!”

  Zahn tore himself free of Ruda Mach, cut the telephone wire near the bar, ran out into the yard, cursed to no avail at the sight of the overturned van (though he had been schooled to face much worse situations), pulled out the carboy of ammonia, dragged it into the front hall, unstopped it, turned it over with his foot, and ran for the smoke grenades.

  Just as Wolf Zahn was cutting the telephone wire near the bar, Jakub Jagr freed himself from the blacksmith’s pummeling and broke the fuses out in the corridor. With his flashlight on, he ripped the fire extinguisher off the wall, released the catch, and icy flakes of CO2 began to shoot out into the darkness.

  The smith from Cottex threw the smoking RDG out the kitchen window and with a double hammer (clasp your hands firmly over the head and slide them down the face of your opponent) he floored Wolf Zahn. Ziki tried to defend his grenade-man with a magnificent ‘uppercut,’ but precise British technique in a free-for-all in the dark was not quite the right thing, the smith grabbed Ziki like a sack of potatoes and hurled him out the window into the yard. Just then the postmaster Alois Hudlicky, his left sleeve torn, walked into the kitchen.

  Meanwhile Ruda Mach bitterly fought his way to Sonya and grabbed her away from the Volrabs. Volrabka parried with her knitting needle, but Sonya grabbed the weapon away from her and planted it in her aunt’s belly in a very gruesome and quite determined fashion.

  Volrabka went into shock from “my little girl’s” sudden mutiny, Ruda Mach raised Sonya over his head with both arms and ran toward the door. At the bedroom door Volrab made a heroic stand, he took a knee in his stomach, tossed away his bent poker, and stretched his short arms toward Sonya, but she was too high up and all he could do was pull one white sandal off her foot. “He’s kidnapping my little girl—” he wailed and roared and groped for her kicking feet until Sonya struck him him hard between the eyes with her bare heel.

  “Et tu, my daughter!” Volrab cried out.

  With Sonya still above his head, Ruda Mach ran out into the corridor. At the foot of the stairs, illuminated by the light of the moon, stood Engineer Jagr, his suitcase in one hand and a stolen kitchen knife in the other, “Sonya, should I kill him?” he cried out.

  “No,” cried Sonya.

  “The last train has left already, but I’ll phone from the drugstore for a taxi to Jilemnice—”

  “No!” cried Sonya.

  “I’ll kill him!” Jakub cried out, and he thrust the knife toward Ruda Mach.

  “No,” Sonya said. “It’s him I want.”

  After Sonya’s abduction the battle spread to the yard and the garden, the guests of the Second Floricultural Evening pulled the rest of the flowers out of the ground and, although there were only a few of them left, they tore up the winter onions, the parsley, the garlic, as well as Volrab’s beloved horseradish, even the bricks (which the connoisseur of horseradish had buried in the ground to hold back the sprouting of his favorite bulbs), they let the pig go free and chased it around the yard (poor Emil was so worked up he ate glass shards from the van, and in the morning he kicked the bucket), they knocked over the rabbit hutches, took eggs from the henhouse and threw them at one another, and broke through the half-tumbled-down gate and into the neighbors’ gardens, whose owners, dressed in long flannel (in the Giant Mountains the nights are cold even in July) nightgowns ran out with flashlights, lanterns, candles, as well as rakes, pitchforks, shovels, poles, and shotguns (in the Giant Mountains a good quarter of the population have gun permits and the rest hunt without bothering to get one). The first shots went off in the night.

  At that very moment in the smoke-filled, carbon-dioxidized, and ammoniated kitchen stood Sarka Hudlicka, the wife of the postmaster (clutching in her hand the sleeve torn from her husband’s jacket) in the retinue of the local chief of police.

  “The fuses,” was the chief’s first order, and when the lights came on in the kitchen he shook his head at the field of combat, stepped over the trampled “whipped-cream” cake on the linoleum, tramped on the crackling peanuts, swept from a chair the disfigured remnants of the Baden Slices, moved a tray of Turkish Hazelnut Delight out of the way, sat down, and opened his notebook. “So it’s the same as last time?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  “How can you talk like that, Major; nothing happened today. It’s just that the customers got feeling a bit lively,” Volrab said stalwartly.

  The next moment Beda Balada fell off the stack of mattresses on Sonya’s bed and the Spanish sardines poured out onto the linoleum.

  “Perhaps, but let’s take a look at that.” The chief looked over at Beda.

  “I had a headache and so I decided to take a little rest…” the intellectual whispered apologetically, and he massaged his aching coccyx, right near the place where the divine force sleeps in the form of a coiled serpent.

  “Yes, that’s the complete and absolute truth, Major,” Volrab lied courageously. “Mr. Balada, he’s a scholar, and I offered him the opportunity to rest there for a while.”

  “So then nothing actually happened?” the chief asked.

  “Nothing at all, and everything’s in complete and absolute order,” Volrab spoke valiantly, and with his foot he accidentally knocked over a plate of Hamburg Pilot Fish, from the surface of this delicacy emerged a few green bubbles of hydrochloric acid.

  “So you won’t make any claim for damages?” the chief asked, looking with interest at the many cans of scarce Spanish sardines.

  “Not a single crown,” Volrab whispered heroically, and with difficulty he leaned on his bent poker. “They’re all our customers, as dear to us as our own daughter…”

  “And your girl, Sonya Cechova?”

  “She is also in complete and absolute order—”

  When Ruda Mach carried Sonya upstairs to his room, No. 5, he sat her in a chair, sat himself down on the bed, placed his hand on his stomach, and said: “Whew—”

  “Did something happen to you, Mr. Mach?”

  “Yeah. That bruiser Zahn kicked me right here—whew!”

  “Can I make a cold compress for it?”

  “No. But you can make me some hot grog — but where’ll we get the rum?”

  “If you think that will help you…”

  “I never take any other kind of medicine. But I’m out of rum.”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Mach,” said Sonya, and she slipped out into the corridor, for a second she listened to the row going on down below, rushed into Room No. 3 and, with a bottle of rum belonging to the Baladas, she ran to the bathroom, turned on the water heater, filled a white enameled pitcher with fresh water, and carried it and the bottle to Room No. 5.

  “You’re incredible.” Ruda Mach rejoiced and nimbly sat down on the bed, tenderly I poured and mixed his grog in his toothbrush cup (the one I had cleaned out this morning).

  “Wonderful medicine,” Mr. Mach eulogized after drinking half the cup, and then he replenished it
from the bottle with straight rum. He drank another half a cup and again replenished it with rum, right up to the lip.

  “Don’t you take it a little too strong?”

  “That’s just so it won’t be too hot,” said Mr. Mach, he drank up another half a cup and again filled it up from the bottle.

  “But it must be cool enough by now…”

  “This is Jamaican-style grog, Sonya, and Jamaica is an island in the tropical Caribbean Sea — it’s real hot there, you see.”

  “And there’s too little water,” I said as Mr. Mach drank half a cup and poured himself another — so that with half a toothbrush-cup of water he had gone through a good half of the Baladas’ bottle.

  “There’s plenty of water in the tropics, Sonya, in a year the rainfall can easily reach thirteen feet. Only that water is full of terrible diseases,” said Mr. Mach, and now he was drinking straight from the bottle without diluting it (it didn’t matter anyway), then he lay down on his back, closed his eyes, and said:

  “Can you stay here till morning?”

  “I don’t know … I’m scared to go downstairs by myself … But on the other hand…”

  “Don’t be scared—we’ve got two beds here. G’night!”

  “Good night, Mr. Mach.”

  Mr. Mach turned his face to the wall and in a minute he was asleep. In another minute he began to snore softly.

  When his sleep resembled that of the dead, I crawled carefully into the other bed, still fully dressed, propped up my back with a pillow, and brought my knees up under my chin. What will happen to me next?

  Outside the door (I had double-locked it and left the key in the lock) traffic kept up until morning, steps going up and down the staircase, doors banging, insults and quarreling (in the turmoil the Baladas’ rum bottle could have been carried off by anyone in the world), sometimes even blows, and only come morning was there dead silence.