Hour after hour I sit on the bed beside the snoring (now quite strongly) Mr. Ruda Mach and I gaze at the opposite wall, at his guitar with its strings cut, and golden squares of trembling sunlight glide infinitely slowly toward the door. What should I do?
Thank Mr. Mach for his protection (it’s marvelous … only I wish he wouldn’t snore so much) and go back to “Uncle” Volrab’s verses, to unending toil from half past five in the morning to half past twelve at night, to go back to the bolted kitchen window and to sleeping in a single bed with that witch Zahnova — they’re watching every step I make so I won’t get away from them again. And how will Auntie greet me after I pricked her with her knitting needle, and Uncle after I kicked him in the forehead… Why, they aren’t really even relatives of mine—
“Hi, hon,” Mr. Mach yawned, and he didn’t even look at me, he squinted at his wristwatch (which he never took off, even to sleep!) and already he was up out of bed, he stretched by the window until his joints cracked, then poured cold water into the jug, drank half of it, and poured the rest over his face and neck and shoulders until the flowing water glistened on the brown muscles of his body, which he carries as if it were one brown, firm, resilient muscle—strong. And beautiful…
“Hand me my shirt—” he growled, and he pulled it onto his wet body (the water marbleized the fabric) and then “So what’s with you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m scared to go downstairs to the kitchen … But then, on the other hand…”
“Well, don’t be scared then and stay right here. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“What will you do all that time?”
“What do women do? … I’ll wait until you come home from work.”
“OK then. Here’s something for your breakfast. So long then.”
Mr. Mach put fifty crowns on the table, went out into the corridor (I immediately double-locked the door) and in a few seconds I caught sight of him through the window as he jumped over the railing in front of the hotel and walked on, from the meadows below the train tracks mist was rising and the wind chased white scraps of paper around the red gas pumps, Mr. Ruda Mach stuck his hands in his pockets, started to whistle, and walked off into the summer morning… Is he the prince who will take me away from here?…
Because otherwise WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME NEXT—
I don’t have a watch, all I know is that suddenly I have an ocean of time on my hands. I’ll clean everything up for Mr. Mach (what will I use?), but that won’t take very long. I have to stay here in this double-locked room (I can hardly go out with just one sandal): the first morning of the freedom I’ve longed for…
After a while steps in the corridor and then Jakub Jagr leaves the hotel, white shreds of mist chase around him and Jakub walks on … if I were to open the window and call, he would take me away by local train, express train, and taxi to their house, to the house that is all white, and we’ll have the second floor to ourselves, in front of our house is a little garden with beds of gladiolus and roses and through the gate overgrown with roses is the way to our apple and cherry orchard … At the end is a bench which he painted green last spring, but which he’ll paint white now, for me… Jakub walks off into the summer morning.
More time passes, ten minutes or a year, and from the end of the corridor (from the Bridal Suite) I can hear steps, it’s him — a black automobile drives out of the courtyard, the gentleman from Prague who gave me sixteen roses and didn’t ask a thing in return, except that he (as if he were the first man ever) kissed my hand.
The black car turns around and stops all of a sudden, the mysterious gentleman gets out—did he leave something in his room? No—and he looks into my window right at me and goes on looking, even after I’ve jumped behind the window curtains, and now he even bows to me and now he blows me a kiss — as if he knew I was still looking at him from behind the curtains…
And then another year, or ten minutes, and jolting out of the yard is Mr. Zahn’s gray van, good and battered now, with Mr. Zahn inside, good and bandaged, and beside him Mrs. Berta Zahnova with a bandaged shoulder. Aren’t they going to stop and come up after me with a ladder? What could I do … just shout a little — Thank God they’re gone.
Then Mr. Ziki drives out in his low sportscar, I notice a white package on the empty seat next to him, that’s his cold lunch (up to now I’ve always prepared them), that means he’ll spend the whole day in the mountains. Would Mr. Ziki still want to buy me a lady’s pistol and a platinum anklet now?
After a moment, heavy steps, they stop in front of my door and a mighty snorting before the voice and the knocking announce the presence of Mr. Volrab.
“Sonya, are you in there?”
“No!” And I wouldn’t let him in for anything—
“Look, darling, we’ve been waiting since morning for you to come to your senses, but it’s past nine, the work’s bogged down in the kitchen, and none of the rooms have been cleaned!”
“I won’t do your cooking and your cleaning anymore, Mr. Volrab. I’m giving you my official notice!”
“But that’s just what I’m here to inquire about!”
“Jakub told me that I’m not even registered as living here. So why should I cook and clean the rooms, when I’m not even living here?”
“But what will you live on, huh?”
“For starters, on what you owe me for two years’ work, of which you’ve given me only five crowns so far, out of Mr. Mach’s hundred-note. All the rest of it—Mr. Volrab—you still owe me!”
“Owe you, shmoe you, you’re meshuga! Remember how you arrived at our home. A few rags and books and two shoes—the others were all worn out—and one stocking had a hole on the heel. All of it rattled around in a tiny suitcase—”
“—which you stole from me the very first day. Bring it here right away! With my pay for the last two years in it!”
“—and that’s not mentioning all the other things we’ve given you during those long, long years: a place to live, clothing, shoes, food, drink, heat, good manners, security…”
“Fine security! You sent me to Ziki’s room and yesterday you set twenty wild men on me!”
“But it’s not so terrible if our gentlemen guests are just a tiny bit lively—we paid for it more than you did—why, they’re all just like our own little children, and sometimes children take vacations—”
“I haven’t had a single vacation in two years. Not even a day off! Not a single free Sunday! So now I’m taking two vacations, two days off, and a hundred free Sundays!”
“But darling, a delusion’s got hold of you … It’s not like that at all, and anyway, everyone loves you and is crazy about you. You’ll be a whale of a success now … And then remember that I’m your father and your mother!”
“And Volrabka?”
“Why, she’s your mother and your father, too!”
“So then I’ve got four parents, right! Look here, Mr. Volrab, my parents are dead … and the two of us are very distant relatives, okay. What are you actually … the brother-in-law of my great-grandmother’s cousin? But that isn’t the point, Mr. Volrab! Bring me my suitcase, my other sandal, and my pay for the last two years. Right away!”
“Sure, you think it’s plain as der Tak, my darling. I happen to be your legal guardian, appointed by the court!”
“And I happen to be an adult, of age, and that’s absolutely that!”
“You’ll have to explain all that to the district court in Jilemnice, which is where I’m having you carted off in a jiffy!”
“I’ll send my husband there on my behalf.”
“What’s that?!—”
“You were always asking me if I’d had anything to do with a gentleman. I really didn’t, never, not with Jakub, not with Ziki—honest! At least not until yesterday. Since last night—” and then I sighed to make the lie sound completely spontaneous, “Ruda Mach and I are like husband and wife!”
“For Heaven’s
sake, Sonya, what you’re saying is dreadful—”
“Nothing dreadful about it, just the opposite. Ruda Mach is my husband and I am his wife. And as long as you won’t give me my suitcase, my sandal, or my wages for the past two years, I won’t say another word to you. And if you go on bothering me, I’ll tell my husband to whip you like a horse!”
“But you wouldn’t do that, Sonya, my precious darling… Not now, when the bar’s been wrecked by those villains, the kitchen’s upside down, the garden’s trampled, the fence’s knocked over, the rabbit hutches’re toppled… And do you know the most horrible thing? My Emil’s dead…”
“That pig was more your relative than I was. And now don’t bother me—I have my own problems.”
“Darling Sonya, come downstairs, there’s a lovely breakfast waiting for you and everything’s forgiven…”
“Clear out, or my husband will slaughter you and you’ll go join your pig!”
And that’s how I proclaimed myself the wife of Ruda Mach.
I am now the wife of Ruda Mach. My husband has gone to work and left money for me to go shopping. So then, Mrs., what are you doing babbling with your crazy neighbors?
Sonya began to sing and to unstitch the flounces from her white dress (I’ll sew them on again for evening wear, so I have to buy a needle and a spool of white thread). Then she put on her only sandal, picked up Ruda’s empty suitcase with one hand and with the other some crumpled old newspaper (that’s to show people I’m carrying the other shoe to the shoe repair), and so I set out on my first shopping trip for my family.
So Hrusov had its second sensation in a short period of time, people stared, even stopped short on the street, Sonya greeted each of them and to each she smiled prettily.
First of all bread, “Is it fresh, Ma’am? My husband won’t eat stale bread!” (how that widow in the bakery stared at me!) and then salt, a good two pounds of it, one has to have salt in the house.
And then four ounces of sweet butter to go on the bread, “Is it fresh, Ma’am? My husband would chase me out if it wasn’t!” (how Mrs. Dvorakova in the dairy store gaped at me!) and then ten dekas of the finest cheese (I’ll teach my husband about nutrition!), and next door, at the butcher’s (how he gawked!), ten dekas of imitation salami (because a man can’t do without meat, after all…) and at the produce shop two pounds of lovely tomatoes.
How wonderfully it’s going … as if it’s what I’d been born to do. But now it’s my job and my vocation…
Now some tea and half a pound of sugar (but no more grog, my love, it makes you snore too much) and a needle and white thread for my wedding dress. And for you, two lovely white handkerchiefs (I meant to buy them a long time ago, my love) and for me a pair of sneakers on sale, so I won’t have to run around town for you barefoot (some day you’ll buy me golden slippers for the ball, won’t you?). For the last six crowns a child’s harmonica, since they’ve ruined your guitar … so you can play when you’re sad (but that won’t happen as long as I’m around) and I can sing along with you.
Waving the suitcase elatedly, in her new, glowing white sneakers, she climbed the Hubertus staircase to her own room, No. 5, in the corridor Ph.Dr. Berkova from No. 6 stopped her and lost her temper:
“Isn’t anyone going to clean this place today?”
“They haven’t cleaned my room either. We’ll have to complain to the management!” I said to her, and I banged the door behind me. The help here sure is awful!
Home now, Sonya took off her sneakers (at home I can go barefoot so the first shoes given me by my husband will hold up longer), she found a chewed remnant of Ruda’s carpenter’s pencil and on the border of the newspaper, employing the tip of her tongue, she totted up in a beautiful script the accounts for her first shopping expedition.
Then I cleaned up the entire room (like never before) and then did nothing but wait for my husband to come back home from work.
What else should I do … now there was nothing to do but GET READY FOR MY WEDDING—
Sonya threaded the eye of the new needle with the new thread, sang softly, and began sewing the flounces back on her white wedding dress.
From six in the morning till noon the half-naked Ruda Mach lined the thiosulfate vats in the Cottex sulfur bleaching room, ate his pound of headcheese for lunch and, using a fine trowel, smoothed out the hardening cement in oval forms (thoughts of Sonya and joy), perfectly and tenderly (the touch of smooth material and joy).
“I need to speak to you,” said Jakub Jagr, approaching him from behind.
Ruda Mach stood up in his vat and turned toward Jagr. “I’m listening,” he said.
“It’s important to me that Sonya is well,” Jagr said.
“To me too,” said Ruda Mach, and he passed his palm over his bare, sweaty chest.
“I wanted to take her home, show her to my parents and be betrothed to her. But she’s in your room now. Is she going to stay there?”
“That’s certainly the way it looks.”
“Does she want to remain there?”
“That’s certainly the way it looks.”
“Tomorrow I shall go away from here and it is not likely I shall ever return. I would like to ask you to give her my final regards.”
“OK.”
“We two are not likely ever to meet again. I shall say goodbye now. Be good to her…”
“OK. So long.”
And Ruda Mach turned his back on Jagr (glad that he had carried it off so smoothly), knelt down again in his vat, and with his fine trowel smoothed out the smooth material (thoughts of Sonya, beauty, and joy), then tossed the trowel aside and smoothed the cement with his bare hand (joy).
When the shift was over he lay for a while in the grass in the sun, like a typhoon he plowed his way a few lengths of the swimming pool in a wild crawl in a savage whirlwind of spraying water, foam, whirling mud, and pieces of grass, twigs, and torn leaves.
With his hair still wet he passed through the glowing streets on his way to the Hubertus, where right at the door that idiot Volrab tried to stop him.
“My dear, respected Mr. Mach,” he babbled, “you are my dearly beloved guest and I am as fond of you as I would be of my own son … but when are you going to send our little Sonya back home?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. She’s an adult.”
“But our little child is so foolish still! And when you’ve got so much influence over her … And between us fellows—you don’t really want her hanging ‘round your neck?”
“Look, chief, don’t worry so much, and run down to the cellar for a bottle of beer. Bring me two of them while you’re at it!”
“As her legal guardian, appointed by the court, it’s my job to worry about her! So what’s going to happen to my ward, Mr. Mach?!”
“I haven’t had time to think that over yet, chief.”
“So he hasn’t had time to think that over yet! But to seduce her, that you’ve managed in a matter of seconds, huh?”
“Tell me before I belt you one, idiot: who told you I seduced Sonya?”
“She told me so herself, Mr. Mach! Herself!”
“Balls. She couldn’t have said that.”
“That’s what she said this morning when I had a word with her.”
“It was Sonya who told you I seduced her?!”
“This morning my dear Sonya told me that she and you are like husband and wife! And then she said it again: you are her husband and she is your wife. I’ve got witnesses to that, being as how Mrs. Berkova and Mrs. Baladova heard every single word she screamed at me through the locked door. Mr. Mach!”
“OK, so run and get me those two bottles of beer — and make sure they’re good and cold!” said Ruda Mach, and he went upstairs to room No. 5, where Sonya was standing in her white dress, she rubbed her bare ankles together and smiled beautifully at Ruda.
On the table a garnished plate of sliced salami, cheese, and tomatoes, and slices of fresh bread, and in a little pot swam some nice, dewy butter.
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br /> “Great,” said Ruda, and he sat right down to eat.
“But that was supposed to be our dinner…” said Sonya.
“OK. We can have it for a snack and go out for dinner,” said Ruda, and he reached for some salami.
“Don’t get angry at me, Mr. Mach, for buying these sneakers with your money — Volrab won’t give me back my sandal … But I kept a good account of everything. I even had enough left over to buy you a present, but that I’m saving till dinnertime…”
After their snack, a walk to Saddle Meadow, where the grass is dense and magnificent, and there’s a view of the central range of the Giant Mountains, then a swim in a forest pond and, hungry as wolves, joyfully back to dinner at the hotel.
With arms ceremonially linked Ruda and Sonya walked into the bar (and the bar stared: they were a handsome couple), Ruda seated Sonya at his table and then said casually over his shoulder (but they could hear it even in the kitchen) across two tables to Ziki:
“Look, Mr. Holy, or whatever your name is, give Sonya up forever, get me. Or I’ll fix you up for some surgery.”
“Much obliged, Mr. Mach,” Ziki said in his clear, sharp if slightly shrill voice. “I’m only interested in girls who are intact.”
Ruda Mach clenched his fist (but Sonya quickly took it in her hand), glanced at Sonya (“Don’t mind him, I beg you, please…” she whispered and blushed) and so he didn’t and he left his fist in Sonya’s nice, warm hand.
“Would you like fizz water today?” was all he said.
“I would, Mr. Mach.”
After dinner, in their room, No. 5, Sonya gave Ruda her present, the child’s harmonica. Ruda was happy and at once began to play song after song on it.
“Sonya,” he said softly. “Why did you tell Volrab that lie today, that we had made love together?”
Sonya rubbed her bare ankles together and smiled beautifully at Ruda. He looked at her. He had never had such a beautiful girl before (or such a determined or such a brave one).
Both got up at the same time. Slowly Ruda put his harmonica away and put his hand on the top button of Sonya’s white dress.
“Do you want to stay with me, Sonya?”
Four Sonyas Page 13