Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  “Yes, Mr. Mach.”

  “Call me Ruda.”

  “Yes, Ruda. That’s what I want.”

  Late at night Sonya quietly got out of bed (Ruda was already beginning to snore lightly), slowly walked barefoot to the window, and pressed her burning forehead against the cool glass. From now on I am completely, absolutely, and truly the wife of Ruda Mach.

  It happened so suddenly and so abruptly that I didn’t even realize quite what it was my husband was doing with me… It was as if I had missed out on one of the most grave and weighty moments in a woman’s life … But no matter, it had already happened. Next time I will pay more attention to what I’m doing.

  It had to happen, but still I am a bit sorry it did … How beautiful it was before … why couldn’t that beuaty last longer … a week longer … a month … Why must the May of cultivation and the June of rapid growth of our love be so brief … and why must July’s harvest come so soon…

  I have lost something forever. But I have gained something new in its place and it is strong and very special: the feeling that I belong to my husband — with my whole self, with all I have, everywhere, forever. That I have nothing but him and what he gives me, that all I am is only for him and that all we have we have together.

  Our Honeymoon:

  When we wake up in the morning, we kiss, we eat breakfast, we kiss, and then Ruda goes off to work. The eight hours of separation go by swiftly, since I’m with Ruda all the time, even when he isn’t right here with me. That’s why I do everything thinking of him and for him.

  I have a new, bigger shopping bag made of shiny leather and I like to go shopping — this is my job now, for Ruda, and my vocation, I test the bread with my finger, jab the tomatoes, and handle the heads of cabbage. The Hrusov women soon got used to me, and now we give each other advice on vegetable oil, goat’s milk, and salads made with rhubarb and chicory, and they advise me about what I’ll need to do when a baby starts kicking inside me … And together we lit into the butcher when he denied having any lungs and hid them behind the counter.

  At home I clean up, then wash and sew my husband’s things—how they needed it!—and every time I go shopping I bring him back something new, a shirt, two handkerchiefs, or shorts. I like to hold his things, and when there’s nothing to repair, I can at least caress them for a while.

  Ruda brings home with him a racket, confusion, laughter. With his hair wet (he goes straight from the factory to swim in the town pool, but really more to rest, because he works hard in the bleaching room) he hammers on the door and throws me a piece of raw meat wrapped in bloody newsprint. No one has cooked for him for a long time and invariably he brings something back from the butcher’s that he’s especially fond of. He swings onto the bed, then he’s right back up on his feet, he jostles me, neighs, pulls me by the hair, and chases me around the room, we laugh, he makes me angry, but I can’t really get angry at him, he pulls me down on the bed, we laugh and play like a couple of kids.

  Then he looks me over again and again, measures the length of my hair, which is almost as long as his forearm, and the size of my waist, which is 23 inches, he passes judgment on what I’ve bought, works out the evening menu, criticizes my hairdo, sticks his nose into my things and grabs one thing after the other, tries out my lipstick and bra, douses himself with my cologne, praises the skirt I patched together from cheap remnants—I like that—licks the cut on my knee and tells me I’m beautiful — how lucky I am.

  Afternoons we climb up to Saddle Meadow, where the grass is dense and magnificent, and there’s a view of the central range of the Giant Mountains, my husband loves the mountains, we gaze together at the foothills reddened by the setting sun and Ruda tells me about the South Sea Islands (which he’s found on maps and in magazines) and he likes me to tell about the gladiators in classical times, and about Renaissance Rome, and especially about the voyages of Columbus, Cortez, Magellan, and the British pirates, which I remember from gymnasium days and from what I’ve read in novels, then we go swimming in the forest pond and at dusk we slowly return to the hotel.

  We eat dinner in our room, Ruda bought a double hot-plate, I’ve largely given up a balanced diet (milk, cheese, vegetables, tea) in favor of meat, and we eat at least two pounds of it every day—Ruda eats three- quarters of it himself—and he likes to eat it with his hands. Then he plays his harmonica and I sing for him, and soon we go to bed and we’re together, absolutely together, I feel his body as my own, but both bodies still possess so much mystery, and I go to sleep after he falls asleep, with my ear on his firm chest, I put my arm around him and we breathe together in a single rhythm.

  In the morning I get up first, to make his breakfast and help him dress.

  “Hi there, geisha—” he laughs at me while he drinks the tea I serve him and him alone, I eat only after he’s gone (Ruda thinks Japanese are the ideal women).

  “‘Yes, sir,’” I smile at him (as I would to a captain who’s just sailed in from the South Seas).

  We kiss, and as soon as he leaves (as soon as I can no longer see him from our window), I throw myself into my work, and there’s certainly plenty of that — I have more new verses to learn:

  The orangutan, with his plate of beef,

  Eats and drinks beyond belief.

  His monkey wife must feed him well,

  Oh, poor thing, she goes through Hell!

  His monkey wife is lucky.

  For I have a husband, and he is all I have, do, desire, think about, and am … he is my job and my vocation.

  I want to learn everything, to perfect myself, and to achieve the highest level, to achieve mastership, champion status, the scepter and the crown—

  Ruda read to me with relish from Youth World (from an account of “a great Chinese dinner” in a perfect sixteenth-century Imperial Palace in which, amid some 108 courses, they served pike stuffed with mouse drumsticks and slugs à la Great Mandarin) about Japanese women, that “it may well be cruel, but a Japanese woman is brought up from childhood to believe that she must prepare for her toiling husband a life in which he can spend his free time resting, with a maximum of relaxation, calm and pleasure.”

  “And aren’t I a ‘toiling husband?’ ” he called to me.

  “My duties as a geisha will be strictly kept,” I promised him (and took a vow on it).

  Japanese women are pure S.-Marie types, and of all the four Sonyas, S.-Marie is the one I like the most (S.-Marikka is more of a dream, while Antisonya is as repulsive as cold toes). But of course we don’t live in a sixteenth-century Imperial Palace, and instead of stuffed pike we eat potato goulash and potato pancakes, and mouse drumsticks run under our bed at night.

  I would like to help my husband earn money. And for my own sake I would like to work — not like at the Volrabs’, but in a factory: genuinely, honestly, and with dignity.

  Ruda is solidly against it, and so without telling him I asked the Cottex gatekeeper to let me into the bleaching room after Ruda had gone in himself.

  The Cottex bleaching room is bigger than the Hrusov church, more resonant than its organ, everywhere, hanging on the walls, from the ceiling, over the doors, or simply in the air are porcelain loops out of which endless strings of wet cloth pour out in all directions and at all angles upward, downward, parallel, and crisscross.

  Wearing only the pants from his overalls, Ruda was kneeling in a kind of pit, puttering around in wet cement — that was my first impression. But after a while I realized that my husband was carrying out an unbelievable number of tasks all at once, now as a bricklayer and then as a carpenter, now with metal and then with a brush, all in all it looked the way I imagine sculpting to be, for isn’t art just that many professions all at once?—and isn’t that what art is all about? … So many tools —a shovel, a saw, wirecutters, a crowbar, the sort of mallet pavers use, even a fine confectioner’s spatula — and how many things he takes in his hand: bricks, cement, boards, planks, angle irons, poles, bars, clamps, cramps, and wires … he
picks it all up, each differently, but everything with joy … that’s how statues are made, and that’s how I found the key to my husband, who likes to eat with his hands…

  From Youth World he reads to me (at home I was leafing through the magazine again) that “the European is always quick to turn up his nose at anyone who eats with his hands. Alas, we forget that for the sake of our proclaimed hygienics and esthetics we pay no small penalty. For we are poorer in one precious sensory perception, which results from direct contact with our food…”

  And then Ruda threw away his confectioner’s spatula and smoothed the wet concrete with his bare hand, like he does my body at night (“we are aware,” I read at home in Youth World, “how strongly we perceive, by contact with our hand, the tempting coolness of an apple, the soothing softness of bread, and the intimate warmth of a potato baked over an autumn fire…”)

  With his firm, gleaming chest my husband breathes deeply (as he does when he makes love to me) and he smooths out the wall he has just created … he is handsome and I LOVE HIM—

  I also want so much for him to belong to me, and I would most gladly walk at his side, to be his in front of all Hrusov and all the world, but unfortunately Ruda doesn’t like to walk arm-in-arm with me (it is, after all, a public embrace, permissible yet beautiful!), “like a well-fed bureaucrat on a Sunday stroll with his family before their tarok game—” he faults me for this, but it means a great deal to me—

  I don’t mind if he gets angry at me sometimes, but it did scare me when one evening—all of a sudden, out of the blue—he sat down by the window and played his harmonica for an hour … a kind of music for which there are no words and for which none of my songs are suitable. It scared me that he was playing only for himself — just as he had before we began living together.

  Feverishly I started to think: what will his Japanese S.-Marie do now? S.-Marikka advises us to draw him out of his melancholy, to provoke him roughly and fervidly— “Is the gentleman fed up with you already?” Antisonya grins. “Anyway, how much longer can he stick it out with you in this hole? A week? Maybe all of two? But when he does pull out—it’s unavoidable—will you go with him? OK, but will he take you with him?” And Sonya Undivided suddenly broke into tears.

  Ruda sighed, put me down on the bed, and consoled me the way he likes to console me. And in his hands I responded—the way a radio responds when you turn it on. How humbled I am by the happiness he showers on me so lavishly and with so little effort … and how enslaved. A man, he knows how to rule, I—in my womanly vocation—know how to submit.

  “But that can’t be all there is — it wouldn’t be enough!” S.-Marikka is angry, even furious.

  “And you’ll turn him off while you’re at it. You’re too stereotypical, darling,” Antisonya grinned.

  However, S.-Marie praises me and exhorts me to patience, tenderness, and faith.

  And Ruda wipes away my tears with his cheeks (they scratch me and I kiss them) and with his sculptor’s hands he warms my heels, which in my grief have turned cold and stiff, to cheer me up he crawls across the floor on his knees, I bump into him and we’re laughing again and we’re smitten again and we make love and everything is as it should be again.

  Somehow I got around to mentioning my best (and only) friend Jarunka Slana (who had had an affair with Ruda), and Ruda remembered her at once. How he came to life … and every recollection—and there were a lot of them—was like a blow with a cat-o’-nine-tails, the whip his favorite British pirates used on their slaves.

  “But you have to admit that I’m better than Jaruna—” I tried to turn it all into a joke.

  “Stand up,” he commanded me like the captain of a slaver, and then he compared us like a connoisseur, as if we were both standing there in front of him. One beside the other…

  And so next morning I wrote to Jaruna special delivery, asking how to deal with Ruda. And Jaruna answered special delivery: “Being with him is really wonderful—you know that yourself. Only he’ll never marry you. And that’s actually for the best, because to be his wife would be incredible hell.”

  “That’s just what I’ve told you all along,” Antisonya grins, “and anyway, poor thing, notice that so far Mr. Mach hasn’t said a single word about marriage.”

  S.-Marikka is furious and she suggests I try to make him jealous. And S.-Marie cries … I cry with her.

  But that’s just when I’m alone; when Ruda comes home, I put on a happy face for him. He tosses me the bloody meat and pulls me by the hair, after shaving he drenches himself with my cologne, chases me around the room, and pulls me to him — and I love him more and more, even when he snores, even when he picks his nose, even when (and because) he eats with his hands, I love him more and more, till it’s unbearable—

  It seemed (I still don’t have a watch) that Ruda was coming home from the factory and the swimming pool later and later, until I finally learned that he goes from the factory and the swimming pool to the local bar and talks there awfully long with Hnyk, his drinking buddy from the bleaching room — what could he have to say that’s so much more interesting than what I have to say?

  And so today I am standing with my shiny leather shopping bag, which contains swimming suits, a snack, and a blanket from the Hubertus (so he’ll be more comfortable with me) at one forty-five in front of the Cottex gate. There are other Maries there waiting for their husbands: Mrs. Astrid Kozakova (Kozak brought her from Norway), who has five children (Kozak likes to take a drink now and then), Mrs. Dvorakova (Dvorak runs away from her at least twice a month), Mrs. Hnykova, the wife of the Hubertus barfly … representing the Marikkas is the Moravian Sekalka, a brave fighter who, as soon as she sees “that skunk of mine,” grabs him by the sleeve and drags him home as her lawful plunder … Another one who waits with us is the tiny, beautiful Alzbeta, whose husband, as soon as he catches sight of her, runs out of the crowd to her and kisses her right away…

  We are standing in front of the gate waiting for our husbands. We have kerchiefs on our heads, for since the middle of August cold winds have been coming down from the mountains even in early afternoon.

  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-high grass, Ruda Mach was finishing the lunch Sonya had packed him (two slices of bread and viscous cheese-spread and two sour summer apples) and with his fingernail he scratched out the next day on his calendar. August is on the run, yeah, after July it’s always August and already this summer’s going down the tubes.

  Lazily he stretched his front paws and, with his face buried in them, slowly closed his eyes, he felt absolutely good (and when Ruda Mach feels good, he starts getting bored). Waiting for the siren, he thought about taking a swim and about having a beer with that joker Hnyk.

  In front of the entrance, in the crowd of women (they were all wearing kerchiefs, just like old women), there was Sonya (also with a kerchief on her head).

  “Why the hell are you hanging around like a spy plane,” he grumbled.

  “I couldn’t wait for you any longer.”

  “But I’m going to the swimming pool now.”

  “I’ll come too. I brought a snack and a blanket…”

  “If you want,” he grumbled.

  From then on Sonya hung around in front of the entrance every single day, packed for a picnic as if for a family with five brats … but the water was already too cold for swimming. The mountains are beautiful, but the summer will desert them too soon.

  The day came when the line of vats to be scrubbed out came to an end.

  “Our sincere thanks to you, Comrade Mach,” Director Kaska told him, “you have delivered some first-class work here…” And so forth and so forth.

  “What have you got for me now?” Ruda asked the director.

  “We didn’t expect you to do things so quickly and so well … Obviously we’ve still got heaps of work for you, but the planning boys haven’t got it all put together yet. But
don’t give it a thought, you can take today off—with pay—and tomorrow morning we’ll talk about what comes next.”

  “So tomorrow morning I’ll be in at six.”

  “Eight will be just fine. Your bonus is ready now … enjoy it!”

  It was just nine o’clock in the morning. Sonya had packed bread glued together with some kind of watery cheese—what does she think I want with cheese all the time?—and another sour apple … Work ought to get its just desserts—

  Ruda Mach stood in front of the gate (in his back pocket that 1,500 bonus) and looked at the white highway (I start doing time again at two … didn’t she say she had to go to the hairdresser’s?) and listened to the tooting of the local train leaving for Jilemnice and Martinice, it’s gone already, too bad (he could have had a nice little outing…), he gazed again at the white highway and thought about all he could do in the space of five hours, at which point a truck went past, Ruda waved as was his habit, and the truck-driver turned on his directionals, hit the brakes, stopped, and opened the door.

  “Where are you going?” Ruda asked him.

  “To Liberec,” said the driver.

  “Great, I’ve never been there,” said Ruda Mach, and he climbed into the cab (Sonya was going to the hairdresser’s, anyway) and already they were on their way.

  A guy always has it good on the road and the truckdriver was a great guy, on the way, in Vratislavice, they unloaded some rugs, then they ate some tripe soup that was sharp as a knife (a helluva lot better than Volrab’s pig swill, and he doesn’t let you cook in your room, either), and already there was stony white Liberec set out on its green slopes like a cake on a table.

  “Damn, from this distance your Liberec doesn’t look too bad!” Ruda Mach delighted.

  “Just wait till you see it close up!” said the driver, and he began to describe the fun you could have at the Nisa Dance Hall and the fun at the Green Tree, the fun at the Town Hall Café (where the girls are), the fun at the Grapevine Bar and the fun at the People’s Restaurant in the park, and then he let Ruda out on the main square.