Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  He went down to the basement for a container of silver paint left over from painting the boiler, in the kitchen he found a second box of matches and Pavel Abrt’s shaving brush (Pavel was asleep) and painted both of them silver. Then he stuck those silly orange fish into the button holes of his romantic shirt and affixed the silver boxes to their tails—it was perfect. And I’ll leave the matches in the boxes, with each movement they’ll sound like castanets … I’ve dreamed up the first musical cufflinks in the world—

  Singing fervently, Lumirek used his hair-dryer on his shampooed hair, then held it in place with hairpins, coated it lightly with hair spray, and dusted it with aluminum — in his rejuvenated spirit he kept hearing a hymn of victory I WILL MANUFACTURE MY OWN CUFFLINKS—

  And Sonya won’t be able to take her eyes off of them.

  The peaceful life of lab assistant Pavel Abrt (eight hours of work and sixteen hours of sleep—during those sixteen hours, admittedly, he did sometimes open his eyes and eat, while during those eight hours he often closed his eyes and slept) was invaded by a peculiar disquiet: the kind curtain of sleep jerked open during such previously quiet hours … Yesterday I even woke up when Lanimir’s alarmclock went off—should I go to the doctor’s?

  Pavel Abrt had woken up while Lumirek was using his shaving brush to paint the match boxes silver. The idiocy of that action (Pavel Abrt considered any action idiotic) rocked him back again into drowsiness, but suddenly he was awakened by the fear that he might have slept through the collective visit to Sonya (he had never owned a watch and never gone anywhere by himself).

  And fear awakened in Pavel Abrt the so-far unrealized thought of activity, even of cunning: he pretended to go on sleeping (to avoid provoking Lumirek, who might not invite him to come along to Sonya’s), but he followed Lumirek’s movements closely.

  “You’re going already?” he cried out, jumping out of bed when Lumirek left the room.

  And Lumirek (who was only going to the bathroom for pink nail-polish) stiffened with horror at the successfully galvanized corpse: his whole life he had never heard Pavel Abrt cry out—and not many people had ever seen him jump out of bed either.

  In less than two hours Lanimir Sapal had ground out the fifth (eighteen-page) chapter of his latest work A PHANTOM OF BEAUTY (about Sonya) and in a “red-hot cloud of creativity” (viz Stefan Zweig, Balzac) he had hopped along the terra-cotta paving stones of the Cottonola plant library: I am actually going to write this novel—

  Eighteen pages in two hours, that’s forty-five pages in five hours of writing every day, so in a month—if I count Sundays and free Saturdays, when I can write ten hours a day—fifteen hundred pages, and in a year all of eighteen thousand pages … Not even Balzac or Tolstoy or all the Dumases together churned out as much literature as I will in a single year, and I’ll write for another fifty years and more even—

  So today another twenty-seven pages—he counted them, sat down and, on the back of a pay slip, began to write feverishly:

  CHAPTER 6

  The richly carved, embroidered with twenty-two-carat gold (inlaid with palisander and various shells, African ivory, and jadeite) teak doors of the captain’s cabin flew open with a crash and Sonia, in a green crinoline of heavy Lyons taffeta, torn to the waist, in her teeth a dagger of Toledo steel, ran out onto the very prow of the pirates’ eight-master.

  “From here on out, there’s nothing but ocean,” John Huston muttered the words sarcastically between his teeth, moving past her with his typical rocking gait, “and in these latitudes there are approximately twelve sharks per hectare…”

  “The Grand Vizier will have you impaled if you don’t bring me back in usable condition!” cried Sonia, her ocular emeralds ablaze.

  “If you knew what a sextant was for, chicky, you’d understand that we’re sailing full steam toward the isle of St. Calixtus…”

  “Into the den of the Black and Red Band—”

  “And we’re as good as there. And there señores De Witt, Ceneka, Lumiretta and Pablo Abrato will sharpen their teeth on your fragile whiteness…”

  “Lanius will protect me,” is all Sonia said to the heaving, shark-infested aquamarine landscape.

  “Your Lanius wails now in a leaden cell and

  And those rogues are actually going after Sonya, especially De Witt, Lanius (Sapal) suddenly realized, and he glanced at his watch, crammed his papers into his briefcase (my productivity in a single afternoon is not the issue, I’ll write for another fifty years—) and he rushed up to the girls’ room on the third floor.

  De Witt was wearing new socks for the third day running, Cenek’s hair was sleek from the water tap, Lumiretta clattered from the matches on his cuffs, and Pablo Abrato was awake—my Sonya is a subject for a most astonishing fictional tome…

  Vit laid his hairy paw on Sonya’s shoulder (this time, Mr. De Witt, we’ll come to blows over our ius primae noctis—) and Sonya smiled prettily at him … O Gods of all continents, isles, and seas, can we leave this splendid meteor to that orangutang?!

  The second session of the divorce proceedings between petitioner Engineer Zikmund Holy, chief hydraulic specialist at USVLH Prague, domiciled in Usti n. L., Vilova 26, and respondent Aja Hola, née Vesela, presently a bargirl on the premises of RaJ World, domiciled at present with her companion Robert Knapp, was dragging on past 2:00.

  Aja wept twice and shrieked three times, Ziki was bored and let his two lawyers talk for him, the young president of the court was all worked up again (Ziki decided that he would give a buzz to his friend Jozek, president of the regional court), Ziki glanced at his platinum datamatic stopwatch (2:16), with a very slight nod to the court he mumbled something and went out of the hearing room into the corridor, crossed to the other wing of the court building, climbed to the third floor, sat on a leather sofa in front of the state notary’s offices beside Bertik Lohnmuller, and took from him a box of matches, inside of which a gold Spanish four-doubloon piece shone against a background of blue velvet, Ziki balanced it in his hand, bit into it, and passed a fragment of touchstone around it, nodded his head, dropped the coin into his pocket, and said: “How much?”

  “Eleven thousand three hundred…” Bertik Lohnmuller announced. “The lady didn’t want to sell it and so I had to—”

  “That’s your business,” Ziki silenced him, tapped his index finger against his right breast pocket, and because the heap of banknotes inside did not seem thick enough, he got up and said: “Come with me.”

  With Bertik Lohnmuller behind him he entered the regional branch of the State Savings Bank (Lohnmuller remained by the door), at window No. 4 Ziki asked for twenty thousand crowns, “Make that thirty—” he corrected himself (why should he have to come here all the time), the clerk filled out a pink slip and Ziki signed it in the lower right-hand corner, he glanced at the cards for his four ordinary accounts (the total balance was over 1,100,000 and roughly as much again would come in over the next twelve months), he sat for a while in an armchair holding the thick cardboard call number in his hand (in his mind he put aside his financial concerns), when his number was called he walked over to window No. 1, asked the cashier to count out eleven thousand three hundred separately, took two packets of hundred-notes, without counting them stuck the thicker pack into the right breast pocket of his black jacket, the thinner into his trouser pocket, and without paying any attention to Lohnmuller at the door crossed the main square to his blue-black Triumph, unlocked it, sat down at the wheel, and opened the handle of the right rear door.

  When Lohnmuller got in the back, Ziki looked around and handed him the packet of hundred-notes from his trouser pocket, asked about sapphires (they hadn’t arrived yet), listened to a report about a collection of gold louis d’ors and ordered it and any quantity whatsoever of Roman gold solidi, he agreed to meet again on Wednesday, banged the door shut behind Bertik Lohnmuller, and stayed in the car.

  He looked at the court building with distaste (he couldn’t stand poorly ventilated room
s), in his mind he put aside his divorce business (my two lawyers can trample Aja all by themselves), played with the new coin in his pocket (he jingled it against his pistol), but didn’t look at it again (it had ceased to amuse him) and, bored, he watched the security officer in the middle of the square, all of a sudden the figure of a girl veiled the officer from view (he watched her until she passed him, but he only saw her from behind), a beautifully developed girl, long legs and long thighs, a narrow waist and a straight back, hair cut short and passionately red.

  Wow! Ziki started the car and slowly drove after the girl, into his broadened field of vision came a police officer saluting, and Ziki nodded slightly in greeting — but the officer was saluting our Sonya! Amused, Ziki smiled, disengaged the clutch, and stopped with the engine running while Sonya chatted with the officer — not more than a minute and Sonya was running after the No. 3 streetcar — Ziki slowly engaged the clutch and drove slowly along behind the streetcar.

  He followed it for four stops, and when Sonya got out at Barvirska Street, he went on driving after her, past the battered garages and warehouses there (he recalled precisely what Sonya looked like from the front, he felt mildly excited and indulged himself with a provocative image of Sonya kneeling in her long children’s nightgown (which lasted only a few seconds), and made a mental note of her address (14 Barvirska Street) and of the metal tablet by the entrance (Lodging for natl. enter. Cottonola).

  He floored it and the engine roared with relief (Triumphs aren’t made for following streetcars), Ziki shifted into third gear, drove through the Predlice quarter, and glided out onto the steeply rising highway which led to the Klise quarter, on Vilova Street he downshifted and drove through the open gates of No. 26 and through the garden right up to the Villa Cynthia’s garage, where Wolf Zahn was using a chamois to polish the windshield of the gray van.

  “Marticka was furious again that you didn’t want to talk to her,” Wolf called to him.

  “You don’t say.”

  “She wanted to wait for you in your bedroom.”

  “That’s amusing.”

  “She wouldn’t let herself be dissuaded.”

  “She’s gotten quite steamed up with us.”

  “I finally had to quiet her down with a blackjack.”

  “That girl has become absolutely impossible,” said Ziki, he took a heap of hundred-notes out of his breast pocket and placed them on the hood of the van, “give these to her in an envelope and then this evening drive her and her suitcase to the station.”

  “Couldn’t I let her stay a few more days? I’d put her in the garden shed—”

  “Take her.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But I don’t want to see her again! And air her room out thoroughly, clean it up, and disinfect it. We’re going to have a new little bird. You know her. She’s staying at 14 Barvirska Street, in the Cottonola dorm. Go take a look at her and prepare for action.”

  “Rely on me, sir.”

  …now those oafs on the second floor all want me, every single one of them. Please send me your instructions.

  Your Sonya

  Sonya wrote at the end of her letter to Manek, it had taken her sixteen pages to describe Cottonola and the dorm in detail, now she slid the pink pages into the pink envelope and wrote the address Manuel Mansfeld, Hotel Imperial, Liberec.

  “Sonya—” an elegant young lady called from the main hall of the post office—and yes, it was Jarunka Slana, my best friend…

  We fell into each other’s arms and kissed. We hadn’t seen each other for so long…

  “What are you doing here, Sonya?”

  “I’m sending a letter to my husband.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t tell me you’re married?”

  “Not yet. And how has marriage been treating you, Jarunka?”

  “It’s about to hand me a divorce.”

  “No! You and Dr. Sedivy are getting divorced?!”

  “Men are beasts,” Jarunka muttered, and she invited Sonya to her apartment.

  Jarunka’s apartment was a nice 2 + 1 1st.-category co-op on the eighth floor of a pre-fab with a view into a square of pre-fabs. One room was furnished luxuriously with a complete living-room suite, the kind they show in department stores, and the other had bare floors.

  “I call it the T.V. room,” said Jarunka, “and my former husband owes me the furniture for it, the beast.”

  And Jarunka told about the beast’s unbearable selfishness—three months after the wedding he moved back to Mama!—for a good three hours.

  “What will you do now, Jarunka?”

  “Live. We came to terms, me and the beast—he keeps the car and I get to stay here in this joint. But furnished! So the beast has to buy me furniture for the T.V. room … then I can try to forget that I was stupid enough to get married. Listen to me, Sonya, never get married!”

  “But what if I love Manek…”

  “After the wedding every guy’s a beast.”

  Jarunka brought out some yogurt and the girls ate it with a single spoon.

  “So now I’ve had my dinner!” Jarunka laughed.

  “How are you fixed for money?”

  “Awfully. I only make a thousand crowns a month and out of that I have to pay six hundred for this apartment—I’m paying off the mortgage. Hey, Sonya, come be my roommate — I’ll let you have the entire T.V. room!”

  “I was just going to suggest that you come work with me at Cottonola. You’d get twelve hundred plus overtime—”

  “I don’t much care for factories. Maybe a little later, if things get worse … and then I’d work at a gas station and take in a hundred a day, with no problem … Let’s work the gas station together, we’ll live like royalty together!”

  “I’d have to get Manek’s permission first.”

  “He keeps a hold on you, huh? More than Ruda did?”

  “Ruda deserted me. Manek’s given me a new life.”

  “Ruda was a jerk, but charming. When I think of his room at the Hubertus … But still, all men are beasts.”

  “They’ve really hurt you … but all of them?”

  “I hate them.”

  Sonya kissed Jarunka on the cheek, and even though she got back to the dorm late that evening, all the oafs from the second floor were still hanging around at their customary posts. As soon as they caught sight of Sonya (she smiled at them prettily), they began to glow (Pavel Abrt even woke up) and began to eat in earnest.

  And they ate even more earnestly the next day, when Sonya sang to them, and they fed their faces even more energetically when she danced for them.

  In a few days a letter came from Ostrava for Sonya’s two roommates.

  “It’s from Majka, the one who lived here before you!” Ivanka shouted, and she read out loud that, “I liked Ostrava at first, but now I don’t like it at all. I had an affair there with someone named Ruda Mach, he was something, but then he started calling me Sonicko in bed, and then he cleared out and was off to eastern Slovakia. The guys here are a bit too lively and I’m homesick for our oafs back there. Girls, if you don’t have anybody living there yet, write and and I’ll be right back, and have Engineer Sapal keep my place in the drying room, so write me right away, so long! Majka.”

  “Ruda Mach … didn’t he used to be your guy, Sonya?” said Barborka.

  “Sort of. But not really. Who gives a damn.”

  “Poor Majka,” Ivanka sighed. “She’ll be sad when she finds out she can’t come back…”

  “Why can’t she?” Sonya was surprised.

  “Because we’re full up: there’s no room for a third girl in the dryer and there’s no room for a fourth bed in this room. Poor Majka…” said Ivanka, out of sympathy she smoked two cigarettes and asked: “What’s that you’re writing, Sonya?”

  “A letter to Manek,” said Sonya, and she wrote sixteen pink pages, on the envelope the address Manuel Mansfeld, Hotel Imperial, Liberec.

  I took out my red briefcase (I bought it for s
chool) and put in my letter and some notebooks and a textbook and a novel I’d already read, Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers (I’d fallen most in love with Hanna Wedling) and then I left the building, on the street a car came up behind me right up onto the sidewalk, I squeezed against the wall, the door of the car opened suddenly and a hairy, tattooed male hand pulled me inside before I could get a hold of myself, I saw the grinning face of Wolf Zahn and then Berta Zahnova threw over my face a handkerchief smelling of something sweet and heavy, I’d smelt it somewhere before…

  I came to my senses again. An unfamiliar room with white furniture, over me Wolf and Berta, and Mister Ziki, too, standing and smiling on a thick yellow rug sewn from sheepskins.

  I shrieked and leaped for the door, the Zahns grabbed my arms and twisted them behind me, I scratched, bit, and kicked, but then Zahn suddenly bent over, thrust his head between my thighs, grabbed me by both my ankles, and flipped me upside down so that I was left hanging from his shoulders with my head to the ground, and Berta Zahnova tore off my dress and even my underwear. Then Zahn threw me on a bed, and all three of them went out and double-locked the door.

  The heavy door has no handle on the inside, nor is there any on the window, and outside the window a massive concave grill projects out toward the treetops.

  In a golden-yellow embroidered robe of Chinese brocade (which had made its way from Hongkong to Woolworth’s, a London department store), which opened to reveal a sliver of an exquisite chocolate-brown shirt made of a mercerized Egyptian cotton known as mako, which was intersected by a loud, sulphur-yellow tie, Ziki stepped up to the glassed ebony sideboard, with the skillful, silent, and economical movements of a single hand he unlocked and let down the massive door: on the counter thus formed he placed a simply etched glass taken from the upper section of the mirrored shelves, and drew out and uncorked (always with a single hand) a bottle of Spanish wine called Tarragona, in one motion he poured his noontime dose into the glass (precisely the same—a finger’s breadth below the top of the glass—as any other day) and with alpaca-lined tongs (always with a single hand) he lowered a circlet of lemon onto the surface of the wine. Sonya is an extraordinary case.