After six days of ‘special treatment’ (Spezialsonderbehandlung), Sonya is as unyielding as on the first day. She’s unbelievable—
Complete oral starvation with nothing but intravenous glucose, the suggestion of a daughter complex under hypnosis plus psychopharmaceutical aids, a salted whip, an assortment of narcotics, light, heat, and electric shocks, systematic hormonal excitation — with Sonya nothing worked. With Zdenicka, the next-to-last girl, a short period of starvation, a light beating with a rod, and some ice cream on a stick were enough, with the last one, Marticka, all it took was eight ounces of white Cinzano (diluted with ice, no lemon) — Sonya triumphed over all the brain- washing techniques known to the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau for the Preservation of the Constitution.
And while undergoing the Scottie-Holzenstamm detection system (electro-impulse measuring with a double dose of lithiumdiisooktylhexacarbonchrysoidine) all she talks about is a certain Manek and she claims she’s his wife — ‘curious,’ thought Ziki, and he took a sip of the Tarragona.
The technical literature cited just one case that had held out against the Scottie-Holzenstamm system: a ninety-three-year-old Yugoin from the Himalayas, who was able to emit his I a good 400 miles to a cloister in Lhasa … but where would an ordinary Czech girl get such enormous, practically supernatural spiritual power?
Five short knocks on the door and in came Berta Zahnova, scratched all over: “She kicked over my last bottle of glucose, sir, and I won’t be able to lay my hands on another one today. She’s so exhausted that if we don’t give her something pretty soon, she might exit on us—”
“Give her milk, bouillon, toast and, starting tomorrow, gruel,” Ziki said tenderly.
It’s annoying. All that’s left is psychotherapy, and I don’t have much faith in it… Extremely annoying: the Security Police can begin looking for Sonya now that she’s been missing for six days, especially that officer who saluted her down on the square—
It’s ‘shocking,’ but Sonya had triumphed. There was nothing left to do but try to eventually win her good will and, through her complete rehabilitation, make it possible to set her free in a state of mutual respect.
Entering without knocking (he could do that only in the most extraordinary cases), Wolf Zahn stumbled in with bloody slashes on both his cheeks, and enraged he announced:
“She threw the hot bouillon in Berta’s face and scalded her, sir!”
“‘Heaven!’ Will we settle with that girl or she with us?!”
“She’s quite superduper, sir…”
“Did she rough you up like that?” said Ziki, and he pointed a bit queasily at Wolf’s disfigured face.
“Only the one on the left. The right one’s from Marticka.”
“‘Damned fool’! You’ve still got Marticka in the garden shed—get rid of her this minute! Idiot! The police might be here any moment!”
Ziki sipped his wine. Sonya’s almost a miracle … I’ve never encountered anything like her before and I’ve encountered all sorts… Dr. Menecka, for instance … or Isabella from Barbados … Ursula von Rottenburg…
A sudden uproar in front of the house, Ziki took a sip and with his glass in his hand he went up to the window and looked out between the curtains: a truck had entered the garden, and police in civilian clothes were jumping out of it and coming up to the house.
Ziki took a sip of Tarragona, from the ceiling safe took out his ‘emergency’ suitcase (packed with a suit, underwear, toiletries, an official and a private passport, both permitting extended visits in all European countries, 300 crowns in Czech currency, 100 east marks and 100 west marks and 50 pounds sterling, under a false bottom eighteen hundred carats of industrial diamonds), he shut the safe (knocks on the door downstairs), drank one last swallow of Tarragona, went down to the cellar, passed through an iron gate past a heap of coke and along a concrete sidewalk at the end of which was his bakelite Trabant auto, in dark glasses (placed in advance on the seat of the car) he drove out onto Sadova Street, left the car near the main station, and on the Vindobona international express he reached his destination at 5:08 P.M., precisely according to the timetable, the station was Berlin-Ostbahnhof, from there a black East Berlin taxi to ‘Check-Point Charlie,’ then a yellow West Berlin taxi to the Berlin-Tempelhof Airport, and by Swiss Air to London (Heathrow Airport).
From the airport he phoned his friend Randolph S., asking him to make a phone call to Usti nad Labem (which may not be very simple, he may have to dial ‘again and again’), and he sent his employer, USVLH Prague (cable: Ustrevoda Praha), a long telegram (collect) to the effect that in the matter of the submersible gas burner for the vaporizing apparatus at natl. enter. Cottex, he was making personal contacts with the manufacturer, NORDAC Ltd., pursuant to prior arrangements (with this he gave his journey a legal basis and laid the groundwork for a claim for reimbursement of travel expenses and a per diem in £), he called to make a reservation (“for a week or so”) at his favorite hotel, the Kensington Palace, in the Daily Express newspaper he checked the cabaret programs, they’ve never been worse, the season’s just starting — and because it was exactly 8:00 P.M., he went to dine at the airport restaurant.
“That girl’s a miracle,” he said to himself after taking a sip of his aperitif (Tarragona with lemon).
A deep-blue five-ton truck rattled out of the industrial quarter of Predlice along the steep highway into the residential quarter of Klise and roared through the quiet, flowery streets, in back Lanimir Sapal, Cenek, Lumirek, and Pavel Abrt held on to the sides throughout the hellish trip, Ivanka and Barborka were jolted around the floor, and in the cab Vit showed Petr Junk the way:
“—take a left and we’re there.”
Petr turned into empty Vilova Street and stopped in front of the barbwire garden gate to No. 26.
“Should we go in on foot or should we drive…” Vit considered aloud after ringing the bell in vain.
“Let’s drive—” Peter Junk shouted, and he stepped on the gas.
Six days earlier, from his dorm window, Cenek had seen Sonya get into (“…something wasn’t right—”) a low blue-black car (“…a six-cylinder Triumph, it’s got three carburetors…”) and Sonya did not come back all day. Even Sapal noticed that his newest soul failed to make it to the drying room by the end of the shift. Chief Sapal wrote in the daily log that “Miss Cechova S. to be dealt with by OUNZ (Ivanka and Barborka—Sonya told them everything about herself—deduced that Sonya had spent the night at Jarunka Slana’s).
But when she didn’t show up that evening, Vit set out after Jarunka in Cenek’s Skoda MB and on his return announced to the alarm of all the singles, “Sonya is missing.”
There aren’t too many Triumphs in Usti nad Labem, but it still took the Cottonola bachelors a good three days (they didn’t want to turn to the police except under extreme circumstances, so they wouldn’t cause any trouble for Sonya—excepting her unforgiveable absence from the drying room), to find the owner of the mysterious auto.
“It’s some Engineer Zikmund Holy and he lives on Vilova Street—” Cenek announced.
“Ziki … that’s Ziki! Remember, Barborka, what Sonya told us about him—”
“The Lord be with us,” Barborka grew frightened, “our Sonya may no longer be…”
Twenty minutes later a red Skoda MB parked at the corner of Vilova and Sadova Streets and five men from sixteen to forty in age, one after the other, took a walk around No. 26. The last to come back was Cenek, pale with horror he pointed to what he had found in a garbage can: shreds of Sonya’s green dress and her left sandal, charred.
When they rang at the garden gate, the lights in the villa went out and after an entire hour of prolonged ringing the house remained deaf and dark.
“Should we go in on foot or should we drive…” Vit considered the next afternoon in front of house No. 26.
“Let’s drive—” Petr Junk shouted, he stepped on the gas, the massive front bumper smashed through the barbwire garden gate, and t
he truck drove into the garden.
Oddly enough, the door of the villa was open and the villa empty (but in the kitchen pots were boiling), both the ground floor and the second floor (in one room a black sideboard was open and on its counter a still damp wineglass with a fresh circlet of lemon).
On the third floor behind a heavy white door (it wasn’t locked, but she couldn’t open it: it didn’t have an inside handle) lay Sonya bound to a bed, wearing a long nightgown (like a child’s), by her head a hospital stand with an empty bottle, hanging from its neck and swinging freely was a red rubber tube ending in a hypodermic needle, on the chair a yellow leather whip, and on the damp carpet pieces of glass—
“What have they done to you, Sonya…”
“Manek, I knew you’d come—” Sonya whispered and then lost consciousness.
In three days’ time (Ivanka sat by Sonya for hours on end without a single cigarette and Barborka cooked till late at night, Marie Junkova furnished some baby food and her baby bottle, out of his savings Cenek bought eggs, vegetables, milk, and chicken, Lanimir read Sonya select passages from humorous novels, Vit forbade the housekeeper Sbiralka to wash the stairs, “ ‘cause you make such a racket with the bucket!” and on the other side of the wall Petr Junk talked to his wife in a whisper, Lumirek made Sonya a pair of electromechanical earrings which lit up, played music, and rotated, and Pavel Abrt took sleeping pills in order to sleep) Sonya dictated to Lanimir a twenty-three-page report to Manek (while she was gone, all that had come from Manek was a very curt telegram: STUDY FOR YOUR DEGREE EXAMINATION—M.M.).
We sat on daybeds surrounding Sonya and felt terribly sorry she had to go.
The director was sympathetic, but matters involving missed shifts fell under the jurisdiction of the prosecutor (petitions with signatures of all the employees of the finishing rooms didn’t help, nor did a thirty-seven-page analysis by Engineer L. Sapal replete with quotations from the fields of law, economics, history, and literature, not even an hour-long visit paid by senior workers Vit and Cenek to the director had any effect), despite all its sympathy, the management of Cottonola could do no more for Sonya than drop criminal charges on condition that Sonya leave. And the telegraphically invited Majka in Ostrava sent an enthusiastic reply AT ONCE AND FOREVER I WILL RETURN ON FIRST TRAIN.
And so Lanimir took Sonya’s suitcase, Vit and Cenek carried Sonya downstairs, seated her in Cenek’s red Skoda MB (Lumirek and Pavel Abrt waved from the open second-floor window, on the third floor Ivanka and Barborka were crying) and they took her to Jarunka Slana’s, as Sonya had requested.
“I’ll write a pentalogy about you!” Lanimir Sapal promised Sonya (after years of suffering he is publishing the first volume), he kissed her on the forehead and, on the way back, mailed another extended report from Sonya to Manek, already with her new address on the back of the envelope, registered express.
“… that’s it. It’ll be all right now,” Jarunka Slana said as she pulled off the bandages on Sonya’s back, peeled off the last scab left from the shots she’d been given, and spread vaseline on her shoulders. “Now get some sleep and then we’ll go out this afternoon,” and she smoothed out her glaringly golden hair (à la chrysanthemum), on the run she grabbed a satchel (it was already seven fifteen), took the elevator down to the first floor, and ran off to catch the streetcar.
Jarunka Slana-Sediva hates men. Three months after their wedding Dr. Sedivy marched back to Mama, “because she’s the only one in the world who understands me,” he said, he took all his things (I haven’t got any of my own so far) and got the hell out. He destroyed my life and made a divorcée out of me at the age of twenty—
Beast, Jarunka said to herself as she put her fare, ten hellers short (like every day), into the streetcar’s farebox, at the same time smiling at the driver radiantly, they’re all beasts and I’ll show them—
Jarunka was the prettiest salesgirl in the salesroom of PRIM Fashionable Accessories for Men.
“…aren’t those a little small?” a customer in his prime hesitated over a pair of obviously teensy socks.
“But they’re stretch-nylon, they’ll stretch to fit your foot!” Jarunka said with a radiant smile, stretching the teensy socks with all her fingers to a pint-size volume (after the first washing, only an infant with an awfully small sole would be able to put them on).
“Well, if you recommend them…” the customer gave in, Jarunka wrapped the mini-socks and then rushed to help a young prospective buyer (“some sort of shirt from the West”) who had arms stretching below his knees, like a chimpanzee’s.
“This is an American original,” said Jarunka, opening a dacron shirt ‘Made in U.S.A.’ (everyone knows that Americans wear their sleeves shorter than anyone else) invitingly across her well-developed chest, “and this is the last one we have…”
“Will it f-f-fit me?” the long-armed youth was terrified by what he saw.
“As if it were made to order. But it costs a hundred forty!”
“That d-d-doesn’t m-m-matter,” the youth said with pride, and he took the shirt (which could have fit a much younger guy, assuming he had a chest like an elderly butcher from Brooklyn).
As with expertly directed whiplashes, Jarunka placed tight socks and shirts, sweaters that strangle, and clothes that constrict the necks, trunks, arms, calves, and feet of the detested male sex (whenever—though not very often—a tormented buyer ventured to come back and beg to make an exchange, Jarunka would crush him with her most radiant smile: “But I thought you didn’t have a neck like a loaf of bread [a bottom like a ham, feet like dumplings] … you don’t really want to try on something else? We haven’t got anything else—” and many a customer went off a second time with the cunningly chosen instrument of torture, since in Usti n.L. fashionable accessories for men are always hard to come by.
So for the most part it was fun (but standing behind a counter gives you varicose veins, and of the less than a thousand a month, six hundred goes for the apartment), so she had to live on a diet of bread, tea, and yogurt, and a twenty-year-old girl also needs to clothe herself and have a good time—
“Those two over there are dying to say something nice to us,” Jarunka said to Sonya over their afternoon tea at the Union Café in Vseborice, and with her elbow she cautiously pointed out two old men at a corner table.
“But they’re too old even to be our dads,” Sonya laughed over her tea (without sugar or anything).
“They’ve only got a year or two till they retire, and that’s the best sort,” Jarunka assessed them professionally, “they don’t grudge you a crown when they’re on their last legs—”
And the eyes Jarunka made to the corner table were so frequent and so radiant that in five minutes the two near- pensioners joined the girls at their table and Jarunka snapped her fingers impatiently (and hungrily) to the waiter.
“Two Moravian cutlets—each with a double portion of chef salad—and four slices of cake and two Turkish coffees with whipped cream!”
Ecstatic about the girls’ appetites and their amiability (Sonya kept smiling at them prettily, and Jarunka radiantly), the near-pensioners ordered headcheese with vinegar and pepper (heavy blows to their gall-bladders—), drank beer after beer (—the same to their prostates and urinary tracts—), and they laced their beers with a little rum (—and to their kidneys).
When they began to tell the girls (a bit incoherently) that “Frantik here has a garden and in the garden a shed and in the shed a crate of suuuch sweeet apples,” Jarunka accepted their invitation “to the shed for apples” and sent Sonya to “telephone Dad and tell him we’ll be home a little bit late.”
“Will you lend us money for the phone?” she said to the near-pensioners with an especially radiant smile, she took a five-crown piece from them and handed it to Sonya.
“Sonya’s been on the phone with Dad for a long time now, it seems,” she said after a while. “Dad likes to play chess with her every evening and she doesn’t know how to say no … I’
ll go and get her—”
And Jarunka ran out of the bar into the vestibule, where Sonya was nervously biting her nails, took her by the arm, and the girls quickly rode off to town in bus No. 5.
“Do you really want to go to that idiotic school of yours?” Jarunka was annoyed with Sonya when they got out on the main square.
“I’ve got to. Manek wants me to pass the degree exam.”
“Too bad, we could go to the Druzba now, it’s Thursday, the day they get paid at the glassworks. No problem though, I can go by myself.”
“Be careful!” said Sonya.
“Don’t be afraid, I can hold my own with those beasts!” Jarunka grinned, and with a pugnacious spirit she brandished her unusually ample shopping bag (with stiff sides and metal-bound corners, inside were lipstick, a comb, three crowns, and a canvas bag containing several pounds of hairpins: one blow to the head could dispose of any man who wasn’t wearing a helmet).
While Sonya was crossing the bridge on her way to night school, Jarunka dropped into the World Cafeteria again, standing at the counter she shoveled down an ice-cream sundae (she loved frozen treats), and shortly after eight o’clock she and her distended shopping bag went down to the underground Druzba Bar.
She went home on the last streetcar of the night, tanked up to overflowing with gin-, orange- and other fizzes, with sparkling wine, and with the most varied cocktails (she loved her alchohol chilled), she found Sonya sleeping with her face down on the kitchen table, by her left ear a geography textbook (Chapter XXXIX. CONSEQUENCES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR), and Sonya was exhaling onto page 18 of the next letter to her eternal Manek—
Poor girl, Jarunka sighed, and tenderly she picked her up in her arms and, half-asleep herself, laid her out on her former husband’s daybed, the beast—
Then she pulled the barrettes out of her hair and in her pajamas she smoked a cigarette by the window that looks out onto the square of pre-fab highrises, comforted that all the windows were dark, only here and there in the dark walls of similarly seven-storied buildings the dull glow of a lamp doing its thing above the headboards of double beds … there’s no way to live with men, sighed Jarunka, and it’s even worse without them—in the kitchen she took a long drink of cold water, swallowed a barbituate to help her sleep, and quietly lay down beside Sonya on her husband’s daybed.
Four Sonyas Page 27