Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  Sonya slept with her face on one hand, she scrunched up the tip of the pillow with her other hand and smiled happily with her half-opened mouth—she was dreaming again of her Manek.

  Lucky girl, sighed Jarunka, and she tried to fall asleep as soon as possible, because nothing spoils skin or youth like crying yourself to sleep.

  The last of Manek’s commands went STUDY FOR YOUR DEGREE EXAMINATION and since then my husband hasn’t sent a word to me, even though so much has happened—

  —too much perhaps, perhaps everything that can happen to a girl.

  Sonya lay on the fugitive husband’s daybed with a just-finished history textbook (I’m studying for my degree exam), in a week I’ll have mastered physics and then all I have to do is wait till spring for my exam. By then I’ll have read another fifty novels or so … will that be enough preparation?!

  Every morning I wake up in Jarunka’s empty T.V. room and do half an hour of exercises (why? I’m studying—), in front of the mirror I comb my hair and make myself up (for whom? I’m studying—) and I go out to look at people (I’m studying).

  I go out without breakfast: except for yogurt (she eats it plain and frozen) Jarunka doesn’t buy much in the way of food, and I’m saving my thousand crowns from Cottonola (so I can study). I’m happy to go out: in that apartment of shipwrecked love, I feel like I’m on a sinking ship.

  It’s October 24, a few minutes before eight. Children are going to school. A plain-looking mother comes to a sudden stop next to the sidewalk, opens her car door, watches her little son until he disappears into the school (before he disappears she waves, and I’m gripped by a brief but powerful emotion), and then drives rapidly away. On the other side of the street a teacher has collected a flock of children, suddenly she strides onto the road, with her arms spread wide she stops the traffic going both ways and beneath her arms the children cross the road as if beneath protecting wings.

  I go to the greengrocer for nuts, a salesgirl about my age is emptying a crate of apples, and so I have to wait for my breakfast (for an hour sometimes: she is working, I am not), I tear open the corner of the cellophane bag and pour some peanuts into my mouth. Next door in the dairy store I drink a bottle of milk in a single gulp and return the bottle right on the spot. No one pays any attention to me, in contrast to me everyone here’s in a hurry. At the kiosk I buy a paper (I’m studying everything), I read it standing up and soon I throw it away.

  I’ve finished my history lesson, I’ve exercised, I’ve combed my hair and made myself up, I’ve had breakfast and informed myself concerning the latest developments in the Middle East, Peru, and Indonesia — it’s just after eight and I’m ready to shout from it all—

  The nicest time of day is when I watch them work on the highway. The lanes are all done now, and the orange machine which laid them is resting a little beyond its last few feet. All that’s left now is to finish the shoulders, to fill the beds for these, stretching all the way to the horizon, with concrete … I envy the men their work: it seems endless, but each day they leave behind them a wonderfully solid piece of road…

  Although the orange machine laid down the lanes almost by itself—the men only served it—they do the shoulders themselves: they shovel gravel into wet cement, they pull their leveling board along it (the gravel disappears and the surface grows smooth), then a vibrating lathe (I read about it in the town library), and finally, on their knees, a trowel, the gravel disappears and the men’s road is suddenly as smooth as a freshly baked cake, and that’s how they play their day away.

  Everyone in the gang is Hungarian (I don’t know a single word of Hungarian, I communicate with them only in gestures, but I do manage to understand them: they’re men) and handsome down to the last one of them, they walk about as if they were on a golf course, they all take an interest in me (as I in them) and they try to entice me, but honorably, simply, and clearly (oh, Manek…), on scraps of paper sacks from their cement they keep writing the figure 2,000, the pay in crowns I will get when I join their gang. I sign that I am still thinking it over (I think of it more and more seriously) and that they should save me a place. There’s no hurry, they sign, and they show me my road to the horizon.

  I walk in the opposite direction, toward the center of town, and it takes me about an hour since I keep stopping and looking at people. I sit on a park bench, in the sand lie rust-colored chestnut leaves, I sit here all alone, two girls are walking across the grass gathering up the leaves, which keep on falling and falling. Couldn’t they wait till they all fall and then gather them all at once? No. This is their job and their vocation. What am I doing? I’m studying for my degree exam. But all that’s left now is physics, and then a half-year wait for the spring exam … and I’ll read another fifty novels … is that a job or a vocation? The girls look at me curiously and whisper to one another. I quickly leave.

  I am the first visitor to enter the reading room of the town library (every day). What should I study today? I walk by the shelves, take down book after book, leaf through them and put them right back, skim them for five minutes standing up, or sit over them for three hours, I read about the cultivation of fruit trees, about cooking nutritious food, about Ceylon tea, about excavations in Mexico, about catching gorillas, about the Wankel engine, about apartment interiors, about the coronation of the British queen, about viniculture in Soviet Georgia, about Saxon porcelain, about the psychology of a pregnant woman, about breast-feeding … have I studied enough?

  I have an absurd amount of time left and I walk (it hardly matters where) to the station, for the twentieth time I etch in my memory the departure times of all the express trains to Liberec and Prague (I’m getting ready for a journey—), departures in the afternoon, at night, and in the morning, so that, for example, today I could arrive in Liberec at 4:37, in Prague as early as 2:12—

  I trudge back (not home) through the town as it comes to life, where everyone has something to do, they drive their children to school or they help other people’s children cross the street, they sell vegetables, milk, and newspapers, they lay highways, they hunt for books in the library, they drive streetcars … I’m studying OR AM I ONLY DECEIVING MYSELF—Jarunka’s mailbox is empty again. M.M. goes on being silent and remote.

  In the afternoon Jarunka and I go to the Café Savoy (tape-recorded music and no cover charge), we order two plain teas and before they come we’re asked to dance. A few numbers and the two men sit down at our table.

  They’re both engineers from the glassworks, young and clever. We all laugh together, Jarunka talks about cars (she knows three technical details about Saabs and she gets a lot of mileage out of them), I talk about the Wankel engine (I’ve studied it in the reading room of the town library), I know its principle and I get a lot of mileage out of it, men like that sort of thing, but we two don’t actually talk very much, we mainly listen (the men are delighted), we know how to get along with men (they’re something I’ve been studying for years).

  We get up to dance, we sit down and then dance again, with a quick raising of our eyebrows we divvy up the engineers, and then each of us cultivates and takes charge of her own. the one I chose is a quite good-looking and clever guy, we enjoy ourselves (as we did yesterday with the near-pensioners at the Union) and we understand each other (as on Wednesday at the Palace Restaurant and on Tuesday with the dentist at Café Bohemia).

  “I’m so glad I met you,” my engineer says to me (today at the Savoy) and I smile at him prettily (as I did at the Bohemia, the Palace, the Union, the Hotel Hubertus … not to mention the Hotel Imperial?)—

  “Is anything wrong?” my engineer grows frightened.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “You turned pale so quickly—”

  My pretty smile must look silly.

  I raise my eyebrows at Jarunka, she’s surprised (because these are really first-rate guys), but she moves smoothly on to a conclusion of our enterprise:

  “We’re really having a great time with you guys,” Jarunka
tells the engineers (her radiant smile is absolutely idiotic), “but we haven’t eaten anything since morning, so we’re in a rush to get home.”

  “When can we see you again?” the engineers wish to know.

  “Let’s leave that to chance,” we provoke them to take the initiative.

  “But at least tell us—”

  “No more. We’re incredibly hungry and so off we go—”

  “But you can have a meal here—”

  “I’ve got just three crowns on me,” says Jarunka (at the Bohemia she’d said “five” and the dentist had suggested that she order grated Roquefort), “and you, Sonya?”

  “I’ve just got streetcar fare—”

  And so the engineers call the waiter over, Jarunka orders fifteen dekas of ham, two portions of butter, and vermouth on the rocks, I run my finger down the prices on the menu and order three expensive dishes along with a bottle of sparkling wine, Jarunka raises her eyebrows (this is dangerous and even for her it’d be pretty cheeky) and tries to turn it into a joke, I glumly persist in my ordering, the engineers exchange glances, but they don’t dare deny me what I want. In spite of Jarunka’s stubborn efforts, the entertainment goes downhill. I stop smiling prettily, drink one sip of sparkling wine, get down one slice of Hungarian salami, and mumbling something I get up and leave it all behind. I’ve got night school, I have to study for my exam, right?

  At night school I’m the best student in the class, I get nothing but A’s and I know it all in advance, the teachers praise me as a model to my fellow pupils while I stare at the blotches all over my desk to avoid the gaze of the tired mamas and the girls on night shift who haven’t caught up on their sleep … I’ve already lost the joy of coming here.

  And from school to the movies, to avoid coming as long as possible to the home that’s not a home. I’ll write a letter to Manek and start studying physics, in a week I’ll have it mastered—and what if M.M. at his comfortable distance goes on being silent another week and even longer, until the men and their highway disappear beyond the horizon—

  “I’ve got something—” Jarunka tells me at night in her kitchen (she’s stuffing herself with frozen yogurt and the splinters of ice crackle between her teeth), she puts her finger to her lips and leads me through the foyer into her T.V. room. On the bare floors of the warm bare room (the heat has already gone on) on a checkered blanket lies something wearing striped shorts, it’s all hairy and shaggy (except for a face with childlike skin) and it seems to be a sixteen-year-old boy.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “At the World Cafeteria.”

  “And what are you going to do with it?”

  “I’ve paid for him!” Jarunka exults and joyfully explains that Krystofek (“Imagine that, his name is really Krystof, I checked his I.D.—”) came to Usti without a single crown in his pocket, he has nowhere to live and doesn’t know anybody here, and so Jarunka bought him two plates of tripe soup and took him home.

  “And what are you going to do with him?”

  “Whatever I wish, he’s mine … I’ll send him somewhere to slave away, he’ll give me his entire pay, and I’ll bring him up like a goldfish in an aquarium — why he’s just a silly little animal…”

  The “animal” is a good six feet tall, Jarunka joyfully shows him off to me, calls attention to how long his hair is (almost a foot), to his powerful legs and arms and, in ecstasy, jabs her finger into his tough white flesh until the boy wakes up and speaks.

  “What’s up?”

  “This is Sonya, my best friend, she lives here with us and you must obey her like you do me!”

  “OK,” the boy agrees. “Should I get up?”

  “But it’s nighttime, you simpleton,” Jarunka tells him lovingly, “go back to sleep so you can be fresh in the morning. Tomorrow morning you’ll be sent to work.”

  “OK,” the boy agrees. “Good night!”

  Jarunka got up at four in the morning (I don’t think she ever slept at all) and through the thin pre-fab partition I could hear her waking up Krystofek (it took a long time for her to accomplish this), she scrubbed him in the bathtub with a scrub brush, cut his hair and nails, fed him (the door to the refrigerator kept banging for a whole hour), and at half-past five she drove him in front of her like a horse going to market. I began to study physics.

  M.M. at his distance went on being silent.

  In the afternoon Jarunka drove Krystofek back into the apartment, draped with shopping bags and nets crammed full (she’d hired him out to the town slaughterhouse and talked them into advancing him one week’s pay and giving him an interest-free loan on the second week’s, as well as a clothing allowance), she’d spent all her own ready cash (“But Krystofek will give it all back to me — right, Krystofek?” “You bet!” said the boy) and she’d bought, among other things, a six-pound loaf of Sumava bread, two pounds of horse salami, seven pounds of pickles, a pair of corduroy trousers (at a bazaar: one leg was shorter than the other and the pocket had been repaired), six yards of flannel (at the bazaar), and at once she began measuring her animal with a tape measure, then sat down at the sewing machine (sewing was what Jarunka was best at), and by nightfall she had turned out a shirt as if on an assembly line. The boy sat and ate and then lay down and slept.

  Each day the Hungarians were another two minutes farther away, each day I poured peanuts into my mouth, drank a bottle of milk standing up, read the paper, the encyclopedia, and novels, looked at people, studied for the degree exam (I studied physics more slowly than any other subject…) and wrote to Manek every day — M.M. at his distance went on being silent.

  Krystofek took to sitting in our room (in the T.V. room all he had was a blanket on the bare floor) in just one chair (it had cost three thousand crowns, by moving a lever it could be tilted to make a bed, but even when untilted it took up a good quarter of the room), which he delighted in tilting and sitting on with his legs crossed.

  Jarunka cooked as for an artillery squadron, she spent entire days sewing new gear for her “animal” (out of an old curtain she sewed him a shirt with a fichu even Lumirek from Cottonola wouldn’t have spurned) and she gave one order after another, Krystofek ran every so often to the cellar for potatoes, to the self-service market for vinegar or mustard, he beat the rugs, scrubbed the floors, scoured out the bathtub, and washed the windows, and as soon as he finished a task he jumped up on the tilted armchair, sat Turkish-style, and stared at me. Jarunka didn’t give him any allowance and forbade him to smoke, the only pleasure permitted him was chewing-gum. Krystofek squatted on the tilted chair, chewed, and stared at me.

  M.M. at his distance went on being silent.

  It was beginning to get crowded having three of us in Jarunka’s apartment. When Jarunka finished clothing her animal, she sat on her daybed opposite his tilted armchair and for hours on end we played a game of rummy known as Vatican, in which you could do anything at all and two hands can take up a whole afternoon, we played five hands of Vatican in one sitting and then I decided to go off to the kitchen to read.

  One rainy afternoon I read Gogol’s Dead Souls and I realized that it wasn’t worth reading anything else, I felt a terrible desire to be with people, and so without knocking I burst into the living room — Krystofek stood against the wall, naked as God had created him, his palms against the ceiling, and Jarunka was embracing him with the tape measure.

  “I’m measuring him for pajamas…” Jarunka whispered.

  Krystofek stood there and didn’t even blink.

  Coming in from school I couldn’t unlock the door of Jarunka’s apartment: there was a key in the lock on the inside.

  “Come back in ten minutes!” Jarunka called to me through the door.

  Outside it was pouring buckets (it’s already November!), I took a taxi (for the first time in my life) to the main post office and at the grill I presented an urgent telegram:

  Manuel Mansfeld Hotel Imperial Liberec

  I’m in the gutter stop should I come to you
or will you come here question mark Please please please exclamation point

  Your Sonya

  And I sat there in the hall of the main post office until it stopped raining, then I went to the movies, then the station, and I didn’t return until long after midnight. In the living room all that remained was my (that is, Dr. Sedivy’s) daybed, everything else—Jarunka’s bed, the tilting armchair, the glassed sideboard, the bookcase, the ficus, the rug, the floor lamp—had disappeared (the floor lamp shone through the glass inset in the door of the T.V. room).

  In the morning I studied the next-to-last chapter of physics (49: Self-Induction), exercised for half an hour, in the bathroom in front of the mirror (Krystof’s toothbrush was reposing in Jarunka’s cup) I combed my hair (it had grown out well) and was making myself up when the bell sounded and a delivery boy on a motorcycle gave me a priority telegram from Prague:

  ENGAGED IN A SECRET MISSION CANNOT COME IN FORESEEABLE FUTURE STOP FIND A NEW PLACE TO LIVE AND BEGIN A NEW LIFE M.M.

  I’d packed my suitcase in ten minutes and left Jarunka a note on the kitchen table: “Manek is sending me away and so I’m leaving. Regards, thanks, kisses, and I wish you all the best!” and I left her home behind.

  A sack of nuts, a bottle of milk, the newspapers (I didn’t throw them away: they’ll come in handy in the new apartment), and I ran after the Hungarians, who since yesterday had knocked off another two minutes of highway.

  They were happy, they gave me an enormous green pepper, and with gestures they pointed out where I could find the manager.