Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  “But I’d like to deal with outsiders—”

  “Fortunately it’s been years since anyone came here.”

  Fortunately, however, from Tuesday on more than enough people visited our PS-VTEI (my boss seemed surprised) and there were more and more of them (my boss was truly panicked) and in a week crowds of them were standing around our shelves, so that during his walks my boss often had to squeeze between them.

  The women came only once, looked me over thoroughly, and went off all fired up. But the women will most likely never love me.

  With the men it was easy, I smiled prettily at each of them and in a few days our PTK and PS-VTEI had regular customers, like a bar with a renowned kitchen (and a pretty waitress). They would stand around the shelves (my boss personally carried all four chairs down to the cafeteria) with an Italo-Polish dictionary, the Berlin telephone directory, or the manual You Are Becoming a Young Man in their hands and try to strike up a conversation with me.

  My boss stood guard over me like a dragon, with his mobility he managed to turn away up to twenty suitors a day (in the same way I managed to have a nice talk with each of them) and in response to my requests he finally set me my first task: to reclassify all the books on the MISCELLANEOUS shelves according to field. It was a task that resembled tying sand with straw: on one hand each book was its own field (only the travel guides formed a kind of unit, from Hiking Trips through the Krusne Mountains to a city map of Honolulu), on the other hand my boss took around a hundred books a day off the shelves and when he returned them he rarely guessed correctly where they’d originally come from (because, constantly on the move, he covered at least ten yards in the ten seconds he glanced through each book).

  Except for Ladi Tringl (a good-looking boy, every day a different pair of trousers stuck out from beneath his labcoat, I counted eleven of them and then gave up) and Ivos Rybicka (a very good-looking brunet), Jakub Jagr came to see me most often, he stood behind me with a book in his hand and once he suddenly stroked my hair—the touch lasted only a moment, but it brought my boss out from behind a set of shelves (he kept an eye on Jakub), he took him by the shoulders and as with a cat into his own puddle he stuck Jakub’s nose into The Automatization of Processes III, Physico-Chemical Tables, and Industrial Cooling.

  And so I got to know one Cottex technologist after another and in the short intervals between the last and the next I took a look at the books and placed Woman in Pictures beside History of the World’s Volcanoes, Male Anatomy beside Let’s Build a House, and longed more and more not only to learn endlessly about everything there is, but to begin TO DO THEM—

  And so for the first time I smiled prettily at Jakub (he lay in wait for the moment when my boss went off to inspect the kitchen) when he offered me “an interesting, responsible, and important job with the possibility of promotion” in his new division—

  “I’d love to!” I said without any hesitation, and Jakub reverently touched the hair on my temple — but then suddenly he jerked his hand away. A man had entered the library, I had so far never seen him whole (only handing out food through the kitchen window: self-assured, composed, calm—perhaps too much so … as if he were dozing—and the small belly of a well-fed man of forty. A calm and contented marriage).

  Jakub greeted him very politely, like a schoolboy caught in the act he muttered something about the invariable aspects of desorption (the newcomer didn’t pay any attention to him, he was looking me over quite calmly) and slipped away.

  The new man had (in addition to the hands and stomach I already knew) a regular sort of face with gray eyes, half closed as if things didn’t interest him very much, on the whole he looked respectable.

  “I’m Ludvik,” he said (as if it bored him).

  “Sonya Cechova.”

  “My boys have told me about you.”

  “I hope nothing bad.”

  “On the contrary. Are you satisfied here?”

  “Yes, so far.”

  “So far?”

  “I’d like to get something more out of life…”

  “Something more.”

  “A lot more!”

  “Yes. Certainly. Obviously,” he said (as if mocking me?) and asked: “And what are you willing to give it in return?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything…” he repeated (as if surprised?), he bowed slightly to me, smiled even more slightly, and disappeared like a ghost.

  “Some guy named Ludvik was here—” I announced to my boss when he had returned from his kitchen inspection with a shiny mouth and a mild, all-embracing expression.

  “Madre de Dios!” My boss was frightened. “And what did he want?”

  “To know whether I was satisfied here.”

  “And you said?”

  “Yes, so far.”

  “And he said?”

  “He wanted to know what I meant by so far.”

  “‘For Mike’s love!’ And you said?”

  “That I wanted all sorts of things out of life.”

  “You’ll have everything if you take walks, reflect, and strive—and he said?”

  “He said yes—”

  “Donnerwetter!” Engineer Kazimir Drapal was barely able to exclaim, and by the end of the shift he had covered a good ten miles of shelves.

  The soft, thick nylon curtains on the cream-colored window are open just enough to give Engineer Ludvik Ludvik (L.L.) a view of the treetops. There are only a few last leaves now, brownish red … so few you can almost count them. With the ability to count comes sadness. I’ve been counting all my life, but still I’m not quite sad enough—Huh, L.L. thought, and without haste he stood up, stretched (I used to exercise), and went to take a bath.

  He slowly soaped himself, calmly looking at his body, which appeared broken in half by the surface of the water. We start the day by lying in our own filth (I used to shower in ice water—but we didn’t have a bathroom then and that’s the only kind of water there was), huh.

  In front of the mirror he carefully finished soaping and then shaved his face with light strokes. Huh, in the mirror I’ve looked just the same for years.

  He kissed his wife Zora on the forehead (she gets up early, but after breakfast she goes back to bed) and his nineteen-year-old daughter Lanka on the mouth (I love you more than anyone else on earth, more than myself … but that wouldn’t be very much. Huh!), Zora served him a cup of Indian tea and he plunged a silver spoon into scrambled eggs.

  “Just look what Lanka has dreamed up for breakfast again!” Zora complained.

  “Why not? It might have an amusing flavor,” said L.L., gazing amiably at his daughter’s breakfast: orange slices covered with cream and lots of pepper.

  “But I don’t eat breakfast to amuse myself!” Lanka said rebelliously.

  “Really?” L.L. smiled at her (poor girl: she insisted on studying in Prague and had chosen philosophy as her major—huh). “But then why so much pepper?” he asked when Lanka kept pouring pepper on her already well-peppered orange.

  “So it doesn’t taste so boring!”

  “Oranges taste boring?” L.L. was surprised. (Lanka keeps astounding me: I love her for it).

  “Like everything!” cried Lanka, and with disgust she spat out the orange, so overpeppered it was inedible.

  “Everything? You might be exaggerating a little.”

  “Everything!” cried Lanka, she went to the freezer, got out a frankfurter hard as glass, and bit into it with gusto.

  Everything … who said that to me? … Why, it was that new girl from the cafeteria. She intends to give everything.

  “How’s school?” L.L. asked, peacefully devouring his eggs.

  “Like that orange,” Lanka said contemptuously, and she courageously ate up her ice in sausage casing.

  “So give it up—just like the orange,” L.L. proposed to his daughter.

  “But Ludvik, what would she do then?” Zora was frightened (Ludvik and Lanka have been joking together for some fifteen years, but it
always frightens Zora).

  “A place has just opened in the plant cafeteria,” said L.L.

  “Easy,” Lanka said and added jokingly, “Don’t rush things unnecessarily, Daddy. Anyway, you wouldn’t let me work there.”

  If we don’t intend to give everything, what can we expect? At least a lot? Or, modestly, at least something more? Evidently far less. But what should I really expect?

  “Of course not, darling,” said L.L., and he wiped his mouth with a napkin, kissed Lanka on the mouth (the taste of ice and youth) and Zora on the forehead (go and rest, my love), went down to the garage, and drove off to work.

  Eng. L. Ludvik occupies an unpretentious but influential position at natl. enter. Cottex (he designed it himself and now holds on to it firmly): as Director of Production he functions as the irreplaceable head of a staff of often changing (and variously talented) commanders of an army. The army is a respectable one: 26 branch plants in Bohemia and Moravia and an adjustment center in Prague, the apparatus of the enterprise’s directorship (armed with, e.g., a central computer), 22,830 employees, and a turnover of a billion and growing. L.L. with his small (but high quality) division constitutes the operational wing of the general staff.

  L.L. likes to count (it amuses him and he’s great at it). His telexes spew forth whole pads of numbers which Lada Tringl (production) and Ivos Rybicka (materials) work over and appraise so that Ida Papouskova (secretary, but she has to work, since L.L. doesn’t really need a secretary: L.L. has a perfect memory, does not see visitors, and does not drink coffee) spends every day until 10:45 preparing A5 index cards, over which L.L. smokes a Player’s Navy Cut cigarette (it was Lanka who showed me how to smoke) and then, soon after 11:00, the management reads the exhaustive appraisal on the cards of everything of significance that occurred at Cottex in the course of the preceding twenty-four hours. Having been asked (in principle only then. For years now only when asked. Years ago I used to argue and fight with them—huh), he would recommend a suitable remedy which either would work (if they followed his advice) or they would later feel sorry they didn’t follow his advice (but by then either the deadline hadn’t been met or the company ended up a few hundred thousand poorer).

  Over the years L.L. had built up a perfect chess-like system of data retrieval and processing, which by a mere glance at the file cards and at the latest telex, and with only a bit of cogitation, enabled him to ascertain, with a high degree of precision, how much hydroxide of soda Cottex 11 will consume by the end of the February, whether it is feasible to transfer a Polish order from Cottex 22 to Cottex 09, and how much cheaper it is to produce an ordinary yard of canvas at Cottex 02 than at Cottex 03, 07, 14, or 26.

  After doing away with the central computer and after a corresponding adjustment of the system, even that personal bit of cogitation dropped out (I used to like it: it gave me a thrill), so that practically all that remains is to process, in advance, the data churned out by telex (L. Tringl and I. Rybicka take care of that), carry it off to the computation center and bring back the results (I. Papouskova takes care of that), and then go to the management meeting with an A5 index card—so that now all I am is director of a kiddy post office, huh.

  Years ago I used to make the rounds of the plants, in a leather jacket (Lanka wears it now to go lying around in the woods) and knee boots (I wear them now to go mushroom picking), I caught workers dozing off behind their kettles or in the cab of a crane (for years now I’ve been sleeping regularly from 11:00 to 7:00, no dreams), spent hours standing by reactors, centrifuges, and especially next to scales (it’s been a long time since I’ve been on the production floor of any Cottex) and then with the management, just roused out of bed, stammering in coats tossed over pajamas (for years now I’ve only talked to them on the telephone), dictated how much they could actually supply and, from that moment on, how much they would be supplying (correspondence with the branch plants is handled by L. Tringl (production) and I. Rybicka (materials), and I. Papouskova submits them to me for my signature). Huh.

  “Ivos, what’s new?” L.L. asked his materials manager, I. Rybicka.

  “Everything normal, sir,” the materials manager announced, without looking up from a telex.

  “Did you forget to switch those carloads from nine to fourteen?”

  “How could I, sir!”

  “Lada, what have you got to tell me?” L.L. asked his production manager, L. Tringl.

  “Things are buzzing, sir,” the production manager announced without looking up from his electronic calculator.

  “How about that Egyptian order?”

  “It’s ours to fill, sir.”

  “All right, fellows, but you don’t seem to be talking to me…” L.L. said half-jokingly, but more likely half-seriously (if one half can be bigger than another), “tell me something else—”

  Ivos and Lada looked at each other with surprise.

  “What would that be, sir?”

  “I mean something pleasant, nice, something new—huh.”

  “Should I tell him?” Ivos whispered to Lada.

  “Well, if he wants to hear what’s new…” Lada whispered to Ivos.

  “There’s a new girl in the library!” said Ivos, coming to life.

  “Drapal snared her from the kitchen and she’s a real beaut!” said Lada, coming to life.

  “Would it be worth my while having a look at her?” L.L. smiled (Huh, he thought meanwhile).

  “You bet it would!” said Ivos.

  “And how!” said Lada.

  Ida Papouskova (in her twenty-fourth year like others at seventy-two) forced a smile.

  “I’d like to get something more out of life…” that new girl in the library said.

  “A lot more!” she said. She’s beautiful as a dream (of course, I haven’t had a dream in years, and I no longer sleep during the day).

  (“And what are you willing to give it in return?”)

  “Everything,” that beautiful girl said.

  I did that, Miss, for years and years … years ago. Huh.

  “Well, sir, what’s she like?” Lada and Ivos grinned.

  “Young,” L.L. announced drily, and he sent Ida Papouskova (she was detestable as an inspector) off to the inspection division for something, and the moment she disappeared he came to life again.

  “Fellows, discretely sound out what she would say to the possibility—in this case the possibility of fulfilling a series of presuppositions and conditions—of taking the position of secretary in the main production office for—huh—thirteen hundred.”

  “Goal, sir!” “That’d be wonderful!” The boys rejoiced.

  “It’s a quarter to one. Ivos—”

  “I know—during lunch hour,” Ivos said.

  “I’m buzzing away already,” said Lada, and he turned on his electronic calculator.

  And, as with something already disposed of (L.L. had been disposing of too many things every day, for years now), L.L. forgot about the new girl.

  From the bed above me hang two tanned legs rubbing their soles together (the bed used to be Slavka’s — she’s in the maternity ward now, a young Rumanian girl got it and every ten minutes she throws a cigarette butt down on the floor), I am sitting on my lower bunk with my suitcase on my lap (the one table in the middle of the dorm is overflowing with mugs, glasses, plates, knives and forks, and framed photos of men) and writing a long (twenty-one pages already) letter to Manek, for advice in this my third new life:

  Things are all right in the library, but it isn’t the real thing, of course, it’s play, and NOW I WANT SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL—I’d say I was already sufficiently prepared.

  Jakub continually (by notes, by phone, and—the moment Drapal disappears from the library—in person) tries to entice me to come to his new division for thirteen hundred crowns a month — what I’m looking for is not an extra hundred, but for life and perspective (is there much difference between them?) — and this morning Lada Tringl asked me (peeping out from beneath his white lab
coat were checkered, terra-cotta-colored trousers) whether I would like to be Engineer L.L.’s secretary, in actuality a production manager’s assistant, and before lunch Ivos Rybicka came to ask me about the same job (after which he invited me to go dancing with him at the Savoy: I turned him down, but smiled at him prettily). I gave both guys a clear YES (I already knew what it was like to work for Jakub Jagr; now, of course, he would work for me — he told me he loved me), but the days pass and no reply comes to my YES, while Jakub becomes more and more insistent…

  And so advise me what I should do. When you finish your secret mission, come for me or write me to come for you.

  Your Sonya

  Sonya finished her letter to Manek, addressed it Manuel Mansfeld, Hotel Imperial, Liberec, sealed it (as she did, another butt flew by), ran to the main post office, sent the letter off by registered express, and treated herself to a small but elegant dinner in the restaurant at the Palace Hotel, danced with six men, paid the waiter out in the hall (so she could leave by herself), and took a roundabout walk back to her dorm where she lay with her hands behind her head (a butt fell past her every ten minutes) and dreamed.

  Next morning in the library (with a little anger and lessening patience now) she faced the shelves marked MISCELLANEOUS and placed Factory Farming of Calves next to the Newsletter of Refrigeration Technology, and Mushroom Atlas next to What the Forest Tells Us.

  Kazimir Drapal walked past, he took a book off a top shelf, The Antilles—Pearl Necklace of the Caribbean, disappeared behind another set of shelves, and then, re-emerging, he called to Sonya:

  “Sonya, did you know that the city Port of Spain has a square made of white asphalt? We could take a fine walk there, don’t you agree?,” after which he thrust The Antilles—Pearl Necklace of the Caribbean back onto the lower shelf of a quite different set of shelves, from which he took Across Argentina by Highways and Trails and disappeared behind a set of shelves.

  Lada Tringl (peeping out from beneath his white labcoat were dark-blue sailor’s bell-bottoms) came early in the morning and Ivos Rybicka (he wanted to know whether I feel a fundamental antipathy for men) came just before lunch—no answer again from L.L., while Jakub telephoned me twice to ask when I was coming to work for him and sent me a candy box (cognac-flavored creams) packaged for overseas export and a pink letter telling me he loves me. I placed A Catalogue of European Watermarks next to The Amazon: Mother of Waters, A Woman in the Bath beside We’re Setting Up a Darkroom, and took a walk into town.