Four Sonyas

by Paral, VladimIr

  He had hardly put down the receiver when Ida Papouskova announced Engineer Jagr “on a matter of great urgency.”

  “Couldn’t it have been handled on the telephone?” L.L. had greeted the young engineer with some displeasure (L.L. didn’t like visits) and had not offered him a chair.

  “I need your help for my new division,” said Jagr.

  “In what respect?” L.L. said as drily as possible.

  “I am running into considerable difficulties trying to fill my authorized positions—”

  “Refer those matters to the Personnel Department.”

  “Certainly, but I would very much like to know your views, since it is a question of one of your own subordinates.”

  “You want to have Papouskova?”

  “I am asking you for her.”

  “Ida!” L.L. called his subordinate, and when she came in (she had been listening behind the door, of course), he said mockingly, “Here’s someone else who’s interested in you.”

  “I’d rather go to PS-VTEI,” Ida said with unprecedented insolence.

  “There’s no opening there,” L.L. warned her, “but if you want to leave here, I won’t hold you a single hour. As soon as I get a replacement, I’ll release you and send you back to Personnel. Both of you should apply to that office. That’s the whole matter, Mr. Jagr. And Ida, you know I do not take visits.”

  The end of November is somehow desperate: the vain struggle of trees… Lying in bed, L.L. counted the remaining leaves in the treetops outside his bedroom window (on Saturday evening he and Zora opened a bottle of sparkling wine and watched television. Lanka had not come back from Prague. When the bottle was half empty, Zora fell asleep), on Sunday only the last four were left and, shortly after breakfast, L.L. drove off to his autumn woods (I have a grove of oak trees there, whose old leaves will keep new ones from growing until spring).

  On the way back (it rained buckets, but then I always have liked rain) that girl jumped in, the one who wants to give everything … what all will she want in return? I gave her a ride. She left a puddle behind on the seat.

  On Monday morning (Lanka still had not come home) the tree outside my window was bare.

  “Call her in here!” L.L. said to his boys and sighed at their rejoicing.

  “I’ve heard that you’re interested in a place in my division,” he said drily to Sonya Cechova (he had greeted her, but had not offered her a seat).

  “Yes. Very much so,” Sonya said seriously (her neck was wrapped: evidently a sore throat from her Sunday hunting expedition).

  “Huh. You would get an extra hundred a month here.”

  “I don’t care about that at all. I’d even be satisfied with less pay than I’ve been getting.”

  “Oh,” L.L. expressed surprise (whenever I’m surprised, I think about and give thanks to Lanka. But she hasn’t come back. She’ll be coming home less and less—), “and what do you care about then?”

  “Work well done. And good prospects.”

  “Huh. Sit down, take some paper and a pencil, and calculate the following: if five bricklayers build a house in thirty days, how long will eight bricklayers take?”

  She figured it out. So she can do word problems, huh — would Lanka have solved it? Not a chance.

  “OK. How long will eleven bricklayers take?”

  I like the number eleven and all the primary numbers, because they’re hard to work with. They’re indivisible and they resist … She figured it out.

  “OK. And how long will a hundred-and-thirty-one bricklayers take?”

  “I don’t know much about construction and so I would need to know: what is the largest number of bricklayers that can work on the house at one and the same time? If you told me that, I could subtract out the superfluous bricklayers and then solve the problem with the number remaining.”

  “Very good. Everything has determinate limits, beyond which any kind of increase is nonsensical—right?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately—”

  “Excellent.”

  “But who knows? Perhaps we only invent these limits … And perhaps they do not exist at all.”

  “Huh…” (But what limits hold, say, for high mountain peaks? Even under a tropical sun don’t they still keep their eternal snow…)

  “Excuse me? I didn’t understand you.”

  “No matter. The job you are applying for requires a gymnasium degree, which, I am told, you do not possess?”

  “I had to leave school because my father died and—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “—and I’ve been studying by myself and will take my exam this spring. I’m certain I’ll pass.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said L.L., and he got up. “Thanks, and by the end of next month I’ll notify you. But don’t go walking in the woods alone anymore—don’t you have a boyfriend?”

  “I’ve got a husband in Prague.”

  “You do?” L.L. was dumbstruck, but he got hold of himself right away and drily (but with all propriety) dismissed her.

  “Would you like a frankfurter or some Swiss cheese?” Ida Papouskova asked him (she had certainly been listening behind the door).

  “A frankfurter … but it has to be like an ice cube,” L.L. said dreamily.

  “Excuse me?” Ida Papouskova voiced her astonishment.

  “Or bring me an orange and some pepper,” L.L. asked.

  Ida preferred not to be astonished and now brought what he’d requested. L.L. put a lot of pepper on the orange slices, tasted them, and threw them in the wastebasket. On the one hand there was too much pepper, and on the other hand it needed something to refine, smoothen, and integrate the ingredients — then L.L. remembered Lanka’s entire breakfast and asked for two more oranges (he’d already had enough pepper) and a half-pint of fresh cream.

  “Should I place The Second Army of the Cross next to Crossing Potatoes or The Main Crossroads of Buenos Aires?” Ida Papouskova asked the morning of January 2, she was standing in front of the MISCELLANEOUS shelves and she was dressed in hiking boots, checkered knee socks, and checkered knee breeches peeping out from the standard-issue labcoat I’d just turned over to her.

  “It doesn’t really matter, darling,” Engineer Kazimir Drapal answered, he kissed her on the ear as he walked past her, went around three sets of shelves and, holding the book You Are Becoming a Young Man, which he’d been studying for a good kilometer, came over to say goodbye to me.

  “So long, Sonya, bye-bye. You have matured so much under my influence here that I can now teach you the sum of human wisdom—take walks—reflect—and STRIVE!”

  “I’ll do all of it!” I promised him, and I gave him a goodbye kiss (Ida Papouskova dropped three books on the floor) and left the PS-VTEI, PTK, study room and reading room, crossed the courtyard and, with my formerly “kitchen” satchel (inside, my file of Manek’s letters and telegrams, a mirror, comb, and lipstick), went down to the second floor of the administration building (the “White House”) and went in the door marked with the black-and-gold sign DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION.

  “Good day,” L.L. responded drily to my greeting (he didn’t smile at me the least bit), and without any transition he dumped a heap of work on me, probably enough to occupy me for twelve hours a day, besides which I was to learn everything Lada Tringl and Ivos Rybicka do (“so that you can step in for them whenever necessary”) and, after work was over, study a tome entitled Principles of Industrial Programming. When I opened the tome I found long, wormlike derivatives and whole tangles of black, serpentine integrals, both of which I had studied at night school — I admired Manek for timing my studies so perfectly.

  Working for L.L. you can always find a moment for fooling around—but just a moment. Otherwise Lada Tringl and Ivos Rybicka do nothing but slave away (I’m amazed that they found the time to visit me in the library), I drudge away like a thresher the whole eight hours (L.L. can’t stand overtime) and carry two pounds of work to the town library — back at the dorm all I do is sleep (a
nd all too little of that!) and write my reports to Manek.

  “Do you feel you’ve been working hard enough?” L.L. asked me at the end of the week (in which I had scarcely slept twenty hours all told) and for the first time he smiled at me just a teeny bit.

  “How do I look to you?” I asked him (MARVELOUS EXCLAMATION POINT AND NOW YOU WILL TAKE CONTROL Manek challenged me with his telegram NR. 7 the evening of January 2, in which he reacted to my victorious telegram No. 15 I START TODAY, sent the afternoon of the same day).

  “Marvelous,” L.L. smiled, and he assigned me an additional eleven tasks.

  January passed like a single feverish day, I was collapsing with fatigue from the constantly increasing weight of L.L.’s assignments, and I often fell asleep at night school — fortunately this didn’t hurt, because I already knew everything required for the degree exam: Manek had planned my studies with the precision of a space-flight.

  In a fourteen-page letter, NR. 31, Manek gave a detailed analysis of the results achieved thus far, and in the conclusion he formulated a fundamental strategic guideline for the month of February: AT ANY COST, BY ALL MEANS, AND IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE, MAKE L.L. ACCEPT HIS FIRST ASSIGNMENT.

  “How do you like it here with us?” L.L. smiled at me on the morning of the first of February (now he smiles at me all the time).

  “Very much. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Something seems to be missing here…”

  “What might that be?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you…”

  “Try.”

  “You wouldn’t understand…”

  “Let’s both try. What’s missing here?”

  “A bit more life.”

  “Yes?” L.L. was dumbstruck, but he got hold of himself right away and for the rest of the shift he closed himself up in his office. Lada Tringl went to the dentist’s and I worked at his calculator, making it whistle (I can also do Ivos Rybicka’s job). At 2:59 precisely (as every day) L.L. said goodbye to us, and to me he added drily, “Tomorrow we’re going on a trip to No. 02.”

  Right onto the keyboard of the calculator Lada Tringl dropped the wet handkerchief with which he had vainly tried to soothe the pain in his dug-up jaw, and then in shock he sighed: “L.L.’s going on a trip—” And Ivos Rybicka explained to me that the last time L.L. went on a trip was six years ago.

  In letter No. 46 I sent Manek a word-by-word account of my conversation with L.L. and an evaluation of his astonishing decision, I spent the rest of the day at the hairdresser’s (my hair had grown out beautifully) and in my excitement I could fall asleep only thanks to the wonderful book by Dr. Karl Werner, Hatha Yoga (fundamental yoga exercises), according to Manek’s prescription (NR. 23) it will allow me to perfect myself, and it also allows me to fall asleep whenever I want and to remain constantly fresh and efficient.

  On the morning of February 2, in the factory courtyard, I boarded an enormous silver-gray Tatra 603 limousine, beside me in back two young engineers from Technology, in front beside the driver L.L., we drove through the slushy late-winter streets (in the square my Security Officer saluted me) and got out in the middle of the courtyard of Cottex 02 in Usti n.L.-Trmice.

  “Go and greet the director,” L.L. said to the two engineers, he winked at me and we went in the rear entrance. I acted as if the deep puddles on the concrete floors did not bother my high heels the slightest bit (L.L. was wearing low boots with corrugated soles), and we passed through an enormous rumbling hall with buzzing reactors, roaring electric motors, and whistling centrifuges, L.L. led me as he might a little girl through a fair, he explained things, picked up lumps of damp fabric, smelled them, rubbed them, and handed them to me, he climbed wet, quivering iron stairs (with my heart in my mouth I climbed after him like a frightened squirrel) onto shaky iron platforms (the highest ones were so narrow and shook so hard, he had to take me by the hand), much of it I didn’t understand (I didn’t pick it up in school—a pity), only that it was mighty, masculine, in motion and, therefore, all in all fascinating.

  When we finally (whenever I looked around, I would ask questions and hold L.L. up) climbed down (I quite daintily, as into the foyer of an opera house) into a puddle on the concrete floor, waiting for us there, between the two engineers, was some sort of frightened little man (later, in the limousine, I learned that this was the plant director).

  “Why do you load the Pfaudler with only three hundred sixty pounds?” L.L. asked him drily instead of greeting him.

  “I wonder, but we… After all, we’re loading it right,” the frightened little man rattled off.

  “How much?”

  “But we… we’re doing it according to regulation.”

  “How much?”

  “But… One moment, I’ll find out right away…”

  “It’s all taken care of. The correct, increased quantity will be communicated to you today via telephone. By the way, you’ve got a hippy sleeping in back of the chlorination kettle. Let’s go.”

  “But…” the little man was now speaking to our backs (but I did glance back in his direction: he was scrambling up the wet stairs like a really frightened squirrel).

  “You’ve made a pretty decent catch with that new assistant of yours,” the young engineer laughed when we were back in the car.

  “I took her along so she can see what she’s actually working with,” L.L. replied drily and didn’t say another word in the car.

  “Thank you, it was really fine,” I told him when he said goodbye to us, as usual, at 2:59.

  “I thank you,” he said and distractedly (!) smiled.

  “…and distractedly smiled,” is how I finished my letter No. 47 to Manek. “Bravo!” Manek replied in his letter NR. 32, and he gave me plenipotentiary power to enter into direct contact with L.L. whenever I should find it appropriate (in letter NR. 31 he had predicted this would happen in the second half of March), so in March already L.L. would be able to undertake his first assignment, originally scheduled for the month of May.

  I found it appropriate to begin at once, and with that goal in mind I went out that afternoon to the largest florist in Usti and bought a potted white cyclamen, back at the dorm I hid it under my bed so that the Rumanian girl wouldn’t throw butts on it from her upper bunk (lately she had stopped putting them out before she threw them away), and the next morning I laid it as a trap on L.L.’s desk.

  “What’s this?” L.L. said, dumbfounded, when he came in that morning.

  “A cyclamen. To give this place a human touch for a change.”

  “Y-yes. Certainly. Thank you.” He was not only dumbfounded—L.L. was mystified.

  After a week of the cyclamen’s illumination (Manek had suggested waiting ten days, but he gave me the power to decide), I went to town and bought a slender bud-vase, then a white hothouse carnation (insanely expensive) and I installed a second light fixture on my desk. I writhed with impatience (Mother Hathayoga was again of great help) for it to begin fading, determined that I would allow it to completely decay—but it proved unnecessary to go that far: on February 17, L.L. removed my white carnation and replaced it with his own (a deep pink).

  “I GOT A CARNATION” I triumphantly telegraphed Manek at the Hotel Imperial, and he replied in a long letter, NR. 37, which came on the very day that L.L. gave me another (a bright red).

  …It’s definitely progress, Manek wrote in NR. 37, nevertheless, carnations and smiles from your boss are still only acts of pure banality. You must become a great woman to him and thus elevate him. Demand the impossible from him.

  A hard-working secretary gets a bouquet from her considerate boss—but Cleopatra won from Caesar the imperial crown of Rome. Make of him a Caesar, as I will make you a Cleopatra.

  For the next assignment, have L.L. give you an apartment.

  —in Usti n. L. these days this is almost as improbable as getting a diadem was in ancient Rome … “impossible” is just the right word. All the better—

  Afte
r the February carnations (the last one was a deep red) came March lilies-of-the-valley, then violets (less expensive, to be sure, but more frequent). Something was happening to L.L. (even the boys had noticed it) and not only the fact that we kept taking trips.

  On the last and longest trip (to Liberec, where we dined at the Hotel Imperial…) L.L. sat, as always, in front beside the driver, I in back where I joked with the two young engineers … in Liberec L.L. unexpectedly assigned the younger (and cockier) to stay behind at the Liberec plant and work something out on the spot — on the return trip he sat the older of the two beside the driver and he sat in the back with me.

  The highway from Liberec goes through magnificent forests and has an abundance of curves, so I couldn’t stay near the door, but kept sliding closer and closer to L.L. On a particularly sharp curve I leaned against him for a second, sighed, and went off as far as I could from him (the back seat of a Tatra 603 has space for three persons).

  “It’s very fine working with you, but I’m afraid I’ll have to leave…” I said sadly and sighed again.

  “Does something displease you?” L.L. asked with amazement.

  “I haven’t slept well for a month now…”

  “From too much work?”

  “I can manage it with a hand tied behind my back, and everything else I do in the afternoon at the town library.”

  “At the town library?” L.L. was astonished.

  “I can’t work at home. Because I don’t have a home.”

  “Where do you live then?”

  “In the singles dorm.”

  “Oh, an awful roommate, right? She plays her radio or smokes cigars?”

  “Some of them are awful and some are quite nice. Some do play radios and others smoke, there’s one in the bed above me who day and night tosses down butts, from cigarettes it’s true, but she doesn’t even put them out.”

  “For God’s sake, how many roommates do you have?”

  “Yesterday there were twenty-eight or so. Maybe only twenty-five, or thirty perhaps—the number keeps changing all the time.”