And then I stood for a while on the balcony and looked at the sloping lawns stretching all the way out to a thin curtain of pine trees, beyond their copper-colored trunks the slender, bright green flames of birches flashed among the mighty dark spruces … if I was ever completely happy in life, it was at this very moment.
My prince was waiting for me down at the bar, I swung myself up on the stool beside him. Manek ordered a vermouth with lemon and ice and said:
“Work before pleasure. How is the L.L. campaign going?”
I summarized it for him, and Manek asked when L.L. would be ready to undertake his assignment.
“That depends on what sort of assignment it is,” I said.
“He helped you get an apartment, compared to that this one’ll be a snap … You’ve done fantastically, Sonya.”
“You did it with me.”
“Cleopatra couldn’t have done it better or more quickly.”
“You gave me what it took.”
“My Cleopatra.”
“My Anthony.”
“He was defeated.”
“But he lived with Cleopatra … till death. Manek, when will we two—”
“When the time comes. First, let’s get the L.L. campaign out of the way: tame him by any means whatsoever so he’ll eat out of our hand, and by the end of May he will have carried out his assignment.”
“By any means?…”
“Absolutely any. Cottex has plants as far away as Moravia. By the tenth of May arrange it so that L.L. takes you on a two-day tour with an overnight stay. And then take control of him.”
“Oh, Manek, you’re ordering me to…”
“My Cleopatra. I will tell you something I shouldn’t: the assignment L.L. has to perform is fundamental to my existence … I swear it.”
“I accept then and I’ll obey.”
“Just the right verbs. Let’s put an end to this discussion and I’ll take you to dinner,” said Manek, and he offered me his arm. The feeling of having my husband at my side was so beautiful and so necessary.
I was permitted to choose whatever I wanted from the big leather menu, and I wanted a great deal (it was my wedding dinner), and sparkling wine, naturally.
Manek told of his childhood in the castle, of the outings on horseback in the English park alongside the door of his mother’s carriage, of hunting with the hounds in the forest around Dobris, of the trophies his father won racing cars at Monte Carlo, of shooting snipe, spotted thrush, wild duck, and quail, then of his travels across Europe and India, and at my prompting he spoke again and in detail about Mount Everest, how the first ray of sunlight strikes the snowy peak of the highest mountain on earth and turns it to gold and to fire…
And (as the level of the wine sank in the bottle) I told him everything about myself, things I would never have revealed even to Jarunka Slana … I shared my entire life with him, back to my earliest childhood memories, when I still had both my parents…
What I most liked to imagine in bed was that I was a princess with a golden crown, a veil, and a golden star on my forehead … My prince (Peta Myrtl from Spalena Street) led me by the hand through the enormous chambers of a fairy-tale castle. My inability to imagine what a castle was like didn’t matter very much, but it did bother me that I had to be a queen, and yet even when I closed my eyes there was nothing I could do to imagine what one was like. In fact, this kept me awake at night.
Then late one night Mrs. Janikova came down from the fifth floor with her daughter, Danuska. Danuska was crying and Mrs. Janikova begged Mother to let her leave the girl with us overnight. Mr. Janik had come home drunk again and had beaten them both. I stuck my leg through the door to the hallway so I could have a look at Mrs. Janikova. Blood was running down her face.
Mother tried to persuade her to stay the night with us too, but Mrs. Janikova only smiled and shook her head. Then she silently closed the door and climbed the stairs again.
I ran to the WC and locked myself in. On its cold chessboard of red-and-white tiles I put one foot on top of the other and closed my eyes, I could suddenly imagine what a queen was like: blood was running down her face and with a smile she was climbing the circular staircase up to her black tower.
Manek tenderly stroked my hair and said quietly:
“The most womanly thing about women is the ability to give of themselves … the most womanly and the most exalted. Regal.”
I kissed the hand that was stroking me.
And we danced and kissed on the dancefloor, in silence now, everything had already been said, at our wedding table we were still drinking coffee and cognac, and at the end of that evening we got up for our final wedding dance … before the song ended, Manek was leading me out of the dining room.
“Just one second, Sonya…” he said suddenly as we were walking past the bar (as if uncertain?), and he tossed down a double vodka, then another, then a third—
“Manek, don’t drink any more…”
“No, I just…” Suddenly he looked at me almost as if he were pleading…
In our room, No. 15, the first thing Manek did was throw cold water on his face (his forehead had been glistening with sweat), and then he promptly resumed his usual tone.
“What’s this?” he said when he caught sight of my tome, Principles of Industrial Programming, on his night table, I had set there as a trap.
“My homework from L.L.,” I said with a laugh, “should I read you something from it?”
“No!” he said and, as if he despised the book, he swept it onto the floor and kicked it under the bed.
Then he went out on the balcony and smoked for a long time, alone, and when I finally went after him he frightened me: sweat was running down his temples and the hand holding his cigarette trembled—
“You’ve drunk too much…” I said with quiet reproach.
“Yes … Sonya, I… I have to tell you…” “Not now. We’ve said everything already. Come.”
He let me lead him back into the room and seat him on the edge of the bed. He stared at his feet and looked so miserable … I turned out the light and drew him to me tenderly. Manek, my husband … was behaving like a very (this I know from novels) … like a young boy. And then he wept like a little boy, I kissed his wet cheeks and told him that it did not, it didn’t matter at all, that we were together now for the very first time and that we would be together many more times … and I stroked him as a mother does her son, until finally he fell asleep.
The next morning, when he got up, dressed, and went out on the balcony again to smoke, I led him back to my bed again and this time Manek became, in truth and completely, my husband.
“You are a fairy tale and a dream…” he whispered, spellbound, and when he dressed for the second time (quite quickly, because we had to hurry), “you are truly my Cleopatra…”
“And you my Anthony. Will we be together now?”
“I’ll write you,” he said (wonderstruck, spellbound, and completely mystified), but we had to hurry, I swept all our things into my suitcase (Manek was in no condition even to put his pajamas into his briefcase), we ran to our car (Manek had paid for the room when we checked in), and in a few minutes we were already in the stream of vehicles whistling along the concrete highway to Prague.
“Love…” whispered Manek, and he kept repeating the word: “Love…”
In twenty minutes we were driving into Prague.
“Which station do you want me to leave you off at?” he asked.
“Prague Central,” I said, and since we were almost there, I quickly transferred Manek’s things from my suitcase to his briefcase.
“By the tenth of May I’ll arrange a two-day trip with L.L. to one of the Cottexes in Moravia, and there—” I said, but Manek suddenly—furiously—interrupted me:
“No!”
“But Manek, yesterday you explained it to me quite clearly…”
“I’m canceling the order. Absolutely and for all time!”
“Manek, I don’t understand
you … Now, when L.L. is already…”
“Not another word about L.L.! I forbid you to undertake anything whatsoever with him … anything that exceeds the usual working relationship between a secretary and her boss. I repeat: the usual working relationship during working hours!”
“But Manek…”
We were arriving at the intersection in front of Prague Central Station. The light shone red, like a warning—
“I’m happy to do what you ask, Manek, very happy. But now you listen to me: give up that secret mission of yours … the whole thing. If it’s important, tell the police about it. And even if you have to go to prison — I’ll wait for you. For years, if need be. Then you’ll come for me … my apartment’s big enough for two people. Even with a baby, if need be… And then we’ll get a real apartment. I’ll find you a job myself—”
The traffic light shone yellow for just a few seconds and then it turned green and we had to go. It was only a few more feet to the station.
“Manek, this time listen to me, the way I’ve always listened to you—”
In front of the station the redness of a sign called out the command to stop, so Manek stopped, opened the door for me, quickly handed me my suitcase, and mumbled, “I’ll write—” and he drove off into the stream of angrily honking cars.
When I got home to my new studio in building No. 2000, I discovered that we had left Principles of Industrial Programming at the Trianon, in room No. 15, under our wedding bed.
Arriving at Cottex shortly before seven in the morning, L.L. greeted Lada Tringl and Ivos Rybicka, spent a few moments exchanging jokes with them (there was nothing else to talk about) and went into his anteroom, greeted Sonya, took a sprig of white lilac out of his briefcase, and put it into the vase on her desk.
“Thanks,” Sonya said coldly, and she reacted to his attempts to tell jokes and stories just as curtly (and even more coldly)…
What can have happened to her so suddenly — in shock, L.L. shut the upholstered door to his office behind him. He read the newspapers and the first memo of the morning, it was just 9:12, they won’t bring me my A5 index card until 10:45, and then at 11:00 I’ll take to the director’s office, huh: director of a kiddy post office.
L.L. jumped up from his desk and furiously walked across his office. Well rested, exercised, bathed, refreshed—what good was it all? Just so he could carry a file card to the director’s office at 11:00.
In a rage L.L. walked across his office and then stood by the window, drummed on the glass, and gazed out into the courtyard. A man who just stands by the window—where have I read that?—is already a dead man.
And therefore—now all of a sudden I can grasp it—to Lanka I’m no longer anything but an object of fun (she envies me … but only for the purpose of conversation: she knows me and knows that I am no longer fit for anything). Zora sleeps at my side: what’s left for her to do next to a dead man?
L.L. drummed hard on the glass: the last racket I’m still capable of. Why does Sonya look at me with contempt and without any interest now? How else could she look at the director of a kiddy post office … who brings her flowers hidden in his briefcase.
It’s 9:16: how many more thousand hours will I stand by the window before I die?
A retinue in white labcoats appeared down in the courtyard, Cottex was being visited by the Minister for the Chemical Industry and, after formal greetings in the director’s office (L.L. did not take part in official functions as a matter of principle), they would conduct him along a route carefully chosen so that nothing could interfere with the purely ceremonial character of his visit. In the same spirit, they would conduct the meeting in the director’s office, the reception, the workers’ meeting, the second reception, and the farewells. The minister is a specialist, however, and would have welcomed a more fact-filled and focused show, which even the director of a kiddy post office could have put on for him—
L.L. tore himself away from the window and with a slight shiver he looked at the labeled steel front of the enormous Cottex card file. Here, systematically assembled over the years, is everything about this enterprise, which I helped to found, to which I have given my life, and which I love—
(Are things once again as they were many years ago? Yes. And in the meantime? In the meantime it was just something to pass the time.)
—and which isn’t well managed.
L.L. breathed in as if profoundly awestruck (to express awe that way is not restricted to young girls), walked up to his desk, took out his note pad as if it were a deadly weapon, walked quickly from the desk to his card file and pulled out one steel drawer after another, and hurriedly covered the paper with tiny numerals. How long it’s been since I wrote anything by hand—
When he went out through his anteroom, Sonya did not even look up at him. I think, my queen, that you’ll raise your little red head for me when I come back.
The meeting between the Cottex management and the minister in the director’s office finished in a boringly ceremonial spirit (the minister had been ostentatiously glancing at his watch), the first ones to grow impatient were looking at the open-face sandwiches on the table, and the director (a decent fellow: but for just that reason he wasn’t cut out to be director of a factory) ended the meeting just as they end a mass in church, and everyone began to push back their chairs and get up…
“Just one moment—” L.L. said suddenly — for me and for Cottex this will be a historic moment.
“It would be nice if things were the way we’ve described them, but they’re actually quite different,” L.L. said drily and deliberately, as if firing a machine gun, the minister watched carefully and with awakened interest, and the other participants were comically aghast as they rose from the table—for many years I have dwelt among you in peace. Now I am declaring war on you.
Glancing now and then at his note pad, L.L. spent the next three minutes puncturing the director’s mass as if it were a child’s balloon, but it only hissed and deflated, so he put his notes aside and, from memory, factually and mercilessly, he caricatured and ridiculed his three years of ostentatious devotion.
“…But our employees are waiting to be addressed,” was all the director could bring himself to say.
“Good,” said the minister and, turning to L.L.: “Could you be prepared to present these matters to me — today is the eighteenth, let’s say by—”
“Within twenty-four hours,” said L.L. “And that includes the two-hour trip to Prague. And now excuse me. I have to start at once.”
When L.L. got back to his office, he called L. Tringl and I. Rybicka into his anteroom, an act dramatic in and of itself, since it hadn’t happened in years. Sonya did not look up from her typewriter.
“I knocked our director down a few pegs,” L.L. said drily, “I’d like to finish him off tomorrow before lunchtime. You all go wee-wee and ca-ca, and lay in some food. It looks like we’ll be here till midnight.”
Sonya looked up from her typewriter.
I bought some more plates, eating utensils, glasses (everything for two), a mop, dust rags, soap powder, and a small vacuum cleaner, and now I go straight home from Cottex, straight home to building No. 2000.
My studio apartment is the dearest thing in the world to me (my husband isn’t a thing, of course) and I spend all my spare time in it (I’ve spent enough time looking at people), I’m happy now because now I’m getting myself ready: to do cooking, cleaning, and laundry for two. I have a bathroom here, a kitchen, a large wardrobe, and two red daybeds. There’s more than enough room here for a husband. The only thing missing is a husband.
Suddenly someone rang my doorbell (I even have my own doorbell now!) and when I opened my door, there was a beautiful girl my own age whom I had once seen from behind a phone booth. It was Lanka, the daughter of my boss, L.L.
“You have a nice place here,” she said instead of a greeting.
“Won’t you come in and sit down?”
“No. I came to ask you to stop bothe
ring my father!”
“What makes you think I’m bothering him?”
“It’s the old story of the secretary who tames her boss. First he gives her flowers, then an apartment — What are you going to ask him for next?”
“I see that you’ve asked me more than I’ve asked you. All I know is that you’re studying something somewhere … with little interest or success. This studio apartment is attractive, but it’s far from being as fine as your apartment. And hasn’t it occurred to you that you came into yours much more easily than I did mine?”
“I live in my father’s apartment!”
“And I live in mine. Relevant information you can send to the workers committee.”
“Of course—you’re always right about everything!” and she waved at me with her white little hand with its respectably sparkling diamond ring — at least three months’ salary for me (I know prices: I’ve been studying them in shop windows for a long time).
“Your ring is much too expensive, Miss, for you to be in the right.”
“Father gave it to me.”
“I don’t care if it was a lover or a magician who was just passing through. Did you come to tell me anything else?”
“Let me have Daddy … I’m so fond of him—” L.L.’s daughter sobbed, and with touching dignity she went out into the foyer.
“Tell your father not to bring me any more flowers,” I called after her, “but don’t ask me to hit him over the head with them.”
Oh yes, I said to myself after she had left and I had begun to vacuum our new rug (a beauty—a warm brown with a quiet pattern—for just four hundred crowns: I picked it out of the second-category pile). Right after I got back from Prague, I asked Drapal to order me Principles of Industrial Programming (which I had left behind at the Hotel Trianon), but when it finally came I didn’t need it anymore. In May, L.L. was named plant director, and he appointed me deputy chief of his secretariat (he didn’t appoint a chief). Two days before that I passed my examination at night school and received my degree (with distinction).
Four Sonyas Page 35