“Oh, it’s you, Eliska, my little powder puff,” said Ruda, laying aside his guitar, “I’d completely forgotten about you—”
“I’ve been standing here a whole hour already,” said the woman behind the fence.
“Well then, go to bed, it’s pretty late!”
“But you promised me … And I was really looking forward…”
“Next time, Eliska. Bye,” said Ruda, and he closed the window and lay down on his bunk.
Finishing a Simon Arzt in bed, he sat up, took out his wallet, dug Jarunka Slana’s letter from the “pleasure” part, and once again he read it through carefully. Jarunka writes that Sonya is now a big shot at the Usti Cottex—but big shot or little shot, a skirt’s always a skirt, and I’m a guy in pants. Ruda Mach reached for his guitar (thinking of Sonya) and raked his fingers lightly across its strings (his mind made up).
Three days later, with his suitcase and guitar, his pocket stuffed with a thick roll of hundred-notes (his unusually large bonus wouldn’t fit in his wallet), Ruda Mach stood on the highway from Ostrava to Bohemia (he was looking forward to the trip), he smoked an expensive Simon Arzt cigarette (he was looking forward to seeing Sonya) and closed his eyes tight in the intense sparkle of a magnificent June morning (the finest joy in the entire world). He stopped truck after truck and asked them all if they were going to Bohemia.
“Where you headed?” the driver of an ancient rattling five-tonner asked him.
“Usti.”
“Then you’re in luck, I’m going to Carlsbad. Only I’ve got a lot of pick-ups to make, so it’ll be three days before I make it to Usti.”
“That’s great,” Ruda Mach rejoiced, “I like to travel!”
And he climbed into the cab, took his seat beside the driver, pulled his sixteen-times-folded school map out of his wallet, spread it out on his knees, and traced over it with his finger until he found Usti nad Labem (I’ve never been there, that’s good), its double circle indicated that it has a population of more than fifty thousand, so it’d be a cinch for Ruda Mach to find a meal ticket there, and then all around it are mountains (he loved mountains) and a wide, blue river runs right through town, great, I’ll sure like it there.
When her big iron alarmclock went off, Anna Rynoltova crawled out of her marriage bed and went to make breakfast, Arno Rynolt lit his morning cigarette, he enjoyed inhaling and letting the ashes fall on the floor (anyway, Anna didn’t have anything to do all day, and I have to support her—), he tried to recall the Indian dancers he’d seen yesterday on TV, but Anna’s tubercular cough from the other side of the wall (if that hag would only kick the bucket) thwarted his effort, furiously Rynolt got up, pulled a couple of times on his spring muscle builder (years ago he had served as an artillery officer and even after his discharge he worked at keeping himself in shape), but he gave it up when he was overcome by a tenacious smoker’s cough (but luckily it gets much better after the morning!) and went to the bathroom.
After a short rinse-off, he spent a long time shaving and then, still in front of the mirror, he massaged his head with birch water and spread over his thick hair (like a young man’s!) a thick coating of scented brilliantine, in his forty-fifth year he looked very well preserved and, snorting contentedly, he went off to breakfast.
“Where is that idiot?” he said to Anna gruffly.
“He’s polishing shoes in the foyer.”
“I thought he was running his trains again!”
“He will, but only when he’s done with everything else and you give him your permission…”
“Pf—” said Rynolt, and he took a bite of cake, I’m trapped: married to a fifty-year-old tubercular hag with an idiot of a son who, at the age of twenty-three, still plays with electric trains! But it wouldn’t be so easy to find another apartment in Prague.
After breakfast Rynolt took his packed briefcase off the sideboard, without a word he went out the front door and unlocked the car door, but before he got in he saw that Anna’s idiot had got there first:
“Let me drive, Mr. Rynolt, please…”
“No way. Sit down and off we go.”
“But you promised me that if I polished all your shoes—”
“You drove on Sunday and you will again soon. Hurry up!”
Rynolt drove slowly through the streets of Prague, yes, in Prague a driver has to keep his eyes open. “Where are you going, you pig!” he roared at a car that had pulled out right in front of him.
“But he had the right of way,” Anna’s idiot said from the back seat (I don’t let him sit beside me), “according to the right-hand rule—”
“Shut your trap! Anyway, I’m the one on the main road!”
“But this isn’t a main road…”
“Shut your trap or you’ll have to take the streetcar, you idiot.”
In spite of several minor near-collisions, Rynolt got to his plant without injury and without getting a ticket.
Rynolt’s “plant” is actually only an auxiliary to the Usti Cottex, here a mere twenty-two employees arrange and pack Cottex colors into sample boxes or according to the customer’s wishes, it is known officially as the “adjustment center,” but Rynolt considered himself a “plant manager” and he would defer to anyone who called him “Director.”
While passing the gatekeeper (the old hag was knitting curtains again), Rynolt put on an affable expression, which did not leave his face the entire time of his stay in the plant: in Prague it’s awfully hard to find anyone willing to work, especially for such miserable pay.
“Today you’ll sweep the courtyard!” Rynolt commanded Anna’s idiot (no woman would do it), and getting out of the car he went straight to his office (let the idiot drive it into the garage, I can’t get the angle right) where two enraged women were already waiting for him (I hadn’t paid them for work they hadn’t done), affably Rynolt heard them out, then excused them and promised to pay them everything they asked, to find anyone in Prague who’s willing to work is awfully hard and it’s almost impossible to keep them.
Rynolt soon took care of his own work, in a committee spirit he divided his work so that there was almost nothing left for him, then he strolled through his three divisions and smiled affably at everyone, when Mrs. Brunclikova refused to ride her bicycle to the post office, he smiled at her affably and sent Anna’s idiot instead.
Two Tatra six-oh-threes suddenly glided into the courtyard, and Rynolt panicked (that gatekeeping cow with her endless knitting couldn’t be bothered buzzing me!) when the bigwig managers from Usti rolled out of the limos, Rynolt already knew the new director, Ludvik, from a conference in Usti, right behind him came a magnificent red-headed kitten and then the poisoners and hatchetmen we know and love.
L.L. had gotten to work before Rynolt had even had a chance to greet him properly, Rynolt received his first reprimand from L.L. and then that red-headed kitten pulled out some papers and reprimand after reprimand rained down on him, but suddenly Heaven was gracious: the telephone announced that L.L. must go immediately to the ministry.
L.L. and his gang (who were having a fine time waiting for us) jumped into their cars and in a cloud of dust (hadn’t that idiot swept yet? That scarecrow couldn’t even handle a broom!) burst out of the courtyard, and when the dust had settled a bit, there was the red-headed kitten standing in the middle of the courtyard.
“Sonya Cechova,” she said when Rynolt went up to her and smiled at her most affably, “Comrade Director gave me two hours off—won’t you show me around?”
“But of course, I’d be very happy—” Rynolt twittered (now I can get a really good look at her—fantastic!) and he guided Sonya through the three shops, upstairs and down, but of course there was very little to show her (pouring powder into boxes and sticking on labels), so during the fourth tour of the same shop Sonya suddenly smiled prettily at Rynolt.
“Thanks, that should be enough, Comrade Director. I’d like to be a little bit naughty now…”
“I am completely at your servic
e … Comrade Chief—” Rynolt said happily, stroking his hair with its caked brilliantine.
“L.L. gave me two hours off and I’ve only used up a half hour of that. I was born in Prague, you know, and I haven’t been here for so many years—”
“As you please … I’d be very happy to … I’ll give you a personal tour of Prague, one you won’t forget for a very long time…” Rynolt said sweetly, and he took this opportunity to cast his first studied glance in Sonya’s direction.
In downtown Prague, I asked Rynolt to stop just before we reached Havel Street and to wait for me in the car — I wanted to go there alone.
The protruding windows of ancient houses with archways (our house is nine hundred years old) smiled down at me and I was suddenly a little girl again, this is the street I walked down on my way to school, this orange mailbox (it was blue then) is where I put Daddy’s letters, Daddy always lifted me up in his arms to reach the slot — and now my girlhood street melted away behind a curtain of tears, through which I saw our house, the archway where I used to jump rope, our second-floor windows, and on up past masonry tortured over the centuries, to the dark windows of the black tower which Mrs. Janikova, the queen, would climb — blood flowing down her face (when will I climb my own black tower—), then I couldn’t see anything anymore, the street broke into burning marbles when out of my family’s house came the smell of ironing—
Rynolt must have loaded me into his car, I wasn’t conscious of anything at all until I switched to L.L.’s black car and we drove away through the Prague streets of my student years, where Daddy and I would go to the movies, and the park where I had my first kiss—
“Did something get in your eye?” L.L. asked.
I made myself blink when they took me away from my own hometown, which I love and where my husband lives.
We whizzed off along the expressway, L.L. was in a triumphant mood, the minister had approved all his measures, both accomplished and forthcoming, L.L. turned on the radio full blast and to the beat of the music we hurtled northward along the River Elbe, the sun at our back.
To our building No. 2000 — ours because L.L. had moved into the second floor, into his predecessor’s apartment (it’s the director’s apartment and by moving in L.L. gained an extra room, and all three are larger and more comfortable than the two he’d had before). L.L. invited me to his apartment “for a glass of bubbly on the occasion of this wonderful day,” I thanked him but refused, and tramped up to my own apartment — was I really at home here? What could I do if L.L. decided to start paying me visits?
I don’t know if it’s good that I’m living in the same building as L.L., that I’m living in his house (like Cleopatra in Rome? Huh!), that we’re together in the same building twenty-four hours a day … but Mrs. Zora is sincerely friendly to me and Lanka … I don’t know what she’s thinking (and I don’t have any illusions: why should L.L.’s daughter like me?), but she always says hello to me and she says it first and very respectfully. But I no longer like it here like I used to…
L.L. wasn’t thinking only about his apartment (my L.L. really is a great director!), the day after we got back from Prague he asked me to order a car “for twenty minutes from now.”
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
“You’ll see,” he smiled at me, we went out to the courtyard and in five minutes we were climbing up the stairs to my old dorm.
L.L. just sighed when he saw the thirty bunks lined up and arranged around the little square with its table and solitary chair. So much clothing was hanging between the dormer windows that the room was nearly dark, I recognized several of the girls but most of them were new, on my old lower bunk sat a girl with her suitcase on her lap writing a letter on pink paper, on the upper bunk above her my Rumanian girl lay with her bare brown legs hanging down and fsht!—she threw a burning butt past the girl writing below.
“We’ll leave no more than eight of them here,” said L.L.
“And the others?”
“I’ve found a building in town that we’ll fix up for our girls, for the others now and for those in the future — would you see to this matter yourself?”
“I’d be happy to—thanks.”
“I’m giving you a free hand with the furnishing. But before you go buying pictures, come and get some advice from me.”
“What kind of pictures should the girls have?”
“Pictures of the sea,” L.L. said drily, and when we returned to his office he gave me a letter of appointment naming me the chief in charge of his secretariat, with a salary that made me rub my eyes. It was enough to live on even if Manek were unemployed … even with our child.
The very same day I was to name all five of my subordinates, by now I knew the Cottex people well enough to make the choices: the elegant and handsome young lawyer (“Huh!” L.L. said in a huff) and four of the ugliest clerks (“Huh!” L.L. laughed), and at once I loaded on the work as L.L. did to me.
Before the end of the working day I wrote Manek a letter, brief as a telegram, No. 99 (after the visit of the security officer, no more telegrams, but I could hardly rescue Manek that way) and on the envelope I wrote, as I had so many times before: Manuel Mansfeld, Hotel Imperial, Liberec.
I looked at the white envelope and all of a sudden I felt a wave of anger rise within me: when he writes cables directly to me, why to him, MY HUSBAND, must I continue to write indirectly, via Liberec (if he wants to stay in hiding, then why does he send heaps of open telegrams?), via the bribed clerk at the Hotel Imperial who, at Manek’s “categorical wish” (as he told me last summer), refused to say anything about Manek … Had Manek bribed him to act against me?…
I took the white envelope out of the typewriter, read it over again, crumpled it, and threw it and the envelope into the wastebasket. I don’t know how — but not like this anymore.
On the 20th of June Cottex celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding (my division was busy for twenty hours a day getting ready), the jubilee day was formally opened by speeches from the minister and L.L. in the courtyard, it was a fantastic morning, L.L. got up on a barrel, spoke briefly, to the point and, in general, magnificently (where had he picked that up? As director of production he could hardly manage a few witticisms), all the streets around Cottex were blocked by official cars, and the minister told me I make the best coffee in the world (I smiled at him prettily for that). That evening the jubilee was celebrated in all the rooms of the Usti House of Culture, and the entire town came.
In my first evening dress (green with a deep décolletage, on my neck a sixty-crown gold heart—part of my special bonus—Manek had never given me anything…) and in golden slippers I welcomed the guests at the door until L.L. said I was off “till tomorrow.” Five orchestras were playing in five halls, young men were dancing with their girls—and all of a sudden I felt so old that I went looking for the bar.
Mr. Ziki suddenly popped up out in the crowded corridor, a glass of vermouth in his hand (with lemon and ice, the way I used to serve it to him at the Hotel Hubertus), and he was wearing a dark-brown dinner jacket and a painfully yellow tie woven from strips of leather.
“I’m glad to see you,” Ziki said casually, as if we had just met that week at another dancing affair. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You’re like a Greek peach…” he told me, and he rattled the ice in his glass and gazed at the floating circlet of lemon.
“But they have big, hard stones, Zikoun,” I told him, and I went off to dance with the minister. Ziki danced with the minister’s wife and stared at me over her shoulder.
Then Jakub Jagr came after me, in each hand a glass of cognac: “Drink with me, Sonya—”
“But before, when I was cleaning all your shoes, you used to stand over me and lecture me on the perniciousness of alcohol—”
“Sonya, I love you—”
“Then drink up both glasses. My husband has forbidden me to drink.”
Manek had actually done that (in letter NR. 36
—I know them all by heart), at least when I’m not with him, but then aren’t I always with him? And so I went to the bar and downed a Cuban rum à la Methusalah.
Five orchestras were playing in five different rooms, young men were dancing with their girls, I downed another Methusalah (does that mean I’m going to drink alone another ninety-nine years?) and danced with all and sundry … but the young men were taking their girls to out-of-the-way parts of the corridors, galleries, and stairs, and there they were kissing—
I downed another Methusalah and made myself blink, I was beat when I left the party … But don’t bawl, girlie, and make your life easier, go home in a taxi! The taxi cost me twenty crowns. For that I could have cooked dinner for two.
On the third floor of my Roman building No. 2000, in front of the door to my apartment, Ruda Mach was sitting on his suitcase strumming his guitar.
“Hi, love!” he said as if we had parted the day before, and with a boyish lack of manners he pushed right into my apartment.
“You’ve got it good here, ” he said once inside the door, and he tossed his suitcase onto my red daybed. “I’ll like it here,” he said, and then he took the thermometer off the wall (a gift L.L. got from a German director in Jena) and hung his guitar on the nail.
“Put that thermometer back this minute!” I shouted, gradually coming to my senses.
“But you won’t be needing it! With me you’ll always be warm!” Ruda Mach said merrily, and he came toward me, embraced me (I resisted, but he was much stronger than me), and gave me a kiss that lasted nearly ten minutes (with my back I rubbed off a good piece of the wall).
“That’s enough,” Ruda Mach said contentedly. “And now I’d like something to eat! Girl, I’ve spent three days looking for you!”
And since I wasn’t in any condition to say much of anything (I was out of breath from Ruda’s kiss and I was massaging my sore spine and shoulderblades), Ruda Mach went into my kitchen and cleaned out the refrigerator.
“That’s enough,” he said happily. “Girl, for three days all I’ve been eating is salami and rolls. So tell me what you’re up to—and then we can go to bed, okay?” And like a connoisseur he fingered the red daybed (Manek’s. But why isn’t it Manek who’s here?) and smiled at me roguishly: “We sure’ll sleep fine on this!”
Four Sonyas Page 37