The Drowning of a Goldfish
Lidmila Sováková
New York
To my true friend, Daad Habbani,
who made my blue Mondays gleaming white.
CHAPTER I
MYŠÁK
If I contemplate the desires of my life, wise and foolish, if I ponder on their value and their strength, the absolute and most intricate attraction I have ever known concerns cats.
And yet, I have never possessed one. But then: Does not the word “possess,” attached to a cat, prove the same total lack of distinction and delicacy as would a collar and leash ’round the neck of a black panther? To practice such an infamy means to fall into the lower depths of the bourgeoisie and to demean oneself into nothingness.
All this happened early in my childhood. Even before, maybe: The recognition of my own existence coincides with my discovery of cats.
Since then, I have been lost. Dazzled by their undulating beauty, I bow before their independence, real or smartly faked. Appalled by my vile weakness, I have, nonetheless, discovered that cats do die of a broken heart.
I see myself again, a little girl with curly hair, so clean, so poised, so well-bred, accosting all the cats that I happen upon. Mostly strays. Aristocats do not prowl.
It is not just passion, but compassion that I feel, touching their famished bodies, listening to their harsh mewing, imploring my protection.
I would like to grow up fast, to become the almighty adult, the Savior, leading cats to the promised land designed just for them and me: where cream floats in abundance, where juicy bone steaks and sparkling fish grow on trees, ready to be picked.
TO EAT THOU SHALT NOT KILL!
Right now I have nothing else to give but to hug their meager bodies in my arms and fondle their noses, dried by fever.
Quivering with rage, I begin to learn the despair of human helplessness.
To prove how serious I am, I bravely swallow, without wincing, the heaps of grated carrots, prescribed as my only source of nourishment by our family doctor. “Otherwise,” he warns, “you shall never get rid of the worms that your beloved friends have passed on to you.”
I do not wish to be a martyr. I take sides.
One day, it will help me understand why Claudel forced Violaine to kiss a leper.
It will also help me accept that dragging crates around an ice-cold factory is easier than becoming a university student, my very dream, provided I would take black for white and wrong for right.
All skin and bones, I score against the adults. I am allowed to adopt a black and white kitten, the only survivor of a litter of five, born at our neighbors’. All the others were drowned in a large rain barrel under their roof, which should have only served to collect water for sprinkling their garden.
So little would have been needed to avoid the savage cruelty: just a small operation at the veterinarian’s. My mother was ready to pay for it. But something that simple would be inconceivable for our neighbors, who were neither sadists nor vicious.
The cruelty of people lacking in imagination will never cease to dismay me.
My childhood is divided between Prague and Senokosy.
One could hardly call this conglomerate of villas, attached at the Belle Epoque to a few graceless farms, held at a convenient distance, a “village.”
I do not like the house, nor the garden. I deeply mistrust the forest behind the fence. Thrown into the disorder of nature, I feel estranged.
I avoid the little villagers who roam about, yelling like savages. Moreover, I am not quite at ease with my grandparents.
I admire my grandfather, but he is never to be disturbed while in his subtle meditations, sequestered in his study, immersed in the contemplation of sophisticated ideas which exceed in importance a little girl’s existence.
Grandmother’s raison d’être is a petty preoccupation with housekeeping.
It appalls me. I feel menaced as an independent human being since, like her, I am “just a woman.”
Grandmother’s mouth overflows with food and statements about a perfect little girl, raised to be married: gay as a finch, busy and thrifty as a beaver, and submissive as an animal, fattened to be slaughtered—which is what marriage seems like, as Grandmother explains it.
Frightened, I refuse to open my mouth, even for a yawn.
Firstly, yawning, even if you cover it discreetly with your hand, is terribly ill-mannered.
Secondly, it proves that my stomach is empty and, at once, she begins to stuff me.
I forget my manners. In a vent of impotent rage, screaming, I throw myself to the ground, hammering it with my dainty little feet.
I am scared to death to become what she expects me to be, and I oppose it with all my might.
Grandmother never reprimands me; she is a real lady. I find this fascinating and worthy of imitation. I am, however, not so sure if one can become a real lady without losing one’s independence. Such an aspiration might turn out to be a trap for poised little girls.
For the time being, I am suspicious and prefer to remain on my guard without resisting our visits to the charming Belle Epoque sweet-shop U Myšáka which, without any doubt, is a nursery for future ladies.
With a pink ribbon in my carefully brushed, glossy curls, my large skirt delicately spread out around me so as not to risk crumpling it, I sit stiff as a palm on a bench covered with brown moroccan leather. And how I do enjoy myself!
With apprehension, while virtuously contemplating life around me, I savor my crème caramel. Now and then, I steal a glance at the lovely ladies: I have been taught that to stare is shockingly rude.
How beautiful the women are! Their pearl necklaces caress their velvety throats from which emanate the same syrupy perfume as the Myšák’s famous cakes; shiny with sticky goodness.
I snuggle up in the tepid reassurance of this sparkling microcosm to which, without any doubt, Grandmother belongs. It depends on me alone to enter it with her, and why not?
Grandmother appears to enjoy her submission to the sovereign authority of her spouse.
She never weeps, never shouts, never seems to be in a bad mood.
The social status of a lady-spouse is, needless to say, an honorable one: Men would hold the chair for her to sit down, kiss her hand, open the door for her. Her life is full and bright. She reads a line or two from a book in vogue, tinkles out a tune, nibbles at delicious pastries. Once a month, in recognition of her cultural obligations, she listens, gracefully reclined in her opera box, to music, dulcified to the taste of a lady. The only strings attached are to be good, docile, and pleasing with a certain gentleman who is so seldom at home.
I think one can do much better: by choosing, for instance, a very old, very rich, and very brittle gentleman who will make me a lady-widow very fast. Then I will just cash in my annuity and do what I wish, without the slightest obligation towards anyone.
A lady-widow is, furthermore, exempted from the condition, obviously embarrassing, of being pregnant with child once or twice in her lifetime.
Me, with my intelligence, how could I believe that they are really happy, these lady-mothers to be, pushing their swollen bellies diligently in front of them?
Besides, there is something queer in their condition, about which the ladies cannot talk without dissimulation. In front of little girls they begin to whisper, hiss like snakes or speak foreign languages in order to shelter them from this precarious state, which turns lovely young women into lopsided toads.
I have eyes of my own to see. And dare you not cheat me!
I set up my black and white kitten at my grandmother’s and, during a solemn ceremony, name him Myšák, not in honor of the sweet-shop tea-house U-Myšáka but becau
se of his humble origin. Mouse in Czech is “myš” and “myšák” means cat, whose main purpose in life is to catch mice.
It is an imposed solution. Father decides that cats do not belong in a city.
Firstly: It is not hygienic.
Secondly: They are not happy there.
Adults are compulsive liars.
A cat who belongs to somebody is never unhappy, neither in the city, nor in the country.
He delicately curls up on his cushion, his little pink nose resting on his soft white paws and dreams, waiting for my return.
Or he sits demurely at the window, watching the world go by.
I have a reason to come home. I have somebody to tell about all the misery of my schoolgirl’s life. I am not just bored; I am disgusted. My schoolmates are a bunch of silly fools.
What a total disappointment school has turned out to be!
They had painted it to me in flamboyant colors, and I have been expecting a luxurious feast of “gay savoir” in the company of other children, intelligent and honest.
And here I sit, caged during the best time of my day—I am a morning child—with these stupid twofaced little darlings, laboriously picking at the crumbs of a stale wisdom, parsimoniously delivered by a teacher of shallow knowledge.
I am gorged with indigestible morsels, stuffed with numbers that I hate and for which I shall never have any use. I refuse, and I banish them from my imagination. I am starving for the things I really need. I shut myself off so as to remain unaffected by this sordid brainwashing called education.
I can hardly wait for the weekends at Senokosy, which used to be so insipid: Myšák is waiting for me.
His daily life with Grandmother is as dull as my own.
For Grandmother, Myšák belongs to the category of animals, and by “animals” she understands a source of food. But since decent people do not eat cats, Myšák is of no value to her.
Myšák feels it. The plates full of goodies that Grandmother, generous with everyone, offers him do not appease his need for love.
In vain I try to explain to him that a child is just as helpless as a kitten, that it is not my fault if he is alone during the week, that our miseries are equal.
Myšák sulks. His big golden eyes, spotted with green, evade me. He is tired of waiting. He sets off and takes up nocturnal prowls in the forest. He neglects himself. He has nobody for whom to dress up. His fur is dull, his paws are dirty, his tail is low.
I am sad. I feel like dying.
When, one day, I shall discover in my Latin texts the expression “tristis usque ad mortem,” I shall be among old friends.
My feeling of guilt towards Myšák culminates in a revolt against Father.
Trembling with rage, hollering, I try to wrench from him permission to take Myšák to Prague.
I collide with his categorical “NO.”
I have to make him understand that it is not just some small squabble we are involved in, but a real split, even if it is extremely difficult for me to break with him. Deep down in my heart I feel that he is the most valuable of all the people I know.
I treasure his honesty, I admire his artistic sense, I realize that we all live on his expense, without him reminding us of this fact.
But I renounce his will to impose his personality upon me.
If I have to choose between the two of us, it is myself that I prefer.
I do not know whether Father ever realized that, by giving in this one time, he could have modeled me according to his image.
I value generosity and I always pay back, but I never forgave him for having sacrificed me for his pride. Thus I forced myself to cut off my ties with him.
I do not believe in nonreciprocal relationships, and sentimental weaknesses make me blush.
That day decided my future. I gave up the idea of studying fine arts, our common ground, and I migrated towards literature, where father would never be able to follow.
That meant revenge in its supreme refinement, and my sense of justice was satisfied.
I not only exposed my intellectual superiority—and literature was the only spot where I could beat him—I also took sides with Grandfather.
Grandfather despised Father to such a degree that the fact of being supported by this “parvenu” did not affect him in the least. He lived in his house and ate his bread—if one can thus call the delicacies worthy of Grandfather’s palate.
He had every right to do so: He had let him marry his daughter, a ravishing beauty, quite untouched by culture, both qualities his doing. Grandfather was a handsome man, disdainful of women.
I do not understand how I merited the distinction of Grandfather’s attention. Did he wish to spite my father? Or did he feel I could take him out of his solitude? Yet, his isolation was voluntary. One day he just decided to break with his friends, to abandon his table at the café, to move out of Prague, and remain with no company other than his own.
Grandmother suffered tremendously from this situation. Raised in Vienna, which she had to leave after the death of her mother for Prague, to her a bleak and uninspiring town, she must have been appalled by the muddy countryside of Senokosy. Thus, she lost the last of her friends and the remains of her world, whose elegant survivors took refuge in the refined paintings of Gustav Klimt.
Grandmother did not rebel. Grandmother never complained. The duty of a wife is to follow her husband. As she tried to teach me: A real lady never displays her emotions and knows how to adapt to every situation.
Becoming a companion to my grandfather, I acquired the right to read all of his books and to possess some of his time and his knowledge. He never treated me like a child. If I did not understand what he was explaining that was my business.
I felt neither deprived nor frustrated. To intuit things fascinated me more than to grasp them. Intuiting became my way of thinking.
Together, we made a funny couple; a very chic gentleman, impeccably dressed in his dark gray suit, with a magnificent bow-tie of a matching color, a flower, preferably mauve, in the buttonhole, his elegant feet in size eight dress shoes, wandering through the fields and meadows in the company of a well-mannered little girl, her pink ribbon tied around her curls, tilting her head toward every interesting plant, trying to classify it with a Latin name, forcing herself to prove that her mind was capable of assimilating all that was being offered.
Grandfather and I started a little botanical garden, all private, all secret, belonging exclusively to the two of us.
Grandfather had a fence built in a sunny corner of the garden, the soil tilled, the sections landscaped into terraced plots. We did the rest.
We carried from an abandoned quarry rocks of exquisite beauty; we grabbed cushions of a lush, green moss in the forest, we embellished our garden with grottoes, rockeries, and opalescent ponds. When the garden was ready to receive the most beautiful plants in the world, we undertook many adventurous expeditions.
Provisioned with just a chocolate bar, sacrificing all comfort, we became keen hunters. Lovely plants trembled at our approach. Nothing but an imperfection, unnoticed at first glance, could save them from our spade. We lifted them out of their native soil with all the delicacy of an attentive admirer. Wrapped in a moist cloth, gently placed in a fine wicker basket, they were carefully carried to the botanical garden. We discussed at length their placement, considering their beauty, but also their wellbeing. Perpetrators of flower-napping, we had become responsible for their very survival.
For that, we were in full agreement.
Small conflicts, menacing our celestial harmony, sneaked in, deceitfully, later on. I, for instance, would have desired to populate our empire with ladybugs, snails, and frogs. Even a hedgehog would have been welcome.
Grandfather, to whom all animality was suspect, found this fancy of mine inadmissible.
“The creatures will gnaw at the plants. And what is more, they are filthy!”
I had to give in. He was right.
The botanical garden was o
nly one of our secret worlds.
There was the Sunday mass in the neighboring village, a real one, with whitewashed Baroque farms, vegetable gardens in front of the sheds, stables full of cows and horses, farmyards swarming with cackling chickens, strutting geese, and ducks tottering on orange feet, like little boats on a sea. Sometimes, I even saw some squealing piglets, very gay and very dirty.
The church, perched on a green slope, dominated the calm and rustic landscape.
Everything breathed the gentleness of life: the streams, teeming with fish, the lavish groves, concealing mushrooms with velvety heads and the trees, offering—according to season—red, yellow, and blue gleaming fruit.
Prim little girl, I would scurry beside my grandfather who would show me all these beautiful things, and we would be happy. We felt part of this sunny serenity and feared nothing.
The steeple of the church, whose shape became clearer and clearer as we approached, reinforced our impression of everlastingness.
The foundation of the church itself dates back to the sixth century when Byzantian monks built a monastery in the forest above the Sázava river. On the twelfth century portal there are majestic birds, bizarre animals, and profiled letters that Grandfather could read. He explained everything to me. We thus possessed the secret of eternity and, as a particle of it, would exist forever.
Educated by Jesuits, Grandfather manipulated the absolute with virtuosity. He tamed reality, suppressed the facts that he could not control, and turned the truth to suit himself. His truth was pure and calm.
He made me feel good. I learned to assimilate my suspicions as I pushed back Father’s world, too brutal to be rendered tame.
I could feast on gold-brown, roasted squab, savor the tender crust of broiled lamb, relish the veal melting on my tongue, muffle up in the fur of wild cats, my intimate friends.
I would kneel beside Grandfather at the base of a pillar in the last row of the church. How hard the prie-Dieu would be without our embroidered cushions!
I would mimic diligently Grandfather’s gestures, while keeping an eye on the priest who moved about with dignity. Anticipating his slow movements, his robe would shimmer under the sunbeams, which lost their intensity as they passed through the stained glass windows.
The Drowning Of A Goldfish Page 1