The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  Our dancing was lackluster. It didn’t matter. At last somebody had asked me to dance.

  “How did you know?” I asked in surprise, but mentally corrected myself: a noble orchid should not have reacted in such a way. I decided to say something cold and elegant.

  “It’s obvious,” he said with indifference.

  “I do not understand you, sir.”

  He danced on his short legs with sureness and aplomb. He pressed me closer. When I said something to him, he didn’t look me in the face but fixed his stare on my cleavage. That made me feel both piqued and proud. He was the only man who had shown any interest in me. He held me firmly. I found him repugnant, and yet reassuring.

  “As I said, you could see it at first glance.” He sighed. “How warm it is! Shall we take a seat?” He bowed before me. “Farewell, my lady, may you have an enjoyable evening.”

  I wanted to go home!

  At home? But I am at home!

  I wanted to go home to the convent.

  The corners of my mouth sagged downward. Quick, to the powder room! Or better still, I’ll flee to my chambers.

  I made my way through the crowds.

  All of a sudden, he took my hand and put his arm around my waist. My fat little waltzing partner! I smelled cigar smoke and sweat. That little man stood on tiptoes and leaned into my ear. He didn’t look at my face. He was staring at the cleavage of my ball gown.

  “What is your name, silent Miss?”

  “Sylva.”

  “Sylva, from Latin. It means forest. Yes, that name suits your personality.”

  I hadn’t known my name had that meaning. I smiled.

  He went on, in a low voice.

  “You are still very young, but one day you will turn into a bonbon, all chocolate outside and cognac on the inside, remember that!”

  A woman with more experience would have slapped him then and there, not only for being impertinent, but for the ungraciousness of his metaphor. I, a foolish convent girl, stared ahead of me, thinking, he’s German, he’s just spoken to me in Czech with a heavy accent. Does he know what he’s saying? I felt like hitting him with my fists; I felt so powerless. It was this same powerlessness that made me burst out laughing.

  “Is it too warm for you, Miss Sylva?”

  I stopped laughing. Why was everybody going on about the warmth?

  I turned around, bad temperedly.

  Monsieur Beauvisage!

  We danced the next waltz. Monsieur Beauvisage was telling me something and asking me questions, but I wasn’t listening. I let him lead me to the rhythm of the waltz. We spun around and around, and the lights and the brightly lit candelabras were burning in the beaming faces of the girls and the flames of the gladioli in the vases turned into long ribbons that floated around us, fanning us and linking us together.

  With ice cream confections in hand, we walked through the chateau garden. I led my companion over to the artificial lake, with its fountain set in rock. Then I realized a couple was already sitting there and that we might be bothering them, but we had already taken our seat.

  I had never seen so many stars in the sky. It was as if I’d asked Saint Peter for them and he had arranged for an entire army of little angels to light tiny lanterns in the sky, and to keep on lighting more and more.

  As soon as we sat down, Petr started to talk a blue streak, then recited:

  To exist in shame, spindly, fearful

  shadows, sprawling and feeling the walls;

  nobody waves to you any more, ill-fated ones!

  Leftovers of humanity, forever past your prime!

  “Do eat, Petr, your ice cream will melt,” I interrupted him.

  He pushed the saucer away. He was lost in thought.

  “Petr,” I said, “why did you recite those verses about spindly shadows on such a marvelous night?”

  “For just that reason. Old ladies are marvelous too, more so, even.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “They have an admirable inner life. All that suffering. Because there are so few people who are able to grasp the beauty of it.”

  “Look, Petr, is it really necessary to talk of spindly old ladies, precisely now, when we have flowering gardens at our feet and the starry sky above our heads?”

  I wanted us to continue in silence, without talking.

  “What you’re talking about is the kind of beauty that anybody can comprehend. A banal beauty, which bad poets and young ladies’ private diaries have thoroughly trivialized.”

  I blushed. Petr went on, “Read the works of Baudelaire and Božena Němcová, Miss Sylva, and you will find that true beauty lurks in the humblest of things, in everything that at first sight seems so poor and unflamboyant.”

  I thought to myself that I too, should look for the hidden beauty that Petr so admired. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bench where the young couple embraced each other. The young man was caressing the arms, shoulders, and breasts of the girl. She wasn’t moving, or even breathing, so as not to spoil the magic of the moment. I looked away.

  My eyes turned to my own cleavage. I’m still a little girl, I thought; and lightly, as if without meaning to, I rested my head on Petr’s shoulder. He didn’t move, but he stopped reciting poems.

  I looked once again at the couple on the bench, on the side of the artificial lake. The girl had also rested her head on her sweetheart’s shoulder, as if she were my mirror image. The young man went on caressing her. His hand was deep in her cleavage.

  I looked at Petr out of the corner of my eye; could he, too, see what was going on? He was sitting with his eyes closed, as if he were asleep, but he wasn’t sleeping.

  I could hear the frogs croaking.

  A white ghost shifted in front of us. It moved fast, almost at a run.

  “Sylva, home with you! That’s enough, I don’t want to see you here.”

  Petr’s eyes opened wide. We heard a horse whinny, followed by a dog barking.

  In the distance, a waltz started up. Petr sat up. I stood up slowly, then Petr did the same.

  “May I accompany you, Miss Sylva?” he said in a low voice. These words were addressed to me alone.

  I was about to say yes.

  “No thank you, Petr,” my mother broke in, “Sylva knows the way back home perfectly well, in fact it’s just a moment away. Go and dance for a little bit longer, darling.” Soothing words expressed with an icy voice.

  Petr was looking at me. He followed me with his eyes as I walked away.

  When I was at a distance, I turned around. I could see nothing but the gigantic, black trunks of the beeches and oaks.

  The bench was empty.

  The days went by, arid as a dried-up riverbed. I had to do something. I didn’t know what.

  I requested an audience with my father. He made me wait for quite a while before receiving me in his study, which smelled strongly of cigars and musty air. He wore a shiny, silk dressing gown that changed color every time he moved.

  “I didn’t want to waste your time, Papa. Please, would you be so kind as to let Monsieur Beauvisage know . . .”

  What was I about to say? And why?

  “Monsieur Beauvisage?”

  My father came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room and looked at me with hard eyes.

  I didn’t have time to think.

  “It’s a nickname, Papa.” I gave a nervous laugh.

  “Monsieur Beauvisage? So you also find him attractive?”

  Also?

  “I didn’t know he was a writer,” I said aloud.

  “A provincial scribbler, I dare say.”

  “Papa, could you . . .”

  “You haven’t answered me.”

  “I’m sorry, but what is it I haven’t answered properly?”

  “Well . . . It doesn’t matter. You are the apple of my eye, Sylva.”

  “I don’t want to waste any more of your time, Papa. Would you be so kind as to tell Monsieur Beauvisage that I will not be requiring any lessons fr
om him for some time.”

  “I will indeed inform him, word for word.”

  I heard a creaking noise. My father was stretching his fingers to ease the tensions in the knuckles. I noticed that sound, so typical of my father, and wasn’t sure I understood my own message. Why didn’t I want to see Monsieur Beauvisage? What would life in the chateau be like without my tutor?

  “Sylva,” my father said in a low voice, as he lit a cigarette, “don’t you think it’s absolutely crazy, this thing your mother’s got about the Czech language? Although it was the last thing anyone would have expected, she gets it into her head to take private lessons. But as she’s a Czech from a family of musicians, she must speak the language well enough.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Papa.”

  “I’ve no idea,” I repeated, “because my father kept on watching me with an enquiring look on his face. “Perhaps she’s unsure of her grammar, or maybe she doesn’t know how to write Czech properly, remember that she went to German schools. You won’t forget to forward my message, will you, Papa?”

  “Of course not, ma chérie.” He caressed me.

  “Sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  For a little while, he drew circles on the carpet with a leather-slippered foot, staring at the window. Finally he said, “Wait, don’t go just yet. There’s something I wanted to say to you.”

  I wasn’t going anywhere. But I realized that this was a cultured person’s way of saying, one more thing, and then you can go!

  “Listen, Silent Woman,” said my father in the direction of the window, as if addressing his message to the apple and plum trees in the orchard. “Remember what I am about to say to you, ‘Whereas all other creatures walk with their heads bowed, looking at the ground, Man has a face at his disposal, with which to observe the horizon, and a head, with which he can look up at the stars.’ That was written by Ovid, a lucid poet, whose life ended sadly, in exile.”

  I strolled through the village next to the chateau, looking for the things that were in the poems Petr had quoted to me.

  I saw elderly men and women. I saw beggars. I saw cripples, both male and female. I saw huts full of destitute people, run-down cottages, wretched hovels. I went in, leaving a couple of coins. The inhabitants eyed me, both surprised and suspicious.

  I saw a man whipping a horse. The beast was standing stock-still, its head bowed, and its eyes full of woe. The horse could not defend itself as the carter whipped it with all his strength. I rushed over to the horse and hugged it. I kissed it. In the deep, sad gaze of that fine beast, in its tears, I saw the eternal suffering of the universe. In those horse’s eyes, I saw the misery of all those who were born only to be beaten.

  I walked over to the chateau garden. I wanted to summon Jakub, so that he could buy up all the whipped horses.

  Twilight was falling. The crickets were singing, but the croaking of the frogs was louder.

  I headed over to the river to see them. As I ambled along the bank, my feet sank into the mud more than once. The mosquitos were buzzing, there were whole clouds of mosquitos. I saw a blackbird carrying a clay-covered worm in its beak. The worm twisted about, trying to get out of the beak that trapped it, but the blackbird had a firm grip. All the frogs jumped into the river.

  As I walked back home, that blackbird was singing on the branch of a beech tree.

  It was getting dark. I was afraid I might get lost. I started to run, my face lashed by branches.

  I finally found a path that led to the chateau garden. It took me directly to the fountain. I would have liked to avoid that artificial lake, I don’t know why, but there it was, right by me.

  Nightfall.

  A couple was sitting on the bench, like the last time.

  I felt a sudden desire to rest on my bench, to examine the surface of the lake and look at my face. Maybe in the milky light of the half moon, I would discover a change in the image I saw, in comparison with the last one I saw there that had been smashed to pieces. Perhaps I would find those pieces now stuck together with the glue of my new experiences, my new thoughts.

  I sat at the edge of the little pond. From their bench, the couple couldn’t see me, there were bushes between us. I looked down at the water: I saw the shiny surface and, on it, a dark stain. My head. None of my features were distinguishable. Only a hole as dark as the night itself.

  I moved away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the couple on the bench, the man embracing the woman passionately; she was responding to his caresses. This was doubtlessly a couple from the village; the garden had recently been taken over by the state, and anyone could enter as they pleased.

  The frogs resumed their croaking. I left. I smelled a whiff of jasmine.

  In the morning, as I was taking a walk with Mademoiselle Lamartine, repeating my lesson, I stepped off the path. On the bench, I found a pair of little combs, the kind used to decorate a coiffure and keep it in place. Encrusted with precious stones that shone brightly in the light of day, they seemed to be gleaming. Then I remembered the night of the volcanoes that spat fire, and the bright morning that followed, which was so like today.

  I knew that Jakub wasn’t listening to me, but I so wanted to get it all off my chest!

  “I saw a man whipping a horse,” I kept explaining to the stable lad, “That animal was standing stock-still, with its head bowed and its eyes full of suffering. A horse can’t defend itself.”

  The stable lad looked at me, unconcerned.

  “Couldn’t we do something? Maybe buy that horse? I’ve already told my parents, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. I mean, you love horses.”

  “We’ll see,” he answered, nonchalantly.

  I noticed that now, apart from indifference, the stable lad felt a sort of abhorrence for this capricious little lady before him. I had seen that expression before on the faces of those I had visited in the wretched hovels in the village.

  “You will try and buy that horse, won’t you?” I insisted.

  “We’ll see.”

  We usually dined from twelve to two. The maid laid the dining room table, and we all sat down to lunch, even my grandmother, who usually preferred to spend her time in her chambers. That summer my mother often turned up for lunch looking fresh, cheerful, youthful, her eyes full of optimism.

  Every day, from two to four, Petr came to the house to give my mother lessons. My mother kept her door locked during the two hours that Monsieur Beauvisage spent in her chambers.

  One day I walked past Maman’s apartment. I couldn’t hear a thing. No dictation. No creaking door. Not a word. Silence. The following day, I did the same thing again. Nothing. As if there were nobody at all behind that door.

  The third day, I forbade myself to walk past Maman’s door, but I couldn’t hold out: I went past on tiptoes, barefoot, back and forth, time and again. Nothing, just a heavy oak door.

  Then one day I came across my father outside Maman’s door. He too was pacing in silence, back and forth, again and again.

  Once I had to walk along that corridor at four in the afternoon, on the dot. I saw Monsieur Beauvisage closing the oak door behind him, heading for the staircase, his head bowed.

  “Petr!” I whispered.

  He didn’t turn around. He only bowed his head a little lower.

  “Petr!” I repeated, a bit louder.

  The back of his neck was disappearing around the curve of the staircase.

  When I reached Maman’s door, this time, for the first time, I heard something. My mother was crying.

  I found the stable lad at the entrance. I reminded him of the incident with the whipped horse and of his promise.

  “We’ll see,” he said once again.

  We walked over to the stables.

  He opened the door. I was swallowed up by the darkness, and overwhelmed by strong animal smells.

  The stable lad came up to me. I was getting used to the dark. I looked into his eyes. They were green and glint
ing like a cat’s. Through the reek of the horses, I could smell his sweat. He took me into his arms—thick and strong as tree trunks. I pressed my body against his.

  He felt me up, roughly. So this is what it’s like, I thought, as his expert fingers ran over my body. Like this, and nothing more? I remained silent and still.

  I pushed him away.

  In a hoarse voice, he said, “Go away, I don’t want anything to do with you! First you get me all worked up and then you go cold as a dead fish. You know where to go, you pampered, little girl! I’ve had enough!”

  Puffing, he pushed me out of the stable.

  The sunlight dazzled me. I felt dizzy.

  I patted a dog as it wandered along the path. That smooth skin, that tender warmth, but the dog responded with violent barking. I felt like a stranger in my own home.

  I tied my hair back into a ponytail and sat down on the bench in front of the house. It wasn’t yet four in the afternoon.

  Monsieur Beauvisage. The only person with whom I wished to speak. In his presence, I felt the way I did when I changed out of my party dress and tight-fitting dress shoes to put on some casual clothes and comfy slippers for wearing in the house. Although this meeting with Monsieur Beauvisage was making me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t take my eyes off the belltower clock.

  The bells were ringing.

  Together we left the chateau garden and stepped out into nature. On the bank, the frogs and birds were silent, it was a muggy day. Only a sparrow chirped feebly, as if welcoming us into his green kingdom. We found all the splendor overwhelming. The weeping willows rustling above the water, the century-old beeches standing in two rows, their branches spanning the space over our heads. Above us, a blackbird began chatting. I looked for it among the branches to see if it was carrying a muddy worm in its beak. Then my feet sank into the mud. With difficulty, Petr removed my heeled shoe from the puddle and cleaned it. That done, he made me sit down on a low branch of a hawthorn, or perhaps a plane tree, to rub the mud off my foot with a handkerchief. Like a mother swaddling a newborn child, I thought.

  •

  I closed the door behind us, gently.

  In silence I led Petr to the bathroom. He stopped at the threshold. “We will wash my foot,” I repeated more than once, tugging at Petr’s sleeve.