The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  “In the future, that is,” the skier clarified.

  “Right now would be impossible,” said Golden Tan.

  “On the other hand, why not in the future? You could do that for sure! No doubt!” said the skier, laughing and raising his glass of coke.

  I didn’t say anything. I waited. They watched me attentively. I remained stubbornly silent. There was nothing to discuss, so I waited to see what would happen next.

  Finally I replied, “I’ve never considered leaving the university or my academic work.”

  They looked at me like I was some kind of exotic animal.

  Golden Tan said, in a low voice, “Think about it carefully, John. We’re not forcing you to do anything, it’s a free country. But do think it over. The best university in the world couldn’t beat the offer we’d be making you.”

  IV

  SYLVA

  A black veil. The day I was married my mother wore a black veil that covered her face and sealed her off from the world. My white veil was draped over my indifferent eyes. Indifferent? No. Rather, they were curious. When I observed that white, aristocratic bride in the mirror, through the mesh of the veil, my face seemed to have been sliced into tiny, little pieces. The girl reflected back to me did not desire the man she was to marry. She was merely a silent young woman, who felt a certain curiosity about the world that her future husband, a man of standing, would reveal to her. She hoped that such a grand world would thrill her and, above all, that she would find her place in it.

  The black veil made my mother look even more noble than when her face was uncovered. Since my father’s recent death, my mother never removed the veil whenever she was outdoors.

  And my father? I know nothing about him. I hardly remember a thing about him. My father . . . yes, now I see him . . . “Listen, Silent Woman,” he said to me one day as we gazed out at 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 sky.’”

  After the wedding, my new husband and I climbed into his black car. It was a Hispano-Suiza. We headed for the wedding reception, held in the palazzo he owned in Prague. The chauffeur was wearing livery, like a waxwork figure. I didn’t look at my husband. I grew afraid when I saw him sitting absolutely still so as not to spoil the cut of the black suit into which he had squeezed himself. When I had peaked at him out of the corner of my eye during the wedding ceremony, he looked to me as if he were preparing to blow out a candle, his cheeks were so puffed up.

  As the car pulled away, my husband looked me over. Or rather he looked my body over. All of a sudden, he placed a hand on my breast, and squeezed it. The first thing I thought of was the chateau cook when she squeezed the tomatoes and cucumbers to make sure they were ripe. My husband watched me as he fondled me. I made an effort not to show surprise. Or fear. I thought that this was the way things had to be, and waited in horror for what would come afterward. He plunged his hand into my cleavage, the way our cook dug hers into a pile of potatoes in the market so as to find the biggest one.

  “Given your age, I find them too large and heavy,” he said, staring me in the eye.

  He used the familiar form of “you.” And as he fished for the best potato in the pile, he said, as if we were alone, “Did he caress you . . . like this? And like this? Or like this?”

  “Who?”

  “That boy, your teacher. Your mother told me everything. I want to know what your face looked like when that boy caressed you.”

  He watched my face as his hand continued searching furiously. He pressed his other hand into service too, to help the first one out. His mustache twitched like a puppet’s.

  I remained silent, unable to move.

  Then he retrieved his hands and rested them on his belly. He sat back in the seat, whistling an aria from an operetta, and watching the passersby in the street.

  I buttoned my dress up.

  He said, as he looked out at the street, “And what about you, what did you do to him?”

  “‘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 sky.’” He repeated Ovid’s words to me, and other ideas that he found in the works of classical poets and philosophers . . .

  I knew these philosophers personally, had talked to them face to face, asked them for advice. For a happy person, philosophy is complementary to life; he has already achieved his aims. For an unhappy person, philosophical ideas help one to keep on living. They are instructions, a promise of survival.

  At the wedding reception, my husband put his hand in my lap.

  “And which place did that boy like best, this one or that one?”

  He wasn’t looking at my face but at my chest, like the time when we danced together, the night of the chateau ball.

  The wedding banquet lasted until the small hours of the morning. When I least expected it, everybody left, both the orchestra and the dancers.

  We were alone.

  My husband took me by the hand and showed me around the palazzo. Paintings hung on every wall, grim, uncolorful ones, dark and dim, not at all like those in our chateau. These paintings were either black landscapes or portraits covered in dust, from which the spectator was only too happy to flee.

  “This is the bathroom,” he said, and showed me the only bright room, covered in white tiles and all kinds of shining taps and showers and washbasins, and a bathtub that was whiter and shinier than everything else.

  “Take off your clothes,” he commanded, and closed the door behind him.

  I turned the taps on and hot water came from one and cold water from the other. The shower felt like April rain, ever so fine. The bathroom filled with steam.

  The door opened and my husband walked in slowly. I saw him through the mist: he was wearing a vest and short pants, as if he were at the beach. He looked as if he’d walked out of a film. A bizarre film.

  “We’ll have a bath, we’ll have a bath,” he repeated, drawing out the words as he undressed me, “we’ll have a bath.”

  He held my breasts in the palms of his hands and murmured, as if reflecting on something disagreeable, “Oh God, how big and heavy they are, breasts so full and weighty that they cannot satisfy a man with a refined sensibility. At twenty you’ll sag like an old woman.”

  As he said this I thought of Plato’s Symposium. Agathon says to Socrates . . . “I do declare that among all the gods, happy as they all are, the happiest of them all is Eros, being as he is the handsomest and best among them.”

  My husband didn’t take his eyes off my breasts, not even when I removed my skirt. He ordered me to sit on the edge of the bathtub with my feet in the water. He wet my chest, my belly, my thighs.

  And I thought about Plato’s words. There is no pleasure greater than love: all pleasures, all of them, are surpassed by love. I thought, hopefully, in silence.

  My husband soaped me as I leaned back against the white, tiled wall. I liked the cold of the tiles on my back, it kept me tense. My husband soaped me as if he were a nanny and I, a little girl. He covered me with soap completely then took his time working the lather over my skin. He made soap bubbles on my body, blowing at them and playing with them across my skin. I sat quietly, repeating Plato’s words to myself, “As regards the mastery of the arts, do we not know that he of whom Eros becomes the master, will become famous and renowned, whereas he who remains untouched by Eros will be submerged in darkness?”

  And my husband whispered, “You’re dirty, we have to wash you properly, until you’re as clean as a whistle. So much dirt! My God, it’s so disgusting! Look, here there’s still some here, look, look, and here too, I can’t take this anymore, how revolting, so much dirt!” With one hand he soaped my breasts and with the other my thighs, spitting out words like “Ergh, ergh, this is too disgusting, ergh, ergh, I think I’m going to throw up.” He continued wit
h the yellow bar of soap, spreading the lather and making bubbles. Then he took off his spectacles that looked like they were made out of the bottoms of beer glasses and, his eyes wide open, he stared at me closely, observing the lather he was spreading over me as if he was buttering a slice of bread. He would say “ergh, ergh” from time to time, and I had the feeling that the more he examined me, the more revulsion he felt, that it was only through sheer willpower that my husband could overcome the disgust he felt for my body, and that only with a tremendous physical and moral effort could he continue soaping me. Finally he pinched me and scratched me and hit me, shouting, “Ergh, ergh, filthy, sordid, repulsive, ignoble, abject, indescribable little girl!” And when he was fed up with the sound of his own shouting, and when his blows and his pinches really began to hurt, I yelled, “That’s enough!”

  Then he took handfuls of water and rinsed the lather from me, carefully, deliberately, with all five senses on full alert to ensure that not a bit of lather was left anywhere on my body. He wasn’t shouting anymore, he simply made small noises of disgust. And his mustache shifted from one side of his face to the other, like a doll in the hands of a puppet master at the village fair.

  Then, with the same fastidious care, those same heightened five senses, he dried me with a towel so that not even the most concealed area was left wet. He put me to bed, and with another towel, dry and white and soft, and made of cambric. He went on drying and massaging me. With the tips of his fingers and the palms of his hands he penetrated into my body’s remotest places so as to dry them, always with an expression of repugnance and aversion and horror in his popping, feverishly shining eyes.

  I thought about the words of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, “When we celebrate Eros, we are celebrating the god who in the present can furnish us with the greatest benefits and who, in the future, can provide us with the greatest of hopes, that will make us fortunate and favored . . .”

  When I had had enough of the massages, of the towel, and my husband’s fingers and hands, when I’d been dry for some time, I repeated, “That’s enough!”

  And, at once, he stopped touching me.

  He put the towel back in the bathroom. Once he’d done that, he got into bed next to me, and immediately began snoring.

  In the dim light, I got up, left the bedroom in silence, and hurriedly got dressed.

  One day, the modiste came to show me the dresses and the jackets and the skirts and the corsets and the waistcoats that she was making for me. When I was trying on the final item, a sand-colored dress, my husband burst into the salon. He wore a dark blue suit with little, vertical stripes that were all but invisible. He had a distinguished air about him, quite a different person from the one I had known in the brightness of the bathroom. He reminded the modiste not to forget what he had already told her, that all the evening dresses should have a generous cleavage.

  “That’s ever so fashionable now, and I don’t want my wife to wear anything that isn’t the very latest fashion.” As he spoke, he watched me as if we were back in the bathroom, and the longer he looked at me, the sterner his expression became.

  As soon as he had left, the modiste and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. When our laughter had subsided, I said, in a serious, grave voice, “This is very fashionable now and I want my wife to dress in only the very latest fashions,” and again we doubled over in laughter.

  Once we’d calmed down, I told to the modiste, a girl who was the same age as me, “The dresses should be comfortable, and none of them should have a cleavage that would make it impossible for me to bend over.”

  The modiste winked at me as she gave a discreet smile, her lips full of multicolored pinheads.

  One evening, at a reception for high-ranking diplomats, my husband made me sit on a solitary chair in a corner, while he flirted with sylphlike and coquettish ladies and conversed with elegant gentlemen. With a glass of champagne in his hand, he went from one little group to the next, blinking and raising toasts and laughing. From time to time, he brought me a saucer with some canapés or a small cake. I sat in silence and drank in the surrounding feast of lights with my eyes. Then, however, I grew self-conscious, like that night of the ball in the chateau. I asked myself: Why did my mother force me to marry this man?

  I will go. From this place too, I will flee in silence.

  Yes, but where? To the convent? To my parents’ home? All of those places were behind me now.

  “As if he were a stranger unworthy of respect,” I had read this line in the Iliad. More than ever in my life, I felt like a stranger.

  •

  That evening, my husband bade me enter the bathroom, giving me a little push.

  “Get undressed!” he ordered as he left.

  Is this what is meant by matrimonial duties? I asked myself as I took my clothes off with a feeling of deep abhorrence. I was afraid.

  After a moment, my husband returned with a brush for scrubbing the floor, one of those with horsehair bristles, to clean me properly. As soon as he hurt me, I said, in a loud voice, “That’s enough!”

  And something incredible happened: my husband left the bathroom and went to bed.

  “Freedom, sir, is as difficult to cope with as obligation.”

  This is a cri de coeur. When I read those words of Masaryk, I thought about my life. I was just twenty years old. I knew all about taking orders, I’d spent my life obeying the orders given by my parents and the nuns and Mademoiselle de Lamartine and my husband, just like a dog would have obeyed its master.

  Yes, I knew all about honoring my obligations: having to pray, having to play the piano, having to be dutiful daughter, not marrying Monsieur Beauvisage, having to marry the honorable ambassador von Stamitz, having to be a good wife.

  My husband was sleeping restlessly, beside me. I stayed awake reading.

  A dream, like a flower blossoming within me, was born.

  The following day, the telephone woke me. It was my husband calling me from his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; he wanted to know if I’d slept well, what I would do today, where I would go, and with whom I had appointments. I didn’t feel like making any confessions, so I said the first thing that came into my head, that I would visit a cubist exhibition with a woman friend. When I’d finished he told me that in two days’ time, on October 28, the national holiday, we were invited to a reception at Prague Castle, as guests of the president of the republic.

  Masaryk! I had to sit down. I would get to see the author of the Pensées I had been reading and rereading time and again! Perhaps I would even get to meet him in person?

  “I want you to wear that new dress.”

  “Which new dress?”

  “How can I put this . . . the one the modiste just made for you, the one with that generous cleavage!”

  “Won’t I be cold?”

  “In the castle? Not at all!”

  It seemed to me that that dress wasn’t decent enough for such a solemn occasion. I said as much to my husband.

  “Sylva, with that dress on, you’ll look like Aphrodite. You’ll make me happy. Do it for me!”

  But I didn’t want to look like Aphrodite.

  “So at midday you’ll be at home?” my husband wanted to know.

  I had no idea. I couldn’t stop thinking that I had absolutely no wish whatsoever to look like Aphrodite, that the dress he had in mind would end up in the garbage can. That very day, I would buy myself a new one. I answered as vaguely as I could.

  My husband wouldn’t give up. “I’ll come, we can have lunch together.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be back in time.”

  “Come back home, Sylva. You’ll make me happy.”

  For the second time, instead of firing off an order at me, he’d said, “You’ll make me happy.” He said it in an imploring tone. I hadn’t expected that. But then immediately I thought, my husband wants me to waste my day! When he hung up, I scowled, then made an oh-forget-it gesture and asked my maid to get m
e some breakfast. Quickly!

  On the dark, hand-carved, baroque dining room table, it was impossible not to see a page that I’d torn out of my notebook and that read, “Don’t wait for me, I’m dining out. Sylva.” In no time at all, I was out in the street.

  In the evening my husband, armed with a mitten, washed my breasts and once they were wet, he twisted them with his hands as if they were a pair of towels he was wringing out, as he whispered, “Ergh! Ergh, you dirty, impure, foul thing! You grimy, filthy, disgusting thing!” While he busied himself cleaning my body, I licked a chocolate ice cream and read some of Masaryk’s philosophical reflections. When my husband’s shouting started to interrupt my reading, I said, “Enough!”

  And off he went to bed.

  On the evening of the twenty-eighth of October, hanging on my husband’s arm, I entered the reception hall of Prague Castle, which was festively lit. My husband had grown thinner and his black suit made him seem even more slender. When we entered the hall, we were met by several inquisitive looks, and dozens of ladies and gentlemen rushed to welcome my husband. I sensed that behind his diplomat’s mask he was disappointed not to see me in my new dress with its plunging neckline. Imagine if he’d known that for the last couple of days that dress had been the main item among other equally unfortunate items in the trash bin in our yard! I don’t know if my husband was made more disconsolate by the absence of that dress or by the fact that I hadn’t done what he’d said. I’d decided to wear a simple, white tunic, inspired by the attire of the ancient Greeks. My dangling earrings were also in the Greek style. My coiffeuse had bunched my hair into a discreet chignon at the nape of my neck.

  This time too, my husband made me sit in a corner. From my solitary chair, all unnoticed and blushing, I devoured that magnificent soiree with my eyes. As I allowed myself to be dazzled by the hundreds of lights and thousands of jewels shining on all the ladies’ necks, I thought back to that morning. I had woken early and headed for Václavské Square. Although it was very early, it was all I could do to catch a possible glimpse of him through a crack in the packed crowds, and then only if I stood on tiptoes. I’d started to get impatient with all the waiting. I had woken early to find only Czechs in the throng. Where were the German and Jewish citizens, why hadn’t they turned up? Then some shouts interrupted my thoughts; all heads had turned to the left in unison, like sunflowers. An elegant, imperturbable man was crossing the long square on horseback, dressed in riding gear and a cap. There was the philosopher president, and behind him, like a bridal train, the long procession of civilians followed him. I’d noticed that even the children, on their fathers’ shoulders were behaving themselves; nobody was in a hurry to have lunch or an aperitif; everybody was as quiet and solemn as if it were some kind of ancestral ritual.