The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  From the Bridge of Legions we walked down to Hunters’ Island. We went right across it, then circled to Kampa Island. I remembered when my husband and I sometimes had dinner on Hunters’ Island and that during the meal we had listened to a quartet playing Dvořák. That kind of dinner struck me as being impossible these days.

  The snowflakes drew thousands of milky ways against the darkened sky.

  “Is your father Jewish?” Andrei asked me.

  “He’s my mother’s second husband. My father is dead. Bruno Singer is Jewish, yes.”

  “As was my wife.”

  I didn’t say anything. The snowflakes had ceased their dancing and now fell lazily to the ground, heavy and lethargic. In the midst of the snow I imagined a young, dark-haired woman arm in arm with Andrei, coming home from a concert; it was snowing softly, the night was brilliant and icy, yet the girl wore her ermine coat open so that her long pearl necklace glimmered in the golden brightness of the streetlamps.

  “She died in my arms,” Andrei said.

  I leaned on the bridge railing. As if on a huge movie screen, the dark-haired girl’s face unfolded before me, pale and intelligent even as she died. This evening is ruined, I thought.

  “Was that long ago?” I asked, not really interested in the answer.

  “She died in my arms. With her dying breath she asked me never to forget to recite her Kaddish. And I haven’t been able to do that,” Andrei said quietly, “That was seventeen, maybe sixteen years ago. And I haven’t recited her Kaddish in a very long time. She died in my arms,” he repeated, as if talking to someone who couldn’t hear him.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Andrei went on, “The Reds hated the Jews, the Whites didn’t care for them either, and the Czechs . . .”

  “Czechs and Jews live together in peace!” I said, defensively.

  “Maybe. But the Czechs hold a grudge against the Germans.”

  “Does that surprise you? They’re taking over our country!”

  “That animosity already existed, I saw it on the mountain where I live.”

  In the fragile, naked, black branches of the island’s park, I saw Bruno Singer’s face, distorted by a grimace of fear. And I saw my mother’s hands clasped together: What would happen to her Bruno? What would happen to me?

  “No!” I shouted, fighting off the embrace of Andrei’s black anguish, “No! You’re a very strange man, Andrei! You see everything in the worst possible light, please go!”

  I saw lightning bolts in his eyes. Andrei leaped onto the edge of the bridge. He took hold of a streetlamp and knocked his skull against it. There’s impotence for you, I thought.

  “I see everything in the worst possible light?” Andrei said, hoarsely, “But everything is terrible, horrifying! Everything is truly hellish!”

  “What is it that’s so bad?”

  “This world! What else? This whole world!”

  The figure standing on the balustrade of the bridge turned to face the river.

  “If even you can’t understand me, then who—”

  “Andrei, please, forgive me! Come down here, I beg you.”

  There wasn’t a soul in sight. Just the snowflakes and the mist.

  When, after quite a while he raised his head, I realized that the clouds had broken. The stars were shining light on our desperation.

  Andrei was calming down. He sat on the balustrade, one leg in, the other out. The mad song of the massacre had stopped ringing in his ears. But can anyone who has heard it once, ever forget it? When he spoke his words came out weighted with pain.

  “Do you remember I told you the story of that day during the Russian Civil War? When the Cossacks tried to make me help them ransack the houses? I refused. One of them told me: ‘For centuries these cursed Jewish landowners have exploited us and grown fat and rich at our expense. Now it’s our turn! Comrade Lenin tells us to steal from he who has stolen from you! All the revolutionary leaders teach us to hate the class enemy and to seek revenge against him.’”

  I thought that all revolutions were spawned by hatred. What else could they lead to if not more hatred and violence?

  “In one house, I could hear weeping. I rushed over. Three of the Cossacks jumped on me then and one of them threatened me. ‘Are you wet behind the ears, you idiot? Who do you think you were about to help, you young fool? The enemy of the revolution! The kulaks! The Jews! Not one step more, if you don’t want me to smash your face in, you snake!’

  “But I could still hear that weeping, those screams. I wanted to go in and find out what had happened.

  ‘Damn it!’ another Cossack yelled at me, ‘Here’s what you wanted. Don’t go telling anyone, you scheming bastard!’

  “He opened the door of the house with a key and pushed me inside. He locked the door again, from the outside.

  “I couldn’t see anything, everything was dark. The weeping and the sobbing and the screaming for help was all in pitch darkness: to say that was hell, Sylva, is not to say enough. Slowly, I adjusted to the shadows. What I found there was horrifying. Corpses thrown one on top of the other, the moans of the dying, the cries of the wounded: all of it . . .”

  Andrei jumped off the balustrade and shook me.

  “All of it was in a huge pool of blood, you understand? No, you don’t understand! You can’t begin to imagine it, you’d be a monster if you could. And there was also . . .”

  He began walking quickly along the bridge.

  “What?” I asked as I ran after Andrei.

  “There was a woman. A girl. Our men had raped her. Before her father’s eyes. The girl told me she had begged them to do it in another room, not there where her father was lying in a pool of his own blood. They ignored her. They raped her: a dozen men, right there in front of her father!

  “Many of the wounded started away from me in fright: I was wearing the same uniform as their killers. Others took my hand and asked me to help them and their loved ones. That night I discovered I was in the very heart of hell. All night I stroked the cheeks and soft hair of that Jewish girl. At the break of dawn she took my hand and said, ‘I am your wife.’ Then she died. That was my wife, who died seventeen years ago.”

  Andrei was walking briskly, waving his arms, and talking to the stars. He sat on a snow-covered bench, which gave onto the Vltava. The silhouettes of the poplars and the chestnut trees were chasing the stars on the river.

  Andrei spoke as if talking to our footsteps, “I believed in the ideals of the revolution because I was drawn by the dream of equality and justice. I believed that those crimes would be investigated and that the people who had committed them would be tried and punished.”

  “Did they punish them?” I asked, ever so quietly.

  “A government commission traveled from Moscow to investigate the killings and the pillaging perpetrated by Red Army soldiers all over Ukraine. Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews had all been the victims of these attacks. These commissars, a few ministers of our new country, arrived in Ukraine. They investigated, and then, by way of conclusion, Comrade Kalinin, one of the leaders of the revolution and of the new government, said, ‘Comrades, it is our pleasure to state that all present have spoken with the utmost frankness and sincerity. We will now leave for Moscow, where we will make a final decision on these matters.’ That’s how they dealt with the whole affair. Not one more thing was done.”

  The Vltava flowed dark and solitary.

  “Don’t you get it, Sylva? I’d believed in their slogans!”

  “What did you do?”

  “I had to flee, I didn’t have any choice.”

  “From the Reds to the Whites?”

  “Yes. And don’t mock me, although you are right to mock me. The Whites were no better than the Reds. But I didn’t want those people who were betraying the dreams of so many to stay in power.”

  “So since then, you’ve done nothing but flee, is that it?”

  “You’re right, after that I fled from the Whites to Prague, as I told you. A
good woman took me under her wing when I got here.”

  I offered my face to the snowflakes, which were pouring once again from the black vacuum of the sky.

  “And then . . . For days at a time, I sat next to the window and stared at a red geranium. Jaroslava told me I was full of terrible anguish. You know Jaroslava, don’t you?” Andrei waved at what I supposed to be my neighbor opposite, “She was the one who insisted that I should be seen by a doctor. After some arguing, I agreed. I went to see the doctor.”

  He stopped and stared at me. He was trying hard to use his eyes to express all that he wanted to say. As if now he didn’t even trust the spoken word.

  I didn’t understand. I longed to comprehend it all in the silence of that stare, but I didn’t know how.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “He was a neurologist. He told me that I had to start treatment immediately. That I couldn’t go home, that they’d keep me there. He said something to the nurse and the door opened. Two men walked in. Each of them took one of my arms, and they held me down by force. I knew I couldn’t shake them off, so I didn’t offer any resistance.”

  “And then?”

  “I asked calmly to go to the lavatory. Those two waited in front of the door, but they waited in vain.”

  “Don’t tell me you escaped?”

  “Someone who is forever on the run always knows how to escape. It’s like a sixth sense. I escaped through the window. And I went on escaping: on foot, by train, on trams, by bus, and when there were no other means of transport left, I went up into the mountains.”

  “And in the mountains?”

  “There I stayed. I found refuge there.”

  I saw a scene from my childhood: my father is riding at full tilt, chasing a fawn. I saw that fawn and the huge dogs that were after it.

  My mother and Bruno Singer had left my apartment a while ago. The gaslight in the street lit the icy flakes that fell and broke against the paving stones.

  I was playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor.

  The music was my way of meditating, of relaxing myself, or of calming someone down. Andrei lay on the sofa, silent, motionless. His fit was over. I had cleared away the broken crockery and swept the entire apartment. I’d done it quickly, without making a noise, while he slept, worn out. Shards of glass and porcelain were everywhere, the floor covered with them, as in A Winter’s Tale. Now everything was neat and tidy, nothing would remind him of how . . .

  Later when he woke, Andrei made strong, Russian tea. He took it without sugar. I also drank that bitter tea. We drank. After so many years of being alone, I’d lost the habit of speaking in the plural. Or even of thinking in the plural.

  We drank the bitter tea.

  Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor.

  I closed my eyes, playing it from memory. I thought back on what had happened: Andrei had come looking for me in the bathroom. It was the only room that his frenzy had spared. I was sitting on the edge of the tub, covering my ears with my hands. He kissed my eyes, but didn’t seem to be aware of what he was doing. He took me into the bedroom. He’d caressed me with his fingertips, without looking at me. He kept my eyes shut, as I did, later, when playing Chopin’s “Nocturne in E minor.” Andrei had moved away from me only once. He removed the white lace curtain from the rail at the window, and he wrapped me up in it, all of me, from my hair down to my toes. “You’re a bride,” he whispered into my ear, “you’re a bride.”

  Then he kissed me through the holes in the lace. When he reached my feet, day had already broken. And it was nighttime once more when he took me in his arms again, all wrapped up in white lace. “You’re a bride,” he said again and again until he fell asleep.

  I’d fallen asleep after him, only to wake up before he did.

  Half asleep, I swept up the splinters of glass and the shards of porcelain and pottery. Once everything was clean, I covered my ears again. In my mind, I’d never stopped hearing that deafening racket. I locked myself in the bathroom with my ears firmly covered. My tears had cleansed me from within, carrying off with them all that uproar, all that madness. And then . . . bride . . . bride . . . I heard this word inside myself.

  I’d felt I needed to see him most urgently.

  In the bedroom, I spotted the blood at once. In the night Andrei’s nose had bled. Without knowing why, I covered my ears again. With my hands on my ears, I looked down at that sleeping body.

  I hid the blood under a white towel. Andrei had stopped bleeding by now. I lay back down beside him. I put an arm over his sleeping body. He has to be protected, I told myself. Asleep, he held my hand and made himself comfortable under my arm as if it were a warm eiderdown.

  And now we were drinking bitter tea. I was playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E minor.

  The phone rang. I ignored it.

  The phone went on ringing for quite a while, before falling silent.

  I desired nothing, I needed nothing, I wanted nothing. I was full, like a pitcher full of sunlight. Full of his eyes, full of his warmth, full of music.

  The phone started ringing again.

  “Bruno has gone off to fight the Germans,” my mother’s voice said over the receiver, “He’s just left with a friend on a motorbike, they’re going to look for weapons.”

  “To look for weapons,” I repeated mechanically. It seemed logical enough to me.

  “Yes, Sylva, to look for weapons. There’s going to be a general mobilization.”

  Maman spoke in a strange, almost solemn way.

  “The weapons,” I repeated. “The Nazis have started to occupy Prague. It seems to make you happy.”

  “They all, we all, want the same thing: to defend our country,” she answered vaguely.

  I said nothing. I was thinking that Andrei had left too soon. He’d left. And I was thinking about something else too: the week before, an entire Jewish family had committed suicide, one of the families renting an apartment in my building. I remembered again that Andrei wasn’t there and that I didn’t know when I’d see him again.

  A moment later, I heard Maman’s voice on the receiver again.

  “Am I happy that the Germans have started to occupy Prague? No I’m not at all happy about it. But now Bruno knows what he wants. The time of uncertainty has passed, the months and years of fearing things yet to come, are over. The time of passivity is over. Now Bruno is going to look for weapons with which to defend the Czech people against the Germans.”

  “But his mother tongue is German.” It was true.

  “Sylva, what’s wrong with you? Does it matter what his mother tongue is? Of course it doesn’t! Are you still asleep? You sound like Verdi’s La Sonnambula, the sleepwalker!”

  Before my eyes swam Bruno’s swarthy, intelligent face, but now it was hidden by the shadow of an army helmet, one of many helmets belonging to the Czechoslovakian army. No, I couldn’t imagine the refined Herr Singer as a soldier.

  I moaned inadvertently, because I didn’t know what to say.

  On the other end of the line, I heard a squeak like the badly oiled wheels of a cart. It was my mother, answering with a laugh that echoed her own mood.

  When people have no words, they emit only sounds. Like animals, so they say. Like objects, in fact. Instead I started to play Brahms’s last Intermezzo, Opus 119.

  I had no words.

  Months later, my mother called to let me know that there wasn’t going to be any mobilization.

  “Right now the Minister of Defense, Jan Syrový, is on the radio. He’s said that this is the most difficult moment of his life. Do you want to listen to him, Sylva?” and she placed the receiver close to the radio. I heard a grave, broken voice:

  “Everyone has abandoned us. To retrace our steps and accept the situation as it is today, now that the three Great Powers have betrayed us, cannot be considered a dishonor. So we wish to call out to our people, to ask them to overcome their heavy heartedness, their grief. The most important thing is that we are all united. It is vital to en
sure that foreign elements do not impinge on us. Do not succumb to confusion.”

  Then Syrový said, with greater emphasis, “Do not stray from the correct path. Now, within our new borders, we will strengthen our community and our national identity. All this is in our hands, and in yours. With your help we will achieve this. We trust in you, so do trust in us!”

  My mother pressed the receiver back against her ear.

  “Our leaders have decided not to fight the invader. You know, Sylva, by doing this they have taken away Bruno’s only feeling of freedom, and his power to decide for himself.” She added, in a low voice, that both she and Bruno felt their country no longer belonged to them.

  “I haven’t left the apartment for days,” I whispered back into the receiver.

  “Prague is now full of Nazi uniforms, Sylva.”

  All of a sudden, she said something that made me think of the words spoken by Defense Minister Syrový, “Sylva, I don’t know what to do. The only thing I know is that in all this chaos and uncertainty, I’m going to be at Bruno’s side, no matter where he goes.”

  “I understand,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “Sylva,” my mother went on, “life has taught me that there are three commandments. Sadly, I haven’t always obeyed them. I’d like you to remember them. Always have the courage to take risks. Think everything over to see what lays on the horizon. As long as you are alive, do something that will be useful for the generations to come. You won’t forget this little legacy of mine, will you, Sylva?”

  I didn’t leave my home. Why would I do so? Andrei wasn’t in Prague anymore. How could he get back to me now, when the Germans were strutting through the streets, humiliating all those who didn’t belong to their nation?

  For the first time I understood something that I would never before have been in agreement with—that a personal concern can be more important than a collective sense of grief.

  The fact was, Andrei had gone.

  But he existed!

  A white geranium was blooming in the flowerpot on the windowsill, illuminating the world around it. In the breeze, the geranium’s white petals mixed with the snowflakes.