The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  The trees of Petřín Mountain were in bud. The fruit on the trees of Petřín Mountain was growing ripe. Then trees of Petřín Mountain turned a fiery red. I noticed all this on my walks upward, ever upward, toward that palace of white ice where pale automatons told me time and again that they knew nothing. And I always found one, usually the youngest, who promised, “As you are a citizen of the Reich, we’ll try and find your mother.”

  The trees of Petřín Mountain were in bud. Later, the buds opened, and then they became flowers, then fruit. The fruit fell to the ground. Then the trees blossomed again. Why? Who asked nature to dress up so fancifully, so graciously, when the Nazis were burning villages and taking men and women to nobody knew where?

  How did Andrei put it? “To know that I do not know is wisdom. To ignore the fact that I know is a sickness.” I knew, but I pretended that I didn’t.

  I went down to the muddy path; the bus was driving away with a rusty, clanking sound.

  The footpath, which led from the base of the mountain to the high sierra, was a steep climb. Icy rain fell, and I hid the bag under my raincoat in which I carried the letters addressed to Andrei that had been sent to my house; especially the letter that contained the invitation, the invitation on which I had placed so many hopes.

  I made my way up through the undergrowth, stepping over stones and branches as big as the arms of a giant. No one was keeping this path in a reasonable condition. I looked around me at all the houses and chalets and huts and farmhouses, all in ruins. Here, far from the big cities, a war between rats had taken place, the rat families had exterminated each other: first the Czechs against the Germans, then the Germans against the Czechs, and then the Czechs against the Germans again.

  Against the greenish sky, I could make out a house with broken windows, holes in the roof, and a half-demolished chimney. The chimney was like a finger pointing to the heavens . . . it’s your fault, bloodthirsty sky! I didn’t dare enter. I trembled just to think what I might find there.

  Bacchic laughter bubbled out of a clearing in the fir trees, something was moving there. Yes, it was heading toward the path. I had asked for directions to Andrei’s house. The black figure now twisted and laughed as it ran toward me, and embraced me only to step back a moment later and move away from me. Then the scent of its breath, familiar and perfumed with liquor, came back to me. The figure moved its laughing face closer.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I’m the guardian,” the laughing man sang out.

  “The guardian of what?” I asked.

  “The guardian of the animals,” he sang, “of the boars and the roe deer, of the squirrels, and the mice and the goats. I’m the guardian,” sang the giggling man and now he was embracing the narrow waist of a birch tree as he danced a wild polka, and then he vanished once more into the shadow of the forest, jumping and singing and giving out euphoric cries, leaping all over the place . . . When he’d gone, I kept my eye open for that figure dressed in dangling, torn rags, with a bottle of spirits in his hand. I would have liked to have taken a swig, as I did years ago from the bottle of the Gypsy patriarch, on this very bend in the path, I thought, there was his house, already in ruins, then and now abandoned, like everything around me, all this mountain scenery inhabited by a single inebriated man . . . a man who, seeing what atrocities had taken place, had gone mad.

  Everything was deserted. There was not a light to be seen. Or a flower on a windowsill. Or a lace curtain flapping at some open window. Only broken glass. No homes now. Only ruin, collapsed. Defeat, death. Homicide, fratricide. Cain and Abel. Abraham and Isaac.

  A cat. And then another, and two more, came out to see me and caressed my legs with their fur. More and more cats, dozens of cats came looking for me from among the holm oaks, dragging themselves along, winding their way through the underbrush, and then suddenly slipping back into the low thickets. I picked one up in my arms, I hadn’t felt such tenderness in a long time, my face nuzzling the warm, shivering fur. The cat leaped from my arms. “Cat!” I said, “I’m looking for Andrei, I’m bringing him his mail and a small loaf of bread.” The cat understood me, he led me to a house, yes, it was this one, this was his house! He entered the dark interior, the cold humidity smelling of mold and cats.

  The house was uninhabited! Where was Andrei? What had happened to him? Had they taken him away too? Or did they murder him, like the others? But he wasn’t German, or Czech, or Gypsy. Why, then? He had friends of all nationalities, but he was good friends, very good friends, with the Gypsies . . . The others might hate him for precisely that reason. All of them.

  Darkness, damp air, the stink of an uninhabited house. Nothing but cats everywhere. I explored further and further into the house, I ran into all kinds of objects, and hit against a table. Feeling with my hand, I found a box of matches and quickly lit one, and the first thing I saw was a candle. The candle flame flickered—the wick was probably damp—as I crossed the rooms, which this sickly light was unable to illuminate properly. Suddenly, I noticed something on the wall, a dark stain, and I held the candle up to it. Before my eyes was a large painting . . . Gypsy children and a Gypsy couple dancing, all in red and yellow and orange. On the opposite wall was a Gypsy nativity scene, done in blue.

  On the third wall I made out an image of male figures, arranged next to each other in a kind of ritual dance or holy ceremony. They wore long, priestly robes and were touching each other with stretched out fingers. All the priests were the same, all looked like that wise ruler of the ancient Sumerians: Gudea. Gudea, who from time to time, visited Andrei. On the fourth wall there was a big, dark stain.

  I was in a chapel with frescoes painted on its walls, a chapel in which I was holding up a little flame. I sighed, then cried out. After a moment, I heard, by way of reply, some muffled sounds.

  It was probably only some animal from the forest; why should I be afraid? I thought in an attempt to put myself at ease. I crossed the room to the door. The sounds were coming from somewhere to the right, from a small room with a tiny window sunk into the wall.

  I noticed the pile of horse blankets on the floor. That was where the sounds were coming from. My fingers trembled and tried to disobey me when I reached out my hands to that pile.

  Underneath was a human body.

  Andrei was weak. For days he had had nothing to eat or drink. He hadn’t even got up in days.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “I just couldn’t, not after everything that happened here,” he said. After this . . . He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

  On the wall of the room in which Andrei was lying I felt a pair of eyes watching me. There was a painting: a dark man. A man with large, expressive eyes and an alert, wise face, dressed in a black tunic. His only adornment was a strip of cloth, wrapped around his head like a turban, and marked with cuneiform inscriptions.

  “At night . . . did the Sumerian ruler come?” I asked with a sigh.

  “Yes. And Gudea said, ‘The name which can be pronounced is no longer a name. In the absence of the name is the start of heaven and earth, and the presence of the name is the mother of all things.’

  And then the Sumerian ruler added, slowly, very seriously, ‘The enigma can be glimpsed only when we do not search for it.’”

  I understood that this was the vision of a dying man for whom the world had plunged into all the horror it is capable of producing.

  I wanted Andrei to take some food, and the sooner the better. I had brought a little loaf with me, but he wouldn’t allow me to give it to him.

  “We must celebrate your arrival.”

  My coming here had given him strength, and he dragged himself along with faltering steps, leaning against the walls. He made me sit down in front of the house while he made preparations for the party.

  When he finished Andrei came over to me, took my arm and escorted me inside like the lord of a c
astle with his beloved. Staggering still, he ushered me into his chapel where he had built a small bonfire, the way he had been shown by the Gypsies, who also built fires on the floors of the half-demolished houses where they lived. The holy fire of the most ancient of the nomadic peoples, as Andrei put it.

  On the walls were the three colored frescoes and one dark one. Now, while the reflections of the flames danced on the walls, I realized that the dark painting represented shadow. Everything was dark, except for the face of the white, illuminated face of a Gypsy woman. She was a moon-woman in the shadowy firmament. I couldn’t take my eyes off that painting. The shining Gypsy woman was leading her people far away, nobody knew where.

  Andrei threw two cushions onto a ragged mat that was laid out on the floor. I now saw that he had stoked that little bonfire with some chairs that he had broken into pieces. Outside the forest was drenched, the trees were dripping rainwater. On the mat Andrei had put a couple of plates, my loaf of hard bread, a water jug, a bottle of spirits, and two eggs.

  “They’re rotten, Sylva.”

  He dusted off the cushion he’d offered me as a seat, and helped me to sit in a cross-legged position.

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re eggs!” I said.

  He settled down next to me, so weak he couldn’t even cross his legs. He handed me the plate with the two eggs, which he had adorned with a pine sprig.

  “Eat them, my love.”

  When Germany lost the war, I stopped receiving the rations I had been getting as a citizen of the Reich. Famished, I refused the plate offered by Andrei.

  “No. Both eggs are for you. You need them more than I do.”

  Eventually, each of us drank a rotten egg. I doubt if I have ever savored any other food as much in my entire life.

  The fire crackled and the golden sheen highlighted the delicate features of Andrei’s face. Part of his face shone, the other was submerged in shadow. His pale green eyes glowed, his teeth glimmered above the smooth, gilt hairs of his beard. He spoke in a curious fashion. He said something; his deep voice made it sound important. Then he paused. There was complete silence, and then Andrei, without moving his lips, hummed a melody full of sadness, in a high key that broke at the end to fade away in a deeper tone. It was like the chanting that accompanies traditional Orthodox liturgies. His frescoes too evoked the spiritual atmosphere of a small Orthodox chapel.

  With this strange chant, Andrei was telling me that before my arrival he had been convinced that he would never get up again.

  “You can’t imagine the horror of what went on in these mountains. Sylva, you know that I have already experienced this kind of thing once before. In the Ukraine, twenty-five years ago, remember? But a second time . . . no, I couldn’t bear it a second time.”

  But this time Andrei was different. He wasn’t worried about saving his own skin.

  I embraced him to calm him down, he couldn’t stop shaking. He had the same look in his eyes as when he was suffering one of his attacks of madness. I hugged him close. He resisted. He was stronger. The man from the forest. The madman from the forest. The madman among madmen.

  I made an unusual effort. I steeled myself to chat away merrily.

  “What about these cats, these dozens of cats?”

  “They belonged to the people who lived here in these mountains. With so many . . . well, let’s say dying, the cats went wild in order to survive. In the winter, they came to my house to find food and warmth. Until recently each cat belonged to a neighbor, to a home. There were twenty-six, from twenty-six now demolished or half-demolished houses. Now there are only twenty-one cats, I think, although I haven’t counted them for some time. I know them as if they were my own children.”

  He didn’t want to talk to me any more about the cats, about the people who had been his neighbors. Those who hadn’t died had to forget the dead in order to survive.

  I loosened my hold on the man. Andrei had taken my hand in his, and little by little his shivers and convulsions slowly subsided.

  We sat looking at the fire. The firewood sang its sad song.

  “Sylva, I don’t want to stay in these mountains of death.”

  “We’ll go to Prague together.”

  “I can’t live in Prague. You know that.”

  “Then we’ll go to Russia together. Why not?”

  From my bag, I took one of the letters I had brought him, which I had already opened in Prague to see if it was urgent.

  “They’ve invited you to the Soviet embassy, to a reception.”

  “Don’t be so naive, Sylva. They’re laying a trap for me.”

  “They just want to talk to you.”

  “Don’t trust them.”

  “They’re counting on you, read it!”

  “Sylva, it’s a trick.”

  I told myself: Andrei won’t do anything for me. I’m nothing to him. And another sensation imposed itself over this fleeting thought: I needed to cling to something safe, to someone who would take me far from Prague and save me from this destruction.

  “It’s considerate of them to invite you, Andrei.”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses, Sylva?”

  “Don’t you think it’s nice of them to offer you an opportunity to start your life over again?”

  Andrei kept his mouth shut.

  “Say something, Andrei.”

  “Do you want me to get killed over there?”

  “You can’t tar all the Soviets with the same brush.”

  “What are you babbling about, Sylva, my love!”

  “What other option is left to us, nowadays?”

  “They’re after me. I know it.”

  I caressed his soft hair. In him I saw the fawn from my childhood, fleeing desperately. Andrei grew calmer and calmer, until he became gentle and tender, and, half asleep, he whispered, “When I was fleeing from the Reds, before reaching the Whites, I slept in the forest, in the fields. A Ukrainian peasant took me into his home and dressed my wounds and cured my chilblains. He kept me in his stable. One day he came to see me with a bottle of zubrovka in his hand. He told me his story: ‘The Whites held me prisoner by mistake. Eventually they let me go. For those six months I was unable to say a word to anyone. Six months without wanting to live because of the humiliation of being held prisoner. Only after six months of living in a black vacuum was I able to return to my life.’ That, Sylva, was all the Ukrainian peasant told me. Just that, not one word more. It was the only day he felt like talking, but thanks to his story and then later to my own experiences, I understood there was nothing so terrible or humiliating as lacking freedom.”

  The house smelled of mold, dampness, and cats.

  Andrei whispered in my ear, “I want to be free and unfettered, like a cloud passing through the sky moves without obstacles all its life, desiring nothing, satisfied with everything everywhere. It is nothing in itself, yet roams the whole earth, without leaving a trace. Now, today, it is resting among the mountains, somewhere near us.”

  At that moment Andrei was transformed into a passing cloud. But he was also the fire warming us, and he was the stone wall against which we were leaning, and the four walls that sheltered us.

  The flames crackled and the wood snapped. The light projected reflections on our faces, the forms of exotic flowers and phantasmagorical trees.

  Andrei, calm now, murmured, “There is no way home. In these azure-dressed mountains I am far from the world . . . Not even the Gypsy women come to see me anymore, or the inhabitants of the village in the valley. Not even the birds visit me. All I see is the curl of blue smoke from the candle, which I always light thinking of you, Sylva.”

  Andrei was falling asleep still whistling his words about the clouds and the blue mountains and the valleys, but I wasn’t listening to him, I, too, was whispering my version of the truth into his ear, my secret story, like a lullaby . . . “Andrei, there is something I’ve never told you. I never told you that I became a German citizen of the Reich. Right from the start o
f the war, Andrei, I was officially German. That’s why they didn’t send me to a concentration camp, Andrei. The way they did Bruno and my mother. They died there, Andrei, for sure. By contrast, I am still alive. Andrei, this is what I have hidden from you . . . Andrei, now that the war is over, in Prague they will hunt me down and kill me, just as the Czechs expelled or killed the Germans from these mountains. I have to get out, Andrei, I have to flee, to escape to some place, even if it’s Russia.”

  Andrei, half asleep, said, “But Sylva, don’t you realize that going to Russia would mean going to our deaths?”

  But I didn’t listen to him. I could only think about fleeing, I couldn’t go on living like a hunted animal. I had a burning stigma on my forehead and I felt that everyone could see it, that everyone was pointing it out. And that wasn’t all: I was obsessed with the idea of putting Andrei to a test, the test that would show me once and for all how important I was to him, whether he was capable of doing something for me or not.

  In his dreams, Andrei must have seen my furtive and half-formed thoughts because he said in a low voice, “Sylva, you don’t know what Soviet Russia is like.”

  “Maybe now, after the war, after so much misery and losing so many people, maybe things have changed.”

  Andrei was silent.

  “Let’s try it, Andrei. If it doesn’t work out, we can always come back.”

  Andrei was silent.

  I insisted: “I can’t live here now.”

  Still Andrei remained silent for a long while. Then he said, in a faltering voice, “My love, you are the most important thing to me. I want you to feel happy, and I want to share that happiness with you. If you can’t live here, that means that we will have to leave. Today you have saved my life, and this life that you have given me, I wish to spend all of it with you. I will go wherever you say. I will go wherever you wish me to go.”

  The fire was almost out. Andrei was sleeping deeply now, lulled by my caresses. The embers hissed and barely lit the frescoes on the walls. My eyes wandered from the embers to the painted figures, as if their movement were to have some influence on what was going to happen next in my life.