The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  I rented a small, cozy apartment for Katya right in the middle of the college campus. Before she arrived, I’d placed a bunch of yellow roses in there as a surprise, but when we emerged from there together, Katya, who was wearing a yellow flower bud in her lapel, was silent and sour faced, in a bad mood because she didn’t like the apartment. Later she confessed that she found it too small and bare, okay for a student, but not for a grown woman. “I didn’t think America was going to be like this,” she said, running her pink nails through her blonde curls. As a result, Katya spent a lot of time at my place. She quickly struck up friendships with other Russians who lived in Boston and invited them over. Often when I got back in the evening from school, I found them all partying like crazy. I ended up coming home later and later.

  Eventually I broached the subject of Katya’s return to Russia. After all, I’d invited her for only a short stay! Katya grew irritated when I asked about her departure. But to be honest, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted Katya to go. I didn’t much like the company of those Russian émigrés, but neither did I fancy the idea of living as I’d done before, all alone, with only the bare yellow light covered by a lace cloth, and my mathematics for company . . . and the image of Helena playing the violin.

  Helena . . . who had disappeared one day, like a grain of sand carried off by the greedy tongue of an ill-disposed wave.

  So what choice could I make?

  In the end, I didn’t have to make a choice. Life made it for me. Katya, like most Russians, would have said it was fate, sudba.

  Why, on the fateful evening, did I seek out Katya’s company? I had told her I was through with her, but she still decided she was going to stay in America. At least for as long as her visa lasted, she said. After that we saw each other only very occasionally.

  At a dinner with the Boston Russians in a French restaurant, Katya criticized American women, saying they were crude, clumsy, unfeminine, and hypocritical. I didn’t agree The American women I’d known were decent, friendly, and natural, whereas Russian women struck me as being calculating and selfish, but I didn’t want to come out with any sweeping generalizations, so I kept silent. I knew from my own experience that it was very difficult for an American to get on well with a European. Although we might be similar in appearance and habits, we are different and never seem to fully understand each other, but that was exactly what I liked about the company of Americans.

  But Katya still didn’t know America, she still hadn’t discovered what I still find really surprising: Americans don’t believe in nuances, in looking at the gray areas, or in taking a middle path. They want things to be clear-cut, the way they are in sports, where you know who’s good and who isn’t thanks to measurable criteria, the number of field goals, the number of passes. Americans see the world in black and white terms, everything must be either good or bad, a success or a failure. People too, in their eyes, can be divided into winners or losers. For a moment, I thought that communist regimes don’t like nuances either and that their values are equally clear-cut, inasmuch that they make it quite clear what you can and can’t do.

  Katya left the table a little bit before the other guests; she was followed out by a man called Mikhail. Later, when I left the restaurant with the others, there was a couple in the shadows of the parking lot, quite a distance away from us. The woman’s coat was unbuttoned, and under the coat I saw a man’s hands, caressing her. Judging from his cap, that man was Mikhail. The woman, without doubt, was Katya.

  That night I slept badly. I kept seeing those hands feeling up that voluptuous body. The day after the dinner I gave a student some exam results that weren’t, in fact, hers. Fortunately, the girl simply smiled and told me I’d made a mistake.

  In the evening, my thirst, my fever grew to an extent that became unbearable. And then I did something that more than anything else shows how irresponsibly and self-destructively irrational I had become.

  I phoned Katya.

  On the first Saturday after my call, we had dinner together at that same French restaurant. After a long period of keeping each other at a distance, our conversation became animated. Still I couldn’t stop myself from seeing those hands feeling up Katya’s abundant body.

  After dinner, we went out into the parking lot. I headed directly for the spot where only a few days ago Katya had let herself be caressed by Mikhail’s hands. For days I had thought of nothing except that moment. I quickly unbuttoned her coat. Then, when I had a firm hold on her body, I realized that I’d been more excited imagining those alien hands on Katya’s body than I was when feeling her up with my own.

  One afternoon, not long after, I went to her apartment to pick her up and got a surprise. Katya had taken great care with her clothes. A gold chain, high heels. Her hair fell over the generous cleavage of her blouse, practically fondling it. I could see her clearly now: she was like a sip of chilled champagne.

  She asked me to sit on the sofa. I looked at my watch, it was half past six. At seven we had to be at Bill and Jills’ place, they’d invited us to dinner. Bill came from a farming background and had been a student of mine, but he didn’t even finish his first year. He left the university to become a car mechanic. Today he has his own garage and several employees. Still he would call me at the university more than once a week and say, “I’d like to buy you a beer.” If he didn’t call me, I’m the one who’d suggest that we have a drink together.

  Recently, Bill had been putting on weight. I didn’t know Bill’s wife, all I knew was that her name was Jill, though Bill talked of her often. Bill didn’t know Katya either.

  At Katya’s place, the light of the setting sun fell on a reproduction of a painting with a maritime theme, stuck in a dark, heavy frame, and also on another reproduction of Degas ballerinas and reflected off its gilt frame. There were quite a few gilt objects in Katya’s apartment, and now all of them were highlighted in all their pompous phoniness.

  Katya placed a bottle of champagne and two tall glasses on the coffee table in front of the sofa. I looked at my watch: it was just past a quarter to seven.

  “Katya,” I started, but she placed a finger on my lips to shut me up.

  In silence, she laid a dish of canapés next to the bottle of champagne. There was red and black Russian caviar.

  “Are we celebrating something? I had no idea,” I asked, cautiously. I didn’t want Katya to see how restless I was, but by now it was getting seriously late. Right there and then we should have been getting in the car, not opening any bottles of champagne.

  “Yes, we’re celebrating something,” she smiled and sat down next to me.

  “But . . . ” I looked at my watch.

  “We’re celebrating something,” Katya said significantly, as she handed me the bottle of champagne. The cork slid out, as smooth as silk.

  Katya picked up a glass, essaying a smile. She probably thought that smiling was the American thing to do. She showed her teeth and gums. Her smile was limited to her facial muscles, it didn’t come from within her.

  “John,” she said, looking at the bubbles. She immediately corrected herself and said my name in Czech, something she never usually did, “Jan.”

  Call me foolish and gullible, but that little detail won me over.

  After a while, Katya said, “I’m . . . you know?”

  Now I certainly wasn’t expecting that. Had it been me or that man with the hands? How long had it been since . . . I started to calculate.

  Katya stared at me. I knew she expected me to say something fitting to the occasion. A toast.

  A toast?

  Yes, a toast, about us being together for the rest of our lives. That’s what she expected of me.

  “Is that a Monet?” I asked, pointing to the reproduction with the maritime theme.

  “Are you seriously asking me that?” she gave me an expression of infinite scorn, “Can you really not tell the difference between a Monet and a Manet?”

  I noticed that some of her lipstick had come off on
her teeth.

  “Of course I can tell the difference, I just made a mistake, that’s all,” I tried to explain.

  A red stain on white teeth. It went well with the gilt picture frames, I remember thinking.

  I didn’t say anything to her about that lipstick stain.

  So I said a few words, without thinking too hard about them. The fact is, I didn’t have anything to mull over: in that instant I knew I had to marry Katya and have the child. And I thought about how, at the age of thirty, or a little less, Katya would be getting married for the fourth time. My thoughts took on a life of their own then, beyond my control: at forty she’d be married for the fifth time, and at fifty, for the sixth. Idiotic thoughts! I ditched them on the spot.

  Deep down, I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. I said the words, watching myself become a father—a man with a gut and weary, heavy movements, carrying a skateboard and an inflatable mattress in one hand, a howling, screaming child holding my other hand, a huge bag full of cookies and Coca-Cola bottles on my shoulder, and an expression of paternal concern and resignation on my face, my body bent under the weight of my burden and of fate itself. No woman would ever look at me again, and if she did it would be to laugh at that human being turned into a dad. Behind me walked my wife, now on the plump side, looking old and worn out, carrying a little bucket and a toy spade, a big inflatable swan under one arm, a beach ball in the other, and three wet towels hanging off both shoulders. That is how I’d seen parents at the beach, and I had pitied them from the distance afforded me by the conviction that that was never, ever going to happen to me. And now I could see myself becoming a dad.

  But right then I could think of nothing except that we were going to arrive really, really late at Bill and Jill’s. It irked me.

  Katya kissed me.

  As I looked at her long, red nails, I heard her voice say, “I dumped Mikhail for you.”

  I didn’t understand. She made an effort to explain, “Mikhail, the one who . . . ”

  Of course: in my mind’s eye I saw a man’s hands and the breasts of an Indian goddess.

  “Yeah, I dumped him for you. And he isn’t just one of your little provincial professors. He’s a businessman.”

  “Katya, it’s half past seven, “I said, concerned, “let’s go, we were supposed to be there at seven!”

  “John! Where do you think you’re going? This evening must be for us alone!”

  I didn’t answer. I handed her her coat.

  Katya grumbled. “I knew this would turn out . . . ” In a lower voice, she added, “You’re a . . . ”

  In silence, I helped Katya into her coat. It was the same one those male hands had unbuttoned, I remembered it well.

  “Katya, this is Jill and Bill. My friends, this is my fiancée, Katya.”

  Bill wore a checkered shirt and jeans. Jill had put on some white trousers and a pink sweater with a big heart in the middle, made of shiny bits of red plastic. She looked something like Bill. She was obese. In fact, you could only tell them apart by their clothes, they looked so much like each other. The pink sweater tipped you off that Jill was a woman.

  “Hello,” Katya finally managed to say, as wide eyed as if she were at the zoo, looking at some strange and monstrous animals. Katya cultivated her foreign accent like a gardener did a pricy palm tree, but when she spoke in Russian, she always threw in a few American words. She was now shaking Jill’s hand, adorned as it was with long, glossy red nails.

  We passed into the house. Through the window you could see a huge shopping mall. It was almost dark by now, and I was greeted by the neon words “Woolworth” and “Wallgreens” and “IGA,” in red and green and then more red and then yellow. The parking lot was almost empty and I could make out my black Toyota quite clearly. By then, I should have been thinking of it as ours.

  I took off my leather jacket, Jill hung it up by the door. Bill helped Katya to take off her coat. Jill was stunned by the sight of Katya’s ever so short miniskirt, transparent stockings, and high heels, and ran her fingers through her hair. Katya looked back at her, scared.

  Bill patted me on the back and grimaced the way he often did when we had a beer together. He led me to my place at the table. Jill brought Katya. Once we were seated, Katya looked at the walls.

  “Are these Madonnas from Florence?” she asked.

  Bill scratched the back of his neck. Jill got to work at the stove.

  “Florence, Italy, Europe,” I explained.

  Bill burst out laughing, “There I was thinking Florence, Kentucky, Florence, Illinois, or Florence, Arizona. OK! The Madonnas are from Jill’s family. Her mother was from Arizona and they’ve got Madonnas all over the place down there.”

  Bill brought over a gigantic bag with red letters dancing across it: Cooler Ranch Bold and Daring Crunchy Chips.

  “Want some?” Bill offered the open bag to Katya.

  She read the letters and seemed somewhat frightened. Bill took the bag away and in its place offered us a huge bag with a threatening message on it: Grab Your Bag of Tostitos. Crunch into Tostitos.

  Jill reassured us, “Don’t be afraid, they won’t make you fat,” and showed us the lettering: Thanks to our Tostitos Chips You Can AllowYourself More Snacking Fun! Great Taste! No Guilt!

  Jill put a lot of plates and platters and bowls and frying pans on the table: mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and a salad made of apples with celery and walnuts. Bill came swaying over to us, bringing more nourishment. “Sweet corn, baked potatoes, hot dogs, for our dinner party!” Jill sang out. Katya grimaced, frowned, then tried to smile, showing her teeth stained with red lipstick.

  “These sausages are for you. We’re vegetarians,” Bill said, as he sat down.

  “Our doctor doesn’t want our cholesterol level to increase,” Jill said in her singsong voice. She stood next to Bill, and stroked his shoulder. She had a tiny nose, teeth like little pearls, and ears that could have belonged to a little girl. The rest of her was simply enormous.

  “We have to lose some weight,” admitted Bill, pointing at some bananas lying on a platter in one corner of the table. On each banana there was a shiny sticker: No Cholesterol.

  “The doctor says we eat too much fatty food,” said Jill.

  “So we’ve become vegetarians,” Bill added, inserting half a potato covered in sour cream into his mouth.

  On her baked potato, Jill added four scoops of a margarine called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, and said, “Bill, eat properly. You’re supposed to start with the salad.”

  Bill blushed. “Oh, right, sure, right.” When he spoke and ate, he wheezed, as did Jill. When he laughed, it came out as a snore.

  We were silent. Only Bill, from time to time, grimaced at me.

  Katya put three spoonfuls of salad on her plate. Immediately, Jill passed her a plastic bottle of Thousand Island Fat-Free Dressing.

  “The average American puts on six pounds for Christmas and then spends January and February trying to lose weight by going on a low-calorie diet.”

  Katya poured some of that thick, pink sauce with little green bits floating in it onto her salad and slowly began to mix it all together. She wore her blouse, which was as red as a poisonous toadstool, as were her lips and nails, unbuttoned. She was looking at where Jill had rested her hands on the table.

  They were the biggest hands I’d ever seen. They smelled clean, of some kind of special soap. They were vanilla flavored, like the sponge cake you used to make for me for my birthday, Mama, when I was little.

  Jill noticed our stares and lowered her eyes.

  “This is my wedding band,” she said, “and this other one with a shell in it is a gift from when I was being given chemotherapy. That was five years ago. Medal for bravery, huh?” she winked at Bill. Bill winked back, and looked at her as if he were about to sing her a lullaby.

  When she saw that, Katya turned to me and kissed me on the lips. Straight away, I followed her kiss with a spoonful of sweet corn and wiped my lips
with a paper napkin. I noticed the teddy bears with lace collars around their necks, printed on that napkin. I think I was blushing. Because of the kiss.

  Bill smiled at me. When he looked back at his plate, he avoided Katya’s eyes.

  “In the factory where I work, I have to take my rings off each morning,” said Jill, “and when I finish for the day, I put them back on.”

  “Could I ask you for something to drink?” said Katya in a pleading voice. Then to me, in Russian, she said, “We brought a bottle of French wine with us. Where is it?”

  “What do they make at the factory where you work?” I asked Jill.

  “Oh, excuse me, I’m a real scatterbrain!” Bill jumped out of his chair, “I forgot. I guess that’s because we never drink anything when we eat, do we Jill? So I didn’t offer you anything. We’ve got water, milk, gin, coffee . . . that’s about it. And coffee with milk, of course.”

  “I’ll have—” Katya started to say.

  “That bottle of wine, we left it back in the car, it’s on the back seat,” I said to Katya quietly, in English. And it’s better that way, I thought to myself.

  “What do they make at the factory where you work?” I asked Jill for the second time.

  “We drink milk, but only when we’ve finished eating, right, Jill?” Bill said, as he put a large jug of cold milk on the table.

  “I’d love a glass of milk,” I said.

  “One glass for John!” Bill said, laughing, and poured the milk into a tall glass.

  “And where do you work, Katya?” Jill asked, and spooned sour cream onto her baked potato.

  “Well, I’ll have some coffee, if there’s nothing else,” said Katya. “I work at a radio station.”

  “Katya might be able to get a job on a local station that broadcasts programs in Russian for Russian immigrants. If there’s a vacancy,” I explained.

  “So what are you doing meanwhile?” insisted Jill.

  “Well, right now, to tell the truth . . .” Katya didn’t finish her sentence and gave me a resentful look.