“What do they make at the factory where you work?” I asked Jill.
“Wow, a Russian radio station,” said Jill, “So what’s going on in Russia these days? The other day they said on the TV that there’s democracy over there, like there is here. Is there enough food? Come on, kids, eat away! There’s lots of everything!” She pointed at the pots on the stove.
“A radio station, wow!” said Bill, whistling through his teeth, “I guess you’ll get to interview the majorettes, and maybe even football players, too, huh?” he glanced at the TV that was switched on.
“I got my rings enlarged, but now they’re too small for me again. It’s a sign of age, ain’t nothing I can do about that!” Jill sighed with a smile.
Bill had forgotten about Katya’s coffee. He said, “I’m a Chicago Bulls fan. I’m from, well, not really from Chicago, but from Illinois, from a little town called Rantoul, well, in fact, I’m really from a little farm lost in the cornfields.”
“Do you follow American football, Katya?” Jill wanted to know.
“Could I help myself to a little more sweet corn?” I asked.
“Oh sure you can! Finish it all, John, that’s what I like to see. What kind of factory do I work in? We make bathroom fittings, bathtubs and basins and showers. Have you been to our bathroom here at home, yet? No? Oh, you gotta go, it’s an experience in itself! Hey kids, make sure you leave a little room for dessert, huh?”
“Jill’s made a cake that is to die for,” Bill said, and brought it over to the table. It was a large cake, decorated with pink icing and a red ribbon made of sugar.
“Hey, hold on there!” Jill told him off, stroking his hand.
“I don’t want to wait! I really want them to see this, right now! It’s a miracle! It’s the best strawberry cake in all of America! And it’s been made by my wife!”
Jill grinned.
Bill looked for something in the fridge, then closed it. He solemnly placed a sky blue rose, made out of marzipan, on top of the cake.
Jill clapped.
I joined in.
I looked at Katya, who was sitting with her nose wrinkled up in distaste, stiff, upright, with her head held high and her eyes raised upward, as if she wanted to see what was on top of the furniture that was almost ceiling high. Slowly she reached for my glass of milk and took a sip. Then she was back to being stiff as a statue. The Allegory of Distinction, I thought to myself.
“Jeez!” Katya said when we were walking through the parking lot to my car. No, our car.
In one of the display windows in the shopping mall, which was closed now, I saw the essence of American life offered to my eyes in red neon: Snacks . . . Root Beer . . . Newspapers . . . Milkshakes . . . Mango Madness . . . Coca-Cola. It was a completely unpremeditated artistic installation and I looked at it admiringly. There was nobody there, only the low and long and wide buildings of the mall, cold, and, to European eyes, dehumanized, as incomprehensible as America itself.
A European has to get used to the cold beauty of America. I knew this from my own experience. Now I got a kick out of seeing a highway with its colorful gas stations on either side; I enjoyed the sight of the huge empty spaces of the ground-level parking lots, full of cars by day, empty by night. I loved to look at this hidden beauty of America, almost a metaphor for the country itself, where the practical use of a space or a building is more important than how they look.
I took Katya by the shoulders and turned her toward me. She lowered her head, looking down at the concrete, the ground of the parking lot. She probably didn’t have any other point of reference. Not even I was a point of reference.
I caressed her shoulders. She didn’t move.
I pressed the smooth fabric of her blouse, but I felt no desire. Katya led me to a place that was halfway between two tall streetlights, that was poorly lit. She threw her head back.
I continued caressing her. Katya sighed and moaned with her eyes closed. I was only going through the motions, I didn’t feel anything. I pressed my palms up harder against her breasts. Katya bent a little forward at the waist. I unfastened her blouse. Her bra then unfastened at the front. Two full, heavy breasts fell from it.
No desire came.
Pity took the place of desire.
I fastened Katya’s blouse. I kissed her hair.
Slowly I took her to the car.
I turned around to see the welcoming yellow light that came from Jill and Bill’s house. I thought about them: as they said goodbye and afterward, as Katya and I walked away, when Bill and Jill gave each other a clumsy hug. At a distance, on the lit veranda, they looked like two rag dolls designed to make people laugh and yet feel tender at the same time. Jill and Bill.
When we stopped in front of Katya’s place, she looked at me out of the corner of her eye—in a seductive way? Or was she keeping a careful watch on me?
“Would you like to come in for a glass of wine?” she asked. No, I didn’t feel like it. So I said nothing. Katya placed a hand on my thigh.
I remained silent. Katya put my hand on her right breast. I still said nothing. I made a move as if to caress her. Nothing. There was just a breast, nothing else; it might as well have been a chair.
Katya stuck out her lower lip and sang, “Sweet corn, baked potatoes, hot dogs,” with her Russian accent. That slightly ridiculous accent. Or sad, even. Pathetic, like my hand on her breast.
“Sweet cooooooorn, baked potaaaaatoes, hot dooooogs,” sang Katya, a disdainful sneer on her lips. She still had that red stain on her teeth. I knew it, even though I couldn’t see it in the dark.
I freed my hand, and turned the key in the ignition.
“Are you sure you don’t feel like a glass of wine or champagne?” Katya asked again.
No, I didn’t feel like having a glass of wine or champagne with Katya. I don’t feel like it, I was about to say. But in the end I replied, “Yes, there’s nothing I’d like better, but tomorrow I have to get up early. So I can’t.”
She left languorously, slowly, with indifference. But I knew she was play-acting. She muttered something in a hoarse voice about Mikhail. Instantly, I saw his hands. But nothing else. I was at peace.
I drove, I didn’t want to go straight home. I took note of the cold light of the streetlamps as they whooshed past me, each one identical to the other. The same lights, with long breaks between them: always, the same monotony. Always, the same enigma. Sweet corn, baked potatoes, hot dogs. The memory of that evening ran through me like sweet port wine. In front of me, I saw the Chicago Bulls and a few majorettes on a TV screen. And a glass of cold milk. A yellow light in a dark house. I stepped on the gas.
X
SYLVA
“In Russia, you will meet Tsvetayava. How I envy you, Andrei.”
You were going back to your country, despite your protests, I had got my way. I wanted to follow you, and live peacefully far from Prague where people were making my life impossible.
“Tsvetayava? That would be difficult,” you interrupted me, “she killed herself a few years ago, not long after her return to Russia.”
Finally! We would live together, far from this poisonous city.
“Then you’ll meet Babel, Mandelstam . . .”
“But Sylva, do you really not know that both of them have died in the forced labor camps?”
I had managed to impose my own will, my desires.
“All right, what I mean is, you’ll be able to meet important artists and poets, maybe even Anna Akhmatova, and musicians, who knows, maybe Shostakovich, why not?” I told him. I prattled on, talking endlessly just to give myself something to do. “What a great adventure, Andrei! How I envy you!”
I talked my head off to make my inner voice shut up. The voice that had been speaking to me since last night.
Yesterday in the middle of the night I had heard the phone ring. I hadn’t woken up. I wasn’t asleep. In silence, I picked up the phone.
“I know it’s you,” said a woman’s nervous voice, “You
who have Andrei in her power.”
“Me?” I’d said, “But Andrei’s free to do as he pleases.” Silly though it might seem, I felt flattered. The woman’s voice was trembling.
“You who do just as you please with Andrei, you who are spinning your little web just the way you want it.”
Irritated, I said, “You’re the one doing as she pleases, how come you’re calling people up at this time of night?” The woman’s voice hadn’t reacted to my words, she was beside herself: “You’re playing with him like a chess player would a pawn. And now you’re doing your best to send him to Siberia.” “Andrei wants to go back to Russia,” I said, and wanted to add, “Of his own free will,” but my voice had dried up. So I remained silent, as usual. It was better that way! I didn’t have to justify myself. “Pardon me, Madame von Stamitz, for being so forthright. But please, do think things over, there is still time!” The woman was imploring me. Her entreaties made me feel good. “Talk to him, let him have second thoughts,” she went on, “You know that he’s ill. If he goes to Russia, he’s done for. It’d kill him!” In the chill of the night, I felt so cold I was shivering. I had to sit down. “I beg of you,” I heard the receiver say. Such hysterics! I told myself, although I knew full well that the woman on the other end of the line was worried sick, that she was desperate. “I beg of you, in the name of your mother, who died in a concentration camp because she wanted to follow her husband even there. Please Madame Sylva, in the name of everything that’s sacred, talk to Andrei, he’ll listen to you.”
I hung up. I felt cold and wanted to get back into my warm bed.
Andrei was sleeping peacefully. I didn’t wake him up. There was no reason to. I wouldn’t have woken him up for anything in the world, least of all to make him think twice about his trip. And for other reasons, including the fact that I knew perfectly well which woman I’d just been dealing with.
All the same, there was still time . . .
So I talked incessantly, Andrei, just to get rid of the silence that had fallen between us, and to get rid of the phantom thoughts that kept telling me you were going back to Russia because I had willed it, against your own better judgement. I talked and prattled on so much that I managed to convince myself that this trip of yours was a wonderful, enviable thing, that it was a great adventure.
Your return to Russia. To the Soviet Union. The return trip organized by the Soviet embassy. In other words, Stalin himself.
The voice of that woman on the phone went through my mind again and again. She had called to convince me that it would be a fatal mistake if Andrei went back to Russia. But I knew that. I’d known it even before that woman called me.
How had she found out about my mother? Or that I’d asked Andrei to make this trip?
Whatever the case, it was too late to go back. I wouldn’t give that neighbor the satisfaction of following her advice. In a short while, Andrei would board a train for Russia. Now that I’d heard how desperate that woman was, I was convinced that Andrei absolutely had to go.
Was it really too late now to backtrack? No . . . there was still time!
On the platform, you looked at me so calmly.
The desperation in the neighbor’s voice . . . would I be capable of such deep compassion?
There was still time . . . I had to tell you . . .
Your silence weighed heavily on me, Andrei. It weighed on me, even though you weren’t nervous then, and were simply looking at me.
“Are you looking forward to going back home, Andrei?”
“I’m looking forward to meeting up with you again.”
“But not to going back home? We each only have one country we can call our own.”
“Why? What does home mean to you?”
“It’s something you value. The thing you value most.”
“You are my home. I have no other.”
“That’s a wonderful thing to say, but I’m talking about fields, forests, scents, and colors.”
“I’ve spent the last twenty-two years in the forest, among animals and Gypsies and trees and small flowers. I was happy there, even more so when you came along.”
“But Andrei, surely—”
My persuasive chatter broke off. Shattered by the quick movement of the little red flag. By the shriek of the whistle.
Yet there was still time!
You got onto the train, together with other faces that were familiar to me from the party at the Soviet Embassy. Carrying your favorite canvases, you boarded the train, Andrei, too tall and too burly for that narrow door, too elegant for those bureaucrats from the embassy, who made you go deep into the inside of the train; you were too free and too natural—like a creature of the forest—for that prison on wheels.
Andrei, when you got onto that train, I couldn’t see you any longer. I just saw a free man who was walking into a cell, it could as easily have been a monasterial cell or a prison cell. A place too dark and narrow for your longings, for your sense of freedom.
You leaned out of the window.
There was still time! I had to tell you . . .
“Andrei, get out,” I said in a near whisper.
You burst out laughing, you thought I was joking.
“Andrei, we’ll have a child, you’ll be by my side.”
“Yes, yellow butterfly, I mean Blue Butterfly, of course we’ll have children! Of course we will!”
He didn’t get it. Yes, we’d have children, because I was already expecting.
I’d put on my sky blue dress, which must have been at least fifteen years old by then. I wanted you to see me like that, in your memories. Dressed in sky blue.
In your memories? Why, we’d be together again very, very soon! And our child would be born there, in those new surroundings where the insufferable atmosphere of Prague wouldn’t weigh upon me so. Hatred. Hatred against me, against the mother of Andrei’s child.
Lots of people on the platform were crying, and some of those who were leaning out of the windows also had moist eyes. Many others were laughing and waving their handkerchiefs and blowing kisses or arguing and raising their voices—a usual enough scene before the departure of any international train. A feverish atmosphere.
Only you then, Andrei, with your white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, you who had argued against making this trip and had refused to make it, you, who had started at the idea of it like a forest creature when it spots a hunter, only you were looking confident.
You were looking confidently at me. Confident in my correct choice.
Your confidence, your devotion was . . .
I wasn’t able to finish the thought. The train moved.
“Andrei, get off the train!”
You didn’t hear me. The train was making a lot of noise. I paid no heed to the hiss of steam from the locomotive, nor to the stationmaster’s whistle, nor to the shouts and wails and kisses. All I saw was my own desire, which had appeared before me as clear and prominent as a palm tree in the desert.
I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Andrei, get off the train!”
At that very moment, perhaps too late, my desire was clear.
“Andrei, get off the train!”
Waves of handkerchiefs, waves of tears.
And in the middle of all this hustle and bustle, you whispered.
I heard you through the din of the revolving red and black wheels, through the flames of the women’s cries. You were upright in the train, by the window, you didn’t feel all those bodies pressing against you. You said, simply, quietly, “Blue Butterfly.”
I got off the tram in the Prague neighborhood of Vinohrady. I was dragging Jan along by the hand.
Jan, who had just turned five, was looking at the shops on Francouzská Avenue. Unlike our impoverished neighborhood of Malá Strana, here there were long rows of display windows. The shops opened their empty mouths. But the eyes of a child could find, even in that desert, sparkling treasures from lost Pacific Islands.
I pulled Jan away from each one of those tem
ptations; in my left hand I was carrying two heavy bags; in them were Beethoven’s quartets, Brahms’s sonatas for violin and Mahler’s lieder, Janáček’s music for piano and Smetana, everything by Smetana. And the Russians, that was something new: Shostakovich’s piano trios, Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring and Orpheus. And, especially, the song of the angels with golden hair and white wings who carried a flute in their hands—the old liturgical chants—and also contemporary ones, the ones by Balakirov.
I pulled Jan well away from a window displaying caps, of the type normally worn by building workers. The sign hanging above the caps read: “Throughout our country echoes the voice of hatred and scorn for the gang of spies and traitors in our midst. Death to the agents of imperialism!” I pulled Jan away from the shop windows with my right hand, in my left I was carrying two heavy bags full of records. This music had survived the war declared on me by my first husband, and on the racket made by the Nazi planes and their orders shouted in penetrating voices, like the kicks given by military boots, and now it had survived the shouting of the new leaders of today, the Communists who had taken over by means of a coup d’état. These records had survived the phony euphoria of the workers’ festivals with their parades: Schubert and Chopin, Purcell and Schnittke, Martinů and Palestrina . . . Giovanni Pierluigi of Palestrina . . . just his name was music to my ears. In those two shopping bags I carried all my worldly goods, all my treasures.
Jan’s treasures consisted of everything he saw in those badly lit shop windows: a wooden train set and a monkey in the toy shop, a string of greenish sausages in a butcher’s, a little pot of sickly violets in a florist’s.
There were no roses anymore. Roses yellow as sand, roses the color of custard, like the arms of a baroque plaster angel, roses white as clouds in the spring sky. Oh, roses! The color of my Pink Palace in the Malá Strana, which was no longer pink and no longer mine, it was gray and the State had taken it over. Roses red as sealing wax. Roses! You couldn’t bring them to me as gifts now, Andrei, those roses in those trembling fingers of yours. What are roses like, those long-stemmed flowers? What do they look like? Jan was eyeing a couple of bluish Vienna rolls in a baker’s window. One was covered in rock salt, the other in cumin, and the cumin was green. In the lady’s wear shop they were displaying overalls of the kind electricians wear, blue ones: they were puffed up with pride, like the flag of this new era. I looked inside the shop: apart from four sets of electricians’ overalls, there were some navy tracksuits, another sign of the new era.
The Silent Woman Page 22