The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  Katya isn’t happy, not even now, after . . .

  From the start she’d taken me to task for refusing to work for the automobile industry, where I would have a far higher salary, and punished me with a stubborn silence that sometimes went on for days at a time. And I was stubborn too, as far as that particular subject was concerned, I wasn’t about to give in.

  Was I so stubborn really? Because in the end I did finally agree to sell my services, even if only in part.

  Still I hadn’t left the university, I hadn’t betrayed myself! Even so the work for the automobile industry took up so much of my time that only with a tremendous mental and physical effort could I ensure that I was still on the cutting edge of my scientific field. I could tell that I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up forever. Katya insisted that she needed more money.

  And then, one day . . .

  “Next stop, Detroit!”

  The pilot’s voice woke Katya in the airplane that was flying the Midwest route.

  Danielle was a colleague from Paris; her eyes passed from one person to another; at this reception, organized by the Ford Motor Company, she had discovered more than one influential person with whom she wished to get in touch. I spotted Katya across the room. If she’d come with me to the reception, then how could I have completely forgotten she was there? She was wearing a leopard-skin patterned mini-skirt. It would have suited her if she hadn’t worn it with a skin-tight white blouse and transparent stockings. Katya had also festooned herself with a huge pearl necklace. Her rather artificial appearance contrasted with the simpler style of the Parisian woman in a long gray dress with a fuchsia silk foulard. Katya was having fun with a couple of men, glancing flirtatiously up at the ceiling, down at the floor, or at the lips or eyes of one or other of the men. Katya was holding a stack of papers, which she showed, laughing, to the two men. When Danielle started chatting to the CEO’s wife, I managed to sneak a quick look at the sheets in Katya’s hands. They looked like architects’ drawings.

  The tanned one, who was one of the two men talking to Katya, called out to me.

  “Having a good time, John?”

  The sporty one slapped me on the back.

  “Great party, huh, John?”

  “It sure is. John’s having a whale of a time, we can all see that,” said Katya, slowly, coldly.

  “These canapés are yummy, huh, John?”

  “Have you tried the curry-flavored nacho chips?” asked the sporty one, interrupting the other guy.

  “Bullshit, they’re wasabi flavored,” said the tanned one.

  “Having fun, huh, John?” the sporty one asked, slapping me on the back.

  “More or less. One of your colleagues was just telling me about all the adventures he’d been having in my country,” I said, while trying as best I could to see what was in the architects’ drawings that Katya was putting away into a folder.

  “My country? Did you say ‘my country’?” asked the tanned one.

  “Even now you still talk about ‘your country’!” said the sporty one in amazement.

  “In my country—wow!” the tanned one said again, “I thought your country was right here in the United States of America.”

  “What’s the matter with the States? Why can’t this be your country now?” the sporty one asked, dumbstruck.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing the matter with them, it’s just that I didn’t grow up here. And my mother never came here. That’s why.” I was trying to clarify my own feelings.

  “So let it go! That country you were born in, just let it go and be an American like the rest of us. C’mon! Join the club! We’d be only too happy to accept you,” said the sporty one, laughing.

  I smiled and winked at Katya, but my wife didn’t wink back.

  “Tell you what,” the sporty one said to the tanned one, “now that John’s got a home and a country, I reckon we can tell him our secret, whaddya think?”

  “John,” said the sporty one in a solemn tone of voice.

  “In your new life with a home and a country, you’re also going to have . . . ” the tanned one said, pausing to mull over what he wanted to say.

  The sporty one helped out:

  “You’ll be the owner of . . . ”

  “As befits your status . . . ”

  I had the feeling I was in some kind of fantasy movie. A terrible suspicion was creeping up on me.

  “John! You’re going to have one big house!” exclaimed the sporty one.

  “With a pool!”

  “You can invite us over!”

  “A yard!”

  “Ideal for barbecues!”

  I felt a knot in my throat.

  “You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you!”

  “A vita nuova. Isn’t that how you say it over in Europe? Did I get that right?”

  “Cut that out, he’s an American now, the hell with that bullshit!”

  “It’s just the beer talking. A vita nuova, John! A magnificent house, the envy of your neighbors!”

  “And me too, no kidding!”

  “Just as well my wife hasn’t seen it; otherwise she’d want one just like it.”

  “Yeah, my wife would too.”

  “John, today is a special day in your life. You’ve got a new home! To pay for it, the bank’s just given you a twenty-five year mortgage.”

  “If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to pay for it before you kick the bucket!” the tanned one said, laughing.

  “Your wife’s prepared a little surprise for you, John. The drawings! Yes, the architects’ drawings of your new home that is being built as we speak!”

  “You don’t have to worry about a thing. Everything’s in place.”

  “We’ve got another surprise for you, John, too!” the sporty one was beaming. “We’ve got a contract here that’ll make it possible for you to work right here, at Ford’s Detroit headquarters!”

  The sporty one announced this as if he were the president of the Swedish Academy awarding me a Nobel Prize.

  Katya took out the drawings and the contracts and the two men spread them out in front of me.

  I took a sip of champagne.

  A fuchsia foulard cut through the thick air of the party and suddenly vanished.

  When the Ford reception was over, we headed for a taxi stand.

  “Did you have fun, Katya?”

  No reply.

  “Are you tired?”

  Silence.

  “Don’t you feel well?”

  This question also remained unanswered. Knowing Katya, this kind of silence meant that I’d somehow put my foot in it.

  “Have you got a headache, maybe?”

  No answer.

  “Is there something I can do?”

  Again, silence.

  We were in a taxi, headed for the Hyatt Regency. Silence sat between us like a Japanese sumo wrestler. Not for the first time.

  The next day, I awoke in the wee hours. Katya was still asleep. I went over to the window. The frost had drawn miniature Chinese images on the pane: pine-topped cliffs, knotty branches covered in flowers. I looked at this marvel, this drawing done with white ink on rice paper. I’d lost sight of so many day-to-day details when concentrating on the so-called important tasks!

  In the gray-white sky with a golden tint courtesy of Detroit’s ambient light, the snowflakes made curves and arches as they fell. I imagined a winter forest and a Russian snowstorm; I saw a window framed in painted wood in the middle of a fir wood and in the window looking out were a woman’s gray eyes, searching for someone . . . Where had all the Russian heroines gone, all those Tatianas and Natashas, all the Sonias and Dunyas, the female heroins of Pushkin and Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, women that men could not help but worship? Where were those women, transparent as snowflakes, who had sung Orthodox liturgies like the angels in Renaissance paintings? The snowflakes outside were falling fast like hundreds of ballerinas on an immense stage. So many Russian heroes had ended up finding peace. What d
id I have to do to find some tranquillity? Did I have to be hard and unbending, or soft and pliant? A rigid tree can be broken by the wind, so you used to tell me, Mama.

  I solved this dilemma in accordance with my nature: if Katya decided to remain obstinately silent this morning, then I would stick to my guns no matter what. If, on the contrary, she woke up in a sweet, talkative mood, I would try and satisfy her needs.

  Over the breakfast I ordered from room service, Katya ended up mentioning that, the previous day, I had almost forgotten about her, distracted as I’d been by another woman. The fuchsia foulard had cut through the room, to stop, finally, in the middle, where it fell to the floor.

  I felt tired.

  I was so lethargic that when Katya placed several forms that needed to be signed in front of me, I took the pen from her and signed all the contracts, the ones for the house and the mortgage, and the one concerning the fulltime job with the Ford Motor Company. I longed for some peace of mind, the peace of the exile who simply does what his new country tells him to do.

  Katya looked visibly relieved, but after a little while her face returned to its usual bored expression. In silence, we ate bacon and eggs, washed down with lukewarm coffee. The morning was growing dark, or was it nighttime already? The snowflakes weren’t dancing anymore; they were waterlogged and fell straight to the ground, as if weighted. But I wasn’t looking at them, I merely sensed them, because I was flicking through the Detroit Free Press.

  In this Persian restaurant in Manhattan, Katya got out of her chair and went to the bathroom. Her face proclaimed: I am a victim. Before, women were victims of violence; now, in this civilized world of ours, we are victims of a brutal indifference as well as violence. I, who am a remarkable woman, born to dedicate myself to higher ideals, I am now a martyr. Yes, a martyr to my husband’s apathy and that of all the gluttonous men who invented Western civilization. And a martyr as well to my son’s future.

  And Katya was right.

  I took the job at the Ford Motor Company. I agreed to do that which, for decades, I had refused to do. The tanned one and the sporty one were rubbing their hands in satisfaction and applauding themselves like little kids. My capitulation had probably earned them the congratulations of their bosses and some kind of reward.

  So, I now work for Ford. We have a brand new house with a swimming pool. Katya has covered the walls with reproductions of Monet and Manet in the gilt frames she prefers. On the shelves and in the glass cabinets there isn’t an inch of free space, there are gold-colored objects everywhere, as well as enamelled Russian boxes, miniature icons, embroidered doilies, painted plates, and dozens of photographs: Katya swimming in Lake Placid wearing an orange bikini; Katya skiing in Vermont; Katya in an evening dress at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House; Katya in the pool with Peter; Katya at a Washington, DC reception, hanging on my arm; Katya waterskiing on Lake George; Katya playing golf in Cape Cod; Katya in a summer dress, yellow as a butterfly’s wings.

  The waiter served us some oriental sweetmeats, which looked really rich, and then filled our glasses with a wine that was almost black. Katya turned up clasping her cell phone to her ear.

  These days, Mama, when I retire to my study, I don’t think much about my research anymore. Sometimes I think about my life, about my being rooted in my solitude, about being a foreigner no matter where I go. In America I can live in a comfortable but not very interesting way; I feel no strong ties to the place. I couldn’t live in Prague because I feel such a strong emotional bond to the city and sense gross injustice there, with every step I take.

  You ask about my work? If I am deeply involved in my work? Don’t even mention it to me, Mama, I beg of you.

  I’ll tell you about something that happened to me the other day.

  At an international convention in Los Angeles, I ran into the prestigious mathematician Kenneth McMasters, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose current research I admire more than just about anybody else’s. As soon as he saw me, a glass of champagne in his hand, the professor left the group of people he was standing with.

  “My good Professor Stamitz,” he said as he quickly headed over to me, “what a pleasure to see you here! I know all about the research you carried out in the seventies and eighties, with regard to the discontinuous function of coordinates. After those first steps you took many of us have continued researching this field, which now looks so promising. Forgive me, perhaps I simply haven’t seen them, but recently I’ve been missing your articles in our journals. The fault is probably mine. I’d be interested in hearing about your most recent results.”

  McMasters took a sip of champagne, automatically, without noticing he’d done so because he was so focused on our conversation, and went on, “I’d like to share the information with my colleagues. How would you feel about giving a series of lectures at our institute?”

  His invitation struck me as a very attractive one and I began telling Professor McMasters about the most recent developments in my work: I had discovered that my theories had many practical applications, such as my theory of control that I had adapted to electric automobile motors, all of this for the Ford Motor Company. Another interesting application I’d developed was the automatic control of diesel motors; this involved a nonlinear model, of an elevated order and with many uncertainties.

  Professor McMasters stared at me as if he didn’t recognize me anymore. I thought that what I’d explained hadn’t satisfied him, so I added climatic control on commercial automobiles.

  “I’d be happy to talk about these matters with you and your colleagues, any time you wanted,” I suggested.

  The distinguished professor cut me off, “Thank you, but . . .”

  There was a lengthy pause. Then he finished this sentence, “But . . . I was referring to a quite different sort of thing. I don’t know if I’ve made myself clear.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The professor had already changed the subject: Hadn’t the president of the convention been exaggerating, yesterday, about the methods of simulation?

  “The methods of simulation?” I didn’t understand him, “Which ones? Well, yes, I suppose in the end, maybe you’re right. Look . . .”

  But McMasters was already saying goodbye.

  “I’m pleased that you’ve settled down in your new, industrial working environment. If you ever publish a scientific article again, please do let me know.”

  And he was off. I no longer interested him, because industry didn’t interest him. He is a scientist, a researcher, just as I had once been.

  Who am I? Someone who has gone to the extreme of rejecting his last refuge: his scientific work, the fortification of his big No.

  I’d married a woman who turned out to be a good wife, maybe; and a good mother, a good housewife, the daughter of a high-ranking KGB official, who has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human lives on his conscience: all the people he sent to the Siberian gulags, innocent people, people like my father. Man is capable of just about anything in order not to feel alone!

  Katya dreamed of her lost lover, just as I dreamed of my beloved from long ago. We are two solitudes chained to one another by weakness.

  Here in the JFK airport there are so many greetings and farewells, hugs and tears and kisses. I should go and look at the arrivals screen; Helena’s plane might be about to land.

  I’ve hurt my hand on a rose thorn. Helena used to like dark red roses, the kind that smell like aged wine, or nighttime gardens in the summer, and the secret places of a loved woman.

  Finally, I too am waiting for someone, for a woman! How I envied the man to whom a woman on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg had written a letter and kissed before posting it. How I envy Bill and his plump Jill!

  Only now, after so much time, have I realized that you, Helena, you who never wanted to emigrate, who always said that a person has only one home, that you vanished that day from Sarajevo to make it easier for me to decide if I wanted to go back to Prague or to emigrate. That�
��s why you disappeared, Helena. That’s why you vanished like a grain of sand on the beach: to allow me the freedom to choose. And having done that, you preserved my longing, my desire for you, which has always been with me and without which my life would have been like an endless winter journey.

  I head for the arrivals screen. Just a few more steps, and I’ll find out if Helena’s plane has landed.

  The letters glow with green light, announcing FLIGHT OK 2901 FROM PRAGUE TO NEW YORK HAS BEEN DELAYED INDEFINITELY.

  XIV

  SYLVA

  A few days after the dinner at my place during which Monsieur Beauvisage had first gobbled up all the cheese and then asked me to be his wife, someone I didn’t know delivered a large brown envelope.

  “Madame Sylva von Stamitz?” he asked. “This envelope is for you, Madame.” And added, in a low voice, in Russian: “It’s from Moscow.” Then he disappeared.

  In the envelope, I found a little pile of torn newspaper, toilet paper, a napkin, a paper cone: all these were covered in closely packed, penciled writing that was blurred and mostly illegible. After sifting through all the different components, I found a small piece of notepaper. My mysterious correspondent, who hadn’t signed his package—something that didn’t surprise me one little bit: who wouldn’t be afraid of sending banned material?–had written a few lines by way of explanation. Using a trusted messenger, he had sent me the clandestine notes Andrei had taken in the fifties, in the forced labor camp where he’d been imprisoned. Andrei wrote them in Siberia, taken by a strange mood: after Stalin’s death he’d thought that some of his fellow prisoners would leave the camp and could smuggle his clandestine jottings out and send them to my address. All those notes were addressed to me. Which is why the von in my proper name had been put on the envelope, which indicated my aristocratic origins, and a name that I hadn’t used since the end of the war. The mysterious sender—Semyon, perhaps?—didn’t say how the notes had come into his possession, and I knew that any questioning on my part would be met by silence.

  Letters from Andrei! I couldn’t wait. I was burning with impatience, so I picked up a handful to take to the library. There I ran into Helena, who had come to return some books. When there was nobody nearby, she said, in a quiet voice, as if casually, “What are you up to, Sylva? Reading clandestine material? Have the Communists thrown someone you know in jail?”