The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  She winked at me.

  I blushed with shame at my unforgiveable naivety and my dismay. I quickly hid the notes in my bag.

  I suddenly had an idea that I felt had to be tried out immediately. Balancing the receiver between my mouth and shoulder, with my left hand resting on Helena’s arm, I dialed a number.

  After a little while, Helena listened as I spoke into the receiver in a warm, but firm, voice, “Good afternoon, Monsieur Beauvisage. Petr, forgive me if you can for what I’m about to say. I acted too hastily when I gave you my answer the other day. Yes, that’s right: I won’t marry you. Forgive me for being so skittish. Even though . . . what I’ve done is unforgiveable, I know.”

  And I hung up.

  “Helena, for the first time in my life, or maybe for the second time, I have freely made a decision on my own.”

  “What are you talking about?” Helena stared at me, wide eyed.

  “Up until now, I’ve always followed other people’s orders.”

  “You let others order you about?” Helena interrupted me, looking at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “I wouldn’t have imagined that possible! Never!”

  “They used to call me the Silent Woman. Only once did I have enough presence of mind to make a decision on my own, and it ended in disaster. Before and after that, I always did other people’s bidding. Today I have exercised my own free will.”

  Helena said nothing. Then, “I’m proud of you. Even though, from what I believe I overheard, you must have really upset someone.”

  That evening I spread the smuggled notes out on the kitchen table; they made a yellow-gray collage. Some words, sometimes whole sentences, had been completely erased. After a month or two, as if in a kaleidoscope, the story of Andrei’s life just before he must have died began to take shape, becoming clearer and clearer. In my mind’s eye, I projected these scenes from the end of Andrei’s life on the wall of my refuge on the outskirts of Prague, on library walls, and on the dirty, gray windows of the public transport in which I spent an hour and sometimes two, every day. In the end, I was able to piece together an entire film, with sound and in color.

  Leila sat with two other nurses in the camp hospital. The three women were drinking tea around a table.

  “If you don’t want to tell us his name, at least tell us what he’s like,” Nadya insisted.

  “Good looking and—”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s good looking,” said the shameless Olga, spitefully.

  Without meaning to, the two women looked at Leila’s huge nose, the hooter that was the first thing anyone saw when they caught sight of that bony, unattractive Georgian woman.

  “Good looking and strong and—”

  “Come on, here in the camp they reduce the lot of them to skeletons fit for anatomy classes,” said Olga, laughing.

  “Here they turn them into petals, into autumn leaves, you blow at them and they’re off, gone!” Nadya grimaced, scornfully.

  “Maybe he isn’t a prisoner, Nadya,” Olga reminded her colleague.

  Nadya looked at her incredulously. She clearly couldn’t believe that Leila had a handsome, muscular lover. Nadya didn’t want Leila to have a strong, good-looking lover who could protect her and . . . and, well, whatever.

  But Leila stuck to her guns.

  “He’s flabbergasting! And gentle. He’s an artist!”

  “When are we going to meet him?” Olga asked, dryly.

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Are you going to bring him here?” Nadya asked, with feigned indifference.

  “Yeah, we want to take a look at him,” Olga repeated offhandedly and sipped at her watered-down tea.

  Leila played her cards close to her chest. She wanted to draw out this little scene that gave her such pleasure, and gave a self-satisfied smile. She, gray and mediocre, was now the center of interest. Maybe the others even envied her as well. What was more, it was easy for her to talk on and on about the man who was uppermost in her thoughts.

  Leila looked over at a corner in which there was a broom and dustpan full of rubbish. In the middle of that rubbish, she saw a shining golden head. She would have liked to have presented it to her colleague by way of proof. She, Salomé, wrapped up in several guazy veils, would approach them, dancing on tiptoe, with Saint John’s golden head on a tray. Yes, on a silver tray, not on a rubbish-laden dustpan, absolutely not!

  “You bring him over in a week’s time, all right?” said Olga, winking, refusing to believe that Leila had a beau.

  “I want to see him tomorrow without fail!” Nadya banged her fist on the table. She added, ungracefully, “I’m off to see that man with a broken spine. They called me an hour ago!”

  “Tomorrow, sure!” Leila shouted, as Nadya closed the door behind her.

  The next day, there was a man sitting in Leila’s chair.

  Olga and Nadya knew him from the hospital, but they felt that today they were seeing him for the first time. They stared at him, they observed him. No, that isn’t the right choice of words. They ate him up with their eyes: this was Leila’s lover! He was, indeed, a man, beyond any doubt he was a live man, sitting there, in the flesh. A man!

  After a routine exchange of greetings, nobody felt like saying very much.

  “Can I go now?” the man asked.

  Leila, who was seated next to him, shot him a filthy look. The man shuddered, and remained seated. And he went on shuddering, neurotically, like someone deranged.

  Olga and Nadya said goodbye. At the door they turned to Leila; judging by their expression they seemed to think: a prisoner, hah! A nonentity!

  But the bitter twist of their lips bore witness to the fact that they hadn’t been able to secure even that. And they’d have liked to, oh, how they would’ve liked to get what Leila had!

  Leila knew it. Leila was glowing.

  She, the soppy one who’d become a star. The envy of her colleagues. They envied her man, a man as handsome as . . . sin. He was a vice! Leila was as drunk on her success, as if she’d been drinking strong wine.

  And if he wasn’t handsome—that, after ten years of forced labor in the mines, would have been asking too much—he was, when all was said and done, a man.

  Leila gazed at him with protective affection and with a pride that was partly maternal. But there was something else in her look. Sensuality. The sensuality that Leila kept painfully, shamefully hidden.

  “You’re getting bored,” Leila said, to break the silence.

  “Me, bored? With three pretty women around?” the man smiled slowly, tormentedly.

  He gradually stopped shaking.

  Leila went red. “Me, pretty? You’re having me on!”

  Nobody had ever before said anything like that to her. On the contrary, her father had always called her a scarecrow!

  The man said nothing then. Leila remembered the drawing he had given her one day. She had barely recognized herself: the drawing of a pleasant-looking woman who, even if she couldn’t be called beautiful, certainly looked interesting, original, and smart. There was no trace of her hooked nose: what stood out were a pair of lips as sensual as the waves of a summer sea. Leila had pinned her portrait to the wall next to her bed. In the evenings she stared at it with passion, and promised herself over and over that she would keep the man, who was able to see her in this light, by her side, no matter what the cost.

  Suddenly, Leila realized that the man had spoken not of one but of three pretty women. The nurse trembled with rage, both at him and her more attractive colleagues.

  “Have you been working on our project?” she asked him.

  “I had to go to the mine, because The Whip turned up.”

  “What’s that to me? I don’t care! Don’t spin any of your yarns with me, dammit, you filthy miner, you traitor to the Motherland! Do you think I’m keeping you in the hospital so that you can live like a pasha? When are you going to finally cut the crap, you liar?”

  The man went pale and made as
if to leave, leaning on the table for support. The paler he got, the more excited Leila became and the more she bared her teeth, as if she’d sucked the energy out of him, “Show me what you’ve done, you third-rate artist, you useless loafer!”

  Leila looked at the photographs of Siberian kolkoz workers and compared them with the portraits that this artist had done of them. With the money that Leila got from selling the portraits, she usually prepared some kind of informal meal.

  “Why are you goggling at me like that? Give me the latest of those crappy portraits and get the hell out of here, you slob! I don’t feel like keeping you here in the hospital, like some kind of big softie. As far as I’m concerned, you can break your back down in the mine, the way that wily mate of yours did this morning.”

  “I’m sorry? Could you say that again? Who did that happen to?”

  “What do you care? Buzz off, you pompous know-it-all!”

  “I’m sorry, but have I insulted you in any way?” said the man, after a moment.

  “Insult me? What are you going on about? I make all these sacrifices for you like the soppy fool I am, and what do you do? You go after the first woman who crosses your path!”

  “Me, go after someone? After who?” The man stared at her with wide, pleading eyes that softened Leila on the spot. She locked the door.

  “Leila, please, tell me who got hurt down the mine.”

  “Later.”

  “Please, I beg of you.”

  “Now’s the time for something else. Look! Look what I brought you!”

  On the table, Leila laid out a bruised apple and two poison-red sweets, which nobody, not even an infant in nappies, would have touched with a bargepole. The man’s eyes lit up. He reached out as if to grab something much sought after that might disappear at any moment, but then thought better of it. He pushed away the sweets, offering them instead back to Leila.

  “I don’t want them, thank you, Miss Leila.”

  “You filthy snob! Even when you’re starving to death you can’t help showing how noble you are. How superior you are to the rest of us, we’re just common fools, then, the vulgar proles!”

  Leila removed the wrapper to put the sweet into the man’s mouth.

  Leila picked up the apple and brought it to the man’s lips. While he chewed on it, she rose and positioned his head so that it rested on her bony body. She caressed his short hair, his neck, his chest.

  The man made an effort to escape the clutches of those passionate, wandering hands, but Leila wouldn’t let him go. She pressed against him even harder, stroking his cheeks, his shoulders. As her hands were busy, Leila gave little sensuous moans, signs of a pleasure she had never known until now, when she was fifty-five. Leila trilled, cooed, chirped, and whistled in delight, like a mother cradling a newborn babe.

  “Miss Leila, some of the inmates here have been allowed to leave the camp after many years. Do you think they’ll let me go one day?”

  “You’re sick, Andrei, first we have to make you better, my love,” Leila said with a languorous sigh.

  “But after that, they’ll let me go?”

  Leila sighed again.

  At that moment, her whole body wanted to cry out: Let you go? Over my dead body!

  The young doctor finished the man’s examination.

  “Did you go to the mine today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you spit blood when you cough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know that your sickness is incurable?”

  “My cough? You don’t think that . . . perhaps in the summer . . .”

  “I’m not talking about your cough. That’s nothing! But about . . . the other sickness. It seems to me that here, with the forced labor, it’s grown worse.”

  “I know that . . .”

  Nurse Leila, breathless, came into the infirmary.

  The man signaled to her, but she didn’t see him. Her attention was concentrated solely on the doctor. The doctor himself hadn’t even noticed her presence. No, he had indeed noticed it: now that she was here, the doctor’s compassionate voice had taken on a gray, unfriendly tone.

  “Exactly, your original sickness has got worse.”

  The man asked, in a weak voice, “Doctor, what does that mean in terms of my case?”

  “I’m not sure that you can cure yourself on your own.”

  “You won’t be attending to me anymore?”

  “That’s right.”

  The doctor didn’t see, because he couldn’t have, that Leila had placed herself behind him so as to catch every word.

  “Are you leaving here, doctor?”

  “Me? No,” the doctor laughed, “on the contrary, it’s you that will be leaving.”

  “Me?” The man couldn’t believe his ears. “Me? How come? Doctor, for the love of God, don’t make fun of me.”

  The patient was trembling, a tear fell down his cheek, followed by another.

  The doctor rested a hand on the man’s shoulder: he, too, was moved.

  “How come, you ask, Mr. Polonski? The time for your political rehabilitation has arrived. Colonel Tertz informed me of it this morning. He asked me if it was possible, as far as your health was concerned, to set you free. And he gave me strict orders not to tell you anything,” the doctor shrugged, “but I couldn’t resist the temptation to share this happy news with you. So it only remains for me to wish you the very best of luck once you are free.”

  The two men embraced. The patient muttered words of gratitude, and wet the doctor’s coat with his tears.

  Nurse Leila took a few steps forward and stood in front of the doctor so firmly and energetically that he couldn’t go on pretending to ignore her.

  “No!” Leila said, menacingly, “We are not going to do that, doctor. We’re not going to send this man to his death.”

  “Who’s talking about death? We’re talking about freedom,” said the doctor, looking away from her in disgust. Leila looked like an old, doddering doe in heat, thought the doctor.

  “For him, freedom means death. We’ll keep him here and cure him, doctor. This patient needs care as badly as the bread he eats.”

  “In these conditions? In Siberia? In a concentration camp? You’re a . . . “ the doctor could barely contain himself.

  “What am I? A scarecrow?”

  “What I wanted to say was that this suggestion of yours is sheer madness. Here, this man will die.”

  “Our duty is to cure him. He’s a schizophrenic.”

  “He’s been rehabilitated!”

  “We’ll do this together, you and I. Colonel Tertz has asked for your professional opinion. You will tell him the truth: that the prisoner Andrei Polonski is gravely ill, his attacks of schizophrenia are so frequent and dangerous that you cannot allow him to be removed from our care.”

  “Nurse Leila, patient Polonski is not a schizophrenic. Don’t forget that I’m the doctor around here!”

  “Exactly. You’re the doctor and you have revealed a political secret to a prisoner. Unfortunately, I am obliged to report your conduct through the proper channels. And I will do so, should you refuse to cooperate with me.”

  The young doctor’s face went pale. “This man has the right to leave the camp. We shall do whatever is required to facilitate his return to freedom.”

  Leila’s bony body stretched, soldierlike, to its full height in front of the doctor. In a loud, clear voice, Leila said, “Over my dead body.”

  “You, my love, my only love,” Leila’s lips whispered, as, for just a moment, she leaned in close to the patient’s burning forehead.

  From the sick man’s half-open mouth came a hoarse sigh, “Blue Butterfly!”

  The tenderness vanished in an instant from Leila’s face. To whom was he addressing those beautiful words? Not to her. No way! Nobody had ever, ever said anything like that to her.

  “Who are you talking about when you come on with that blue butterfly stuff?”

  Instead of an answer, only sighs could be
heard from the man she’d just woken up.

  “Who is Blue Butterfly, Andrei?” Leila asked in the same inquisitorial tone, with an insistent edge to her voice.

  “My wife,” came the faint voice from the pillow.

  Leila said nothing, as if refusing to believe what she’d just heard. Immediately, hardening her voice to a threatening tone, “Your wife! Well, look at you! Why on earth am I, idiot that I am, acting as your mother and your maid, your doctor and your nurse? I dedicate myself to you. I lose sleep and slave away so hard I can’t even describe it. But that doesn’t mean a damn thing to you, does it? You just keep on, you don’t have to go to the mine every day, you don’t care that I’m making myself sick with worry for you, while you there, you ingrate, just go on about your wife!”

  Leila was shaking with fury.

  The sick man could barely get his words out, “It’s been fifteen years since I last saw my wife, you see, Miss Leila. I’ve had no news of her for fifteen years. It’s easy enough to say fifteen years, Miss Leila, but . . .”

  His face became pale. Weakened, the patient fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Leila looked fiercely at his face. Once she was sure her patient was in a deep sleep, she got up.

  She went over to the window, and opened it wide. Icy gusts of Siberian wind flew into the room.

  The nurse uncovered the sick man’s body. As she did so, she looked at the patient with eyes that were once more filled with tenderness.

  “My love, my love, finally, you’re all mine,” she said with passion, and watched the man’s shivering body, and his lips that were turning blue from the cold. Gently, lovingly, she pressed her dry lips to his.

  “Now, finally, you belong to me, my love.”

  Suddenly she heard footsteps in the corridor. She quickly covered up the sick man and closed the window.

  The young doctor opened the door, “My God, it’s cold in here!”

  “I need to put some more wood in the stove,” Leila said sharply, her eyes fixed on the floor.