The Silent Woman

by Monika Zgustova

  Everything is ready, the wine and the cheese canapés garnished with tiny pieces of carefully sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. I have showered again and put on perfume, and I dried my hair slowly, bit by bit, so that it would come out soft, my white hair that he’s never seen. The last time, at Semyon’s exhibition, he must have seen my hair as it used to be, that light chestnut color, which with the aid of some chamomile, would turn golden . . . My hair that went gray after Jan left. Jan went away and he won’t be able to come back because his home no longer exists, his home has ceased to exist because it has changed so much, into a strange, alien place. He who abandons his home becomes an eternal globetrotter, a stranger with one wish in his heart, a longing that can never be satisfied. He turns into a foreigner whose home is everywhere . . . and yet everywhere means nowhere.

  My hair is as white as milk, my face is a finely spun web, a skin of thin snakes covers my hands, Andrei. You have never seen me like this, my love, you won’t know me, I’m not me any longer, this woman is not the Sylva who lived in Paris, where they addressed her as Madame l’Ambassadrice. No, she is no longer the Surrealists’s inspiration, she is no longer Mnemosyne, the goddess of the muses and the deity of beauty, that Sylva whom the painter Semyon and his friends called Solnyshko in Russian, meaning little sun. The seventy-year-old Sylva, whose age pretty much coincides with that of the century, is somebody else now. Who is this solitary woman with a handful of white narcissi on her head, with lace thickly woven by a spider and then engraved deeply on her face?

  Sylva is no longer your blue butterfly, her hair is covered now with a layer of frost and her skin is like a blank page on which someone has spilled dry tea leaves. But inside Sylva there is now a garden full of green fruit in the middle of which there shines a single, white, perfumed apple. That apple ripened when I found out you were alive, my love.

  Andrei, at home the soft, fresh smell of white lilac awaits you . . . At home, Andrei, where is your home? Where is home for you? The forest in the Czech mountains? The streets of Moscow? Among the coats of arms that cover the low walls of my swallows’ nest on the outskirts of Prague? Maybe it’s in that squirrel burrow, in the middle of which there is a vase full of lilac, tender and white as old age, and next to which there are two candles, one a little shorter, the other just a tiny bit taller, two lit candles, golden, searing, two candles and two flames, our lives, and those two candles will burn and two people will get to know each other again by looking into each other’s eyes. The river of our affection and our compassion and our desire, and the river of our understanding will be different now. It will be a river of old age, a river of shared silence, a quiet, white-waved river.

  I head for the station exit. I am leaving this place. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to be a witness to the change wrought in you. And I don’t want to see my own transformation mirrored in your eyes.

  No, that’s not right, my inner voice tells me. You’re deluding yourself. This isn’t right!

  So what is it, then? I ask, in a weak voice.

  This: that you’re ashamed. Not because your hair has gone gray. You are so shame faced because you are guilty.

  A moment ago, through the window of the station café, I was secretly watching the people who were greeting the passengers on your train: I saw everything. I even saw the pillar where we’d agreed to meet. But I didn’t see you, Andrei. I didn’t want to see you, that’s why I didn’t go over to the train, nor did I go up to the pillar, our meeting place . . . in order not to see my man of the forest, weakened, wrinkled, wan.

  All because of me.

  To the exit! Get out of here! As far away as possible!

  Rain and yet more rain is flooding the street, white rain, alluvium swallowing me up. I have to walk, always forward, for a long time, then drop into the first café to have a glass of wine, yes, a good glass of wine, white as the rain, to celebrate the definitive entry that I have just made into the empire of solitude. And when I’ve done that I will walk some more, never turning around, going ahead without staggering, trotting at an even pace, for a long time, and then even more, until weariness settles in. Why am I going, if I came here with such hope, expectation, longing? I don’t know. I only know that I have to do this. I have to go. To flee, fast!

  And what about him, what will he do when I go? Has he gone to the pillar, our meeting place?

  But surely even now, at seventy, life can begin again! There’s still time! Life has trembled in me like a blackbird in spring, it’s shaken itself like a sparrow in a puddle of water, and it has opened its beak. I go back to the station, I head for the platform. I walk over to the café where we were supposed to meet, where we must meet, by the pillar. I lean on the café’s closed door. I look at the pillar: Is it the same one in front of which Andrei said goodbye to me thirty years ago? I think of the brook on Andrei’s mountains; I am the stone, he, the water. The stone remains, the water, in its eternal movement, goes back to where it came from. Just a furtive glance, just to see Andrei, and I’ll go. Just one look, like Lot’s wife. One single look, and I’ll be turned into a pillar of salt!

  I shouldn’t do it. I can’t. I can’t think it over, I only know that I have to leave. To flee, fast!

  It’s raining, it’s pouring down, the rain is black now, people are restless, pushing and shoving each other with elbows and umbrellas as if they were medieval weapons. What would have happened if I’d stayed at the station? I see myself, looking at our pillar . . . I see myself, leaning against the wall, looking at the pillar with its peeling paint, I watch it as if my life depended on it. A pillar, which stretches vainly up into the sky, because nobody’s leaning against it. It supports the entire vaulted roof of the station, the vault that shelters dozens of platforms from the elements. A simple, bare, old pillar. A pillar to which somebody has walked up, and waited a long time, before leaving. A solitary pillar.

  Now that I am moving away from you once and for all, Andrei, in my mind’s eye I see, between the drops of black rain and the lilac-colored ones which the sky never ceases to pour, another look. I see eyes staring at the pillar. From a corner full of cobwebs, an old man is watching the column. His lips are parched and his eyes, sunken. But on his eyelashes, waiting and resignation, uncertainty and hope. And the glow of the last ember of life left burning. The old man’s look, edged by white lashes, is fixed on the old pillar as if it were a goddess to whom he had come to make an offering. A look like the white wings of a seagull. A look like the flame of the candle in the Café Louvre. A look like the flame reflected in the glass from which we both once drank. As I make my way through the heavy, lilac curtain of the rain, I see myself in the station . . . I am not taking my eyes off that pillar either; then they settle on the old man. Our eyes meet. We don’t move, we don’t breathe. And, finally, on our lips appears a barely perceptible smile . . .

  That might have been the case, if I hadn’t left the station. But I had no alternative.

  The canapés, prepared for him, garnished for him, are getting dry. In vain did I polish and buff everything, in vain did I put on my pearl earrings. In vain did he pack his luggage, and search for gifts and buy the ticket. In vain did he take such a long journey. Now he must be sitting there on the platform, two heavy suitcases in his hands, full of gifts that he has been choosing for a long time. I see him in my mind’s eye: an old man on the station, rubbing at his eyes, thinking that this is impossible. Where are you, Blue Butterfly? No. Sylva isn’t there. Sylva hasn’t come. He is alone.

  Alone, forever.

  As am I. Two solitudes. Two rivers that flow separately. Two candles that have gone out.

  Heavy black drops are falling, drops of tar. I am dripping wet. Where’s my umbrella? Could I have left it at the station? No. It’s in my hand, still rolled up. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I am soaked through if he is stuck on the platform, alone, disappointed, desperate.

  Far away!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MONIKA ZGUSTOV
A was born in Prague and lives in Barcelona, Spain. She has published seven books, including novels, short stories, a play, and a biography. Her novel Silent Woman was a runner-up for the National Award for the Novel, given by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and will be published by Feminist Press in 2014. Zgustova has also received the Giutat de Barcelona and the Mercè Rodoreda awards in Spain, and the Gratias Agit Prize given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague. She has translated more than fifty books of Russian and Czech fiction and poetry, including the works of Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel, into both Spanish and Catalan.

  ABOUT THE FEMINIST PRESS

  The Feminist Press promotes voices on the margins of dominant culture and publishes feminist works from around the world, inspiring personal transformation and social justice. We believe that books have the power to shift culture, and create a society free of violence, sexism, homophobia, racism, cis-supremacy, classism, sizeism, ableism and other forms of dehumanization. Our books and programs engage, educate, and entertain.

  See our complete list of books at

  feministpress.org

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