Dominique put down the book, curled around Aimée who was already asleep, and held her like a doll against nightmares.
*
In their early dating days, Dominique had admitted that she talked in her sleep. Somniloquy. Aimée kept pronouncing it as ‘soliloquy’, which Dominique kept explaining was when a character in a play goes to the side of the stage and confesses something.
“Like in Shakespeare baby . . . where Othello sees a huge eclipse, or Antony the ghost of Cleopatra, or where Lady M can’t wash the blood from her hands, you know . . .”
But what Dominique had was not the type of somniloquy where one mumbles to oneself to buy more bread or answer an email, but where one shrieks, jolts, thrashes and jumps out of bed.
Aimée could not help but think of her disorder as soliloquy, because Dominique went to the side of her stage, where the light hung low around her, where she stood upon a surface that reflected like a black river, and where she emitted the words and sounds of the hot-eyed animal inside her, frantic for language.
*
“That’s the difference, Aimée! I’m not bad at what I do. I’m a good actress, I know I am. They just don’t want me. I could analyse every which way. If I were mediocre, I could just admit it to myself. But I am good, Aimée. I am really good and they just don’t want me.”
*
Aimée loved to watch Dominique on stage. There, where Dominique was charged, where she was holy. Like that first night when they didn’t even know each other and thirteen-year-old Aimée stared at those dangerously bare thighs. Aimée loved Dominique when she was acting, because then both of them felt like they fit perfectly into the world: Dominique pulsing in the light, Aimée privately watching. Aimée also loved when Dominique was sleeping, not fretfully, but softly, unsuspicious. She could look at her face and see everyone she had been, all the girls and women she had grown through, resting together, curled up into each other.
*
Although she told her father, the Doctor, that she didn’t want to talk about it, he took both of her hands and told her, as clearly as he could, “She is exhibiting what any medical professional would call alarming symptoms.”
And so finally she let her father get Dominique a prescription of the sleeping pills that let her sleep a full night.
In addition, by her father’s suggestion, Aimée had to put a lock on the knife drawer and a bell on the door handle of the bedroom.
*
Aimée took it as a good sign when Dominique veered away from Koltès’s texts and began reading a Norwegian playwright back to back and taking interest in saints’ lives.
*
“What does it feel like, when you are having one of your night terrors?” Aimée asked, putting the cold compress lightly to Dominique’s forehead.
“I guess it’s like . . . Like someone is going to come, any second . . . and I don’t know who . . . but I know it will be unbearable, when they arrive.”
*
When Aimée came home from her work at the gynaecologist’s office, they were all laughing in the living room, Guillaume, Claire, Eric, Olivier and his boyfriend Angelo who had worked on last season’s Wajdi Mouawad production.
Claire was leaning on the counter with her butt facing Aimée. She coiled her head around and said, “Hello”.
Aimée put her keys down and walked over to kiss Dominique on the lips.
*
“Stop it, stop treating me like I’m stupid because I’m young or naïve or however it is you justify it—”
“I don’t justify it—”
“Wait, ok, wait, so you admit it?”
“No! You’re being ridiculous.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh great, bravo!”
“What am I, some little quiet secretary by day and stage puppy dog by night you got following you around your shows—”
“I never beg you to come.”
“Well I want to, how about that, I want to see you!”
“Baby, you want to have someone to follow around, at first it was your father and now me and—”
“That’s what you think, baby, that’s what you really think of me—”
“Wait, Aimée, come on, I’m trying to say that – Benoît’s doing what he wants in Thailand, and your sister’s set herself up quite nice in London, and your mum’s—”
“And you – you’re doing what you want with Claire . . . ? Is that it?”
There was a pause between the women.
“So, are we going to play who’s more pathetic now?” Dominique said.
Aimée’s teeth clenched into each other as her eyes grew humid.
“Dominique, I swear to God . . . if I’m asking you questions and you’re lying to me, I swear to God Dominique!”
*
Aimée stayed in the spare bedroom at her father’s. After a week, Dominique called and said, “Please”. When Aimée came back to the apartment, Dominique was lying on the couch on her stomach, with her face in her hands. She picked up her head and looked up at Aimée. Her face was pale and bloated, and her hair greasy at the roots.
Dominique sat up and said in a half–voice, “You are the love of my life.”
*
They stopped mentioning names and decided to take a trip to Switzerland. The mountains were breathtaking. The whole train-ride Dominique was flirty, teasing, joking, nudging. Everything was so beautiful, so unbearably beautiful.
From Grindelwald station, they took the cog-wheel train towards the glacier, through a carved mountain, to a town called Lauterbrunnen.
Those mountains, chiselled grey stone, with the white powder waterfall flowing from the top, making the edges shine like granite. With the clouds sitting on the peaks, Aimée and Dominique talked about Olympus and all the gods, somewhere up there, trying to one up each other.
The train passed steadily through its landscape: the pines with their thin-haired needles and the stub-whitish-green firs and the bright spruces, prickling against the slow-moving fog. The churches with their narrow cone hats and rigid metal crosses on top. The clocks on the towers in golden roman numerals. The white cottages with the brown triangle roofs. There were pastures of cows, some brown horses in the fields, white puffs of sheep, thinner puffs of goats, calls in the distance, a sudden “moo”, a donkey haw, a jaw-dropped “bah!”
The air was almost liquid with its freshness and chill, and as they approached Lauterbrunnen, there was a perpetual sound of running water, the birds calling to each other in the distance, and the vast mountains one behind the other, seeming so close you could reach your hand out of the train and touch the moss.
*
Hotel Staubbach, on the Hauptstrasse, was a family-run lodge, pale-yellow exterior with brownish-red shutters framing each window, and the hotel letters spelled out in the same colour on the side of the building.
*
“Die schönen Berge . . .” the receptionist was pointing outside the window and nodding for agreement.
“The beautiful mountains . . .” Dominique translated for Aimée.
Dominique had retained an elementary speaking German from her mother’s home-schooling days, whereas Aimée, who had taken it for years in school, still stumbled over completing a full sentence.
Both women nodded at the thin man in a burgundy vest, with the name tag “Klaus”.
*
In their room, the duvet, the walls, the floor, all soft colours and meek designs, pastel green, blushing coral, pale plum, skittish teal and weaving lines of cream. Dominique opened the large window to the panoramic view of the Staubbach Falls and the Lauterbrunnen valley.
*
Downstairs, Klaus explained that there were seventy-two waterfalls in the area and gave them a hiking map with dotted red paths like threads of blood lines through the mountainous earth.
If they wanted to see the shops, they were a fifteen-minute walk downhill.
Klaus advised them to visit the cheesemaker at the bottom of the hill and t
hen to turn left, off the long road, to the cabinetmaker, in case they were looking to purchase some regionally crafted furniture, and then to continue down the road, where they could get to what Klaus proudly described as “a graceful cemetery”.
*
They popped into the cheese shop, passed by the cabinetmaker and headed down the road. The cemetery at the end was pristine, framed by short-trimmed grass so green it could almost tingle. The graves were arranged in neat rows with red flowers planted in between like berries. The stones stood in lines, white and grey and brown, crosses with carvings, every stone corner looked wiped and shined.
Aimée walked ahead of Dominique on the entrance path. Dominique thought of a monologue from Faust, in that Polish production she saw last season, where Faust sang to the devil, suspended from his bungee cord on stage:
This life of earth, whatever my attire,
Would pain me in its wonted fashion.
Too old am I to play with passion;
Too young, to be without desire.
*
There was a petite woman, with a white bun pinned neatly above her thin neck, crouching down beside a dark blue bucket and a pale rag. At her feet, an alert brown and grey German Shepherd stood tall. She dipped the rag into the bucket, pulled it out dripping, and wiped the tombstones, one by one.
Aimée noted from the dates that most of the people buried here lived well into their nineties. The petite woman herself seemed to be in her late eighties.
“I guess the Swiss Alps hold the key to immortality,” Aimée nudged Dominique. “All that hiking, fresh cheese, hand-crafted cabinets . . .”
Dominique stared at the dog and thought of the hiking trails on the map like blood sewn into paper.
*
As the days passed, Dominique silently measured her own dissatisfaction against the contrast of the beautiful landscape.
*
Upon my couch of sleep I lay me:
There, also, comes no rest to me,
But some wild dream is sent to fray me.
*
Dominique was standing in front of the window, looking out absently. Aimée came up to her and put her arms around her waist from behind. She didn’t move. She stared straight into the glass, as if her eyes were just windows, unaffected by the sight that passed through them.
*
Someone is going to come . . .
*
Aimée was no longer the sixteen-year-old girl following in step with her older girlfriend to make sure she doesn’t find her too naïve. She was thirty-one now, but her role as the naïve partner had merely taken on new forms of maturity. After fifteen years together, she was well familiar with the cloudy sadness that would take over her wife. It would leave for years, then reappear. But every time it came, Aimée played her role, not daring to enquire more than Dominique was willing to share, timidly on hand and devoted as if Dominique required more blind faith than informed understanding.
Dominique left the window, went to the bed and lay down in her clothes. Aimée followed her and sat on the edge of the pale floral comforter. She put her hand on Dominique’s back, then slid down to her, placing her face loyally into the crux of her neck.
“Get off me,” Dominique said.
*
There wasn’t much reception in their room, so Dominique was pacing around in the lobby, near the brown-leather sofas and the burgundy armchairs, walking around the corners of the wine-toned carpet, beneath the dew-drop chandelier. She was nodding and biting the skin around her nails.
When she came back up to the room, she pinched her lips and squeezed her fists.
“They want me for the part!”
Dominique’s eyes radiated such a warm colour that Aimée thought she could see her blood coursing through. Just below, her lips were parted and her teeth, left so unguarded in her smile that Aimée jumped up and ran to her.
*
Someone is going to come . . .
Well it happened
Zorka’s father died. I overheard my mamka say that Zorka’s mamka was unstable and couldn’t take care of herself and that Zorka was turning out just like her mamka, and then she turned to me and said I should focus on my studies. Zorka told me that she was getting the hell out, for real this time. I felt invincible with her and hopeless with my family. I said, “Don’t leave without me!”
*
More snow came, large flakes, like lamb’s wool.
No one saw Zorka for six days. Not even me. I walked all through the Letenské Park, rubbing my hands together against the cold, whispering “Zorka . . . it’s me!”
On the seventh day, the whole building was full of her name. Ms Květa from across the street was yelling “Fire, fire!” and my brother said “Holy shit” in English.
The whole hallway smelled like vodka and burnt hair and in the middle there was Zorka’s mamka’s prized fur coat, all aflame, like a newly landed meteor. My mamka handed me a bucket and I ran to fill it in the bathroom. All the neighbours took turns running in with cups and pots and rubber boots and whatever they could find to fill with water, to dump on the burning coat.
When the fire was finally put out, it started burning deep and low behind everyone’s eyes. “Where’s that little devil’s cunt?” the heat flickered.
I snuck out that night one more time and walked through the streets, the snow crunching beneath my boots, husking at the dark, “Zorka . . . ! It’s me!”
But I only saw a dementia-faced stray cat, and a man who told me I had pretty hair and asked if I wanted to come up and have a piece of his mother’s cherry bublanina cake.
I guess I had started to feel very different since Zorka had disappeared, as if I was in charge in her absence. So, I looked the man in the eye and said, “If I was gonna get a stranger’s dick forced in me, I’d expect a little more than your mamka’s bublanina, you asshole. Sharpen your approach.”
The man sneered and said “You little cunt” under his breath.
I turned around and flipped him a winter bird, à la Zorka, then began to run. I ran through the streets, feeling the grainy road layered with ice and slush shifting beneath me, the evening air, chilled and liquid, like curtains of black water. I kept running, turning left, down the streets, across the street, across the river, around the trees, past Wenceslas Square, I kept running, feeling Zorka was just behind me, both arms up, middle fingers penetrating the night.
*
Soon enough though, I was far from the bravery of the bublanina cake episode, lying in bed, feeling impossible. I closed my eyes and slept, and in my sleep there was this dream: snow. Snow all over the gardens. She’s standing by the closed-down carousel. Zorka. She slides off her mother’s heavy fox-fur coat and lets it fall down to the snow. She pulls off her red jumper and drops it too. She unhooks her bra and lets it go. Her hands at her sides, fingers knotted, her body’s shivering. She’s breathing hard and her ribs are showing. Her breasts are pinched and blue.
“Janka,” she says to me and she’s shaking from the cold, “I d-d-dunno w-wh-why I’m such a malá narcis. D-d-d-dunno why I d-d-do these things. Ju-just can’t be a g-g-good, obedient dog. I-I-I know the whole world w-w-w-wants me to ‘S-s-s-stay put. S-s-sit. L-lie down.’ But I can’t . . . I ju-just want to sniff people’s asses.”
I reach out to put my arms around her but she turns away from me. Then I see it, on her left shoulder, there are three tiny sores in a row, puffed and unhealed, each one with a tear of blood rolling down.
*
I started to focus on my studies. I recited a passage from Molière for my parents, in French. And a week later, I memorised and recited another from Faust in German. I continued to stuff my memory with classic passages in foreign languages.
My older brother stopped wearing that blue T-shirt that I liked on him, because of the way it hung from his collarbones. He started filling out, it wasn’t really muscle and it wasn’t really fat, just more of him from all the angles. Before we knew it, he was immense. Not
just tall, but beefy, like a stew come to life, he began hovering his shoulders in and hooking his neck down when he stood or walked. Our mother told him in sing-song voice to stand up straight, and our father flapped him on the back and said, ‘Be proud of your size, Vilèm.” One evening, like so many, I was feeling that sunset ripple of anonymous dejection, and was eager to go to my room to cry. Just as I was leaving the bathroom, I saw my brother standing in the back of the hallway like a stump, half his face in the shadow.
He asked me if I’d seen his hair gel.
“Haven’t seen it,” I said.
I reached for the door of my room, but he said my name.
“Jana . . .”
His voice was so timid just then, I couldn’t understand how it connected to that huge figure at the end of the hallway.
“Yeah?” I replied, looking at the door knob.
“Jana . . . I think my ears are going to shit . . .”
“Yeah?” I said meekly, still facing the door.
“Maybe it’s cause . . . I’m like . . . big . . . like, tall . . . way up . . . or something, but . . .” His voice trailed off.
I felt him take a step towards me and I turned my head. The hallway light caught his thick brow pushing out over his thin eyes, which were retreating like a freshly crashed wave.
“Night,” he said, then gave me an embarrassed smile. Just the tips of his two crooked teeth showing on his bottom lip.
*
He began studying computer science at the university and got a side job as a security guard in Želevčice u Slaného, forty-five minutes out, at that production plant that made hospital beds. He got a grey button-down shirt with a dark-blue tie and matching slacks, through which he looped his worn black-leather belt. He’d leave the house with his yellow walkman in his hand and fuzz blaring from his headphones. I was discretely crying all the time. He was listening to his Pearl Jam cassette. It had his favourites on it, “Jeremy” and “Alive”. He got it from his friend Slavek, who had golden fingers for American stuff. He’d sing under his breath “Zheremy . . . zeemed a harmless little fuck . . .” Luckily our parents couldn’t distinguish an Anglophone syllable from a cough. Once I walked in on him with his headphones on, eyes closed, squirming his arms and clenching his teeth singing “Cheyyyy, cheyyy, I, oh, Im still ah-live!” He didn’t see me. I quietly closed the door and ran outside without my coat.
Virtuoso Page 6