Four Sonyas Page 3

  Sonya took a step back, away from Jakub, the cone of light from the flickering flashlight shone on the contours of her waist, the bend of her elbow, the curve of her neck beneath the cascade of glittering liquid copper hair, 100!!! Sonya’s beauty soared to a score of at least 100,000, Jakub reached for her and pressed her against the wall, suddenly he lurched, blinded by the shining lens pressed to the bridge of his nose, and already she had torn free of him, then the rattle of a key in the lock and Sonya’s laughter behind the locked door.

  As if beaten up, Jakub crawled to the hotel entrance and in his room No. 4 he slammed down his suitcase. When he opened it, the red silk of the shorts lying on top struck him a vicious blow below the belt.

  With clenched fists Jakub marched across his bare room, and when he began to feel cramped there, he marched up and down the nighttime second-floor corridor on the red coconut matting past the doors of the hotel rooms, MEN DON’T TALK WITH WOMEN, are you a man? I haven’t been, Dad, but now I will be (from room No. 6 slaps and a woman’s cries), YOU MUST CONQUER HER (from room No. 5 the “Big Beat” of consummated love), ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR—

  Jakub flew down the stairs to the ground floor, on the way he fingered his breast-pocket wallet crammed with its emergency 2,700 crowns, wouldn’t you like to have a kiss too? For a mere three crowns that girl really puts on a performance! Get your change ready and join the line — when she’s given so much, then why not me too, again Jakub fingered the wad of banknotes over his heart, no long drawn-out rigmarole and I’ll buy that girl 900 times running.

  The front door of the hotel was locked and so was the door to the kitchen, of course. But not the toilet for the bar’s customers (crumpled carnations on wet paving stones) and Jakub crawled through the narrow window and jumped down into the darkness of the courtyard.

  The kitchen window was wide open and from the inside, through the complete darkness, shone an odd, narrow, zigzag chink stretching across the room, suddenly it moved, swelled up, and then zigzagged again, evidently the floricultural evening was still in progress — no matter, I too will up the stakes—

  Jakub swung through the window, crept toward the transverse, chest-height strip of light, and inserted one hand into it, he was grasping a featherbed from beneath and firmly he yanked it off: underneath the featherbed, lying on her stomach in her long nightshirt, Sonya was reading a book by the beam of her flashlight.

  “Listen here, Mr. Jagr!” she hissed.

  “Forgive me, Sonya, I just thought that…”

  “Shh! — You have no business thinking! Get right out of here!”

  “I can’t leave, Sonya, till you promise me…”

  “Shh! — I’ll promise you tomorrow, but now get out or you’ll wake Uncle!”

  “I could spit on that fat, vile, no-good—”

  “Shh! — Jakub … go away!”

  “Sonya, you’re so wonderful and beautiful and—”

  “Shh! — Let go of me, or— Shh!”

  “Sonya. My love—”

  “Shh!”

  After a little jostling, Jakub felt Sonya’s soles on his chest, he leaned toward them and was kicked so hard he stumbled and knocked over a chair. Sonya slipped out of bed and ran to another door.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Volrab’s voice could be heard from that direction.

  “My husband’s got a gun!” Volrabka shrieked from the same direction.

  (The exhausted Sonya had hardly been able to stand on her feet when her Uncle Volrab pushed old man Srol, the final participant in the FIRST FLORICULTURAL EVENING, out into the night. A total of 126 carnations had been sold.)

  “Our pantry’s been cleaned out,” Volrab rejoiced, “and the cellar too.”

  “I’d never have thought we could get rid of that potato salad from last Thursday,” whispered Volrabka, touched. “It was a big success, my darling, big as a building!”

  Volrab cut his wife a huge hunk of bread and spread it thick with lard, Volrabka threw two half-pound sausages on to boil for her husband, at once they began to eat and at the same time count their take (greasy, gleaming fingerprints on the crumpled banknotes), which exceeded their wildest dreams (and the greasy kiss-marks of their gleaming, greasy lips), with her fingers Volrabka fished fried pork rinds out of the pan, dipped them in salt, and tossed them smack into her gullet. Volrab opened a large container of Spanish sardines, salted the entire contents and, without even a slice of bread, ate them off his knife, incessantly chewing he drew four beers, gulped them down, and then two more (Sonya drank a glass of milk and before going to bed she aired out and cleaned up the bar) and then they all went to bed.

  “For tomorrow evening we’ll make a walnut cake with peanuts and margarine, a whipped-cream cake with eggwhites, and ice cream with powdered eggs,” Volrabka dreamed while Volrab unfastened her bra.

  “With those canned herrings I’ll make real Parisian rolled anchovies, and with last year’s currants I’ll make ‘Extra Special’ Swedish punch,” Volrab rejoiced as he crawled under his featherbed.

  “To think that we even sold that potato salad from Thursday…” Volrabka whispered, entranced, her hands behind her head.

  “We had a fine soirée, that’s for sure. And the next one will be much finer. Success after success!” Volrab addressed the darkness.

  “I still don’t feel sleepy,” Volrabka snickered, and she pinched her husband hard on his fat hip, “How about it, you devil?” and again she gave her husband a mighty pinch on his hip.

  “But it’s time to make sleepy-bye, darling,” Volrab grumbled, rolled over, and peacefully fell asleep.

  Volrabka went on snickering a while (she was thinking of those delicious war years, of our old Hotel Globus across from the Usti railway station, of the brisk trade in the bar and in the guest rooms whenever a train arrived from the front or a boat anchored in the harbor, there were times when even Mme. Wohlrab herself was pressed into service for the warm young bodies of those starved beautiful boys from the Navy and the Wehrmacht) and then she too fell asleep, happy that they had sold Thursday’s potato salad.

  Suddenly awakened by noise from the kitchen, the door of their bedroom violently thrown open, and on the threshold a dark figure.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” roared Volrab, and he rolled out of bed in search of a poker.

  “My husband’s got a gun!” Volrabka screamed, and in no time her hand was equipped with a long knitting needle.

  “Uncle! Auntie! It’s just me!” cried Sonya. In the twinkle of an eye the Volrabs were standing on the alert like cranes (the nights at the Globus had been wild ones whenever a train arrived from the front or a boat anchored in the harbor) on both sides of the bed, he with his outstretched poker, she with the pointed end of her needle projecting forward (employees can do ugly things sometimes).

  “It was only Engineer Jagr coming to get something,” Sonya explained breathlessly.

  “And you let him in?” asked Volrabka.

  “He came in through the window. I was airing out the kitchen.”

  “So run then and get that window closed!” Volrabka screamed, and she turned to her husband: “What could he want so late?”

  “But you know, my darling, what the young man might want from our Sonya.”

  “But that’s vulgar — why, he didn’t even come to our evening!”

  “Sonya darling, have you closed the window? … And the front door’s locked? Well then, come and go beddy-bye between the two of us, you know we won’t give you up…”

  “But there’s no point in…” Sonya started to object, but then stopped herself (one didn’t make objections to the Volrabs).

  And the Volrabs placed Sonya between them in the marriage bed, almost tenderly, without Sonya it wouldn’t have been a success and that potato salad would have gone to feed the pig, with their hands they kept reassuring themselves in the dark that they really had Sonya (at the same time appraising how well she had developed, just right for a colonel from the General Staff
wearing an order of laurel leaves, swords, and diamonds), and they fell asleep full of their cares, which were by no means small ones considering the fragile nature of the goods (but we know very well how to deal with such things).

  That Sunday morning, on the second floor of the Hotel Hubertus in Room No. 5, face to the wall, Ruda Mach slept in the nude and beside him Jarunka Slana, dressed in Ruda’s shirt (her back supported by a pillow propped against the headboard), she was smoking his cigarettes on an empty stomach and swallowing her tears.

  The last time, the end, never again. Ruda’s brown face, drenched by the rain, and his laugh when he picked her up on the highway, a waterlogged hitchhiker just kicked out of her house … in nothing but the outfit she happened to be wearing … and his rough hands running through her hair to wring the water out of it, then along her chin, her neck, to warm her up faster … and later on that night, and for hours now in this room and long after love-making was over his hot palms went on warming her frozen soles. Could it really have been no longer than two months?

  With Ruda love unfortunately has no continuation. He knocks about hotels, everything he owns in a single suitcase, when he needs a girl he puts himself out and can be quite charming. But in the morning he gives her the boot—the beast.

  He’s just an animal. But a young girl needs a husband, a place to live, and security—

  With a snarl Ruda turned over on his back and began to snore quietly. In ever widening golden trapezoids the morning sun moved toward a guitar which hung next to the scuffed-up door.

  Farewell, my love, whispered Jarunka, and tears dripped onto her breasts, why do things in this world never go the way a person would like them to — and stubbornly she tried to think of her fiancé, Dr. Lubos Sedivy, of the new, cosy little apartment on the eighth floor of a new building. Of the new blue gown hanging in her closet, of the reception hall rented for the wedding, and the row of garlanded automobiles in front of the Palace Hotel, but Ruda Mach snoring louder and louder made these highly artificial images collapse and Jarunka ran her damp cheeks along his cool skin, scraping against his growing beard, and she swept his face with her hair until finally he woke up.

  “Hi, love,” yawned Ruda, without even glancing at her, he took a quick look at his watch, which he never took off, and already he was on his feet, he stretched at the window until his joints cracked, and then placidly and powerfully he broke wind, then drank down half the water in a tin pitcher, splashing the remainder on his face and neck and shoulders, the running water shone on his rough brown back, a hard, mobile sculpture of muscles and tendons, and it shone like mercury in the dark growth on his chest.

  “Hand me my shirt,” he growled, and as he pulled it over his wet body, the fabric marbleized. “So get going already,” he growled impatiently and with rising anger. He always wakes up in a rage and he has never known how to say goodbye.

  A final look at Ruda’s room, the green bed, the scratched-up guitar on the wall, the never closed closet door, and then already the cold stairs down (when I climbed them I might have experienced all the love of my life) and in the bright morning glare in front of the Hotel Hubertus Jarunka had to lean against the dew-covered railing.

  “Well, so long,” said Ruda.

  “I could wait for you until you come back this afternoon.”

  “There’s no sense dragging things out any longer.”

  “What else do you have to say to me?”

  “Have a good time.”

  “I never had so good a time with anyone as I did with you — and I never will.”

  “Hell, you act as if I were leaving you, and not you me. Jesus, are you getting married, or am I? Well, don’t bawl any more, girlie … Well, so long.”

  And Ruda leapt over the railing (silvery droplets of dew rolled down the metal poles like tears) and already he had gone, from the meadows below the tracks mist was rising and the wind drove white shreds of paper past the red gas pump, Ruda thrust his hands into his pockets, started to whistle, and walked off through the summer morning, a fellow who knew how to make every girl happy, but once he’d made it with her didn’t know where to go from there.

  While Jarunka Slana went on weeping in the hotel kitchen with her best girlfriend Sonya, Ruda Mach was walking through the entryway of Cottex Plant No. 04 (a good-natured Old World building that looked like vanilla ice cream with whipped cream on top, geraniums at the windows and a red star on the roof, a meadow in front, a mountain stream in back, and beyond that nothing but forest up to the sky), at the red-and-white barrier he pinched the gatekeeper on her mighty backside, and before she had stopped squealing with fright he was out in the meadow pinching a young lab assistant on her rosy little posterior and rumpling the front of her too loose-fitting white labcoat, he threw his shirt into the bleaching room, in the course of two beers he lined the rest of the chlorinating basin with alkaline-resistant tiles, he was unusually adept and the work whistled through his fingers, he went into the office to give a piece of his mind to the time-and-motion spies, in the director’s office he mortally offended Director Kaska as well as the technical inspector from the Usti branch, Engineer Jakub Jagr, in the lab he again rumpled the lab assistant and sent her out for a pound of bloody headcheese, meanwhile he stuck into his pocket four sample skeins of the finest Egyptian cotton called mako (far more delightful than toilet paper) and went to sit for a bit in an outhouse overlooking the Jizera River.

  (“…but what if you had to choose between unreliable love and marriage to a Ph.D. who has his own apartment with central heating, a balcony, and a car!” cried Jarunka Slana in the Hubertus kitchen, drawing her knees under her chin, still in tears.

  “Love, nothing but love!” Sonya said decisively as she attacked the potatoes energetically with a scraper.)

  The outhouse on the river only had three sides, in place of a fourth there was a view of the valley from the circular opening one sat on, Ruda Mach pulled out of the back pocket of his lowered trousers a brass-bound wallet, spread out his pay and his papers on his bare knees, and buried himself in administrative work.

  As a trained insulator and specialist in alkaline-and acid- resistant pavings, tiles, putties, glues, special cements, brickwork, and paints, Ruda Mach always found well-paid work wherever he took it into his head to go. Most of the year he worked in the great industrial complexes of Northern Moravia and Eastern Slovakia, where there’s good company and a fellow has a fine time, but when the meadows blossom he would head out with his school map on a tour of places where so far he had never been. And the heads of small factories stuck away in charming tourist sites would outdo one another in their bids to the experienced specialist, who could do by himself as much as a whole gang could, they replied with costly express telegrams to his scrawled notes written with a carpenter’s pencil, they sent him their own cars to pick him up at the station and they were glad to pay for his hotel rooms.

  (“…because Ruda Mach has a white liver,” Jarunka sighed across the hot stove with such emphasis that Sonya dropped her ladle into a casserole of boiling goulash soup.

  “A white liver—” Sonya repeated with horror, “What does that mean?”

  “It means that as a man he’s simply fan-tas-tic—”)

  In the great industrial complexes of Northern Moravia and Eastern Slovakia women are scarce and unavailable. Ruda Mach loved girls and had a burning need for them.

  When he had thoroughly counted his pay (he was an expert at complex special pay rates and knew them better than any bookkeeper did), he stuffed the roll of banknotes into the crammed compartments of his wallet, got up, made use of all four skeins of cotton, in the lab he packed his mouth full of bloody headcheese and then in the bleaching room by noon he had finished a day’s worth of work, he hurled heavy shovels full of wet insulating material into the wire netting high above his head, at a fast tempo and without a single pause, more the sporting elegance of a handsome naked body exerting itself than a construction worker’s drudgery (joy from using one�
�s muscles along with joy from letting them relax, and joy from food, from making love, from cold water and from sleep, Ruda Mach had felt one or another of these joys continuously throughout his thirty-one years), at last with a fine trowel he smoothed out the solidifying mass into rounded shapes (he was thinking of a girl’s body and of joy), perfectly and with tenderness (a touch obedient to the material and with joy), then he stepped back from his work and with his head bent toward one shoulder he appraised it: it was good and it was finished (joy).

  (“…and keep an eye on him. Understand?—” said Jarunka, and Sonya avoided her penetrating gaze, she bent over the chives on her chopping board and the skin on her neck turned red — both girls held their breath for a moment in a special tension in which sympathy was strangely mixed with envy, and pleasure with pain — it lasted only a second and already Sonya was chopping her chives again and Jarunka was continuing to rinse her reddened eyelids with strong tea. The girls no longer had anything to say to each other and in a little while Jarunka Slana was hitchhiking to Usti to get married.)

  The factory meadow ended at the confluence of the millrace and the river, in a wild triangle of never-mown prairie, buried in yard-high grass, Ruda Mach lay on his stomach and, his eyes closed, placidly devoured what was left of the bloody headcheese wrapped in greasy newsprint, then he lazily stretched his front paws (rough as a tire and beautiful as a javelin-thrower’s) and with his face on his hands he slowly closed his eyes, he felt wonderful, and when Ruda Mach feels wonderful he starts getting bored. For amusement he rolled over on his back, and when his fat wallet started to pinch him in the hip he rolled over again as he had been before, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, held it firmly in his teeth, and with his bare elbows he parted, bent, and broke off the grass in front of his nose until he’d made a clearing two feet square; on this he carefully laid out his wallet.

  Bound on the corners with brass strips, the smudged leather was stretched taut with compartments jammed fat as a box of candy. The right or “business” half was stuffed with pay slips, hotel bills, urgent telegrams from directors, a thick wad of hundred-notes, already stamped blank forms, and court summonses.