The Drowning Of A Goldfish Read online

  “Well, well, is it not Daddy’s little girl who tries again to worm her way through our ranks?!”

  “You don’t count with the PEOPLE, do you? Do you know that the cloth does not make a monk?!”

  “But do sit down, Comrade. We shall take our time to discuss your problem. Open your heart to your comrades. And be sure that whatever we decide is for your own good … which, of course, must conform to the justice of the PEOPLE, whose interests you certainly cherish, whose defender you would like to be, wouldn’t you? That’s true, isn’t it? Or … would you remain the same rampant bourgeois individualist, who tries to profit at the expense of the working class?! Do you intend to be a parasite on its labor?! To usurp its results?!”

  “You don’t say anything, Comrade?! Are we right?! Did you come here hoping to educate your shabby little bourgeois soul at the expense of the SOCIETY?!”

  “You don’t speak, Comrade … have you nothing to say?! And what about us?! Who are wasting our precious time, which belongs to the PEOPLE …?! The working class, wishing to give a chance to everybody of pure heart, is too indulgent with a dirty slug like you! Get out of here! And make sure that we don’t see you again!”

  The layer of faked kindness has flaked slowly off … The voice has appeared in all its brutality.

  I gather my strength and like a swimmer who, having touched the very bottom of the sea, remounts, floats exhausted to its surface, I unstick my back from the chair. Bracing myself, I stand up and walk towards the door. Pushing the handle, my back dotted with their hateful glances, I walk away.

  The hallway is empty and dark. The windows, covered with grime, follow me with their cataractic eyes.

  People pass by in front of the University, cars circulate, trams shake gray, indifferent passengers.

  Not wanting to see myself, I look at them.

  I am ashamed of my misery. I disassociate myself from my helplessness. I am hardly able to tolerate my own existence.

  I creep along the quays. I turn to Národní Avenue. I head towards Venceslav’s square.

  I have a place to return to. My misery has its limits.

  I don’t say a thing.

  Father’s hand weighs on my shoulder.

  “You have to be patient. Their time is running out. The system will crack in a few months and I shall send you to the Sorbonne to study.

  “Hold your head high. The march must go on.”

  That same evening I return to Ústí. The train is three hours late. The waiting room, crowded with grimy bodies, reeks of stale sweat, making me sick.

  I step out onto the platform. Sinking to the bottom of my being, I lose my breath. In front of me, the train screeches to a halt.

  The crowd runs over me as I am pushed and squeezed into the overloaded carriage. People scramble for compartments, dispute the seats. At last, crammed on hard, wooden benches, they calm down.

  Pressed against the window in the darkened corridor, I let the night flow under my swollen eyelids.

  Like a good rain, tears, large and heavy, pour out of my empty eyes. I cry quietly, like a fountain full to its brim.

  Hope must be justified. If not, it kills.

  I do not share Father’s illusion of the imminent fall of the communist regime. I find his gliding between the real and the imaginary extremely dangerous.

  My survival depends on my fulfillment. Considering suicide a bastardly solution and conforming to this regime inconceivable, I have to find another way. But first I must give up any hope of Rudolf’s moral or sentimental assistance and break my emotional ties with him.

  This done, he will not be able to hurt me any more.

  To fend off attacks from the outside world, my inner spheres have to be shock-proof. The wounds inflicted by affection heal poorly and leave scars.

  Intellectually, all seems clear.

  Emotionally, my misery is grim.

  I envisioned my life with Rudolf to be an honest and loyal union, a wall protecting us from life’s cruel jokes. I wanted to give and take, believing that to offer is the only decent way to receive.

  He, however wants a Mary, a small and simple life where the king returns home, whenever he feels like resting, to get comfort from his slave’s faithful body.

  This is a way of life, that I shall never share, that I loathe. I know that it exists and will not disappear. It is waiting for me, setting a trap for me.

  Yet, I will not be caught. Rudolf and I are face to face. Our split is final, our expectations of life incompatible.

  Our confrontation takes place in a void, as we do not inhabit the same planet; but the blows we deliver to one another are murderous and one of us will not survive. Our odds are equal, but I have to be the stronger one. I have to win.

  Even if he loses, he will pull through.

  I would not.

  Life is not like writing a book. I cannot say: “I need peace, a paper and a pen, a warm, well-lit library where I can sit without being disturbed, my back against a comfortable chair, my hands resting on a solid table.”

  Life is made without any support.

  The subject is imposed and it is me. If I fail I am finished.

  I want my life to be well-written: no soap opera, no naturalistic drama, no tear-jerker to amuse the mob.

  My life shall be little poems in prose, well-composed, sophisticated, refined.

  I mustn’t be frightened. Death does not daunt me. To die is not humiliating. Death is a release. The struggle is over and everything becomes calm.

  I am not alarmed by death.

  Rudolf is scared.

  He is scared that he will not be strong enough to tame me, to build his happiness on my misery, to change me into Mary.

  Rudolf got married in order to rot away tranquilly; I to fulfill my life.

  He is scared of failing his goal. I am certain of mine.

  Through his fear, I defend myself.

  Through his fear, I take hold of him.

  Through his fear, I shall beat him.

  Slowly, as one moves after a long illness, on unsteady legs, with eager eyes, I leave the room.

  The corridor has been swept by the magic branch of the sun, the remainders of the shadows are thrown into a garbage can.

  The sun is waiting for me in the garden. I stretch out on the grass and we begin to play.

  I open my mouth; it tickles me beneath my tongue and polishes my teeth until they glisten like pearls, nestled in fleshy, humid oysters.

  I shut my lips, taunting the sun, swallowing it. The sun just laughs at me and escapes through my nostrils. Dashing off into the branches of the trees, it makes them shine a golden luster. Green interlaces with yellow, cuddling like dancers, toying with love.

  I am lying on the grass.

  I am living again.

  I lift my arms, and turn my palms towards the sun.

  I touch me.

  I feel me.

  The breathtaking joy of self-recognition grasps me, blows me up and I rise …

  Wherever I shall go, I shall be at home. I carry the world in my mind. My brain, an indestructible private possession, yields to my will.

  I get up.

  I walk.

  No paths, no streets are closed to me.

  The frightening shadows have lost their force.

  The benediction of a godless sky inundates me with its foamy waves.

  I am floating above the town, ready to take part in its life.

  I handle it, without being touched.

  On March the 5th 1953, Joseph Vissarionovitch Djugashvili, defrocked pope, extraordinary magistrate, known as Stalin, died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

  In the courtyard of the cancer pavilion, the director Anna Krátká, deadly pale, is having a sobbing fit.

  She bars my way with her outstretched arms, wanting to embrace everybody in her grief.

  “I am so worried for you, that I can’t stop shaking, comrade Velenská! HE, so generous, so considerate, so merciful towards all the parasites and enemies of th
e working class, is DEAD!

  “Who’s going to protect you? Who will help you now?! My poor Comrade Velenská!”

  Anna Krátká is a simple woman. A former worker, she climbed the ladder of the Communist Party patiently and blindly. The position of Director of the Cancer Pavilion is the last rung. From there she cannot but fall on her face.

  Anna is not a nasty woman. I may live in her territory, eat “the bread soaked in the sweat of the working class,” hide in the little room above the radiotherapy ward … until she gets the order to liquidate me.

  Anna and I are standing in the courtyard of the cancer pavilion. I think I understand her; she believes she understands me. An aura of thin air forms an impenetrable shield around us.

  Yet her voice reaches me: The words fall apart and the core of the message glows in a white, radiant, glistening hope: STALIN IS DEAD!

  Things change. Slowly, carefully, scarcely noticeably.

  Almost three years are to go by before the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party takes place.

  I content myself with little: I want something more than dragging crates around an ice-cold chemical warehouse. I want a job which will be useful both to me and to society, a job in which I can excel.

  I speak German, French, English, Russian fluently.

  Thanks to Father.

  Thanks to his generosity.

  Thanks to his sternness.

  Thanks to his bringing me up the hard way. “Either you are the best, or I am not interested,” still rings in my ears.

  I graduated with honors and I have the brains to escape this deadlock.

  The outsider who used to roam the streets of Ústí with her head lowered and her back hunched has changed into a determined explorer. My nose in the air, I read the wind, trying to find ways to end my misery.

  Merchant of four languages, I shout, “Who wants my English, German, Russian, French? Who will take me? Who will give me a chance to enter the world?”

  At language schools, they send me back, not even bothering to test my skills. They are not interested in knowledge but in a university degree. How can I present one, being excluded from any university studies?

  To be accepted as a translator or a tourist guide, I need to be an “element worthy of confidence.” I should come from the working class or, even better, be a member of the Communist Youth or the Party.

  It’s no use trying.

  Like a beaten dog, I crawl through the streets of Ústí, muttering timidly:

  “Who wants my English, German, Russian, and French? Who will give me a chance to enter the world?”

  Refused everywhere, I am still disciplined, keeping sight of my goal, gritting my teeth hard and still harder.

  Once the Nazi occupation was over, the Union of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship was founded as an expression of gratitude for the liberation from Nazi Germany. It was intended to be an organization where everybody could participate, regardless of political opinions. Besides many other activities, it offered courses in Russian language and literature. I learned that teachers need not be members of the Party, nor have a university degree.

  To become a teacher there was my last hope.

  Ústí nad Labem had once been a rich town, prosperous and generous. From that time there remained a magnificent theater on the main square and some majestic villas, amidst devastated gardens.

  The Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship Building was located on the main street halfway between the railway station and the cancer pavilion, in an old house, wide and low-slung, reflecting its hundred years with the dignity of its former splendor.

  The information desk is on the ground floor. I enter a vast room under a high ceiling. It is empty and I dare not advance.

  The walls are decorated with posters, strikingly true to life, and landscape lithographs of the Russian realistic school of the 19th century. In one of the lithographs, snow is glittering and sparkling under the blaze of the setting sun. In sleighs drawn by stout, white horses, bonny ladies with cherry-like cheeks, cuddled in satiny furs, recline gracefully against portly gentlemen adorned with audacious moustaches.

  They laugh, gliding along at breathtaking speed past the snow-laden trees of my childhood. I have not yet met with the cold; I just imagined it through the glass of the windows of a well-heated room, smelling so sweetly of almond cookies and ripe mandarins, titillating deliciously the nostrils of a good child …

  A sonorous voice interrupts my daydreams. It is soft and warm, like the silky muzzle of a docile cow, contentedly chewing prairie grass in the Alps.

  Vladimír Mesner, president of the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship Union, is a former singer with the Opera of Ústí. When he lost his voice, due to a deficiency in his vocal cords, the Party, which he had joined in the enthusiasm of the liberation of 1945, procured this well-paid and comfortable position for him, where no special knowledge was required.

  Vladimír accepted his fate without bitterness. Easygoing and handsome, he lived life day by day, emphasizing the positive.

  Warm and generous, he offers me his hand, smiling at me. His eyes are as blue as the summer sky; his forehead large, like the wheat fields of the Ukraine, and his cheeks, deep cushions.

  Vladimír is big, fleshy, powerful; a brave voivode, protecting the just, fighting the villains.

  He takes my life in his welcoming hands, my misery runs off like a frightened rabbit.

  He needs me; in fact, rather desperately! My Russian is indispensable to him! He does not even ask to see graduation credentials so delighted is he with me! Hiring me on the spot, he puts me to work the same day.

  I am floating.

  Holding my breath, I savor the feeling, not wanting to waste any of it.

  Suddenly, an ice-cold current strikes my mind.

  Does he know who I am?! Does he realize to whom he is talking?! Is he going to retreat when he learns the truth?!

  I must tell him everything and explain who I am! If he wants to take his support back, he must do it immediately or I shall not survive …

  I dig my nails into my moist hands, straighten my back, and stretch my trembling muscles.

  With a raspy tongue, I wet my lips. My head lowered, not daring to look at him, I start to talk …

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and turns me towards him. He looks into my eyes; his are sad, mine are frightened.

  “But how can you believe that all this matters to me?! You are so young, so pure, so innocent! How could I hurt you?! YOU have nothing to do with the rotten capitalists! How could I punish you when you have not sinned?!”

  He moves closer, inspecting me indulgently, like a lion looking at a mouse that has slipped into his cage to gnaw at the remainder of his royal feast …

  All of a sudden, I become aware of the ridiculousness of my situation. This tragicomedy, this absurdity suddenly overwhelms me and I begin to laugh.

  Where have I seen all of this before? In a fairy tale? In a comedy of Molière? In one of the Soviet optimist tragedies, where people die so that the principle can live forever?

  In the next second, the hero, with wide gestures, head thrown back and chest swollen with romantic feelings, will begin to sing.

  My Prince Charming comes from a music hall.

  The Russian courses are organized along the slogan: “Let the wolf eat and the lamb stay intact.”

  The instructors are sent into the factories and offices to teach Russian to the employees. The weekly one and one-half hour is taken from their working day. Who would dare touch their leisure time?

  Their textbooks are offered free, and the students learn, with great difficulty and little comprehension, how to spell words written in azbuka—the Russian alphabet.

  To learn Russian does not hurt anybody and it has certain advantages: It shows that their relationship towards the Soviet Union is “positive and constructive”; it is added as a “cultural activity” on their records and will be taken into consideration as a “group activity” during their a
ssessment.

  My role as instructor is not to bore the participants beyond measure, to let them doze with half-closed eyes and to assign good marks at the end of the course. This course is the first of a three-level cycle, followed by a course in either conversation or literature, according to the participants’ choice.

  The repetition of the work of learning a language fascinates me, even comforts me, making me breathe the air of my childhood, an era I cannot sever.

  Light as a feather dancing in the breeze, I leave Vladimír. I flutter across the hill towards the hospital. Distributing happy hellos and radiant smiles I float into the dining room.

  Without waiting for Rudolf, I step into line, fill my tray, and start to appease my well-deserved appetite. I seethe with impatience, wanting to tell the first person who comes along of my joy. I am dying to share it with the whole world.

  Rudolf enters. In vain he looks for me at the entrance, where I should be humbly waiting. His disapproving glance finds me, eyebrows dipping with deep concern.

  Contemplating me with disgust, he sits down beside me.

  “How dare you come here out of breath, your hair in a mess, your hands dirty, and your skirt God knows how far above your knees?!

  “Look at yourself for a change! And don’t forget that you are my wife and people will judge me also by you!

  “Either you behave or, next time, you’d better stay at home!”

  He probes me. He frisks me. I do not live up to his standards.

  Why am I not prostrate, overwhelmed with grief, plunged in distress like other times?!

  What is happening behind this obstinate forehead? My eyes are no longer looking down.

  How come this mouth does not clench and stop chewing? Why does the food not get blocked in my throat?

  I gulp the last forkful and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand—another strictly forbidden gesture.

  I scoff at him, saying:

  “You know, I have found a job …”

  Stunned, he is looking at me in startled disbelief and absolute disapproval.

  His eyes look mad and icy.

  Now did I dare do such a thing without asking for his advice, without begging for his consent?!

  “You won’t need to support me any longer.… and I can even bring you money.”