Goya's Glass (22 page)

“From now on we will be dispensing with your services.” Very nice. He won’t see Božena’s latest letter, that hopeless dolt! “Fräulein Zaleski, please stop talking about yourself.” “Fräulein Zaleski, don’t waste my time!” “Fräulein Zaleski, such useless whining, so typical of women, does not interest me at all!” “Concentrate on what I ask of you, Fräulein Zaleski, we will only pay you if your work for us is of any use.” Scoundrel! I shall read Božena’s letter by myself. She at least has wonderful memories,
enough of them to build a cathedral with. The only memory that has stayed with me is the brilliance of the ring on the finger of my fiancée. And my romantic dreams about good-looking young men, about doctors and sensual cures.

No, I’m not going to read Božena’s letter. It would hurt me too much. I have persecuted an unhappy and defenseless woman, as defenseless and unhappy as I am myself. With one huge difference: my legacy to posterity will be a few police reports, whereas Božena’s work will always be read. Maybe they’ll even be reading her stories a hundred years from now or more. No matter how much they spy on you, Božena, no matter how much hunger and misery they subject you to, and how much they distance you from your friends, people will always admire and respect you. You are important for the simple reason that they pay you such attention, that they create these piles of paper full of reports about your life, that you merit the cost of informers and spies like myself. What will happen when I am gone? Why, look, there will be a burial attended by my father and siblings and nobody else. Afterward they’ll have lunch in a restaurant and will raise a toast, perhaps, to the memory of poor, unhappy Vít
ě
zka, who reveled in her fifteen minutes of glory when she worked as a police informer. Maybe somebody will shed a tear. Then they’ll go back home, and the next day everything will be as before and Vít
ě
zka? Vít
ě
zka will gradually be forgotten.

And how about for you, Božena? Your readers will organize a funeral worthy of a queen. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people will turn up to say their farewells. They will mourn you for months on end, publicly and in private. Later, they’ll write
books about you, they will delve into your parents’ lives and will take such an interest in you that you could well be a planet spinning in the universe. Perhaps someday one of those shining stars will even bear your name. For men and women both, you will always be Mnemosyne, an untouchable goddess, mother of the muses, the most beautiful statue in the ancient world. That is the difference between we two wretched women: I am common, banal; and you, surprising, prodigious, unique.

Deep down, are you as unhappy as you seem? No. You have dreams that you believe in with an obstinacy made of steel. In the letter now in my hand, you write to your sister, I suppose about this most recent doctor and lover of yours: “Although he has hurt me, I believe in him. I believe in him, even though it might all be nothing but a sham. Don’t break up my dream, don’t spoil my poetry.”

Yes, Božena, you have your dream world, full of beauty, love, and poetry, which nobody can take from you. Your dream world, as attractive as the real one is ugly, gives you strength to keep going. You are not afraid of human evil or police harassment. Like the girl in your folktale who gets her strength from the fantastical world hidden in a willow tree, your folktales are full of supernatural powers that bring harmony and justice to the world. You, in turn, give sweetness and consolation to the world, but above all you give it to yourself! I, too, dream. And I dream of love, but do I know any men except those who are already your admirers, Božena? Do I have any other choice but to imagine myself with your devotees? Do I have any other possibility beyond that of projecting myself onto you, of projecting you
onto me? Of an attempt to become you? And to write about. . . about your lovers, about my lovers?

It doesn’t stop raining. We are at the tail end of winter; the snow makes a slushing sound when trodden. It’s better not to go outdoors unless absolutely necessary, or to do so only in the evening when merciful darkness hides all that dirt. She ought to be happy: she has managed to get her publisher to pay her some money. She should buy something for dinner, at least for her children. But she doesn’t have enough strength to do so. She would prefer to sit on the pavement or in front of a church. Yes, in front of a church like that ancient sage with whom she had flown between the chimneys. What would he advise her to do now?

After days, weeks, of sadness that she found all but unbearable, under the weight of which she had collapsed, now she feels completely empty. She doesn’t want to even think about writing. Her health has deteriorated; she is coughing and spitting blood. Aside from her cough, there is nothing else left inside her. Not a single thing to look forward to, not a trace of joy when she sees something beautiful. Not even hope.

She passes the lit windows of the cafe frequented by her friends. Perhaps through the glass she will see the face of somebody to whom she can explain her sorrow. She is empty but the weight of her sadness has not left her, she’s aware of that. Only to speak, to let herself go! But what can she tell them?
I have lost love? I have lost everything? I have lost life?
All of them,
absolutely everybody, would laugh at that. She knows that they don’t care for her lover and consider him a charlatan and a fraud. Those who would listen to her would be running off to share this latest gossip with their friends a moment later. This has happened to her before. But what does she care? She needs to speak, to get rid of the weight pressing down on her, to hold someone’s hand and tell them. Tell them what, really? Tell them her life is over.

That woman sitting over there isn’t. Indeed, it is Vít
ě
zka. She approaches her window. Vít
ě
zka is sitting among some friends who are in the middle of an animated discussion, but she doesn’t seem to understand their words. Her eyes are frightened, big brown eyes like . . . Like a deer’s, like a wild goat’s. . . No, like a little donkey’s. Vít
ě
zka is like a tender, timid donkey who was born to be used by others. Vít
ě
zka is made of that same stuff, as are all those who have to hide their suffering in order to give the impression they are getting ahead in life, in order to make the world look like a happy place.

She taps the glass, close to Vít
ě
zka’s ear. The young woman who seems so distracted looks through the glass out into the street and Božena realizes, suddenly, that Vít
ě
zka looks somewhat frightened and perhaps a little compassionate.

She leans on Vít
ě
zka, who had come out to say hello, and took her over to the Vltava. There, next to the water, she looked at her sideways. Yes, with those big, innocent, sad eyes she looked like a little kind-hearted donkey. For the first time in a long while, Božena saw tears in the other’s eyes and she put her arms around the neck of that little donkey looking about
without understanding a thing, her big eyes blinking. With her head on this young woman’s shoulder, eyes bright with tears, she began to let herself go, saying she had lost love . . . that she had lost everything, that she had lost life. She spoke and sobbed, and her words fell like drops of slow autumn rain.

Vít
ě
zka was about to open her mouth to say: “But your lover hasn’t left you! He doesn’t want anybody else! His love is sincere. What he couldn’t stand, and I find hard to put up with too, is that you are so great and famous, as well as being so beautiful, whereas he is just a mediocre student, one of many. It also riled him that you could escape from him, that you fled into the books you were writing, into your willow tree. And he couldn’t cut it down like Vítek does in the folktale. That’s why he ran off with other women, not with the most stunning ones, but with the ones who were easy to ditch, the ones who had nothing memorable about them, who could feel nothing but uncritical admiration for him. Once he had filled his cup of self-esteem with them, he came back to you. Then one day he definitely did not come back because the secret police, who were after you, moved him away from Prague. They sent him far from the capital to a practice in a distant place, and they did that because they didn’t need him anymore. Your wise Czech friends had already distanced themselves from you, shocked by your relationship with him, and by getting him out of the way the police did you additional harm. They were afraid of you because you dared to proclaim in public that you are Czech. You are proud of it, you do as you please, and, on top of that, you are brilliant. All these things together are unforgivable.”

Vít
ě
zka was about to say all that, but at the last minute she did not. She couldn’t. She remained silent. This was her most heartfelt rebellion against the person who was better than she in every way, even as she now cried in her arms.

Božena talked and cried and talked. Her words fell upon the gray waves of the Vltava and the river carried them far away.

This was Vít
ě
zka’s final revenge.

One day in May, Herr Anton von Päumann, the prefect of Prague, sat down at his work desk in the prefecture, and found that two items had been delivered to him. Both were from the same sender: Fräulein Zaleski. The first, a large envelope, contained a pretty sizable text, dated December 1854—March 1855; and the other one, much smaller, clearly contained a letter. The prefect picked up the first envelope. The note accompanying the text said, among other things: “You contracted my services in order to reveal the existence of a conspiracy, to ensure that the bad would be punished. I have sent you a detailed report on the current relationship between N
ě
mcová and her latest lover.” Anton von Päumann started to read:

At this point, von Päumann skipped a few pages, then went on reading:

When Herr von Päumann finished reading, he smiled. He didn’t quite believe it all. To the contrary, he was convinced that Fräulein Zaleski, with that sick mind of hers, had invented a great deal of it or rather, had made it all up. But as he now had the story in his hands, Herr von Päumann selected the most believable extracts for police use with a view to demonstrating the moral degradation of the writer Božena N
ě
mcová. Not long afterward, the abridged version of the story that Vít
ě
zka had written started to circulate by word of mouth among the most notorious gossips of Prague, and confirmed the rumors with which Božena’s “friends” had justified their distance from her, thus leaving their consciences clear.

Then the prefect of Prague picked up the little envelope, which contained a single sheet of paper. He read: