Goya's Glass (14 page)

The enemies of Austria-Hungary never rest and one must
be forever on the alert. Society is full of conspirators. The other day at a reception, the former ambassador of France told me that the Austro-Hungarian government makes the same mistake as similar regimes by thinking that revolutions are prepared by groups of secret conspirators. He said, “Revolutions emerge from unbearable social conditions, but you, my friend, like the rest of the Austro-Hungarian police, have shut your eyes to this obvious fact!” It is rather the French who have shut their eyes to the network of conspiracy that is being woven across our empire! As a police representative, I am the best defense against the conspirators: with a good nexus of informers, control over the mail, and other such tactics, I will create a state of permanent fear within society. I will be unpredictable, mysterious. Taken to extremes, this strategy will make the people tremble. Yes, I wish to keep the Czechs in a state of terror. May they tremble before making any decisions on their own. In Austria-Hungary we have no need of a few geniuses, but rather of a mass of happy subjects.

In other words, there can be no compromise. I shall write a letter to Herr Kempen about this woman writer.

A rather special woman, this N
ě
mcová. Why is she complicating things for herself? She has now started to publish her
novel,
The Grandmother
, in monthly installments. I forgot to ask Fraülein Zaleski about the book and above all, about the coded political programs and revolutionary messages that might be found within. I’ll have her brought here at once.

The student of medicine came in with a heavy suitcase and headed for the patient’s room with eyes fixed to the floor. From the suitcase, he took out various glass cups, cylinders, small bottles, needles and scissors . . . A thousand years’ worth of knowledge transformed into objects, she thought. As if he’d overheard her thoughts, he glanced at her, a slight smile on his lips, and asked her to undress and lie down on the sofa that they now used as an examining table. Meanwhile, he went on blowing into his flasks in order to clean them, before placing them on the chair next to the bed.

“Please lie face down.”

He undid her corset, leaving her back exposed. He rubbed the palms of his hands together; ssssssh . . . and the fragrance of a beech forest filled the room. He started to massage her back with his palms, fingers, fists, the backs of his hands, and his forearms. The touch of his hands was firm and tender at the same time, and produced tickles, then caresses that stretched out over her skin and penetrated beneath the epidermis, deep into her body. He then proceeded to take the glass cups, one by one, and she felt the circular objects cover her back, sticking to it like suckers.

He took the cups off her body. A new smell of wood filled the air, probably pine, this time, and his palms spread that perfume
over her skin, up to her shoulders, then down, until he was putting pressure on her waist, then he continued on to her buttocks and thighs.

He laced up her corset.

“Turn over, please. And try to relax.”

Eyes fixed on the ceiling, she made an effort to slacken her tensed muscles and make herself comfortable. The doctor, or rather the trainee, placed a chair behind her head and sat down. Having rubbed his fingers with an oil that smelled like a jungle after the passing of a monsoon, he rubbed her nostrils and, like some mad painter, used the tips of his fingers to draw all kinds of doodles and scrawls on her cheeks, chin and forehead.

Now his fingers slid down her neck, over her collarbone, to her shoulders. They followed the shape of the bone from which the ribs emerge. Through her silk underclothes, they traced the outer circle of her breasts. Then, briefly, he put pressure on the breasts themselves. Half dead from the shock, she couldn’t so much as ask herself if this formed part of the treatment.

But the upper part of her body was already wrapped in a blanket, and the doctor’s fingers were now playing with her belly. They prodded its muscles, and, in a way that revealed they were experienced, put pressure there where the belly ends. At that moment she felt a wave of desire that spread rapidly to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her hair, and showed no sign of going away. The patient lay there with her eyes firmly closed, half maddened. The doctor’s soothing voice simply intensified her feeling of pleasure.

“I’ll be giving you this treatment every day for a week. What I’m doing is touching certain nerve endings in order to give your body energy, strength so that it will be able to cure itself.”

Then he picked up several folded paper envelopes, tied with different colored ribbons. He gave her instructions regarding the medicines she had to prepare for herself using the herbs in the envelopes which she had to drink in the form of infusions, and place on her body as poultices, especially on her chest, stomach, and kidneys.

“After this week,” he added, “I will let you rest for ten days. We will then go ahead with a further week of intensive treatment. At that point we’ll take stock of the situation. Perhaps you will already be feeling better and will not require any further care from me.”

As he spoke, he put his objects back into his case. Only now and again did he run his eyes over the face, neck, and shoulders of his patient, as if involuntarily, like a shy child. She suddenly felt that he wasn’t a doctor at all, but rather a little boy who in his innocence had caused some irreparable harm but was unaware of it and continued to go on happily.

“You may get dressed. See you tomorrow!”

These words, spoken from the half-shadow of the hall, cut through her dreaminess like a sword through a bridal veil. She wanted to run after him to make him stay, but she was half-naked. The sound of the front door as it banged shut went through her like an icy gust of wind.

That good-looking young man, with his broad shoulders and butterfly waist, has been visiting the N
ě
mecs’ apartment since Božena came back to Prague, in order to cure her. They say he is a real doctor. If he isn’t one, who cares, he’s so attractive. The kind of man I would describe as Oriental, at least that’s how I imagine Oriental people to look from the descriptions of František Skuhravý. Yesterday I dreamed of that young doctor. I was Božena and he came to cure me. But what was I thinking of just now? Oh, yes: if he’s a doctor, maybe he could show me some kind of exercise for my back, which I just can’t keep as straight as I should. I have the feeling that everybody laughs at it. Yes, people, even when they’re being serious, are forever staring at me, their mouths like open drawers.

My woman friends make fun of me too. When they told me that František had left me, they laughed. I will always remember their wide-open mouths, so happy were they that František got engaged to another woman. Never again will František share with me his enthusiasm for the ideas, colors, and perfumes of the Orient, never again will he tell me I look like an Indian girl. Later I saw them together at the theater. The golden hair of his fiancée had so stunned me that I preferred to look at her fan. I do believe it was painted by Hellich himself. At that very moment the brilliance of her engagement ring stung my eyes. When they went to take their seats, my woman friends laughed their heads off.

But now it’s me who’s laughing. I’m the one who’s got this woman writer—the one everyone’s talking about—whom everyone reads—by the scruff of the neck. All by myself, I can liquidate
her, invalidate her, neutralize her, how and when I wish. Afterward, I will show everybody who the real writer is and what writing is really about. I wouldn’t bore my readers with legends and folktales the way Božena does, nor would I write stories about workers and peasants. I’m going to write about the kind of life I myself would like to live, which is like the one Božena has had for herself. She has her husband and her children, she publishes one book after another, people read her and worship her, and on top of all that she has dozens of male admirers, maybe even dozens of lovers! They adore her. Božena writes to one of them in a letter: “What you have written to me, about having a right to feel proud because people honor and respect me, you yourself cannot have really believed this even when you wrote it, and now I myself can do nothing but smile as I read it.”

That’s how she replies to her lover’s praises, playing at being a foolish little girl, the goody two-shoes, and delicate flower, to whom success means nothing. And the things she writes next! “A sincere heart, the endeavor to achieve perfection, the striving to help my people to the utmost limit of my capability—these are the only things at which I am superior to normal women, who do no good in the world.”

I will tell the police exactly what I know of you: that you are an illegitimate child, that the people you think of as your parents are not your real ones; that you married an imperial civil servant on purpose to cling to as you pave your way to Vienna, but in Prague, among Czech patriots, you also want to stand out, which is why you won’t stop boring the pants off us with your verses and stories and pretty words about the unity of the
Slav peoples. In my police report, I will also include the fact that when only newly wedded you couldn’t bear to be with your husband, that you went in search of male friends and lovers, always in such a way that they helped your literary career; that you used the same criteria when choosing your female friends, who always had to be wealthy girls from good families, like Johanna and Sophie; that your friends are influential, well-known, and respected people, people such as
Č
elakovský, Purkyn
ě
, Erben, and Havlí
č
ek; and how you flirted your head off with all of them so they would contribute flattering reviews of your writing in the newspapers. I will not forget to add that you are a heartless mother, your children do not get enough to eat, while you just go on writing, even though you know that if you write you will hurt your family because the imperial police are after you. But above all, I will tell them that you have a lover. I do not know for certain, nor do I care. The police, and eventually society in general, will know that you are a fallen woman. From then on, no one will give you a helping hand, no one! What more is there to be said? I will fill in the details myself. I have a rich imagination and my dreams are in full bloom. Yes, you are a depraved woman who pursues relationships outside wedlock.

But no matter how much this may be the case, if, in the future, people remember ideas from this time, they will be yours. For they are easy to listen to. When you say: “What I long for is love, a true love, but not for one single person, but rather for everybody, for all humanity, a love that asks nothing in return, a love that would improve me, that would bring me closer to truth,” that sounds pretty, very much so, and when seen in an
album of memorabilia, next to your phrase “it is better to be a martyr than a good-for-nothing who doesn’t even know why she’s alive,” people will be stunned and they’ll believe it as if it were gospel. They will always read your work, both today and ten years from now and probably a hundred years later as well, they will read your writing and marvel at your ideas and your style, and they will remember your physical appearance. It is far more romantic for a woman writer to be beautiful than disagreeable to look at, even though the latter might have written volume after volume and suffered more.

And what will become of me? What will remain after me? A few reports written for the police, with which I will simply help turn you into a martyr, whereas I will always be a parasite for the coming generations, a shameless woman gnawed by envy. You will always be the superior one, even though you will die of hunger, even though everyone will abandon you.

It does not matter! If a parasite is what I must be, I might as well be a genuine one!

Božena N
ě
mcová is the illegitimate daughter of Duchess Katerina von Sagan. As to the identity of the aforementioned person’s father, we have only rumors to go on.”

No, no I can’t go on like this if I don’t want them to think I’m full of envy. First I will have to get everything straight in my own head and will then enforce upon all my thoughts a style and form that will suit the police. But do I really believe the Duchess von Sagan is Božena’s mother?

The other day, when she was flat broke, I gave Božena a little loose change so that she could buy milk for her children. I needed to search her apartment. In the cupboard I discovered an engraving with this curious inscription: “The artist dedicates this print to his daughter.” The artist was none other than the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Perhaps a future historian or relative will try to prove that Božena is Goya’s daughter, to add a little extra charm to her history.

What is the relationship between Božena and the duchess? She told me how, in the park of Ratibo
ř
ice castle, where she grew up, from time to time a beautiful Amazon woman would emerge from the trees and vanish in an instant: the duchess, out riding with her admirers. I am sure that more than one of the wonderful princesses and good witches in Božena’s stories have been based on this duchess.