Philip Roth - The Prague Orgy

“Why does she need looking after?”

“Why do you need looking after?” Bolotka asks her.

“This is awful,” she says. “I hear stories about myself tonight-Stories about who I fuck. I would never fuck such people.”

“Why do you need looking after. Olga?” Bolotka asks again.

“Because I’m shaking. Feel me shaking. I never stop shaking. I am frightened of everything.” Points to me, “I am frightened of him.” She flops down onto the sofa, in the space between Bolotka and me. I feel pressing against mine the best legs in Prague. Also believe I feel the touha.

“You don’t act frightened,” I say.

“Since I am frightened of everything it is as well to go in one direction as the other. If I get into too much trouble, you will come and marry me and take me to America. I will telegram and you will come and save me.’’ She says to Bolotka, “Do you know what Mr. Vodicka wants now? He has a boy who has never seen a woman. He wants me to show it to him. He is going into the street to get him.” Then, to me: “Why are you in Prague?

Are you looking for Kafka? The intellectuals all come here looking for Kafka. Kafka is dead. They should be looking for Olga. Are you planning to make love to anybody in Prague? If so, you wilt let me know,” To Bolotka: “Kouba. There is Kouba! I cannot be in this house with that Kouba!” To me: “You want to know why I need looking after? Because of stupid communists like Kouba!” She points to a short man with a bald head who is animatedly entertaining a circle of friends in the center of the milling crowd. “Kouba knew what the good life was for all of us. It has taken the Koubas twenty years to learn, and they’re still too stupid to leam. All brains and no intelligence. None. Kouba is one of our great communist heroes. It is surprising he is still in Prague. Not all of our great communist heroes who were in Italy with their girl friends when the Russians invaded have bothered to come back from their holiday yet. Do you know why? Because when the Russians occupied Prague, at last they were free of their wives. Some of our greatest communist heroes are now with their girl friends teaching Marxism-Leninism in New York. They are only sorry that the revolution fell into the wrong hands. Otherwise they are like Kouba — still one hundred percent sure they are right. So why do you come to Prague? You are not looking for Kafka, none of our heroes in New York sent you, and you don’t want to fuck. I love this word fuck. Why don’t we have this word, Rudolf?” To me again: “Teach me how to say fuck. This is a good fucking party. I was really fucked. Wonderful word. Teach me.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Beautiful word. Shut the fuck up. More.”

“Fuck it all. Fuck everything.”

“Yes, fuck it all. Fuck everything and fuck everybody. Fuck the world till it cannot fuck me anymore. See, I learn fast. In America I would be a famous writer like you. You are afraid to fuck me. Why is that? Why do you write this book about fucking that makes you so famous if you are afraid to fuck somebody? You hate fucking everybody or just me?”

“Everybody.”

“He is kind to you, Olga,” Bolotka says. “He is a gentleman, so he doesn’t tell you the truth because you are so hopeless.”

“Why am I hopeless?”

“Because in America the girls don’t talk to him like this.”

“What do they say in America? Teach me to be an American girl.”

“First you would take your hand off my prick.”

“I see. Okay. Now what?”

“We would talk to each other. We would try to get to know each other first.”

“Why? I don’t understand this. Talk about what? The Indians?”

“Yes, we would talk at length about the Indians.”

“And then I put my hand on your prick.”

“That’s right.”

“And then you fuck me.”

“That would be the way we would do it, yes.”

“It is a very strange country.”

“It’s one of them.”

Mr. Vodicka, pink with excitement, is dragging the boy through the room. Everything excites Mr. Vodicka: Olga dismissing him like a bothersome child, Bolotka addressing him like a whipped dog, the indifferent boy weary already of being so cravenly desired. The stage-set splendors of Klenek’s drawing room — velvet burgundy draperies, massive carved antiques, threadbare Oriental carpets, tiers of dark romantic landscapes leaning from the paneled oak walls — evoke no more from the boy than a mean little smirk. Been everywhere already, seen the best in brothels by the time he was twelve.

Mr. Vodicka is fastidious with the introductions. Bolotka translates. “He is saying to Olga that the boy has never seen a woman. That’s how Mr. Vodicka has got him in from the street. He promised he would show him one. He is telling Olga that she has to show it to him, otherwise the boy will go.”

“What do you do now?” I ask Olga.

“What I do? I show it to him. I have you to fuck me. Mr. Vodicka has only dreams to fuck. He is more frightened of everything than I am.”

“You’re doing it out of sentiment.”

Placing my hands over her breasts, Olga says, “If it weren’t for sentiment, Zuckerman, one person would not pass another person a glass of water.”

Czech exchange. Bolotka translates.

Olga says to Mr. V., “First I want to see his.”

The boy won’t hear of it. Plump, smooth, dark, and cruel: a very creamy caramel dessert.

Olga waves her hand. The hell with it, get out, go.

“Why do you want to see it?” I ask her.

“I don’t. I have seen too many already. Mr. Vodicka wants to see it.”

For five minutes she addresses the boy in the softest, most caressing Czech, until, at last, he shuffles childishly toward the sofa and, frowning at the ceiling, undoes his zipper. Olga summons him one step closer and then, with two fingers and a thumb, reaches delicately into his trousers. The boy yawns. She withdraws his penis. Mr. Vodicka looks. We all look. Light entertainment in occupied Prague.

“Now,” says Olga, “they will put on television a photograph of me with his prick. Everywhere in this house there are cameras. On the street someone is always snapping my picture. Half the country is employed spying on the other half. I am a rotten degenerate bourgeois negativist-pseudo-artist — and this will prove it. This is how they destroy me.”

“Why do you do it then?”

“It is too silly not to.” In English she says to Mr. V., “Come, I’ll show it to him.” She zips the boy up and leads him away, Mr. Vodicka eagerly following.

“Are cameras hidden here?” I ask Bolotka.

“Ktenek says no, only microphones. Maybe there are cameras in the bedrooms, for the fucking. Bui you go on the floor and turn the light out. Don’t worry. Don’t be scared. You want to fuck her, fuck her on the floor. Nobody would take your picture there.”

“Who is the lover who wants to kill her?”

“Don’t be afraid of him; he won’t kill her or you either. He doesn’t even want to see her. One night Olga is drunk and angry because he is tired of her, and she finds out he has a new girl friend, so she telephones the police and she tells them that he has threatened to murder her. The police come, and by then the joke is over and he is undressed and sorry about the new girl friend. But the police are also drunk, so they lake him away. The whole country is drunk. Our president must go on television for three hours to tell the people to stop drinking and go back ‘ to work. You get onto a streetcar at night when the great working class is on its way home, and the great working class smells like a brewery.”

“What happened to Olga’s lover?”

“He has a note from a doctor saying he is a psychiatric case.”