Philip Roth - The Prague Orgy

“I am coming up.”

“You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“Not me,” she says.

I’m still doing up my trousers when she is at the door, wearing a long suede coat that might have seen her through trench warfare, and a pair of tall leather boots that look as if she’d been farming in them. Against the worn, soiled animal skins, her white neck and white face appear dramatically vulnerable — you can see why people do things to her that she does not necessarily like: bedraggled, bold, and helpless, a deep ineradicable sexual helplessness such as once made bourgeois husbands so proud in the drawing room and so confident in bed. Since I am frightened of everything, it is as well to go in one direction as the other, Well, not only is she going, she’s gone: she is reckless desperation incarnate.

I let her in quickly and close the door. “Prudence isn’t your strong point.”

“This I have never heard. Why do you say this?” she asks.

I point to the brass chandelier suspended above the bed, a favored place, Sisovsky had already told me back in New York, for the installation of a bugging device. “In your room,” he warned me, “be careful about what you say. There are devices hidden everywhere. And on the phone it is best to say nothing. Don’t mention the manuscript to her on the phone.”

She drops into a chair beside the window while I continue to dress.

“You must understand,” she says loudly, “that I am not marrying you for your money. I am marrying you,” she continues. gesturing toward the light fixture, “because you tell me you love me at first sight, and because I believe this, and because at first sight I love you.”

“You haven’t been to sleep,”

“How can I sleep? I am thinking only of my love for you, and I am happy and sad ail at once. When I am thinking of our marriage and our children I do not want to sleep.”

“Let’s have breakfast somewhere. Lei’s get out of here.”

“First tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

“Is this why you marry me? For love?”

“What other reason could there be?”

“Tell me what you love most about me.”

“Your sense of reality.”

“But you must not love me for my sense of reality, you must love me for myself. Tell me all the reasons you love me.”

“At breakfast.”

“No. Now. I cannot marry a man who I have only just met” —she is scribbling on a piece of paper as she speaks —”and risk my happiness by making the wrong choice. I must be sure. I owe it to myself. And to my aged parents.”

She hands me the note and I read it. You cannot trust Czech police to understand ANYTHING, even in Czech. You must speak CLEAR and SLOW and LOUD.

“I love your wit,” I say.

“My beauty?”

“I love your beauty.”

“My flesh?”

“I love your flesh.”

“You love when we make love?”

“Indescribably.”

Olga points to the chandelier. “What means ‘indescribably,’ darling?”

“More than words can say.”

“It is much better fucking than with the American girls.”

“It’s the best.”

In the hotel elevator, as we ride down along with the uniformed operator (another police agent, according to Bolotka) and three Japanese early-risers, Olga asks, “Do you fuck anybody yet in Czechoslovakia?”

“No, Olga. I haven’t. Though a few people in Czechoslovakia may yet fuck me.”

“How much is a room at this hotel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course. You’re so rich you don’t have to know. Do you know whv thev bug these big hotels, and always above the bed?”

“Why?”

“They listen in the rooms to the foreigners fucking. They want to hear how the women are coming in the different languages. Zuckerman, how are they coming in America? Teach me which words the American girls say.”

In the lobby, the front-desk clerk moves out from behind the reception counter and crosses the lobby to meet us. Politely excusing himself to me, he addresses Olga in Czech.

“Speak English!” she demands. “I want him to understand! I want him to hear this insult in English!”

A stocky gray-haired man with formal manners and a heavy unsmiling face, the clerk is oblivious to her rage; he continues unemotionally in Czech.

“What is it?” I ask her.

“Tell him!” she shouts at the clerk. “Tell him what you want!”

“Sir, the lady must show her identity card. It is a regulation.”

“Why is it a regulation?” she demands. “Tell him!”

“Foreign guests must register with a passport. Czech citizens must show an identity card if they go up to the rooms to make a call.”

“Except if the Czech is a prostitute! Then she does not have to show anything but money! Here — I am a prostitute. Here is your fifty kroner — leave us in peace!”

He turns away from the money she is sticking into his face,

To me Olga explains, “I am sorry, Mister, I should have told you. Whipping a woman is against the law in a civilized country, even if she is being paid to be beaten. But everything is all right if you pay off the scum. Here,” she cries, turning again to the clerk, “here is a hundred! I do not mean to insult you! Here is a hundred and fifty!”

“1 need an identity card for Madame, please.”

“You know who I am,” she snarls, “everybody in this country knows who I am.”

“I must record the number in my ledger, Madame.”

“Tel! me, please, why do you embarrass me like this in front of tny prospective husband? Why do you try to make me ashamed of my nationality in front of the man I love? Look at him! Look at how he dresses! Look at his coat with a velvet collar! On his trousers he has buttons and not a little zipper like you! Why do you try to give such a man second thoughts about marrying a Czech woman?”

“I wish only to see her identity card, sir. I will return it immediately.”

“Olga,” I say softly, “enough.”

“Do you see?” she shouts at the clerk. “Now he is disgusted. And do you know why? Because he is thinking. Where are their fine old European manners? What kind of country permits such a breach of etiquette toward a lady in the lobby of a grand hotel?”

“Madame, I will have to ask you to remain here while I report you for failing to show your identity card.”

“Do that. And I will report you for your breach of etiquette toward a lady in the lobby of a grand hotel in a civilized European country. We will see which of us they put in jail. You will see which of us will go to a slave-labor camp.”

1 whisper, “Give him the card.”

“Go!” she screams at the clerk. “Call the police, please. A man who failed to remove his hat to a lady in the elevator of the Jalta Hotel is now serving ten years in a uranium mine. A doorman who neglected to bow farewell to a lady at the Hotel Esplanade is now in solitary confinement without even toilet facilities. For what you have done you will never again see your wife or your old mother. Your children will grow up ashamed of their father’s name. Go. Go! I want my husband-to-be to see what we do in this country to people without manners. I want him to see that we do not smile here upon rudeness to a Czech woman! Call the authorities — this minute! In the meantime, we are going to have our breakfast. Come, my dear one. my darling.”

Taking my arm, she starts away, but not before the clerk says, “There is a message, sir,” and slips me an envelope. The note is handwritten on hotel stationery.

Dear Mr. Zuckerman,

I am a Czech student with a deep interest in American writing. I have written a study of your fiction about which I would like to talk to you. “The Luxury of Self-Analysis As h Relates to American Economic Conditions.” I will meet with you here at the hotel anytime, if you will be willing to receive me. Please leave word at the desk.