Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

Someone is going to come…

Zorka’s father died. I overheard my mamka say that Zorka’s mamka was unstable and couldn’t take care of herself and that Zorka was turning out just like her mamka, and then she turned to me and said I should focus on my studies. Zorka told me that she was getting the hell out, for real this time. I felt invincible with her and hopeless with my family. I said, “Don’t leave without me!”

More snow came, large flakes, like lamb’s wool.

No one saw Zorka for six days. Not even me. I walked all through the Letenské Park, rubbing my hands together against the cold, whispering “Zorka… it’s me!”

On the seventh day, the whole building was full of her name. Ms Květa from across the street was yelling “Fire, fire!” and my brother said “Holy shit” in English.

The whole hallway smelled like vodka and burnt hair and in the middle there was Zorka’s mamka’s prized fur coat, all aflame, like a newly landed meteor. My mamka handed me a bucket and I ran to fill it in the bathroom. All the neighbours took turns running in with cups and pots and rubber boots and whatever they could find to fill with water, to dump on the burning coat.

When the fire was finally put out, it started burning deep and low behind everyone’s eyes. “Where’s that little devil’s cunt?” the heat flickered.

I snuck out that night one more time and walked through the streets, the snow crunching beneath my boots, husking at the dark, “Zorka…! It’s me!”

But I only saw a dementia-faced stray cat, and a man who told me I had pretty hair and asked if I wanted to come up and have a piece of his mother’s cherry bublanina cake.

I guess I had started to feel very different since Zorka had disappeared, as if I was in charge in her absence. So, I looked the man in the eye and said, “If I was gonna get a stranger’s dick forced in me, I’d expect a little more than your mamka’s bublanina , you asshole. Sharpen your approach.”

The man sneered and said “You little cunt” under his breath.

I turned around and flipped him a winter bird, à la Zorka, then began to run. I ran through the streets, feeling the grainy road layered with ice and slush shifting beneath me, the evening air, chilled and liquid, like curtains of black water. I kept running, turning left, down the streets, across the street, across the river, around the trees, past Wenceslas Square, I kept running, feeling Zorka was just behind me, both arms up, middle fingers penetrating the night.

Soon enough though, I was far from the bravery of the bublanina cake episode, lying in bed, feeling impossible. I closed my eyes and slept, and in my sleep there was this dream: snow. Snow all over the gardens. She’s standing by the closed-down carousel. Zorka. She slides off her mother’s heavy fox-fur coat and lets it fall down to the snow. She pulls off her red jumper and drops it too. She unhooks her bra and lets it go. Her hands at her sides, fingers knotted, her body’s shivering. She’s breathing hard and her ribs are showing. Her breasts are pinched and blue.

“Janka,” she says to me and she’s shaking from the cold, “I d-d-dunno w-wh-why I’m such a malá narcis . D-d-d-dunno why I d-d-do these things. Ju-just can’t be a g-g-good, obedient dog. I-I-I know the whole world w-w-w-wants me to ‘S-s-s-stay put. S-s-sit. L-lie down.’ But I can’t… I ju-just want to sniff people’s asses.”

I reach out to put my arms around her but she turns away from me. Then I see it, on her left shoulder, there are three tiny sores in a row, puffed and unhealed, each one with a tear of blood rolling down.

I started to focus on my studies. I recited a passage from Molière for my parents, in French. And a week later, I memorised and recited another from Faust in German. I continued to stuff my memory with classic passages in foreign languages.

My older brother stopped wearing that blue T-shirt that I liked on him, because of the way it hung from his collarbones. He started filling out, it wasn’t really muscle and it wasn’t really fat, just more of him from all the angles. Before we knew it, he was immense. Not just tall, but beefy, like a stew come to life, he began hovering his shoulders in and hooking his neck down when he stood or walked. Our mother told him in sing-song voice to stand up straight, and our father flapped him on the back and said, ‘Be proud of your size, Vilèm.” One evening, like so many, I was feeling that sunset ripple of anonymous dejection, and was eager to go to my room to cry. Just as I was leaving the bathroom, I saw my brother standing in the back of the hallway like a stump, half his face in the shadow.

He asked me if I’d seen his hair gel.

“Haven’t seen it,” I said.

I reached for the door of my room, but he said my name.

“Jana…”

His voice was so timid just then, I couldn’t understand how it connected to that huge figure at the end of the hallway.

“Yeah?” I replied, looking at the door knob.

“Jana… I think my ears are going to shit…”

“Yeah?” I said meekly, still facing the door.

“Maybe it’s cause… I’m like… big… like, tall… way up… or something, but…” His voice trailed off.

I felt him take a step towards me and I turned my head. The hallway light caught his thick brow pushing out over his thin eyes, which were retreating like a freshly crashed wave.

“Night,” he said, then gave me an embarrassed smile. Just the tips of his two crooked teeth showing on his bottom lip.

He began studying computer science at the university and got a side job as a security guard in Želevčice u Slaného, forty-five minutes out, at that production plant that made hospital beds. He got a grey button-down shirt with a dark-blue tie and matching slacks, through which he looped his worn black-leather belt. He’d leave the house with his yellow walkman in his hand and fuzz blaring from his headphones. I was discretely crying all the time. He was listening to his Pearl Jam cassette. It had his favourites on it, “Jeremy” and “Alive”. He got it from his friend Slavek, who had golden fingers for American stuff. He’d sing under his breath “Zheremy… zeemed a harmless little fuck…” Luckily our parents couldn’t distinguish an Anglophone syllable from a cough. Once I walked in on him with his headphones on, eyes closed, squirming his arms and clenching his teeth singing “Cheyyyy, cheyyy, I, oh, Im still ah-live!” He didn’t see me. I quietly closed the door and ran outside without my coat.

Zorka was long gone then, her father buried, her mamka moved out. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started memorising proverbs at an incredible rate. We got more dictionaries in the house. I got into the high school specialising in languages and impressed everyone by doing nothing but studying, all the time, big books gasping open all around me. My mamka started calling me “The Scholar” and bragged openly about my skills in French and English and German and Russian, all the while I was in my room, learning more and more. My papka was a bit different about it – a layer of discomfort, like coarse hair in a comb, at having a bookish daughter who could only spit out proverbs. He always echoed my mother, “Good job, Janinka!” But something in the way his pupils rolled away when he pushed a smile at me, made me want to disappear forever. He observed me the way you look at people who do small tasks with too much passion and precision.

I often wondered if he ever wished I’d go blind so that I’d never read another book again.