Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

“But let’s discuss more concretely. Here,” Mr Doubek turned the page for the clients as Jana spoke, “the system of connected air cells between the two-layered mattresses creates the therapeutic effect that has been proven to accelerate wound healing.”

“And as you can see,” the page was turned again and Mr Doubek’s finger pointed to a photo of a nozzle-like apparatus adjoined to the side of the beige bed-frame, “the Virtuoso mattress system is also equipped with a one-hand-operated CPR system.”

The French clients began nodding in sync, then flipped backwards in the brochure.

“Very impressive,” the cleft-chin client said, “but it is also quite an investment, you would agree.”

“The investment is on a par with the service, gentlemen,” Jana said calmly. “This is state-of-the-art medical care. This one-of-a-kind mattress, this complete bed system,” Jana continued as Mr Doubek held down the brochure with the fleshy side of his fingertip, “this is the human sleep wherein science can reach its hand the farthest it has ever reached to intervene.”

Mr Doubek gestured, letting the clients leave first. After they’d left the meeting room, Jana stood up, and Mr Doubek followed suit. She took a couple of steps towards the door, but Mr Doubek slid around her into the doorway and turned to face her.

“The meeting went very well,” he said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jana replied and waited for Mr Doubek to step out of her way. But he just stood there, looking at Jana.

“Can I get you a coffee… and a pastry…?” Mr Doubek asked.

“No, thank you,” Jana replied, looking beyond his shoulder.

Mr Doubek maintained his gaze on Jana, continuing to speak in a weighted tone.

“I know I am intruding, Ms K—. I was under the impression you might want to hear more about your friend…”

Mr Doubek reached his left hand inside his jacket pocket and pulled out an inky-coloured business card and gave it to Jana. On the card, the letters were embossed.

She angled it towards the light and read:

THE BLUE ANGEL

Underneath, Bar à vin .

Then the address. A street named “Prague”, in the 12th arrondissement.

“We could get a drink there,” Mr Doubek said. “At 9pm…”

Jana’s eyes were going over the contours of the card, dropping into the grooves of each letter.

“I hope you like sad music, Ms K—…”

The other kids were mush. Except her, she was solid, I knew that from the courtyard when I looked up.

Sure I get what the gossip was, even back then, Slavek’s big brother with his big mouth was spreading it, saying me and my mamka and my papka had been kicked out of our last apartment for our “dynamics” and we were on our best behaviour in the new building and that truth-be-told, I was the nutjob of the family.

Yeah, I had a pee trick when I first moved in, six going on seven, but for the record, I did behave most of the time cause Papka said we can’t get kicked out any more, but then Mamka would scream, clang a dish, take a hard footstep, how she did, close the window abruptly, and I knew she was coming for me. So I stood in the middle of the carpet, and pulled down my tights and my underwear and let it stream.

“Stop it stop it stop it,” Mamka would run in, trying to pick me up, getting pee all down her stockings, cursing, kicking me with her pee-stained leg, screaming “Malá Narcis!!” when I fell to the floor, then me standing back up, the stream starting again between my legs, Mamka slapping me across my face, me falling back down on the wet carpet, Mamka getting on top of me, Mamka whacking me on the shoulder, on the temple, the cheek, the wrists, the arms, the mouth, whatever, it was all the same to Mamka’s hands. She’d slap herself tired, then get off me and stand up, take a moment of solitude like I knew her to take. She’d place her face into her still-hot palms and hold her head up like that, eyes closed. And I’d get up, careful, checking things out, my face stinging, my lip bleeding. I’d give her dress a little tug. I’d say, “Mamka?” in my not-so-nasty voice.

There were dashes on my cheek from Mamka’s wedding ring.

I’d give the dress a tug and say, in my quiet, not-weird voice, “I’m all out of pee now, Mamka,” to let her know.

Then she’d take her hands away from her face and look down at me and say, “When you call me your mother, it makes me want to die.”

It was the anniversary of the Soviet invasion, and the adult talk was: “Twenty years now of this Warsaw Pact crap”; the Czechoslovaks were a slow-boiling people, they were a cautious people, but now, even they had had enough of this shit. I’d been collecting my saliva in a cup I hid under my bed. “Everything you don’t say,” I told Jana, “becomes liquid.” I didn’t want my words, said or not, to go to shit. Jana played it quiet, like she did. She was good at that. But then she whispered to me that she was already full of wasted words, so maybe she shouldn’t speak at all. I snuffed at her then, “Yeah right, Janka, never! You gotta keep speaking, and if it don’t sound right in one language, just learn another.”

Jana knew what I meant, and everyone could see it. She was sharper than sharp. Her mamka was always bragging about her brain. She got her big books, dictionaries, Russian and French and German, and Jana started learning words that looked confident.

Maybe I’m not telling it right. Or when I hear myself describing Jana, I get sorta pissed off about it, like that’s not right. I don’t know how to make it sound like how it was, for us.

She was solid, Janka. She was my best friend.

We were eight when the first cracks began to appear in the cemented communism we had grown up with. In November, the news came that the Berlin Wall was coming down and refugees were trying to sneak through Czechoslovakia; the Vltava shifted beneath its icy skin like life heckling a corpse. The adults were asking each other in private, “Well, what do you think, what about us?”

Janka and I, we sat under the kitchen table daring each other to swallow the pebbles we had collected that autumn. Big pieces, little pieces, country by country, communism started crumbling everywhere.

“Janka…”

“Huh?”

“Guess what?”

“Huh.”

“Guess though.”

“Um…”

“You’ll never guess.”

“What?”

“Know how I’m supposed to be like… greater… than this.”

“Yeah.”

“Like… my eyes the size of the planets out there.”

“Yeah.”

“And like, my heart beating, splitting land masses into islands…”

“Yeah.”

“And like, big tits. In everyone’s face.”

“Yeah.”

“Well… I’m getting outta here.”

“Outta here where?”

The first time I ran away from the new building, Mamka smoothed things over with the neighbours so we wouldn’t look too weird as a family. Sure, her eight-year-old girl went missing for a couple days, she sang her tune, but she probably reminded everyone that I’m a Little Narcissus, and assured them one by one in the hallway that I’d been pulling these stunts since I could walk, and please, did they want to help themselves to a portion of her poppy-seed cake, freshly baked?

I came back a couple of days later, and Jana asked me where I’d gone and I told her I was hanging out in the forest and then we both looked at the curtains in the kitchen and I could feel her feeling it cause I was feeling it too, the nothingness of time, as thin and stretchy as your eyelid if you pull it up with her fingertips. If we had known how to cry about those feelings, we sure would have. But we were kids, we only knew how to cry about the stuff that didn’t really hurt, we cried to show everyone we were still kids, in case they started worrying we were up to some adult shit. But I remember those curtains and how much I wanted to cry about my destiny and I’m sure Janka did too, and so I just reached out my hand and Janka took it, and that was enough, and actually, it was incredible, to hold on to something instead of wetting myself.