Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

This year the ageing Heilig spouses will go to Lake Balaton. From Germany, they’ll go via the Czech Republic and Slovakia: they’ll save money. Everything is much cheaper towards the end of the season, they don’t have children and needn’t worry about school holidays and so on.

* * *

Lady’s husband was out of his mind with worry; his wife had gone shopping and vanished without trace. He waited anxiously, and when at eleven in the evening she still was not back, he called all his friends to see if she might possibly be visiting one of them. She was not.

His friends had only the obligatory words of comfort for him. “If you need us,” almost all of them said, “we’re always here for you.” This meant: “Don’t bother us; leave us alone. Your wife vanishing is your problem. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

Lady’s husband got the gist, thanked them all and phoned the police.

The police didn’t like the fact that Lady had been missing for such a short time. “Why the panic?” asked the duty officer. “She’s been missing only twelve hours. She’ll be back in the morning. She must be visiting someone.”

Lady’s husband sat in an armchair; there was no point trying to sleep. The hours passed, one by one, and there was no sign of the young woman. The bottle of whisky was almost empty; Lady’s husband was drunk, slumped in the leather armchair. But even drunk, he looked neat and tidy. Towards daybreak he fell into a deep sleep from which he kept jerking awake. The young woman had not come back.

When the husband went to the police at six in the morning, at first nobody paid any attention to him. They were all very busy. It was only around eleven that a tired dishevelled desk officer, wearing a jacket and with a cigarette in his mouth, agreed to talk to him. When he heard the reason for the man’s visit, he smiled.

“Twenty four hours is nothing,” he said.

He silently listened to the description of the car that the missing woman had gone shopping in and looked at her picture. “Wow,” he said, looking at the young woman’s face. “Quite a girl,” he added approvingly. His attitude softened.

“Go home: maybe she’s got your breakfast ready,” the police clerk advised Lady’s husband in an avuncular manner. “You know what women are like. They get a bee in their bonnet and you don’t see them for three days. There’s no point getting upset. Women are like that.”

“But she has never done that before,” said Lady’s husband, pondering the policeman’s suggestion.

“Every woman does it once,” said the policeman loftily. “Any woman can get a bee in her bonnet. Maybe you had a quarrel before she left, maybe you slapped her about, excuse my saying so: did you?”

The husband raised his hands in shock: they never quarrelled.

“How do I know,” the policeman hazarded a guess. “Maybe she’s found another man. That’s what women are like, after all,” he started to philosophize. “It’s hard without them, but being with them is harder still…”

“We love each other very much,” said the man with dignity.

“Take it easy,” said the policeman, trying to calm him. “It’s just that twenty four hours is too short a time. I’m experienced. I’ve been in the police for twenty years. And, frankly, I’ve been divorced three times.”

“And what would be enough time for you?” the husband asked.

“What do you mean?” asked the policeman, puzzled.

“I mean, if twenty four hours is not enough, what is?” explained Lady’s husband.

The policeman thought it over. “I’d say a month, or two,” he said. “There was another man whose wife vanished. He was out of his mind, just like you; madly in love. Two months later, we started a nation-wide search, and she was soon found. And where do you think she was?”

The man shrugged. He had no idea.

“Less than five hundred yards from her home,” the policeman said triumphantly. “In the woods. Someone, actually several men, since that could be ascertained, raped her and then hanged her by her legs, gagged, from a tree. According to the pathologist, she probably lived two more days. You know, women. They’re always tougher… But we did find her, by God!”

The policeman triumphantly banged his desk, as if to underline the significance of his words.

“I’m telling you, sir, women tend to disappear,” he said soothingly. “Particularly since the fucking democrats opened the borders. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the white slave trade is flourishing. Females between eleven and forty-five vanish like anything. And where do they end up? I’ll tell you: in secret perverts’ brothels somewhere in Asia, or South America. But why do I bother you with this? Go home and wait. If she doesn’t show up in five days, come back. And keep calm. Trust us! I know what I’m talking about.”

The desk officer got up, hinting to Lady’s husband that the conversation was over. Lady’s husband made a move and meekly went home.

At home, he changed and went to work. He sat under a fan, his back to the efficient blinds, watching through his glasses his computer’s light-blue flashing screen. The secretary brought him his post. She behaved discreetly; the news of his misfortune spread at lightning speed through the firm. Some pitied him; others, people he had been promoted over, were rubbing their hands with glee. The man sat at his computer and asked himself where he had gone wrong.

Yes, recently he’d spent too little time with his pretty woman. He was constantly overworked; just the thought of having sex filled his limbs with devastating fatigue. He got up very early in the morning, to get ready for the working day, and in the evening he came back, happy to throw himself into his armchair for a few minutes with a drink in his hand. He would go to work almost every Saturday and rested on Sunday. To put it simply and briefly, he could no longer get it up. He began to think about the last time he slept with his wife. It turned out that it had been some time last year. When he realised that, he was stupefied. It was terrible how fast time flew.

Lady’s husband got up, turned his computer off, and went to see his line manager. In a few brief, well-chosen words he explained the situation, took three weeks’ leave and went home.

Three days later, his erection was back, but not the young woman.

He went to the police again. This time, it was a different policeman, a fat grey-haired man with a scar on his temple, in a sweaty white shirt and with a pistol in an underarm holster.

He wrote up a report, searched in his drawer and found the picture of Lady that his colleague had put there a few days ago. He had a good look at Lady’s face. “Quite a girl,” he said admiringly and looked at the man condescendingly. “Have you have any arguments recently, or any problems?” he asked.

“None at all,” said Lady’s husband, shaking his head. “We loved each other,” he said shocked at himself using the past tense.

“You loved each other,” repeated the policeman with an ironic smirk. “Look here,” he said. “It’s clear to me. Either your wife ran away with a lover, or she emigrated to the West. Don’t take offence; it’s my personal opinion. It is, of course, possible that she could have been abducted, but she was too old for that. White slave traders go for twelve- and thirteen-year olds. Foreigners have enough of their own old whores, if you’ll pardon me. Oh well,” concluded the policeman. “We’ll begin to search for the vehicle. That will be our starting point.”

A few days later they picked the young man up at his house and drove him to a car park in the middle of the city. “Is this it?” a uniformed policeman asked him, pointing to Lady’s car, parked by the snack bar wall. The man nodded silently.