Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

“What would you be willing to do to make things better for Josef, Květa?”

“Whatever it takes,” she said, attaching no importance to his words. “Whatever it takes, of course.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m being serious here.” She glanced over her shoulder, then turned, blood rushing to her cheeks, and said in a faltering voice:

“You know I have no money, though. We barely get by as it is.”

“Now you’ve insulted me,” he said. “Now you’ve really insulted me. Of course that’s not what I meant.”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t think you wanted it for yourself,” Květa said. “I just thought you might need it for a bribe …”

“What is it you value most about yourself?” Hynek asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

“No, seriously. I don’t know,” she said.

“But you’re willing to help him?” he asked again.

“Of course,” she said.

“Listen, Květa. I can help him. I’m going to try. But there’s one thing I want from you. I want you to give it some thought.”

“Oh, please,” Květa said. “I think about it constantly. It’s all I think about.”

“Not like that. That’s not what I mean,” Hynek said. “What I want is for you to understand for yourself what it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to come see me next week so I can be sure that you’ve thought it over.” Květa sat back in her chair in front of the empty cup, visibly upset. “Do you have any idea what they’re doing to them?” Hynek asked.

“I think they deprive them of food and sleep, and sometimes they beat them.”

“Yes, Květa, that’s right. But why? Why is all this happening?”

“Because they want them to—”

“Because they want to break them. And to break someone, first you have to humiliate them,” Hynek broke in. He paused a moment. “I want you to come see me next week and tell me what would be the worst thing for you — I repeat, for you — the thing that would humiliate you the most. Come and tell me, so at least I’ll know I’m not getting involved for nothing.”

As the two of them exchanged chilly good-byes, Hynek noted to himself that whenever she got offended, her neck got longer and her whole body seemed to stretch higher. Yes, she’s even more beautiful when she’s offended, he concluded. I’ll definitely have to make her angry more often. The next day in his office, out of sight of his secretary, he arranged for Květa to receive a summons to appear at an ally’s office, where she was told there was reason to believe that she wasn’t taking adequate care of her child. How predictable: the next day she rang at his door. He assured her that he would do everything in his power to make sure Alice wasn’t taken into custody , and then sent her home.

Hynek’s unusual willingness was a comforting surprise. It reassured Alice that she could trust him. The next time she came over, she sat down and proceeded to tell him all of her worst fears. It was like opening up the city gates to the devil. Hynek was prepared for a long session. He listened attentively as Květa ran down the list, ranging from nightmare fantasies to everyday annoyances, waiting for her to come to the part about her body. After about forty minutes with scarcely an interruption from him, it finally came. Hynek listened as she mixed imagination and intimacy, like stinky cabbage with sweet roses. Interesting, but incongruous. As, flushed in the face, she revealed all her forbidden pains and secret sexual desires, Hynek finally interrupted, acting as if none of it interested him, to ask about something she had said at the beginning.

“You said you couldn’t stand to be tied up or put in handcuffs. I actually have some right here. I can show you how they work,” he said, and he gave her a brief demonstration. “Here are the two keys. You can take them home and try it. Just pretend. Take them with you, and next week when you come, you can put them on in front of me, first on your feet, then your hands. Just for the experience. Just so you can feel what it’s like.”

Little by little, with each weekly visit, they went farther and farther. It started with the handcuffs. It was odd at first, though at the same time there was something exciting about it. Květa wasn’t sure if it was Hynek, his unusual requests, or she herself. She put the handcuffs on herself at home a few times, and the only thing she was afraid of was that she might lose the key. When she was at his place, she snapped the bigger set around her ankles and the smaller ones around her wrists. Next, Hynek hogtied her arms and legs together with rope and left her like that for about half an hour while he sipped red wine and smoked an American cigarette that he had saved especially for the occasion. After half an hour Květa asked him to untie her, saying she needed to pee. Hynek agreed, knowing she still had a long way to go. When she came out of the toilet, he gave her a hug. “There, you see, my scared little duckling. In reality it’s nothing. It’s only our fear that paralyzes us.” Gradually, over the next few months, slowly but surely, they reached the point that Hynek had been aiming for all along. And one day he said: “Now bend over.” Květa bent over, rolled up her summer skirt, and underneath it appeared her naked buttocks, hips, and bosom. From that point on, each time they met, new hidden pleasures were revealed, grounded in pain and the gratification of insatiable, unacknowledged desires. If Květa showed up even just a few minutes late, she had to kneel down in the entryway on all fours, and Hynek would plant as many blows on her back and behind as she was minutes late. Květa found herself so mercilessly drawn not only to him but to the pain he inflicted on her body and mind that she would intentionally wait in front of his building, increasing the number of blows she was to receive. Gradually she fell in love with Hynek and the pain he inflicted on her. After a few months, they both gave up pretending that Hynek was trying to help Josef; their affair itself was the bond that united them. The moment Květa closed the door, she ceased to be Květa, instead becoming a filly or mare, as Hynek liked to call her. The moment he spoke to her, her whole body tensed up, her neck stiffened, and she didn’t know what would happen next. “My tame little filly,” he would say. “She tried so hard to resist, but now she enjoys the taste of forbidden fruit. Don’t you, my juicy little mare.” She accepted his insults and humiliation with special pleasure, and it didn’t occur to her until several months later to ask how he had done it. How he had transformed someone so proud and independent as her. “Pavlov,” he replied. “Pavlov and his famous experiments on dogs. Simple, proven, works on everyone. The theory of conditioned reflexes. Never forget, my dear, my perfect knowledge of Russian. Man does not live by Ulyanov alone.” Every so often, Květa would vow never to set foot inside Hynek’s again. She even attempted it a few times. The first time it lasted three weeks, and he told her if she wanted to come back, he would have to teach her a lesson she was never going to forget. She nodded, stripped naked, and asked for some folded handkerchiefs to hold between her teeth. Her neck, head, and face were the only parts he left untouched. Even in the scorching heat of summer, Květa wore long sleeves, dark stockings, and long skirts that blocked out the sun. She started locking herself in the bathroom so her mother wouldn’t see the scars encircling her body like a chain mail shirt. When she tried to break off their relationship, weeping, gritting her teeth, and sobbing, she got what Hynek called a second object lesson. She didn’t want to see him anymore, but she longed for the orgasms that came with his beatings. After she went back to him, her body was constantly on fire, burning like never before. He used a new method of beating, new types of instruments. It felt like her body had been whipped with a thousand stinging nettles. But the truth was that the overlapping orgasms they shared following her beatings were more powerful than ever. She loved her body and hated her soul to its depths. Yet the feeling of complete submission, along with the feeling that somebody actually cared about her, was so exceptional she couldn’t break it off. Sometimes she would break down in tears out of the blue, when it was least appropriate. It was always the same moments, the ones when she would remember Josef and realize what had become of her. Of her: she knew she couldn’t put the blame on anyone else. She rang the bell, the door opened, Hynek stepped aside to let her in. Her eyes were glued to the floor. On the right side of the hallway was a bookshelf that had belonged to the Germans who lived in the apartment before the war. Hynek glanced at his trusty Russian watch, engraved with an inscription from the minister of the interior in recognition of his successful liquidation of the enemies of socialism and peace, and said: “You’re seventeen minutes late, bitch. Since that’s an odd number, we’ll multiply it by an even one. How about four. How much does that make?” “Sixty-eight,” Květa said. “All right,” Hynek said. “Now bend over!”