Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Read online

  And now comes the most distressing part. One of the houses to have witnessed his secret is the one where you now live. Oh yes, he knows its every stone, and better than any of its current inhabitants. He knows everything, from how the door locks work right down to your earrings. But that’s not all. You have probably gathered from what I have said that I am as subject to the constable’s will as my poor father was. I am as young as fish milt and though several times I have been ready to commit a crime, some stroke of fortune has kept my hands clean. And two days ago, by his agency, I saw something so entrancing that I cannot view the days to come but with fear and trepidation. By the light of the moon I saw you sleeping close by the open window; it was from here you would have been able to see a ladder the following morning, had it not slid to the ground under a sudden gust of wind. Thus were you robbed of your earrings, and I had the good fortune, as the monster’s accomplice, to know you. Was not my father similarly granted the same good fortune, which in the fullness of time was to become twisted into misfortune? I am fearful of the future, and this fear guides my hand as I write to you. I know not why the monster seized the earrings, but I am afraid it was not just from greed. No matter what the case, the jewels are back in your hands. From the fact that my uncle’s favorite food is fresh chicken blood, you may deduce how his mind works. I do not wish to frighten you with the assurance that he is an extraordinary man who has, so it would seem, thoroughly covered the learning of several centuries. I suspect he is equally schooled as a doctor and as a priest, and I have personally witnessed his remarkable skills as a veterinarian. But let me not overestimate the role of the earrings; what concerns me far more is the immediate fate of their wearer. Maybe he wanted to sniff them as he might the last wind-torn petal of a rose he hankers for. Once I was witness to how he ran a hind through with a massive knife, and only because he wanted to sniff its blood. And yet the worst of it is that at that moment my eyes gleamed, although my heart had nearly stopped beating in disgust at the heinous stroke of fate which I was powerless to avert. I suspect the constable of having many unwitting allies, but I’ve never been able to determine in advance which of those who affect more innocence than little vetch flowers belong to his gang. Then again, do they even realize it themselves? I’m afraid they do not. And so for many a long year, with never a twinge of conscience and no suspicion of following in the worst possible footsteps, I have carried out his errands with a measure of glee. Once you have read this letter, destroy it without delay. The man with the polecat face would exact terrible vengeance on me if the letter were to fall into his hands one day, even years later. But what if I were only acting as his instrument even now? What if I were just the snare that was to entrap you? Although in writing these words I am plunging a knife into my very heart, I cannot but warn you against myself, since I truly do not know what I am. You have my promise that I shall be on guard against my own deeds – and that I would rather break my own neck than become the cause of your misfortune.

  So finally I come to the entreaty that I would wish from the bottom of my soul not to go unheeded.

  Tomorrow, as I expect you know, the missionaries who are at this very moment entering the town will give their first divine service. I do not doubt that you, like all the daughters of reputable families, will also be attending the service. Everything, as I see it, is going our way. I doubt your aged relative will accompany you to church, since the first service of the missionaries is intended for maiden girls. I do not know if I have told you, but I am barely seventeen and no razor has yet touched my chin. So then, if you were to leave a set of your clothes for me in the garden arbor, I might be able to escape the town’s notice and attend the service by your side. This I urgently beseech you, since by whispering between the prayers I will be able to reveal more to you than can be committed to paper. Believe me when I say that I have few opportunities to be alone. That I am able to put these few lines on paper I owe to the constable’s attendance at some crazy wedding, the noise from which shows no sign of abating as I write. My constable enjoys a party every now and then, since at any sort of masquerade his scarred face blends in better than at other times, so he has no need to conceal it by sundry devices of his own making. As the old saying goes, the Devil always makes a good companion.

  I have not been granted the gift of writing poetically, but how could I have been when I am doomed to spend my days at the side of such an unsavory character as my dubious uncle. And yet I do not know whether I should suspect him so totally of a lack of decent conduct. He remembers times when gallantry was not in such absolutely short supply as today, and who can tell what this revolting polecat, this chicken-sucker, might be capable of? I can feel my face beginning to burn, and several beads of sweat have appeared on my brow. My blood boils at the thought that I must make you witness things which would make even the most hardened blush, while I would prefer to speak to you, without witnesses, of things not so utterly devoid of grace as these lines of mine. So, once more, even if it may sound like an order: Before dusk falls, you shall find a way to lend me some of your clothes. At least this will give you the sensation of standing next to yourself. Let the missionary thunder, our whispers shall be loud enough to drown out not just the prayers, but his fulminations as well.

  In eschewing all the usual courtesies, I do not mean to banish courtesy from the discourse of men and women. The paper runs out here, barely permitting me to sign, as legibly as possible, my hapless name

  Orlík

  Having read for the tenth or twentieth time the words which made her completely forget about her grandmother, Valerie sensed the onset of dusk. This was because the sun no longer cast its rays directly into the cellar through two openings the size of two bricks. Exposed so long to the cold, Valerie felt like a stalactite illuminated by the twilight. She stared at the winding potato haulms that crawled over the floor and up the walls of the cellar. Standing there, she felt as if the cellar floor were shaking with the monotonous blows of a battering ram.

  But then she hurled herself back on the trail, marked out with lines now running straight, now meandering, and read, she lost count of how many times, the tale of someone who had already lived through more than the heroes of the stories she enjoyed reading at the end of the day.

  Then she repeated the whole letter from memory, and only after making sure she would not forget a single word of it in the future, she went and burned it bit by bit in the flame of a candle.

  No sooner had she completed this act of piety than her grandmother came to tell her it was time to dress for the service, which was to be dedicated to the instruction and exhortation of virgins. Running into the garden to gather some rosemary, Valerie placed her most beautiful clothes in the arbor.

  Chapter IV

  THE SERMON

  That evening, there were so many young girls in the church that it looked like a congress of angels. Valerie was standing opposite the pulpit. She gazed downwards and listened tensely to the background noise in the church. Her cheeks blazed and she was so on edge she did not notice the missionary mounting the pulpit steps. It took the silence that spread throughout the church to make her look up.

  In the pulpit stood the missionary with the head of a polecat and he stared her straight in the eye. She withstood his stare, but the longer it lasted, the more she felt herself paling. Her head drooped and she fixed her eyes on the ground. And then the missionary’s voice rang out:

  “I, a servant of the Lord and missionary of Christ, have come among you, virgins all, to afford you vital instruction and fortification. All that I shall say to you is strictly confidential and will be heard by neither your fathers nor your mothers, by neither your married sisters nor your grandparents. Forget, virgin, that you are one of many and take this act of worship as if I were coming to you alone, to your own virginal little room in order to speak to you in God’s place about things that are your secret. Oh virgin, do you know who you are? You are an alabaster hand extended in a house of plague, infested wi
th flies. You are a vessel whose neck I bless with my thumb. You are an as yet uncleft pomegranate. You are a shell in which the future ages will ring. You are a bud which will burst when the time is ripe. You are a little rose-petal boat floating on the tempestuous ocean. You are a peach oozing red blood ...”

  At these words something impelled Valerie to glance up. The missionary with the head of a polecat was accompanying his words with grand gestures and flash after flash fell from his eyes onto the field of virginal flowers. Valerie trembled. The ode to virginity, which the preacher sought to embellish with ever new images, touched the girl’s very body. Having completed his litany on virginity, he continued his sermon in a different tone:

  “How much longer are virgins to be undone by a callous hand? How much longer will virgins submit to any random plunderer of their beauty? If you knew, virgin, that the callous hand which touches your breast would leave an indelible imprint upon it, how ashamed you would be! Ah, you will say. No one can see the imprint, and yet ... I shall prove that you are in error, that the blemish cannot be concealed, that the stain shrieks. You, virgin, whose eyes have met mine, not only your breasts, your entire belly is plastered with shame. Weep now, that the tears might at least wash away your degradation. And you whom I have in mind, veil your thighs in skirts as you will, and still you would not deceive me. They are sullied as if having been fondled by a chimneysweep, and how can you not be ashamed! And how is it that among you there is one who, calling herself a virgin, is a sinner, whose womb yields at the touch of a vulgar right hand? Oh wretched womb! You are like a magnificent apple riddled with maggots and you evoke my pity. How withered you are. Angels weep at the sight of you. What grief, base virgin, you bring to your guardian angel! As you sleep, when he, pure as the disk of the sun, turns back your shift in order to breathe upon your abdomen, with what horror he averts his gaze from your fingered loins.”

  The church echoed to the sound of weeping. Several girls had broken down and sunk their heads in their handkerchiefs.

  But the missionary went on:

  “How beautiful you are, virgin, having shunned all human baseness. I see your body, for the fabrics recede in respect before its radiance. I see it – as if the cold had breathed upon it or as if the dew had breathed upon it. Your nipples are like Bohemian garnets sending out alluring flashes of lightning through your garments. Your throat is a long bladdernut rosary, twisted over and over, with whose beads I count my prayers. Your breasts are the purest of husked barley. Your belly is an excited bell, pure as the matinal bellflower. Your womb is an alabaster bowl, which I bless with forefinger and thumb ...”

  Once more Valerie had to look up, against her will, into the eyes of him who was now touching her. Those eyes were large and ablaze, and their dazzling light meant that she could not see the missionary’s face. Those eyes blinded her eyes, and Valerie gazed into them as the missionary said:

  “I am with you, virgin, in the role of a guardian angel who rejoices in heavenly bliss at your chastity. I am with you. I bend down over your bed and with the most sacred unguents my fingers make the sign of the Cross on your lips, the tips of your breasts and your loins, which have yet to know sin.”

  And in tones borrowed from Solomon the missionary ended his homily with the words:

  “Maidens and daughters of mercy, marry, lest the great city of the Lord perish. Yea marry, and may the whole world be present at the wedding. Marry, so that the Devil shall depart from your beds thwarted.”

  Then the missionary gave the virgins his blessing and left the pulpit.

  Valerie turned around. But the one to whom she had lent her clothes had not come.

  The girls were leaving the church flushed and with their eyes downcast. If with friends they left in twos, not daring to speak. Valerie stood as if rooted to the floor tiles of the church. A strange dream descended onto her eyelids, despite her being awake. And only when the church was nearly empty did she leave, the last to go.

  Chapter V

  LOSING THE WAY

  Valerie had lost her way. For the third time, without knowing how, she had entered a deserted square that seemed to be enchanted. When she glanced at one of the locked gates, a missionary appeared to her standing in front of it. She left the square and entered the square. Her legs were tired and were leading her on their own, while her spirit wandered like that of someone sleeping. Over one doorway she noticed a cluster of grapes held in the beak of a dove. Then she was alarmed by four windows that seemed to have been forged from a storm. She thought she heard a groan. Her eyes settled on a tall gas lamp with moths fluttering around it. But the groan came again. Having circled the square, she suddenly found herself just a few steps from the lamp and saw to her amazement a terrifying image: tied to the lamp’s base was a girl, emitting plaints from deep in her throat. As Valerie stepped up closer, she recognized her clothes, which were torn in several places.

  “Orlík,” escaped from her lips. But then the head of the victim sank, and Valerie rightly surmised that he had fainted. She rushed towards him and started to unravel the ropes that bound him to the lamppost. It required strenuous effort. The coarse fibers of the ropes cut into her fingers. Yet despite the difficulties impeding her from untying the bonds, she persevered in her rescue. When she thought that the rope binding Orlík’s hands had slackened, she bent down to his feet and tried to free them from their fetters. Finally she succeeded. The young man was sleeping on his feet and his face was blanched. His pink mouth wore a smile and a number of fair curls tumbled across his brow. Only after Valerie touched his brow for a third time did his eyes open.

  “I was waiting for you,” the girl said.

  “That monster,” Orlík replied, as if still semiconscious.

  “His beautiful sermon nearly had us in tears.”

  “What? He even invaded the pulpit? Now I understand why he cleared me out of the way for the evening.”

  “These knots are his handiwork?”

  “Far from it. He didn’t lay a finger on me himself.”

  Orlík was reviving. He blushed at the sudden realization that he was wearing a dress.

  “I’m like your sister,” he said.

  “True, I’m not the least embarrassed to be standing here with you.”

  Orlík bit his lips and his eyes flashed.

  “I’m not a girl, do you hear? I’m not a girl.”

  He began to take off his girl’s garments and handed them to Valerie one by one. Without a hint of a blush he was emboldened to stand before her naked.

  “That’s my revenge on him,” he said.

  But Valerie averted her gaze and looked towards the doorway at the grapes in the bird’s beak.

  “He had his henchmen attack me.”

  “You were attacked?” Valerie asked in surprise.

  “Because I didn’t want to enter the church until just before the start of the service, I hung back in this square, which has been, or so it seems to me, deserted practically all day long. Just as I had resolved to set off towards the church, I was approached by a pack of drunken men, who had probably attended that wild wedding, and with all the brutality they could muster they bound and tied me to this lamppost.”

  “Why didn’t you shout for help?”

  “I simply could not cause you any trouble by calling for help while wearing your clothes.”

  “And if anyone were to see me with you now, as inadequately attired as I imagine you to be?”

  “I will make sure that no one sees us together like this.”

  “Farewell then.”

  “You can’t leave just yet. I was about to give you some sound advice.”

  “I’m worried that it’s not entirely proper to be taking the advice of a naked man on a public square.”

  “Five paces from us there is an allegorical sculpture of Peace. Before you turn to look at me I will change myself, to the best of my ability, into a sixth figure wrestling with the serpent. So now you can turn your head without fear.”

>   Valerie glanced back. Her eyes could barely detect which of the men in the sculpture was Orlík. Under her arm she gripped the torn clothes that had been returned to her in such a strange way.

  “I’m impatient to hear your advice, since I’m sure they’ll be coming to look for me.”

  “First,” said Orlík, but he did not finish the sentence. Like a deluge, or a black cloud, a swarm of hands rolled in from somewhere and hurtled up towards the allegory of Peace. In the darkness, Valerie counted five men brandishing belts, whips, and switches. A furious struggle ensued before her eyes. As she herself could not discern the real figures from the false, the assailants, too, were unsure whether they were lashing marble or a human body. During the fight this or that assailant was suddenly swept to the ground and this or that weapon wrenched from his grip.

  When most of the thugs were on the ground, Orlík detached himself from the statue with a leap and fled, pursued by those he had duped and fooled. Only now did Valerie dare to fix her gaze wholly on his fleeing silhouette, and with anxious heart she measured the shrinking distance between the youth and his pursuers. Everything now depended on who would be the more agile at the low wall they were approaching. Orlík leapt over it effortlessly. His pursuers were held up for a time until they had managed to scramble up onto the wall.