translated by Magdalena Mullek
This translation first appeared in Slovak Literary Review 2017.
Reprinted with permission of LIC.
I feel like a tacky ornamental plant: A flowerpot in the shape of a head with the grinning face of a nondescript gnome with a clump of grass sticking out of it. When you buy one of these, there is no grass, but give it some time and it’ll grow. All you have to do is water it once a day.
I didn’t plant or water anything. I’m not harvesting anything either. My head has turned into a bed of weeds. I’d like to pull them out, but they don’t let up. I have no idea when those seeds sprouted. I only remember the day it all began. Suddenly it was here. A story. Someone else’s. And yet mine.
Morning light streamed into the library through a barred window. Outside the window a branch swayed slowly, indecisively, and a high-pitched mechanical squeal could be heard from afar. Its source was attached to the roof of the house across the street, and its purpose was to keep away the overpopulated pigeons. They had grown accustomed to it long ago. Unfazed, they sat on the roof, and once in a while they flew off, just as a matter of form. The noise did, however, grate on the nerves of the women working at the library who spent several hours a day there. It was particularly bad on hot days, when it was impossible to survive with the windows closed.
“Have you read the tabloids?” my boss asked.
“I haven’t. Why do you ask?”
For a moment she was suspiciously quiet.
“Should I? ” I asked just to break the awkward silence.
“Better not, ” she said meaningfully. “But you won’t be able to get away from it. ”
I didn’t say anything; my mind was blank. I wasn’t in the habit of reading the tabloids to find out about disasters that affect me personally. Not many people are.
“I’ll bring some coffee,” my boss said. Was there a hint of intrigue in her voice? Or pity? Before I managed to decipher it, she handed me the latest edition and left.
That was the beginning of one of the worst days of my life. A heavy silence engulfed the room.
I didn’t lift my eyes off the front page when I heard her coming back. Nor when she put the coffee in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I registered her lingering in the doorway for a moment. It wasn’t until she quietly closed the door that I tore myself away from the paper. There were two cups in front of me. Years ago, when I was left alone in the kitchen with two cups of coffee, they were the harbinger of the divorce I had decided on of my own free will, and never regretted. I took another look at the picture on the front page.
After a while my boss poked her head in the door. The critical moment must have passed, because while I, the person struck by fate in the form of a tabloid, perceived it as short, she must have thought it sufficient to attempt to check in with me. She gave me an inquisitive and worried look. Maybe there was something more in it too. Curiosity? Perhaps the level of interest with which older people read news about the rich and famous at the grocery store, then put the magazine back, and go do their shopping.
“The library doesn’t open for a couple more minutes. Do you want to go have a cigarette? I’ll work your desk or send someone else.”
I shook my head and stayed put. The boss left. It was just before ten. In a moment, older men would start to trickle into the reading room. They tend to come in first thing in the morning. They look through the papers, sit a while. The door closed behind my boss. My head was buzzing. Too bad my vision didn’t blur. I could see my photo on the front page all too clearly. It was me. Without a doubt. I was standing in front of my house, holding a trash bag. My hair was a mess. I was looking straight at the camera with a furious expression on my face. The caption under the photo read: THE WOMAN A FAMOUS ACTOR CHEATED ON FOR YEARS. In the bottom right corner was the page number of the article highlighted in a bright red star. My fingers didn’t want to obey, but I finally found the page. Did I really walk around looking so angry? Yes, that was my T-shirt. And my sweatpants. And my hair. How come I never noticed someone taking pictures of me in front of my house? I drank the coffee, first one cup, then the other. In disbelief I looked at more photos. On one of them I was sitting on the balcony, my hair was oily, and I was wearing a baggy T-shirt, underneath which my nipples showed. On another my ex-husband and I were arm-in-arm at some kind of an event. The shot was taken about fifteen years ago. And then there was our wedding picture. Amusingly awkward, like all wedding pictures years after the fact. I closed my eyes, although I knew there was no hope of that monstrous collage disappearing. When I went back to looking at the photos and their descriptions I learned that “the famous actor left this once-beautiful woman, who looks so unkempt in the photos, when he moved in with the winner of a music contest, but she kicked him out after a short and tumultuous relationship.”
I didn’t understand a thing. Years ago, no one had been interested in our divorce. Why were they associating me with my ex-husband now?
“Have you seen the TV show?”
I didn’t realize my boss had quietly opened the door and slipped in.
“What TV show?”
“Jano was making fun of…”
“Me?”
“No, of the singer they’re writing about.”
“Oh.”
“A blonde, long legs, large breasts, full lips. The host of the show dressed up like her. He put stuffing under his shirt and taped on fake lips. The two of them were splitting their sides laughing.”
“The two of them?”
“Jano and the host.”
“Oh.”
“Your name didn’t come up at all, so I don’t understand…” My boss gave me a guilty look. I looked back down at the article, and with a knot in my stomach I read that my ex-husband made fun of his former mistress on some TV show. Then it said that the aforementioned singer responded by giving the tabloid an interview in which she said that Jano was impotent and his feet smelled. She also said she would sue the TV station. And that it wasn’t the last time they’d be hearing from her.
I slowly lifted my head from the paper. My boss had left the door open. The first patron slowly shuffled into the room, a slightly hunched man in his eighties in a worn-out grey suit. He propped his stick up on an armchair, took off his hat, and greeted me with a nod. Then he sat down at a table with the daily papers and gave me a probing look. Either because I was paler than the dirty wall behind me, or because he had seen my face at a newsstand on his way there. The tabloid lay open in front of me. My boss gave me a sympathetic nod from behind the door, and I gathered I had just been given permission not to set it out with current periodicals. Unnoticed I shuffled it under some papers on my desk. I didn’t finish reading the article, but I had a whole lifetime ahead of me in which I could study it in depth, if I so chose, or learn it by heart, even though I didn’t understand it. It contained everything about me that this paper considered relevant. I had let myself go, because a famous husband left me. I never recovered from the blow. I was beyond help. I must have been a real bore if Jano ended up in the arms of that “blow-up doll,” as they had supposedly referred to the star on some cable show. I thought about my neighbor from ages ago who only wore expensive bathrobes around the house, and brushed her hair and put on make-up to take out the trash. This could never have happened to her.
More regulars filed into the library. They were going to spend the morning leafing through the papers, and I dreaded the moment when they would ask for the most popular daily. It turned out though that my boss had empathy, and she sent over Helenka from the children’s literature section, where hardly anyone wanders in all morning. Helenka was going to staff my desk, and my boss gave me the day off. She didn’t even make me use a vacation day. So I was on my way out. I paused briefly, wondering whether I should put the tabloid into my bag. In the end I left it on my desk piled over with papers, and the next day I felt relieved when I found it where I had left it. People who come to the library sometimes look at newspapers that are a few days old, but thankfully, no one had set out this issue. When the time came, it would end up in the recycle bin with the rest.
On my way home I couldn’t resist and discreetly bought a copy at the grocery store. So that I could read it in the privacy of my own home. The store clerk didn’t identify me as the face on the cover.
My mother was in the habit of saying that every miracle only lasts three days. Three whole days, I groaned mentally, and slammed the door to my apartment behind myself. I was certain that all the neighbors had already seen the paper.
My cell phone rang. It was my mother.
“Hi mom, what’s new?” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. My heart was pounding just like it did when I was a kid and came home from school with a note that I had been disruptive in class. I held my breath. I was sure she’d ask: Have you seen today’s paper? I’ve always told you to take better care of yourself. You never know… Yes, I know, I should take care of myself, always look good, and most importantly, wear clean underwear in case I get run over by a car, so that in the ambulance, my bloody maimed body would be dressed in clean, and more importantly, new-looking underwear. And I was sure she would add: I don’t deserve this. What will the neighbors say?
But my mother said: “Would you come over? I need you to pick me up some of that cream for my joints.”
A weight lifted off my shoulders, but I still had a knot in my throat.
“Of course I’ll come over. I’ll drop by in the afternoon and bring you the cream.”
“Would you please also pick up coffee and cream on your way?”
“Sure. By the way, how are you?”
“Oh, don’t even ask.”
“OK. Take care for now. I’ll see you soon.”
One must appreciate the small things. She hadn’t been to the store, and it was unlikely she would set foot outside that day, so unless a neighbor brought her the paper, the whole thing could blow over.
I studied the photos, how very recognizable I was. It occurred to me that I should change my image. But I couldn’t go to the hairdresser just then. I was certain they would have had papers with my face on every table. I could have gone to the drugstore and bought a hair coloring kit. But I wouldn’t have been able to apply it by that evening. And I didn’t feel like sneaking down the street in dark glasses, although, who would have given a second thought to a woman in her fifties? If I had gone to the store near the university dorms, people would have crossed the street to avoid me, no one would have paid attention to me; women of my age are considered an omen of death there. Or I could have gone somewhere frequented by managers in their thirties. They wouldn’t have remembered me even if I had attacked one of them. Going to my mother’s was a different story though, especially if I ran into someone from the neighborhood. The only thing I could do was to spruce myself up. Put on make up. Brush my hair, so that I would look different than I did in the photos.