could ask the same of you, fräulien.”
“Buy me a glass of kvass and I’ll tell you.”
“Kvass?” Kaspar said, more bewildered than ever.
“It’s a kind of Russian peasant beer, made out of old bread. A house specialty.” She pulled up a stool and sat down. “Do you know how the Russians say ‘Mind your own business?’ ”
Kaspar shook his head mutely.
“I’ll tell you, Herr Toula, but I’ll have to whisper it.”
He inclined his head toward her, asking himself what could possibly be considered inappropriate in such a place. Her breath against his earlobe made the soles of his feet prickle in their cashmere stockings.
“Вы не проникли, так что не ерзать ваши ягодицы.”
“Ah!” Kaspar said, nodding. “But what does that mean?”
“You’re not being fucked, so don’t wiggle your ass.”
“Ah,” he repeated, bobbing his head absurdly. “I see.” The blood was draining from his face, but there was nothing he could do about that. She was staring at him brashly, her cheeks lightly flushed, biting a corner of her mouth to keep from laughing.
“Ah,” he said a third time, but by then she’d already left him for the boys in the neighboring booth. When the kvass came he drank it himself.
∞
Kaspar caught the train that same evening (he’d already purchased his ticket) and spent four restless days at his mother’s bedside. When his brother came home on the weekend, he returned to the city immediately, marveling at his lack of family feeling. He spent the next nine afternoons at the Jandek, drinking endless mélanges and repelling all comers, wearing unironed trousers and keeping his hat on indoors. At 15:15 CET on the tenth day, Sonja emerged from the kitchen exactly as she had two weeks before, and this time there was no gang of Makart disparagers to receive her. She came straight to Kaspar’s table, as though his presence there were no more than expected, and sat down without a single word of greeting. She was wearing the same shapeless gown as before, and she scrutinized him just as directly, but there was a disquiet in her manner now, even a hint of appeal. The feeling in Kaspar’s throat as he watched her was the same one he got when he ate chestnuts by mistake. He was mildly allergic to chestnuts.
“Kvass?” he said suavely, beckoning to the waiter.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she answered, glancing over her shoulder.
“I’d assumed—that is to say, I may be mispronouncing—”
“I’m finished with the Russians. They treat their workers abominably. You’ve heard of the disturbances in Minsk?”
“The which?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She pushed the hair out of her eyes, still looking past him. “What are you drinking?”
“Pilsner,” he mumbled, indicating the full stein before him. “In the town I come from, in Moravia—”
She turned back to him now with a different expression entirely. “You’re Czech?”
“Of a sort,” he said, choosing his words cautiously. “That is to say, the name Toula is originally from the Czech. It means ‘to wander about,’ apparently. Of course, we speak German in the home, and I’ve been learning English—”
“The Czech language is the most beautiful spoken in Europe,” Sonja said earnestly. “Worlds better than Russian.”
To the best of Kaspar’s knowledge, the Czech and Russian languages were part of the same cozy family; but he had the good sense not to point this out.
Sonja peered over her shoulder again, then took a ladylike sip of his pilsner. “He’s not coming out,” she said. “Thank heaven for that.”
“To whom do you refer?” said Kaspar, as nonchalantly as he could.
“Kappa, the painter. I model for him every second Tuesday.”
“You model for him,” Kaspar repeated. “I see.” Things were coming clear to him at last, but only slowly. “He paints you in the kitchen?”
“Close enough, Herr Toula. He has an atelier back there. Appropriately, it used to be the sausage-curing room.”
“I see,” Kaspar repeated, thinking hard. The notion of Sonja modeling made perfect sense and made no sense at all. It was difficult to conceive of a less suitable vocation for a young lady of standing. He’d met models before in the cafés, of course, but none who weren’t also prostitutes.
Sonja was watching him closely, taking sociable sips of his beer, which did nothing for his clarity of mind. He regained his self-possession by a furious effort of will.
“That would explain your outfit, I suppose.”
Her smile faded. “I beg your pardon?”
“That smock—or whatever you call it—that you have on. The first time we met, you were wearing a wonderful dress, I remember, with a charming blue bustle—”
“The dress you refer to,” Sonja said icily, “took thirty minutes and six hands to get inside of. Its stays were so tight I could barely breathe.” She shut her eyes and emitted a series of gasps, as though the memory alone were enough to suffocate her. “Have you ever watched the women promenading in the Prater, Herr Toula, or along Kärntnerstrasse on a Sunday afternoon? Have you ever taken note of how they move?”
“Oh yes,” said Kaspar, smiling in spite of himself. “They walk with tiny steps, like turtledoves.”
“They walk like cripples,” Sonja hissed. “You’re not one of those cow-eyed romanticizers, are you? Those chastity fetishists? I thought you told me that you were a Czech.”
My grandfather took a deep, pensive draught of his pilsner. Sonja regarded him through narrowed eyes.
“I do come from Moravia,” he said hopefully.
“Don’t be fooled by the ribbons, Herr Toula. The female anatomy is terrifying to man, so he hides it behind a wall of scaffolding. Under each of those dresses you find so bewitching, a body is locked away in quarantine.”
This was a bit much for poor Kaspar, but he was willing to tread water until he sighted land.
“Quarantine,” he repeated. “I see. So you wear that smock on your days off, as well?”
“This ‘smock,’ as you call it, is the rational answer to an irrational society. It was designed by the maestro himself.” When Kaspar said nothing, she added, slightly more tentatively: “When we have the society we deserve, it may be possible to attach a few bows here and there.”
This glimmer of weakness was all the encouragement my grandfather required. He sat forward soberly, every inch the bourgeois kavalier, and took Sonja’s plump,
