Tomáš Zmeškal
A Love Letter in Cuneiform
The lion, violent and sudden, expresses the present; the wolf, which drags away its victims, is the image of the past, robbing us of memories; the dog, fawning on its master, suggests to us the future, which ceaselessly beguiles us with hope.
The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts.
1. THE WEDDING
Before Alice woke up, she had a dream that she was soaring or gliding. Any such comparison is of course too cheap to express the floating sensation she had. For a while she forgot herself. Then suddenly her heart reminded her, stopping short in the midst of its crowlike flight. She herself, though, kept to the hummingbird’s path of her thoughts, until finally she took a deep breath and said it: Tuesday. At that moment it was all she could think of, subsumed in it, being it. Her day had arrived and she had begun to get used to the scent.
Between inhale and exhale, between holding her breath and the sparkling celebrations of pain in her lower belly, between the inertia of sun-basking to a copper tone and oozing tears of sweat quickly soaking into the bedclothes, two spots appeared before her eyes. She had to force herself to inhale. With some concern. It wasn’t clear if the two dancing spots behind her firmly shut eyelids were caused by the contraction of her eye muscles and their pressure on her retina, or whether they might be viewed as something else … metaphysical, perhaps. After brief deliberation Alice decided for the latter. She completed the cycle of inhalation and exhalation, but no longer trusting herself enough to move, she lay motionless in bed, the spots circling before her still-closed eyes. One was the past, the other the present. It wasn’t obvious which was which, but either way she felt that this was the most present, most perfect, and certainly most sweet-smelling day she had ever experienced. Suddenly she realized: Yes, of course — it was the smell! If she hadn’t been in bed, her head would have reeled. The smell! It was the smell that woke her up. If not for that, she might have assumed it was the music drifting in from the next room. Alice involuntarily shuddered, drawing a sharp breath. Her lungs took in more air than she intended, and more than she was sure she could hold. She shuddered in fear, but the action kept on repeating, like she was drowning, taking water into her lungs. She ceased to perceive past and present, having forgotten which spot meant what and which one was which. As she opened her eyes, she was vaguely aware of a soothing tickling on the soles of her feet. Her eyes opened and her larynx released a sob. Then came an explosion, an eruption, a detonation, a sunny breeze, an avalanche, a downpour, a cloudburst, a landslide, in short … tears. Around her, around her bed, all around, in every direction, there were roses scattered everywhere. Every shade, color, scent. From the deepest black-red to the rosiest bright pink, from a brownish dark yellow to the gayest butterfly gold. They were all around, serving as her comforter, blanket, veil. Surrounding her, embracing her, refusing to let her go. And beyond them, beyond the land of the roses, by the door and on the windowsills, were lilies and chrysanthemums. The whole room smelled delicious. There were flowers everywhere she looked and roses everywhere she could reach. Today was Tuesday. Her wedding day.
She could hear music from the room next door. That meant her father was already up. One, he was nervous, which was why he was listening to music so early in the morning. Two, to try to relax he was listening to his favorite, Haydn, even though it meant he risked scratching the record, since his hands always shook in the morning, and three, she couldn’t hear him humming along, which meant he was eating breakfast. Alice looked around and sat up in bed. The roses lay all around her, tickling the soles of her feet. And they were all fresh. How come I didn’t hear my sweetheart and why did he let me just go on sleeping? she wondered. She walked out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen.
“Where is he?” she asked her father. He sat in the kitchen, looking out the window.
“Where is he?” Alice asked again.
“Sitting, or more likely taking a nap, in the living room,” her father replied. She went into the living room and found him there, half sitting, half reclining.
“Maximilian!” she cried, and before he could open his eyes, she realized that over the past few months her vocabulary had been reduced to interjections, euphemisms, and possessive pronouns, in particular mine, yours, our, and ours, all of them predominantly with verbs in the future tense. Or at least that was her father’s observation. Maximilian smiled without opening his eyes. Despite believing herself immune to his smile after all these months, and even though he couldn’t see, she returned his smile. Only after that came the hug.
“Maximilian!” she cried again. “Maximilian!”
Maximilian, name of a monstrance. Maximilian, name of the sun. An emperor’s name. The name of a solar monstrance in a religious procession. A name with glints and rays of light shooting off in every direction. Depending on her mood and the condition of her vocal cords, depending on her weariness, energy, and joy, his name took on a different color, shine, and sparkle every time she pronounced it. It was a Loretan name. Lustrous, that is, as a polished diamond from Antwerp. Radiant, that is, loving. Golden, that is, all-embracing. It was Loretan, that is, every time it was spoken, one of the jewels in the monstrance twinkled with opulence and exaltedness, like gold and precious stones. He held her tight, eyes shut.
“Maximilian,” she voiced his name again.
“I don’t like to say it,” her father spoke up from the next room. “Not only don’t I like to say it, I only rarely think it … but before your mother comes, you have one last unforgettable chance to have breakfast with me, as chastely unmarried individuals, that is … So shall I put water on for coffee for the two of you as well?” After waiting a moment with no response, he shifted his weight on the chair, turning to the door several times to see how much of Haydn’s sonata was still left on the record. He wanted to avoid having to listen to the next one, by Beethoven, who in his opinion had been grossly overrated for more than a hundred and forty years. And on what basis? Alice’s father wondered. “Ode to Joy”? If there was anything that distinguished the piece, besides the fact that it was used to mark the end of the Prague Spring classical music festival every year, it was its total lack of humor. How typically German, he thought. An ode to joy lacking humor.
“No intentional humor, that is,” he said aloud. “Things, people, and ideas with pompous titles and a total lack of humor have always made careers.”
“What’s that, Dad? What did you say?” Alice asked, walking into the room.
“Lacking humor, I said. But that’s not important now. If you don’t mind, when the record’s over would you two have some breakfast with me? I mean … that is … before your mother gets back.”
“Well, maybe. I don’t know,” said Alice. “Let me ask Max.” Meanwhile her father got up and went into the bedroom to turn off the record player, but didn’t get there in time to keep the Beethoven sonata from beginning. Carefully lifting the needle from the record, he declared: “Even Schnabel can’t save it. It demonstrates an alarming lack of talent and an exaggerated tendency to pathos on the part of the Bonn native.”
“Who’s Schnabel?” Alice asked from the kitchen.
“A very interesting pianist, who will be all too soon forgotten in this progressive era of ours.”
“I see,” Alice said. She dashed back to the living room. “Want to have breakfast with my dad?”