Balla, Vladimír: Before the Breakup (Pred rozchodom Angol nyelven)

BEFORE THE BREAKUP

Miša discovered there was something in the apartment.
It was behind the TV set in the corner of the living room. But later in the evening, when she phoned Jano, who had left on a business trip a few days earlier, she made no mention of her discovery. Why make him worry? He had other things to worry about out there in the Asian metropolis. Or maybe he didn’t? Doubt started gnawing at her: only the other night she dreamt of her husband in karaoke bars and the things he was getting up to with sluts, although in those parts they might go by a different, posher name –  Miša couldn’t remember the exact word – but she was quite sure they were just sluts engaging in slutty practices.
After the routine call was over she sat in the kitchen until late at night, and as the light of a small lamp above the freezer illuminated her hands and fingers, and long shadows crept along the floor and the opposite wall, Miša wondered why this had to happen to her, of all people. Actually, not just to her – to Jano as well, but Jano didn’t have an inkling of it. Or did he? Was he lying in a hotel bed somewhere with an inkling? Or was he on the twentieth or thirtieth floor of a skyscraper, in the middle of negotiations, with an inkling?
Miša grew up in a family where nothing ever appeared behind the TV set. Her parents had never even mentioned such an eventuality to her, although they were happy to discuss in her presence the petty scandals involving their neighbors or people at work.  But perhaps they too had it in their bedroom. Their daughter was never allowed to go in there. Could it have been in their bedroom? Did they take it along when they went on vacation? On one of those outings they used to go on, leaving their daughter with her grandma in the countryside?
She went to the hallway and called a friend from the landline, for she felt the need to discuss this unexpected problem with somebody. A few sentences into the conversation she replied, baffled:
- You mean I should go and see a psychiatrist?
- Of course. You’ve got to. What if you’re just imagining it all?
-  You mean... I’m hallucinating?  You think I’m hallucinating?
- But what if it isn’t there at all? From what you’re saying, it’s almost the size of a wardrobe… Could such a thing even fit behind the TV set?
-  Soňa, believe me, it’s there!  
- I doubt it. Look, you know Dr Monty…
-  The one with the beard?
- No, the one who goes to the Irish Pub.
- Where does he sit?
- Right at the back, underneath the speakers.
- I don’t know him at all.
- Well, then you know the other one, what’s his name… help me out…
- You mean Dr Ráthé?
- Exactly.
- But he’s not a psychiatrist, he’s a psychologist.
- All right, all right, a psychologist might do for starters…
- What do you mean for starters? It’s as big as a wardrobe and you’re calling this starters ?
- I’ve already told you there’s no way it could be as big as a wardrobe. Just calm down. I’m sure it’s much, much smaller.
- So how big do you think it is?
- Let’s agree it’s the size of a matchbox at most.  It’s absolutely tiny.
- Listen… How about you coming and taking a look?
- That’s out of the question. I can’t.
- Why? Do come!  Please!  Help me.
-  But how?!  Is there really something wrong with you? What’s this got to do with me?  And anyway, I’m in a complicated situation.
- I don’t understand.  
- ...
- What is it? Can’t you talk?
- Uhm.
- All of a sudden. You can’t talk when I need you to do me a favor. Can’t you whisper either?
- I can do that. But what am I supposed to whisper? You’d better go and check again…
- But I keep watching it all the time.  Actually… not all the time, right now I was looking out of the window… and… by the door to the hairdressing salon … you know where I mean…
-  Of course I do. By the door. So what’s there?
- There...
- C’mon, what is it?
- Nothing! Nothing at all! Do you understand?  It’s not there. It’s only here, behind the TV set.  Why don’t I imagine it’s out there too if I’m only imagining it? Let me tell you why:  because it’s only here and it just isn’t there. And you were lying.
- How was I lying?
- When you said you could only whisper. Right now you were so curious about what was there by the door to the hairdressing salon that you started shouting. Out of curiosity. And the only reason you found it so fascinating is because you also go to that salon.  So the only time you’re willing to listen to me without accusing me of being crazy is when it involves you, too?
The phone call ended on a rather uneasy note.
Miša sat down at the kitchen table, picked up a mirror and examined the pale skin on her pale face.  Her face shone in the kitchen night. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the corners of the mouth.  Thoughtfully, Miša went on to examine her shoulders, chest and legs. It would have been almost impossible to distinguish the whole from other wholes of this kind.  Perhaps only sometimes, by the clothes and also by the situations in which they were discarded, by the way of being naked. The way of being naked? Yes, see yourself for who you are! Step in front of the mirror, get to know yourself from the outside, but intimately! Watch the inside!
Miša stood up and sat down again.
She was sitting on her backside in the kitchen again.
Jano came home a few days later, left his bags in the hall, took off his shoes, went to the bathroom, took a shower and after thoroughly drying himself with a big thick bath towel he headed for the living room. She was waiting for him by the door. Thinking of the sluts and the karaoke. And also of herself and her role. Is she supposed to float up in the sky, all dreamy-eyed and happy? Or should she let barbiturates, medication or a psychiatrist take care of everything? She stepped back a little to let Jano pass. He sat down in the armchair and switched on the TV with the remote.  The flickering blue light carved out objects in the dark.
That’s when Jano spotted it.
It was moving slowly and in this slowness Miša detected both a sinister threat and something absolute. Jano didn’t say anything. His head looked like a mask stretched across a rack of bones.  Only when his wife whispered to him hysterically did he respond, commenting that in his view it made the living room even cozier than before, covering himself with his statement as though it were a precious Tibetan rug.  Miša ran out of the block and called Soňa on her cellphone. She was panting:
- I know everything!
- What do you know?  
- It’s turned up in your place too! That’s why you can’t talk! It’s watching you! It’s listening to you! It’s growing!
- ...
- Have you got nothing to say to that???
- I told you I can’t talk.
- Well, whisper then.
- It’s turned up here too. But it was a long time ago. It’s stopped growing now although, I admit, it’s not getting any smaller either. We’ve got used to it. As it is. Look, I know how you feel. It’s not easy to come to terms with the new situation at first… But is it really new? OK, I know you hadn’t counted on that. You didn’t expect it to … visualize quite like this. What woman would expect such a thing? I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you – to you and Jano. Last time you called, I thought you might be exaggerating a little bit. Because in our place it didn’t grow quite so fast! Peťo and I had been together for six years by the time we first noticed it! But times have changed, life is moving faster… I know I’m probably not putting it well, but the fact is, the world’s got faster so that you and Jano… Even though you’ve only been together for two years – it’s been two years, hasn’t it? Or three? Anyway, for some reason it’s come faster. Oh dear, I’m naïve.
- Soňa I love you, you’re my only friend. But why did you have to keep this secret from me, of all things?
- I’m telling you: I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you!
- And what about your parents? At home, when you were growing up… Did they have a problem? You know what I mean.
- Of course. Nearly every family on our estate had it. I remember the Kropáčes, they had to move out because of it: it simply pushed them out of their apartment. One morning it was sticking out into the hallway. Can you imagine the delicate situation? Real existing socialism and you’ve got something sticking out of your apartment door?  And you and your children have to sleep on the stairs? Well, my parents took their children in for a few days, the kids stayed in my room, but I didn’t like them, they cried all the time.  By the way, it eventually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Kropáč family: it followed them everywhere; in the end they were staying in a workers’ dormitory in Smíchov in Prague, but one night, after it swelled up and caused a scandal by making the whole house burst and waking up half the city of a thousand spires, they took a radical step: emigration.  Now they have a wonderful life in the West, she’s living in Italy with the kids and he’s somewhere in Switzerland. They split up as soon as they crossed the border, you see? Do you get it? It was a question of life and death. But actually, in cases like this it’s always a question of life and death.
- But why did Mom never even hint at it?
- That’s what women are like: although we can see – right from the beginning, actually – how things happen and how they’re going to end, inevitably, we keep hoping … and making the same mistakes. We just don’t learn our lesson. Typically. Not even seeing how our own parents have ended up prevents us from letting the same thing happen to us and to our children at the same time.  From their earliest days we push them towards doing the same thing to their offspring when the time comes. It’s like some compulsion, can you feel that?
- Soňa! I thought I was going round the bend!
- That’s right. You are going round the bend but nobody will notice you’re mad. It’s collective madness. You’re no different from anyone else. How do you diagnose madness if everyone is mad?
Miša had no idea.