The Prague Orgy Read Free Page A

leading actress with the National Theater. But our system of justice is not yet so developed. It is stronger on punishment than on restitution. ”
    “ They are strong on nothing, ” says Eva. “ It is that I am so weak. That I am stupid and cannot defend myself against all of these bullies! I cry, I shake, I cave in. I deserve what they do. In this world, still to carry on about a man! They should have cut my head off. That would have been justice! ”
    “ And now, ” says Sisovsky, “ she is with another Jew. At her age. Now Eva is ruined completely. ”
    She erupts in Czech, he replies in English. “ On Sunday, ” he says to her, “ what will you do at home? Have a drink, Eviczka. Have some whiskey. Try to enjoy life. ”
    Again, in Czech, she pleads with him, or berates him, or berates herself. In English, and again most gently, he says, “ I understand. But Zuckerman is interested. ”
    “ I am going! ” she tells me— ” I must go! ” and rushes from the living room.
    “ Welt, I stay… ’’ he mutters and empties his glass. Before I can get up to show her out, the door to my apartment is opened and slammed shut.
    “ Since you are curious, ” says Sisovsky, while I pour him another drink, “ she said that she is going home and I said what will you do at home and she said, ‘ I am sick of your mind and I am sick of my body and I am sick to death of these boring stories! ’”
    “ She wants to hear a new story. ”
    “ What she wants is to hear a new man. Today she is angry because she says I bring her here with me only to show her to you. What am I to do—leave her alone in our room to hang herself? On a Sunday? Wherever we go now in New York and there is a man, she accuses me of this. ‘ What is the function of this man? ’ she says. There are dramatic scenes where she calls me a pimp. I am the pimp because she wants to leave me and is afraid to leave me because in New York she is nobody and alone. ”
    “ And she can ’ t go back to Prague? ”
    “ It is better for her not to be Eva Kalinova here than not to be Eva Kalinova there. In Prague, Eva would go out of her mind when she saw who they had cast to play Madam Arkadina. ”
    “ But here she ’ s out of her mind selling dresses. ”
    “ No, ” he says. “ The problem is not dresses. It ’ s Sundays. Sunday is not the best day in the émigré ’ s week. ”
    “ Why did they let the two of you go? ”
    “ The latest thing is to let people go, people who want to leave the country. Those who don ’ t want to leave, they must keep silent. And those who don ’ t want to leave, and who don ’ t wish to keep silent, they finish up in jail. ”
    “ I didn ’ t realize, Sisovsky, that on top of everything else you were Jewish. ”
    “ I resemble my mother, who was not. My father was the Jew. Not only a Jew, but like you, a Jew writing about Jews; like you, Semite-obsessed all his life. He wrote hundreds of stories about Jews, only he did not publish one. My father was an introverted man. He taught mathematics in the high school in our provincial town. The writing was for himself. Do vou know Yiddish? ”
    “ I am a Jew whose language is English. ”
    “ My father ’ s stories were in Yiddish. To read the stories, I taught myself Yiddish. I cannot speak. I never had him to speak it to. He died in 1941. Before the Jews began even to be deported. a Nazi came to our house and shot him. ”
    “ Why him? ”
    “ Since Eva is no longer here, I can tell you. it ’ s another of my boring European stories. One of her favorites. In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night. My father was horribly shy of people, even of his students. But because he believed that my mother and my brother would be protected if he was courteous with the officer, he went whenever he was called. And they