Alice (short story) by Krzysztof Mąkosa

The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To Gosia

Alice

1

It happened suddenly, like an accident, in the fall of 1994.

Alice, a young woman he didn’t know, left a short message on his answering machine. She was a fan of Robert Lipkowicz, the Polish poet. She majored in Russian studies at (unintelligible) in California. She had his number from Mme. Bonté, Lipkowicz’s literary executor. She would call some other time.

Soon he found out a little more about her.

She had written, was writing, or was going to write a Ph.D. dissertation about Gogol’s influence on Nabokov. She was of Polish-Russian descent and grew up in the U.S., so she spoke fluent Polish, Russian, and English. She had literary ambitions and was on the staff of Blank, a magazine dedicated to postmodern American fiction. She dreamed of being a writer and knew almost everybody who counted in the book business.

She said she was translating Lipkowicz’s Fiddlesticks, a collection of, to quote an excerpt from a New York Times review, very atmospheric, compulsively readable poems, in which black humor and bittersweet irony mingle with dream images. He said he was surprised to hear that, even though he wasn’t surprised at all. Four years later he’d tell her the truth: a critic named Karol Dobroczyński had written him a few days earlier, mentioning her and her plans. I haven’t done much, to be honest with you, she said dismissively. Just two or three poems, that’s all. And in a bantering tone she added that she wasn’t some kind of man-eater eager to worm her way into his confidence only to use him, abuse him, and lose him. She didn’t have any bad intentions. After all, she’d sent a sample translation of Fiddlesticks to Christiane Racquette, Inc., not to A. Boner & A. Dudd Company which planned to publish his rendering of it. She just wanted to make friends with him, that’s all.

As a goal-oriented, no-nonsense person, she was always busy, always doing things. She worked on several projects at a time, hoping to see at least one of them through to the end. Apart from Joseph Brodsky’s and Robert Lipkowicz’s poetry she was translating a book by Adam Kan, a renowned but mediocre writer, and poems by Nina Drewnowska, an insipid poet she proudly referred to as her mother’s dear friend.

Very soon she sent him her translation of Kan’s short story, asking him to check it for errors.

He couldn’t bring himself to refuse.

Out of innate kindness, and to show off his dubious literary skills, he reworked it, changing almost every sentence in the process. He seemed helpful and oddly unselfish (he didn’t ask anything in return), so she suggested they meet in New York right before Christmas. And then she sent the revamped manuscript to Wigh & Wherefor, Inc., one of the publishers interested in his translation of Fiddlesticks.

2

Funny as it may seem, the person munching Waldorf salad across the table from him (in the Barnes & Noble café on Astor Place, the one with the mural of famous writers) was nothing like the girl he’d spoken with by phone. The original Alice sounded nice and kind; her New York persona, on the contrary, struck him as jaded, aloof, and bored with their conversation in general and with him in particular. There was something peculiar about her full, sensual mouth, whose corners drooped every time she affected indifference or contempt; her dispassionate face that brightened only when they talked about things mundane and serious; and especially her red floppy hat with three fake violets, in his opinion overly flashy and a bit too large.

At one point he gave in to an impulse and said she might want to trade her hat for a jaunty little beret. This sent her nostrils quivering with suppressed rage.

And when he suggested she become his literary agent she bristled and shot him a murderous look. She can’t take a joke, that’s for sure, he thought.

He noticed too that when she smiled her purplish-blue eyes, which sparkled like two sapphires, were expressionless and cold.

Alice removed her hat, swept her dyed chestnut hair from her face, and said firmly that he couldn’t just walk off the street and get published; that while they might okay his translation they would definitely reject his foreword; that, as she remarked with mock sympathy, raising a derisive eyebrow, the shadowy they loved to bully outsiders for the hell of it because they treated criticism as a blood sport; that she knew the right people and had a much better chance to find a publisher; and that they (her and him) should do his translation, which he’d done a few weeks earlier, together.

He was stunned. After a long while he asked her to repeat. Seeing that she was dead serious he tried to turn the whole thing into a joke. Alice stiffened and blanched: she seemed ready to leave. But she composed herself quickly. She picked up his doughnut and slowly, with deliberation impaled it on her fork. Then she put it to her eye and studied him through the hole with a strange smile, half mocking, half flirtatious.

Two days later, when they met at his East Village apartment, a studio in a roach-infested walk-up with zigzag fire escapes, she gave him a battered old computer her friend Matt Dohr had lugged from California.

He didn’t accept her gift.

She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

He said he didn’t need it.

She said he must take it.

Finally, for the sake of peace and quiet, he capitulated.

And the next day he put it out on the street.

3

She told him about her family in Poland. Her father was a professor of law, her mother had a doctor’s degree in psychiatry. Her well-off, well-connected parents were among her town’s best people. Her mother kept open house, organizing artistic soirées, where exuberant ladies and bored gentlemen discussed cultural events, listened to music, poetry, and so on.

America… Alice came to America at the tender age of seven.

The world was beautiful as a fairy tale, in those days, and mysterious as a dream.

Let’s plunge into this enchanted garden! The smells, the refreshing, heady smells!

She told him about her university friends. She claimed, for example, that one Wallmount, Blank’s founder and editor-in-chief, was a disgusting pig. Staying at her place one night he behaved abominably, never mind the details. What’s more, Wallmount, a thin red-faced fellow with crooked teeth, told her point-blank that he didn’t discuss serious things like literature with snooty schoolgirls, period. And with a broad jack-o’-lantern smile he added: I adore blondes with blue eyes like you. Know what I mean? Alice, enraged, persuaded the other editors to oust him but Wallmount was by then thoroughly fed up with Blank and quit himself. If she wasn’t more loyal to his successor, that was mainly because he’d stabbed her in the back. Soon afterward she let slip that that sneaky bastard had prevented her translation of Joseph Brodsky’s poems from being published.

She told him about a Polish scholar who had just come to America. Since the man could be very useful Alice was quick to help him. Sometime later, with a beaming smile, she said: There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me, now. Well, you know what they say: Be good to people, and they will be good to you. Don’t forget that, my dear.

And yet their friendship fell apart as Alice was bothering him with her translations of Kan’s disheveled prose and Drewnowska’s bland poetry. She even reminded him that he’d received quite an expensive gift from her. You’re out of line, my dear, he thought. This can’t go on. One sultry evening he lost all control of himself and hung up on her.

4

Two years had passed, and they renewed their friendship.

Alice was trying to publish her translation of Drewnowska’s poetry but, as it happened, she had a rival in a professor of Slavic languages and literatures, known for his excellent standing in the community and the deadly efficiency with which he eliminated his competitors, real or, more often, imagined. She’d encroached on the turf of the same academic-poet-translator who would later block him from publishing his translation of Fiddlesticks, so that a connected somebody could modify it or, to be exact, dumb it down for the general reader, and publish it as their own work.

One day Alice gave him some practical tips on how to break into print: Make friends in the business, build strong relationships with critics and peers, arrange for glowing reviews of your book, and get a famous author to write the foreword or afterword, or whatever. Be proactive, not reactive. Be assertive and think positive. Stay open-minded. Never give up. And keep smiling, always keep smiling, that’s the most important thing. C’mon, tiger, you can do it! Her route to publication, it seemed, should be shorter and less tortuous than his, since Drewnowska’s poems were a huge success with publishers and academics. Still, Alice was afraid that in revenge for her gross insubordination the almighty professor would, as she put it, flatten her like an empty can; and, in a quavering, almost tearful voice, she repeated over and over again: That slimy snake will ruin my future, my career, my whole life.

She collected herself, however, and phoned to congratulate him on his piece about academia, to her mind awesome and amazing. In the same breath she noted that his style was a little unorthodox, sort of quirky or, better yet, mannered; besides, she added, acclaimed authors didn’t write like him. She offered to find him a suitable publisher if he sent her his literary stuff. When he turned her down she lost patience with him – for a while. Didn’t he know she was an honest and reliable person? Hadn’t she read, at his request, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina? He had no reason not to trust her. She had never played any dirty trick on him. That was no way to treat friends! He was paranoid, or worse!

He was deaf to her exclamations.

She decided to infuse their friendship with affection. She began to call him sweetheart. She told him about her suffering after their argument two years earlier. She even used the metaphor of a tunnel with a halo of light looming far in the distance. As she walked down that long tunnel the light went out suddenly, and she was shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

He was immune to her wiles.

Alice gave vent to her frustration. She said he was colder than ice, horribly cruel, barely human. In her opinion he took a sadistic delight in torturing decent people, such as herself, for example. She wanted to find out everything about him, meet his parents, and even befriend his wife who she believed was a real angel. She wondered how on earth poor Margot, his wife, could put up with such a monster… such a self-loving, selfish bastard, snob, phony, weirdo, total wack job. Rebel without a cause, angry young man, lone wolf. Ha, ha! What a laugh! He called himself a writer? Who the hell did he think he was? But despite his awful and, let’s be frank, undeniable faults, she urged him to settle in California where he’d be safe and warm.

California?

He said he wanted to move to Madrid.

She said she loved Madrid.

He said he might go to Macedonia.

She said she liked Macedonia.

How about Macondo? he asked.

She didn’t mind Macondo.

Mocassa?

Why not?

There were other strange goings-on too. Alice for no apparent reason wanted to show him her version of Fiddlesticks which, she felt sure, wasn’t worse than his. When he refused to see it she offered to send him a treatise on the art of translation she’d written with a friend of hers. He said, predictably enough, that he had no time. And when he asked her to tell him more about that treatise she dismissed him with a disdainful Oh, puh-leez!

One evening he discovered that Mme. Bonté would not permit him to publish his translation of Fiddlesticks, after all. Alice had found out about it from Blank’s new editor-in-chief, a well-informed, bowlegged individual with a pear-shaped skull. Anyway, somebody’s doing a new translation, she concluded with a verbal shrug. The world went into a spin, and he collapsed into himself. Everything around him held its breath. Who? he muttered into the phone. That she didn’t know; that was a secret. And then she sent him her translation of Drewnowska’s poems, so he would proof it for slips and typos. This reminded him of his nocturnal adventure: He gallops to Grand Central, ties his horse to a lamppost, soars into the air, flies high above the tracks, falls like a missile into a freight train with CALIFORNIA graffitied on it in huge letters, and after a nightmarish journey ends up in Penn Station, about a mile away, where he wakes up. He braced himself and proofread her translation but warned her that he would not revise her stuff again. This made her indignant, her pride rebelled. Gee, thanks, she said through clenched teeth. As he would learn later she had many helpers, big and small, to choose from.

Matt Dohr checked her translations for errors of English. Various bilingual Americans, including himself, helped her in various ways but were never mentioned in her acknowledgements. Fyodor D., a stern-faced Russian lecturer with a bushy beard and the high forehead of a thinker, revised her translations of Brodsky’s poems. Karol Dobroczyński introduced her to famous literati, and her academic confrères provided protection for her in the book racket. She participated in countless conferences, congresses, and panel discussions, not to mention social events or business meetings, where she met many polite, sensible, very resourceful and above all extremely stimulating folks.

Finally she arrived.

She made her debut in a prestigious magazine.

She was invited to deliver a public lecture on Drewnowska’s work to over a hundred people.

And with Karol Dobroczyński’s support she signed a contract with a large publishing firm to translate a novel by Arek Niemowicz, the photographer turned writer.

5

Alice came to New York once again in September of 1997.

They met in Washington Square Park, greeted each other with a great show of cordiality, and went off to a Chinese restaurant on St. Mark’s Place. They sat down, examined the menu, he ordered: General Tso’s Chicken for me and Shrimp and Broccoli Stir-Fry for this nice lady (who clapped her hands and exclaimed: God, I just love to eat! I’m, like, a hedonist.) At dinner Alice ticked off the reasons why she believed they should see more of each other. They both took pride in their creative translations. They possessed admirable qualities, exceedingly rare in their line of business, such as integrity, independence, self-respect. They were relentless in their pursuit of perfection. He often appeared in her dreams, and she needed a fellow traveler, whatever that meant. She thought it would be wonderful if he could teach her some useful things because she had that extra something, the divine spark, and worked very, very hard. She was confident she would make all her dreams come true.

Alice explained what she meant by a fellow traveler. Matt Dohr, her current fellow traveler or, more precisely, her husband (this she confessed with a hint of disappointment) was a real angel: here the corners of her mouth drooped. Matt loved and admired her – she wrinkled her upturned nose and curled her carmine-red lips into a sneer – but, to be honest, that wasn’t at all what she wanted, not at this stage of her life anyway. What she really wanted – her slim, narrow hands were kneading an invisible lump of dough or clay – was a meaningful relationship, preferably with a member of her profession: here she fixed him with her sparkly sapphire-blue eyes. He cleared his throat, took a gulp of ice water. He noticed that the two fellows seated to their right, one of them crop-headed, the other shaggy-haired, were looking at them suspiciously.

The conversation shifted to another topic. Alice put down her chopsticks, patted her lips with a napkin, and said quietly, as if to herself, that she was disgusted with her Blank associates. Once or twice she even called them cynical opportunists and, rolling her eyes heavenward, groaned: What a cesspool! Naturally they criticized their friends in the business, the most successful ones in particular. Mr. A., as everybody knew, was practically semiliterate. What would he do without all these editors and proofreaders? Mr. B., who fancied himself a great poet and a translator of genius, wanted to translate The Divine Comedy, even though his Italian was limited to pronto and presto. Mr. C. had no clue about the basic rules of rhyme, his politico-literary acrobatics would go to waste. What a shame. Poor Ms. D., blah blah blah, ha ha ha.

Alice confided to him that she reproached herself for having met Arek Niemowicz, the writer-cum-photographer whose novel she’d recently begun to translate. Why? Crumpling the napkin, she told him a fiendishly complicated story of which he didn’t understand a word. Finally she blurted out that there were photos… of her and Arek… kissing. This was Arek’s handiwork, no question about it. Well, well, who knew? Damn shutterbug. Unbelievable… People have no sense of decency, these days, she said with a resigned sigh. She’d vowed never to see Arek again. She didn’t want him to get the impression that there was something going on between her and Arek. I would never ever do that to Matt, she declared with emphasis. And what about flirting? Well, she did like to flirt, particularly with literary men or, more broadly, with men of artistic temperament. Flirtation, she said in a schoolmasterish voice, frowning and glaring at him, was part and parcel of her sexuality. She drew herself up and with small fussy movements of her hands smoothed the dress over her knees.

He changed the subject. How was Karol? He wondered if Karol Dobroczyński, a grizzled sixty-year-old professor with a gentlemanly manner, would help him publish Fiddlesticks, as he’d promised. Alice said she was disenchanted with Karol, though she’d quite recently extolled him as a man of honor. She even intimated that Dobroczyński had morphed into a miserable hack and, like most critics, was busy churning out you-know-what. But wait, there’s more! she added, her sallow face wreathed in smiles. Good old Karol has a new babe, a black-haired student with the face of an angel. The funny thing is, when his wife drowns her sorrows in drink in the kitchen downstairs Karol cavorts with his luscious lady friend in the master bedroom upstairs.

He blinked a few times, as if waking from a dream, and mumbled something. Alice meanwhile crossed her legs, tilted her head to one side, and puckered her lips. She was now watching him through half-closed eyes. And suddenly she began to rub her slender black-stockinged foot up and down his shin. Great footwork, by God! Delicious languor, blissful nonexistence. Fire in the belly, tingling in the loins. Shouldn’t I have a bit of fun? he asked himself. He was, as they say, a happily married man, but so what? Where was the harm in a little fling? Anyway, if Margot discovered his innocent affair, he would simply brazen it out.

He gulped hard. His limb began to throb. Their fingers intertwined. Casablanca. Madama Butterfly. Their eyes met.

I love you, she lied.

I love you too, he lied.

I’ll do my best to help you, she lied.

I know, he lied.

Right after that she stuck her chopstick into a piece of shrimp and, rolling it between finger and thumb, with a coquettish smile she purred: Care for a tasty morsel, kittycat?

And when he wanted to give her a hug or a kiss, not far from a brownstone in Greenwich Village, Alice recoiled, frightened. Don’t. Somebody may see us, she hissed, stealing glances around. But a moment later she cooed: Maybe next time. She adjusted her hat, wiggled her fingers and, swinging her hips, tip-tapped her way toward Sixth Avenue.

Night. Blurred orange lights. Townhouses with stoops looking at each other across the tree-lined street. A yellow van with the sign Trust US drives past, followed by an eerily white stretch limo. Somebody screams Ouch! somebody else whistles, rather off-key, It Ain’t Necessarily So. Horn honks. Silence. Mechanically he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a fortune cookie strip saying: A friend will soon bring you a gift.

6

They never met again.

A few weeks later somebody persuaded Karol that there was no point in helping some bum off the street. Sweetie, before you go downstairs for a glass of Scotch, let’s discuss this ridiculous New York thing. [She sits down on the edge of the bed, sweeps her dyed black hair from her face, takes out her sapphire-blue contacts, rolls the stocking down her leg.] Shall we?

Dobroczyński, a respectable and reasonable man if there ever was one, informed him that, unfortunately, and very regrettably, he didn’t know how to help him, honest to God.

Alice, when he gave her a recap of his conversation with Dobroczyński, said in the cool, matter-of-fact, apparently indifferent tone he knew so well: Oh, please, what did you expect from that old hack? But when he told her who had poisoned Mme. Bonté’s mind against him, who had done everything to kill his project, and who had plotted with his enemies to put him out of business, she was silent for a while, and then just moaned: Have a heart, you know, have a heart.

And when, for reasons only he knew, he called her the next day, her husband, a respectable and sensible man if there ever was one, leaped to her defense. Matt snatched the phone out of her hand and told him, his voice cracking, that this whole story about Alice was pure fiction, nothing more.

Who knows, maybe Matt was right. Perhaps everything was as it should have been. Maybe he was insane, and his tale completely invented. Perhaps it was all a dream. 

Who knows?

New York, October 10, 1998

© by Krzysztof Mąkosa