THE CZECH GIRL

A Czech girl in my English Lit class at the University of Texas in Austin was the first person I knew who put cream into hot tea. Her name was Kateřina—Kateřina Katerabek. Kateřina and I would wander over to the student union building after class and talk. I liked to ask her questions about her background. Born in Prague, she lived in Austin now because her father, Hektor Katerabek, worked in the foreign service and was stationed in Houston. Austin was just a three-hour drive away, so it made sense for her to attend college here. Her two younger siblings, both girls, were still in high school back in Houston. She inspired in me a desire for international détente in the post-Cold War era, as well as more primal male yearnings. She was an attractive young woman, I thought, slender and slim-hipped and almost statuesque, with brushed-straight honey blond hair and lips like Lolita and a full, incisor-prominent smile that virtually spoke Eastern Europe. She seemed cultured and literate, as well, qualities that I deemed important in a potential love interest, qualities I was interested in possessing myself. I thought perhaps she could help me in this regard. I loved saying her name: Kateřina. I tried not to overplay it, pronouncing it with just a touch of a trill on the r near the end. In class, she went by Kat, but I preferred the full version.

Her English usage was near impeccable, except for some endearing mispronunciations and overly formal enunciations of sentence forms. There were few contractions, an occasional colloquialism, often stilted. That she was foreign-born and a foreign citizen did something for me, though. I guess it turned me on a bit. And I was impressed with myself, impressed that I could entice this attractive young woman from across the sea, that she could recognize my world-class intelligence and wit and physical attributes.

Sometimes after we went through the cafeteria line together, we would wander over to the Biology Pond and sit on the grassy banks and talk. The pond was dark and murky, like a mystery, covered with moss and lily pads. Our initial conversations involved class topics, Keats and Shelley, sometimes Coleridge, then evolved into general philosophy and everyday topics such as the pros and cons of shopping at Costco. Sitting there, I would bump into her occasionally or touch her arm then pull quickly away, my senses alive with joy from the contact. Though she rarely initiated contact, she seemed to take my mild advances in stride.

Sometimes we talked about life in Europe. Sometimes we talked about her parents. Hector Katerabek was a tough, hard man, hardened by life growing up under the Iron Curtain. Sometime during his assignment to the States, he had veered hard right, parroting Fox News and Limbaugh talking points. He had no mercy for the downtrodden and dispossessed. He began to feel that his success in the world was his alone, due to his skills and prowess, not any outside factors. He felt that his values were being shorn away, like the side of a rocky cliff. This bothered Kateřina, that her father was such a heartless bastard, but he had good qualities as well, she said, he was a good provider and faithful husband and conscientous public servant. He felt isolated from his countrymen, stationed in Houston, but recently he had found a niche wiht a group of fellow conservative expatriates who played golf and bridge while railing against the unwashed masses. Kateřina’s mother, Magdalena, from some long line of aristocracy interreupted by the Communist regime, attended lunches at the country club and played polite games of tennis in a sedate white skirt and blouse set.

“What about your parents?“ Kateřina said.

This question always made me feel unformed and incomplete. It stuck a pang of fear into my half-baked, callow heart. There wasn’t really much to tell, except that my parents were ignorant heathens who repressed and hasseled me and made my life growing up in San Antonio holy hell. It was really too painful, too traumatic, to talk about. I couldn’t wait to get out. I couldn’t wait to escape. It was hard to explain. She would never understand, for instance, the igonimy of having just one telephone, located on a wall in the living room where my every word could be heard and scrutinized by kibbitzing family members. I just stuck to the basics.

“My father’s an accountant. My mother works part-time in a bank.”

“But what are they like, though?” she said. “Describe them.”

I was perspiring profusely now, challenged with this dangling Damocles Sword of description. I could destroy my future with her with one sloppy statement.

“My father,” I said, “grows pot in the basement and sells it online.”

She stared at me hard, trying to determine what sort of person this crazy American was. I was relieved when she finally determined it was a joke.

“You are funny, do you know that?” she said, with a tilt to her head that I found enthralling. My pulse quickened. I don’t mind saying I felt a manly surge of desire.

We were quiet for a while, then she said:

“Would you like to come to my place sometime?”

“Your place?” I said.

“I could cook you dinner. There’s a swimming pool on the rooftop of my building. We could go swimming.”

My heart raced now, my mind soared. This was one of those moments, one of those pivotal, turning point moments that can change your life—for better or worse. Your previous, “normal” life recedes into the past. You can never go back. Everything will be different going forward. Our conversations in the cafeteria line, sitting on the banks of the Biology Pond, discussing Keats and Shelley, sometimes Coleridge, would all occur in a new context now. I touched her lightly on the wrist, as I had before. It felt different. I’m not sure if it felt better.

“That sounds great,” I said. But oddly uninflected, no exclamation point.

“Saturday night?” she said.

“Saturday night sounds great,” I said. I mentally checked my calendar, cancelling attendance at the University of Texas Longhorn football game Saturday evening. I hadn’t missed a game since I started college. I would tell my game buddies I had a family obligation.

“I live in Hardin-North,” she said. Hardin-North was the name of a private high-rise women’s dormitory on the western fringe of campus that included a food court, game center, movie theater, and tavern. It was known colloquially among male UT students as “Hard OnNorth,” for reasons cloaked in college lore.

“I know where that is,” I said.

“Have you ever met a girl there before?” she said, teasingly. I hesitated briefly. I wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be.

“I met a girl there once,” I said. “But I never knew her name.” She laughed, tossing her honey blond mane of hair.

“You are funny,” she said. I touched her lightly on the wrist. She smiled, happily, I think.

I wandered over to my next class in a weird, unsettled funk. In a way, everything was perfect before, just sitting in class with her and then the student union and the Biology Pond. I couldn’t turn back now, though. You can’t turn back. You can only go forward.

Saturday night I signed in at the front desk at Hardin-North, where a gray-haired woman who looked like somebody’s maiden great aunt gave me a look that virtually undressed me. The lobby was eerily quiet, with an abandoned feeling—everybody was attending the Longhorn football game, I felt sure. (I fought back a pang of disappointment that I wasn’t there.) I rode an empty elevator to Kateřina’s 9th floor apartment and rang the doorbell. Her clear, contralgo voice rang out, carefully enunciated:

“I am coming!” she said.

“I am here!” I said.

The latch turned. There she stood, her long, stylish legs slim and almost birdlike. A pretty ocean bird preparing to fly off.

“Good evening, Kevin!” she said, holding the doorknob with one hand and a large stirring spoon with the other. It gave me a rush to see her. It was good to hear her voice. She seemed buoyant, bouncy, ebullient tonight—a Czech tennis babe dressed up after a match. Her honey blond hair looked washed and soft and full, hanging just before shoulder length. She was dressed in a peacock blue turtleneck with white slacks, accentuating her figure and her foreign-ness.

“Good evening, Kateřina!“ I said. I leaned in for a quick introductory hug but she was moving away already, motioning for me to follow. I followed her carefully, a million calibrationsand calculations occurring in my mind. She led me to a sitting area with a brown fabric couch and coffee table and director’s chairs, standard college-unit fare, and bid me to sit on one end of the couch. She remained standing, one hand on a hip, the one with the stirring spoon in the air, looming over me like a welcoming, smiling, and quite atttractive young genie.

“Would you care for wine?” she said. She smiled, widely.

“Wine would be fantastic!” I said.

“Is red wine OK?” she said.

“Red wine is just what I like!” I said. She smiled even more widely, as if my response signified some vital connection or collusion between us. I smiled back, confirmingly.

She brought back the wine in tall, fluted glasses and handed me one. Then she sat, too, though not beside me on the couch but on an adjacent director’s chair. I had hoped she would sit by me. She crossed her long legs, right over left, revealing the soles of low-cut, soft red shoes, almost like ballet shoes. Very Euro, for sure. I took a small sip of wine.

“Good wine!” I said, holding up the glass in a kind of celebratory salute.

“Thank you,” said.

We sat quietly for several minutes, staring at our wine glasses, adjusting our focus. It was silent inside her apartment—almost forlorn. Kateřina’s all-too-American roommates Lindsay and Michelle were off somewhere, probably at the football game. (Everybody was at the football game!) It was just the two of us, and possibly we weren’t quite ready for that. We were out of our usual element, minus our standard props—the classroom, the student union building, the Biology Pond. She uncrossed her legs—and crossed them again. I crossed mine—a manuever that required rather more dexterity than I was capable of mustering at the moment. She moved her wine glass to her lap, holding it in both hands. I grasped mine, labor-intensively, by the stem on a side table to my right. It felt as if I were staring at her across a consellation of stars, with her occupying one galaxy and me another, and were moving away from each other at intergalactic speeds. I jiggled my right foot obsessively—and off-puttingly, I am sure. Kateřina took a sip of wine, and then she spoke. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the two events.

“So,” she said. “Tell me your opinion of Molly Squires?” Molly Squires was our classmate who wore tiger-striped halter tops with short shorts and had a purple cotton candy swirl in her peroxide blond hair. She seemed to revel in revealing shocking secrets about herself in the course of class discussions, such as the abortion she had last spring and the double life she led here in Austin and with a straight-laced doctor boyfriend in her hometown, El Paso. The aborted child was not the doctor’s. Molly Squires was a lifeline, of sorts. She was a link bank to our roots, back to our beginnings in Parlin Hall 222 on the UT campus.

“I’d be afraid to go through the cafeteria line with her,“ I said, provisionally.

“She might eat you,“ Kateřina said.

“Without sauce,“ I said. We laughed aloud. Soon we were piling on shamelessly, free to pillage Molly’s appearance and reputation at will. It was a liberating feeling.

“More wine?“ Kateřina said.
“More wine!“ I resoundingly said. She went off and returned with a wide-mouthed carafe, pouring us both a full glass. I held my glass aloft and presented a toast.

“To Molly Squires!“ I said.

“To Molly Squires!“ Kateřina saud, “That she puts the two halves of her double life together!“ We laughed in complicit glee.

“How is Hector Katerabek tonight?“ I asked, emboldened by our conversation.

“Pan Katerabek?“ she said, with a small, sly smile. I had never seen that particular smile with her before. “I’m sure he is doing quite well. He is likely sitting in his easy chair railing aginst the heathen masses.“

I laughed.

“And Mrs. Katerabek?“

“Mrs. Katerabek is doing just fine also, thank you,“ she said. “She is holding court at the country club in her white tennis outfit eating a Cobb salad and possible a slice of vegetarian quiche.“

“You are funny!“ I said.

“I try,“ she said. There was the small, sly smile again.

I was beginning to feel rather amorous now, aroused by her humor and good spirits and apparent affection for me. It was a fine feeling. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. There seemed a kind of mutual recognition in our smiles, in our eyes, that signified approval and assent. I stood, hovering near for a moment, then plopped myself down beside her on the armrest of the couch. I placed my hand discreetly on her forearm, rotating my upper body into position for a kiss. I made a move—and whiffed. She stood abruptly, brushing off her slacks as if brushing them clean from me.

“Ready for some dinner?“ she said.

“Dinner?“ I said. “Oh, yes, sure.“ I had pretty much forgotten dinner was on the agenda.

Deflated, I stood on wobbly legs and followed her into a small kitchen area with a round table set formally for two, across from each other. I sat heavily, fumbling my place setting to the floor.

“Shit,“ I said. Kateřina pretended not to hear.

Focusing carefully, she removed the glass top of a ceramic casserole dish, and a rich, spicy aroma escaped. A green salad in in a wooden bowl sat alongside.

“My specialty,“ Kateřina said. “Pasta Panzani. It’s asparagus with pasta noodles.“

“That sounds good,“ I said.

She signaled that I should start. I picked at my salad greens cautiously with a long, three-pronged fork. I twirled the pasta dish onto my plate, long strands overflowing like the tentacles of an octupus. I pushed them back inside the perimeter of the plate. Oddly, the pungent aroma from the Pasta Panzani seemed to push me back, like a magnetic force. My amorous feelings had dissipated totally. I tried desperately to regain the feeling I had back on the banks of the Biology Pond, speaking of Keats and Shelley, sometimes Coleridge. I was perspiring profusely. I felt that I was chewing loudly, boorishly, though I didn’t seem to taste anything I was eating. It was as if my entire body had received a shot of Novocaine.

“How do you like it?“ Kateřina said, after an introspective pause.

“Delicious!“ I said. I felt certain I had pasta and asparagus strands dangling from the corners of my mouth.

“Would you care for a second helping?“ she said.

“Yes, defintely,“ I said. She signled with her hand, and I shoveled more food from the casserole dish onto my plate and wolfed it down—it was like eating a bowl of seaweed. Kateřina smiled appreciatively. I feigned pleasure, but I was beginnign to feel puffed up and encumbered, like a pretend sumo wrestler wearing a pumped-up costume. My stomach groaned. I was miserable. I almost fell asleep right there at the table.

After dinner she offered coffee, which I accepted gladly, sipping with both hands. A strong, mint-flavored coffee, it served to layer a caffeine buzz atop my wine and pasta torpor. But the coffee worked. Things started returning to focus. Kateřina was again the girl from English class, and I was the boy sitting beside her, flirting with my eyes. We talked again of Keats and Shelley, sometimes Coleridge. I sat forward in my chair, attentive, alert. The amorous feelings returned. Keats and Shelley no longer seemed enough. I stood. I came around the table to grab her for a kiss . . .

“Did you forget about our swim?“ Kateřina said.

“Oh, yeah!“ I said. “My suit’s in the car. I’ll go get it.“

“Fantastic,“ she said. “I’ll get ready in here.“

When I returned she was dressed already in her swimsuit, a diagonally-striped two-piece with a blue teri-cloth cover-up. I cold see her legs, pale and lean, very Euro. Her legs looked great. Her legs looked sexy. She pointed me to a small bathroom piled with feminine accouterments and returned wearing my suit with a tee shirt and a towel wrapped around my waist. I smiled nervously. She smiled nervously back. There was a lot of skin showing that neither of us had seen before.

“Shall we go?“ Kateřina said.

“Let’s go,“ I said.

Kateřina grabbed a towel off a table and led the way out the door. We rode the elevator to the top floor and navigated a narrow, cluttered corridor to a small, decktop pool with chairs and loungers scattered about. Kateřina flipped a switch on the wall, turning the pool lights on. I eased over to the bank, testing the water with my foot.

“How is it?“ Kateřina said.

“Not bad,“ I said. “I think I’ll give it a whirl.“

“Give it a whirl,“ she said.

Stripping off my tee shirt I dived in, swimming vigorously to the far side and back. Surfacing, I felt energized, exhilarated.

“Come on in!“ I said, hanging onto the side. I was a different man suddenly. I was going to move this relationship forward! “Feels fantastic!“

Her smile was cool and enigmatic.

“I must go in the slow way,“ she said. “Slow and steady.“

Dropping her teri-cloth cover to the ground, she waded in cautiously, using a rail and the corner steps. I swam up beside her and grabbed her hand. Facing each other, we walked around in the shallow end for a little while, like a slow motion dance. This new little liberty filled me with giddy delight. I leaned in toward her.

“Would you care to race?“ she said.

“Let’s race,“ I said. “The other side and back?“

“Other side and back,“ she said.

“You go first,“ I said.

Drawing a breath, she dived out headfirst, swimming toward the far wall. She swam well, with a loose, classical motion, but I caught her by the turn and passed her on the way back. I slowed down to let me catch her by the end. After touching the wall, we stood in the shallow end, laughing and breathing hard. Her wet hair was hanging loose, long clumps covering her face. Her swimsuit stuck tight against her skin. Her face looked bright and flushed. I couldn’t help myself now. I felt clear-headed and strong. I trusted my emotions. I knew I was right. I moved in closer, establishing positino for a mouth-to-mouth kiss. I tried again. She turned away.

“No?“ I said. Panic set in. I felt myself falling into a deep, dark abyss. Bats flew around my head. Banshees shrieked. She shook her head.

“I can’t right now, Kevin,“ she said. She pushed clumps of hair away from her face. She shook her head. “I can’t.“

“You can’t?“ I said. “Why not?“ I wanted to know a reason. I needed to know something. She shrugged. She shook her head. The expression on her face seemed a shroud of sorrow.

“I don’t feel that way about you,“ she said.

“You don’t?“ I said. She shook her head a third time.

“I am sorry,“ she said. ”I don’t . . .“ Her voice trailed off like a muttered requiem for my dead soul. I held her hands tightly for a few desperate, delaying moments, then let go. It was like letting go of a chatper of my life.

The rest of the night felt hollow, a somber echo of our previous delight in one another. We lingered in the water a few meaningless minutes more, then rode the elevator down to her apartment, speaking rotely. I gathered up my belongings and left quickly, patting her on the shoulder on the way out. She failed to respond. I drove home silently in a tomb-like car, hitting every stoplight along the way in yet another rebuke. The drive seemed to take forever. All my previous failures in life emerged to haunt me, bedevil me, mock me like ghouls at a Halloween haunted hosue. Leaving my car I heard a loud cheer from the football stadium, wafting in on the wind.

In class Monday morning Kateřina took a different desk on the far side of the room, chatting with the boy beside her. At the bell she left quickly, ahead of me, not looking back. I searched for her int he student union building and at the Biology Pond, but she wasn’t there.

Steven McBrearty grew up in San Antonio, Texas, in one of those large, rollicking Catholic families so prevalent in that era. On any given day, there might have been games of pitch and catch in the hallway or tackle football in the back bedroom. Steven moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and has remained living there ever since. He has published three collections of short stories, two in Adelaide, and more than 40 individual stories overall. Most recently, his story, Quality Photos, was published in Literally Stories literary journal.