Vaclav Serves It Up
It’s the Thursday before Christmas
Trudge through the snow back to my place on Riverside
Shopping bags stuffed like sausages
Into the elevator with that charming Vaclav lives on my floor
Charcoal Armani suit, white opera scarf, piercing blues eyes
Asks politely the pleasure of my company to his holiday party
An authentic dinner at 7 tomorrow evening
Offers a hand with my packages before going our separate ways.
So I bring a silver-wrapped bottle of pinot noir
Show up about 8 and as he opens the door to Vaclav’s world
Already there’s a buzz of warm conversation layered atop cool jazz
Emanating from down a long hallway bright with abstract prints, rich tapestries
Walls painted deep orange red, the color of paprika
Authentic paprika comes in that proud Hungarian flag red tin.
I follow my nose to the kitchen, simmering paprikash on the stove
Veal stew spiced with Hungarian pepper sweet and hot
Their garlands festoon the room, dried, deep red, spicy
It’s the real deal.
Move to living room magnificent view of snowy, stately Hudson River
Guests animated, they are well-heeled, they are cosmopolitan, they are slightly inebriated
Amidst the din of westside Manhattan chatter,
I hear clipped German softened by a Swiss accent
I hear rolling Spanish r’s and rapid-fire vowels of emphasis
I hear sentences in unidentifiable tongues seeming to lack vowels altogether.
But the music is heady and wholly American
Miles and Coltrane, Dexter and Billie
Someone hands me a tiny etched glass of chilled vodka
With each icy swallow I’m carried on a phrase of muted trumpet, of velvety sax.
Milos, bear of a man, they call him Milo
Grabs my paw says please dance with me madam
You are soooo beaut-i-ful
So we find a dance groove inside the jazz riffs
He’s already peeled off his suit jacket like a banana,
Linen shirt rumpled, smiling with sweat.
Left Prague in ’68 speaks four languages
Designs interiors for international banks
Tells me under Soviet thumb we couldn’t listen to Miles,
Couldn’t listen to ‘Trane
But what a country this, eh?
King Menelaus black curls crown his bear head and he is
Some kind of Slavic Paul Bunyan in the High Tetra Mountains.
I meet Valentina and Benicio from the Banco Popular
Newly married they smile from the loveseat.
She Chilean, full-figured, statuesque, blood red-manicured
He Mexican, slight, agile, fine-featured.
The reserved Bank Suisse couple, greet in lilting Swiss German
The Rappoports from East 65th Street
Mrs. Rappoport already swaying her third manhattan
The Jaspers and Petersens sip martinis talk stocks
Nosh devilishly good Russian eggs topped with caviar,
Must be a premium brand.
Daria and Ivanna, eastern European eye candy eagerly
Watch the door for the promised eligible young bankers
From a four-inch heel attitude, they daintily sample head cheese
Sliced butterfly wing thin served on elegant transparent plates
I work up the nerve to try calves brains in black butter
And finish only the capers
But the five-star dish is the hearty veal paprikash
That oh so savory, yet richly sour creamy pink stew
That warms everyone to lip-smacking satisfaction
Causing a lull in the conversation.
Then Mr. Jasper offers that the masses, the little people who can’t afford veal
Should save money, look for bargains, substitute cheaper cuts.
Mr. Petersen nods, but Vaclav snorts he didn’t come to this country
To eat chicken wings on sale at Red Apple
Daria adds here people don’t have to line up for bread.
Why do they complain so much?
Why doesn’t every body vote when you can do so easily
Next door to the market and no machine guns.
Milo says working under Soviet state was creative death
So he made a career of drinking vodka and making sweet love to beautiful women.
He laughs defiantly then flees the room
The energy shifts the music grows louder, freer
Milo in the bedroom, guest coats forming a yurt on the futon
Comes out wearing Mrs. Rappoport’s fur trimmed pillbox hat
Dwarfed ridiculously on his massive head
And then in time with Miles’ trumpet solo he bellows
OK EVERYBODY GET NAKED
But he doesn’t’ say naked exactly, he says ‘nake’d’ like in half-baked
And every body cracks up, lets down their guard
Mr. Peterson, the Swiss banker all the suits break into a smile.
The wives look to their husbands for permission.
The Czech girls put on disco, kick off their improbable heels
Forget their rich no-show would-be dates
Flank Milo, and put on a show
Heat up the room with pumping legs twirling torsos manic mayhem
The living room now a burlesque sauna
Vaclav throws open the windows, westerly wind
Blows in that Hudson smell, that river vitality
And we suck it in like ambrosia.
It has stopped snowing
I notice the lights down in Riverside Park, lights from barges,
Lights from across the river in Fort Lee.
The George Washington Bridge a’twinkle upriver
All of our intent, excited eyes a’sparkle here uptown.
Vaclav brings out homemade slivovitz
Its stinging plum sweetness
Paralyzes my throat
I’m speechless, I’m burning hot, I’m in 3-D.
The room reeling
Three Mr. Petersens wear pillbox hats gaping at Ivannas doing
The dance of three times seven veils
The willowy Mrs. Rappoport bends in half as she and
Vaclav meld crazily dancing cheek to cheek
The Swiss banker loosens his tie admires Mrs. Jasper’s pendant watch
Nestled in her generous designer décolletage.
The music swells to a hot pepper crescendo
The horns echo with rich savory harmonies
The drums and bass pounding, persistent
It makes the empty tureen of paprikash crash
What was once the Russian egg platter clatter
Death by chocolate cake, unfloured, devoured
Every liter of vodka, deciliter of slivovitz down the hatch
I turn to Benicio beside me, speak to him in Spanglish.
He answers me and soon I hear no English
Soon I hear no vowels
Soon I hear no words
Only the thumping bass lodged in my own sternum.
And where is Milo? And where Valentina?
They’ve been at it for a half hour or so
Valentina a lioness, Milo a bear
Shape shifting in the elemental comfort of Mrs. Rappoport’s
Full length mink coat lining their conjugal yurt
Milo’s inventive Spanczech murmured into Valentina’s ear.
Vaclav kills disco reinstates Miles muted ‘Kind of Blue’
We all hear the insistent shrill ring
Milo’s wife calling from a Hoboken Christmas tree-lit living room.
‘Baby feverish, wants daddy to come home from work.
Now.’
Vaclav nods to me
So I enter the bedroom, see the entwined forms
The room reeking of prowess
But Valentina has just hit her stride. She wants more
She will not tolerate interruption at this pivotal juncture
She hasn’t had this kind of action since Santiago
She growls at Milo curses at him as he gets up
He knows only formal Spanish, doesn’t recognize
Her words, her need, her pain.
Milo can’t explain.
Can’t say he married a Jersey girl to get a green card
Have American children.
Hair slicked with sweat, he is suddenly smaller
Suddenly sober, he hastily dresses
Gazes morosely out the window, across the river to home.
One last look at the roaring lioness, out the door
Into the December air feels the warm trickle of blood
Where she has clawed raw his back
He can taste her hot peppers all the way over the river
All the way home to his gulag.
I grab a towel, wipe her down a racehorse after the derby
Spot clean Mrs. Rappoport’s mink coat, somewhat sullied.
Valentina pants, shudders, sobs.
I pat her flushed cheek, she strokes my bare arm
Speaks to me longingly in Spanish.
But I already know
She married Benicio because she was lonely for home.
I help her into her dress, tame her steamy tangled mane.
We emerge to the lingering peppery aroma of paprikash
Ella is singing ‘The Lamp is Low’
Candles are burning, Vaclav warms cognac in the brandy snifter
Valentina again sits demurely next to Benicio on the loveseat
And smiles our collective afterglow.
