Ester stood in the shadow of a billboard with Casino Route 2 km written on it, wondering what to cook Vojta for his dinner. There was still a bit of smoked sausage in the fridge she could make cabbage soup with. Or potato cakes? No, she’d leave them till the next day. She didn’t have enough garlic anyway and didn’t feel like going to the shops today. On days when she was working, Ester only did things that made her feel good. She loved cooking. And, more importantly, she loved Vojta. Ester shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her tight shoes were starting to pinch. She looked at the line of cars gliding along the road, watching to see if any of them would indicate and turn in her direction. Today she needed at least five customers so she could pay off the next instalment of her debts and take Vojta for a nice day out at the weekend. They could head to the aquapark or go for an ice cream and then maybe the cinema. Ester imagined his little face lighting up and the corners of her mouth involuntarily turned upwards.
A blue Fiat signalled and turned off onto the dirt track. So it was Rosťa today then, thought Ester. That would be a quickie with a rubber, so that was OK. Rosťa parked just past the billboard and his corpulent body spilled out of the car.
“I’m glad it’s you here today,” he said breathlessly.
“It’s good you stopped by,” said Ester, moving closer to him with a smile plastered on her face. She put her hand on her hip and stuck her chest out a bit. She noticed the sweat on Rosťa’s body and his swollen hands as he pulled the banknotes out of his wallet.
“Price is still the same, right?” asked Rosťa as he handed over the money. Ester nodded, giving the banknotes the once-over before sticking them in her handbag.
“Do you want it the same as last time?” she asked as she passed Rosťa a condom still in its wrapper and went to stand behind the car to avoid being seen from the road.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Rosťa, reaching for his fly and rocking back and forth with excitement as if he couldn’t make up his mind which way to go.
Ester hitched her miniskirt up to her hips and leant over the car bonnet.
“Come on then,” she said to Rosťa encouragingly. The sooner she got it over with, the better. No dawdling or foreplay – that was the main thing. The best customers were the ones who were done in two minutes flat.
Rosťa pulled his trousers down and clumsily tried to get the condom packet open.
“Give it here…” said Ester, reaching over. She ripped the packet open with her teeth and put the latex sheath on the part of his body that could barely be seen for his massive belly.
Ester had long since stopped thinking about which men attracted her and which didn’t. Truth be told, none of them turned her on any more. Even if Brad Pitt were to stop off here by the road, all she would see was a penis like all the others. Maybe she’d be more interested in a guy who didn’t whip it out in front of her. Someone who didn’t ask her how much it cost for a fuck and whether a blowjob was cheaper. She’d like to meet someone who’d just take her out for a coffee and tell her jokes about blondes and policemen, which she’d laugh hysterically at.
Rosťa took Ester from behind, gripping her hips with his enormous hands. Ester was aware of his rapid, slightly sour-smelling breath and her thoughts turned to cooking again. She imagined she was holding a knife in her right hand and chopping an onion, imagined the sharp edge of the blade biting into the chopping board and crushing the white substance, which sprayed its stinging juice into the air. She’d fry the small white pieces in hot oil until they were golden brown. Or blood red if she added ground paprika. Then the aroma of the toasted spice would spread throughout the house so that anyone who walked in at that moment would say: “Wow, it smells amazing in here!”
“You smell amazing,” moaned Rosťa into her ear. Ester rolled her eyes. She did this whenever she had her back to a customer and he began to annoy her by talking. Her thoughts were no longer on cooking, so she at least examined the tips of the red high heels she’d bought last week.
Rosťa let out a long final groan as he twitched slightly inside her. Ester automatically reached for a paper hankie from her bag, which she used to wipe the rest of the lube off her thighs and crotch. Rosťa wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, the veins on his temples bulging blue.
“It’s a lovely day, so it is,” wheezed Rosťa, because he didn’t know what to say but was feeling relaxed, though not without a pang of regret for the thousand crowns it had cost him. But Ester was five hundred crowns cheaper than most of the girls that hung around here by the road, so he should actually think himself lucky. It was just a shame her shoes reminded him of the ones his mum wore.
“D’you know what I really like on women?”
“What?” asked Ester absent-mindedly, examining the paper hankie.
“Stilettos. Those really tall, narrow high heels.”
“Except you wouldn’t be able to stand up in this field wearing those, never mind walk in them.”
“Couldn’t you just put them on for a little bit?”
“You want me to change my shoes next time?” frowned Ester.
“Maybe.”
“You’d have to buy them for me.”
“Oh, right. Don’t you make enough money as it is?”
“No, believe it or not, I don’t,” said Ester, pursing her lips.
“Never mind then,” said Rosťa, abandoning his erotic fantasies along with his suggestion and trying to drive away the uncomfortable image of his mother, which really didn’t belong in this scenario. “So business isn’t great then?” he went on, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear it was fine and at least ten other guys had taken their turn before him.
“Not really. In fact, you’re the only one today,” lied Ester. “So I’ve no idea how I’m going to buy new gym shoes for the little one. This’ll just about cover me for food for the weekend, and I still have to give half of it to Mára,” she said with a theatrical sigh, hoping Rosťa might take pity on her and slip her an extra five hundred.
“Well, I’ll stop by again sometime so you can get those gym shoes,” said Rosťa, licking his lips, and he swivelled his rotund body towards the car, signalling she’d get no more out of him.
Well, at least that’s over and done with, thought Ester, becoming aware of a painful burning sensation between her legs. She’d have to go for another checkup, although it was probably just a yeast infection. And yet she never did it without a rubber, even though every other guy wanted her to. Not her, though, she wasn’t stupid. She knew that a third of the girls—at least a third!—had chlamydia and kept on spreading it. Ester couldn’t understand why the guys who had wives at home didn’t want to use protection. After all, they must pass it on to them. Ester found herself shaking her head in disapproval.
A light, warm breeze got up and combed through the fields of maize. Ester was glad the corn was tall now as she was fairly well hidden—although her customers knew about her and Mára sent them her way too. But the defensive wall of stalks wouldn’t last long and soon the monstrous, noisy combine harvesters would come and break it down. And Ester would be naked there, even more exposed than if she were stripping off her last items of clothing in a club. She’d be left there for the lustful and scornful looks of all the male and female drivers. She’d have to be on the lookout for police cars and duck down behind the huge billboard mast in time to avoid being fined or taken to the station, which would mean losing her earnings and, at the very least, getting a beating from Mára.
The wind was rustling in the corn again. Ester stepped among the stalks and crouched down to take a pee. She watched the liquid flowing out of her body, bouncing off the hard, dry soil and spraying in every direction. Some of it even landed on her red high heels. She took some comfort in the fact that even they—so beautiful, shiny and untouched—could be sullied too.
(…)
(p. 71-74)
I’ve already had to learn the hardest lesson, thought Ester. Not the discovery that the guy she had fallen in love with had been pretending to be someone else. Not even the fact that he had stolen from her so blatantly. The hardest lesson was finding out she couldn’t rely on her own family when push came to shove.
“What, now you want me to lend you money?” said her mother, bursting into tears, when Ester asked her for help. “What goes around comes around, my girl. And you should have let Jan have the house. All of it! Or at least half, that would’ve been fair. It was the height of stupidity giving it to you. But I know why she did it. I know only too well!”
“Darling…I haven’t got any money. Your mum’s the one who holds the purse strings,” was her father’s excuse. “And there’s no talking to her right now. She’s wandering around like a zombie. This has…really hit her hard. She keeps saying nothing like this could ever have happened to her. But listen…once the dust has settled…once you two have made up…then you can always stay here with us. You’ve still got your old room. It’s full of junk at the moment, but that can be cleared out,” he said in an effort to placate her.
“Look, Ester, I’m sorry about what happened, but you deserved it,” her brother said down the phone. “That house should’ve been mine as well and you know it.”
“But Gran gave you money,” said Ester defensively.
“Which wasn’t even half the value of the house,” was Jan’s sharp retort.
“But you once told me you weren’t interested in a dump like that.”
“I said that? You’re talking crap!”
“Gran wanted me to have a place to live, and you already had your flat…”
“Because I worked for it! No-one gave it to me! And you could have stayed with Mum and Dad.”
“You reckon? You know I can’t stand being around Mum.”
“That’s your problem. Just don’t make out you had no place to live.”
“All you care about is money,” Ester spat out, because it was obvious her brother wasn’t about to lend her any.
“You can talk! For me it’s about the principle!”
“But you never even wanted the house! You thought everything about it was…disgusting…and that it stank.”
“We could always have sold it.”
“What? You don’t seriously think we should have sold the house where Gran and Papa lived? Where Mum grew up?”
“Oh, come off it, it’s just a pile of bricks and stone.”
“I’ve got loads of memories of the place. Nice ones.”
“I always thought it was odd, you going there so much. Especially when she was dying. Who knows what ideas you planted in her head,” added Jan spitefully.
“She was all on her own. She needed someone to talk to,” replied Ester, her throat tightening with remorse.
“She had everything. She didn’t need anything.”
“She wanted to talk to someone. She was all alone!”
“Exactly, and who knows what ideas you planted in her head. Who knows what ideas you planted in her head!” Jan repeated indignantly, and if Ester had been standing in front of him, she’d have seen his flushed face.
“Planted in her…what the fuck?!” Tears and fury welled up inside her. She hung up without saying goodbye and angrily flung the phone down on the bed. She wouldn’t be speaking to Jan again any time soon. How could someone say that about her? She’d never asked Gran for a thing. Gran had loved her – that was all!
“Ester, we all have our cross to bear,” is what Gran would have said about her debt problem if she were still alive. “You probably weren’t humble enough. And you didn’t pray enough. That’s why you weren’t visited by the Holy Spirit. That’s why He didn’t come to you. And now that it’s happened, you just have to accept it. Bear that cross with humility.”
“But, Gran, I don’t want to lose your house,” Ester said to her in her mind.
“You won’t be taking the house to your grave either, my dear. As we were born, so shall we die. Dust you are and to dust you will return. We must learn to surrender all things. Not to cling to earthly possessions. You were probably too attached to it. That was why it happened to you. It’s probably the way it had to be.”
“But where will me and Vojta go?”
The gran of her imagination had no answer for that. And so Ester went to the creaky old armoire and took out all her gran’s prayer cards and her beautiful big rosary with the light pink, heart-shaped beads. Even though she had stopped practising her grandmother’s faith a long time ago, she decided she should at least give it a try. If she prayed long enough, perhaps her gran—or God, it was all the same—would send her a sign. So she would know what to do, how to resolve the whole situation. After all, what was the point of all those prayers unless they were answered, unless they worked like pneumatic post you could use to send God your messages, your calls for help? But nothing happened – nothing that Ester could have interpreted as a convincing answer. And yet she tried her best to meet the voice of God halfway. For example, she closed her eyes, opened up the Bible at random, put her finger on the page and read the first line her finger was pointing at. However, there was no help to be found in the words: “At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first.” Nor did the second line offer much in the way of enlightenment: “Until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.” She also tried walking to the church her gran used to go to, stopping after twelve minutes—because that’s how many apostles there were—and looking around for a sign. However, she found herself in a street lined with detached houses in the style they used to call entrepreneurial baroque, with bulging balustrades, golden grates on the windows, and turrets instead of chimneys.
She also sought advice from the parish priest who came to the village to celebrate Sunday Mass.
“The Lord is not a vending machine. You don’t put money in and expect Him to provide whatever you need,” was his reply. How did the priest know that, Ester wondered. How did everyone know what God was like apart from her? Did the others have privileged access to Him? Or had they read it somewhere? The Lord is not an old man in the clouds. The Lord watches over us. The Lord is not a vending machine. You must stand in awe before the Lord. The Lord knows our every care. You must entrust your cares to the Lord. You must be grateful to the Lord for all He has given us. The Lord is just. The Lord is all-powerful. The Lord is forgiveness. The Lord loves us. But what if—Ester thought to herself—the Lord is utterly…indifferent to us?