The Fireman’s Wife

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in Antae

Small-statured Master Zet is dressed in blue knee-highs, burgundy breeches and thin-soled sandals. Master Zet’s frock coat is well tailored, and a dark green bow, knotted neat by the hand of a mute maid, constricts his slender neck. Master Zet is twelve, and he is permitted to stroll beside the flowerbeds laid out along the house that is home to his father, fat, moustachioed Mister Zet, his mother, wiry, peculiar Missus Zet, a maid, an aunt, a dog and a cat. Little Master Zet harbours a quiet hatred for cat and dog, aunt and maid, wiry lady and moustachioed gentleman. His neat-sandaled feet trace imbecilic figures of eight between the flower beds. His desires are modest: all he wants is to leap out of his sandals and wrench off his blasted knee-highs. The mute long-nosed maid eagle-eyes him from a window. Flowerbeds are made to be trampled… Savage thoughts give Master Zet no peace. His sandals carry him past the flower beds and trace yet more confounded figures of eight. The long-nosed maid’s lopsided smirk follows him from the window. Master Zet’s dream is to find himself in the rear yard, if only just the once. And open that soot-besmirched door. The rear yard is where the boiler house stands. All firemen—of this Master Zet is convinced—belong to some mysterious caste. Naturally, they worship fire; their rituals are enigmatic and frightful, and the sacrifices they must offer to their insatiable god are without measure. The family of the resident fireman is three-strong. There is the fireman himself, a lank, dirty-faced, red-palmed man. There is his wife, a lady whose impossible proportions have          extinguished the young gentleman’s imagination. And there is their daughter, a wizened, diminutive creature, all crooked legs and orange batiste dresses. Master Zet is scarcely acquainted with them. They do no more than bow to one another from afar before turning aside in discomfiture. Master Zet is too timid to make the first approach. Which is why he is so enticed by a fantasy: that of flinging open their soot-besmirched door and bursting into their world. No one knows what awaits him there: the anguish of a purposeless existence, or rituals replete with ignorance, incantations and passion. The fireman’s daughter buries her wizened little face in the hem of her batiste dress. Her crooked legs trot her over to the soot-besmirched door, with her father in great-strided pursuit.  The fireman’s wife looks round, and Master Zet sees her large face, her discomfited grimace, her red, half-open mouth. The door, as always, slams shut. The maid leans half her length out of the window and cranes her neck hither and thither to see what has drawn little Master Zet’s notice. From the depths of the house comes the piercing voice of Missus Zet. Clambering down from the broad marble sill and gathering up her voluminous skirts, the maid hastens to answer her mistress’s summons. The time is now, thinks Master Zet. He takes an enormous leap, trampling the flowerbed, and flattens himself against the wall as hard as he is able. Now the maid won’t see a thing, however far she pokes her nose out. Body flush with the wall, frock coat snagging on its brown brickwork, Master Zet darts on tiptoe towards the corner of the house. He rounds the corner, and freezes. Nothing can prevent him from making a break for the fireman’s dwelling. There is no time for anyone to call out a warning, seize him by the coat-sleeve or block his path. Perhaps Master Zet’s dream has already come to pass: this is the moment he’s awaited for so long. He is so free he can turn back without regret. All at once he is overtaken by a lassitude of sorts, seeming harbinger of endless ills. Ought he to carry this adventure to its conclusion? But the strange sense of duty he feels before his own fancies impels him onward. The soot-besmirched door swings open in front of him. The fireman palms his forehead. His daughter sinks into a clumsy curtsey. His wife’s large face is aflame with discomfiture. Master Zet makes his way down the stairs. The fireman bows and begins to withdraw. His daughter snatches up his red hand, and, nodding ceaselessly, they retreat together behind a dusty velvet curtain which separates the room from a world of boilers, coal and infernal flame. The fireman’s wife sits in her armchair, eyes downcast, furious fingers worrying at an openwork doily. Master Zet looks about him, and sees only a wooden stool standing solitary in the middle of the room. Nasty little tremors take hold of Master Zet’s legs, and he flops onto the stool. Guest and hostess remain silent, not venturing to utter a word of conversation. How to conduct themselves neither has the faintest. Master Zet has been too well drilled in the brick house, while the hostess is too meek to engage in genteel chit-chat with a distinguished guest. They scrutinise one another. Master Zet adjusts his frock coat. He makes to pull up his socks. He thinks better of it and sits erect, hands darting to his knees. The hostess straightens her skirts on her immense hips, but Master Zet’s movements freeze her into stillness. Bolt upright and statue-still, they continue to scrutinise one another. The tension is such that the telltale tremors resume in Master Zet’s leg, and he clutches at it with both hands. She notices, and smiles, and leaves her mouth ajar. He leaps up. Her impossible gargantuan breasts billow out at him as she rises from her seat in a deliberate, almost ceremonious motion, pillar-like legs planted firmly apart on the floor. He snatches for breath, hands groping downward like a blind man’s. She stands there before him, her boundless, behemothic, absurdly bedizened body swaying back and forth. Master Zet leaps out of his sandals and wrenches off his blasted knee-highs. For the first time in his life he is bare of foot. In a languid, infinitely drawn-out movement, the fireman’s wife raises her blouse. Her skirts slide half way down her elephantine hips, exposing her immense insatiable belly. Its extraordinary pink bulk overhangs her salad-green bloomers. Master Zet hurls himself forward and presses his cheek to this orb, hot to the touch and aquiver with life. Keeping her breasts in check and digging her heels into the floor, she leans back. Tears streaming down his cheeks, body atremble, he takes fast hold of her belly. She screams with joy as she cradles his head. Sobs convulse Master Zet’s twelve-year-old frame. He throws back his head and looks up at the fireman’s wife. In the brick house the dog begins to howl. Master Zet finds himself gripped by a sensation of higher truth. The fireman and his daughter re-enter the room and freeze in a wordless bow. The door growls open, and the maid materialises wide-eyed on the threshold. In the brick house the wiry lady collapses in a swoon. Her moustachioed spouse tumbles into a flowerbed, crushing the cyclamens. The cat yowls. Master Zet is barefooted and free.