Sokal (Part I)

To four I had a bit of time, so I decided to buy some flowers for the lady of the house. 

Sokal’s wife I had seen two or three times during her penal expeditions, which primarily ended her husband’s wayward escapades—when he ripped himself away from home so that in some unknown to her town in a suspicious locale to the glee of the gathered degenerates there he could play on the clarinet, drink and make camp where he fell. She was good looking, elegant and energetic. She seemed to me decidedly older, she was actually thirty something. 

Women much older than me I always compared to Milena, but Sokal’s wife was a good few years older than her already. 

I knew quite well that as one of the complicit fellows in her husband’s escapades I could be seen by her in not the best of light. So I depended on these flowers. 

Unfortunately everything in this place was deafly closed. Stores, restaurants, cafes, people this day had to join in these festivities, not wander about in stores or sit around in locales. The commando jeep with my team left long ago, and like bad air I hung around the town, trying to acquire some effective bouquet. 

Walking like this in these crowds of holiday-going simpletons, I saw suddenly some by measure cultured looking lady. I asked her if she lived here and when she confirmed this I told her about my trouble. 

She thought for a moment and explained to me, that my one chance was to go in the direction of the local cemetery. There lived an older man, who tended to flowers and had even some small greenhouse. This was the one place. 

There was just one problem, the gardener spoke exclusively in German. I thanked her profusely, saying that when she directed me towards the cemetery, for a moment I thought she would advise me to complete a bouquet from the flowers at the graves. 

Five after four I stood with beautiful flowers before the house at Kosciuszki 17. Sokal’s villa, if you could even call it a villa, was reminiscent more of an Old German castle, completely like a set design for one of Wagner’s operas. 

Stylized for Bastille, the gate had, under an enameled white-ultra-navy blue sign that read DR S. SOKAL – DENTIST, a door bell. 

After a moment from a completely different direction, as if from the back of the house, arrived some two-meter fellow. He opened the wicket to the gate and not asking for anything, allowed me inside. 

The whole time, while I was still far away, from the direction of the house came to me the uninterrupted yelping of dogs, which intensified greatly when after a many-stepped stairs I got to the level surrounded by a strange Old German-Roman oval wall and began to approach the large, two-winged oak doors at the entrance. 

Because for almost my entire life up to that point I was raised with some dogs, by their sound I oriented myself that there were three: an Alsatian, a dachshund, and some third dog, most likely from the family of setters. 

When I stood at the threshold and wanted to knock, which anyway on account of the dogs’ barks did not make the least sense, the doors rapidly opened. Stood in them, by the looks of it, a servant-woman. 

Immediately, the dogs threw themselves at me. They turned out to be a threatening pack and each of the three attempted in its own manner to greet me. 

Because, wanting to be very elegant this day, to a dark blue jacket and navy blue-white low tops in a golf style I wore snow white pants, before the dogs got to me, I immediately crouched down, so that the attack of their greeting did not go on the white pants, only for the lesser of two evils, the darker parts of my wardrobe. 

In this uncomfortable position, with my left hand once petting the dogs, once shooing their caresses away, in the right I held an enormous bouquet high up over me, so that the greedy beasts did not at first rip apart the bouquet of flowers obtained with such difficulty. 

Time after time I tried to lift myself from this squatting position, but then immediately they jumped on me. Each of the dogs in a different manner showed his joy. The dachshund at any cost tried to get at my lips to lick them. 

The Alsatian delicately caught me with her white, after all her owner was a dentist, teeth, by some fragment of flesh or wardrobe, and pulled at it in every direction, she let out a friendly growl. The setter, who turned out to be a pointer, jumped at me and tried above all effectively to copulate here my arm, here the knee, here again my calf. 

There was no resisting any of this until Sokal appeared. When he yelled KENNEL, the dogs, grudgingly and still wagging their tails, moved away from me, though I know, that kennel was for them a completely abstract idea. 

“It was unnecessary to bring these flowers. Christina is not here today. Do you think that I would invite you for dinner if she had not left with the kids for the whole day to her family, who live out in the woods? I hope you are aware of this that she sincerely hates you all, and even to me shows love the way dogs love an old blind man in a dark alley. You hungry?” 

“Like hell,” I answered. 

“Dinner will soon be served, and now let’s go to my sanctuary to listen to some music.”