Some days Weronika is simply Zyta. It usually happens at the beginning of the week, when it is necessary once again to take up the toil of creation, to separate yes from no, light from darkness, Weronika from Aleksander. After the division they are strangers to one another. Weronika, dressed up and made up, watches how Aleksander sleeps, plunged into idyllic chaos. That is when she decides that she will be Zyta and through that gesture, gliding through the alphabet by one, maybe two letters, she moves away from her obsessions, not too far, so that the next Sunday it will be possible to return to Weronika, to Aleksander, to forget about frontiers, about the end and the beginning.
Now Zyta/Weronika or Weronika heavy with Zyta or Zyta, pregnant in the head, like Zeus, pregnant with Weronika, sets out for a walk to the outskirts of the little town of S, in order to return by eight, wind up the clocks, wake Aleksander, begin a new chapter of duties and sexual tricks. The dream, which Zyta alone can reveal without running the risk of ridicule, is a consumer paradise in a newly established supermarket, a capitalist imprint on the burnt-out shell of communism. Zyta, in contrast to Weronika, belongs to a society that crazedly consumes spiritual and material goods, and in the supermarket she makes journeys to countries she will never see because of financial restrictions.
In the supermarket Zyta can strip naked and - without awakening any amazement - lie down on a stack of bananas, oranges or kiwis, ticking off countries from three different continents at the same time: Spain, Ecuador and New Zealand. It is a very cheap and at the same time pleasant way of touring by means of four of the senses (the fifth, namely taste, is too expensive). The fruits warmed by Zyta?s body are later very popular among the shoppers, especially the toothless little old men who come to the supermarket mainly for that ? to spy on Zyta through gaps in the pyramids of creamy butter.
When Zyta?s nakedness has gained added value through contact with another climactic zone, she moves to the cosmetics department, paying careful attention to the arrows and signs, because more than anything she is afraid of getting lost. On the way Zyta docks at the clothing department, where she purchases the essential emoluments of femininity, namely a bust-enhancing bra and a waist-reducing dress. That is all ? beyond that Zyta goes barefoot, and does not surrender the secret of her lingerie to anyone, even to the nice shop assistants. There are some seductive lesbians among them.
In the cosmetics department, Zyta purchases some cream of eternal youth and a set of lip balms with a leaflet written by St Augustine, proclaiming the following:
?Now I wish to cite examples of sublime style from the works of both doctors. Indeed both express themselves violently against women making themselves up, or rather disfiguring their faces with cosmetics. On that theme, Cyprian wrote ? among other things ? ?If a master-painter has skilfully painted someone?s face and shapely body, but after the completion of the portrait someone else has set about things and, as if more experienced, tried to improve on the drawing and painting, it would be a grievous wrong to the previous artist and would cause justified indignation, and yet you believe that your ungrateful and thoughtless insolence before God the Creator will pass with impunity? So as not to be regarded as shameless in the presence of the people and bawdy because of your alluring rouges, having spoiled and abused God?s work, you become a worse adulteress. What you consider to be dressing up, adorning, is assaulting God?s work, it is betraying the truth ... What is sincerity and truth, when that which is sincere defiles itself with adulterous colours, when the humbug of cosmetics changes true things into falsehood.??
- De doctrina christiana - announced the caption at the top of the leaflet, and underneath was the instruction, ?If you notice similar symptoms of sexism in culture, religion and politics, submit them to the world organisation of women?s? rights, which, for the year 2000, is preparing an anthology of anti-women texts, The Roots of Misogyny.?
Zyta was lost in thought. Weronika would know what to do with that. For Zyta was a woman completely emancipated from taboo and uninterested in the lack of fulfilment felt by so many women. In fact Zyta?s emancipated claims knew no bounds.
Having satisfied her initial aesthetic hunger Zyta goes on to the virtual reality department, where with the help of a computer she visits a model of a Dantean inferno. The way in to the purgatorial mountain turns out to be significantly harder to conquer, for it is as steep as the wall of the Matterhorn.
?How did he get up there?, wonders Weronika, hidden in Zyta, ?since he didn?t have a rope or even any good boots?.
In the course of her wanderings around the Internet Zyta receives a multitude of love letters, whose contents she disposes of immediately with the delete key. After a long journey she finally discovers a model of a Teutonic castle. Unnoticed by anyone, she strolls through empty rooms. On the bedroom walls hang crossbows. In the master?s chamber stands a pewter jug from across the sea, and in it sleeps Rhenish wine, tired by the long journey along the Rhine, and then the Baltic coast. Then Weronika throws up, moving to Riga, not least because of travel-sickness. She admires the orderliness of the hanseatic universe, which can be upset by an invasion of the Teutonic knights such as the present one.
Knight Eu had for a long time been at daggers drawn with the richest cooper, for that man had hidden his daughter ? a townswoman of miraculous beauty ? from him. Now this damsel caught the knight?s eye when along with two servants she was taking some barrels destined for goods back to the port, where knight Eu was recruiting sailors for the crew of the order?s ships. Having offered the maiden an amber rosary, he would creep night after night into the cooper?s house, yet he never found that beauty in her chamber. Flying into an unheard of rage, in revenge on the cooper, he set light to the store of barrels. The maiden, burned up in one of them, was proclaimed a holy martyr. Having left Weronika in Riga to visit the narrow alleys, Zyta abruptly abandoned virtual reality, where the computer game ends with the command: ?Instead of arson, try to find the barrel in which the jealous cooper has concealed his beautiful daughter, you have five shots. As a reward for an accurate hit a program will be run illustrating an erotic massage?.
Because Zyta?s associations often run along unusual paths, she recollects that in the middle of yesterday?s massage of the widow Adela?s sore radicles, she was given a shopping list of innocent groceries. Adela would never go to the supermarket, because she saw in it Satan?s invention and worldly vanity. However she willingly sent Weronika for the sorts of spices that whet the worldly appetite. In the end Zyta?s trolley looked like a hanseatic caravel, loaded with fragrant goods, whose coloured packaging rustled and fluttered in the breeze from the ventilators, like pennants on a ship at sea. On the way to the cash desk Zyta picks up Eve?s apple, full of environmentally friendly oils. The apple of self-knowledge, the apple of promise.
The handsome cashier was pleasantly surprised by the quantity of goods in Zyta?s trolley: ?Would the queen of beauty like an escort??
?Oui?, Zyta answered in accordance with the preponderance of French goods in her trolley.
In the twinkling of an eye an even better looking man appeared, who offered his arm, and with his other hand took ten of the coloured plastic bags crammed with goods.
?Why on earth can?t Aleksander get up early?, Weronika thought, hidden in Zyta, ?he?s really no use at all.?
?Delighted to meet you, Madam?, the young man said in her ear, smelling, apparently, of Salvadore Dali eau-de-cologne, ?however, please do not raise your hopes in connection with my external appearance. As our regular client, I shall entrust you with a certain secret: the devil is an ascetic, so he offers the best carnal temptations you can imagine?.
?That means I?m talking with the very same...?
?That?s right, lovely lady, code name in paradise ? serpent with apples, Jewish-style. It is I indeed. The sophisticated dish of a female population who ? the overwhelming majority of them ? aren?t devoid of taste?
?Why did you choose me exactly??
?You attracted my attention by your uninhibited behaviour in the supermarket?.
?There was nothing indecent in my behaviour.?
?Why, there?s no question of it. I said, ?uninhibited?. I don?t see any reason why you should immediately feel guilty.?
?What are you talking about??
?You greatly increased our number of clients, of suicides, who recognised that their present life in the world of restrictions was worthless.?
?You must have confused me with somebody.?
?Charming innocence. O pretence of corruption. Could Satan find himself a better instrument for the fulfilment of his goals??
?I?m not Satan?s property, or God?s. I?m an emancipated woman.?
?You?re giving in to an illusion, my child. Yahweh and I divided this world up between us a long time ago. You can?t not belong to either of us.?
?Men?s divisions of the world do not interest me.?
?Recognise, my child, a single common feature of God and Satan. Both laugh in the same way at such an assertion.?
Zyta let go of a sleeve scented with Salvadore Dali water and plugged her ears, but the laugh went on, a satanic-godly laugh without the Manichean division. There was no supermarket, only a building site ploughed all over with tracks. There was no cashier, only a security guard watching Zyta sneeringly through filthy spectacles. Above soared a coloured kite made of waist-reducing dresses, bust-enhancing bras and leaflets written by St. Augustine. Zyta was slowly turning into Weronika.
On Sunday morning Weronika set out for the house of the Lord, naturally after previous fulfilment of marital obligations. Meanwhile Zyta was sitting under lock and key in the cellar, on a box full of empty jars complete with coloured lids with butterflies drawn on them. Weronika had decided not to let Zyta out, and certainly not in Church, because that threatened alarming consequences. No, she will not be sorry for Zyta, who is trembling from cold in the cellar, wrapped in old, dusty curtains, squeezed into a corner between a sledge and a folding bed. Zyta is a person barely safe in the world of stereotypes, she shouldn?t be let out ? except in the greatest secrecy ? because that would only lead to problems.
Having heard the Gospels out, expecting a rather boring sermon to follow, Weronika occupied herself by looking at the clothes and faces of the parishioners, for as a writer she was an inveterate observer. Unfortunately the parishioners were surprisingly similar to one another, even uniform, apart from the strange person of Kaska, who appeared at each mass dressed in Marian colours and walked around the Church, kneeling in front of each portrait and figure. Once, by mistake, she kneeled down in front of Weronika, who had on a light blue overcoat. One of the old widows remarked on this error muttering under her breath, ?Blimey, look what kind of a new saint she?s got herself, shame.?
?Why shame?, thought Weronika, ?why couldn?t I qualify to be a saint, just because I think differently.?
Her most distinctive difference attracted attention, even though Weronika was ostentatiously exhibiting her wedding ring to the public gaze, to demonstrate that she was normal. Indeed, the source of her discomfort was the looks then being cast by the married women, clutching the arms of fatherly husbands like trophies of war. ?Perhaps, just once, he could come here with me,? thought Weronika about Aleksander, thus realising the hidden subtext of the looks being cast upon her. She felt judged. But that was barely the beginning. A young priest with an angry face also seemed to be casting looks in her direction.
?Next time I shall dress differently and stand in the background,? she thought.
The sermon, contrary to expectations, was announced in an unusual way. ?Sometimes,? began the young priest, ?I am struck, brothers and sisters, by the similarity between the Army and the Church. For both are founded on strict obedience and the authority of commanders. In the Church, just as in the Army, men and women have specific roles. The former fight for the preservation of the holy treasure of faith, while the latter by their silence and obedience soothe morals and tend hearth and home. In the army nobody can distinguish himself except when the keen eye of the commander notices and rewards him. Therefore it is necessary to watch every individualism with great caution, for if it stands out from generally established assumptions it may be the mark of Satan. I repeat, it may be, which does not mean that it must be. Observe however, brothers and sisters, that the greatest romantic poets had on their conscience the sin of fraternising with Satan by their unreservedly proud attitude, and of elevating themselves above the modest public. In today?s times we stand before a particular spiritual threat, which bears the name of feminism. Its menace consists in the fact that women, formerly so faithful to the Marian ideal of silence and discretion are giving ear to rumours of emancipation from the traditional role, and in the name of ill-understood liberty are discarding their sacred vocation as priestess of the home surrounded by a wreath of children. Such a role, we can attribute to those indiscreet and disobedient women in our army. You see my dears, they are sutlers. In case you do not know that word, let me tell you that it was invented in the French army for immoral and corruptible women. You see my dears, sutlers are among us.?
At that point the widows from the first pews began to cast suspicious looks at the few married women, who were hanging on to their husbands? arms, thus demonstrating their innocence. Weronika did not have anyone to hang on to, so with impatience and weariness she waited for events to develop.
?It saddens me, brothers and sisters,? the priest continued inexorably, ?that I must reveal a certain fact to you and publicly stigmatise one of our parishioners. For let us observe this very picture?:
Here the priest nodded in the direction of the sacristan, who had suddenly appeared in front of the projector in the pulpit and lo and behold, on the screen, previously used only for hymns, appeared Zyta?s naked body among the Spanish oranges.
Such a scandal, perpetrated by a person who had once been the hope of the Church.
In the church commotion prevailed. The widows from the first pews were shaking their rosaries in the direction of the beautiful nude, the men were moving closer so they could satiate themselves ? under the pretence of an expression of anger ? with the vision of nakedness. The few married women tugged on the arms of their husbands, who suddenly recovered their energy, and ordered their children to cover their eyes and stand with their backs to the altar.
?Behold Eve celebrating her shamelessness,? said the priest, ?she is among us, but let us allow her to leave, so that she can reflect upon her sin and be able once again to enter the bosom of the Church, like a reformed prostitute.?
A lot of empty space suddenly appeared around Weronika. As she made towards the door the parishioners did not spare her their spiteful sneers, and in some cases even insults.
?Be silent, brothers and sisters,? said the priest, ?for the fact that Satan has ensnared someone does not mean that we too must yield to his whisperings and use indecent language. Truly she has already received her punishment, whereas I am going to read you the parish notices.?
The sermon had, as it turned out, a magical effect. For the parishioners joined in a communion of ill will against Zyta. They left the church with heads held high, for it was not upon them that sin and punishment weighed. They were clean, sanctified by the juice of the oranges crushed by the sinful body. Disputes between the widows and the unmarried women ceased.
?Father Peter saved the community from corruption,? explained a seminar adept, surrounded by a group of unmarried women dangerously fascinated by the picture of fruity nakedness. The adolescent altar boys began to visit the confessional more often, confiding each time of the secret importunity that consisted of fingering the oranges. In general oranges began to enjoy great popularity as the forgotten vitamin C, namely the first letter of the word, ?caritas?. Married women gorged on them as they got older to arouse their husbands? desire, widows gave up using flower water, in favour of sprinkling themselves with orange juice. Even Father Peter?s aged housekeeper took a fancy to cakes stuffed to bursting with orange peel.
lol I think Bluey made that for me
