The Drowning Of A Goldfish by Lidmila; Sováková

This, in turn, allowed him to expand his chicken farm, to trade grain, eggs, and chickens for other goods, to acquire more land, and further his social standing.
    Everything was meticulously planned. His son, speaking German better than a German, won a competition allowing him to work at a Nazi airport, twenty kilometres from his village. Thus, he avoided the obligatory service in the German Reich, required for all young people of his age, and could look forward to the end of the war. Then, he could start studying medicine at the university.
    He did not opt for German citizenship, to which he was entitled since his great-grandmother was German. To fight in the war was not part of Velenský’s plans.
    Rudolf was a model son. While frequently dating girls from well-to-do families, he never ventured too far. To prepare a successful marriage needs patience. He would save himself for a union worthy of a doctor and certainly, after his studies, he could strike an even better deal. Nothing is more pathetic than an ill-matched marriage, conceived by a stupid teenage romance.
    To satisfy his carnal impulses, Rudolf chose a notorious village slut. In case anything went wrong, let her try and prove who was the child’s real father!
    Rudolf’s first sexual experience dated back to his childhood, when he spent his school vacation in a German village in order to learn the language. One afternoon, when he was tossing a ball with his host’s daughter, a girl with flaxen, braided hair, it began to rain. They climbed into the loft of a barn, where the darkness smelled sweetly of hay and ripe fruit. He leapt forward, eager to retrieve the ball, which the girl had hidden in her arms and plunged his hands into something soft and round …
    An ear-piercing scream of pain made him free his prey and he pulled back his hands in startled confusion.
    â€œNaturally, she was blushing,” he related to me one day.
    â€œYou can well imagine how painful it was to her—a virgin! She cried out, confused. ‘It is not a ball, Rudolf!’
    â€œAnd me, I understood and respected her innocence …”
    Rudolf often bestowed upon me little stories of his past and acted the role of a professor. He planned to mold me into an ideal wife, reserved and submissive, concerned with nothing but her husband’s needs. He was confident of his final success.
    â€œA man can do what he wants with a woman whom he has deflowered,” confessed he, with a wistful smile.
    In Rudolf’s arsenal, there was a whole series of stories about women, oblivious of their reputation, who would give themselves up to forbidden physical pleasures.
    â€œHe threw this tart to the ground amidst the bushes. It was winter and snow covered the ground …” Rudolf knew my horror of the cold. “He tore off her panties and penetrated her; a job quickly done. Then, shaking the snow off his coat, he left without saying a word. How could a man respect a slut who consented so easily to being laid?”
    Another source of intimidation was Rudolf’s ex-girl friend NataÅ¡a.
    â€œAn indulgent nymphomaniac, impudent like Messalina who, in the fury of fornication, did not even try to hide her orgasm!”
    When, during a holiday of skiing, she fell and broke her leg, Rudolf left her where she lay. Let her other flirtations take care of her! Rudolf was not prepared to waste his vacation looking after a tramp.
    Rudolf’s scale of female values swayed between red and white; a chasm gaped between the whore and the lady, and he needed them both.
    We were in Bulgaria, by the sea. A young woman, her head propped up on her arm, tanned and smooth, her eyes half open, was basking in the fire-hot sand. She had the listless beauty of upper class Poles, remote and sensual at the same time.
    â€œWell, well … I wonder what she is dreaming about, the little slut,” gasped Rudolf, with a shrewd connoisseur’s wink.
    I was collecting and