He continues to tell her things she is desperate to hear. It wasn’t ideal, he says. Your compartment was packed. The woman sitting one away from you, I could tell was drowning in cloying cheap perfume.
How right you were.
Unlike you.
She doesn’t look up at him when he says this.
I didn’t even know if you spoke English. But I closed the door I had opened, the one that didn’t lead to you, and I walked back three cars, and opened another door.
I glimpsed you through the dusty glass, Chloe.
The drinking, the wandering in the warm evening air of an exotic foreign city, the leaning down and smelling her perfumed neck, the murmuring, you smell so musky, so delicious, the shoulder bumping against hers, her arm in the crook of his arm, it’s all elegant seduction leading to wanton frenzy. And he hasn’t even begun to sing. He’s just talking her out of her slinky Polish dress and onto her arching back. He’s gazing at her, but not kissing her, or circling the soles of her feet with his thumbs, or rubbing the center of her bare spine with the knuckles of his hands. Not yet. They’re just walking, full of raspberry wine, full of chocolate wine. He offers her a cold beer on a street corner, and she says no, and he laughs, and she watches him. Do you know, he says, that a girl is fifty percent more likely to love you if she likes the taste of beer and drinks it with you on your first ever night out?
Chloe laughs too and says, is love a euphemism there? That’s when he stops walking, and turns to her. No, he whispers. It’s not.
He kisses her under a Warsaw streetlamp in a cobblestoned alley, not far from squares and singers and art and cafés open late, and yet a plunging world away from it all. He raises her face to his great black eyes, and presses her woozy-with-wine body in soft spun cotton against his chest.
He tastes of beer and vodka and wine and smoke and strawberry rhubarb pie. He whispers into her mouth wild things, mad things. He hasn’t even begun to sing.
She almost needs to be carried back to the inn by the castle, up the stairs to their room, to their high bed by the window.
He throws off his shirt and falls sprawled on the bed. She wobbles in front of him and unzips her summer dress. You look so pretty, he whispers, opening his arms, beckoning her to come near. The dress falls to the floor.
There’s no light except for the lit-up Royal Castle by the River Vistula outside their tall windows. Naked she climbs on top of him, her bare breasts, her bare nipples skimming, grazing against his chest. They kiss.
Oh Chloe.
Oh Johnny.
Bare on bare, naked on naked, woman on man, she lowers her breasts to his impatient ardent mouth. She moans, he moans. His hands cup her, fondle her, he licks her, he kisses her. He sucks her nipples until she can’t sit up on top of him anymore. She is spinning. He is her narcotic, her opiate, her potion and poison. She falls on the bed, on her back. She raises her arms above her head. He falls on top of her. She is pulsing, and he has barely touched her. But he is pulsing too. Everything red, wine, lust, raspberries, lifeblood flows just under her white and aching skin. I am parched, she gasps. Only in your throat, Chloe Divine, whispers Johnny. Only in your throat. She moans, all foamy. Now he has touched her. Now he is almost singing. Please don’t moan, he begs her. Please don’t.
Oh God, why.
Because if you moan I will come.
Desperately she tries not to, but she can’t help it. She moans. And he can’t help it either.
They have so little time. Nothing but frenzied minutes. Don’t be mad at me for Mason, he whispers beseechingly. We’re just kids, saying the wrong things, doing the wrong things. What I said … it’s not true.
Yes, it is.
It’s not, Johnny says. You know how I know? Because if he touched you, he would love you. Are you telling me he’s never touched you?
He has, but not like this, says Chloe.
And then later: I know you think it makes your relationship with him a lie, but it doesn’t. It just makes it your first relationship.
Chloe doesn’t care. She listens to the drum of Johnny’s tapping fingers, she watches his caressing hands on her. Their heads nod in sync with one another, their bodies move together to the rhythm of love. She clutches his neck, presses her palms against his back. It’s clumsy at first. She wishes he could be more gentle, less fevered. They don’t know how to walk in step yet, their dance new, syncopated to a disparate beat. In the beginning he stops dancing before the music ends.
Don’t fret, Chloe Divine, says Johnny in the briefest of drunk afterglows, don’t worry. One day, a man will touch you in wonder, and you’ll know I’m telling you the truth.
They stare at each other across the blue air, heavy with varnish, sap, beer, peaches and plums.
Are you that man? she mouths to him, terrified, inaudible, barely moving her lips.
I am, he says, his clammy face lowered into her breasts, his stubble scratching her raw. I’m the one.
He whispers, he kisses her. His mouth is so soft, so sweet. The sweat from his hair and head drips into her face. So this is what it feels like. A lover bringing himself to bear over her. First short dance on the bed, second longer on the floor, the third they stand like horses, like palms, tango like lovers, entwined, embraced, and he whispers, holding her whole bare body to him, your lips are paradise and she moans back her answer but he is panting and sweltering and doesn’t hear, so she moans it again, moans it louder until he does.
Lower, Johnny, she moans. Paradise is lower.
25
Roses for a Farm
Chloe
She had hoped that breakfast would cheer the rest of them up, but no. Johnny, however, was invigorated, fresh, brushed, and shaved (down to designer stubble, not bare cheek). He got them coffees and pastries while they waited outside Castle Inn for Emil. He brought melted ham and cheese for the boys, a plum Danish for Chloe, and plain buttered toast for Hannah with water, not coffee. She didn’t want to eat even the toast. She said she was still not feeling well.
“I know,” Johnny said. “But if you force down a few bites of bread, you’ll feel better.”
Blake was in quite a pickle. He didn’t want to accept breakfast from Johnny, but he was also starved.
Right outside their hotel, horse carriages waited for riders. There was a long line of them, all in a row, horses eating out of feedbags and pooping. It was enough to ruin a healthy person’s appetite, and Hannah was not a healthy person. They walked around the corner to a cobblestoned plaza, to get away from the smell. The Pizza Hut had al fresco tables with cute umbrellas. Another time Blake would’ve found that amusing. Not this morning. The entire Old Town was cobblestoned, and where they were waiting, the buildings were white stucco with red roofs to match the red roof of the Royal Castle. Chloe tried to tell her friends that elsewhere in the Old Town, the buildings were painted all the colors of the rainbow, but no one cared. Mason nodded politely, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.
“Listen, Chloe,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” He paused. “Blake’s not right about the passport. I did leave it. It was under the chair. I had to look for it. He didn’t know it was there. He didn’t see it.”
It took Chloe a second to figure out what Mason was talking about. She patted him on the arm, touched his turned-away face, ruffled his hair.
“Don’t worry, Mase,” she said. “I believe you.” She turned away her own face. They both watched Hannah, bending forward after attempting the toast.
“It must be food poisoning,” Mason said. “All that stuff at Varda’s. I’m surprised we’re all not barfing like her. Who wouldn’t get sick?”
The four of them loitered in the plaza, near white steps and smooth walls, while Johnny waited for Emil a little farther down the street near the horses. Chloe tried not to look down the street after him, tried not to look at his denim-clad legs, his gray T-shirt, his twisted-back hair. Last night his hair was out, spraying sweat with every pulse of his body. She moved away from
Mason, in shame. She studied the cobblestones. She studied Hannah.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Hannah said to Blake, who stood like a stoic by her side, his backpack over his jean jacket, his belt buckled, his Timberlands tied, his unsmiling gaze on Pizza Hut. But to Chloe, when Blake walked ten feet away to throw out their garbage and her uneaten toast, Hannah whispered, “I have to talk to you.”
“And I have to talk to you,” Chloe whispered back. “But when? Tonight?”
By Hannah’s desperate expression, Chloe didn’t think her friend could wait until tonight. She didn’t know if she herself could wait.
“Where did you get that dress?” Hannah asked, weakly appraising her.
Chloe wore her newly bought coral concoction, flimsy like cotton candy, sleeveless and soft. There was a cinched waist, a halter neckline, and a jaunty bow across the hip. There was cleavage. There was casual loose hair and glossy lips and the flickering eyes of a frantic animal. Chloe knew what she looked like. She had stared at herself in the mirror long enough before she finally dared leave the private bathroom upstairs.
“I went out for five minutes yesterday. There’s an outdoor market two blocks over. Maybe we can go tomorrow. You’ll find some nice things.”
“You felt too unwell to remember to leave us a note,” Hannah said, “but well enough to go dress shopping?”
It was obviously the dress Hannah was objecting to. Perhaps it was too nice for a death camp.
Chloe didn’t want to show Hannah how light-headed she felt, liquid in the stomach, terrified of the nightmare slowly unfolding, all that, and yet blinded and beguiled. The violet plunder of yesterday hadn’t ended things. It barely began them.
While they waited outside in the abundant sunshine, Chloe noticed that Hannah was not wearing makeup. She wore a long skirt with an elastic waist and a borrowed, oversized T-shirt that swallowed her rail body. Instead of looking effortlessly elegant, she looked haggard. Her bleached hair was brushed back. Her face was plain and pale. She looked as if she’d slept through a night of terrors and was still haunted by what she’d seen. She looked as if she hadn’t slept.
Gamely, Hannah stood for a few more minutes, leaning against the wall of the building, but finally she squatted down on some stone steps. Chloe perched next to her. She touched Hannah’s arm. She put her arm around Hannah.
“Don’t do that,” Hannah whispered, “or I’m going to break down.”
Blake and Mason were near. They couldn’t say much.
“Hannah, what’s going on? You okay?” Chloe whispered to her friend.
“No,” Hannah said. “Not even remotely.”
Mason
Emil drove up into the square and parked his beige shuttle bus next to us. Johnny was in full animation mode, chatting to Emil, inspecting the van, making jokes, laughing, slapping him on the back, drinking another coffee, I think his third. Even his stubble looked energetic. You couldn’t say the same for us sorry lot. I felt pretty good but everybody else was dragging, Hannah especially. I wasn’t sure what to think about Emil. Johnny introduced him, we shook his hand and all, but he was sullen and silent. Shorter than Johnny, and stockier, he was dark of skin, dark of hair and clothes, dark of disposition. He was unpleasant. He wore mirrored sunglasses, so you couldn’t see his eyes, and sported an ungroomed beard and messy unwashed hair. He looked as if he’d just struggled out of bed. He wasn’t interested in the smallest niceties; he didn’t even ask how we were enjoying Warsaw. He didn’t give a shit, and acted it. His van looked like the shuttle buses we saw at Logan Airport, except the sign on the side said Warsaw Tours. A second dude jumped out of the van, this one a tiny, skinny guy named Chris, who gave Johnny a huge hug as if they’d been friends forever.
“Johnny! When did you get out?”
“A week ago,” I heard Johnny mutter. Then he added, “Joining the army next week. Then off to Afghanistan.”
“Duuude!” Chris mock-saluted him, giggling. I couldn’t tell how old he was, but he didn’t look as if he shaved yet. He was crazy skinny and white and skittish, like a live wire. “Afghanistan! No shit. How’d you manage that? Your dad? Hey, say hello to him for me, will you?”
“He’d disown me if he thought you and I were still tight, man.”
Chris laughed. “Word, man, word. Things’ve been good around here. We’re doing good. Emil too. Hey, you need to be hooked up?”
“Nah, I’m all set, thanks. You coming with us today?”
“Nah, I’m just here to say hello to my man Johnny. When Emil told me he took you to Lublin yesterday, I damn near shit my pants. I didn’t believe him, I said I had to come see for myself. I actually gotta run, man, an hour late for a day gig, but you take care, Johnny-boy. How long you in town? Maybe I see you tonight?”
They hugged, they fist bumped. “Well, if you want to hang tonight or something, you let me know, I’m still at the same place on Vosznecenka.”
“Word, dude.”
Chris tipped his cap to us and gunned it down the cobblestones.
“How’s he been?” Johnny asked Emil.
Emil’s accent surprised me. He looked so foreign, and yet he didn’t speak like a Pole. He looked dark as if he could be from the South Pacific, but he spoke in the most elegant Queen’s English; not that I would know, I’m just saying he sounded more like Henry Higgins than Eliza Doolittle.
“He’s been all right, my man, hanging in there, like the rest of us, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to make a living. We still hang sometimes. Speaking of making a living,” Emil continued to Johnny, in a tone that was too loud to be truly private, “we’re going to need our money.”
“I know. I told you, I’ll pay you tonight.”
“But I’m not driving down to Krakow with you unless I get my money now. So what are you going to do about that?”
“I’ll ask them for partial payment. Don’t worry.”
“What about them?” Emil nodded in our direction. I pretended I was studying the Baroque architecture of the building we were standing next to.
“They’re friends. They don’t pay.”
“I’m not taking them if they don’t pay.”
“Dude, I’m the one paying for your wheels. What difference does it make how many seats are occupied?”
“There’s three hundred extra kilo on my suspension,” Emil said. “You don’t think that makes a difference?”
Johnny shook his head.
“I just want my money,” Emil said flatly.
“You’ll get it. I promise.”
“I don’t know. Last time you promised me my money, you disappeared for a year.”
“You know that couldn’t be helped,” Johnny said. “But you did hear from me, right? I didn’t blow you off. Came all the way to fucking Warsaw, found you. So what are you worried about?”
“You put me in a bad spot, John-boy,” Emil said. “I caught a lot of shit because of you. Had to shell out my own dough to cover your little messes.”
“I understand. I’ll take care of it. Will you relax? We have one more day with them. Now be a proper driver. Smile, tip your cap.”
“Fuck that.”
While Emil and Johnny were having that conversation, Hannah and Chloe on my left were having a different one.
“How much is this luxury hotel you’ve booked us into, Chloe?”
“I’m not sure if the dig is on the word luxury or …”
“No dig. I just didn’t realize we were so flush with cash that you could double book us.”
“Hannah, you’ve seen the other place, right? We couldn’t leave our bags there. We couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t.”
“I’m not sure a few fleas warrant bandying about our precious dollars.”
“I’m not bandying.”
“Leave her alone, Hannah,” said Blake, who overheard. “We couldn’t stay in that room, and you know it.”
“I’m just saying,” Hannah said. “We should try to be a little more economic
al, that’s all.”
Perhaps the two conversations weren’t so different after all.
Meanwhile five feet away on my right, Johnny and Emil’s financial meeting was coming to a close.
Emil: “It doesn’t sound to me as if your new friends are loaded up with cash.”
Johnny: “I told you, they don’t pay. I pay you. That’s all you need to concern yourself with. Chill, for fuck’s sake.”
Emil stalked off to have a smoke. Johnny got out his guitar. He started strumming, then singing, then singing a little louder, strumming a little louder, as he was walking, along the desert, the mountain highways, the dry death valleys …
Ten seconds into the chorus, an older dude in a smart suit rushing by took out a bill that had a 100 printed on it and casually threw it on the ground by Johnny’s feet.
“Dziękuję,” Johnny called after him, still strumming, still singing. “Dziękuję very much …”
I wanted to talk to Johnny about yesterday and his trip to Majdanek. But he was singing, and I was listening. I wanted to talk to Blake about why he didn’t wake me to go stay with Chloe, but Johnny was singing and I was listening, and the day was so happy and sunny, and the plaza had six cafés on it, and churches, and little shops and people strolling by, and it smelled good, of flowers and bread, but also of horse manure, which wasn’t as good, and then Chloe said, “I almost forgot, I have to buy flowers, I promised Moody I’d buy some flowers for Treblinka.”
Johnny stopped singing, although he continued to strum. I didn’t know “This Land Is Your Land” had so many verses. He’d been singing it for ten minutes. I think he was just making up the lyrics as he went along. There was some shit in there I’d never heard.
“You’re going to bring flowers to Treblinka?”
“I promised her.”
“My group is going to be here any minute. And then we have to go—they’re running late.” We had been waiting for them for a long while. “Come with me,” he said to Chloe, slinging the guitar onto his back. “There’s a stand in the Palace Square that sells cheap roses. We’ll be right back,” he said to the rest of us, motioning Chloe to come along.
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