“Did you lose your job?”
“I guess. I’ve lost jobs before, Poppa.”
“But you won’t be going back to Finland....”
“I guess not. It’s beginning to look that way.”
Poppa closes his eyes. Closes in on what has really been troubling him. “Then how will we get Jaja’s memoirs?”
He can’t possibly know about Leningrad! He just wonders where they are.
“I’m sorry, Poppa. I just forgot. I had so much on my mind today.”
“You didn’t forget, Felix. You don’t have them, do you?”
“Of course I have them”
“I went through your luggage, son.”
“They’re in the trunk then.”
“Are they?” His eyes light up, apologizing and embracing me at the same time. I cannot do this to him.
“No. They aren’t there.”
Poppa’s face collapses. “But why, son? What did you do with them?”
“I lost them, okay? In Russia. They took them from me. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Who took them away?”
“The police. The KGB. I don’t know. They took them from me at the airport. I didn’t even know I had them. And even if I had I still wouldn’t have thought about it. But they took them.”
“Why?”
“The Polish stuff. And all those clippings you kept sending me. They read it all and then they wouldn’t let me have them back.”
Poppa’s eyes are glistening in the bad light.
“Poppa, please! It was an accident. Just like this was. Don’t you see?”
But Poppa just shakes his head. The tears are dropping now. “This was no accident, son.”
I do not follow. “What do you mean?”
“Batcha set the fire on purpose. I was upstairs sleeping.”
“But you said —”
“I said so she could be buried from the church. She deserved that, at least. I couldn’t save her, Felix, because she and every goddarned piece of paper out there was drenched in coal oil. She did it deliberately. She even managed to drag those boxes out from under her bed.”
“But why?”
“She’d hardly spoken to me all winter. Once Marie and I set to work on Jaja’s memoirs she wouldn’t have anything to do with us. I put it down to her sickness — but why she did it is beyond me.”
“She wanted to destroy his history?’
“What else? She was going to die anyway. She was hardly in any pain.”
“But you didn’t tell anybody?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t. I knew nothing I did would ever bring them back. That’s why I was counting on you, but even that —”
Poppa wipes his one good hand over his eyes. He is blaming me. Even Poppa is blaming me. It is all my fault, everything. Right from Day One.
Marie Jazda is shaking as she reaches for the sugar dispenser. She has tried every excuse to get out of this meeting. Too much work. Dentist. A meeting with the Manpower higher-up. But I have driven all the way from Renfrew to find out something far more important than anything she could possibly be doing. And I have told her that. And in the end she agreed to join me at Prince’s for lunch. Chips and gravy, Coke, Boston cream pie with coffee. No wonder Marie remains unmarried: her fingers look more suited to canthooks than rings.
But I know her heart is also large. Marie is my cousin, but I lost track of her somehow between childhood and Poppa’s letters. We have kissed as cousins, wrestled, run away from home, spied on animals doing it, beaten up her brothers, lied to our parents together. But now we are strangers, forced into the same red-freckled Formica booth by ill luck, her hurrying to eat and get out before the dark stranger opposite dares try and make conversation.
But I want to know why she was not at Batcha’s funeral.
“I had to work, Felix.”
She didn’t sign the guest book at the funeral home, and that was right here in Renfrew.
“I had the flu that week, sick as a dog.”
She didn’t call.
“Still haven’t got my phone in.”
Poppa hasn’t mentioned her.
“Yes, I suppose he hasn’t.”
There is something in the way that she looks up from her coffee, small brown eyes opening wide, then ducking, that tells me there is more here than I am catching.
“Did something go wrong between you two?” I ask.
“He didn’t think much of me getting a job,” she says, Tink, after all that schooling.
“He told me you were finished.”
She grasps, pouring more sugar. “Well, the things he’d marked off, yes. You should know. You got them.”
Tings.
“I lost them.”
The eyes widen over the coffee. It is a stare I have seen in a hundred arenas. Only the cup is different here. “For good?”
“Forever.”
The eyes close. She probably knows even better than I what they meant to poor Poppa.
“Did you know Batcha set the fire on purpose?” I ask.
Marie glances suspiciously around as if we might be taped. “Yes.”
“How?”
“I knew the second I heard. The boxes weren’t even kept in the shed. We piled what we finished in the kitchen corner.”
“Then she had to haul them out?”
“I imagine.”
“Were they heavy?”
“Were they heavy? Are you kidding?”
“Then how did she manage?”
For the first time Marie smiles. “With your Batcha you don’t ask questions.”
“Does anyone else know what you know?”
“I don’t know. There was some talk. It certainly seemed strange to everyone. A bed-ridden old lady. And I heard some say there was coal oil all over her and the shed.”
“But no one said anything to the police?”
“Why would they? What good would it do?”
“I suppose.”
“Father Schula would throw a fit, you know him. Them that say she killed herself say they’d have done the same if they was dying from the cancer.”
She takes a long sip of coffee, relaxing for the first time. Perhaps she thinks this is all I came to hear.
“But you know it wasn’t because of that.”
Marie keeps the cup high to her mouth, muzzling herself. She waits, then puts it down. “Yes, I know.”
“Do you know why she did it?”
“I don’t know that, no.”
But I am not convinced. “You must know, Marie. For Christ’s sake! I’m your own cousin.”
“Can I get another coffee?”
I wave over the waitress. “Tell me what you know.”
She waits for the coffee and the waitress to move off, then checks around for further surveillance and leans forward to whisper. Anyone watching would assume we were plotting an affair, and they would have to wonder what it is she has, or I lack.
“Your father and I had quite a falling out, you know.”
“I was beginning to suspect.”
“I doubt he’ll ever speak to me again.”
“What happened?”
“You remember that sealed package? The stuff your grandfather set aside? Your Poppa told you about it in your last letter, I think.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well your father took that stuff pretty seriously, eh? No way he was even going to peek.”
I see now. “But you did, is that it?”
Marie blushes, the colour returning her to the eight-year old I remember playing with.
“He used to go out and do whatever the hell he felt like while I sat there and was expected to type all day. I didn’t mind at first, but it got to be a real bore after a while. All he had to do was read, eh? I had to translate it all and then type it up, and take care of her, too, for that matter.”
“Batcha?”
“She could be a real test when she was ill, Felix.”
“She was always a bitch. You don’t have to tell me.”
“He was out checking his damned rabbit snares and I figured he’d be gone at least until lunch. I got a bit ahead and then took a look at the package. I steamed it open. I didn’t mean no harm. I wouldn’t even tell anyone, but I figured it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than that boring Bismarck crap, eh?”
“I don’t blame you,” I say, encouraging.
“All I did was read it, some of it. And she caught me.”
“Batcha?”
“I didn’t even hear her. She came in from her bedroom, from my back. And she must have been standing there looking over my shoulder. I don’t know how I didn’t hear her. You know how she walked in those boots. And that floor! And no cane either. It was like she floated, eh? She half scared me to death. She reached over and grabbed them right out of my hands and started hitting me.”
“Batcha?”
“Can you believe it? She was yelling at me in her Polish, which I can barely understand. She called me mora. It means bloodsucker. She didn’t hurt me, but she scared me so bad I threw up before your Poppa got back.”
“What happened?”
“She had the stuff in her bedroom. She called him in. I was so sick, Felix, it was awful. Then he came out and told me to take my stuff out to the truck. He’d drive me home. He never spoke to me again.”
“But why? What was in the package?”
“I didn’t have a chance to read it, Felix.”
Why is she being evasive? “But you read some of it.”
“It didn’t make much sense. It was in strange Polish. Your father was much better with the old Cassubian than I was. But even he might not have known some of these words. It was really strange.”
“But you must know what it was about, Marie. Surely.”
She can only shake her head.
“Does that mean no, or you won’t tell me?”
She swallows. “You don’t want to know. I shouldn’t have been into it. Your father was right.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Marie! I have a right to know.” I realize I am almost shouting. The waitress is looking at us, and other diners. But Marie also notices and perhaps this is good luck, she cringes, would like to be elsewhere. I know instantly I can use this to my advantage.
I maintain a loud voice. “You’ll have to tell me, Marie! and now!”
She is the colour of the Formica now. Marie shrinks into her seat and stares at me with a fear that suggests I am Batcha returned from the dead, about to flail at her yet again for her ignorance.
“It was mostly about you, Felix.”
Me? Why would Jaja seal what he wrote about me? Why would he write anything down? And why those words? All Marie could recall were words, certain words ... mucka, something on the head of the baby. On my head! And vjeszczi ... vjeszczi ... vjeszczi ... Of course — the word the bitch used when she ripped my neck. Monster. Me?
Not just about me but, but about her too. And maybe he kept it quiet — kept what quiet? — only so long as the bitch was still around. Maybe he thought whatever it was would go with her. But she hadn’t gone. He had. And that’s right — it was only after he was gone that she dared set herself up as a càrovnica. But she must have always been a witch. And somehow he wouldn’t let her.
But he had to have been worried about her. Otherwise why write it down?
Of course, of course. He didn’t write it down to keep it from me. He wrote it down for me. So I would have it in case I needed it. Good old Jaja. That was why I saw him in the painting. He was calling me home to get it. But why would I need it?
And what is it?
Who can tell me?
Not Marie. Not Poppa. Not Batcha. Maybe that’s why she killed herself. So I’d never know. So she’d win either way, dead or alive.
Someone has got to know!
Old Frank, the Black Donald Lake jiza, is still alive but drunk, probably drunk for years for all I know. The garbage he has just slopped straight out the door, twin grey breasts of ashes and eggshells and tin cans and tea bags and busted bottles on both sides of the landing, most of the boards broken or rotted through and the door window broken and replaced by an old torn camp blanket. I knocked, but no answer. I knocked again, rousing him barely.
“Uhhhnnn?” he grunts from inside.
“Is Frank home?” I call. I don’t know what else to say.
I hear bottles falling and spinning across the floor from his footsteps. He peers out through the blanket, red, rheumy eyes blinking with light and the white paste that has formed around their seams. When he winces his upper lip rises and his beard drops, opening a brilliantly red, empty hole in his face. The sunlight makes him sneeze, and he turns and explodes five straight times onto the floor.
“Are you Frank?”
He blows his nose and pulls the door. “Who’re you?”
“Felix Batterinski.”
He blinks and wipes away some of the paste, but it makes his vision blur. He turns and works on his eyes with his shirt, blinking several times until I come back into focus.
“Karol’s boy?” he sniffs, thinking not of Jaja but of Batcha, his competition.
“Walter’s. Karol was my grandfather.”
He nods. “I was sorry to hear about the old lady,” he says, sincerity lacking. The door opens and the stench pours out. A sewer, small, rotten, festering. I feel like throwing up. In the corner closet to the door there is an overturned white enamel pail with newspapers piled on it and axe blows through the floorboards for a rough hole. His toilet. The sewer smell. There is a bed, sagging with a yellow water-stained mattress and several more old grey camp blankets on it. A broken wooden ice box for a table. Some police magazines, some cups, spoons, tobacco tins, papers, candles, cans, papers, garbage, garbage, garbage.
But in the far corner, cleaned and exact, a small crucifix hanging from the wall, a prayer bench and a bewilderingly clean white napkin under an expensive candle holder. The candle is out, but burned halfway. The holder and napkin hold no sign whatsoever of the tallow droppings.
“Come.”
I go all the way in, swallowing heavily, trying to minimize my breath. Old Frank goes to what must have once been a kitchen — a broken green Coleman camp stove piled high with filthy pots and pans — and pulls two chairs, one with a broken back, one with no back, out from the newspapers. He brushes them off and sets them out by the chapel.
“Sit.”
I sit, glad the air is more bearable away from the hole. He sits and stares again at me, then smiles.
“A Batterinski has need of old Frank, eh?”
“I want to ask some questions,” I say, not at all sure how to talk to this hermit.
Again the smile; his swollen gums glisten, the red within like scarlet lipstick.
“You would ask for free at home.”
For a moment I do not understand. I look up into the glistening grin and see the red eyes dance with small jokes. Slowly, I rework the phrase and understand perfectly. I pull out two ten-dollar bills, thinking to give him one now and the other if he earns it, but he snatches both from my hands instantly. He shoves them inside his shirt, then the mouth reopens.
“Chłopa pjisca mjerza.”
“I’m sorry. My Polish is really pretty weak, I’m afraid.”
The lips have sounds; they scrape out and wheeze into what, in fading, I realize is a laugh. He reaches over and touches my hands. I recoil but hold them still, the sensation not unlike when Danny once blindfolded me and placed my hands in peeled grapes, telling me they were children’s eyes. Old Frank’s temperature does not seem human: the hands are like ice, long knobby fingers with mats of black hair over the joints.
“‘A man is measured with the fists’ — that’s what it means. It is an old saying, very old.”
I look at my hands. What has he seen there? He knows who I am, a Batterinski, but can he possibly know what I also am, as well? Is it
written there for him to see?
“I play hockey,” I say.
He nods enthusiastically.
“The word vjeszczi — what does that mean to you?”
His hands instantly leave mine, the left going to his waist where he tucks the thumb behind the band, sign against wurok, evil eye. Can the word be that powerful?
He licks at his lips. “The work of smantek,” he says.
That word I know well enough. Devil.
“Why?” I ask.
Old Frank spits out green slime and admires it for a moment before running a boot over it to smooth it into the rest of the grime on the floor.
“A true vjeszczi is a vampire. So is wupji.”
“They mean the same?” I ask.
He shook his head. “Both monsters, but they are not the same at all! A wupji is far more dangerous. You can do nothing until a wupji is dead to make sure.” He shrugged. “If a wupji does not lose its colour, you can always fix him in the box.” He chuckles at the thought.
“I don’t understand.”
“Many ways. Put a half nickel in his mouth. Put a brick under the chin. Turn him upside down so he claws out the wrong direction. Throw a net over him so he has to unite all the knots. There are many things you can do if you’re sure it is a wupji.”
“Do? But why?”
He looks at me as if I am crazy. “Why? So he won’t come back for you, that’s why.”
“But there’s no such thing,” I say.
Frank shrugs. “Suit yourself. I have known them. I have seen them. I have dealt with them many times. Just as I know your grandmother would have. Is that why you have come to me, to tell me there is no reason for any of this?”
“I want to know about vjeszczi.”
The smile, glistening.
“Much easier. The wupji is born with two teeth. You must immediately check the baby’s mouth. A wupji you can do nothing about until he is dead, and by then there may not be anyone around who remembers how he was born. A vjeszczi is a much simpler matter. The baby is born with a caul. Mucka.” — Yes, another of Marie’s words — “You simply scrape the little cap off the head and save it. When the child is seven years old the caul is ground up and fed to the child in his food. He never even needs to know. Once he eats it he is no longer vjeszczi, see?” The smile.
The Last Season Page 41