I packed away the groceries and then sat down at the kitchen table with the latest copy of Bialy i Czerwony, which one of the shop clerks was selling on the sly. As Father snored, I ran my fingers over the headline on the front page; “Economic Crisis Worsens”. The pads of my fingers came away black. I lifted them to my nose and inhaled their inky scent.
Inside was an article about protests in Warsaw in which students had been beaten up by the Zomo riot police. I couldn’t read it – it was too distressing. I quickly turned the page, where a headline caught my eye: “Notes from Prison”. My heart quickened as I read the by-line: “Written by Dominik Duwak”. Not only had he smuggled his article out of prison but he had, once again, published under his real name. His boldness shocked me. But maybe this was the very thing that would protect him. I had heard that foreigners kept an eye on people like Dominik. Political prisoners, they called them. Perhaps the safest place for Dominik was the spotlight.
Dominik’s article was two pages long; he would have been pleased with the space dedicated to it. He wrote about the dismal conditions in prison, “Our two meals a day, of thin soup and hard bread, are supplemented by the black-market trade in cigarettes and homemade vodka.” He went on to write about the people who were in prison with him:
Among these ‘criminals’, you will find honest working men who have been betrayed by the very system that is supposed to support them, together with some of the brightest minds in the country. For each of us here, it is an honour to be interned, for our condition signals to the world that we stand on the side of truth. We refuse to compromise our values, just as we refuse to be silenced. With the whole world watching us, with justice on our side, the spring will be ours.
Reading the article was like hearing Dominik’s voice again. Not the private voice he used with me, but the one he shared with other people. Going slowly, so that the pleasure would last, I finished the page and then turned to the next:
Some people are easily broken. I have seen men inside – good men – betray their fellow Poles by signing a dirty piece of paper to get out. What does this paper demand? It demands that they swear total allegiance to the State and renounce everything they stand for, everything that gives them dignity. I have seen this weakness surface in men I considered my friends. I have, tragically, seen this weakness surface in a woman I considered my wife.
The inside of my body went still. It was as though all my organs and muscles stopped working. When they started again, it was at twice the pace.
They think they are gaining freedom but the prison that encloses them in the outside world is far more insidious than the one in here. Give me steel bars over invisible ones any day.
Blood rushed through me. The back of my eyes pulsed. How could he? How could Dominik write such a thing? Especially when he knew nothing about it. There were ways to get messages out of prison and if he’d bothered to contact me, I could have told him about Father’s illness. I had to be here. The pounding in my head escalated as I snatched the newspaper and stuffed it into the gut of the stove. With the stroke of a match, I set it alight. The fire ate Dominik’s words. The edges of the paper blackened and turn to soot.
I concentrated on making Father better. Trying to tempt him with chicken soup and his favourite cake, sernik. He barely ate a thing. I couldn’t eat either. The shame of Dominik’s article sat heavy inside me. Who else had read it? There was no doubt Krzysio would have – he kept up with all the news in the underground press. After what happened to Dariusz, he would despise me. Had he told Małgorzata in Paris? What about everyone else at university, did they know? I was a leper now. No one would ever trust me again. And they were right not to. The only reason I’d been released from prison was because I had agreed, at least on paper, to cooperate with the State. Who knew when they would come to collect their dues.
The sight of Father shuffling out of his room returned me to the present. I had to be here. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘I want to show you something in the work shed.’
As we walked out, I steadied him by the crook of his arm. His breath was wheezy and light. I opened the door to the shed and gestured for him to go in. ‘After you,’ he insisted.
Inside, Father touched the faces of the headstones as if blessing them. ‘There’s four left,’ he said. ‘One for your old tatuś. The rest you can sell.’
‘Stop it. You’re being dramatic.’
I helped Father settle on a stool at the workbench. His limbs were insubstantial, as though they belonged to a doll. I bit my lips.
He prodded a chisel on the bench and then rolled it back and forth under his palm. He said, ‘Have you thought about going to Canada? Or what about America? That Reagan’s doing good things, I hear.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I snatched the chisel and wriggled it into place in a canvas pouch.
‘I won’t have you stuck in this village carving headstones,’ he said. ‘You have to go to a real country. A rich country where people will buy your art.’
‘Why don’t we go outside? Enjoy the sun.’ I couldn’t stand being in the work shed now that Father was too weak to carve.
We walked to the garden and sat down on a wooden bench. Next to us, a couple of pigeons scratched on the roof of the rabbit hutch. The afternoon was filled with the discord of their cooing and the sweet rot of their droppings.
Father raised his face to the afternoon light. ‘The rabbits should fetch a good price. For the meat and skin. And then there’s the chickens,’ he counted the items on his fingers, ‘and the jewellery. You should go somewhere warm. Write and tell me all about it.’
The smell of wet lindens hung in the air and the sky was alight with violet. ‘Look,’ I said, gesturing around us. ‘Isn’t it a nice evening?’ Father didn’t answer. Though I tried to find a light topic of conversation that would engage him, I couldn’t stop thinking about Dominik’s article. I didn’t want the article to ruin my time with Father. But if I couldn’t talk to Father, who could I talk to? Keeping my gaze on the rabbit hutch, I told him what Dominik had done.
He picked up a feather from the bench, scraped off the muck from its quill and then stroked its down. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘the day we brought you home from hospital you screamed until you turned purple, shaking your fists like an angry little elf, making us laugh. I didn’t want a child, that was your mother’s idea. But as soon as I saw you I knew the world had turned on its head because you were alive and for this shortest of time, you were mine. Your mother was always beautiful you know, so that made sense. But you came from me, too. Even though you came from an old fool like me, you were perfect. You still are, słoneczko. Nothing can change that.’
24
Father lay on his bed, his arms by his sides. I reached out and stroked his cheek. His skin was cool and soft and smelt of lavender and birch. A woman had come to clean him yesterday, after he died. She bathed his body in scented water and dressed him in his best church clothes, a stiff-collared shirt and black pants. He didn’t look right. After she left I changed his shirt for the old one he wore when carving. I tucked its loose folds into his belt, straightened the cuffs on his wrists. ‘There,’ I said, ‘you look nice.’ A light kiss on his brow. The black cloth, which I’d draped over the mirror in his room, had started to slip. I got up and rearranged it, taking care not to meet my reflection.
Pani Wedel was helping with what she called ‘the arrangements’. She was in the kitchen now, serving cake to the other ladies from the village. People I hadn’t spoken to in years suddenly appeared at the cottage. They knelt by Father’s bed and wailed.
I wanted us to be left alone, the way we always had been. I was tempted to tell them to leave. But his voice echoed in my head, Be kind, słoneczko. So I let them stay. The village women kept the candles lit day and night, and Father’s room smelt of melting wax, like a church. I picked up his hand and kissed his fingers before resting them once more on the bed. There was a presence in the room, as intangib
le and real as the crackling of electricity. It buzzed around my head and heart.
Yesterday, while the village women were genuflecting by Father’s side, I carved his name on a headstone. Following the inscription he’d left, I wrote, Here lies Henryk Skowroński, Husband, Father, Stonemason. It was a paltry way to sum up his life, so I added, He is loved and missed to this day.
Pani Wedel crept into the room, a plate and dishcloth in hand. ‘Why don’t you get some fresh air? I’ll keep watch,’ she said. I shook my head but she prodded me with a manicured hand. ‘It will do you good.’
The work shed was lonely without Father but at least it gave me a break from the mourners. I touched the headstones and then caught sight of something behind them. It was the triskele I had carved in the forest all that time ago, before I left for university. It was supposed to keep Father safe. The wood made a clunking sound as I threw it against the wall.
The funeral was ‘well attended’, Pani Wedel kept saying. Her hair was permed for the occasion. At the cemetery she gripped my elbow, accepting people’s condolences on my behalf. She kept whispering, ‘Look how much people cared about your father. He was a good man.’ If I’d been able to speak I would have said, ‘He was better than anyone else and the tragedy is that he never knew it.’
Even though the funeral had only been yesterday, I couldn’t fit it together in my mind. I remembered it in pieces that were as hard and sharp as a broken mirror. I remembered the mourners dabbing their eyes while I watched. I remembered how the post office clerk had removed his hat and then, noting he was the only one, slipped it back on. I remembered the way the priest kept tugging at his earlobe throughout the sermon.
Afterwards, people crammed into our cottage. They bustled about, singing mourning songs and drinking Father’s honey wine. I left them in the kitchen and went to Father’s room and sat on his bed. Come back, come back. But the electric charge in the room, or whatever it was that I’d felt, was gone.
25
For the first couple of weeks after the funeral, the village women came over to cook, bringing their husbands to take care of the outside jobs, the patching of the roof and the weeding of the garden. Then they stopped coming. Though this was the moment I’d been waiting for, being alone did me no good. Without other people I was as insubstantial as a leaf. My hands shook when I tried to perform the simplest task like making a cup of tea. I couldn’t sleep at night because my bones were too hot. There was something molten inside me.
When Pani Wedel came to visit, I was relieved. She made us obiad. ‘Do you want to change out of your nightgown before we eat?’ she asked.
I took a section of the cotton fabric between my fingers, unsure of how long I’d been wearing it. After dressing in day clothes, I joined Pani Wedel in the kitchen. I tried to swallow some rye bread as she talked about a couple of workers at the abattoir who she said were as lazy as cats. ‘All they want to do is gossip and take cigarette breaks,’ she said. ‘Well, I told them –’
I looked out the window. As soon as she left I would go to Father’s work shed and sit with all the things he’d loved and touched.
‘If you weren’t going away, I’d invite you to work for me,’ she said. ‘But as it is, you won’t be with us long.’
‘Away?’ I wasn’t going back to Wrocław. Everyone at university would have heard about Dominik’s article. They all knew what signing the loyalty papers meant: that I had crossed the line from us to them. That I had sided with the people who killed Dariusz. The bread stuck in my throat and I swallowed some water to wash it down. ‘I’m staying here,’ I said.
Pani Wedel finished her cake and then retrieved a handkerchief from her bag and patted her mouth. ‘Now, Ania. This is no life for a young girl, living among the dead. There’s nothing here for you. Don’t you want to go abroad?’
‘There’s Father’s business. I’ll keep it going.’
‘Your father made me promise that I’d help you get out. I know people. I can arrange the papers.’
The back garden, seen through the window, was eerily still. All the animals had been killed for the funeral meal. There was only one chicken left. It circled the garden, flapping its useless wings.
This had all happened so quickly. Perhaps things would have been different if I’d managed to come home sooner, if I’d convinced Father to go to another doctor or to a health resort. ‘When did you find out he was sick?’ I asked Pani Wedel.
She glanced at the crucifix on the kitchen wall and then said, ‘A little while ago.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know exactly … It was probably around the time of that show you put on in the woods. He made me promise not to tell you. He didn’t want you to worry.’
I shook my head. All this time? ‘I should have realised.’
Her fingers curled into the palm of her hand, then stretched out. ‘That’s how it is when we love a person. We don’t see them properly.’
Heaviness settled over me. I left her in the kitchen and went to my room, closed the door and leaned against it. Sobs pushed out of my stomach and chest. Shuddering and exhausted, I slid down to the floor.
I woke in bed. With no memory of how I’d got there, I pulled on a jumper, wandered out to the work shed and switched on the lamp. Father’s tools were in their pouch. I picked up the first chisel he’d ever bought me. For all these years, I’d kept its wooden handle polished and its blade free of rust.
Even after what Dominik had done, I wanted him here with me. I wanted him to comfort me.
No. I placed the chisel back on the bench.
Dominik could have got word to me from prison, but didn’t. Instead of finding out my side of the story he went to the paper and exposed my shame for all the world to see.
Pani Wedel was right. There was nothing left for me here.
26
I travelled by train from the village to Warsaw. It was the first time I’d been to the capital. I went for a walk, carting my luggage with me. This city had none of Wrocław’s elegance. Here, concrete buildings towered through smog, competing for space in the dirty sky. Stalin’s Finger, the ugliest of them all, dominated the horizon. I went back inside the station.
As I sat on a steel bench, waiting for the Chopin Express, my eyes watered. If only I could have gone back to Wrocław to see Krzysio one last time. I was too ashamed to face him and, even more than that, it wasn’t safe. Though I had no intention of spying on my friends, I was afraid of being tricked or coerced into doing so. As long as I remained in Poland, those papers would continue to have power over me.
This was the worst way to leave the country, with no one left to say goodbye to. No one except Pani Wedel, who had arranged matters for me in exchange for some furniture and other household items. The travel documents were tucked in my coat – forgeries, of course. An uneasy feeling came over me as I wondered how Pani Wedel had procured them. What if this was a trick? What if she had told the militiamen about my plans to escape and they were waiting for me?
Stop.
There was a copy of Trybuna Ludu on the bench, and I opened it. I was simply a girl going on a holiday to Austria. I would be away for one week and then I would return. That was the story.
The seat dug into my backside and I rearranged myself on it. Father’s jewellery hung from a long rope around my neck and whenever I moved, the velvet pouch knocked against my chest. I also had złoty in my shoes and one small suitcase packed with essentials. A few changes of clothes, the chisel Father had given me, photos and feathers and letters. A stone from the cemetery where Mother and Father now lay, side by side.
The Chopin Express pulled in with a great huff of steam. Its whistle blasted the ceiling. Around me, people stood with their suitcases, staring resolutely ahead. Militiamen patrolled the station.
A conductor stepped off the train and signalled that we could now board. Some people rushed on but I made myself wait. I refolded the newspaper and then picked up my bag and stepped onto the train, trembli
ng as I placed one foot in front of another. I looked for my seat and my heart ricocheted in my chest when I saw that someone was in it. An older man. Was he here for me?
‘Excuse me, Pana.’ I held out my ticket. ‘I think this is mine?’
He glanced at it and grunted. ‘Idiots. They’ve allocated the same seat twice.’ He checked his ticket and then got up and sat in the opposite seat, nodding to the one now empty. ‘It seems I was in the wrong one,’ he said, looking embarrassed.
I thanked him and swung into my seat, which was by the window. Pani Wedel had given me instructions for my journey: From Warsaw the Chopin Express will take you to Austria, where you need to get on a bus and go to the police station. Follow the other Poles, they’ll be going there too. You tell them at the station that you’re claiming political asylum. It’s very important that you use those exact words, ‘political asylum’. The police will take you to Traiskirchen. This is a camp for people who are refugees.
Five minutes until departure time. I tried not to think about that word, refugees. Two more people sat down in my compartment, nodding politely.
Outside on the platform, a militiaman was inspecting the passports of a young couple and their two children. He shook his head. The father pointed to the train and for a terrible moment I thought he was pointing at me. I moved my head back so I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. The mother put a hand over her mouth and pulled the children to her.
Movement. The train let out a fierce bleat and rattled to life. We pulled out of the station, away from the family on the platform, their bags piled around them.
A fist smashed through my dreams. ‘Passport control,’ someone yelled. Alert now, I sat straight as a militiaman charged out of my carriage and banged on the next one. ‘Get your papers ready for inspection!’
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