The Girl from Krakow

by Alex Rosenberg

  She took a seat and looked around again. Here on display was the life she was now being relentlessly sucked into. Correct and censorious, these women were dressed in so many layers that motion was almost impossible. They were squinting at menus through lorgnettes and looking down on almost everything. If she were lucky and her husband took her to Lvov often enough, surely she would become accustomed to this room.

  It took the better part of an hour to do justice to a pot of tea and a few buttered brioche. By then the thick damask of the tablecloths, the uncreasable starch of the napkins, the overbearing gleam of the silver metal tea service had begun to oppress her. She could not make herself remain at the George Hotel another minute, no matter how early she would be at the specialist’s clinic.

  It was a ten-minute walk to the Central Hospital through what still seemed to Rita like a teeming metropolis. When she arrived without a wrong turn, there was still a half hour to spare. She found the main entrance and searched the directory for the obstetrics and gynecology department. Finding it on the first floor, she advanced to the sweeping double stairs. They were in the same proportion as those at the law faculty in Krakow. As she glided up them, she tried to recall the feeling of being a student again, instead of a matron.

  Presenting herself at the reception desk, Rita began to address herself to a nurse obviously too preoccupied to look up at her. But when she explained that an appointment had been made for her that morning by Dr. Pankow, the nurse looked up with a start. “I have instructions to show you into the doctor’s cabinet immediately.” She rose and led the way down a wide hall. Its marble floor was flanked on one side by doors and on the other by tall windows, through which much of Lvov seemed slightly to shimmer in the aberrations of the wide panes of glass. The nurse stopped at a door, knocked, and without waiting entered, announcing as she did, “Pani Doctor Guildenstern.”

  A youngish man with a still slightly sunburned complexion, in a dark, well-cut suit with a velvet waistcoat, black mustache, and dark hair, stood to receive her. Rita could only gasp, but the nurse did not notice as she formally introduced him, “Dr. Romero. Dr. Guillermo Romero.”

  Rising, the doctor said rather too quickly, “Thank you, nurse; that will be all for the moment,” and taking her by the elbow, hurried her out of the room. Then he turned and smiled.

  “Guillermo Romero?” Before Rita could say another word, he put his forefinger to his closed lips and took her hand, leading her to a door that opened up to an examination room. Gil turned on the light, closed the door, and threw the bolt on the lock. He took both of her hands and looked intently in her eyes. She was reading the same look in his eyes, now gleaming as a tear welled up at each corner. Suddenly they were both weeping with delight. Gil leaned forward to kiss her, and Rita’s mouth opened at the same time. It lasted fully a minute, after which Rita began to move Gil’s fingers over the buttons and hooks that held her oppressive clothing to her body.

  Skirt dropped, blouse opened. It was too much for both of them to wait till he had removed slip, camisole top, stockings, garter, underpants . . . She brought her hands to his fly and deftly undid every button as he loosened his belt. Leaning back on the examining table, Rita pulled down her underpants and drew up the slip for him. He took her—or more aptly, she thought later, she took him. Their mutual passion welled up too quickly to be paced or channeled. Almost before he had much penetration, climax overcame him, leaving her moist and unsatisfied.

  “I’m sorry. It will be better the next time.” Gil stepped back and began adjusting his clothes, while handing her a starched linen hospital towel.

  She was still in a fever of excitement when the questions began intruding on the sensations. As she dressed, she could not decide which to ask first. How had this happened? What was Tadeusz doing here? How had he managed to get back to Poland? Why had he come back at all? Why was he masquerading as a Spaniard? Who was Guillermo Romero? Even before she could fully formulate the questions, the broad outline of some of the answers began to suggest themselves. But she wanted details.

  “I really am Guillermo Romero now, Rita. That’s what I am called; that’s what my documents call me. That’s how I think of myself.” As he said it, he felt its truth. “In Spain I had to change everything. By the time I left, I was Guillermo Romero.”

  “But I still go to your mother’s bookshop every week, and she tells me about Tadeusz in Spain. When the International Brigades were withdrawn, I hoped you’d come back . . . When I saw that picture in the magazine of the French gendarme leading those men across the sand in greatcoats carrying nothing but bedrolls, I looked in every face for you. Then your mother told me you were going to Mexico.”

  “I wrote to her, so she wouldn’t worry. In Barcelona the return address was always ‘poste restante.’ When the brigades were withdrawn, I had to think of something. I wrote her from Marseille that I was going to Mexico, where I’d be safe. Lots of Republicans went there. Now I’m well settled here, but I haven’t figured out what to tell her. Is she worried?”

  “Not yet.”

  But Gil was already distracted from the problem his mother’s anxiety might pose. “How long can you stay?”

  “The last train back is at nine o’clock.

  Gil looked at his watch and smiled. “Let’s get some supper.”

  “Where?” Rita said with some anxiety.

  “Nowhere public. I have a flat nearby. Meet me at the hospital entrance in five minutes.”

  An hour later they were at last relaxed enough to begin really to exchange intimacies, recollections, and expectations. A few streets away from the hospital, Gil had taken Rita’s arm, and she had willingly given it. There was no concierge to concern them as they passed through an arch into the courtyard of a large building. Within, patches of grass were still littered with the drying leaves of a large oak that dominated the courtyard. Gil pulled a latchkey from what looked like a military officer’s belted trench coat and opened the door.

  Inside, he reinserted the key and double locked it in a way that said, “We are now really alone.” Rita was ready to fall into his arms again, but Gil was already moving to a small kitchen off the entry. She followed him to its open door.

  “First, we eat, just a little.” He reached into a small icebox, and she noticed that there was almost no water melted into the drip pan visible below it. It was almost as cold inside as out.

  Still wearing his coat, Gil reached in, pulled out some eggs and butter and a bottle of white wine. He saw her shiver, so he put the food down. A fire will be even more important, he thought. Moving back through the hall into a sitting room, he bent at the small fireplace and lit a match.

  She could hear the hiss of gas escaping just before the warm yellow light skipped its way along the twin pipes of the grate. Before he could rise from the fire, Rita began to take charge in the kitchen. She could feed them more quickly. It would leave them more time. While she prepared the eggs, Gil laid out two plates, filled two wineglasses, sliced two slabs from the loaf on top of the icebox, and put the butter dish between the plates that faced each other.

  By the time they had finished their meal, the rooms had warmed. With some wine still in their glasses, Gil fished a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and offered Rita one. She thought for a moment and said, “Afterward.” They both rose and went to the now warm sitting room, illuminated only by the fire in the grate.

  They undressed themselves slowly, watching each other. Gil threw a goose-down quilt from the chesterfield to the rug, and they lay down on it before the grate. This time Gil was as patient as he had been the first time he made love to her the year before. How many women had he slept with? Rita wondered. The question was flooded away by the urgency he was able to call forth and then let diminish as he stroked her thighs. His mouth was at her nipples, just barely hurting them, but very surely readying her for him. Another random thought occurred to Rita: is this a doctor’s clinical knowledge of a woman’s body?

  Meanwhile Gi
l was alternatively entering her, releasing himself ever so slightly, and then holding himself back, withdrawing to bring his mouth to the velvet tissue between her legs, and then moving up to kiss her mouth as he entered her again. When he finally began to thrust, Gil grabbed her right hand and moved it to her mons. She was well beyond any inhibition and did as he suggested, moving her fingers rapidly.

  Afterward, as she recovered, she asked herself, now that it was over, whether she was ashamed, embarrassed, somehow repelled by the sheer carnality, the animality, and the dimensions of the pleasure attained. The answer was no, no, never. “I’ll take that cigarette now.”

  They lay together, facing each other, heads supported by elbows, enjoying the aroma of Virginia tobacco for a long while. Each looked at the other, unaccountably and at the same time understandably, comfortable in their nudity. Then, stubbing out the cigarettes, they began to make love again.

  It was dark when Rita noticed the large clock now audibly ticking on the mantelpiece. The light was too poor to see its hands. “What’s the time?”

  Gil looked to his wrist. He had left his watch on. “Eight fifteen.”

  “How far to the station?”

  “It will be close.” He rose.

  They dressed quickly, walked out of the courtyard under the arch, and began looking and listening for a cab in the darkness. Silence. “Let’s walk. We can just make it. We need to talk anyway.” Gil led her at a rapid pace in the direction from which they had come. “Speaking as your gynecologist, I shall require weekly visits for treatment of your infertility problem.”

  Rita was not following. “What infertility problem?”

  “You have none. And seeing you once a week is not enough. But I can’t think of how I can get to see you here more often.”

  The train was pulling away. Rita leaned out of the compartment window.

  Gil shouted, “I’ll meet your train next Thursday morning.”

  Afterward, they would both be able to remember that date. It was March 16, 1939.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Two weeks later Urs began to wonder why he had received no bill from his Lvov colleague Dr. Pankow. He could well imagine Pankow forgoing a fee for the first visit. That was a common enough professional courtesy. But if Pankow thought he was expected to treat without charge a fellow physician’s wife over the course of several appointments, he was very much mistaken. He decided to wait another week, and if no bill came, he would write to the good doctor, thanking him for his kindness, but gently chiding him for his misplaced generosity.

  Certainly the treatments seemed to be doing Rita good. She would come back from Lvov with a good color. The first time she returned with stories overheard at the tearoom of the George Hotel. The second time she talked about the films that never made it to Karpatyn. She’d managed to bring back pastries. Even better were the back numbers of the medical journals she found for him at the hospital.

  Only he would have to remember to write Dr. Pankow . . .

  Late in the afternoon of the last Thursday in March, Gil broke out of a postcoital haze to ask, “Rita, what is going to become of us?”

  “It’s probably not up to us,” she replied in an offhand way.

  Gil lifted his head from her bare midriff and looked at her. “Who is it up to if not us?”

  “Herr Hitler, I suspect.” She frowned. “We’ll be at war with him very soon.”

  “Poland at war with Germany?”

  “Of course. We’re his next target. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No, no. You don’t understand the international situation.” Rita could tell a lecture was coming on. She sighed. Not noticing, Gil took a breath and began. “The Brits and the French have given the Polish government ironclad guarantees.” He reached for her cigarette, drew on it, and handed it back. “We’ve got more important things to think about . . . us.”

  Rita was willing to argue. “I wish you were right. I wish we had the luxury to think about us. But I don’t think we do. I think Stalin will give Hitler free rein in Europe. Then if Hitler loses his war against the Brits and French, Stalin fills the vacuum in Germany. If Hitler wins, then Stalin was not strong enough to beat him, anyway.”

  “Hitler and Stalin in bed together? That’s the Trotskyite line, Rita? Where are you getting this from?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough if I am right. But just suppose I am, what will you do?”

  “Fight for my country, I suppose.”

  “Your country, Guillermo Romero? Spain? It’s already lost its war.”

  “Well, I’ll fight for what’s right.”

  “But what if right doesn’t line up neatly with any of the sides you’ll have to choose between? Fight for British plutocrats or the French bourgeoisie, or Stalin, who destroyed his own allies in Spain? Besides, for weeks now you’ve been telling me morality is just an imposition of forces of production, haven’t you? How can you start talking about defending what’s right?” By now she was slightly angry.

  “Let me rephrase that . . . What I meant by right is nothing more than minimizing human suffering. If the Nazis win, the suffering will be immense. Look what is happening to the Jews in Germany. Surely we’ve got to resist adding so much human misery?”

  Rita nodded. “Yes, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking there’s some objective moral rightness that’s making us act. We’ll struggle against the forces—Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Franco’s—that make millions of lives unbearable. We’ll do it because our humanity, our emotions compel us to. Not out of some abstract notion of what’s morally right.” She looked at him without smiling.

  Gil needed to break the spell. The day couldn’t end like this. He rose from the bed and came back a few moments later with a box in the shape of a large cosmetic compact. “You asked what will become of us. Well, one thing I think we don’t want to become, at least together, is parents. So, I got this for you.” He handed her a diaphragm in its case.

  Without opening the case, she knew what it was immediately. “I can’t take this. If Urs found it at home, that would be the end.”

  “Would that be a catastrophe?” Before she could answer, Gil went on, “Don’t worry. I will keep it here for you.”

  The letter came with the first delivery on a Thursday morning at the end of April, an hour after Rita had left for her treatment in Lvov.

  April 28, 1939

  Dr. Urs Guildenstern

  14 Ulm Street

  Karpatyn

  Stanislava

  Dear Colleague:

  Thank you for your kind communication of 23 March. I have the honor to confirm that I did indeed decline to make any charge on account of an initial consultation with Pani Doctor Rita Guildenstern.

  Had I entered into a course of treatment, I would have presented such a statement of account. However, after the initial consultation, I sent her on to my colleague, Dr. Guillermo Romero, a gynecological specialist at the women’s lying-in section of the General Hospital.

  I understand that Pani Doctor Guildenstern is now under his care. I trust he has been in contact regarding his statements for services.

  I remain your obedient servant.

  Dr. Stanislaw Pankow

  Urs read the letter once, twice, a third time. What could it mean? He had certainly had no bill from this Dr. Romero. And Rita hadn’t asked for money to pay for her appointments, at least three of them by now. She hadn’t said a word about this new doctor, Romero. She had not even mentioned his name, leaving the distinct impression it was still Pankow treating her. Suddenly Urs felt himself becoming warm. He felt the perspiration beneath his shirt. Drops of sweat trickled down his arms toward the starched French cuffs. He removed his coat, unbuttoned the waistcoat, sat down behind his desk. Now he was perspiring uncontrollably. He loosened his tie, opened the collar. Then he detached it altogether from the shirt. Still the heat was rising everywhere in his body. It had happened once before, he recalled: that morning a year earlier he’d come home from an all-night call
, early the morning after Sommermann’s visit, when he found the apartment door unlocked and Rita nude beneath the eiderdown.

  The only way to get control of his body now was to go outside into the cold April air. He picked up his collar and tie and pulled his overcoat, hat, and scarf from the rack. Passing the mother and child in the waiting room, he said aloud, “Sorry. I have an emergency. Please come back tomorrow.” Out the door, he was already a little cooler, dressing himself as he strode to the railway station.

  The midday to Lvov was an especially slow one, stopping at every crossroad town to load the day’s milk. There was only one passenger car, with open seating. Sitting there in full view of the other passengers, Dr. Guildenstern had to get control of himself. As he thought about matters, his suspicion about Rita did not recede. His rage alternated with despondency until both were displaced by shame.

  At 3:00 p.m. he was standing before the reception at the women’s clinic of the Central Hospital, presenting his card and asking for Dr. Romero.

  “Sorry, sir. Thursdays he is not here. It’s his day off. Doesn’t see patients today. Would the doctor care to come back tomorrow?”

  Suspicion strengthened, Urs replied, “No. It’s a matter of professional urgency.” The lie came easily. “Can you give me his home address?”