by Lily Brett
“Oy, cholera,” Edek said suddenly. He looked at his fork. “Another worm,” he said. Ruth took the prawn from his fork. “This small prawn couldn’t possibly hurt you,” she said. “I’ll eat it.” She put it into her mouth.
“See?” she said. “It’s delicious.”
“My daughter does like worms,” Edek said. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
Chapter Eleven
R uth was awakened by a phone call from Max. It was 6 A.M. Ruth was completely disoriented. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Was she in Poland? In New York? In Australia? It had been years since she had thought she was still living in Australia.
“Bern’s mother has turned out to be very good,” Max said.
“What time is it in New York?” Ruth said.
“It’s midnight,” said Max. “I’m at home.”
“I’ll call you back in five minutes,” Ruth said. She hung up.
She sat on the edge of the bed. She felt dislocated. Max’s call had rattled and flummoxed her. The call had felt like a communion from another time, another place. It was as though Max was calling from Mars. Ruth felt so removed from Rothwax Correspondence. She could hardly remember anything about what was going on in the office. She felt as if she had been away, under a spell. Or adrift at sea. She hoped that she still remembered the business phone number. She checked. She was relieved that she still did.
What was Max saying about Bern’s mother? Of course, Ruth remembered. Max was talking about the possibility of Bern’s mother writing letters by hand for them. Ruth picked up the phone. “I want to cancel the two wake-up calls I booked for 6:10 A.M. and 6:15 A.M.” she said to the hotel operator.
“Why is this?” the operator asked.
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“Because I am already awake,” Ruth said. She shook her head in bewilderment. What other reason could there possibly be for canceling a wake-up call? She would never understand Poles, she thought.
She got out of bed and switched off both of the alarm clocks she had set. She had bought an extra alarm clock in Lódz. She didn’t trust the anti-quated electric clock in the room. She brushed her teeth in the bottled water and swallowed her vitamins. She looked at the display of vitamins and minerals. She wasn’t sure what they were doing for her.
She rang Max.
“Let me call you back,” Max said. “It’s cheaper that way.”
“Okay,” Ruth said. She hung up again. Why was everything in life, including a simple phone call, so complicated? Max was right, though. It would cost far less for her to call Ruth. Max wouldn’t be paying the exorbitant price that was charged for international calls in Poland, or the hotel surcharge.
The phone rang.
“Bern’s mother is very good,” Max said. Max sounded excited. “Her handwriting is clear and not full of flourishes and swirls,” she said.
“It’s not pretentious?” Ruth asked.
“Not at all,” said Max. “It’s intelligent handwriting.”
“Intelligent handwriting. That sounds good,” Ruth said. She felt as though she could do with some intelligence herself. Her head felt thick and clogged.
“She can do three pages in an hour,” Max said. “She’ll soon, when she gets used to it, be able to do four pages an hour.”
“What is Bern’s mother’s name?” Ruth said.
“Alouette,” said Max.
“Alouette,” Ruth said. “That’s a great name.”
“I suggested to Alouette that we have a trial run with her,” Max said. “I told her not to leave her current job until she knows how she feels about us and how we feel about her.”
“Did you feel odd saying that to someone much older than you?” Ruth said.
“No,” said Max.
“Were you uncomfortable suggesting a trial period to someone of color?”
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“No,” Max said.
“That’s good,” said Ruth.
“Alouette is very comfortable to be with,” Max said. “I didn’t think about her age or her color. I just liked her. I suggested that she work for us for a few hours a couple of times a week. And then we’ll all decide how we all feel.”
“Perfect,” said Ruth.
“I said we’d pay her fifteen dollars an hour,” Max said.
“We charge twenty-five dollars a page,” Ruth said. “I think we can afford to pay her twenty dollars an hour.”
“Okay,” said Max.
“If we take her on permanently, we’ll negotiate a salary,” Ruth said.
“That’s what I told her,” said Max.
“Well, you sound like you’re handling everything pretty well,” Ruth said.
“How are you doing?” Max said. “I’ve been thinking about you all the time.”
“I’m fine,” Ruth said.
“Are you sure you’re fine?” Max said.
“That’s a very Jewish question, Max,” Ruth said. “I’m fine.”
Max laughed. “I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about you facing all that loss. And your father facing all that loss.
The two of you together lost in the loss. And then there’s the loss of all the other Jews.”
Ruth interrupted this messy monologue on loss. “Edit, Max,” she said,
“edit. I really appreciate your concern, but I’m very tired. So, let’s move on to the rest of the business.”
“Okay,” Max said. “Sorry if I was a bit long-winded.”
“That’s okay,” Ruth said. “You really could have tried an alternative to the excessive repetitions of the word ‘loss,’ though.”
Max laughed. “Now I know you’re fine,” she said.
“Bern loves having his mother at the office,” Max said. “He says hello to her each time he passes her. He buys cookies for her to have with her coffee. It’s great to see how close they are.”
“I’m not sure it’s all that common for men to be close to their mothers,”
Ruth said. “I’m impressed enough by women who are close to their moth-T O O M A N Y M E N
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ers. There seem to be few enough of them. Most people seem to do little more than complain about their parents.”
“You’re not going to go on to one of your ungrateful children dialogues are you?” Max said.
“It would be a monologue, not a dialogue,” said Ruth. “You never join in.”
“That’s because I want children one day,” Max said. “Poland hasn’t stopped you being so acerbic. It hasn’t mellowed you.”
“Poland has nearly killed me,” Ruth said. She was surprised at herself.
Had Poland really nearly killed her? She certainly felt more mortal than when she arrived.
Ruth realized that speaking to Max had cheered her up. Made her feel more normal. More attached to the normal world. That was what being in Poland did. It made life in New York seem normal. Her old life felt so normal. The Raisin Bran, the weight lifting, the twelve-minute limit on the time she allowed herself for People magazine. The coat hangers all facing the same direction. It all felt so normal. Why had she called it her old life?
she wondered. This was still the same life. This was not a new life. She was still Ruth Rothwax. Still forty-three. Still on a diet. Not that much had changed.
Ruth was glad that Max had called. “Speaking of mothers,” she said to Max, “how does your mother feel about you and the married man?” Ruth was sure that she could hear Max squirm. “Do we have to discuss that?”
Max said. “You’re in Poland.”
“I know I’m in Poland,” Ruth said with a sigh.
“My mother doesn’t say anything,” Max said.
“Does she know?” said Ruth.
“No,” said Max.
“What about your father?” Ruth said.
“He doesn’t know,” said Max. “I couldn’t tell them anything separately.
>
They would immediately tell the other. They tell each other everything.
They’re soul mates.”
What were soul mates? Ruth wondered. Mates who melted into each other? Souls with no borders? Did souls have borders? Did souls have edges and divides? Could you protect your soul from trespassers? Or could anyone traipse through it, once you’d lost the protection of a physical
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being? Was it easy for souls to merge? Easier than those beings encum-bered by bodies?
Ruth shook herself. She had to stop this unearthly thinking. These oth-erworldly cogitations and considerations. She had wandered off into outer space. Into uncharted territory. She had missed half of what Max had said.
Ruth stood up. She would be much better off, she decided, if she kept herself grounded.
“The good news is that everything in the office is going well,” Max said.
“Two new clients called today. Both from California, so news of Rothwax Correspondence is spreading.”
“Good,” said Ruth. “Tell Bern’s mother that I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Ruth showered and dressed. She sat on the bed and ate an apple. She had taken the apple from yesterday’s breakfast buffet. It was a green Granny Smith. It was no good. It was hard to get a good apple in Poland.
The apple cake was superb, but the fresh apples were spongy and small and bruised. She ate the apple anyway. The interpreter that the hotel clerk had arranged for her was waiting at the front desk. She got her bag and her coat and went downstairs.
“I am Tadeusz Kuczynski,” he said to Ruth. Tadeusz Kuczynski looked about fifteen. He was tall and gangly.
“How old are you, Tadeusz?” Ruth said.
“I am twenty-five,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “I thought you were much younger.”
Ruth was glad that she had a young interpreter. A young person was less likely to bring their own history, their own prejudices, their own baggage to this potential transaction. Ruth hoped that by arriving early she was giving herself a good chance of finding the old man and his wife at home, in Kamedulska Street, in Edek’s old apartment.
She briefly explained her mission to Tadeusz. Tadeusz didn’t seem to find the situation very complicated. “If you pay them the right price I am sure that they will sell you the china,” Tadeusz said.
Tadeusz was probably right, Ruth thought. Why did she have to feel so tense about it? Because she wanted that china very much. Very, very much. Her desire to have the china was probably completely disproportionate to the old couple’s need to sell the china. She was tense. No wonT O O M A N Y M E N
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der she was tense. Her position was not a good position to be in, in any negotiation.
The taxi that was taking them to Kamedulska Street was a small, nondescript Polish car. It felt tinny to Ruth. And cramped. Her knees were pushed up and were almost touching her chest. Why did the hotel clerk order this taxi? Probably because the driver was a friend, and the clerk was getting a kickback for every customer he provided, Ruth thought. She was agitated. She should have asked for a Mercedes. She had clearly become accustomed to Mercedes. The car stank of cigarettes. There was no need for her to wish Polish people any ill, she thought. Most Poles were going to smoke themselves to death.
She wondered whether she should tap her right foot to ward off any retribution for that thought. Did an aggressive thought toward Poles count in the lexicon of untoward behavior that merited punishment? Who knew?
Whoever it was that decided what was to be punished and what wasn’t, if there was someone or something overseeing all human behavior, had a very strange system. An incomprehensible set of criteria. If feeling hostile to Poles warranted punishment she would have to tap her right foot ceaselessly and start immediately. She didn’t have enough time left, she thought, for ten taps for every hostile thought she had had about Poles. She would have to do so much tapping, her right foot would get worn right out.
She smiled at her unintentional pun. Why did the mixing and blending of words and their nuances mean so much to her? Maybe because so much of what she heard as a child was so blunt. The short, blurred communications from her mother and father were not their fault. Their stunted ability to speak the language she spoke was just how it was. They were too busy working in factories to go to English classes. When they came home from the factories, there were no tender discussions, no delicate explanations, no refined analysis of this word or that. Everything was cut short and condensed. All greetings and orders and suggestions and reflections ended up as sharp fragments. Impossible to piece together.
“Tadeusz,” she said, “it is crucial that these people don’t think that the china that I want to buy is very important to me.” She looked at Tadeusz.
Could she trust him? How could she tell? She didn’t know him. “Because it is not important,” she said. “If they want to sell it, that’s fine. If they don’t, we’ll leave.”
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“Of course,” said Tadeusz.
Whom could you trust and whom couldn’t you trust? The question was even more difficult to answer in Poland. She had surprised herself by asking the doorman at the Grand Victoria if he could find her a couple of strong boxes. She had been astonished, first, that she had asked the doorman. She had thought she found him too revolting to make any requests of.
Then she had been surprised to hear herself requesting two boxes. Two large boxes, she had said. What did she think she was going to find in her father’s former home?
Ruth suddenly thought that she should let Tadeusz know that she could understand Polish. He needn’t know that she couldn’t understand every word. Or most complicated words. She didn’t think the old man or his wife would be using very complicated language. She wasn’t lying to Tadeusz, she thought, not that that was a moral issue or any other sort of issue for her. She could understand more and more Polish, though. Sometimes, she wished she understood less.
She didn’t want Tadeusz to entertain any schemes of colluding with the old couple and splitting the proceeds. She didn’t want him to think he could hike up the prices and split the difference with these vendors. She didn’t want him to be duplicitous. She was not sure that she could prevent any duplicity. Still, it would only be money that she would be losing if the interpreter and the couple colluded. He probably wouldn’t try anything, Ruth decided. After all, how did he know he could trust the old couple?
Even to a Pole, this couple would look untrustworthy.
“You do not have to be so nervous,” Tadeusz said. Ruth jumped. How could he have known what she was thinking? He couldn’t have known. He must be addressing her general demeanor.
“I’m not nervous,” she said to him.
“I think you are,” he said. “If you do not mind me saying so.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Plenty of people have commented on what they see as my nervous disposition. I’m not that nervous. I just appear nervous.”
“It is not so bad to be nervous,” Tadeusz said. Maybe Tadeusz was okay, Ruth thought. Any young man who thought it wasn’t so bad to be nervous couldn’t be all that bad.
“I agree,” she said to him.
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Ruth wondered if she should offer Tadeusz a bonus to keep him on the straight and narrow? No, she decided, she was already paying him extra for the early start.
“Could you make sure the driver knows that he has to wait for us?”
Ruth said to Tadeusz.
“I discussed this with the driver, before,” Tadeusz said.
“Okay,” she said. “Could you tell him that we’ll pay him for the whole trip when we get back to the hotel?”
Tadeusz spoke to the driver. The driver nodded his head. Ruth was relieved. She didn’t trust any Pole enough to leave even a taxi pickup to chance. The driver would have to wait
if he hadn’t been paid. And she wouldn’t be stranded in this desolate part of Lódz with two heavy boxes.
Two heavy boxes? What sort of fantasy was she indulging in? She would be lucky to leave 23 Kamedulska Street with the bowl or the teapot. If the old couple were really trying to sell the items they had displayed, they would have made a display of everything they had for sale. Ruth thought that the old couple were probably just trying to impress her and Edek, and had forgotten where the impressive accoutrements they had used had come from.
The taxi turned into Kamedulska Street and pulled up outside number 23. Ruth got out of the car. She had a strange urge to cross herself. Her hand had flown up to her forehead. How weird. She had never crossed herself in her life. She didn’t even know the movement. Did it begin with a touch to the forehead or the shoulder? The forehead, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. She had often envied Catholics their crossing mechanism. It was so overt and seemed so much more substantial than touching wood, and less lunatic than tapping a foot. Maybe if tapping a foot was done by hundreds of millions of people it might seem less absurd, Ruth thought.
Out of the car, she felt frightened. She felt in need of protection. No wonder she had wanted to cross herself. She must have felt this Catholic habit might be more effective than a foot tap, in a country that was so Catholic.
She began to walk into the building. The brown dog that had been there the day before yesterday was still there. The dog rushed up to Ruth and wagged its tail. Ruth tried to ignore the dog. She stopped. Where was Tadeusz? She turned around. Tadeusz was saying something to the driver.
What were they discussing? Ruth felt unnerved. The dog jumped up at Ruth. His paws were making muddy marks on her coat.
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“Get away,” she said to the dog. The dog wagged its tail.
“It is a very friendly dog,” Tadeusz said to Ruth. He patted the dog.
“What were you talking to the driver about?” Ruth said.
“I told him he will get paid nothing at all if he leaves here for even a moment,” Tadeusz said. “I did not want to come out and find that he had gone for a drink, or tried to fit in a trip for someone else.”
“Thank you,” Ruth said. “Don’t pat the dog,” she added. “You don’t know who he belongs to and what he’s like.”