Winter Eyes

by Lev Raphael

  He nodded happily. Steam from the kettle clouded behind Sasha.

  “Shall I teach you?” Sasha took out a large silver tray and arranged things on it.

  “Me?” He could almost not say it.

  Sasha picked him up and hugged him.

  “I wish you were my daddy.”

  Sasha flushed and put him down, shook his head, looked like he wanted to laugh, or was afraid.

  “Are you growing the tea?” Stefan’s father called, and Sasha bore out the heavy tray.

  “Stefan?” That was his mother but he didn’t want to go to them; he liked this small private room and didn’t care about the tea cakes and whatever else was on the tray.

  “But can I learn?” he said as soon as he seated himself on the couch.

  “Learn what?” His mother took a sip of the strong-smelling tea.

  “I offered to teach him to play,” Sasha murmured through a cookie, looking very big in the little chair he’d pulled up across the low table. Sasha was big, while his father only looked it.

  “So that’s what was going on in the kitchen.” His father grimaced. “It’s a waste of time.”

  “It’s my life,” Sasha put down his cup very hard. Stefan edged down the couch.

  “A waste for him to learn,” his father explained. “And it’s too hard.”

  Stefan shrunk; he agreed with that—it couldn’t be easy. It was hard, it sounded hard, he could never do it.

  “I want to!” he burst out, full of tears.

  “Stefan—” His mother frowned.

  “I want to.”

  “See?” Sasha popped a tea cake into his mouth and crunched it very calmly. “Nothing is hard if you want it enough.”

  His father said something very low in Polish—words Stefan had never heard. He still wanted to cry; he didn’t know if they’d let him or not, and he didn’t know why everyone was so strange today, and he felt like a baby. He wanted to break something; sitting on the couch made him feel sick. The tea was not hot anymore and smelled of measles.

  He went to the bathroom, and ran the water a lot when he was done.

  His parents didn’t say anything all the way home. His first lesson was to be next Sunday and Stefan hid in the back seat under a small blanket, pretending to sleep. The picture of himself sitting at the piano and commanding the keys like Sasha thrilled and scared him. What if he couldn’t do it? What if his father was right?

  At night he heard his parents yelling—it was almost always in Russian and he never really knew why. Once he’d seen them—all red and ugly—and he’d cried, unable to run back to his room, but they didn’t even notice: his father paced in and out of the kitchen, loud, fists thumping the air near where his mother sat at the kitchen table answering him.

  Their voices were as heavy as when a building was being made; he couldn’t get away, he heard them now even in his room with the pillow over his head. He didn’t know why they shouted at each other and he was much too afraid to ask.

  It was the worst thing they did.

  The next Sunday his father drove him to Sasha’s; they didn’t say much in the car. His father mostly cursed at other drivers and Stefan sat as firmly planted in his seat as he could—in case something happened. He had never seen an accident except on TV, but the way his father gripped the wheel and criticized every other driver made Stefan keep silent. He didn’t want his father to be mean to him. The quiet in the car was even worse than usual because his father had broken the radio jabbing at a button. Stefan wished his father would drive straight up Broadway instead of taking the highway—everything went by too fast and there was always a big truck shadowing them, making Stefan clutch his seat. His father would shake his head then and Stefan blushed; he knew he wasn’t supposed to be scared—like of the dark or bad dogs—but it was very hard. His father didn’t ever call him a baby, but Stefan could tell that he sometimes thought it.

  Sasha did not scare him as much, hardly at all. Sitting on the piano bench next to his uncle he felt very safe and warm. Sasha was so big and the open piano very tall and wonderful—shining, streaked and carved, mysterious. He was almost unwilling to put his hands on the keys the way Sasha showed him after he started learning their names. He listened very hard and became almost dizzy with not understanding. Sasha rested an arm on his shoulder and helped him push down the keys of his first chord and then a scale. It was new, all new, more exciting than anything at school except maybe reading—but even that wasn’t much unless you read out loud.

  “Let’s take a break.” Sasha went to get lemonade. Stefan sat at the keyboard running a finger down the white and black lengths; the keys were so hard and all alike and they led inside to the secret. He stood, looked down at the strings, depressed a key, saw the little hammer, watched and heard the dull buzz. It was a marvel to him.

  “You really like that?” his father asked, staring from where he sat with a pile of magazines.

  He knew the answer. “I do.”

  “It’s hard work, you don’t know how hard. You won’t be playing like Sasha for years. Maybe never.”

  And Stefan’s purpose blurred; his father was so sure. Sasha emerged from the kitchen with two full glasses. “If he wants to learn, let him.” Sasha stood over his father’s chair. His father shrugged.

  “I don’t see the point,” his father said.

  “The point is music. That’s enough.”

  “For you perhaps.”

  “Prosze,” Sasha said heavily. Stefan knew that was Polish. It meant please. He wanted to say it too in case they started to yell.

  His father shrugged again, plucked a magazine from the pile.

  “Here.” Sasha joined him at the piano. “To your lessons,” he toasted.

  “I wish we could get you a piano,” his mother said one afternoon, sitting by his bed. Stefan had stayed home from school with a cold, drinking tea and listening to the radio, falling in and out of a light sleep. Even though he was tired, the steady stream of music cheered him, especially when there was a piano in it; he listened as hard as he could then. They weren’t just sounds anymore but pieces—sonatas and capriccios—the names and directions were in a beautiful language, and the way you wrote music was also beautiful. Not like arithmetic—there was art in it and numbers. Somehow he understood everything Sasha said now, or knew he was almost ready to understand.

  “Sasha says you learn very well. You can even play.” Stefan’s father was impressed too, she said. “But I’m not surprised. You read so well for your age.”

  Stefan grinned. He knew he was an “advanced” reader at school, but this was even better. And it made him feel like his parents did about how good their English was; his mother and father often joked about other Poles and Europeans who couldn’t pronounce the English “th” sound.

  “It’s wonderful in just a few months.” His mother stroked his cheek, felt his forehead; that was the best part of being sick: his parents touched him, were in and out of the room, talked to him and listened.

  “I wish we could get you a piano,” his mother said again, not looking at him even though her hand still lay on his forehead. He wanted to touch her hand or for her to take it away, he didn’t know which. When his mother stopped looking at him while she spoke it was as strange as his father’s anger that simmered like bad soup with pieces in it (Stefan liked his food as smooth as possible).

  “But we can’t.…” His mother drew her hands together in her lap.

  “Are we poor?” Stefan had a flash of his mother in rags, like in a book, but poor people didn’t have apartments, did they? And poor children never played the piano.

  His mother laughed. “No, darling, no we’re not poor! It’s just that your father—” but she didn’t finish what she was saying, left him to make more tea.

  He thought of having his own piano; it seemed like something that would only happen when he grew up. Where would they put it? There wasn’t any room at home for even one of those little squashed ones unless they took someth
ing out, and that didn’t make any sense. The living room was very crowded with his father’s desk and file cabinets and bookcase taking up half the room, even though he had an office at school. And he thought his father wouldn’t like the practicing anyway, because he always wanted it quiet in the house at night, so he could “grade papers.”

  Stefan didn’t really want more tea but drank it anyway when his mother returned.

  “Why doesn’t Uncle Sasha have a family?”

  His mother moved to the window, stood there with her hands on the sill. For a terrifying moment in which he thought her hands were shaking, Stefan wondered if his mother weren’t about to cry. He knew women cried—but not his mother.

  “He can’t,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He just can’t. Drink your tea.” On the way out she turned off the radio.

  Later, when his father came in to say good night Stefan asked again.

  His father stared at him as if he’d said a terrible word, the kind you couldn’t even write down.

  “Why can’t he have a family?” his father echoed. “He has us.”

  Stefan had never exactly thought of himself as belonging to Sasha; the idea was a pleasing one. Still, though, he wanted a real answer, the kind his father liked to hear from him.

  His father stood at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets, eyes very small and sharp.

  “He can’t, there was…an accident.”

  That Stefan could understand, accidents were bad and you died or went to the hospital. There was a big one with lots of dark dirty buildings near Sasha’s house. It looked like the castle of witches, and it had a long funny name that was almost like where his father was a teacher—Columbia Presbyterian—and Stefan was always a little scared when they walked or drove by it.

  “There was an accident,” his father repeated.

  Stefan nodded and his father said good night.

  So Sasha was his daddy, then—in a way.

  His father stopped sitting through the lessons, would go drive somewhere or take a walk in Riverside Park across the street from Sasha’s building, and so Stefan stayed at the piano with Sasha longer and longer. Sunday grew to be all he really thought about, in school, on the school bus; he would look down sometimes to find his fingers moving slowly as if they were on keys. The feelings of warmth that came from Sasha’s large comforting bulk at his side and from the uncluttered apartment stayed with him week after week, like a secret. It was like the time when he was very little and found a small chunk of glass near a tree in front of their building. He scooped it up, washed it later, dazzled by the glittering edges. Stefan kept it for days behind some books until his father found it.

  “What are you doing with this?” his father demanded.

  Stefan didn’t explain how he’d found his diamond.

  “You could hurt yourself.” His father bore it away. Stefan hadn’t protested; it seemed natural that his father would throw out his treasure. He didn’t cry, not right then or when his father came back.

  “What did you need it for?”

  “I just wanted it.”

  His father had frowned.

  Stefan liked it that Sasha’s small apartment wasn’t crowded or as neat as his, where everything shone and smelled of polish. His mother was always tugging at the corner of something, scrubbing the sink, spraying, vacuuming. His greatest fear at home was to knock a vase over or drop a glass or even spill something; no one scolded him but there was so much cleaning afterwards that every movement seemed directed at him.

  At Sasha’s there wasn’t very much outside of the kitchen to break, and he could put his feet up on the couch, sit on the steps into the living room. That was his favorite place to be, after sitting at the piano, because if he sat to the left he could see the keyboard and Sasha’s hands while he played. Sasha even let him put his glass on the floor, which didn’t look less clean than at home—but floors were “dirty” and it was kind of exciting.

  “Am I your best student?” he asked one day, many months after the first lesson.

  “You’re my favorite,” Sasha beamed from the bench, smoothing his hair back and leafing through a music book on the piano. “And you learn well.”

  “Mommy said she wished I had my own piano.” Stefan didn’t mention his parents to Sasha much, only when he asked; for the few hours there every week it was almost as if he didn’t have parents—or those parents. “Hmm?”

  “Why don’t they take lessons too?” he wondered.

  Sasha closed the book, set it aside.

  “Not everyone wants to play.” Sasha faced him. “Besides, your mother used to.”

  “When?”

  Sasha rose. “Are you hungry?” He moved from the piano. Stefan wasn’t, but he liked Sasha to make things for him so he said yes.

  “Your father will be back soon. How about eggs? Did you have eggs today?”

  They were in the kitchen. Stefan shook his head but Sasha’s grin made him admit the truth.

  “Well—a little French toast? Yes?” Sasha busied himself with the ingredients. Sitting at the table, Stefan was not as intent on the milk and eggs, cinnamon and vanilla as usual; the whirring toaster and the oil in the pan almost annoyed him.

  “When did Mommy play piano?”

  “Before— When we were all young.”

  “Before what?”

  Sasha stirred the batter and dipped a slice of lightly toasted bread, laid it in the pan; his movements were very big in the kitchen and something usually got knocked over or almost. Sasha laughed when he broke glasses or dishes.

  Sasha turned, leaned against the sink, eyed him in the same unseeing way his mother sometimes did.

  “The two of them used to fight to practice.…”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother and Eva.”

  “Who was that?”

  Sasha flipped the toast over, dipped another piece and set it to fry.

  “She would’ve been your aunt,” Sasha said quietly.

  His father came back before Stefan could find out more than that Eva had been Sasha’s and his mother’s younger sister and had disappeared in Poland, which was also called Polska. He knew his parents’ families came from Poland, a place he’d seen in lots of picture books, a place he thought of as full of castles, statues, churches, and soldiers. He liked castles; there weren’t any here and they were so big and neat looking, with flags and little windows, dark and pointy at the top. Not everyone over there lived in castles, his mother had told him once, not even small ones, but he bet they wanted to. When Stefan played with cutouts the best ones were the castles; he could even make castles on his own, stand books together on their ends. It took a lot of them to make a really good castle, and he needed pencils for flagpoles and paper cups for towers and all the little men—animals and soldiers from different games and sets—marched along the top and in and out the doors. He hadn’t done that in a while, though—since he’d begun playing the piano; that was more important, and more fun than anything else.

  “Why don’t I have a sister?” he asked on the way home; it was an old question that got the old answer.

  “Because we wanted just you,” his father said, honking at a man who crossed the street in front of them too slowly. The man didn’t jump or even look up, just kept going and Stefan admired that—car horns frightened him.

  “Did you have a sister?” he asked, clutching his seat as they roared through the intersection. This question was new.

  “No.”

  “Did Mommy?”

  “Why?”

  Stefan was silent; being questioned in reply to a question unsettled him, made him unsure; it was worse than when his father came into his room and said: “Why is there such a mess here?” Stefan would look up from his book or drawing and glance around a bit wildly. He didn’t know, it just got like that. “Why is that shirt on the floor?” His father would point and Stefan would stare at the shirt as if hoping it would explain. Stefan had a vague sense that
you couldn’t really control a lot of things; they fell or crept behind bookcases, rolled under beds or ripped because they wanted to. To be in charge you had to straighten and dust the way his mother did: without stopping. “Are you going to pick it up?” his father would continue.

  “Why do you ask?” his father said now as they stopped at a red light.

  Stefan squirmed.

  “I don’t know.”

  His father disliked that answer—you had to know. “If you don’t know, then don’t ask.”

  They said nothing more.

  After he’d done his homework Stefan lay on the floor picking at the blue rug, listening to the radio which was playing a piano concerto he had heard a few times already. It was written by a deaf man, Sasha had told him, or a man who went deaf, Stefan couldn’t remember which—but either way it was magic. He listened to the long proud melodies that were so big compared to the tiny things he was beginning to play. He wondered what the man at the piano looked like, and how many scales a day he practiced. Sasha had promised to take him to a concert some day; that seemed as much a dream as having his own piano.

  “Stefan?” His mother knocked and entered.

  He sat up to protest when she turned the radio down—she was always doing that.

  “Did Sasha say anything to you today?” She sat on the edge of his bed and the careful way she did it was so unusual that Stefan understood there was trouble. “Did he say anything, anything about—”

  Stefan glanced from her to the door; he felt very angry and didn’t know why. He didn’t want her in his room or on his bed.

  “He said you had a dead sister.” Stefan looked her right in the face. He felt very mean; it was scary and thrilling. He wasn’t used to feeling like he’d swallowed a hot drink when he hadn’t.

  His mother nodded, crossed her arms, uncrossed them, smoothed her graying hair back the same way Sasha did, and with the movement he relaxed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What? No, not you—” She looked behind him, or somewhere. The idea of a woman like his mother, but someone who was dead, a woman he’d never met, but was his aunt, took hold of him. It was like being hungry in a new way.