The Unmade World
Steve Yarbrough
Unbridled Books
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Copyright © 2018 by Steve Yarbrough
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Yarbrough, Steve, 1956- author.
Title: The unmade world : a novel / Steve Yarbrough.
Description: Lakewood, CO : Unbridled Books, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034089| ISBN 9781609531430 (softcover) | ISBN
9781609531447 (e-isbn)
Subjects: LCSH: Life change events--Fiction. | Grief--Fiction. |
Guilt--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3575.A717 U56 2018 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034089
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Book Design by SH • CV
First Printing
For Jill McCorkle
I have been so dislanguaged by what happened
I cannot speak the words that somewhere you
Maybe were speaking to others where you went.
Maybe they walk together where they are,
Restlessly wandering, along the shore
Waiting for a way to cross the river.
David Ferry
CHRISTMAS IN KRAKOW - 2006
“You’re lucky I love Ella Fitzgerald,” his daughter says. She’s standing on the chair he brought in from the kitchen, and she’s just positioned the angel atop the tree. They bought that ornament this morning at a stall in the enormous Cloth Hall, which dominates the market square, and they bought the tree yesterday outside Galeria Krakowska, and then he dragged it ten blocks through the snow and up five flights of stairs. He was still jet-lagged, and though he goes to the gym twice a week and is in decent shape, he had to pause on each landing. Somewhere between the third and fourth floors, in the offhanded manner in which the most contented among us entertain such notions, he realized that his wife, who’d grown up here with her brother, had been right a few years back, warning that one day he’d wish they’d swapped it for a flat in a building with an elevator. He doesn’t have that many regrets, but the lack of a lift may become one.
Anna cocks her head, looks hard at the angel, then reaches out and makes an adjustment. “We’ve listened to this same CD three times since we started decorating. Did you realize that?”
“It’s a short disc.”
“Not that short.”
“And it’s the greatest ballad album ever recorded.”
She tosses her blonde bangs. “One could argue.”
“If one did, what might one propose as an alternative?”
“Dexter Gordon’s Ballads. Clifford Brown with Strings. The Intimate Ellington. Alternatives do exist.”
He’s having fun. He always looks forward to decorating the tree with her, but never more so than this year. They flew six thousand miles for the pleasure. “We started with Ella,” he says, “so we’re staying with her. It’s important to maintain continuity when doing something as momentous as decorating your first Polish Christmas tree.”
“This tree came from Norway.”
“How do you know?”
“The sign above the booth where you paid for it said, ‘Norwegian Wood.’”
“I didn’t see that.”
“You weren’t looking.” She puts out her hand, sticky from sap. “I’m finished,” she says. “Help me down. I’m too mature now to jump.”
He opens his arms. She steps into them, and as he lowers her to the floor, he gets a whiff of the scent she started wearing back in October after developing a crush on a kid who sits beside her in the string ensemble. She’s no longer a child. She has breasts, for Christ’s sake. “What do you weigh these days?” he wonders aloud.
“I would’ve hoped that by now you’d know not to ask a person of the feminine persuasion such a question. But I’ll answer it anyway: a hundred and eight pounds, give or take an ounce.” Gently, she pokes his stomach. “What do you weigh?”
“About a hundred and five kilos.”
Like many musicians, she’s also a proficient mathematician. “In other words, two hundred and thirty freaking pounds? Truly?”
“It sounds a lot better in kilos.”
“You need to take it easy on the pierogi, Dad. Not to mention the goose-liver pâté.”
A shade over six three, he’s got broad shoulders that suggest he might have made a good linebacker in his youth, though the only competitive sport he ever played was baseball. He can carry a good bit of weight. Yet he can’t deny that not long ago he had to let his belt out. He’s been eating and drinking a little more than he should. The last few months have not exactly been stress-free.
He covers Central California for the Los Angeles Times. He’s held that job for more than two decades, the only break coming seventeen years ago, when his Polish fluency brought him here to report on the revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe. Back in September, the Times’s publisher was ousted after protesting cuts proposed by the parent company. Then just last month, his editor-in-chief, a close personal friend, had also been forced out. What do you do if you can no longer do what you’ve done your entire adult life? Until recently, he hadn’t thought he’d ever have to ask himself that question. Even now, he’s not overly concerned. Still, when they return to Fresno in January, he’ll send out a few feelers, just to stay on the safe side.
Julia Mirecka-Brennan: she’s forty-six, a year younger than he is in December of 2006, her hair as dark as their daughter’s is light. Her eyes are large, brown, and mildly convex, and they often roll out of focus when she’s on top of him and an orgasm ripples through her. During their years together, she’s taught Richard a great many things, one of which is to walk on her left, cantering along beside her like her personal Saint Bernard. If she decides to make a left turn, either to go around a corner or enter a shop where something has captured her attention, she drops her shoulder and nudges him in the proper direction. The single time he remarked upon it, she said, “What’s a person my size to do when walking with someone like you?” He told her she could just say, “Hey, let’s go in there,” or “Why don’t we walk down that street?” She responded that she liked how her approach was working, and he abandoned his inquiry because, basically, he did too.
Back in the ’80s, when the country was under martial law, she had carried an extra toothbrush everywhere she went in case joining a demonstration led to her arrest. She has never been fainthearted, nor has she ever been one to conceal her opinions. There’s a particular way her mouth twists when she thinks you’re full of shit. He doesn’t see that expression very often these days, but it’s definitely on display when she steps into the flat this evening, her cap and the shoulders of her sheepskin dusted with snow, and spots him and Anna standing there in the darkened living room, admiring the brightly lit tree, neither of them dressed for dinner. He’s wearing slippers and an ancient pair of red Boston University warm-ups.
“Does either of you have the slightest idea what time it is?” she asks. She sets her shopping bag down in the hallway, then shrugs out of her coat.
He and Anna exchange glances. They had promised to be ready at a quarter till seven, and he knows it’s at least six-thirty now. “I don’t,” he says.
“Me either,” says Anna.
Julia lays her scarf aside, then bends to remove her boots. “It’s six forty. The reservation’s for seven thirty. You
two are both hopeless.”
“But what about our tree?” Anna asks.
Her mother pulls the boots off, stands them on the mat, then walks into the living room for a closer look. They await her assessment, pretending that it matters, even though all three of them know that this annual festive act belongs to him and Anna.
“The tree,” she finally concedes, “is not hopeless. Unlike both of you, it appears to have a bright future, if only a very short one.”
The car is a ’79 Mercedes diesel that they bought several summers ago. For much of each year it rests under a tarp. Until yesterday, he’d never driven it in cold weather. Mostly white, it features a beige rear quarter panel from a salvage shop and is missing its back bumper. The upholstery is a fungal shade of green, and at some point in the distant past, somebody had deemed the dashboard lighter the perfect tool for artistic expression, using it on the front passenger seat to burn little rings in the vinyl arranged to spell the name Klaus. Mercedes or not, it’s a wreck, but it runs and is that rare European vehicle with an automatic transmission. He hates stick shifts. Truth be known, he can’t drive one.
Julia and Anna climb in while he brushes snow off the windshield and the back glass. Five or six inches have fallen. It’s coming down pretty hard now, but the forecast calls for it to quit by eight or nine o’clock.
He starts the car and pulls away from the curb, heading toward the Old Town. While he drives, Julia calls Monika, and from the conversation, he can tell that Stefan is still in the shower and that they’ll be late too, something you can generally bank on. He thinks the world of his brother-in-law, but if he had to hold a real job, his life would be ruined. Fortunately, he doesn’t need one. He’s a successful crime novelist, his work published in more than thirty countries.
In Krakow, with the exception of approved vehicles, automobiles are banned in the Old Town. So they have to go around it rather than driving straight through. Traffic is surprisingly heavy. Everybody must be doing last-minute shopping. Stores will be open again tomorrow—Saturday—but virtually everything will remain closed on Sunday for Christmas Eve. He finds the country’s transformation into a consumer culture both exhilarating and disquieting. Sometimes it seems that the profusion of color and the proliferation of choices have come at the cost of clarity.
“We’re going to be pretty late,” he says. “You better call the restaurant. The reservation’s in my name. Ask for Mustafa and tell him who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“The wife of the guy who wrote an article about his establishment for the L.A. Times. If Brad Pitt ever eats there, it’ll be because of me.”
She pulls out her cell, and from memory he rattles off the number. It used to amaze her that he could recall such minutiae, but she long ago accepted it as a by-product of his profession.
While she’s on the phone, they pass the café where they met. It’s called Bunkier and is attached to an art gallery that represents the purest example of Brutalist architecture in the city. Open to the air in warm weather, it’s presently protected from the elements by clear plastic drop panels. The heaters must be turned up pretty high. Icicles hang from the eaves, and steam is rising off the roof. He’s promised Anna they’ll stop by for dessert tomorrow afternoon. They’ve logged many an hour beneath that canopy, whenever possible sitting at the table where he met her mom, whom he’d gone to interview for an article about women in the Solidarity movement. A couple of summers ago, while they waited there for their order, Anna rapped the tabletop. “So,” she said, drawing the syllable out, “this is where the idea that resulted in me began to get a little traction. Right?” She told him later that he looked like a figure in a Renoir, with a scarlet splotch on each cheek.
Julia ends the call. “They’ll hold our reservation,” she says. “Your friend Mustafa’s exact words were ‘Please inform refulgent Mr. Richard that upon arrival he will receive supreme justice.’ If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think he was threatening to execute you.”
“You probably should’ve spoken English to him.”
“Why? Is his English better?”
“No, but it’s considerably less florid.”
They cross the Vistula, then start west on Monte Cassino. Once they reach the outskirts, traffic begins to thin. Before long, they’re traveling through the countryside on a two-lane highway. A lot of the nouveau riche have built villas along this route, many of them with four or even five stories. Interspersed among these new constructions are traditional Polish farmhouses.
Twenty kilometers from the city, he slows down. They turn onto the narrow blacktop and drive up the hill, where they finally see the sign. He takes a left onto an even narrower road and drives another half kilometer, and they find themselves in the snowy parking lot.
The popular dining spot is housed in a pseudo-alpine castle built by the Nazis, originally as a vacation site for Luftwaffe pilots. By the end of the war it had become a Wehrmacht hospital, and under the Communists it had served as the Institute of Forestry. Now it belongs to a wealthy Kurdish family who fled Saddam in the ’90s, then bought and remodeled the rundown structure and established a Polish-Kurdish restaurant. The idea was disjunctive enough to make it wildly appealing, which explains why even on a night like this, the parking lot is jammed. He eventually locates a place between a Maserati and a Land Rover, the latter displaying a Croatian license plate. Someone else has come a long way for dinner.
Bogdan Baranowski is sitting on one of the checkout counters in the dimly lit grocery, watching it snow. The store occupies the ground floor of a dingy gray block that was purchased eighteen months ago by a young developer. So far he’s succeeded in evicting over half the tenants from their flats. He plans to renovate the property and turn it into luxury condos.
Around a quarter past eight, a silver BMW pulls up to the curb and blinks its lights three times. At first, Bogdan can’t believe it, so he doesn’t move. Fifteen or twenty seconds pass. Then the lights blink again. “O Jezu,” he says. “Matko boska.”
He reaches under the counter and grabs the sack of kielbasa. Then he puts on his coat and sticks his hand in the pocket to make sure the balaclava is still there. It’s black and made of wool and has holes for the eyes and mouth. When he tried it on in the bathroom, he immediately began to itch. He’s always been allergic to wool, but this was the only one he could find. In the mirror he looked like a Chechen terrorist.
He steps outside, locks the front doors, lowers the security grating, and locks it too. Then he walks over to the gleaming sedan and opens the door. “Is this your brother-in-law’s car?” he asks, lowering himself into the passenger seat.
Marek grins, his teeth white and perfect. Unlike Bogdan, he still has a head full of dark hair only slightly shorter than it was in his teens. “Nice, huh?”
Bogdan reaches for the door but hears a faint whooshing sound as it slowly closes itself. “Did you tell him what you planned to do?” he asks. “If you did, admit it right now, and I’ll get out. I’ll probably get out anyway.”
Marek throws the car into gear and pulls away from the curb. “Of course not. They flew to London to spend Christmas with their son and his family and asked me to feed their cats. I borrowed it for the evening.” His wife’s brother launched a small brewery around the time he and Bogdan founded their grocery chain. Five years ago Heineken bought it. Now his brother-in-law has a big house here, a smaller one in Zakopane, and a BMW.
It does happen. It just doesn’t happen to Bogdan. “What model is this?” he asks.
“Seven sixty something. Under the hood, there’s a V-12. If we need speed, we’ve got it. But we won’t need it.”
“How many of these cars do you suppose there are in the whole country?”
“More than you’d ever guess.”
The emphasis doesn’t pass unnoticed. Despite everything that’s gone wrong for both of them, Marek has maintained his sunny outlook. He’s been like that as long as Bogdan has known him, all the way ba
ck to elementary school. He’s enough of a realist to admit he’s never had a truly great idea but too much of an optimist not to think he’ll have one eventually.
As a rule, Bogdan finds perpetual good cheer grating. But lately, the presence of a hopeful friend, no matter how deluded, may be the only thing stopping him from walking into the frozen-food locker, lying down, and closing his eyes. The truth, which he’s incapable of admitting, is that he needs Marek. Almost everybody needs a Marek, if only to resent his existence.
“Since we’re stealing your brother-in-law’s car,” he grumbles, “why don’t we go over to their house and rob them instead of some stranger?”
Their business losses can be traced to the arrival of heavyweight Western retailers like Carrefour and Tesco, with huge inventories and cutthroat prices. They owned four stores in ’99, three in 2003, two in 2005. Now they’re down to one, with a rent payment due on January 15 that they lack the funds for. They’re in trouble with their suppliers too.
In all fairness, he and Marek aren’t complete fools. Both of them have been to Western Europe, and Marek once visited relatives in the U.S. When they first started out, they knew what Western supermarkets looked like: bright colors splashed everywhere; countless versions of the same product, all packaged differently and positioned at various price points, the label on each item fronted with military precision; aisles as broad as the Champs-Elysées so shoppers can roll their carts past one another without toppling floor displays. They understood what was coming and believed they could counter it. They took over formerly state-run shops and made few if any cosmetic changes. They offered Polish products, kept prices low, and retained the employees who’d worked in the stores when they were owned by the state. This last practice produced the first hiccups.
In a country where nearly everything belonged to the government and nearly everybody viewed it as corrupt, cheating was tolerated. Bogdan never did it, but back when he managed the warehouse, he knew that the guys who loaded and unloaded produce took a little bit home. A few apples here, a few pears there. As long as it didn’t get out of hand, he looked the other way.
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