She had run from the kitchen, found the door to the apartment, heaved it open with difficulty, and fled downstairs to her grandmother's apartment.
Horrible. It had been horrible. A memory that always brought an inward cringe. Please don't let him remember.
"You came to tea once, I think, when you were quite small."
"Yes."
Now she was blushing. Thank goodness it was fairly dark on the landing. And here she was so fat. He was probably thinking she hadn't changed, was still so greedy. Oh, why was she so overweight? There was no dignity in it. However, one did what one could. She pulled herself together.
"You saved me, I remember. I had eaten all the cakes and you covered for me. I ran away and never thanked you. Please accept my sincere thanks now––even if twenty years late." Her slow speech and outward poise gave her a certain majesty.
He smiled very slightly. "That I only vaguely recollect." ("Were you hungry?" he had asked. He had liked her straightforward answer: "No, I just felt like it.") "I believe you were wearing a pinkish dress with ruffley things and had sugar on your face."
Horrible.
He changed his tone, as if suddenly remembering why she must be there. "I'm sorry about your grandmother. I'm afraid I couldn't make it to the funeral––I had a shift at the hospital."
A doctor then. He would be, of course.
"I missed it too," Hania said wearily. "The plane was delayed. And now no one seems to be home."
"Did they know you were coming?" He leaned over and knocked hard on the door. "I ask, because I saw your aunt and uncle getting into their car earlier with luggage. But perhaps they came back...Anyway, the children should be here." He knocked again, harder yet, with the natural air of someone accustomed to helping others out of difficulties.
From within a high female voice called "coming!" in a rather irritated tone.
"There you are, then." Konstanty Radzimoyski gave Hania another slight and distant smile, his eyes already looking somewhere over her head, (problem solved––goodbye, pani) and had reached the next landing before the door opened.
With a sinking heart, Hania waited for her aunt to open the door. Instead, it was pulled back only to the length of the chain and a shank of dishwater hair and a pair of eyes, one above the other, appeared in the crack. There was no light in the apartment, and the light had gone out on the stairs again, but she thought the eyes must belong to her cousin.
"Kalina?" she questioned.
"Who are you?"
"Hania. Your cousin, Hania."
There was a long pause, and the sound of whispering behind the door. Then:
"Prove it."
Hania was so taken aback for a second she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But this was ridiculous.
"Kalina, is your mother or father at home?"
"Why do you ask?"
A second, younger voice added, "We're not supposed to talk to strangers." There seemed to be a bit of a scuffle inside and then the door was slammed shut.
She knocked and it opened the six inches again.
"I can show you my passport. Is that proof?"
She heard the younger voice saying, "No, no, don't let her in yet," but the elder said "okay," in a dull tone, and she handed the document through the crack. A while later the light came on, the door opened wide, and Hania found herself looking at a stony-faced girl of around fifteen, dressed in low-cut jeans and a tight, cropped top. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing makeup that looked like it had just been hastily applied.
"Okay, you can come in." She held out a limp hand to shake Hania's.
Konstanty washed his hands, as he always did after being out, but he neither loosened his tie nor took off his blazer. If he was no longer a prince in anything but family memory, it pleased him still to keep up a certain standard. He stood for a moment in the center of the room considering: to watch television or work on his history project? He was tired, but the intellectual exercise drew him more. He sat down at his large desk. It was a very fine desk, made of Gdansk oak––the kind of wood that is seasoned for twenty years in a bog hole before being used for furniture. This one was carved all over with scenes of Sarmatia and was one of his grandfather's few salvages from the estate in Radzimość. At the moment the wood was almost hidden under a load of books and notepads. He sifted through a stack of neatly arranged papers. Strange, he thought, as he read the headings on the papers, strange that he should have remembered that incident when he was a teenager with Hania Lanska. The brain was an odd repository. What had made that stick when so many other things were irretrievably flown? Her childish face had come back so clearly. He supposed it was that his own behavior that day had pleased him. He had felt quite good about himself afterwards. Yes, that must have been it. It was always self in the end, he noted with a touch of wryness, but glad to have solved the minor puzzle. He liked to have his own motives clear and he had no illusions about himself. Here was what he was looking for:
The Neolithic people in the area of today's Poland, like the later Slavonic tribes, are known to have practiced trepanation, the drilling of holes in the skull of a live person. He began to type, pecking slowly with two fingers. In this, the early Poles showed their common humanity: trepanation would seem to have been a world-wide practice, encountered from Polynesia to Alsace. Is this where the phrase 'a hole in the head,' originates? Well, no. He erased the two sentences, and began again.
Poland was then a vast wilderness of primeval forest, of dune and meadow, cut across by the wide-flowing Vistula and dotted with lakes. By the 6th century B.C. the local inhabitants were already the target for raiding Scythians and Sarmatians, Germanic and Celtic tribes. A century later Roman traders were coming too, travelling to the Baltic and beyond in search of amber. Like loose change in a parking lot, the
Amber Route today is peppered with Roman coins.
The pause in the hallway was growing embarrassing. The girl neither invited Hania in nor made any explanations.
"Er…so your parents aren't home?"
"No."
"When do you expect them back? Didn't they tell you I was coming?"
"I don't expect them back." Kalina still spoke in that dull voice. "I don't expect anything from them anymore." She turned abruptly and, leaving the entry way, passed through a door into a small sitting room, where she threw herself on a sofa, and picking up the remote, clicked on the television. It was rather loud, so that Hania would have nearly had to shout to be heard above it. She stood indecisively in the doorway, looking at the girl, who pretended to be engrossed in a commercial.
Should she just turn around, walk out of the apartment, and go to some nice, sane, ordinary hotel? Even if it did mean crossing town on foot at a late hour? Yes, that's what she should do.
The problem was, she thought, she never gave up as easily as she should. With a sigh, she walked over to the television and turned it down, then, puffing a little, she straightened and said, "Excuse me. I suppose you're very unhappy because of Babcia"––she saw Kalina widen her eyes and look up startled––so it wasn't that then––"and I'm sorry to intrude, but I really need to talk to your parents. I mean, I thought I was invited to stay here––obviously I made a mistake. Perhaps I should go to a hotel?"
"Yes, I think you made a mistake," said Kalina. "You'd better go."
The phone rang. Kalina stared at it as if trying to make up her mind, while Hania waited in dismay and suspense. Kalina let it ring five times and then picked it up.
"What?" she growled into the receiver, listened a moment with her eyes rolled towards the ceiling, then at last handed it languidly to Hania. "It's them."
With a sense of enormous relief, Hania put the receiver up to her ear.
Wiktor's warm voice resounded down the line. "Hania! How wonderful that you're here. We're so sorry that we missed you at the airport, but things have been so hectic! You wouldn't believe! But tell us about you first! Are you all right? Did you have a good flight? What a way to
treat you! Fourteen-hours delay. I would write and complain to somebody…"
The charm was turned on full. Hania recognized it––wasn't it the same charm her grandmother had had, and her father had?––she recognized it and couldn't resist giving way to it, to finding herself wrapped in the warmth of suddenly being cared for, liked, met more than halfway…she gave in, and yet a part of herself steeled for the follow up.
"Listen, Haniu, kochanie, it is so fortunate that you are there. We've had to come here overnight––"
"Where?" Hania tried to squeeze in, but Wiktor swept on.
"Absolutely unavoidable. You wouldn't believe the problems we've had."
She sensed the self-pity. "Yes, but…" she tried to stop him but he kept talking.
"So it's very fortunate that you're there, and we'll be back on Thursday, Friday at the latest…"
"But..." Thursday––that was three days away.
"The children will be good. They won't be a problem for you. You've been teaching right? Yes, yes, of course, I've always kept track of what you're doing..."
She felt a little glow and stifled it, trying to get a word in edgewise. "But where are you?"
He didn't answer that. "So you'll be fine with the children. Excellent then, that's all settled then, thank you so much for everything you're doing…" and in the middle of her questions the line went dead, and she was left staring at Kalina.
Kalina didn't lift her eyes, but just observed in her monotone voice, "That's my dad."
"Yes," said Hania wearily, "I have the same sort." Kalina actually turned her head then and gave her a quick upward glance before returning to the television. But after a second some better feeling perhaps prompted her to say, "I'll show you your bed."
"Thank you," said Hania, and then, "Where's your brother? I remember meeting you when you were small, but I've never met your brother––he wasn't born yet the last time I was in Poland."
"He's asleep," said Kalina brusquely, "I wouldn't wake him. He bites."
2
Childhood burns with an inborn heat;
there is no need to add fire to fire.
– Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski on diet, 1551
Hania woke early and stared at the high ceiling of her room, not certain at once where she was but aware of a feeling of stiffness and discomfort. Things came back to her in a moment. Warsaw, she was in Warsaw, in her grandmother's apartment. She had met Konstanty Radzimoyski on the stairs. She had missed the funeral. Her aunt and uncle had disappeared and left her in charge of their children. She turned over and looked at her wristwatch and as she did so the sofa bed creaked and a support banged against the floor. It sagged at all points. It was a miserable bed but it was hunger that had woken her. Extreme hunger. Later she would remember to resent her uncle's actions, later she would wonder what was wrong with Kalina––at the moment she just wanted something to eat. Only five o'clock. Of course, there was the time difference.
She lay in bed and looked around. The room was small and higher than wide, with tall, tall windows and a plaster medallion around the light fixture. This had been her grandmother's room, the smallest room in an enormous apartment, an apartment that for forty years had been the envy of all their acquaintances, an apartment Babcia had received from the Communist authorities in exchange for staying in Poland, for proving that Natalia Lanska approved of the true socialist way. Natalia Lanska had cared nothing for ideology but had known a good opportunity when she saw one. When, after stunning successes abroad in the late forties and fifties, her career had begun to falter––was it because her once Valkyrie-like figure had begun to take on unbecoming rondeurs? Because she quarreled with too many impresarios, concert managers, and conductors? Or just bad luck?––she had abandoned Paris and returned to Warsaw, where she had remained at the top of her teaching profession, treated with humble––even abject––respect by her students and catered to by the authorities. She had had a maid and trips abroad and tutors for her children. For a long time her concert earnings and master classes had allowed her to lead a life of luxury, and with the end of the Communist era she had begun to make money again from lessons in Warsaw too. She had done well. Still, she hadn't ever thought about much besides music, and her room was decorated in a mix of inherited 19th-century furniture and the ugliest of central-planning-era pieces. This sofa bed had held more weight than it could bear for thirty years at least, thought Hania. Time to get out of it.
The room had already begun to collect Ania's paintings. Ten or so large canvases were leaning against a wooden wardrobe. Hania had hung her clothes over them last night in the hopes that some of the wrinkles would be gone in the morning. Now she looked at the top painting as she got dressed. It had a background of thick black impasto and a red figure that might have been a cubist nude in the center. Somehow the nude had become detached from its (realistic) eyes, which floated in the upper-right corner. She found it rather unpleasant and wondered if there was anything she could put over it again.
It was light out, but even the local grocery stores wouldn't open for another hour or so. Still, there must be something to eat in the kitchen, if only an end of dry bread.
She dressed quietly, hoping not to wake her cousins. If Maksymilian were anything like his sister she didn't really feel she could face meeting him before breakfast.
The kitchen was rather small, divided as it was by the służbówka, the four-foot-wide, walled-off space that all pre-war apartments with pretensions to dignity provided for the maid. One looked at the służbówka and felt a sudden sympathy for communism. There would have been just room for a cot in it.
She opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for a bottle of Heinz ketchup and some mold. She opened the cupboards, but they only held dishes, glasses, pots, and vodka bottles. There was not a scrap of anything to eat. She found some tea in a canister, but there was no sugar, no coffee, no milk, no bread. She opened the door to the służbówka, and saw stacks of boxes and a pair of someone's dusty old shoes. She had a moment's impulse to fall upon them and chew the leather.
"What are you doing?" said a firm but squeaky voice.
Hania turned quickly. A small boy was standing in the doorway. He had his sister's dishwater hair, with a round head, round eyes, and round glasses. He looked like a pale little owl, except that he was wearing only blue briefs with a space-ship design.
"Are you trying to steal something?" he asked suspiciously.
Obviously he was a pair with his sister, thought Hania.
"No," she answered deadpan, "I'm wondering whether I could eat that shoe."
The boy considered this for a moment. "Can I watch?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I can't eat it. There's no oil for frying. I only eat fried shoes."
"You could go to the store," the boy suggested eagerly.
"Mmm. Yes. But it's too early––that's the problem. By the way––I'm Hania. You must be Maksymilian." She held out her hand and he shook it politely. Then he stepped back and, holding his glasses against his nose, regarded her for a long moment.
"You look like Babcia."
"Do I?"
"Yes. She's dead."
"I know. I'm sorry about that."
"She wasn't here. She hasn't been here for a long time. She was in the hospital." A long pause. "I don't remember her face, really. Only she was fat like you."
"Yes."
"Will she get thin now? Since she's not eating, I mean?"
"Maks," said Hania with sudden decision, "How about you get dressed and by that time maybe the stores will be open and we can go together and buy something, okay?"
Maks disappeared obediently and Hania left the kitchen, hesitating before the tall double doors to the right. Beyond those doors had been her grandmother's territory. She put a hand on the brass door handle, pushed gently, and walked in. It was a large room, perhaps forty meters square, with tall windows along one wall and three grand pianos filling the space. Nothing had chang
ed. Only there was a fine layer of dust coating the heaps and heaps of music scores that covered every available surface: Mozart, Brahms, Scarlatti, Clementi––everything from solo pieces to orchestral scores to the most advanced études for virtuosos. Only her grandmother had known where everything was. The pages spilled over one another and threatened to topple from the piano lids. The Bechstein and the Bösendorfer were her grandmother's. The Steinway over there was Wiktor's. It had fewer scores on it and a heap of dirty coffee cups, un-emptied ashtrays, pencils, and electronic equipment. Wiktor composed atonal music.
Wiktor, in Babcia's opinion, which she had expressed to whomever cared to listen, had been a traitor, a turncoat, and a serpent of a son. There had been no possibility, however, that he would move out, find his own apartment, lead his own life, and play his own music at a distance from his disapproving relative. And perhaps the emotion generated by a friction of artistic ideas had been stimulating. Wiktor had turned up the volume. Babcia had played louder, been driven to new heights of musical dexterity, had taken Rachmaninoff and the Goldberg Variations to technical perfection. Public opinion, moreover, had been on her side; the neighbors had only banged on the floor when Wiktor sat at the piano. Or perhaps they were afraid to do so when Babcia was about.
And it wasn't Wiktor Hania was thinking of now, but of Babcia. She had stood here, sat here, played at this piano. Hania sat down at the Bösendorfer, put her hands forward and then drew them back abruptly. Anyway, people were sleeping.
Maks was back.
"I can't get dressed."
"Why not?"
"All my clothes are dirty."
"So wear whatever's least dirty."
"Well," she thought with a shudder when he reappeared a little later, "at least he's not my child."
They descended the cool, dim stairs together in companionable silence and went out into the morning. There were a surprising number of people about, walking with the quick determined step of Polish people––not the frantic rush of New York, where everyone was always behind-time and scurrying to catch up––but the step of people unaccustomed to dallying; people getting in cars, climbing off buses with shopping sacks––where had they been shopping at this hour?––people heading to the grocery store for the morning bread. Young women in clicking high heels, mothers with small children in strollers, elderly men in neat, pressed shirts. Hania drank in the sights and sounds: the city was clean and calm, had order without rigidity. Or so it pleased her to imagine as she walked along looking right and left.
Swans Are Fat Too Page 2