Swans Are Fat Too

by Michelle Granas

  Maks had made the walk back so miserable that she had felt several times like leaving him along the side of the road in the hopes he'd be picked up like a stray dog by some kind and unsuspecting passer-by.

  And then there'd been an afternoon of emptying buckets and of mopping and mopping the floor. It was only some time in the evening that Yola had put her head around the open door and spoken to Hania as she rose from her knees with a wet towel.

  "Excuse me, pani." She pulled forward a little brother. "Hubert says he thinks he knows how to turn the water off."

  Hania just stared, unbelieving. "If he does, please tell him to do so."

  "We have to go in the bathroom."

  They all proceeded to the bathroom. Hubert pointed to the wall. Yola said, "He says he watched our uncle when he renovated the bathroom last year. The turn-off-thing's behind the tiles. Nice, isn't it?" She smoothed the tiles with a hand, "It doesn't show at all."

  "Which tile? Hubert, are you sure?"

  "This one." He said, pointing, "Or this one or this one." He touched three tiles.

  The tiles were sealed with cement grout. They did make a hollow noise when tapped.

  "How do I get them off, I wonder?"

  "You have to break them," said Hubert. "With a hammer. Pow!"

  Great, thought Hania, and if I break them and find nothing? Then I pay for the redoing of Wiktor's bathroom? But the bucket in the kitchen would be overflowing soon, she remembered, so she couldn't dither too long.

  No. She had an idea. She rushed to get her nail file, and applied it with vigor to the grout. The children watched in silence as she worked and worked; she could feel her whole body shaking up and down as she filed. After fifteen minutes she had made a small scratch and she was panting and gasping for breath.

  "Okay," she said to Hubert and to Maks too, who had been watching excitedly but were beginning to get bored, "let's find a hammer and bash away."

  The children scampered to find the tool. And lo and behold, when they'd demolished six tiles the water pipes were revealed and a shut-off valve.

  Well, thought Hania, as she rewarded Hubert lavishly and he went off a hero, I will write about my adventures to Konstanty. Then of course, she had picked her laptop up from where it lay on the floor and found it wouldn't work.

  It is only because I'm so tired that I feel such anguish about the laptop, said Hania to herself as she sat still with her eyes closed. It doesn't really matter so much that I can't email Konstanty. It was just in my mind, a crush that I was indulging because there seemed no harm in imagining. I will find a way to let him know that I can't work for a while, or we will go back to Warsaw. But no, we should stay because the children are happier here. She tried to concentrate on that thought: The children were happier here.

  If she needed to talk to someone she could pick up the phone, of course. Whom would she call? Not Konstanty. To write an email in the vague context of a common project was one thing, actually to talk to him on the telephone about her own problems quite another. He seemed immensely unreachable. She felt quite hollow and shaky at the thought.

  Her mother? Her parents had divorced when she was fourteen. When her mother remarried and moved to Montana, Hania had stayed in New York for the sake of her piano studies. It had all been agreed amongst them; it had all been for the best. But her mother, married now to a rancher in Montana, seemed often to be living on a different planet. She had no patience at all with the Lanskis, she hated Poland––it was a primitive, uncivilized place, she said––and she was always in a hurry to go feed the cattle or clean the barn. There were many things Hania couldn't talk to her about. She dialed a number and heard her father's voice.

  "Hallo, Tato?"

  "Haniu, kochanie, where are you? I've just been talking to Wiktor."

  "I'm in Żabia Wola. Where is Wiktor?"

  "Żelazowa Wola? You're giving a concert?"

  "Tato, I don't play anymore. Not Chopin's birthplace. Żabia Wola."

  "Never heard of it. What on earth are you doing there?"

  "Looking after Wiktor's children. Tato, I really need to have a phone number to Wiktor or some way of getting in touch with him."

  "Well, why don't you call him?"

  "Where?"

  "It's like I was telling you, he's in Berlin." A pause. "Or Bern? You know he's taking part in this festival. That's why you're looking after the children, isn't it?"

  "You knew about all this?"

  "All what? Hania, you don't speak clearly."

  "You knew I'd end up taking care of the children?"

  "That's what you went to Warsaw for, isn't it?"

  She held the phone for a moment in her hand, away from her ear. So he had arranged it all. She could see it clearly. Wiktor had called about Babcia and mentioned he needed someone to look after the children. Her father, with his love of arranging things, of setting events in motion, had sent her off. He had probably not meant to deceive her; it had just seemed better to him to present the situation in a light that would appeal to her––a vacation in Warsaw. Wiktor needed help, Hania wasn't busy, why not?

  She said goodbye quickly and hung up the phone.

  She sat down and stared into space, feeling very tired and alone. Kalina appeared in the doorway. Hania closed her eyes; she really didn't think she could deal with Kalina's freaks tonight.

  "Are you all right?"

  Hania opened her eyes. Kalina was regarding her with a look almost of concern on her face.

  "You look really tired. You should go to bed."

  Hania was so touched she almost felt like crying. "My laptop's broken," she said. "I can't…do my work."

  Kalina picked up the laptop, turned it in her hands, shook it, shrugged her shoulders.

  "I know someone who might be able to fix it."

  But in the morning Kalina didn't want to get out of bed. It must be psychological, thought Hania; so often in the morning she said she wasn't feeling well, and then in the afternoon she was just fine and chasing around with the other kids. At least Kalina hadn't brought the pacifier to the country, she thought, as she waited more or less patiently for the girl to bestir herself.

  "Okay," said Kalina around noon, "let's go find Śrubokręt."

  Śrubokręt. "The Screwdriver?"

  "That's what everyone calls him."

  They traipsed, Kalina with Hania clutching the laptop, to the end of the row of village houses. They came to a fence where a vicious-looking dog lunged at them with bared teeth until they passed through the gate, when it subsided onto its back with waving paws and wagging tail and every appearance of friendliness. They gave it a pat and passed on through a yard into a murky barn that contained a pen of young pigs with twitching noses, bobbing ears, and backs pale against the dirt. A lean, long-faced young man in dirty overalls was shoveling manure in the obscurity but paused to lean on his shovel when they came in.

  "Can you fix this laptop?" said Kalina without preamble.

  The young man came towards them, reaching for a rag on which he wiped his blackish hands. He didn't say anything, but took the laptop from Hania, held it up to his ear, and shook it. Hania was not encouraged.

  They followed him out of the barn and into the house in silence.

  He gestured to them to sit on a blue plush sofa. "Mamo! Bring tea!" he shouted.

  Then, as they sipped tea and made small talk with a thin and weather-beaten woman, he proceeded to take the laptop apart into little pieces. It will never go back together again, thought Hania as she watched his dark work-worn hands twiddling with something inside the computer––never, never. And it will be very embarrassing. Kalina will be unhappy and the young man will be unhappy, and I won't be able to write to Konstanty.

  "There," said the young man, "Look. Works fine now." He turned the screen so they could see it, then unplugged it, shut the lid, rose, and was heading out of the room, almost before Hania could close her dropped jaw.

  "Wait! How much do I owe you?"

 
"It was nothing, you don't owe me anything." He waved a dismissive hand and was gone in the midst of her thanks. He would never know, she thought, how much it meant to her to have the internet back. She tried to phrase it that way in her mind, but what she really thought was 'to have Konstanty back.'

  There was an email awaiting her:

  Respected Madam, I've had an absurd evening…

  Having informed his sister that he had decided he and Agata were not suited, she had promptly invited him to Konstancin. It had not surprised him to find a young woman had been summoned as well. Not exactly a beautiful young woman, but slender, tall, good-looking, with that stiff upper-body posture he found familiar. He didn't recognize the name, Kalpurnia something-or-other, but he was sure it would turn out that her grandmother was a Potocka or some such thing. Pelagia was careful about these matters. Pelagia knew, although he had never said so, that he had reached an age where he wanted a wife. He kissed Kalpurnia's hand, smiled his half-smile, inclined slightly towards her. Her answering half smile and incline had been so much a mirror of his own mannerism that he had actually laughed, startling himself, his sister, and the guest. He had had to exert himself to be very charming all evening to make up for the gaffe. It had been hard work, Kalpurnia's ideas and statements being all so exactly what one would expect. As they had politely discussed London and Corpus Christi celebrations, he had thought––I will marry a woman like this one, and we will have children whom we will educate carefully and teach to behave formally. They will grow up in accordance with the model, and be well-mannered, believing, and follow tradition and that's what I want.

  …I'm sure you will feel for me.

  Hania read this message over many times. He had never written so familiarly before.

  Respected Sir,…How do I feel about tradition? It entirely depends on which ones, doesn't it? The traditions of a cannibal tribe may be very long, but not worth perpetuating. If the future is going to be better, each generation has to be an improvement on its elders; if our children are only as good as we are, then we've failed, don't you think? They have to discard some of what we believe in or there's stagnation.

  Anyway, a lot of Western culture could be discarded as pernicious: Almost all folk tales, all cruel painting and sculpture, large parts of our literature, a number of kinds of patriotism, so many unjust habits…Did I answer your question, or get way off the track?

  She got way off the track, Konstanty thought, reading this email, but that's all right. It's not how Kalpurnia would have answered me, or Agata either. He did not stop to wonder why he was making comparisons, or to consider that he would not have made any had he received such a message from a male acquaintance. He read the rest of the message.

  I don't know if absurd is the right word for the last twenty-four hours, but I know they were entirely different from anything in my previous experience…Between your history and real life I feel I am learning a great deal about Poland...

  Konstanty, as he finished reading her account, was both amused and bemused. What he found most appealing, he thought, was her lack of resentment toward Maks or disdain for the villagers, her charitable attitude in a trying situation.

  8

  The neighbors continued very friendly, even if they were inclined to tell Hania, after the fact, everything she should have done whenever anything went wrong. But she listened politely. They were well meaning, and very generous. In fact, she and the children had hardly more to do in the way of acquiring groceries than Elijah, fed by ravens. Someone was always stopping by with a basket of plums, or a bunch of carrots, or an enormous smooth, green cabbage. (If she only had the imagination, she thought once, to create dinner from a bundle of radishes and three brown eggs).

  She experienced, too, that quintessentially Polish outing, a mushroom-picking expedition, little imagining how it would end. She walked in the forest with Pani Ola. There was not much underbrush and the needles of the pines were thick under their feet. The light was diffused and soft. Somehow, it was the melody of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune that came to her, but perhaps, she considered, it should really be Kilar's Polonaise, or some other piece reminiscent of the mushroom gathering in Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz, the epic poem of country life in Napoleonic times:

  Who would have guessed these figures, so serene

  And silent, were the people we have seen,

  The judge's guests, from noisy breakfasting

  Gone to the solemn rite of mushrooming?

  They moved into the mixed forest, where the paler leaves of the deciduous trees mixed with the dark evergreens, walking quietly, as in the poem, like shadows amongst the tree trunks. There were wild geraniums here, tidy three-foot-wide shrubs covered in magenta flowers. Bees hummed lazily in and out amongst the foliage. But Hania's mind, instead of anchoring itself in these surroundings and on the search for mushrooms, kept wandering off to her future. She made an effort to return to music. Music, now. It was a pity her job at the school consisted of teaching bored first graders to sing rounds––she had so much more to give. She'd like to have students like––well, like Maks. Somehow the idea of going back to this teaching job didn't seem appealing at all. At the back of her mind she knew that she'd had an idea of staying in Poland, of working at something or other. Only there were the financial reasons: she would make so much more money in New York. More by far, she supposed irrelevantly––oh, very irrelevantly––than Konstanty as a doctor in Warsaw.

  "This one," said Pani Ola, bending and picking and straightening, "is a rydz. See? It has this cap like a dish? It's very good fried, with lots of butter." They walked on, Pani Ola instructing: "These here are maślaki, they grow in little clumps, see? These are good for pickles. I'll give you a jar when I'm finished and teach you how to prepare them."

  They went on, talking a little and collecting. At the edge of a meadow Pani Ola dropped an ordinary-looking mushroom into her basket. "This one's good," she said, "and that one over there"––she pointed to an identical-looking mushroom––"is poisonous."

  "And you've never made a mistake?" Hania asked nervously, wondering if she would dare to eat Pani Ola's mushroom pickles.

  "Nie. Look, there's a big difference." Pani Ola picked up another mushroom. "See, this one's edible––" She broke off, stared at the mushroom in her hand, turned it this way and that doubtfully. "Or maybe…" Then with sudden decision: "Ach, it's probably good." And she dropped it in her basket.

  They crossed the meadow and a field and were at the end of the village. Hania saw that Maks was seated by the road with two of his friends. Pani Ola walked on toward her house, and Hania strolled over to Maks. Kalina had said that her brother had been allowed, for two years now, to run about the neighborhood unattended. Still, freedom for an almost seven-year-old was all very well, Hania thought, but they really shouldn't be this close to the road. She was going to speak rather severely, but when she got near she saw that the children had three small containers full of mushrooms. Maks jumped up when he saw her.

  "We sold two containers already!" he shouted.

  "You haven't been selling them?" said Hania with horror, taking in the scene. The Polish roads were full of mushroom pickers selling their gatherings, but Maks ––Maks knew nothing of mushrooms. Or did he?

  He looked up in surprise at her tone. He had obviously expected her to be pleased. "Yes. We sold two, like I said. We're going to split the money. Look." He pulled two crumpled złoty bills out of his pocket. "We have to sell one more so we can share it evenly." His two friends nodded, eyeing her warily, sensing her alarm and prepared to flee already. Boże, he couldn't do simple math and he was selling potentially fatal commodities. She looked at the mushrooms, lying in a heap. They looked like the last ones Pani Ola had hesitated over. Like the ordinary mushrooms found in grocery stores.

  "We picked them in the woods," one of the boys offered. "They're good."

  "Do you know?" Hania asked hopefully. Maybe, young as he was, he had some expertise. "Do
you really know which ones to pick? Did someone teach you?"

  "No. But I think they're good." He added, as if that clinched the matter. "The people who bought the other ones thought they were good."

  "How many people have bought them?"

  "Just one car stopped," said Maks with disgust, "and we've been sitting here a long time."

  Hania fought down a moment of hysteria. What was she supposed to do in this situation? Somewhere there was a car full of people, who were going to eat mushrooms that might be poisonous. Did she call some health department and ask for a bulletin to be broadcast? "People in a blue Lancia who passed through Żabia Wola at approximately 3:00 p.m.––don't eat those mushrooms!" She quailed at the thought. But she had to know.

  "Maks, were all the mushrooms like these? Just like? It's important. You have to be sure."

  Maks and his friends both nodded. She compared them to the ones she had picked with Pani Ola. They looked the same. She would hurry home, she decided. She would eat them, and if nothing happened, well and good, she would assume that the purchasers were safe too. If not, then at the first twinge she would call the authorities.

  She walked home fast, cooked at top speed and ate, forcing each bite down and thinking she was soon going to lose all interest in food of any kind. In the revolted wake of this hasty meal, she set about typing to take her mind off the consequences.

  …When Zygmunt August died without an heir at the end of 1572, both Polish and Lithuanian, Protestant and Catholic parliamentarians gathered in Warsaw in January to ensure that the existing order of tolerance was not disturbed: They swore that although they were 'dissidentes de religione,' they would 'keep the peace…and not spill blood for the sake of our various faith and difference of churches.' A suitable king was sought, but the options were not encouraging: it was between Ivan the Terrible of Russia, a Habsburg prince, and the King of France's twenty-two-year-old brother, who had just helped orchestrate the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants. This French prince, Henri de Valois, was eventually elected by a gathering of 50,000 noblemen in Warsaw, and came reluctantly to Poland, where he was unimpressed by the noblemen's jewels, their clothing, their Latin speeches, their large, cold palaces, and their strange, quarrelsome politics. He was supposed to marry the late king's sister Anna, who was over fifty––and he was polite, but made no move to do so. He retired to his room and played sick until word came that his brother's death had left the French throne empty. Then he jumped on a horse and raced for the border, threatening to knife anyone who tried to stop him. (A few months later he was crowned King of France in Reims, and two days after he was married to a princess whom he had chosen for completely non-political reasons. They were hours late for their wedding because he was busy dressing her hair.)