Swans Are Fat Too

by Michelle Granas

  The guests were enthusiastic and as they talked around him, Konstanty sat bemused, imagining what the monument might look like. It would have a column, surmounted by a large cross, with an engraving of a plate and silverware and the words 'In honor of the glorious act of patriotism performed by the women of Konstancin, whereby 5 German officers were sent to the hospital and 15 seriously incommoded.' And below there would be a Latin inscription: 'Caveat Eater.' Well, no. He swallowed his laughter in a hasty sip of too hot tea. He would save the joke for Hania.

  And then he remembered that he had been trying hard all day not to think about Hania. He also became aware that Kalpurnia was approving the monument and asking that her name be put down for a subscription. He was going to be asked next. No, not asked, but everyone would look at him, or consciously not look at him, and he had better seek now for a mode of escape. This wasn't the place to speak his mind, or to embarrass Pani Topocka by suggesting that he didn't think any act of violence should be commemorated. He made as if to stand, but his brother-in-law entered the room at that moment, and, out of a polite respect for his––regrettable, but we think about it as little as possible, as some of the guests would no doubt summarize it––nationality, the conversation instantly switched to other topics.

  Konstanty sank back in his seat. It was very pleasant here, really, in this comfortable room with the large fire in the chimney, the guests with their air of breeding and polite speech; one felt secure; there was a restful lack of stimulation and all the choices were already made for one. He didn't need to think about a certain girl, who could not, somehow, be whittled away to her essence, her eminently desirable mind, leaving her excess weight––and excess baggage in the shape of regrettable relatives––quite to the side.

  And yet, if it was possible to rid oneself of national sanctities, to re-evaluate who and what were worthy of honor in Poland's past, then why couldn't one free oneself of convention in a personal matter? If it was obvious that human happiness could be better served by a more penetrating view in the one case, then surely there were other areas where old ideals could profitably be abandoned? Wasn't that what Hania, in other contexts, had been telling him? He had a momentary image of walking through the door with Hania––and he stood up abruptly, without even knowing why, and went to stare into the fire.

  Hania squinted at Konstanty's handwriting:

  For Poland, World War II had three main results. One was the immense loss of life and material destruction. Another was the shift of its borders westwards: Russia took its eastern lands, the Potsdam Agreement gave Poland territories to the west in compensation, and mass migrations of populations ensued. The third was Poland's domination by Russia again, and the imposition upon it, for the next half century, of Communist rule.

  She had only a small stack of pages left. He would leave one more section in the Lanskis' mailbox; she would correct it and hand back the manuscript and then, she supposed, the intercourse between them would be entirely reduced to a nod and a sentence or two at chance meetings on the staircase. She felt bereft at the thought of giving back his handwriting. She had carefully preserved all his emails. Yesterday, when five days had passed since their outing to Wilanów and she realized that he was not going to call or write, she had opened them, and read them one by one. She hadn't been fooling herself, she thought; there were a great many of them and they did show a growing intimacy. And he had invited her out once to coffee, and once to dinner, and he had taken her to Powązki and to Wilanów. Still, there wasn't anything that gave her the right to suppose he had more than friendly feelings for her––even that last gesture, she had to admit, could fall in that category, and it was only she who was so stupid as to make something of it. The thought was bitter.

  She had only the children to distract her. School had started, and she had spent hours traipsing round stores for their supplies, dragging a reluctant Maks, who suddenly decided he didn't want to go to school.

  "I don't want to go," he stated for the tenth time as she picked up a book for him. "I don't want that book. Don't buy it."

  She wasn't as sympathetic with him as she might have been. She had her own preoccupations. "I have to. You have to. Sometimes in life we have to do things we don't like."

  "Oh, ha. You never do."

  "How do you know, Maks?"

  He changed tack abruptly. "I won't go and you can't make me."

  This was a declaration of war, and with Maks, the merest hint had to be taken seriously. Hania had to put aside thoughts of Konstanty, of the weight of Polish history, of a difficult passage in a Chopin étude, of notebooks and textbooks and pencils, of tonight's dinner, of four puppies, and pull her mind out, like Hercules emerging from the Augean stables, into the moment.

  "What is it you're particularly afraid of?"

  "I'm not afraid. I'm just not going."

  "Okay. Good. That makes it much easier for me. I was going to help you with your homework so you'd be the best student in the class and everyone would look at you and say 'there goes the smartest boy in the school' but now I won't have to. That's good." She made an effort to appear relieved and pleased.

  Maks said nothing for a moment, and then, with disgust, "Kalina says I can't cheat until I know how to read."

  "Well, there you are." Goodness, yes, all Poles can read.

  Maks kicked at pebbles and scowled at her. "Okay. You can teach me that much. But no more."

  "Okay. Agreed." Obviously her ideals were shrinking.

  "You see?" said Kalina, some time later, "We had to sell the piano. How else would we have managed?"

  Hania had to admit that Kalina was right. She wasn't finding it easy to attract students. Two little girls had come. One was skinny and uninterested; she had a blank look in her eyes and reminded Hania of a rubber pencil. The other was skinny, uninterested, hard-driven by her mother, and fitting piano lessons in between English, German, French, math, ballet, and tennis lessons. Neither wanted to learn, but she did her best with them. They nodded politely and looked out the window or at the clock while she explained the beginnings of music theory.

  Lessons with Maks went much better. Not only was he making real progress at the piano, but he was learning to read with great rapidity as well. Maks, Hania thought curiously one evening, as she stared at his head bent over a book in which he was carefully deciphering words, was the one bright spot in her desolate existence.

  On the other hand, since she had to walk with him to school, and meet him afterwards, it made it impossible to seek other work.

  Then Kalina came back from school one afternoon, threw her knapsack in a corner and herself onto the sofa, and announced that she wasn't going to school ever again.

  "What happened?" asked Hania, regarding her darkened face and trembling lip with trepidation.

  "They think because they're teachers they can speak to us any way they please; they can humiliate us and make fun of us and..." Here the rest of the sentence was lost in tears.

  Hania waited a moment, then asked "Which teach-er, and what did she––or he––say?"

  "My Polish teacher. She's really mean," Kalina said between sniffs, as she hugged a sofa pillow. "I had her last year too. She likes to make fun of people. But last year she didn't pick on me, because there was this really stupid boy in class, and she always went after him. But now he's gone and..." Kalina shrugged.

  "What? She calls on you and you don't know the answer?" Hania guessed, trying to imagine what a Polish classroom was like.

  "No. I know the answers...." Kalina pulled some threads out of the pillow. "She makes remarks about my looks." Sniff. "Like today, she says, 'What's wrong with you? Why are you sitting there like a sack of potatoes? Straighten up.' I mean, it's not her business is it, how I sit? And yesterday, she didn't like something in my essay and she says 'the only thing sloppier than your writing is the way you look.' And all the kids laughed... I'm not going again."

  "That's horrible. That's unacceptable. I'll go and talk to the d
irector. Maybe you can go into a different class."

  Kalina shrugged. "It won't do any good." But she looked rather hopeful.

  Hania went back to her typing, wondering how much of Kalina's problems with her teacher were the result of leftover thought patterns from Poland's past.

  ...The Communist regime, which was forced upon Poland by the Soviet Union after the war, ruled the country with a heavier or relatively lighter hand for over forty-five years…Perhaps initially the enthusiasm expended on rebuilding the country distracted those not directly affected by the excesses of Stalinism (there were some tens of thousands of victims)…When Stalinism ended in Poland, there was a brief period of euphoria during which censorship was relaxed, and more could be written and debated than before, but by the end of the fifties, the party was again tightening its claws.

  Hania had an image of the national emblem, the bareheaded Polish eagle––the Communists had removed its former crown––coming down out of the sky to sink its talons into the country. She deleted the line, and wrote instead: 'the party reaffirmed its hold on society.'

  Although politically, the severities of the first half of the fifties never returned, general living conditions were difficult during the entire period: for many people these included appallingly crowded living quarters and long queues for staples...The rights of citizens, enshrined in the constitution, were flouted as a matter of course by the police and the courts.

  The next day, Hania, feeling considerable apprehension but armed with a sense of duty, pushed open the glass doors of a modern school building and went in. She had called yesterday and asked for an appointment. She was to meet the directress at eleven. It was five minutes before the hour. The hallway looked like school hallways everywhere, with notices up, and some class's identical drawings behind a glass display case. There was a vague hum of muffled voices behind classroom doors. In the office, a couple of bored secretaries were drinking tea and reading magazines. They gestured towards an inner door but told Hania she'd have to wait. She stood and waited. Eleven. Eleven five. Eleven ten. She tried to catch the eye of one of the secretaries, and finally one looked up with half a glance and shrugged. "Okay, go on in pani." Hania opened the door and found a middle-aged woman in a suit, shuffling papers. She did not look up on Hania's entrance.

  Hania began uncertainly, still standing. "Hello, I'm Hania Lanska, I called yesterday..."

  The woman still did not look at her. "Sit down," she almost snarled, "you can see I'm busy."

  Hania sat patiently, hands folded in her lap, her astonishment at the woman's rudeness growing as the minutes ticked by.

  Finally, the woman put aside her papers, leaned back in her chair, and looking somewhere in the corner of the room, with her nose in the air, said "What is it that you want?"

  "I came because my cousin has a problem with her Polish teacher and as I am looking after..."

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is Hania Lanska and I'm..."

  "I don't care what your name is. What business do you have here? Are you a parent?"

  "No, I..."

  "Then on what basis have you come here to complain? How is this possible?" The woman was tapping briskly on the desk with a pen. "Pani. I am very busy. Please don't bother me anymore." She pulled some papers in front of herself again and pretended to read.

  Hania began to feel rather heated. "I may not be a parent, but I know improper behavior when I see it! Kalina's teacher's behavior is unacceptable. And so is yours." She began to rise.

  "How dare you be so uncivil to me!" the directress snapped.

  "I suppose," said Hania, "that I shall have to seek help higher up." She turned to go.

  "Well," said the directress, suddenly smoothing her hair and adopting a different tone, "there's no need to get all upset. Please sit down."

  Hania sat, her heart beating in outrage. The directress shuffled some papers. "Lanska, Lanska," she murmured, "that name sounds familiar." She suddenly rose and went to a filing cabinet.

  "Ye-es. I have a note here..." There was a considering silence. "Where are her parents?"

  Hania had to admit she didn't know.

  "You don't know? How can you not know?"

  "They're travelling."

  "It doesn't matter," said the directress, with an impatient gesture, "We'll have a phone number in our records, somewhere."

  Did they have cell phones? Of course they would. But Kalina had said not. Kalina had lied, thought Hania.

  The directress waved a slip of paper. "You haven't been looking after her very well, have you?" she added with only a hint of triumph.

  So, thought Hania, as she and Maks went into the Łazienki Park later that day. She walked with forced calmness and a feeling of hollow tranquillity. I have messed everything up. I have tried to help and I haven't. The school would contact Wiktor and Ania. And what would they do when they couldn't avoid the truth? Would they just call and make a scene or would they call her father and make a scene and expect him to pass it on? Would they come back? Somehow, she didn't think they were likely to handle the news in any very constructive manner. Now that she had decided to stay with the children and her life with them had settled into a routine, with its own small pleasures and compensations, the thought that it might be disrupted was very unsettling. What was going to happen? But there was nothing she could do.

  And in the back of her mind, always, as a subtext to every other thought, was the idea: Konstanty doesn't want to have anything to do with me.

  The trees were turning gold and red and darkening, the paths were patterned under their feet with the points of the oak and chestnut and broad maple leaves. The air was cool and full of the threat of colder weather to come. But today, in the September haze, the park was still beautiful. If they turned to the right after the duck pond, and passed over the bridge, they would come out on the far side of the lake and have the Palace on the Water ahead of them, perched on its island, with its lovely proportions and pillars and statues.

  Here, high above them, the white Belweder mansion, where Piłsudski had once ruled and Lech Wałęsa had spent his term in office, presided over a vista of lawn and lake. They went down the hill, leaving the city behind, and walked along the wide clay path by the bank of the pond.

  Hania said nothing, and Maks did not break the silence, but he kept glancing at her now and then. They stopped beside a weeping willow tree. Its graceful arms brushed narrow yellow leaves against the water. Ducks paddled in and out among the branches and a white swan floated up, dipping and bowing its arched neck.

  "Why do you look so unhappy?" Maks finally asked Hania. "I haven't done anything terrible today, have I?"

  "No, Maks."

  "Then what?"

  "I feel old and ugly and fat."

  A pause, while Maks considered this, and they began to walk again, the swan gliding beside them.

  "I guess you are old," he said at last, "but you have a nice face. I like your face."

  "Thank you, Maks, that's kind of you."

  "Swans are fat too."

  They circled the park and returned home. There was no doubt about it, she thought as they walked back up the hill, she was losing weight and gaining in condition. She wasn't even breathing hard. She had been doing so much walking it had cut her appetite too. She had no desire to eat all day and she was definitely less heavy. But what did it matter now? Even if she could skip up the stairs, she thought when they reached their building, Konstanty wasn't coming down.

  She went into the piano room. Kalina came home and opened the door.

  "Well? Did you talk to the directress? What did she say?"

  "I'm afraid I didn't do any good. I think she intends to call your parents."

  Kalina stood still for a moment in the doorway, her school bag bulging over one shoulder, her stomach protruding over her jeans. Hania couldn't read her face.

  "They had to know sometime," she added tentatively.

  "But not from the school!"

&nbs
p; "I'm sorry, Kalina," Hania whispered.

  Kalina shrugged. "Fine." She turned away with an air of unconcern, closing the door rather too forcefully.

  Hania began to play the piano. Ave Maria, with her own variations.

  In the apartment above, Konstanty crossed to the window and unhooked it, pulling it open enough so he could lean out. The cold autumn evening came in with its scent of rain and leaves. He struggled to catch the music. The notes came to him individually, in little groups, some he missed. He imagined Hania in the room below, at the piano, with her brown hair down her back. He didn't know why he hung on each note so. He had made it clear to himself that he wasn't interested in the girl. And because he had seen, in her eyes, that moment when he had touched her cheek, that she––he didn't want to think about it. He straightened abruptly, brought the casements together sharply, and, feeling unhappier than he could remember feeling, snapped the latch into place.

  Maks came into the room. He stood beside Hania with his no-nonsense air. He was probably up to some mischief, she thought.

  "You love the piano, don't you?" he asked.

  "Yes. Once I loved it very much. I hardly thought about anything else."

  "Do you love the piano more than you love me?"

  She was startled. Did he have some premonition of loss? Had Kalina told him something? Did he think she loved him? Did she?

  "It's not the same thing, Maks. One could never feel for music the way one feels for a person." There, she had admitted it. She held love highest. If she had had a choice between love and a career as a concert pianist she would have chosen love. Hands down. She wasn't going to have either, but that was another matter. "Yes, Maks, I love you much more than the piano." And it was true. She reached out to give him a hug but he recoiled from her grasp, adjusted his glasses, and said, "So that's okay then…Are you going to teach me something new? Or am I just going to stand around here all day?"

  17