Spring Will Be Ours
Page 71
He turned and looked at her, still guarded, but no longer cold.
She slipped her arm through his, and he didn’t draw away.
Ewa looked up from the candles and saw them, arm in arm. She looked at Stefan, and said: ‘I want to wish you a Happy New Year, but I can’t. I just want to say – I’ll try to help you. I won’t make it difficult, I’ll try not to.’
Stefan put his arm round her. ‘I know, Ewa, I know. You don’t have to say these things. And – and I will try to be the same. Whatever happens.’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek, and she said: ‘You are the dearest person I have ever known. Whatever happens.’
Beside them, Danuta stood feeling horribly alone. The people in the hotel had been very sympathetic. That is to say they had all said how sorry they were, and that it must be awful. Every time she turned on the radio, every time the television in the hotel lounge was on, there was talk of Poland, or a film by Wajda, or clips from the summer of last year. The whole world was watching Poland – but who was watching her? If she hadn’t met Jerzy and Elizabeth, who would she turn to now? No one knew what the Home Office was going to do. The Poles trapped in this country by martial law could stay for the moment, that was all they could say, but their status was unchanged. Danuta was still not allowed to work.
She turned to Jerzy, and said: ‘Thank you for phoning me. It was very kind.’
He smiled down at her. ‘I’m glad you came. And don’t worry too much, all right? We’ll work something out.’
Elizabeth was bending down to tend a candle. She stood up and said to Jerzy: ‘Aren’t you going to take any photographs?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and snapped open his camera case, slung round his neck. He set the flash and raised it, and looked through his view-finder. He saw his grandparents, standing close to each other, but not touching, because that was not quite dignified. Babcia said something to Dziadek, and Dziadek bent his head to hear her, attentive, courteous, very old. Jerzy snapped. He took a photograph of his parents, arm in arm, and Jan looked up at the flash and waved him away, but as if to a friend. He took Ewa, looking at Stefan, and Stefan, looking out over the candles, and he took Danuta, very pale, who wasn’t looking at anyone. On the other side of the crowd, people were beginning to sing carols. He found himself humming, and he took a photograph of Elizabeth, who didn’t know the words. He moved through the crowd, photographing the candlelit faces.
Someone began singing softly the refrain of the song that Solidarity had·made its own. ‘·Z eby Polską była Polską Z eby Polską była Polską …
So that Poland shall be Poland
So that Poland shall be Poland …’
They all sang it, over and over again, words and music floating out in the cold air above the candles, burning before the dark and shuttered Embassy, beneath the towering crosses.
Jerzy lowered his camera, and looked up at them.
13. Warsaw, January 1982
Krystyna stood with Olek in her arms, looking out of the window at the little park. The silver birches were bare, the swings at the far end empty, the ground thick with snow. Olek was pointing.
‘Park! Park!’
‘It’s cold, Olek, it’s very cold out there.’
‘Park!’
She put him down, and he began to cry. ‘Park! Go park!’
She picked him up again, and he squirmed. ‘Park!’
‘Oh, stop it!’ she snapped, and put him down. ‘Come on, maleńki, we’ll go later, all right? You’ll freeze out there.’ He toddled off to the kitchen; she could hear him opening cupboards, banging saucepans.
If Stefan had sent the snowsuit, it hadn’t arrived. Nothing had arrived for Christmas – no snowsuit, no food parcel, no letter. No letter. Everyone she knew with relatives in the West was waiting for letters. She didn’t actually know anyone whose husband was there.
Outside in the street a patrol of the milicja went by, stamping. She wanted to open the window and spit at them. She hadn’t taken down any of the posters on the wall, and she wasn’t going to. The offices of Solidarność in Szpitalna Street were locked and boarded; she knew plenty of people whose husbands had been arrested and interned. If Stefan had been here, he would almost certainly have been among them. If he ever got back here, he would almost certainly be among them. Hadn’t he stood outside his factory holding the Polish flag on the day of the one-hour strike? Hadn’t he delivered leaflets and flysheets, and plastered posters all over Warsaw?
Hadn’t everyone?
There was a joke going round, there was always a joke. The television news had gone down the drain again, and now there was a useful TV Dictionary:
2 Poles: an illegal gathering
3 Poles: an illegal demonstration
10 million Poles: a handful of extremists
Stefan would like it. She didn’t know if she was ever going to see Stefan again. There wasn’t a day she didn’t pick up the telephone and see if it was working. It wasn’t. None of them were working, she couldn’t even phone her mother. She knew Stefan would be trying to phone her, but beyond that she knew nothing. She didn’t even know his address.
Condensation had misted the window. She rubbed it, and went on standing there. From here you could see not just the park but other apartment blocks on the estate: she and Stefan used to watch the graffiti change. SOLIDARNOŚĆ! STRIKE! WE DEMAND REGISTRATION … THE RELEASE OF NAROZ·NIAK … ACCESS TO THE MEDIA. BREZHNEV: STAY HOME!
When the state of war was declared, the graffiti stopped, but only for a few days. They were soon out with paint pots, defying the curfew, defying the proclamations, with their lists of punishments. GESTAPO! was scrawled over most of those, BEKANNTMACHUNG! WARNING! The milicja went round painting it all out, but they did it very badly, like everything else.
There was a slogan all over Warsaw, probably all over the country. It had been on the wall of the block across the path, hastily written in dripping paint: WINTER IS YOURS; BUT SPRING WILL BE OURS. The pigs had tried to paint it out, but they’d obviously been in a hurry. You could still read what it said.
Copyright
First published in 1988 by Century
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Sue Gee, 1988
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