by Frank Tuohy
‘I am interested,’ Rose said plaintively.
‘Or very polite.’
‘No. One gets tired of being polite.’
‘Nobody can talk politely about what has happened to us,’ Adam said.
‘But it has happened everywhere, surely. Not just in Krakow.’
‘It means more in Krakow. After all it was the old capital, it was one of the outposts of the West against barbarism and it held out against everyone from the Tartars onwards. And in 1848 it rebelled against three empires at once, can you imagine that? But in 1944 your two English-speaking empires handed us over to the barbarians. So it is a sad place now. You will see.’
‘Why sadder than anywhere else?’
‘You will see. Perhaps it was better that nothing was left of Warsaw. In Krakow you can still see the signs and relics and memorials of what we once were. Everywhere else it has all gone.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Yes, it has all gone. We are just survivors, by mistake. Our neighbours always wanted to destroy us and next time they will do it properly.’
As she had with Mirek Sypniewski, Rose found that this sort of conversation dragged one deep into the speaker’s orbit. She could barely hear what Adam was saying, being deafened both by the engines and by the physical impact of his presence. She was afraid that it was his vehemence that gave him all his attraction and if he stopped addressing her he might somehow deflate and become another of the pudding-featured passengers who filled the rest of the seats of the aeroplane. But while he talked, he was wonderful. The Rudowskis were forgotten. She had left their world of domestic irritation and entered one of tragedy and glory.
The plane began to wheel and descend into the darker evening. They felt a jolt of warm air over the iron foundries of Nowa Huta.
There was a bus beside the hangar. Rose and Adam sat waiting for it to leave. He had given her his vision; he looked tired.
‘You are staying at Francuski?’
‘No, what is that?’
‘The Hotel.’
‘No. With friends.’
He speculated a little about this. ‘Seeing how the poor live?’
‘But why are they so poor in Krakow?’ she asked. ‘You said they had no war damage.’
‘And they didn’t have the money which rebuilt the other towns. In any case, everybody is poor. Terribly poor. You cannot imagine.’
‘I try. I’ve been staying with my sister.’
‘They are rich. They both can work.’
‘They seem poor to me.’
‘To you, of course. You’re Fanny—’ he raised a placatory hand – ‘No, don’t get worried, please. You – are – like – Fanny Price: “Though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.” Poland can have no pleasures.’
Though she already felt she knew him extremely well, she puzzled over this as she had over his pipe. Mansfield Park, however, was an aspect of his profession. Perhaps his knowledge of English slang also was.
‘I’m not looking for pleasures. You think because you’ve all suffered so much here, other people are indifferent. But we do try to feel. At least I do. I must. And I think there are good things, as well as bad.’
‘Wait till you have seen Krakow, seen how some of the old people live, people like Magda Wahorska, the Palewska girls and their mother, the old Princess. They had everything, remember, and they lost it all.’
She was happy and excited by the antagonism between them. But she did not react to the name of Mrs Wahorska, the sister of Mrs Kazimierska. She was getting used to such conversations full of little gulps of silence, of things you preferred not to say.
Chapter Twenty-two
The two women rose early and were out to Mass in the Old City. On their return Antosia, the maid, folded away the blankets from the pair of hard chaises longues they slept on, and went into the corridor to light the gas. Her mistress moved towards the door of the second room and put her ear to it, listening for the sounds of the girl sleeping. After a few moments she tapped and opened the door.
Rose had been awake for some time, had heard them go out and stayed wondering what to do and not wishing to be in the way. It was indeed difficult to move around, the rooms being so much cluttered with furniture that if you were to shift one object it would appear to blaze a trail of prying curiosity. So she stood still, looking out at the roofs and bell-towers of the city, and thinking about Adam and about Tadeusz.
At the sight of Rose, standing in the sunlight, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown and brushing her hair, the two women made noises of admiration. Antosia hurried off to the kettle which was drumming and blowing in the corridor. She returned with tea and bread and butter.
‘It is excellent tea,’ Mrs Wahorska said. ‘We have already, I am afraid, been tasting a little.’
‘But it is for you. Please do not waste it on me, I can have it any time.’
The old woman’s eyebrows were raised at this and she observed Rose without friendliness; evidently, she had not forgiven the awkwardness of the previous evening.
The difficulty had begun at the bus stop. Adam had said good-bye abruptly; it seemed he was certain of seeing her again, though she had no idea when or where this might be. She was alone and therefore herself unmistakable when the two shabbily-dressed females approached her. Remembering Kazimierska’s great height Rose headed for Antosia, who was large and square, but a brisk angry little woman interposed herself. She was furious and there was to be no laughing it off. While they walked across the public gardens, one difference indeed became clear. The former Countess Wahorska had still a long young stride, like an English girl brought up in the country, while the servant took the waddling steps of the bundle-carrying peasant woman. But a greyness of poverty had taken away all other distinctions; Adam was right: this was worse than either Biala Gora or Warsaw.
Later, unpacking her suitcase, Rose said: ‘I have brought you a present of tea.’
Her hostess examined the packet with suspicion. ‘C’est du thé, ou du Lipton?’
‘Thé,’ said Rose, who had been unaware of this distinction. ‘Chinois.’
‘You do not take our tea? You wish to drink only this?’
‘No, it is for you. I brought it from England.’
‘I find that curious, since you did not then know that we should meet.’
This morning nothing had changed: Rose was meant to ask questions and do as she was told. Besides, Mrs Wahorska spoke French, that domineering language, far better than she did.
‘This room belongs to my daughter. Up to now, I am allowed to keep it. But perhaps someone who does not like me will say something, and I shall have strangers put here.’
‘Strangers?’
‘Perhaps a whole family. One cannot know.’
‘But won’t your daughter come back?’
Antosia brought another glass and a saucer with rounds of lemon.
‘Look, Antosia has found a lemon for us. She has a cousin at a State Grocer’s Shop.’ Rose’s question remained to be answered. ‘My daughter has been in Paris for three years. She intends to prolong her scholarship.’
‘I see. What does she do?’
‘Art history, naturally. My niece Halina who comes this afternoon, also. Halina works in the museum this morning and so you must put up with me. I have my lessons in the afternoon and evening. That photograph is of my son. It is not a good one but we never thought, in 1939, that there would be no opportunity of taking others.’
While she was talking a succession of bangs and clattering sounds echoed from the house beneath them.
‘Those are the workmen.’ The old woman suddenly acquired an air of extreme constraint and embarrassment. ‘I regret I must tell you, they use our lavatory in the corridor, it is rather disagreeable. If you would prefer Antosia can bring—’
‘No, of course not,’ Rose said quickly. ‘What are they doing?’
‘They are transforming our house into a museum for the Workers�
� Party.’ The first warmth came into the old lady’s face. ‘Imagine, my dear, this was my father’s house. My great-grandfather built it. But, you know there is a point where one cannot complain any more but only laugh. So I had my friends’ – a string of names followed, including the ones Adam had mentioned the evening before – ‘for my name-day and I made the announcement that they are transforming the house into a Museum for the Workers’ Party and we all laugh. We cannot help it, we cannot stop laughing. Staszek Kopczinski, he is my nephew and a very brilliant man, said: “They put all our things in museums and everybody goes to admire them, but all they will have for their own place will be a few photographs and some old pamphlets which everyone laughs at because they are in such bad Polish!”’
The old woman sat back and wiped weak sardonic tears from her eyes.
‘When you are ready we may go out. Later Antosia will prepare dinner for us.’
‘I want to invite you. I was told the hotel restaurant is good.’
The other looked as if she were being offered charity, which was unwelcome.
‘Please come. If it’s true about it being good, I mean.’
‘That, I cannot tell you. For many years none of us could afford it, and we did not like to be seen there with foreigners. Now perhaps it does not matter for what more can they do to us?’
After Rose had dressed, her hostess reappeared in a coat and hat, both trimmed with fur which seemed not merely old but to have come from sick animals in the first place. However, heavily powdered and rouged as she was, the old lady managed to look both fierce and spritely.
‘Today we will use the grand staircase, where the men are working.’
‘Won’t they mind?’
The old lady snorted.
They went through a doorway and down some stairs which gave on to the mezzanine floor. The house dated from the late eighteenth century, and marble columns rose on each side of the grand staircase. Across the wall at the head of the stairs, there had already been set up a sepia ‘photomural’ of Lenin, flourishing his fist over a sea of cloth caps.
Mrs Wahorska took Rose’s arm and they slowly descended the grand staircase, which was still protected by sacking. At the bottom, in the places formerly occupied perhaps by flunkeys, five workmen were watching. One of them wore a paper hat like the Carpenter in ‘Alice’ and the others had embroidered skull caps. A sort of bloom of dust and whitewash lay over their hair and eyelashes and blond skin. They leaned back against the marble balustrade and watched step by step the descent of the girl in her smart foreign clothes and the bent, shabby figure beside her. As they got nearer, Rose expected the workmen to smile or say good morning. They were as silent, however, as their prototypes in the photomural up above. It was certain they knew who the old lady was but it was of no importance to them, and the indifference, which had been handed out in this house through the generations, was being given back again with a long stare of their little pale eyes.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘Today there is fish, that is because it is not Friday. No fish is allowed to be served in restaurants on Friday. You see, they are rather childish sometimes, the people who look after us.’
After this disquisition, the old lady went back to reading the menu, while Rose watched the surrounding tables. Next to them a delegation of Chinese, dressed like members of the Salvation Army, sat completely silent while a woman guide addressed them in squeaky English on the subject of industrial development. On the other side some shabby men in grey sweaters with zip-fasteners were talking German; beyond them was a group who looked like Arabs. There were little silk flags on the tables, unrecognizable, of recent countries. One table had no flag and there Adam Karpinski was sitting with two people. He gave no indication of having seen Rose.
Mrs Wahorska began discussing the menu with Rose, who, agitated and hardly concentrating, found herself committed to herring in sour cream, beetroot soup, and chicken à la polonaise. After the fatigue of a morning of museums they came to an even quicker agreement that they should drink vodka.
Rose still wondered whether he had seen her or not. Among the confusion of languages in the restaurant, his presence there tingled and throbbed like some sound just above the range of the human ear.
Her back was turned to him, but he surely must have noticed her when Mrs Wahorska and she first arrived. If he had, there might be some reason that had prevented him from attracting her attention. The woman with him was smart and not bad looking, the man squat and unattractive. Were they married? Intellectuals here got the prettiest women, one had been told. Perhaps, however, they were foreigners like herself, even though there was no flag on their table.
The herring arrived, masked in its sauce of cream and chopped onion, and with it the little carafe of vodka. They drank to each other, and the old woman tasted the herring appreciatively.
‘That is good. You understand, we do not eat so well on what we make by giving lessons and doing translations. Also, every week I give something to the little nuns at the convent.’
By the time cups of dark red soup were brought, the old lady beamed and glistened: the luncheon was being a success. As they drank another vodka, Rose heard Adam’s voice invade a moment of silence: he was speaking in Polish, but for nearly a minute she could hear nothing of what Mrs Wahorska was saying.
‘Afterwards my niece Halina will come here. She will take you to see some more churches. The museums will be closed, I think. Halina knows a great deal about our churches, more than I. She is a nice girl but much too serious, I am afraid. Not like my daughter, who is always cheerful. But then, evidently I shall never see my daughter again.’ She blinked away a wave of unguarded emotion, took up her glass again and fixed her gaze on Rose.
‘And you, you are Catholic? That is strange for the English, I think.’
Rose was puzzled at this. This morning she had crossed herself going into the Cathedral by the Wawel palace; the sharp-eyed old woman had noticed it. Now Rose went rather pink, as she used to when explaining about this.
‘My mother was a convert. When I was a child she sent me to a Convent school. It was during the war.’
‘And you?’ The improbable painted eyebrows were raised.
‘My father wanted us to be free to choose.’
‘And what have you chosen?’
‘Nothing.’
Disapproval is middle class; the upper classes prefer to employ a sudden and complete loss of interest. Mrs Wahorska began to attack the small chicken-half on her plate and the bowl of fresh cucumber beside it. Rose thought that she was about to speak again but when nothing came of these preparatory mumbles, which were due to nothing more than the violent tussle with fragile bones, she herself said: ‘Of course, it is different here, I expect.’
‘You are correct.’ The old woman wiped her mouth and said fiercely: ‘In Poland if we had lost our religion, we would have disappeared, we too. It defined us. Now they are taking it away from our children and they know what they are doing. We will disappear, we will become a part of Russia or perhaps a part of nowhere. Here we are not free to choose. We cannot choose a nothing.’
‘I suppose not.’ There were many objections to this totalitarian attitude but Rose was not in a position to make them. The lunch continued, with Rose no longer a person of much importance; she was rapidly demoralized by the sceptical smiles with which the old lady greeted her further attempts at conversation.
When Adam came out of the restaurant, Rose was sitting alone in the foyer of the hotel while Mrs Wahorska telephoned her niece.
‘You see, we must always meet. Krakow is like that.’ He made a gesture of holding a clutch of eggs or a bird’s nest. ‘Are you having a nice time with that old thing?’
‘No. Awful,’ she said vehemently, and then felt guilty.
She hoped he would stay but already he was moving off.
‘Don’t let her bore you too much, will you?’
With this unhelpful remark, he left her; his two companions
were already waiting in the car outside. Rose saw him go with a pang of loss. There was no prospect of escape from Mrs Wahorska for another three days.
Rose was incredibly far from home, and now remorseful at leaving the Rudowskis and at launching out into an indefinite world of strangers. She should not have deserted them in the short time they would have of her in the whole of their lives, with so much that still needed straightening out. With all this in mind, she forced a bright smile at Mrs Wahorska when she returned.
The other rejected this as the silliness of a person who lacked any interest to catch the attention. ‘Halina will be here directly.’
They took up each other’s company like a burden that had to be toted around for some reason forgotten to both of them.
Chapter Twenty-four
‘Et ce Monsieur Armstrong-Jones?’
‘Well, I don’t—’
‘Marysia Strelicka is now not minding so much her daughter marrying a man of no family. If the sister of the Queen of England may do it, you understand—’
Halina, the art-historian niece, had brought her guest to somebody’s name-day party. It took place in a couple of tiny rooms, near some marshalling yards at the farthest edge of the city. The two rooms were crowded with elderly people, whose whitish distinguished look, as though already partly of commemorative stone, made them seem remote from everything else. In fact, whether traditional academics or survivors of the pre-war aristocracy, they did their best to involve themselves at every opportunity with the arguments of the age: they wanted to feel that they were endangered and possibly dangerous. Because of this, though their lives were extremely hard, they were never bored.
Their hostess found no satisfaction in Rose’s answers about the Royal Family and turned away. She was glad to have captured other visitors from outside the circle of a provincial town; the writer Bogdan Malczarek, recently returned from the West with his wife, who was rather less interesting; and Adam Karpinski from Warsaw, with flushed face and jabbing forefinger, holding forth to a group and expressing the exact mixture of knowledge and alarm, the painful bite down on to the rotten tooth of fact, which they all appreciated so much.