Swans Are Fat Too (18 page)

Even while I am typing these things, thought Hania, I am thinking not of unending death and destruction, but of the fact that Konstanty wrote these words, looked at these words, and I am wondering when I will see him again. She knew that some days he worked evenings at the hospital, so it was much less likely that she would run into him on the stairs or at the grocery shop––or even that he might––she was silly enough to hope it––ask her out for coffee again. She had the more difficulty in keeping her mind off her imaginary romance in that the home atmosphere was unpleasant.

There seemed nothing to be done. Days passed. Maks' bad temper gradually declined into a simmering boil that allowed him to function normally and even be tolerably polite, but which boded ill, Hania realized, for some time when she was least expecting it. Fortunately, she had had the foresight to check her bed that first night. Three eggs were nestled at the foot, under the covers, just waiting for her to climb in and break them. But since then nothing had happened. Hania checked chairs before she sat down, her drink before she drank it, and kept Maks as much as possible in sight. He returned to learning the piano, even if he wasn't very cooperative, and insisted on changing the rhythm and the dynamics, playing everything fortissimo and looking at her to see if she would object. Sometimes she simply walked away and closed the door on him.

She tried to persuade him as much as possible to get out of the house, hoping that exercise might blunt some of the edge of his aggression. Her persuasion mostly took the form of bribery pure and simple. "Maks, come to the park and then we'll eat ice cream."

Wasn't that the tactic her mother had used with her? Hania thought, as they sat one day in café chairs beside the sidewalk, eating chocolate ice cream. After Babcia had said she'd never make a pianist, no talent at all, and Mama had been determined to prove her wrong: "Hania, practice one more hour and you can have a big bowl of ice cream." It was a very bad idea, using food as a reward regularly. Look at the results for her. She hardly fit in this wicker chair. Well, and why did people so nearly always repeat the mistakes that had been made in their own upbringing? Like Wiktor and her father being neglected as children, being furiously resentful of Babcia for the fact, and then turning off to their own children. Or herself, a stuffed child, stuffing another.

Respected
Sir
––she would write when she got home. She began composing her letter between spoonfuls, then pushed the bowl away, deciding she didn't really want it––"Is that instinct? That the accretions of experience, good or bad, have to be passed on? Is this the reason why humanity seems to have such difficulty breaking out of old patterns of behavior? One war leading to another and on and on, when avoidance would be possible if a little reason would be used because––"

That ice cream was going to go down Maks' shirt front. She half rose, scrabbled for a napkin. Too late.

"Maks," she asked another day, "don't you have friends you could go see or invite to play with you at the park?"

"All Warsaw kids go on vacation," interposed Kalina, "they've all gone to Cyprus or Egypt or Tunisia. Except the ones who went to the sea or to the mountains."

"Everybody goes on vacation but us. Why can't we go back to Żabia Wola? We could take Bartek. She'd like it."

"Yes, and come back again on the train with all the puppies? No thank you."

"Don't say we're going to the park again. It's too boring. I won't go. There's nothing but sandbox babies in the park."

"So we'll go sightseeing."

"Nooooo!"  

"Come on, if you're good I'll buy you a nice treat. We'll go see St. John's Cathedral, where Stanisław Leszczynski was crowned king three hundred years ago." She had been typing about Stanisław that morning and her mind was full of his story as she got ready to go out. It seemed to her comforting, somehow. '
A man who would have been a good king for Poland but wasn't given a chance
,' Konstanty had called him. Stanisław had been a high-minded young nobleman when he caught the eye of the Swedish king, Charles XII, who had just invaded Poland. The king of Poland being on the run, Stanisław had been crowned in his place, but on Sweden's expulsion, he had had to abdicate and go into exile. The previous Polish king tried to have him assassinated, but he forgave his would-be assassins.––For which fact alone he should be honored, thought Hania.––Then he spent the next years playing music, painting, engaging in philosophy, and educating his daughter, who was unexpectedly invited to marry the French king, Louis XV. 

So that was another marriage, sighed Hania. It was better not to dwell on such things. She picked up her handbag, collected Maks, and left the apartment, still thinking of the past.

Years later Stanisław had been persuaded to try to regain his throne. Konstanty had written that the French prime-minister, Cardinal Fleury, had sent him off for reasons having to do with the Austrian succession and Bourbon interests in Italy and nothing at all to do with Poland. Poor Stanisław hadn't known that, of course. 

Stanisław was getting on in years, badly overweight and not very healthy…

What had Konstanty thought
on writing that, she wondered, did he feel the sense of repugnance some people seem to feel toward the obese? And yet his tone toward Stanisław was warm––

…he set out obediently for Poland in disguise, as an ordinary traveller, with a few companions, and was duly elected. Unfortunately, he was forced to abdicate again after a disastrous period of foreign intervention and the Russians' siege of Danzig. He had to flee on foot, through swamps and over great distances, all the time in danger of his life.

Hania and Maks were waiting at a stop light to cross the street. Maks tried to annoy her by repeatedly extending a foot beyond the curb.

…Having unwittingly served French interests, Stanisław was given the Duchy of Lorraine to rule, which he did with great success, making technical inventions, designing palaces and innovative gardens, promoting justice for the common man and religious tolerance, writing treatises on government, law, and philosophy; founding an Academy of Science and a public library; setting up a social security scheme for his subjects and a rudimentary but free health care system; and hosting many free thinkers banished from his daughter's court in France...

He had done all these things and been much beloved by his subjects, thought Hania, as she walked along with an eye on Maks. She'd asked Konstanty in an email if there were any statues or squares in his honor in Poland? No, he'd replied, he didn't think there were, not in Warsaw anyway. Perhaps because he hadn't won any battles? she'd asked, writing that she thought Stanisław made a good hero. She hadn't added that it made her own efforts to make the best of things seem more supportable to have a model. She liked the account of Stanisław's last days too:

He lived to be 88; in his last years he was rather feeble, but one of his former mistresses, whom he had shared with great goodwill with his prime minister, took kind care of him and he would sit by the canal with a fishing line, watching the passers-by. One morning his robe caught fire as he bent to light his pipe at the fireplace. An elderly waiting woman came to his aid and received burns as well. "Who would think that at our age we would burn with the same flame?" he joked with her, gallant to the end. His days were numbered but he remained cheerful: "you warned me not to get cold, you should have told me to look out for the heat," he wrote to the Queen of France, his daughter.

Hania hoped she'd keep her sense of humor that long. Judging by the look on Maks face she was going to need it.  He was dragging behind her.

"Where are we going?" he whined, as they walked along Krakowskie Przedmieście.

"To the Old Town."

"The Old Town bores me."

"Yes. I know. You've told me so 23 times already. But we can't stay in the apartment all the time and I haven't been there for so long. And it's full of history. Look, see this church?"

The Church of the Sacred Heart loomed above them, its tall double flight of stairs protruding onto the pedestrian mall. "Chopin's heart is buried in there. Well, not buried, but sort of encased in a pillar."

Maks looked up at her, with a scowl. "That's horrible." He had stopped and was standing still. "Why do you tell me horrible things like that?" he said in a tone of disgust.

Oh dear, she thought, maybe she shouldn't have told him. One could never tell with Maks. It
was
unpleasant––carving up bodies for sentimental reasons.

"Come on," she said to Maks, "You're right. I'm sorry I mentioned it."

"No." Maks pulled at her hand. "I want to go and see it."

A beggar came towards them, an elderly woman, well-dressed and holding out her hand. A man, dirty and ragged, who had been sitting between the stairs, climbed hastily to his feet and came towards them too, hobbling on a cane. Hania distributed coins right and left, received elaborate, insincere blessings from one, and a look of resentment from the other, and hastened into the church. Here it was all white walls, and gilt, and an atmosphere of candles and the strong scent of incense. They crossed the nave quietly, so as not to disturb the scattered figures kneeling to pray. It seemed pleasantly peaceful. I could come here, sometime, and join them, thought Hania. They stared at the pillar for a long time. There was nothing, fortunately, to be seen, but obviously Maks' imagination was working. Hania wondered what went on in Maks' mind. Was he disturbed? Was this simultaneous repulsion and attraction normal?

"Where's the rest of his body?"

"In Paris."

"Oh. Who was he?"

"Chopin?" It was her turn to stare. How, living in a household of musicians from birth could he not know who Chopin was? But naturally, if no one paid attention to children they didn't know much. "He was a composer. One of the great musicians of the Romantic period. I'm sure you've heard his music. He was born here in Poland, but as an adult he lived mostly in Paris, because Poland was controlled by Russia then. About a hundred and fifty years ago there was a revolt and some Poles tried to get rid of the Russians. The result was that a lot of people got killed"––oh dear, here they were again...

"How many?"

Really, the child was a ghoul. "Mmm. Lots. Anyway," she hurried on, "what I wanted to tell you was that the Russian soldiers were so mad about the whole thing that when they found Chopin's piano in a palace near here, they threw it out the window, onto the cobbles." She saw she had his attention. "Come on. I'll show you where, if we can find the spot."

They walked down the street. "This doesn't mean that I want to go," said Maks suddenly, as if their little conversation had been compromising. "You're still my enemy."

"Your enemy, Maks? Would you put it so strongly as that?"

Maks looked a little uncomfortable but he added, his gaze in the distance, "Yes. You'll see."

"Listen, Maks," Hania began, and then stopped. Hadn't she already tried reasoning with him?

"There's a poet called Norwid who made a famous poem about the piano. At the end he says that 'the ideal hit rock-bottom.'" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Maks. He was drooping along listlessly again, past the intricate wrought iron gates of the university, and the presidential palace––with scaffolding up again, because every president had his taste in paint––past Mickiewicz's super-sized statue behind the fence...he was walking slower and slower.

"There, Maks," Hania pointed, "In front of that church, St. Anna's, see, the king used to sit on a chair, on a high platform, specially made for him, during ceremonies. The former Tsar of Russia, Vasily Shuisky, and his brothers were brought here as prisoners from Russia, almost 400 years ago."

He wasn't listening.

"They spent the rest of their lives locked up in a castle."

He looked up quickly, but resisted the temptation to be interested. She gave up. There, standing before the Castle, in the

Royal Square, was the tall column of Zygmunt III Vasa. They reached him and she stared up, contemplating the slightly bent figure. A jail-and-Jesuit-twisted man with a large cross in one hand and an upraised sword in the other. It was a good statue, but the symbolism was offensive. They should take it down, Hania thought, even if it is a good statue, artistically speaking. Or they should break his sword or cap it, to show that no one approves of that mentality any more.

The base of the statue was crowded with skateboarders, whizzing up and down, from plinth to cobblestones, and a number of break-dancing teenagers were mashing their heads into cardboard to the sound of a radio. They seemed as far removed from old Zygmunt as possible, but one never knew, perhaps such images left marks upon the brain and influenced behavior, later, in moments of trial...

Above them the brown-orange walls of the Castle looked down stolidly below the cheerful clock tower. They crossed the cobbled square with its pastel, candy-box houses. Not for them the expensive britchkas with their round, heavy horses awaiting customers. Those are the sort of horses I'd have to ride, thought Hania, as they threaded their way through the tourists, if I were ever to get on a horse. She spared a warm fellow feeling for the creatures.

They headed for the river, passing through the old market square, where the well-to-do sat under canopies, eating salads, and on to the embankment, where the young people sat on walls, drinking beer. Below, far below, on the other side of a highway, the river stretched out, gray and reserved and windswept, to a far bank where willows grew and nothing moved but possibly birds.

Hania leaned against the railing. Her ancestors, down how many generations, had stood thus and looked at the river. There wasn't any place in America where she could stand and think that. Did it matter? She looked down at Maks and considered putting the question to him, but he was caught up in watching the bicyclists go down the hill, and she didn't dare. In spite of his current intermittent enmity, he was close, he was here, he was her cousin, and New York and all her life there seemed very far away.