Swans Are Fat Too (23 page)

"Tato, I have to be back in New York…"

"So I'll call this Szopecki and tell him that's all settled then, shall I? And he can tell Wiktor and Ania."

"Who's Szopecki?"

"I don't know. Gerhardt gave me his number. I think Ania and Wiktor are going to Turkey with him."

"To Turkey? What for?"

"To rest, I suppose, what else? You should go sometime. You know it's not good the way you never get out and see things."

"Yes, well…"

"So how are you? How are things? Did you know it's very hot here today?"

"Kalina's pregnant and I'm in love with a man who will never think of me." She could say it in perfect security. It would never go in.

"Good, good. So that's fine then. Did you know that Ania and Wiktor are going to a spa in Turkey? Wiktor's so tired after all the work he's done this summer that they need to rest. It's someplace called…let me see…well, someplace with a Turkish name."

"Yes, Tato."

"Mamo, it's Hania."

"Haniu,
kochanie
, how are you? Hold on a minute, I have to let the dogs out."

Hania waited for her mother to come back on the line.

"So, what's happening? How do you like Poland?"

"I like Poland very much. It's…just…I have this problem...these problems..."

"Say it straight out, because––wait a moment…" There was a conversation in the background, something about a truck and bales of hay. "Okay, sorry, I'm back on. Wayne's going out and I had to speak to him first. So, what's up?"

"There's this man…"

"In Poland?"

"Yes. I…"

"Oh Hania, you really don't want to get involved with a man in Poland. I hope it's not too late to tell you that?" Her mother's tone slid from worried to irritated, "You know, I really can't understand this fixation you have with Poland."

"That's not the problem…I…"

"Well, what does he do? Could he find a good job in America? You know, it's not all that easy with immigration. You wouldn't believe the problems we had."

"But I don't think he'd want to leave. In any case, that's not the point…"

"Not want to leave? Is he crazy? How could anyone not want to leave Poland?"

"Mamo, Poland isn't like it was. It's completely changed. Lots of things are good here…"

"Like what?"

"There's no death penalty, and the murder rate's quite low, and there isn't a huge jail population, and mostly people don't go around shooting each other, and men and women like each other, and if the health system's far from perfect, at least they're trying to provide one––but that's not what I called to talk about, I…" She thought of the moderate peasant prosperity of Żabia Wola, of the chic denizens of Krakowskie Przedmieście, of weeping willows draping the banks by the Palace on the Water. She would never make her mother understand.

"Hania, please. We can argue about Poland some other time––this is going to be a very expensive call for you. How's the piano playing?" But her mother wasn't listening. Hania could see her quite clearly across the distance; she had her hand half over the receiver and was giving instructions to her husband. Hania could see him too: a kindly man, who always wore boots and a Stetson, even to his wedding, even indoors. He called Hania a 'gal,' had nothing whatever to say to her, and tried to hide the fact by making jokes about 'Pollocks' and about taking her horseback riding.

"It's fine." She murmured, said goodbye and hung up. There was no one to talk to.

The phone rang again under her hand. She picked it up mechanically and was jolted by the sound of Konstanty's pleasant-timbered voice. Almost, she was too nervous to say hello back.

"I was calling to apologize for being so abrupt on the stairs this morning."

Oh, so he wasn't angry. She almost cried with relief. But, of course he wouldn't be angry with her for something she couldn't help. She'd have thought less of him if he had. She could reason like this now that he'd called. 

"It's just that I had to get to the hospital rather quickly. I hope your crisis with the children wasn't too serious?"

"No. Not serious. Just…something I couldn't leave." She couldn't tell him about Kalina. What sort of a family would he think them? He would know eventually, of course, but by then she'd be back in the States, and it wouldn't matter so much…But why was she being so 19
^th
-century? Teenage mothers were the commonest thing in the world. Still, she didn't think it would be a neutral fact to him.

"Do you have plans for tomorrow evening? Shall we try again?"

Hania put down the phone, her heart bubbling with gladness, and something like Tchaikovsky's
1812 Overture
––the part after the cannons––playing in the background of her mind.

He had said––she heard the smile in his voice––that this time, he would knock on her door, and they would walk together. He would come at eight.

At seven-thirty she was taking a shower. In the shower one hears nothing. She didn't like that. Maks had been unusually quiet all day. She turned off the water a number of times but she didn't hear anything. She was rinsing the last of the soap off when suddenly someone was knocking vigorously on the bathroom door.

"Who is it? What's happened?" she called.

It was Maks, squeaking, "Come, come quick! Burglars! Burglars have come into the apartment!"

"Maks!" she called, "Please leave me alone. I'm not falling for anything like that!"

"But come quick!" he was whispering loudly and urgently through the keyhole. "They're going into your room!"

"Maks, please."

Silence.

She dried herself and climbed out of the tub. Strange, when she first came to Poland the tub had seemed unusually high, in an odd European way, and hard to get into, and now she hopped right over without a problem. Maybe she had just got used to it, or maybe running after Maks was making her more agile. She had left her bathrobe in the hasty flight from Żabia Wola, so she had nothing to wrap around herself but an old beach towel she'd found in a cupboard. It made a rather insufficient covering, but she only had to reach her bedroom. She tucked the towel in modestly and was reaching for the door handle when Maks began to knock again.

"They're taking your clothes."

"What?"

The towel came undone and fell to the floor. She scrabbled for it, slung it around herself, and ripped open the door. Maks was standing there, head tilted slightly back, holding his glasses to his nose.

"Why didn't you hurry?"

"Maks, I don't like this sort of trick."

"Suit yourself, I warned you."

She hurried along to the bedroom. She had left the new dress hanging on the front of the closet. It was gone. She jerked open the closet door. There was nothing inside, not even hangers.

"Maks!" she shouted. "Maks! Where are my clothes?"

He appeared in the doorway. "I told you. Some burglars came in and took them."

"What nonsense. Tell me where my clothes are."

"I can't. I don't know where they took them."

Hania controlled herself with difficulty. "And what did they look like, these burglars? Like one seven-year-old boy named Maks?"

"No. One was sort of tall, and had blond hair, a nose like this, and a kind of squinty eye." He squinched up an eye. "The other was very large, with big arms, and…he was bald…They were wearing black caps."

"I suppose they were in desperate need of a size-vast collection of dresses." She glanced at the clock. Fifteen till. "Maks, it isn't funny anymore. Where are they?"

He raised his hands in a gesture of ignorance.

All right, she thought, they had to be in the apartment somewhere. She began to look. She tore her bedroom apart: looked under the bed, behind the closet, picked up the seat cushions. She ran into the next room, and searched it similarly, then Maks and Kalina's room.  She threw boxes of toys onto the floor, jerked blankets off beds. Kalina was asleep on her bed, but woke up and said drowsily that she hadn't heard anything.

"Maks says burglars took my clothes."

"What nonsense," Kalina murmured, half asleep still, "he probably threw them out the window."

Hania ran and looked out all the windows. Nothing to be seen on the sidewalk. Where could they be? She ran, towel clutched around her, into the piano room, lifted the piano lids––nothing. Five till.

"Maaaaks!" she cried in despair, "Don't do this to me! Where are they?"

"Burglars took them. Maybe," he said, taking off his glasses and polishing them with an air she could only suppose he'd learned from a James Bond movie, "next time you'll pay attention to me."

She suppressed a strong urge to slap him. Two minutes till. It was hard to search while holding onto a towel, but she was a one-armed wonder.

The door-bell rang as she was straddling boxes in the
służbówka
.

She scurried to Kalina. "Kalina, I can't go to the door. Please, you'll have to go let Mr. Radzimoyski in––no, I mean, don't let him in––tell him what happened."

Kalina groaned but didn't get up. Hania leaned over and shook her. "Please, Kalina, please go now, before he thinks I've stood him up again."

Kalina stumbled to her feet and padded down the hall to the entryway. Hania, holding her breath to listen, heard her say good evening, and then:

"Hania says to say she can't come out tonight." A long pause.

What? Thought Hania, she isn't going to explain? She's going to leave it at that? Feeling intensely ridiculous, she called from down the hall, "Because somebody took all her clothes!"

She couldn't imagine how he would look on hearing such words. Would he laugh? Would his face take on a thoughtful look? Whatever, she was sunk beyond hope of recall.

Kalina was saying, in her sleepy voice. "Maks says burglars came in and took all Hania's clothes. She was in the shower, I think. At least, I guess that's why she's been running around half-naked, shrieking…But I don't know, I was asleep."

Aaaaah, thought Hania. I'm going back to New York and I'm never coming to Poland again. Never, never, never.

"Would you ask Maks to come here, please?" she heard Konstanty saying to Kalina. She retreated down the hall; she didn't want to know anymore. When she finally took her hands off her ears, she heard the door click open. She listened. There was a sound of thudding on the stairs, and then she heard Konstanty saying to Kalina. "Please tell your cousin that I will be back in fifteen minutes." There was the click of the door shutting again, and then Kalina calling, "Hania, Hania, he's gone and Maks has brought your clothes back! He put them in a bag and took them to the attic."

Kalina helped her iron the dress again. She was ready when the doorbell rang.

They were walking side by side along the street. "How did you convince Maks to give them back?" she asked.

"I reasoned with him. I told him that you were his friend and that you always tried to help him and he should try and help you. I told him I was sure he wouldn't want to make you feel bad…things like that."

"And it worked?" she looked at him in amazement.

"No," he shook his head rather ruefully. "I'm sorry to say, it didn't appear to move him a jot. Seeing which, I remained very calm; I told him I would call the police, that a detective would come and take fingerprints on the closet, etc."

"And that worked?"

"No. He said that burglars wear gloves and that his fingerprints would be all over the house––it wasn't proof."

"Ah, that sounds like Maks."

"So then I asked him if he'd heard of a truth serum? And he began to look a little less certain and asked if it were true. I couldn't lie to him, but I said I had a large syringe upstairs…" his hands made the gesture of a foot-long needle, "and that was sufficient… I wish it had been the gentler methods that worked; it would have fit my worldview better, but there you are…He's quite a character, is Maks."

"Ye-es," said Hania, without enthusiasm. "I suppose he'll grow up to be a big-league criminal, or a politician. Probably both."

He looked down at her and smiled, "That's a very pretty dress."

"Thank you." She blushed.

14

Some Poles hoped Napoleon would restore Poland's independence. In 1797 the Polish legions were formed in Italy and fought for Napoleon until only a couple regiments were left as soldiers of the Kingdom of Naples. (Amongst other employment, Polish troops had been sent against Italian peasant uprisings, against the Papal States, and, in 1802, to put down a slave rebellion in Haiti. So strange are the uses of soldiers.) In 1806, Napoleon reached Warsaw and established the Duchy of Warsaw. Polish volunteers rushed to his armies again. After Napoleon's 1812 disaster, Poland was again partitioned between the usual powers…

Hania paused, considering how to rewrite the next series of failed insurrections. One in 1830 was ignited when a group of cadets attempted to assassinate the Tsar's brother. Constantine escaped from a Warsaw palace in women's clothing, and later was willing to grant an amnesty, but, while some Poles wanted to negotiate, others were unwilling. The country fell into chaos and the resultant war with Russia lasted till September 1831. The constitution was suspended, repressive measures taken, and 9,000 persons went into exile.
Then there was another uprising in Galicia in 1846, during which the peasantry turned on the insurgents; and––she began to type:…
In 1863, in spite of the fact that Poland had been enjoying increased liberty and growing economic and cultural attainments, grievances still existed, and another rebellion against Russia was attempted. It too was unsuccessful. The result was that 20-30,000 Poles died, 10,000 were sent to mines in the Urals, and 40,000 were sent to Siberia.

Death and food for patriotic poets, Hania thought; all this dreary history was doing nothing to raise her spirits. Somehow she wanted to go far, far away––maybe to Siberia––and hide. But why? Yesterday evening had been one of the best evenings of her life; she and Konstanty had talked and he had even laughed and there had always been understanding, even when they disagreed, and no lack of topics. And yet she had risen today with a sense of despair. She was falling deeper and deeper in love, and she was quite aware that on his part––she swallowed––on his part…There was no 'on his part.' He might like talking to her, but he would be shocked by the very idea of a connection between them.