Pleased as I was with this turn of events, I could not help being concerned over how much the season pass and Irenka’s salary would be depleting our finances. When I voiced this to Mother, as we left the pool area, her response was that we have lunch at a café on our way back to the hotel.
This would be a further, non-essential expense. It was like the time in Lisbon, when Mother had gone out shopping for new dresses to wear on the ship.
The café had tables out on the sidewalk and very large menus, and Mother said I could order absolutely anything I wanted. I ordered a ham sandwich, and Mother only ordered coffee and lit a cigarette.
“I have a job with Sra. O’Brien,” she announced, suddenly. I remembered her mentioning the possibility of one when we were with Sr.Segiera.
“Wh. . . at are y. . . ou d. . . oing?” I asked.
“I am helping her to write her memoir.”
Well, this certainly took some pressure off our financial situation.
Then Mother said, “Well, I guess Ernesto doesn’t like us as much as we thought he did, does he?”
The statement had taken me totally by surprise, and I realized that while this assuaged my concern over the security of our diamonds, I was actually disappointed, since I like the senhor.
“A gentleman would have called by now,” she said.
“M. . aybe he’s v. . . ery b. . . usy,” I said.
“You liked him, didn’t you?” Mother said.
I shrugged my shoulders in response.
In the past, Mother would have admonished me for shrugging my shoulders, but recently she hadn’t. I was pretty sure that the reason was that she didn’t want people to hear me stutter. Or to hear me herself.
The very next day, when Mother drove off to Sra. O’Brien’s again, in the black car, Irenka and I made our way to the pool, hand in hand. School being in session, there were very few people there. One muscular lifeguard sat in a chair raised several feet over our heads, reading a newspaper. In one corner of the shallow end, I proceeded to give Irenka her first swimming lesson.
I had seen enough swimming instruction in Yurata so that I knew what to do. Standing in chest-deep water, I showed Irenka the breaststroke arm action again. When she seemed to have mastered that, I held on to the edge of the pool and demonstrated the frog kick. Then I had her do the same. But when I demonstrated the arm action and leg action together, as I made my way across the pool and then told her to do the same, Irenka would not lift her feet off the pool bottom.
“J. . . ust j. . . ump f. . forward and s. . . tart s. . . swimm. . . ing,” I said, but she refused to try.
I remembered my own solo flight in the ship’s pool. “J. . . ust t. . . ry it. Y. . . ou’ll s. . . e it’ll w. . . ork.”
“I’ll try it tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve learned enough for one day.”
It wasn’t a matter of too much to learn. She had already learned it. All that remained to do was to put what she already knew into action. “B. . . B. . . But I t. . . t. . . tell y. . . y. . . you that it it w. . . will w. . . w. . . work!” I said, impatient with her timidity and frustrated by my own difficulty at expressing myself.
And suddenly there was a man standing there with us and saying,”Permit me, Miss,” in Portuguese. He reached out for Irenka’s hands, which she obediently gave him. Then he began pulling her forward, away from me, indicating that she should do her frog kick. She did as he directed, and he continued pulling her around by her hands. Then, when Irenka was on her feet again, the man put his hands on her waist and indicated that she should put both her arms and her legs into action, while he held her from sinking.
With this assistance, Irenka lay down in the water and proceeded to follow his directions. Except that, instead of the frog kick that I had taught her, her feet began to flutter up and down in the water.
“No, no, do the kick you were doing before,” the man must have been telling her, though I couldn’t understand or even hear everything he was saying.
I saw Irenka’s arms stop their action and, as the man still held her waist, resume the proper kick. The man nodded his head in approval and said something else.
Irenka began her arm motion again, and her feet immediately went back to their flutter.
The man stood Irenka up again. Then he lay down and demonstrated the proper coordination of arms and legs in the breaststroke, as he swam a little ways away and then back to her.
I saw Irenka nodding her head, and then they resumed their position with him holding her from sinking. On his instructions, Irenka’ legs began performing the proper kick, and the man seemed to approve. But the moment she started her arms moving, her feet resumed their flutter.
The man said something sharp and let go of Irenka’s waist. Irenka immediately began sinking to the bottom.
“Oh! Oh!” I heard her cry, with the second
oh
cut in half by water entering her mouth.
I rushed as fast as I could toward her through the water, as the man reached down to pull her out. But Irenka’s feet found the bottom before either of us reached her.
She was spitting water as she stood up, and I could tell by the tilt of the man’s head that he must be apologizing. Irenka, I think, was apologizing as well. Finally, they shook hands, and she walked back to where I was standing, while he dove into the water and swam a splashy “crawl” to the far end of the pool.
“I’m so stupid,” Irenka said. “I made him very angry.”
“N. . . n. . . no, n. . . n. . . no, I. . . I. . . renka!” I protested, losing all control over my stutter. “Y. . . ou aren’t!” But, at the same time as I was saying that, I was realizing that, maybe, there was something about my sweet Irenka that was very different from other grownups.
That evening, in bed, I re-thought our experience on the beach the other day. It was hard to believe that Irenka had actually had said the things about horns and tails. Could I have only imagined her saying them? Or did she really believe them? Even if I hadn’t seen that my baby cousin had no horns and had not felt around my own head for scars, I would have known that the idea of horns and tails on people was preposterous. Just as I had known for years that there were no witches or goblins. I had known it not only because Kiki had told me so, but because it just wasn’t reasonable. Oh, in moments of stress, I had doubted that conviction as I lay alone in bed, surrounded by provocative wall-shadows. But I was a child under stressful circumstances, and in the light of day, my certainty had always been restored. On the other hand, Irenka was a grownup who should have known that such things weren’t possible. What she believed was a childish fantasy that she should have abandoned years before. She should have abandoned her fantasy years before I abandoned mine, even. And, yet, there she was.
There was, in my mind, an order, a system, into which things fit as they related to one another. And my new impression of Irenka was upsetting it. It didn’t fit. Actually, this was just like learning that people
could
have horns or tails and having to readjust one’s entire concept of reality in accordance. Now I was having to readjust my concept to the apparent fact that there could be grownups who still held childish beliefs, beliefs that I had long ago grown out of, and that my Irenka, who couldn’t speak French or coordinate her hands and feet in the breaststroke, was one of them.
Her former employer, Mrs. Romanski, had taught Irenka to speak good Polish, and she had done a good job, because Irenka didn’t speak anything like the peasants I had heard speaking before our escape. Maybe I could teach Irenka to speak French. Yes, I had learned most of my French from Mademoiselle, whom Mother had hired as my governess in Lvoof, just before our escape. She had taught me while we went for our walks or played Gin Rummy, simply by speaking French to me. I could do the same with Irenka. And suddenly, the idea of my teaching Irenka French had restored my faith in her. And I was so excited by the prospect of lying on our beach blanket with Irenka and teaching her to speak French, that sleeping was out of the question. In fact, even lying still was no longer possible, and I got up and pulled an armchair to the window, where I would wait anxiously for the sun to come up.
“Oh my God, Yulian! What are you doing there?” It was Mother’s frightened voice waking me up in the armchair by the window. It was still dark, except for the streetlights outside.
I didn’t have a proper response to Mother’s question, so I closed my eyes and pretended to stay asleep.
I felt Mother’s hand on my forehead, feeling for a fever. Then I felt her take my hand. “Come back to bed,” she said, quietly now, and pulling gently on my hand. I realized that she must think that I had walked there in my sleep, the way I had heard my Uncle Benek used to do in Poland.
Keeping my eyes closed, I let Mother pull me to my feet. She was holding both of my hands now.
I had had bouts of crying in my sleep, since the start of the war and woken up in the middle of the night, to be told that I had had bad dreams, though I couldn’t remember having them. It was a small step now for Mother to believe that I walked in my sleep as well. I had to press my lips between my teeth to keep from grinning, while I let Mother walk me back to my bed.
“My God,” I heard her whisper under her breath, as we crossed the room. It was one of those expressions I had heard escaping from Mother on occasions, without her seeming to be aware of it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. I didn’t want to frighten Mother. But I couldn’t very well tell her now that I had only been fooling. I let her tuck me back into my bed and pretended to drop off into deep, untroubled sleep.
CHAPTER VI
The following morning, the big car came to take Mother to Sra. O’Brien’s again, and Irenka and I waved goodbye to her from the sidewalk, as we set out for the beach. Irenka had expected to be going to the pool again, for my prescribed exercise, but I had suggested that we save that for the afternoon, so that I could start in on the French lessons. Of course I hadn’t told her yet what it was that I was planning.
“Tadek is all beaten up this morning,” she said, as I put my hand in hers. I was about to respond with an automatic expression of sympathy, but realized that her statement required some clarification, which was certain to come by itself, as well as that there had been a detectable tone of glee to Irenka’s statement. I waited.
“He got into a fight with some people in a bar last night, and now he can barely see out of his eyes,” she finally went on. “And if he thinks I’m going to care for him, he can think about something else. He even ruined his good suit.”
I had never actually known any grownup who had been in a fight. I, of course, knew about soldiers fighting with guns, and I had seen boys get into fights at recess in the school that I had attended for a year in Warsaw, so this took a moment to assimilate. “W. . . hat di. . . d th. . . ey f. . . ight about?” I finally asked, my curiosity aroused.
“He didn’t tell me, and I don’t want to know,” she said.
I took this as the end of discussion on that subject, though she had raised a new question, and, reluctantly, let it go. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
“H. . . ow w. . . ould y. . . ou l. . . ike to s. . . peak F. . . rench?” I asked, once we were settled on our blanket.
“I can’t. I don’t know how to speak in French,” Irenka said.
“I m. . . ean, h. . . ow w. . . ould you l. . ike me to t. . . each you so that y. . . ou c. . an?”
“Do you speak French?” There was real surprise in her voice.
“I do.”
“You swim, you speak French, and you do magic tricks. What else do you do? Do you dance?”
Suddenly I was embarrassed. But I laughed. “I d. . . on’t d. . . ance,” I said, “but b. . . efore we es. . . caped f. . rom the R. . . ussians, I h. . . ad a g. . . overness who s. . poke F. . . rench to me, and I c. . . an do the s. . . ame w. . . ith you.”
“But I won’t understand anything you say.”
“W. . . ell, I’ll t. . . ranslate it f. . . or you. But s. . . ome w. . . ords you w. . . ill un. . . derstand j. . . ust f. . . rom wh. . . hat I’m t. . . alking ab. . . out, or d. . . oing.” The thought now descended on me that, maybe, my friend Irenka just wasn’t very smart.
“Like how?” she asked. She sounded really interested now.
“L. . ike, if I t. . . ell y. . . ou th. . . at I’m g. . . oing to s. . . it on the b. . . lanket, and y. . . ou d. . . on’t know the w. . . ord for b. . . lanket, but y. . . ou s. . . ee me s. . it d. . . own on it, th. . . en y. . . ou w. . . ill know th. . . at the w. . . ord m. . . eans
b. . . lanket
.”
“Oh, so it’ll be like a game.”
“Y. . . es.”
“So go ahead and say,
I’m going to sit down on the blanket,
in French
.
”
“
Je v. . . eu m. . . ’assoir s. . . ur le
. . . ” I began, but stopped. The fact was that I didn’t know the word for blanket, though Sr. Segiera had used it a few days before. Taking a step to the side and moving off the blanket, I added the word
sable
, as I seated myself on the warm sand.