Necessary Lies (27 page)

Anna was thinking of a glass case with a mummy of a small girl she saw in a museum once, wads of greyish bandage hiding the body. It was better that way. Better not to see what's inside. To her mother she wrote of her health, of Montreal, of Canadian weather. There was no telling what would be unearthed if they let themselves go.

“Tell us,” her father says. “Tell us about Canada.”

But it is they who talk, who tell her what happened when she was away, in Montreal. About the cut off phones, Chopin's music on all radio stations, tanks in the streets. About a prison guard who confiscated Piotr's Bible with its dedication
So that Truth will always be victorious.

“A Russian invasion we would have understood, yes, but not the coup. Not our own people,” her father says. “This was the hardest to accept.”

“On TV,” Yan joins in, “the announcers had military uniforms. They read lists of offences punishable by death.”

“We had curfew,” her father adds, “couldn't go anywhere without permissions. But just a few days later you could get permissions by the dozen. Stolen from the offices, already stamped.”

They want her to know that even at the height of martial law the spirit of the nation was not doused. It strikes her that they are explaining all of this as if she had never lived here. They use phrases like “geopolitical situation,” “general conditions,”
“historical position,” talking all at once, talking as if she never stood in line-ups with them, as if she never huddled in front of the radio, waiting for the news, tuning in to Radio Free Europe, listening past the buzzing noises and whistles of the jamming towers. “I was away for ten years, only” she says, and they nod as if this only confirmed the need for such explanations.

The doorbell rings with a shrill, piercing sound. “Here they are,” Yan says and rushes to open the door. For the last half an hour, he has been checking his watch anxiously. “It's all because of Basia's mother,” he explained. “She has asked them to come and help her.” This, he wants Anna to know, is the only reason why his wife and son are not here yet to greet her.

“That's all right,” Anna responded. The apologies seem to her excessive. What is there to explain?

She can hear her brother's reproaches and a woman's soft, humming voice. “I couldn't . . . you know how she is . . . she wants my attention.” And then Anna hears a child's voice. “I can?” and the sound of footsteps.

Adam is standing at the door, his eyes fixed on Anna. His smooth, oval face looks serious, concentrated on what is about to happen, but he stops at the threshold, motionless, and looks back to see if his parents are behind.

“Go in,” Yan says, “She doesn't bite.”

Anna doesn't wait for Adam to come in. She rises from her chair and comes closer. She squats so that their eyes meet.

“Do you know who I am?” she asks.

“You are
Ciocia
Anna, from Canada,” Adam answers. His voice is clear and pure, like a chime. “You have sent me all these neat toys and clothes. I have your picture in my room.
Tata
gave me.”

Anna's eyes mist with tears as she embraces Adam, feeling his thin arms cling to hers. Basia laughs, pleased at this display of affection. There is no sight of the old-fashioned braid. Her hair is now short, styled in waves over her cheeks. “You have to watch out,” she says to Anna, “now he won't leave you alone.”

Anna stands up to say hello to her sister-in-law, who embraces her warmly and, from her quilted shoulder bag, takes out a small bundle. Inside a white linen cloth there is a piece of
bread and a small jar of salt. “Old custom,” Basia says, “to say how glad we are you've returned.”

Anna takes a piece of bread, dips it in salt, and puts it in her mouth. The bread is thick and heavy, and she chews it slowly, the salt crystals dissolving in her mouth. They are all moved, fighting tears, inventing chores to cover up the emotions. “Come on, sit down, the tea is growing cold,” her mother says, and offers them more food. Adam, who has unwrapped his presents — a memory game, a truck, and a box of Lego blocks and tucked them safely inside his mother's bag — insists that he wants to sit between his
Dziadek
and
Ciocia
Anna. His plate is moved and they all make space for him. As soon as he is settled, he begins telling Anna of his new aquarium, of the fish he bought, of the new pump and filter he still needs. He interrupts his story only to watch what food is being placed on his plate. “You know I don't like ham,” he protests, and Anna watches his smooth face, his straight blond hair, dark eyes. “Did you know that there are vacuum fish, not really vacuum, but I call them vacuum, and they clean the floor of the aquarium for me. And I will have baby fish...”

“That's enough, Adam,” Basia says. “Let
Ciocia
talk to us.”

“We will go out together,” Anna promises Adam. “Tomorrow. Then you will tell me all you want. OK?”

“What time tomorrow?” Adam asks. “I have to know,” he adds, hesitating as he watches a frown on his father's forehead.

“Ten o'clock,” Anna says, looking straight into Adam's serious eyes. “Just the two of us. I'll pick you up and we'll go for a pizza and ice cream. Will you remember?”

“I will,” Adam says, nodding, and takes hold of her hand.

Basia praises the food, asks questions. There is a pleasant warmth about her, a need to smooth what can be smoothed. She has praised the dress
Mama
is wearing, the flowery pattern, the softness of cotton. She has read of some home remedies for respiratory problems and has cut out the article for her parents-in-law to read.

Tata
has brought out a bottle
of jarz
biak,
a fragrant Polish brandy and is pouring it into small narrow glasses. Adam gets a glass of juice. “Now you can get any juice you want. Apple,
orange, grape,”
Mama
says. “So why did we have to scrounge for forty-five years?”

They all nod.

“Your health,”
Tata
says, and Anna drinks slowly. The brandy stings her throat but the warmth that comes releases some of the tension in her neck. The muscles let go slowly, one by one, as she leans back in her chair.

“That's more than asthma,” Basia says when an hour later Anna helps her wash the dishes in her parents' kitchen. “We've been trying to find a really good doctor. Piotr's father gave us a few good contacts. Perhaps then we'll know more.”

“That's nice of him,” Anna says, uneasy at Piotr's implied presence. She will write to her former father-in-law, she thinks, with thanks.

Basia dips the plates in soapy water, Anna rinses them and stacks them on a plastic rack. They can hear Adam's voice in the dining room explaining something, insisting that he knows what he is talking about.

“He's always been like that,” Basia says. “Just like Yan. He has to have his way.”

For over four years Anna's old apartment, where her brother lives now, was a safe house for Solidarity activists. Equipped with high-frequency radio equipment to monitor police cruisers, a bag full of false identity cards. Sometimes “visitors” stayed for a few days, sometimes for a few months, sleeping on the living room sofa, staying away from the windows so that the neighbours wouldn't know too much. At night strangers knocked at the door to take dispatches and to bring supplies.

Anna asks Basia about that time. “How did you manage?” she asks. “With a baby?” Basia, Yan said once, smuggled underground leaflets in Adam's pram.

Basia laughs. Adam, she says, was instructed not to tell anyone of the “uncles” who stayed with them, and he was very good. Once only, in a crowded store, when he was four-years-old, he pointed to the Most Wanted poster with a familiar face in it.
“Mama,
look! This is Uncle Karol.”

“I froze,” Basia says. “Someone in the store just started to laugh. They thought it was funny. So I laughed, too. But my legs were so soft I could hardly walk.”

The dishes are done, dried and stacked in piles. “We'll leave the rest to
Mama,”
Basia says. “She has her own way of putting them away. Don't even try to mess it up.”

Anna nods and they both laugh.

“How did I manage?” Basia returns to Anna's question. Anna will remember her like this for a long time, recall this moment over others. Basia, her hands alongside her body, her face turned to Anna, pensive, serious, just like Adam's .

“You know, I'd just look at my son. At his tiny lips, opening up to me, so totally dependent on what I would do. I've brought this baby to the world, I thought. I'm responsible. All these police vans all over the city, troops throwing canisters of tear gas, tearing our posters from the walls, painting them over. It all seemed so ludicrous, so utterly insane. I knew it couldn't last. I wanted to do something to change it.”

Anna watches as Basia waves her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Nothing, really,” she adds. “I'm much more confused now, with all the politics. Everybody is quarrelling. Everyone accuses everyone else of betrayal, of taking bribes. It frightens me to listen to the kind of Poland some of our own friends want now. You know, Poland for Poles only, for Catholics... Sometimes our old enemies make more sense than they do. I don't even know who I support.”

They sit down on the rickety stools in the kitchen. Basia has poured some mineral water into small glasses.

“What are you going to do, now?” she asks Anna. “Will you stay with us for a while?”

Anna takes a sip of water, the tiny bubbles rising to the surface, exploding into mist. She shakes her head.

“I'll be all right,” she says and manages a reassuring smile. It is not a lie.

Shrieks of laughter reach them from the living room, Adam is having a good time. Anna would like to sit like this for a little while longer. Basia must feel the same, for she makes no
effort to stand up and leave the kitchen. It's Yan who finds them there, silent and content.

When Yan and Basia leave, taking Adam with them — Adam who reminds Anna of their promised trip in the morning — it is hard to fill the emptiness that is left.
Mama
sighs and goes to the kitchen to put the plates away.
Tata
gathers the cards he took out of the desk drawer to show Adam some tricks. As in Anna's childhood, they ended up playing her once-favourite game, scattering cards on the table, building a house on them and trying to remove the cards from the base without making the house collapse. She was always too impatient with it, pulled too hard, too fast. Her father remembers that, too.

“You always wanted to play it,” he says. “Every evening.”

“I know” Anna says, smiling at the memory. The cards are now in their separate boxes, and Anna puts them where they've always been, in the second drawer of her father's desk.

“But you didn't like to lose. You'd cry for the whole evening, if you did. You'd bite your lip and cry,” her father says, gently. “So I always tried to let you win.”

Mama
comes into the room, quietly, and listens. The whites of her eyes are bloodshot from exertion. She can't have been getting enough sleep.

“How is your friend?” she asks about Marie.

“Fine,” Anna says. “She sends her greetings. Still remembers her visit here. During martial law.”

Her mother nods her head. She liked Marie's warm enthusiasm, her compassion. She recalls how Anna's friend sat right here, on the red sofa, clenching her fists. There was a store she saw that afternoon, a store full of nothing but sugar at the time when their ration cards allowed them a kilogram per month. She thought it cruel, blatantly cruel.

“But for us it seemed normal,”
Mama
says, and then, adds her old, well-tried explanation.
“Takie byty czasy.
“Such were the times.”

At night, even with the door to her room closed, Anna can still hear the once-familiar noises.
Swish
goes the water, flowing down the pipes from the apartment upstairs. The boards squeak, the refrigerator in the kitchen switches on and off. Distant trains go by, and at times Anna can hear the echo of the announcements from the speakers at Central Station.

She hears whispers in the kitchen, louder now for her parents are hard of hearing. She hears Piotr's name mentioned, and then William's . She cannot make more out of it, just the grave tone, the murmurs, the concern. The room is chilly. The thick solid German walls take long to warm up.

When she was little, she lay in this room listening to
Mamas
steps, her hushed voice. “Sh . .. you will wake up the children,” and the low whispers that followed. What were they talking about, she wondered. Another war?
Babcia
lived through two world wars,
Mama
through one, why would Anna think she might be spared?

She assessed her chances of survival. Wardrobes were treacherous, she thought. Bottom boards could squeak and reveal her presence. Dogs could sniff her out. The walls of the pantry could crumble, and suffocating smoke would find its way through the layers of goose down covers. She remembers knowing that her mother was the only person in the whole world who could save her at a time like that. Her mother's strength was her only chance.