Swans Are Fat Too (3 page)

The charm was turned on full. Hania recognized it––wasn't it the same charm her grandmother had had, and her father had?––she recognized it and couldn't resist giving way to it, to finding herself wrapped in the warmth of suddenly being cared for, liked, met more than halfway…she gave in, and yet a part of herself steeled for the follow up.

"Listen, Haniu,
kochanie
, it is so fortunate that you are there. We've had to come here overnight––"

"Where?" Hania tried to squeeze in, but Wiktor swept on.

"Absolutely unavoidable. You wouldn't believe the problems we've had."

She sensed the self-pity. "Yes, but…" she tried to stop him but he kept talking.

"So it's very fortunate that you're there, and we'll be back on Thursday, Friday at the latest…"

"But..." Thursday––that was three days away.

"The children will be good. They won't be a problem for you. You've been teaching right? Yes, yes, of course, I've always kept track of what you're doing..."

She felt a little glow and stifled it, trying to get a word in edgewise. "But where are you?"

He didn't answer that. "So you'll be fine with the children. Excellent then, that's all settled then, thank you so much for everything you're doing…" and in the middle of her questions the line went dead, and she was left staring at Kalina.

Kalina didn't lift her eyes, but just observed in her monotone voice, "That's my dad."

"Yes," said Hania wearily, "I have the same sort." Kalina actually turned her head then and gave her a quick upward glance before returning to the television. But after a second some better feeling perhaps prompted her to say, "I'll show you your bed."

"Thank you," said Hania, and then, "Where's your brother? I remember meeting you when you were small, but I've never met your brother––he wasn't born yet the last time I was in Poland."

"He's asleep," said Kalina brusquely, "I wouldn't wake him. He bites."

2

Childhood burns with an inborn heat;

there is no need to add fire to fire.

–
Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski on diet
,
1551

Hania woke early and stared at the high ceiling of her room, not certain at once where she was but aware of a feeling of stiffness and discomfort. Things came back to her in a moment. Warsaw, she was in Warsaw, in her grandmother's apartment. She had met Konstanty Radzimoyski on the stairs. She had missed the funeral. Her aunt and uncle had disappeared and left her in charge of their children. She turned over and looked at her wristwatch and as she did so the sofa bed creaked and a support banged against the floor. It sagged at all points. It was a miserable bed but it was hunger that had woken her. Extreme hunger. Later she would remember to resent her uncle's actions, later she would wonder what was wrong with Kalina––at the moment she just wanted something to eat. Only five o'clock. Of course, there was the time difference.

She lay in bed and looked around. The room was small and higher than wide, with tall, tall windows and a plaster medallion around the light fixture. This had been her grandmother's room, the smallest room in an enormous apartment, an apartment that for forty years had been the envy of all their acquaintances, an apartment Babcia had received from the Communist authorities in exchange for staying in Poland, for proving that Natalia Lanska approved of the true socialist way. Natalia Lanska had cared nothing for ideology but had known a good opportunity when she saw one. When, after stunning successes abroad in the late forties and fifties, her career had begun to falter––was it because her once Valkyrie-like figure had begun to take on unbecoming rondeurs? Because she quarreled with too many impresarios, concert managers, and conductors? Or just bad luck?––she had abandoned Paris and returned to Warsaw, where she had remained at the top of her teaching profession, treated with humble––even abject––respect by her students and catered to by the authorities. She had had a maid and trips abroad and tutors for her children. For a long time her concert earnings and master classes had allowed her to lead a life of luxury, and with the end of the Communist era she had begun to make money again from lessons in Warsaw too. She had done well. Still, she hadn't ever thought about much besides music, and her room was decorated in a mix of inherited 19
^th
-century furniture and the ugliest of central-planning-era pieces. This sofa bed had held more weight than it could bear for thirty years at least, thought Hania. Time to get out of it. 

The room had already begun to collect Ania's paintings. Ten or so large canvases were leaning against a wooden wardrobe. Hania had hung her clothes over them last night in the hopes that some of the wrinkles would be gone in the morning. Now she looked at the top painting as she got dressed. It had a background of thick black impasto and a red figure that might have been a cubist nude in the center. Somehow the nude had become detached from its (realistic) eyes, which floated in the upper-right corner. She found it rather unpleasant and wondered if there was anything she could put over it again.

It was light out, but even the local grocery stores wouldn't open for another hour or so. Still, there must be something to eat in the kitchen, if only an end of dry bread.

She dressed quietly, hoping not to wake her cousins. If Maksymilian were anything like his sister she didn't really feel she could face meeting him before breakfast.

The kitchen was rather small, divided as it was by the
służbówka
, the four-foot-wide, walled-off space that all pre-war apartments with pretensions to dignity provided for the maid. One looked at the
służbówka
and felt a sudden sympathy for communism. There would have been just room for a cot in it.

She opened the refrigerator. It was empty except for a bottle of Heinz ketchup and some mold. She opened the cupboards, but they only held dishes, glasses, pots, and vodka bottles. There was not a scrap of anything to eat. She found some tea in a canister, but there was no sugar, no coffee, no milk, no bread. She opened the door to the
służbówka
, and saw stacks of boxes and a pair of someone's dusty old shoes. She had a moment's impulse to fall upon them and chew the leather.

"What are you doing?" said a firm but squeaky voice.

Hania turned quickly. A small boy was standing in the doorway. He had his sister's dishwater hair, with a round head, round eyes, and round glasses. He looked like a pale little owl, except that he was wearing only blue briefs with a space-ship design.

"Are you trying to steal something?" he asked suspiciously.

Obviously he was a pair with his sister, thought Hania.

"No," she answered deadpan, "I'm wondering whether I could eat that shoe."

The boy considered this for a moment. "Can I watch?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I can't eat it. There's no oil for frying. I only eat fried shoes."

"You could go to the store," the boy suggested eagerly.

"Mmm. Yes. But it's too early––that's the problem. By the way––I'm Hania. You must be Maksymilian." She held out her hand and he shook it politely. Then he stepped back and, holding his glasses against his nose, regarded her for a long moment.

"You look like Babcia."

"Do I?"

"Yes. She's dead."

"I know. I'm sorry about that."

"She wasn't here. She hasn't been here for a long time. She was in the hospital." A long pause. "I don't remember her face, really. Only she was fat like you."

"Yes."

"Will she get thin now? Since she's not eating, I mean?"

"Maks," said Hania with sudden decision, "How about you get dressed and by that time maybe the stores will be open and we can go together and buy something, okay?"

Maks disappeared obediently and Hania left the kitchen, hesitating before the tall double doors to the right. Beyond those doors had been her grandmother's territory. She put a hand on the brass door handle, pushed gently, and walked in. It was a large room, perhaps forty meters square, with tall windows along one wall and three grand pianos filling the space. Nothing had changed. Only there was a fine layer of dust coating the heaps and heaps of music scores that covered every available surface: Mozart, Brahms, Scarlatti, Clementi––everything from solo pieces to orchestral scores to the most advanced études for virtuosos. Only her grandmother had known where everything was. The pages spilled over one another and threatened to topple from the piano lids. The Bechstein and the Bösendorfer were her grandmother's. The Steinway over there was Wiktor's. It had fewer scores on it and a heap of dirty coffee cups, un-emptied ashtrays, pencils, and electronic equipment. Wiktor composed atonal music.

Wiktor, in Babcia's opinion, which she had expressed to whomever cared to listen, had been a traitor, a turncoat, and a serpent of a son. There had been no possibility, however, that he would move out, find his own apartment, lead his own life, and play his own music at a distance from his disapproving relative. And perhaps the emotion generated by a friction of artistic ideas had been stimulating. Wiktor had turned up the volume. Babcia had played louder, been driven to new heights of musical dexterity, had taken Rachmaninoff and the Goldberg Variations to technical perfection. Public opinion, moreover, had been on her side; the neighbors had only banged on the floor when Wiktor sat at the piano. Or perhaps they were afraid to do so when Babcia was about.

And it wasn't Wiktor Hania was thinking of now, but of Babcia. She had stood here, sat here, played at this piano. Hania sat down at the Bösendorfer, put her hands forward and then drew them back abruptly. Anyway, people were sleeping.

Maks was back.

"I can't get dressed."

"Why not?"

"All my clothes are dirty."

"So wear whatever's least dirty."

"Well," she thought with a shudder when he reappeared a little later, "at least he's not my child."

They descended the cool, dim stairs together in companionable silence and went out into the morning. There were a surprising number of people about, walking with the quick determined step of Polish people––not the frantic rush of New York, where everyone was always behind-time and scurrying to catch up––but the step of people unaccustomed to dallying; people getting in cars, climbing off buses with shopping sacks––where had they been shopping at this hour?––people heading to the grocery store for the morning bread. Young women in clicking high heels, mothers with small children in strollers, elderly men in neat, pressed shirts. Hania drank in the sights and sounds: the city was clean and calm, had order without rigidity. Or so it pleased her to imagine as she walked along looking right and left.

"Why do you keep looking about like that?" said Maks.

"I just want to take in the city. I haven't been here for so long."

"I don't like to walk."

"Just to the store?"

"We passed it way back there."

"Oh."

There was already a line at the grocery. They stood behind three blonde older women in skirts, and waited their turn. The lady in front was in no hurry as she gave her order item by item. "And half a kilo of the Maasdamer cheese, or no, make it the Edamski, and some slices of pastrami, or do you suggest the
karkówka
––we had some of that other last night––and…" Hania and Maks waited patiently, jammed between a counter of cold cuts, a rack of rye bread and rolls, a rather fly-infested platter of sweet pastries, and a barrel of garlicky pickles.

Hania looked up as someone joined the line.

"Good morning,
pani
, morning, Maks."

"Good morning,
pan
."

Konstanty Radzimoyski, being polite to a neighbor.

"You're up early. Are they putting you to work already?"

"They aren't home." No need to explain who "they" were. "I guess they'll be back on Thursday or Friday." Why had she said that? He wouldn't be interested, anyway. Probably she just wanted to reassure herself that "they" really would be back.

"Are you planning a long visit?"

The line was hardly moving.

"I was intending to stay the summer."

"Then you will have lots of time for sight-seeing."

It was the merest small talk. No need at all for her to confide in him.

"I'd like to see if I can find work."

A pause. "What sort of work, if I might ask?" They couldn't stand there side by side without making conversation.

"It should be as a piano teacher, of course…" 

Hmm, he thought, his mind half on something else, why did that ring a vague bell?

"…but I know it would be difficult to find students during the vacation period, so…I don't know…it seems there's a glut of translators, or I'd do something like that...I'll have to see…"

It was his air of actually listening that was so flattering, she thought, as she heard herself go on talking. Even though she knew it was only, after all, a mannerism.

The person in front gathered her bags from the counter and the shopkeeper was rather impatiently requesting the next order. A bit flustered, Hania turned back to the counter and asked for bread, sugar, eggs, potato chips, two––no, three please––packages of cookies––as quickly as possible so as not to keep Konstanty waiting––handed over her money, and was stuffing her purchases into bags when Maks raised his voice.

"You forgot the oil."

"I don't think we need it now."

"But you said you were going to fry the shoe in it. You said!" His voice held a tone of disappointed outrage.

How embarrassing. There was Konstanty listening with interest.

"Maks, it was a joke."

Maks wailed so loudly that everyone in the vicinity turned to stare. "You're just like everybody else! You don't keep your promises! I dooon't liiiike yoou aaafter aaall!"

He turned and ran from the shop and she hurried after him––"Maks! Wait!"

 The day didn't get any better from there. Maks sulked and refused to eat breakfast.  Kalina got up around noon. When she came into the room Maks jerked his head in Hania's direction. "I don't like her."