The Last Season (42 page)

She seemed transparent, her skin bluish, her hair greasy and plastered to her head like she'd just removed a hockey helmet.

She puts a cool washcloth over her face. I don't know what to do. I try to take over the dabbing but she recoils from my reach.

“Please,” she says from behind the cloth. “You must not touch.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, sounding like the one hurt.

She breathes heavily, the intake louder than exhaling, and every so often a moan sounds like it is coming from somewhere else in the room.

“Geez, you're really sick,” I say.

She moans.

“Did you try and eat?”

She moans louder.

“What about a doctor? Did you call?”

A moan, or no, I'm not sure.

This is the reverse of the ferry ride to Stockholm, but I do not have Kristiina's natural gift for comforting. When I offer something it only seems to make matters worse. Speaking doesn't soothe, it frustrates. I touch and she shivers. All I can do is follow orders. She wants a blanket and I run for a blanket. She wants the blanket off and I peel it like wet wallpaper from her sweating body. She wants a blanket. She wants a drink, the pail, another drink, the pail again, help to the washroom, a tissue, a drink, a hand to hold.

And now she wants me to go.

“No way. You need me.”

She shakes her head, breathing heavily from her nostrils, as if exhausted. “No,” she says, her voice very weak. “I just want to sleep. Please, you do not have to stay.”

“Sleep,” I say. “I'll be here.”

She looks up and forces a smile, but it does not catch. “Please go, Felix. I will be better alone.”

How can I argue? I place my hand on her shoulder. She pulls my hand down and kisses the back of my wrist. She is very hot and clammy and I curse myself for hoping I don't catch whatever she has. I want to grab her and hug her, but I am afraid of hurting her.

“I love you,” I say.

Kristina does not answer. She presses tight to my forearm, then moans. But whether in pain or pleasure I cannot say.

The two weeks pass quickly. I let Timo all but take over the coaching chores leading up to Leningrad. He, after all, has played the Soviets some twenty times and understands all that madness about double circling and five-man units and pic-ing. My experience with the Communists is so limited that I've basically got it all down to one play: send Eddie Van Impe out to beat the piss out of the first Red over our blueline. But I doubt the board would go for it.

Timo is as excited as a child about the trip. I had come to think of him as just my big dependable defensive partner and had forgotten that first and foremost Timo is an art historian with the government archives, with a particular interest in Russian art. Back home your teammates played hockey for a living, period; I had forgotten that in Finland hockey is little more than a hobby. It's like finding out that Tiger Williams teaches linguistics off the ice.

Kristiina says she can't go. The flu barely cleared and it is back again, worse than ever. She has lost weight. Her doctor says her red blood cell count is way down. He's booked her into the Kirurgimen Sairaala for a complete physical. And if Kristiina is not going, Pia has decided not to either, leaving Erkki chainsawing his nails over the possible effect to our deal.

“It's nothing serious?” I ask at her apartment the evening before our flight.

She smiles and shakes her head. She looks so much better lately I cannot believe there could possibly be anything worth going to a hospital over. She's probably got mono, like Torchy in his second year in Philadelphia.

“This is common practice,” she says, “I want to go anyway. I keep putting it off.”

“You look fine now.”

“Surfaces can be deceiving,” she says, forcing a smile. “I still do not feel very well, you see. The doctor, he thinks it is some kind of small infection that takes over when my blood goes down. It is nothing to be concerned about. I will be out when you get back and we can go up to the cabin if you should like.”

“Alone?”

“But of course.”

I lean over and kiss her and she accepts me, mouth opening and ripe with the scent of toothpaste. It has been two weeks since we last made love and I can feel myself jump with eagerness. I shift on the couch and place a hand over her breast, slipping in through her gown. But she folds the gown on my hand, as if it might erase the intention. I move back and look at her, eyes begging.

“When you get back, okay?” she says “I am afraid I don't feel up to it.”

I try to make light of the matter. “Well I sure do!”

She does not laugh. She does not even smile. She holds my head down onto her shoulder like I have hurt myself and need comfort.

I stay there, holding my breath, staring over her shoulder in search of something to focus on. But there is only the empty room and the sense of her too close to be seen.

On the afternoon of the departure I am waiting in the Inter-Continental lobby for the bus to the airport, which is late. And when I am pacing I notice a large envelope stuffed in slot 622, my room. I ask for it and am hardly surprised it is from Poppa. The bus horn blows and there is nothing to do but shove it in the zipper pouch with all the other letters and Jaja's story and hope to read it on the flight over.

The loading goes well. We are up and away in a sky as clear as the 7-Up Pekka is pouring into a glass already half full of his beloved
koskenkorva
drink. I order a nice cold Lapinkulta beer, watch while we shoot out along the coast for signs of ice breakup, see none, and then turn to Poppa's letter with a second beer.

March 23, 1982

My dear son, Felix,

By the time you receive this letter you should be very nearly through your season, according to your most recent letter which we received on the eighth of this month. It just doesn't seem possible to me that time has flown by so quickly. But in a way, it can't go fast enough here, for at least a while. We've just been through three weeks of solid ten to twenty below zero.

There was a big story in the Ottawa
Citizen
about your old buddy Torchy Bender. What's wrong with that boy? It makes you wonder about that California. Everything's got to be a trend, eh? I saw him the other day on the television and he was making a fool of himself. May as well have been begging on the street for his money. You think about it, son, you never hear of a good Catholic going that way.

Back home, your old friends are doing a bit better. Danny got promoted full yard foreman down at O'Malley's and his head's near as big as his stomach now. Building a big new place up Schama's side road back of the mountain too. One of them Viceroy homes, comes just like a toy all boxed up and you just stick it together with spit.
(It's gorgeous, really, and I hear it cost them nearly $18,000 — can you feature that? Hi Felix, Marie.)
They got another kid, too, him and Lucy, but I've lost count how many all told.
(Three — Marie.)

The worst news I have to pass on is about our beloved Batcha. She's very, very ill, Felix. The doctors say it won't be long now. Her blood's just running out. Doctor gave her a transfusion last week and she fought like the dickens. He's also left us some painkillers, but she won't have nothing to do with them. I'll let you know the moment anything happens, don't you worry.

I almost forgot.
(I didn't — Marie.)
Our Marie has got a job coming up over in Renfrew.
(It's in the Manpower Centre, Felix, they must have gotten so sick of me coming in bellyaching all the time that they hired me just to shut me up. Ha! Ha! — Marie
.
)
I'm sure going to miss her. You can't believe, son, what a help she's been in all this. We're close to finishing up, at least the stuff I mark off. I doubt anyone would ever get through it all, and, quite frankly, some of it's not worth bothering with.

I'm going to tell you about something, Felix, that I want you to know in case I'm not around once you get to Jaja's works. Marie and I found a sealed envelope in the last big box, down near the bottom, and it has a handwritten note from Jaja on it that simply asks us not to open it until his immediate family is gone. I'm not sure what he means by that. Him and Batcha, I think, but Marie says I'm immediate family too. It might be the deed they got when they took up here, I don't know. Whatever, I'm going to honour it at least as long as poor Batcha's still with us. Then you and me can make the decision together. One thing I know, it's not money. There never was any around to put in.

You'll notice I've included a few more clippings you might be interested in. You can thank Marie for them because she picks up things she thinks I might be interested in when she's in Renfrew.
(It's nothing, really — Marie.) Time
magazine made Lech Walesa “Man of the Year,” did you see that? Every Pole throughout the world can be proud of that, I say. We can lay claim to the two most inspirational leaders in the world, his Holiness Pope John Paul II and Walesa The radio here has said Jaruzelski will not even permit Walesa to attend his baby daughter's christening. He has not even seen his baby, you know. You know what Jaruzelski's real fear is? The Roman Catholic Church, that's what. He's afraid to let Walesa be seen near a church in case he asked the bishop for sanctuary. With Walesa under the blessing of God, the Communists would be destroyed and they know it. So pray for Walesa and for Poland.

You read Jaja's accounts carefully, Felix. You will see that there is nothing new on this earth if you are a Pole. Jaruzelski has been around before, in different disguises. When your great-grandfather died so valiantly, Jaruzelski was known as the Marquis Alexander Wiepolski, a Russian flunky who was set up as dictator. He was a Pole by name and birth only. In soul, if they have one, which I doubt, he was a cursed Russian. Just like Jaruzelski.

Enough of that. There is more intelligent stuff in Jaja's papers, selections of which we are enclosing. I have only two more points to mention, one good, one I pray is not as bad as it first sounds. The good is your Kristiina. She sounds lovely and intelligent. You know well my thoughts are on a grandson to carry on the name of Batterinski, so I won't go over them.

The other point concerns a photograph that appeared in several of the Canadian newspapers. Certain highly respected people in Pomerania have brought it to my attention.
(Not me, I swear. If you're wondering who, you might try a certain “highly respected” person at St. Martin's — Marie.)
The picture shows a hockey player spitting in the face of a man from Sweden. I cannot clearly see the face, but the newspaper says it is my son. I have faith in you, son, and have told people it is all a mistake. I am sure you will prove me right.

We are all praying for you. You pray for Batcha. She needs you.

Your loving father,

Poppa.

I will pray for Batcha, all right. “Oh Most Merciful Father, make it quick. I wish no pain on anyone. Amen.”

I can feel the jet sag, the whining slow. We are descending on Leningrad. There is only time to quickly scan Jaja's notes. I will have to get back to them later.

How appropriate that the Poles, my people, who came to Canada would end up being sent into the worst kind of wilderness to build what was called a “settlement road.” We were sent up the Bonnechere River and then further up the Opeongo into the hills. All the men knew what their job was, to build roads good enough that the Scots and Irish could come along behind and cut down the white pine for shipment back to Europe. We, the Poles who had waited over a hundred years for Europe to come in and give us back our home, we were thousands of miles from our beloved homeland, sleeping in swamps, fighting flies and trying to lay down roads on topsoil that turned into pure granite two inches down, all so we could help to build a Europe that would never come to our aid.

But we were not bitter. What we saw, only the Poles would like. To the east, west, north and south there was only more bush and more hills and more swamps and more mosquitoes. No Germans. No Prussians. No Russians. No false promises from other Europeans. Poles stand alone, and here we would be allowed to stand just that way, forever. We chose the highest hill for the church, so no matter where we were in the bush we could see the steeples and pray and be thankful....

Thankful.
Thankful for what, Jaja? For a lifelong chance to work for the Scots and the Irish lumber barons? For a chance to just maybe get on with the highways and paint shithouses for the tourists all summer and then be shit on all winter when they lay you off? For the chance to end up like Danny Shannon, the envy of the village because he got himself an $18,000 house that fits together like Tinkertoys?

... which I personally consider to be the most emotional moment of my life. Ignace Jan Paderewski was to play at Toronto's Massey Hall on Wednesday, April 26, 1905. I determined I would go somehow and saved for six months. Everyone knew all about Paderewski and about how the previous spring he had stood up to the Tsar himself in the Russian court. “I beg your majesty's pardon,” Paderewski had said, following the Tsar's silly delight in finding such a great talent in the Russian Empire. “
I
am a Pole!” The Russians gave him twenty-four hours to get out of the country and never return. His concerts at St. Petersburg were cancelled. His name was forgotten.

But not by the Poles. Not in Europe. And not in Canada. To us he was Poland's greatest hero, not just the world's leading interpreter of Chopin. I had to see him.

By the end of March I had saved ten dollars from winter hauling and the previous fall's roadwork. I boarded the
Canadian Atlantic
when it stopped for water and switched trains twice more, once in Ottawa, once in Kingston, arriving in Toronto on the afternoon of April 26th. I walked up to Shuter Street and found this Massey Hall and was told the concert had been sold out for a month. I turned away, near tears, when the old man at the ticket office simply said: “Don't go far. Wait until the concert begins.” He would tell me no more. I figured he meant that I might get to see the great man, anyway.

I stayed all through the day, no lunch, no supper, and felt like a common criminal when the people began to flood in off the main street in their fancy clothes and big hats and chauffeured cars. Not one of them was even a proper Pole.

When the crowd began to clap and cheer I was certain the great pianist himself had come. But the man that descended from the buggy had a huge top hat on, with bare wisps of white hair showing. I knew it could not be Paderewski. Where was the lion's mane of hair? Where was the moustache? I asked a man beside me. “There's the governor general,” he said.

“That be Lord Grey himself, come all the way from Ottawa for this.” I told him I, too, had come from a long way, further even than Ottawa, but he just laughed in disbelief.

I was ready to go when the old man who'd been selling the tickets came out and announced that Paderewski himself had arranged that two hundred tickets be held and now released.

I got one of the first for only $1.50, and thirty minutes later found myself in the third balcony staring down past a pillar and from the side, but at least seeing Ignace Jan Paderewski himself walk out. I felt exactly as I had when I looked on the Black Madonna at Czestochowo. This wasn't a man anymore than she was a painting. This was Poland!

I remember every note of music he played. Bach, Liszt, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, then what I had come for: Frederic Chopin. I still have the program. Nocturne, op. 62, in B Major; Etudes no. 12, 7, 30; Prelude no. 17; Valse, op. 42.

I do not remember his encores. I do not remember coming down the stairs or going out into the night. I do remember that Paderewski came out and spoke to me and other immigrants who had gathered there. He told us not to give up, to pray.

A woman gave him flowers. Roses, they were, and at that time of year! Once, his grey eyes swept across my own and I felt I was finally seeing what my father looked like, but I now know it was just wishful thinking.

It is hard for me even today, April 21, 1951, to believe what came to pass for this great man. It was Ignace Paderewski alone who persuaded President Wilson to fight for Poland after the Great War, and it was Paderewski who was the new state's first prime minister in 1919, as was only fitting.

It was Paderewski who, never forgetting for a moment the monstrous abuse Poland has suffered at the hands of Russia, refused to allow the Russian troops access to Polish land during the years immediately after the Revolution. He refused to permit the easy flow of Russians. He refused to comply whatsoever with the Russians. And in my opinion he, more than any other man, stopped the Communist Revolution from sweeping down through Europe as all the fashionable Marxists in Canada were praying.

In 1951, in Pomerania, Ontario, there is one tired old man who never, ever goes to bed without saying a prayer of thanks to Ignace Jan Paderewski through the Holy Virgin, Our Lady of Czestochowa.

I want my children to know I, Karol Batterinski, saw Paderewski play and heard him speak....