Necessary Lies(28)
Every day Marie insists on taking her out, or on coming by, placing food in front of her. For Marie, Anna’s appetite is the measure of her mood. If Anna pokes her fork into the leaves of lettuce, Marie pleads for a movie, or a walk. If Anna eats what is in front of her, she can be left alone.
“When will you go back to teaching?”
“I don’t know,” Anna says. It hasn’t been too hard to find a replacement for the two English classes she usually taught at that time of year.
“I don’t need the money,” she says as if that’s what Marie were worrying about.
“But you need something to do,” Marie snaps. “You can’t cry all day.”
In this other life, as Anna sometimes thinks of the time William was still alive, she had so many plans. There was a radio documentary she wanted to work on with Marie, interviews with Polish refugees who could now go back to the new, democratic Poland. “Would they?” Marie wondered.
“He wanted to have a trout pond. And a vineyard,” Anna says. She has taken to speaking in short sentences as if words tired her. A thought takes too long when it has to be wrapped up in words. Is this why William turned to music? She would have asked him if he were here.
Marie has heard it before, a list of what is no longer possible.
“Here,” she says and hands Anna an envelope with newspaper clippings, William’s obituaries she has collected. Brilliant composer… cruel loss… he had so much more to give. Hackneyed, threadbare words come too late, but Anna craves them nevertheless.
His music. In the last years he wrote so little, and what he wrote he tore to bits and threw away in disgust. She had to become an expert on consolation. From old reviews she had memorised whole passages and recited them back to him over the breakfast table. His music thrives on ambiguity and conflict. It is interested in the decay of sonorities, in patterns that collapse as we become aware of them. In its avoidance of pulse it mocks our need for stability. Change, when it happens, has no purpose; it is time that takes away some things and substitutes them with others…
“Listen to me, darling!”
Insatiable, seductive, brilliant. William Herzman’s music transcends the boundaries of genres. It takes us beyond our selves, shakes off our complacency…
He always listened. Rolled his eyes in mock impatience, but never ever stopped her. Never tired of praises, however stale she feared they’d become.
“What would I do without you!” he would say and, now, when she remembers it, she is awash with tenderness.
Marie orders two shots of Zubrówka, bison vodka, fragrant from a blade of sweet grass. The waitress places them in the middle of the table.
“Come on,” Marie says. “Together.”
They raise the glasses. Anna flinches as she drinks, but the vodka does warm her up.
“How’s your Mother?” she asks.
“Fine,” Anna says. “They’re all fine.”
“And Adam?” It’s all a deliberate, transparent effort to make her think of her family in Poland, and it works. She has a sister-in-law now, and a nephew. In a twist of fate it was Marie who had met them, and Anna has not. When Marie visited Anna’s parents in 1983 Adam was just a toddler with a crooked smile and small plump hands. When Marie was leaving, he gave her a wet kiss. She has had a soft spot for him ever since.
“Adam sent me a card,” Anna says. He is but a face she has traced on photographs, recognising the toys and clothes she and William have bought for him.
“I’m going to Prague next week. Why don’t you come with me? You could go to Poland, too. See your parents?” Marie says.
“All I ever got were false signs,” Anna says, as if she hasn’t heard. She is thinking of the times her heart stopped when she looked at the kitchen clock, its black hand moving too fast, advancing into spaces she found increasingly difficult to explain. “He is late,” she thought, trying to calm down, “a bit later than usual. He was stopped by a student. He had nowhere to call from.” She would pace to the window and back, all the time waiting for the sound of William’s car in the driveway, for the cheerful squeak of the storm doors, the sound of a key turning in the lock. When he did come in, ashamed of her fears, she would run to him, throw her arms around his neck, and press her cheek to his chest. “What’s that all about?” he would say, laughing. “Another bout of your Slavic soul?”
“Anna,” Marie says softly. “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing. You shouldn’t think of it like that.”
“Like what?” Anna asks.
“Like you could have somehow stopped it,” Marie says. Her black hair has a slight purple hue to it. It’s very becoming, but Anna will not say so. It annoys her that she would even notice a thing like that.
“I’ve been punished,” Anna says. “For coming here. For leaving Piotr. For leaving Poland.”
“That’s absolute bullshit and you know it,” Marie says, frowning. “So don’t even start it.” She is fixing her eyes on Anna now, her grey almond shaped eyes, clouded with anger and impatience. They have been through this before. Anna knows Marie doesn’t like these self-accusations, but she brings them out nevertheless, with blind persistence, like a tongue pushing on a loosened tooth. She longs to hear Marie’s protests. “For Goodness sake, Anna! People change, they grow! You had the right to think of yourself, of your own needs! Can’t you see that?”