Necessary Lies(4)

In March, Piotr was given leaflets to take to the students at the Politechnika. This was the real beginning, he said, when Anna came to see him at the dorm. This time they hurried; there was no time but for a kiss. The leaflets were in two bundles. An explanation of the need for action, a call for peaceful protests and for a Poland-wide student strike if necessary. He put the bundles into his shoulder bag.

“Give them to me,” she said. “They won’t search a schoolgirl.”

He hesitated.

“Come on,” she said. “Give them to me.”

She washed all traces of mascara from her eyes and tied her hair into a ponytail, a thick flaxen curl between her shoulder blades. Pinned the school badge to her left arm, smoothed the sleeves of her uniform. Let her glasses slide down her nose. She could look fourteen when she wanted, innocence itself.

“Give them to me.”

He didn’t look at her when she took the bundles from his bag and pushed them into her school satchel. For the first time it occurred to her that he might be scared, but she dismissed the thought at once. Not Piotr, not him.

At the last moment she put a jar of jam and a loaf of bread into his bag. And then she rolled the newspapers that were lying on the table and added them.

“Just keep cool,” he whispered into her ear and offered her a shot of vodka. She drank it and felt nothing but warmth, not even a turn in her head. He had two shots, one after another and gave her a mint candy to disguise the smell.

The first time the milicja patrol approached them she did keep cool. They had discussed the best tactics before and Piotr was now doing his part, leaning on her shoulder, his body heavy and limp. She gave the men a helpless smile, a smile of a woman left to carry her burden, an old dance of the sexes. They had counted on that. On their laughter at his mumbling voice.

“Just don’t be angry with me, little sister,” Piotr pleaded with drunken insistence. “Can a man not have a drink in this country anymore without a woman screaming at him?”

“Wait till Mother sees you,” she yelled and gave his body a shove. “She will teach you a lesson.” That’s when the milicja men laughed.

Later, far from their sight, Piotr heaved his body straight. “Bastards,” he said and she watched his upper lip tremble. “Bloody pigs.”

The second time they were stopped, the two men in blue uniforms with set jaws in their pale faces emerged from around the corner before they had time to do anything.

“Documents!” they barked and then stood, feet apart and looked at them as they fumbled for their I.D.s. Anna handed hers first, to the shorter one. Slowly his eyes travelled from her face to the photograph in her school identification. Piotr, she had noted, handed his internal passport, not his university I.D. “What’s in this bag?” the taller one asked, pointing at Piotr’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” Piotr said. “Groceries. We’ve just done some shopping.”

“Open it up!”

The bag slid onto the pavement. Piotr kneeled to open it and took out the jam, the bread. The newspapers.

“Student?” The shorter one was taking over.

“Yes.”

“Where are your books then, Mr. Student? Aren’t we supposed to be learning? Aren’t we supposed to study hard?”

“At the dorm,” he said. “I left them at the dorm.”

“Is that so, Mr. Student? Or maybe we needed some room to carry other things than books?”

Anna stood motionless, staring at them, watching their every move. Think, she told herself. They are going to beat him up. Think! If she didn’t clear her throat, she would choke.

“A nice girlfriend. A lucky bastard, too!” the taller was looking at her now. The shorter one spit on the pavement, the white blob landing at Piotr’s feet. Glass cracked. Kicked, Piotr’s bag landed a few feet away. The milicja men laughed. Their knuckles tensed on the handles of the white night-sticks. “Let’s see how lucky you really are!”

She could see, with a corner of her eye, that the sinews in Piotr’s neck were tensing up. He would say something now, she knew it, say something that would make the men strike. Call them pigs. Moscow lackeys. Quote his constitutional rights. Then they would be arrested, searched. She had to stop it, right away. Now.

“Him!” It was the contempt in her voice that caught their attention. “He’s no longer my boyfriend. And he is no longer a student. He failed his exams.”

“Third time,” she said and laughed. “Failed for the third time.”

She was counting on the power of their contempt, on the slight chance that they might dismiss Piotr as not worthy of their effort. She was not taking into account the simple fact that she was humiliating Piotr. Such deliberations required time. She felt the men’s eyes slide up and down her face, her breasts, her belly. She was waiting, a soft smile on her lips. Anything that might tip the scales in Piotr’s favour.

The shorter man, who was holding her ID in his hands, had been staring at her picture for some time now, but did not write anything down. A golden ring on his finger glimmered in the sun.

“Shouldn’t you be at school right now?” the taller man finally said, and she knew that she had won. He was returning her school I.D.

“That’s where I’m going,” she said, taking it and putting it in her pocket. Her school was, indeed, a few streets away. “Only now I’ll be late.”