Necessary Lies(56)
Under martial law her brother joined an underground dissident cell, delivering leaflets, preparing safe houses, carrying messages, lecturing clandestine groups on the legal means of active opposition. In Canada she knew little of these activities, except for vague hints in the letters smuggled out of the country and mailed outside the reach of censors. Her mother did not write about him, either.
“How is Basia,” she asks. “And Adam?”
“Oh, fine. They will come to see you later.” His wife and son, her sister-in-law and nephew, new family she has only seen in snapshots. Adam in the clothes she has sent from Montreal, sitting on a soccer ball, eyes rising to the ceiling in a gesture of exasperation. Basia, her long auburn hair plaited in an old-fashioned braid.
Yan lifts Anna’s suitcases up, and leads her to his car, the interior of which smells of gasoline and plastic seats. This is another childhood smell, Anna thinks, the smell of rare trips in a taxi, the now-forgotten curved line of the first Polish car, Warszawa, when she fought nausea for the sake of this tiny bit of luxury, a ride through the streets of the city, then almost empty of traffic. “My wheels,” Yan says with pride. “A bit on the old side, but still in good shape ” The car starts with a clutter and a shake, but takes off fast.
“Remember?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, terrified of the proximity of other cars on the road, her brother’s overly aggressive manoeuvres. Marie was right when she said that drivers in this part of the world accelerate and brake, as if speed or full stop were the only alternatives. But Yan laughs at his sister when she holds on to the seat.
“Relax,” he says. “I won’t kill you.”
“How are they?” she asks about their parents.
“Grumpy,” he says. “They never go anywhere. Mama doesn’t let Tata do anything. He cannot drink, and cannot smoke without her making a fuss. You know how he is. He’ll never say boo to her. Never could.”
“But how is he?” Anna asks.
“You’ll see for yourself.”
Yes, her brother looks tired; his face is sunken and grey. Partly it is the haircut, Anna thinks, too short for him, but partly it must be the life here. Too much vodka, too many cigarettes, and no desire to camouflage the passage of time. “Men do not live long in this country,” he tells her, as if he could read her thoughts. “We keel over before we are sixty-five.” He tells her this in a casual tone, as if it were gossip, something funny to tell a visitor from so far away. He uses a term that makes her shiver, “over-mortality of men,” and, all the time, gives her quick looks out of the corner of his eye.
“Listen, I’m so sorry about William.”
“Yeah,” she says, and suddenly, overcome by bitterness and loss, she chokes with sobs. Yan stops the car and lets her cry, waiting patiently until she calms down. He makes no attempt to quiet her, to comfort her sorrow, to reason with her. With all her smug talk about the habits of the land, this is something she has forgotten, the overwhelming acceptance of pain. Her brother knows she has to go through it, and there is nothing she can do but wait for the wave to pass. When she stops crying and dries her eyes, he drives off, cautioning her about the dark stretches of the streets.
“It’s no longer a safe city,” she hears. “Don’t carry any big money in your purse.” He is worried that with the way she looks now, she will stand out in the crowd. “Blend,” he seems to be telling her. “Don’t draw attention to yourself.” A game of survival, she thinks, and promises to try her best to become one with the crowd.
The stairs seem lower than she remembers, winding past closed, silent doors of the neighbours. Walls and doors are painted light grey, the paint unevenly spread, with drops dried midway down, like thick, frozen trails. On the first landing Anna peeks through the window into the back yard where someone has left a pile of broken boards, bricks, and chunks of concrete. A rusted bucket sits on top of the pile, splattered with remnants of white paint, and next to it lies a broken ladder, three rungs missing. A few children run across the yard, playing tag. “Got you,” cries a girl with a ponytail so light that it seems white. “Did not,” chants the other, smaller girl. “Did not!”
Anna can still remember a thick crystal glass panel with snowflake patterns in the front doors, smooth green tiles in the hall with brown outlines of chestnut leaves, carved wooden staircases, the shine of brown linoleum on the steps. The crystal panel was smashed on one of the Saturday nights when the hallway always smelled of urine and when she could hear feet pounding the ceiling above her bedroom, screams, dull thumps, things falling on the floor and rolling until they stopped. The panel was replaced first by an ordinary glass pane and subsequently by a piece of plywood. One by one, carved railings disappeared. The banister was held in place by roughly hewn pieces of wood.
In the backyard she used to play with other girls, hiding secrets in the grassy meadows, filling shallow holes with flower petals, beads, coins and then covering them up, first with a piece of glass and then with earth, promising never to tell. In this backyard, crabapple trees yield thick, pink blossoms in the spring and small, tart red apples at the end of the summer. Rajskie jabluszka, the little apples of paradise was the Polish for them, and when she bit into the white flesh, it made her tongue tingle. Every spring, the children broke off thick, blooming branches and carried them home to their mothers. Every fall, the boys climbed the trees, cracked more branches under their feet, shook the trunks for the shower of crab apples, cut their initials deep into the trunks.