Necessary Lies(64)
“Does your husband speak Polish?” she asks, looking at Yan who stands in the door, hesitating.
“Oh, no,” Anna says. “This is my brother. My husband died. In January.”
“I’m so sorry,” Magda says, embarrassed by her mistake. “But I thought... I am sorry. I didn’t mean ...”
“That’s all right,” Anna says.
The rooms have been painted many times over, and are now the colour of green peas. The pictures on the wall are cheap reproductions of Polish paintings, a young peasant woman stretched on a meadow, an old peasant and a young boy watching a pair of flying storks.
Anna asks if there is anything else left that could have belonged to K?the’s family.
“No,” Magda says, there is nothing in the attic. There used to be some clothes she remembers, coats with fur trim, boxes with hats, but moths got into them and her mother had to throw them away. She remembers the clothes because when she was little she used to dress up in them, pretend she was a lady.
Anna takes out a photograph of K?the and William and shows it to Magda who examines it. The evergreens around the house, she says, are so small. The giant fir in front is no larger than a Christmas tree.
In the backyard, underneath the hazel bush the breadbox with family silver may still be buried. K?the’s mother hid it there before leaving for Berlin, but it was William who told her about it, not K?the.
“Would you like to see the bedrooms upstairs?”
“No,” Anna says. “Thank you so very much.” She is beginning to feel uneasy, as if assuming a role she is not entitled to. It’s not her home, after all; these are not her memories. “But I would like to see your garden,” she asks. “I love gardening,” she adds as if to explain her wish. “Your hostas look gorgeous from here.”
Magda is pleased. “I’m sorry there isn’t that much for you here,” she says and suggests that maybe Anna would like to take pictures of the house. Anna nods.
“Go ahead,” Yan says, accepting Magda’s offer of tea and home-made cake. As she is closing the back door behind her, Anna hears their muffled laughter at the confusion of the first moments. “Come on, do I really look German?” her brother asks.
In the garden the hostas look resplendent, next to big, bushy ferns. They must like the shade of the trees and the acidity of the soil from the needles of the big fir. The hazel bush has been pruned with care. For a split second Anna considers asking Magda if they had found the silver, but it is only a split second. What if it is still there? What if they dig it out now? She doesn’t want to put this hospitality to the test of who owns what. She is sure K?the would not want it. It’s better to let things lie buried in the ground.
When she comes back into the house Magda and her brother talk about computers. That might just be a salvation, Magda says. She has been to Taiwan a few times already. Mostly she brought back clothes, but there is more money in electronics. She has managed to sell a few PCs, but what she needs is a store and service. She would have run a business out of here, God knows there is enough space, but it’s too far from the downtown.
Anna is asked to join them, for a cup of tea and a slice of plum cake. She is asked which computers are the best in Canada, but her answer — hesitant and cautious, explaining that it depends so much on the individual needs and preferences — is clearly a letdown.
“We can sell the best here, too,” Magda says, “Not only hand-me-downs.”
Her brother nods. “All sorts of people with money” he says. “Big money.”
“You should consider investing here,” Magda says. “It’s the time, now. Tomorrow may be too late!”
Anna hands Magda a box with maple syrup candy, one of the Canadian gifts she has brought for such encounters.
“We must be on our way,” she says. “Thank you so very much for your hospitality.”
“That’s all right,” Magda smiles. “My pleasure. All the way from Canada,” she says, still amazed at the turn this day took.
The next morning Anna wakes up late, unwilling to get out of bed, to leave its softness and warmth. As in her childhood, the windows in the room are covered with white lace curtains, freshly starched and ironed. She lies staring at the ceiling, at the plaster ornaments, broken where the cord of the electric lights was added. The wiring was a later addition in this building, and so was the sewage system. Pipes and wires run over the walls. The Germans used to hide them under the wallpaper, her father said, but you can’t do that with paint.
She gets out of bed and walks around the room. The floorboards have layers of paint on them, lighter patches show through reddish brown and there is a pattern to their creaks and squeaks, revealing the spots where the nails have loosened. How little has changed, she thinks.
Her parents are up. From another room she can hear her father coughing, a long recurring bout, and her mother’s voice telling him to swallow something. “Just take it. For once don’t argue with me.”
A white shoebox, filled with papers is lying on the table. “Piotr brought it here, after they let him out of the internment camp,” her mother said. “He told me he didn’t know how he could return this to you.”
Piotr brought most of the things that belonged to her here right after the day she called to tell him about William. They are still unpacked, a whole stack of cardboard boxes in her mother’s room. Anna will have to go over them in the next few days, get rid of what she doesn’t want to keep.