Necessary Lies(66)

“So what, finally, brings you back to this part of the world?” he asks.

“My husband died,” she says, and his eyes narrow at the word “husband.”

Ten years have passed. Piotr is sitting in front of her, with the signature of another woman written all over him — in his choice of tie, the cut of his jacket. His face is still smooth, but pale. His hands are manicured, cared for, she remarks. A thought, a desire comes over her, to put her hand on his, to feel the warmth of his skin, the soft cushion of hair on his hand.

She says she is back to see the end of Communism.

“I see,” he says. “Quite a pilgrimage.” His eyes wander away from her, and he leans backward in his chair. It occurs to her that if she had known of Ursula’s existence ten years ago, she might have gone back to Poland — to Piotr. This, then, would be her other life.

“You look happy,” she says.

He looks at her as if checking that he has heard her right. “Do I?” he answers, his brows raised. So this, too, is the wrong thing to say. She lets it go.

The marble table is cold, and Anna crosses her arms to avoid touching it. In the back of the café, two young women in long black dresses are playing Tchaikovsky on violin and cello. William would have said something about the soulful quality of their bowing, or the accuracy of their intonation. How she loved watching his face when he listened to music, waiting for the moment when his mouth moved from a distant smile to a twitch. It never came quite at the places she expected.

The waitress asks what they would like.

“A glass of red wine,” Anna says. Oh, but she will have to choose, the waitress says and brings her a wine list. French, Italian, Spanish or Californian? Beaujolais Nouveau is here, a small card on the table informs her.

“Californian,” she says.

Piotr orders a beer. Zywiec. Polish.

She recalls that Piotr didn’t say anything when she mentioned William’s death. Not even a token, “I’m sorry to hear that.” He is not sorry.

She asks him about his father’s Kraków practice, about his mother’s health. He takes after her; his mother is still fiercely proud, impetuous, prone to anger, and ready to laugh. In one of the family stories, a party hack told her not to talk to him as if he were her father’s lackey. “Then don’t behave like one,” she shot in his face.

She was lucky. It was the time when people disappeared for lesser reasons. The story was repeated all over Kraków, in hushed, delighted whispers. What saved her from revenge was an event of monumental proportion; the death of Comrade Stalin and the fearful chaos that ensued.

Kraków will have to be restored, Piotr says, after forty-five years of Communism. This vicious, premeditated destruction of Poland. The steelworks of Nowa Huta, the Communist challenge to the bourgeois Kraków, will have to go, he says. The pollution washes away the faces on the monuments, raises the rates of cancer. Anna is not sure where the anger in his voice is directed. Communism? Her?

The waitress arrives with a tray and their drinks. Anna leans back, and sips her wine. “Julio Gallo,” the waitress informs her with pride.

“It’s fine,” Anna says. “Thank you.” The wine is slightly sour, but she sips it with pleasure. It gives her something to do. Piotr pours his beer, slowly, into a tall glass and watches the foam rise. His eyes are focussed on the beer glass. She remembers kissing his eyelids, sometime in the distant past, on a sun-baked meadow, on drying moss. A blade of grass in her mouth, she was leaning over him. His fingers brushed her skin when he took the grass away from her lips.

“Do you still hike?” she asks.

“When I have the time,” he says and frowns.

Piotr glances at his watch, but Anna can sense he is not really in a hurry. He has assigned this afternoon for her, with his wife’s approval. Hanka is probably watching their daughter play, building a tall tower from her Lego blocks or dressing her Barbie in pink jump suits. There is an aura of smoke around him, but he hasn’t made any attempts to light a cigarette. He must have thought through his every move, decided what Anna is entitled to, what she should be refused. When she asks to see a photograph of little Wanda, he shows it to her, quickly: a cascade of blond hair, a smiling, mischievous face, on the verge of laughter.

Wanda! Even his daughter’s name stings her, the name of a Polish princess who preferred death to marrying a German prince. First made him promise not to seek revenge on her people and then threw herself into the Vistula river. “Follow me, if you wish,” she said. A mound to her memory has been raised outside Kraków, high enough to be visible from every part of the city.

“You don’t have children?” This sounds like a question, but Piotr knows the answer already. He has been hearing stories, too. Julia, of course, doesn’t count. She is William’s daughter, not hers.

“Look,” she says. “I have no claims. I’ll sign whatever you want.” That’s why she is here, isn’t she? To dismiss all obligations. To move on.

“You can’t . You own half of the apartment.”

“I don’t want it.”

“How about your parents, your brother?” he asks.

“Silly,” she thinks. “Of course.” Nothing here is just hers alone. Her parents helped them quite generously with it, and her brother is living there now. She has no right to give up what has been theirs, too.