Necessary Lies(81)

Anna hesitates.

“Please,” Ursula says. “We shouldn’t part like this. I want you to see it.”

Ursula walks fast, her heels clicking on the pavement, and Anna follows, each step an effort for her swollen feet.

Ursula’s car is parked nearby, a red BMW with a black interior, and Anna sits down with relief, stretching her legs as far as they will go.

“You can move the seat all the way back,” Ursula says. “It’ll give you more room.”

She drives fast, taking sharp turns and stopping with a screech of tires, and Anna leans back in the seat. “I know how it must hurt you,” Ursula says. “I’ve thought about it. It was such a terrible time to find out. When you can’t grab him by the collar and scream. And William cannot explain, cannot mend anything.”

There is so much intensity in Ursula’s voice. So much passion. Is she defending William, pleading for him? Her hands are clasped tight on the steering wheel. Anna can see the muscles hardening, stretching under the skin.

“William is dead,” she says.

“But he is still hurting you,” Ursula says.

“It’ll pass. I’ll forget.”

They drive by the streets, empty but for cleaners who sweep away the discarded fliers, confetti, and cigarette butts.

“When the Wall fell, the longest line-ups were in front of porno shops,” Ursula says quietly. “The bouquets of flowers we greeted the Ossis with did not last. A few days later you could hear the first jokes: Why should we envy the Chinese? — They still have their wall!”

They drive out of the city, past long rows of one storey prefab buildings, empty at this hour. It is getting dark fast. Anna watches it all, silent.

“You won’t forget,” Ursula says. “I won’t either.”

The car pulls up to what seems to Anna like the end of the road, but is only a lowering of the terrain, a big empty lot where she sees a herd of small cars, parked all over the place. When the engine stops, Ursula leaves the lights on and blinks them three times. Slowly, one by one, the little cars light up, doors open, and men come out, disentangling themselves from their sleeping bags. Soon a whole group of them circles the car, and Anna is uneasy. She would have locked the car doors, driven away, but Ursula waves her hand.

“Hi, guys,” she says. “Is Andrzej around?”

“Tomorrow,” a tall, heavy man says in German. “Jutro” he repeats in Polish. It is only then that Anna realises that all of these men are Polish. She should have guessed it from their faces, broad and tanned, from their moustached lips. Or from the shape of the small Polish Fiats, with their steel shells filled to the brim with soft human bodies.

The men give Ursula quick, suspicious looks, and exchange a few words among themselves. She has opened the doors of the BMW, and is standing up, her foot resting on the chassis. They seem nervous, unsure of themselves, their hands awkwardly looking for something to do. One of them, the heaviest, with short greying hair, lets a load of saliva gather in his mouth and spits it on the ground with a swishing sound. He is calmer than the rest; he has obviously seen Ursula before.

“Your friend,” the man asks, pointing at Anna. “She too, looking for workers?”

“You can ask her yourself,” Ursula says. “She speaks your language.”

The man slowly turns to Anna, and she sees in his look a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“You speak Polish?” he asks. The question is not a polite inquiry. The man does not call her Pani, but uses a direct form, “Mówisz po polsku?” Anna does not like his directness, the unwanted familiarity, the underpinning of contempt.

“Tak,” Anna says. The sound of this one word gives her away, tells him that she does not merely speak the language, but is Polish.

“From Warsaw?” he keeps asking.

“No,” she says quickly. “From Wroclaw.”

He gives her a questioning look. What is she doing here, then, with this German woman in her tight black dress, her red vest, the air of some actress?

“You work with her?”

“No,” Anna says. “Just visiting.”

“Ah,” he says and leans on the BMW, toward her. “Enjoying the sights?” The contempt in his voice makes Anna blush. “Checking us out?” He gives a loud, piercing whistle and Anna, quickly, turns her head away.

“Can we go now?” she asks Ursula.

The men are beginning to leave, one by one. They have already decided that their prospects of getting a job from these two women are slim, not worth giving up a few hours of sleep. Only three of them are still standing around the car, stepping from one foot to another, waiting for something to happen.

Ursula takes out a piece of paper with directions. “I need five for next week,” she says. Five, she signals with her palm. The heavy man grabs the paper before she has the time to extend her hand and stuffs it into his pocket.

“Ya, ya,” he says. “You German whore,” he mutters in Polish, loud enough for Anna to hear him. “Danke sch?n. We come.”

“Gut!” Ursula says, gets into the car and starts the engine. “Auf Wiedersehen!”

In the headlights the men seem weightless, dancing in the beams of light, like moths. They look back as they walk away, their white faces distorted and suddenly, Anna notices it now, drawn from exertion.