Love Among the Single Classes (21 page)

Christmas at my grandparents' house in Warsaw. A house large enough to feel grand, with a salon in which twenty people could sit without it being crowded, but small and intimate enough to remain a family house. It was only our home for three generations. No, let me do this, it's not the tumour, just memories. I came into the entrance hall, a very little boy, holding Mama's hand. Was there a butler? Did he bow? Or was it to Mama, when she was a child, walking ahead of the poor French governess, that he bowed? It doesn't matter. I am in the hall. The floor is tiled in black and white marble. To my right the staircase curls upwards and away, with wrought-iron banisters and a handrail that I had to stretch high to reach: but I liked the way the wood flowed like silk under my palm. Straight ahead I walked, from the hall, through double doors, into the drawing room, with its chandeliers and mirrors and the tall tiled stove. Left was the dining room, another chandelier, more mirrors; and right, the salon, panelled in wood, with the portrait of Grand'mère painted just after her marriage, a fireplace burning huge logs, and the high Christmas tree – higher than Papa – that scented everything with the smell of Christmas. Is that right? Yes, wait: the Christmas tree used to stand in front of the french windows so that when the curtains were drawn back, people could see our candles flickering and the fire dancing in the darkened room. No-one decorates their trees with real candles today: it's always those electric lights that smell of nothing but dusty flex. Real candles smelt of danger, as I secretly waited for them to set the branch above alight, or even the Christ-child on the very top. The tree's shadowy bulk seemed to fill one side of the room. I would gaze into the sky, waiting for the Christmas Star to appear. Grand'mère would sit in her winged chair and watch me open my presents, and then put them away for me to give to the poorer children after Christmas.
Then
I was allowed
to kiss her. I was a privileged little boy and didn't need toys, did I? Those were for children less lucky than me. I shall never sleep with all the women I want.

And then, in the evening, we processed in to dinner. First my grandparents, and then my parents, and then me and my sister, the last year before she died, and then the governess and the nursemaid, to make sure that little Urszula ate. Not that she did, not even at Christmas. Was there family silver and fine linen and gold-edged Korzec plates, or do I imagine them? Do I imagine it all? It can't be the tumour, it's Christmas, my candlelit Christmas!

What a surprise it was, to find that Constance and her family had real candles too. Not just on the tree, which she had spoiled by draping it with silver strands and glass balls, instead of leaving it green like a wild tree in the forest that just happened to have flowered with candles, like a chestnut tree. Her whole house was full of candles, and their smell brought my childhood back, almost more vividly than I could bear. I sat in a corner of the sofa and talked to Kate, melting her sullenness by praising their decorations.

The other surprise was Constance's husband. I had imagined a fussy, bossy little man, whose self-importance would explain her anxious humility. Instead, he was a good chap; distant to me at first while he watched how I spoke to his children and treated his wife – his, of course, ex-wife – and then once he'd checked me out, friendly and complicit. What could Constance have told him that made him say to me while she was in the kitchen, ‘She's a good girl you know, Constance. I'm more aware of it after eight years apart than I was when we lived together. When we were married, I mean. Just try not to let her become too complicated. She thinks too much. Have you noticed?'

‘She is an intelligent woman …' I said guardedly.

‘Of course. But she over-analyses. Her main fault is thinking too precisely on the event.'

‘She has been very generous to me. So have your children.'

‘Kate's the tricky one.'

‘Ah,' I said, not knowing how Kate had described me to
her father, but remembering my covert jealousy of any man or boy who seemed to approach too close to Alina or Henryka.

‘Try and make her relax … Constance, that is. She's best value when least complicated.'

Did he think me a simpleton?

‘And your … friend?' I asked.

‘It gets awkward, all this business, when your kids are grown up and at it themselves,' he says, man to man: we understand the problems.

‘I suppose so.'

He beckoned Cordelia over, and she poured both of us another drink. He was more relaxed with his daughters than I ever could be with mine. He could hug them unselfconsciously, as though they were still just little girls rather than young women. I was always uneasy about my daughters' sexuality. Their little breasts alarmed me. I seldom hugged them once they'd changed from girls into women. I was afraid of being aroused by those forbidden breasts.

Constance sat at the head of the table, with Paul and me on either side of her. She was high-coloured and flirtatious, showing us off to one another, basking in our attention. The food she had cooked was delicious – goose and red cabbage – and since Paul had brought champagne and I vodka soon we were all a little drunk. By the time the meal ended, Constance was leaning towards me in open invitation, but I felt inhibited by the presence of her husband – ex-husband, as if the man whose children she had borne could ever really be ‘ex' – and couldn't respond to her advances. Paul left the table and danced with his daughters, first the little one and then the older, and finally with both of them together. Max stood before his mother saying, ‘OK then Mother, might as well show them!'

When they danced together I was surprised how good they were. The boy moved well and Constance became almost abandoned. She laughed and swung her head and body, fast or slow, whatever the rhythm, until you would not have thought she was a mother dancing with her son. She
would have ended the evening equally happily in bed with either of us: Paul or me. I knew it would not be me. Even with his implied permission, I could not have made love to another man's wife after spending the evening at his table, eating his food and drinking with him. Perhaps I was just making excuses, or perhaps it was the soft body of Cordelia – whom I held in my arms when, later, we all danced together – that I secretly coveted. I have taught too many young girls.

Finally Kate made them all calm down while she lit new candles on the tree and gave out presents. The resinous smell and the packages tied with bows and the church bells ringing outside made me nostalgic again, though I had been avoiding sentimentality. What good are the carols, the sweetmeats, the samovar, the midnight mass? Then I was a child, and not a happy child, not at the time, and now I am a middle-aged, almost an old man. We think we are free to celebrate, copulate, deceive, forget. We are trapped. I am trapped. The tumour grows. A thick yellow poison as sweet as honey fills my senses with the past. How can I sleep with this woman who only wants to give me a future? Because I am afraid of becoming old and lonely and sexless. I don't want to turn into one of those men with twisted faces, who mutter to themselves as they carry out obsessive errands that nobody needs. I don't want to be a man whom nobody touches except by accident. Will Constance save me from being old, unfucked, and mad? Will Joanna?

Tadeusz, next day, is more direct than Paul. After we have eaten Christmas lunch with their friends, and the women are in the kitchen, he puts his hands on the table, palms upwards, and says, ‘You know it would make me happy to see my daughter married.'

‘Yes.'

‘She is nearly thirty-five. I don't know why she hasn't married yet. She is a good-looking woman, and not just in her father's eyes?'

‘No, more than that. Joanna is a beauty.'

‘She's not one of these strange, modern women, who
reject motherhood, and say they don't want a husband and would think it demeaning to run his home.'

‘No, she will make someone a good wife.'

‘Have you thought about it, my friend?'

‘Tadeusz, you flatter me. I am an old man.'

His right hand clenches into a gesture of virility. ‘Not too old.'

‘Not too old to make love to women, thank God. But too old to start again, with a young wife and family. Children. Babies. Anyway, I have no money.'

‘Rely on me.'

‘What makes you think Joanna wants me? Maybe she wants to get away from Poland, from this Polish heritage that drags …? Maybe she wants to be
English?'

I understand what he is saying. But if I were so certain that I wanted to stay here, I could marry Constance, without the problem of children.

‘Tadeusz, all men worry about their daughters. Mine are married, and I worry about whether their husbands beat them. You know Alina expects a child in the spring?'

‘Congratulations, my friend! You will be a grandfather!'

‘It is too late to start all over again. I would look a fool, becoming a grandfather and then a father myself.'

‘I have watched Joanna. I won't say she loves you, I don't know if she does, but… think about it, Iwo. Here she is! Tell her your good news!'

Joanna's eyes light up, and she swings eagerly towards me, smiling.

‘What good news? What is it, Iwo?'

‘My daughter is with child. It will be born in the spring.'

‘Congratulations!'

Gravely she kisses me on both cheeks, and her hair sways towards me, scratchy and fragrant. In a flash of lechery I long to see her head bent over me, her face hidden behind that curtain of hair. I will have her tonight, grandfather or no grandfather. I rise in expectation. They are toasting me. With upraised glasses we salute new life.

In the evening we all go – Joanna, Tadeusz, her aunts – to
the Polish Centre, to join the other wistful expatriates who together will create a travesty of our vanished Christmases. Schoolchildren in national dress sing Polish carols; the restaurant has made a special effort; the women have baked; there are fir twigs on the tables in front of each place, and candles again, more candles, and the Polish eagle clenches its beak and claws and bends its fierce eyes on all of us. The old people reminisce, their crinkled eyes fill with rheumy tears, the women smile and sway. The young are patient and impatient. I close my mind to all thoughts and plan to detach Joanna from her relatives. She toasts me in vodka, brandy, and wine, her eyes sparkling. She is at her best when she feels desired. She wants me too, as husband and home-giver. Why not? I don't want to be old and lonely and unfucked, and Joanna can save me from all that and let me be Polish as well. I want you naked in a dark landscape, dense with bronze chandeliers, vases …

I fuck Joanna as if I were raping Poland, purging my furious homesickness on her barren white body, and she cries out in Polish and loves it.

The end of the year is cold. My room is cold. The postroom is glum with anti-climax and boredom. I spend my time composing letters to Katarzyna, not yet knowing what I want to say or how I want her to respond. I will write two letters and send whichever seems the more convincing.

Constance rings, still full of Christmas, and asks me what the inscription in front of her book means and whether I have plans for New Year's Eve. I have forgotten what I wrote, but I invent something. If I start the New Year with her, will that tip the balance towards her and away from Joanna? Perhaps I should spend New Year's night alone, waiting for the mirror to show me the face of my future at midnight's stroke? I say nothing, and Constance is too sensitive to press me. She senses the increasing distance between us. And yet I have tried to love her, to squash myself into the shabby, comfortable role of a second husband, to please her friends and appease her children. I am cold and stiff and tired of pretending. I want to be mad. Then I could shed responsibility for my old age, my feet wandering feebly forward, my mind travelling confidently back.

What was it like being the economics professor that I was, the figure in the vanguard of Communism, glibly reinterpreting the world according to the new orthodoxy? What was it like, to have seen through God and dispensed with superstition, what was the rational Iwo like? I would get up after a night spent in my bed, the bed I chose when I married my wife, between sheets darned and turned but made of good rough linen. I would wash and shave in a bathroom that had not been used by strangers. I would dress in clothes I selected from a wardrobe in which every
garment reminded me of past events. They were not expensive but they were my own: dark jackets, duffel coat, a warm muffler, my fur hat. I would breakfast on bread and sausage and hot, bitter coffee while my daughters or the radio spoke to me of the day's events in Polish. When I left my home, my departure was noticed. Someone called after me: Two, don't forget to ask at lunchtime about getting the telephone mended!'; ‘Daddy, will you bring me some drawing pencils?'; ‘Papa, tonight you have to hear my music for the examination, don't forget!' I was a person, don't forget.

It is not security I need, but continuity. Any woman would make me secure, but only my wife is continuous. Can I, more than half-way through my life, forget thirty years or more as an adult and start again?

My dear wife,

It is four years, almost, since I left, and to my dismay I find I am less and less able to accommodate this new life I chose. I have read your letter many times, and I am filled with visions of Alina as a mother, you as a grandmother. I wish I could share this new family with all of you. Is Janek taking care of her? Has she enough of the right things to eat – whatever they are – you craved coal, unless that is another fantasy of mine. I am often bewildered nowadays, and I have difficulty untangling real memories from those I have invented. It seems to me that you and I were happier together than I knew at the time, and it is hard to think of myself as some other woman's husband, though, believe me, there are those who would willingly marry me. And what about you? Have you another man in your bed? Not men – those, dear Kasia, were always there, and I knew and didn't know, but now I know – but a
man?
Or are you perhaps … I cannot put it into words. Write to me, tell me your thoughts, embrace my daughters since I cannot, and ask for everything you need. I earn good money here and shall soon be promoted and earn more,
so don't be afraid to ask for everything you need. Real coffee? Warm clothes? What do babies wear?