Loves of Yulian (7 page)

The hotel was closer to the center of town than the
pension
had been. It was a totally urban setting, and there were stores and apartment buildings across the street. We were on the fourth floor and had a bedroom and a living room with a cot, meaning that I would have my own bed. We also had a telephone on a little table next to my cot.

On the bad side, however, was the fact that we were in the same hotel with Mr. K, whom I didn’t trust to begin with, and had even more concern about now, in view of Mother’s confession of the previous day. My concern increased when he telephoned Mother that same afternoon and then came up from their suite on the floor below to talk with her.

I had hoped that Mrs. Irena would come with him, but she didn’t. He did, however, bring a briefcase from which he produced a diamond necklace and some earrings to show to Mother. They sat together on my cot, and he let Mother hold them. She turned them one way then another in the light, as I had seen people do with jewelry. I could tell from her expression that she liked them.

They spoke quietly, so that I wouldn’t hear, but, if he was hoping to sell them to her, he was barking up the wrong tree because we had no money. Of course, it could have been a trick. I had heard of pickpockets, people who would distract you in some way so that you wouldn’t notice them robbing you. Kiki and I had even seen a stage performer who could take the watch off your wrist or the wallet out of your pocket, without your knowing it. And so Mr. K. could have been trying to get Mother so interested in his necklace and earrings that she would not notice him sliding the diamond ring off her finger.

It was, as I thought about it, a rather clever trick. You put somebody off their guard by giving them something valuable of 
yours
to hold so that they don’t suspect that you are actually
robbing
them. But I wouldn’t let it work here. Sitting in a little armchair by the window, I had my eyes on Mother’s ring every second, and, if he tried anything, I would see it.

On the other hand, what if he simply asked for the ring and Mother gave it to him because she considered him a gentleman? No, that couldn’t happen. There was no way that Mother could just give her ring to Mr. K. I must have misunderstood Mother’s statement yesterday. Or, what was most likely, there were certain conditions under which this was true, conditions which Mother had been too distraught to specify.

I was relieved to see Mother finally hand the necklace back to Mr. K. and him pack it back in the briefcase—with the ring still on Mother’s finger. I thought he might go home now, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled a large broach out of his bag, and they went on talking quietly.

Then Mother looked at me. “Yulian,” she said, “Mr. Kosiewicz says that his wife hasn’t been to the beach yet. Why don’t you take her.”

Nobody had ever put it that way to me before. It was always someone who was taking
me
somewhere. If Mother’s suggestion had been just that, a suggestion, it would have presented a temptation that was hard to resist. But I knew that I had no choice in the matter anyway. And, as far as the ring was concerned, if, in my absence, Mother’s ring were to disappear somehow, we would all know who had taken it, and all we’d have to do is call the police and tell them. And, because Mr. K. knew this as well as I did, he would not try anything.

Mr. K. was already on the telephone, telling his wife that she was going to the beach with me. I went into the bedroom to put on my bathing suit, then waited a long time out in the living room for Mrs. Irena to arrive. This time, I determined, I would call her
Irena
, as she had asked me to on the ship, when I hadn’t been able to.

When she finally knocked on the door and I let her in, she had what must have been one of her husband’s shirts over her bathing suit. The shirt was unbuttoned, and I automatically checked to see if she had on one of the skimpy, two-piece suits I had seen on the beach the day before, but she didn’t, and I was disappointed. It was the same white bathing suit she had worn on the ship. Her beautiful brown hair seemed even fuller and more luscious than I remembered it. A green headband crossed over the top of her head, over which she had a pair of large sunglasses, which I immediately envied.

She shook hands with Mother, then with me. “How are you today, Yulian?” she asked.

“I’m f. . . ine, Mrs. I. . . rena. How are y. . . ou?” I was speaking very slowly so as not to stutter.

“
Mrs. Kosiewicz
,” Mother corrected.

“Oh no, please Missus,” Mrs. Irena said. “I asked Yulian to call me Irena. I hope that’s all right.”

“Well, as long as he’s respectful.”

“It’ll be fine,” Mrs. Irena said.

“Go get a towel from the bathroom,” Mother said to me, “and you’d better get a blanket out of the closet.”

I saw that Mrs. Irena had brought neither blanket nor towel, so I brought an extra towel from the bathroom. “Let me carry the blanket, and you can take the towels,” she said. I handed her the blanket.

“So, are we ready to go?” Mrs. Irena asked me.

“Y. . . es M. . . rs. I. . . rena,” I said.

I had expected her to lead the way into the hallway, but she didn’t. Then I realized that I should open the door. “P. . . lease, M. . . rs. I. . . rena,” I said, holding the door open.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping through. Then, when the door had closed behind us on the landing, she said, “When we’re alone,
Yulek
,” using the familiar form of my name, “just call me
Irenka
. The
Missus
makes me feel like an old woman. And I don’t look like an old woman to you, do I? Your mother and Tadek probably won’t like it, so you can call me
Missus
in front of them, but when we’re alone, we’ll just be two friends. It’ll be our secret.”

I knew that this was going to be hard for me to get used to. But without the
Missus
in front of her name, I would be free of that third-person form of address. Not only was the third-person awkward to use, but I felt that it put a barrier between people. It was as though I had to wear a glove to touch her hand. As we rode down the hotel’s one elevator, I searched for some equally-intimate response I could give.

“I have a b. . . ear n. . . amed M. . . eesh,” I said, as we reached the lobby. “W. . . hat I m. . . ean is that h. . . e is a t. . . eddy b. . . ear.” As we walked through the little lobby, I realized that I had a problem. I wanted to hold Mrs. Irena’s—or Irenka’s—hand once we reached the street, but I didn’t want her to think that it was because I was a little boy who wasn’t allowed to walk in the street without holding someone’s hand. I still remembered how soft it was, from the two or three times we had shaken hands, and the idea of walking the three blocks to the beach, nestled in that pillowy hand, seemed suddenly like a short sojourn in Heaven.

If she were to ask to hold my hand, as she well might, I decided, I would comply, because that would not indicate that that was my normal practice, but just her
supposition
of my normal practice. But for me to take
her
hand, could well be interpreted as though, on the street, I was always held by the hand. .

“Which way do we want to go?” she asked as we stepped out into the sunlight, and she lowered the sunglasses down over her eyes.

“T. . . he b. . . each is j. . . ust th. . . ree bl. . . ocks str. . . aight ah. . . ead,” I said. “so w. . . e can g. . . o either l. . . eft or r. . . .ight

“All right. So which way do you want to go?”

I realized, suddenly, that it was I who was supposed to be taking Irenka to the beach, so it was up to me to make those decisions.

“To the r. . . ight,” I said, and began walking in that direction. Irenka caught up to me, but that put her on the street side of the sidewalk, the side on which, I knew, the gentleman was supposed to walk. I crossed behind her to place myself on the proper side. As I did, I passed the two towels to what would now be my outside hand.

“Oh, you are such a gentleman, Yulek,” she said. To the best of my memory, that was the first time that anyone had actually credited me with that elevated status.

But the blanket stayed in Irenka’s left hand, dashing any of my dreams for the softness of her palm. Then I remembered that I had begun confessing to her about my relationship with Meesh.

“I g. . . ot M. . . eesh w. . . hen we w. . . ere in L. . . voof and I w. . . as a lot y. . . ounger,” I said. I explained that, at first, I had pretended that he was my son and carried him everywhere, but, later, when we got to Hungary, and I was older, he didn’t like being carried around anymore, but we would still talk together in our secret language.

It had not been an easy confession to make, as I felt myself laying my soul bare in front of my new friend.

“I hope I can meet your bear someday,” she said, and, as I fantasized introducing Meesh to her, the feeling I had was of a sacred bond being sealed between us.

And suddenly, to my horror, I found that, inadvertently, I had slipped my hand between Mrs. Irena’s palm and the blanket.

At what point in my confession I had done that, and how long it had been there, I had no idea. And now I wasn’t even sure that she was aware of what I had done. Possibly, I reasoned, it had happened as we crossed the street.

We had turned the corner, and I could see heads of people as they moved about the beach, some three blocks in front of us. I walked very carefully now so that my hand wouldn’t jiggle against hers and alert her to its presence. If the issue came up, I would pretend that I was as unaware of the situation as Mrs. Irena seemed to be—that it had happened inadvertently, as it had, and that, for all I knew, it was she who had initiated the action.

As we walked now, I tasted again the deliciousness of the words she had spoken on the hotel landing, when she had told me to call her
Irenka
, and hoped that she had another luscious intimacy to share with me. But then I chided myself for my greed.

“It’s good to have a friend you can talk to, isn’t it?” she responded, at long last. And then I realized that what my frantic thoughts had construed to be a passage of time, had only been a few seconds.

“Y. . . es,” I said.

“I’m sure that your Meesh is very discreet, isn’t he?”

I had heard the word
discreet
before, but wasn’t exactly sure of what it meant. “Y. . . es,” I said, hoping that she would clarify it.

“Things that you say to him he doesn’t repeat to anyone, does he?”

I assured her that he didn’t and suddenly got an inkling of where this might be going.

“And do you keep the secrets that he tells you, too?”

There really weren’t any secrets that Meesh ever told
me
, but I assured her of this as well, because I would have if there had been any.

“You know that when somebody tells you a secret, you can’t repeat it to
anyone
.”

“Y. . . y. . . yes,” I said, my stutter getting the best of me this time.

“Well then, maybe you could become
my
Meesh.”

Suddenly I could feel my heart thumping. Of all the things that an eight-and-a-half-year-old boy could become, I could think of none I would rather be than Irenka’s Meesh.

Now Irenka was saying something else, and I had missed it. I didn’t even know if it had been a statement or a question. “Y. . . es,” I said. For the first time, I was glad for my slow speech, since it enabled my response to be taken for either an answer or an acknowledgement. And my
yes
was an unequivocal agreement to anything she might have proposed.

Now I felt Irenka give my hand a little squeeze. “You and I are going to be very good friends, aren’t we,” she said. Overwhelmed, I responded by giving her hand a firm squeeze in return.

“We’ll have a nice talk when we sit down,” she said, smiling. And the smile stayed on her face, as we completed our walk to the beach in silence.

The next thing I heard from Irenka was her exclaiming what a beautiful beach it was, as though she had not seen it before. “And look how long it is,” she said.

“I w. . . as . . . here . . . yesterday,” I said, though I was sure she already knew it. “N. . . ot ex. . . actly h. . . ere, but f. . . urther up. N. . . ear where our p.
.
. ension w. . . as.”

“Where shall we spread our blanket?” Irenka asked.

There were a lot of empty spaces in front of us, but I didn’t know if she liked to sit near the water or far from it. “H. . . ow ab. . . out there?” I said, pointing to a space half way down, though I wasn’t sure she could tell which one I was pointing to.

“Fine.”

Then I realized that she was waiting for me to lead the way, so I stepped down from the sidewalk, onto the sand.

When we had spread our blanket, and Irenka kneeled down and began to twist her shoulders in order to remove her shirt, I could see a lot of people watching her, and I was suddenly glad that she was not wearing one of the skimpy, two-piece bathing suits. In fact, I would have preferred that, in front of all these people, she even not remove the shirt. I looked her directly in the eyes and even raised my chin so that she would know that that was where I was looking. “The s. . . un is . . . very h. . . ot on th. . . is beach,” I said, “m. . . aybe M. . . issus, I m. . . ean
y. . . ou
sh. . . ould k. . . eep
your
sh. . . irt on.”