Swans Are Fat Too (16 page)

"Why did you let people know about Bartek, stupid?" said Kalina angrily.

"I'm not getting rid of her!" returned Maks belligerently.

"Mama will make you."

"I'll run away." He lifted his chin, adjusted his glasses. "I know how now." He tightened his grip around the dog's neck.

"Maks. Kalina. Please. We can discuss it later." Hania turned an inquiring eye on Konstanty.

He said, "When I came home this afternoon and saw that the intercom had been fixed, I was afraid the girl who was coming to care for the dog might not be able to get in. So I went upstairs to make sure it was all right––had food and water and all that. And I found Maks….I got the Lanskis' number in Żabia Wola from information, but no one answered, so I thought I'd better hang on to him. I left an email message for you too, but I suppose you've had other things to do than check your emails."

"When he disappeared, we thought he'd come here."

"You knew about the dog?" asked Kalina incredulously, staring at Konstanty.

"Yes. I suppose everyone in the building does." Except your parents, he added to himself. "It's been a couple of months now since I first noticed you and Maks going up there to the attic. Sometimes I hear it barking. And sometimes at night I hear toenails clicking on the stairs so I know you walk it. I was afraid it might not be very good for it to be shut up in a dark attic. But I kept an eye on it and since it appeared to improve in condition, I decided to hold my peace."

"Improve in condition! Did you see it when we found it? It was skin and bones and now look how fat it is…" said Kalina indignantly.

"Er, yes. In fact, I wonder…"

"And its hair was all matted and it had sore eyes!" Kalina went on.

"We put my eye medicine in," said Maks. "It worked real well."

Konstanty the doctor raised his eyebrows a little, "I'm not sure that's recommended," he began and then stopped abruptly. "Yes. You've taken very good care of her."

"I suppose you'll tell our parents now." Kalina's remark was sarcastic in tone and delivered to the air between Konstanty and Hania.

"It's not my business," said Konstanty politely, withdrawing a little. 

"Maks, Kalina, let's not bother Mr. Radzimoyski anymore. Let's go home."

"Have a cup of tea before you go?" Konstanty asked Hania. She realized that he was looking at her dress. She glanced down at it and found that the green frog-pond water had dried in tie-dye rings across her front.

"I thought Maks fell in the pond. I was searching for him." She explained, embarrassed.

"You must have had quite a day. You look worn out."

The sympathy of his tone was almost too much. Behind the sofa, a parchment genealogical chart hung on the wall. Below it, Maks and Kalina were quarrelling about the dog. Hania realized how very, very tired she was. She just wanted to get away, to go someplace and hide.

"Thank you," she shook her head at him, "Thank you anyway. And for looking after Maks."

"Don't mention it." But the reserve was up again.

It was a weary troop that entered the Lanskis' apartment a floor below. The apartment had the musty smell of closed-up rooms and a good bit of dust had collected. Only the little dog seemed in good spirits and ran about sniffing everywhere and exploring. No one felt like talking. There was hardly anything to eat in the apartment, but they opened a can of green peas and mixed it with a ramen soup, and after this unappetizing meal, divided in three, they all went to bed.

As Maks dropped off to sleep, Hania heard him murmuring, "the inner kidney has fifteen collecting tubes …"

When Hania woke the next morning, it was to the consciousness of multiple sore muscles, of relief, and of a curious flat feeling. In all her life, it seemed to her, only two people had ever said, with concern, "you look tired." That the first should have been Kalina and the second Konstanty was one of those strange ironies of life. Neither really cared for her. Why was it? Was it because she was so overweight that no one had ever felt she needed care or protection? Her grandmother had cared only for those who might be of use to her, or would in some way increase her sense of worth. To them she had been charming, warm, and imperious. Her father? He was too lost in his abstractions ever to notice other people's feelings, and her mother had been so concerned with trying to illicit a response from her father that she had never had much time for her daughter as a person. And yet Hania knew that if she had been a sylph-like figure, she would not have been as easy to overlook. Why is there a point after which excess weight makes a person invisible? It had seemed to her sometimes, playing the piano, that her love for the music, for the doing of it, the making it, was connected with the fact that it made her real, made people pay attention, made them notice––if not her, at least something she had created…She rolled over in bed. Enough, she said to herself, with an attempt at an inner laugh. Soon you'll be like Kalina, with her pacifier. Get up and eat breakfast and you'll feel better. Or was breakfast her pacifier? Now there was a shocking idea. Somehow the thought of breakfast wasn't at all enticing anymore. And there was the dog problem to deal with, and the apartment to clean, and she wanted to get Maks back to playing the piano, and––and, in short, it was time to get up.

The dog was lying curled on a sofa, but raised its head and thumped its tail when it saw her. It really was the most hybrid-looking creature, she thought, as she bent to pet it. Perhaps it had had a Dalmatian in its ancestry, and possibly a Yorkshire terrier. Very small, it was mostly white, with a few ill-placed black spots, and tufts of hair growing at odd angles. In fact, the sofa was already covered in hair. She supposed it needed to go out. The children weren't likely to wake early today she thought, so she searched through the apartment till she found a piece of string, which she knotted round the dog's neck. The dog didn't seem to mind the knotting, but when she suggested it get off the sofa and accompany her, it dug in its feet, lowered itself flat and heavy against the sofa cushion, and gave every signal that it didn't intend to budge. Obviously a Lanski, she thought with chagrin.

She stopped tugging on the makeshift leash and straightened up. "Bartek!" she said very firmly, pointing to the floor, "Get off and come along!"

Bartek gave her a reproachful glance, slid off the sofa with a thud, and waddled towards the door.

As they strolled slowly to the grocery store, Hania tried to ignore the fact that she was sure all the passers-by were thinking 'like owner, like dog.' 

She went into the store with the dog. The proprietor leaned over the counter to look at it, almost friendly for the first time since she had begun going there.

"What a breed." He clucked to the dog, "nice doggie," and tossed it a bit of sausage, which it caught and swallowed in a flash. "I see it's going to have puppies!"

"No!" exclaimed Hania in horror.

"Oh, yes," said the man, "I know about dogs. Not a doubt."

Hania looked at the dog, looked up. Konstanty had appeared behind her. "Good morning,
pani
."

"Ah, here's a doctor," said the proprietor, indelicately, Hania thought. "What does
pan
doctor think? Isn't it going to have puppies?"

Konstanty put his head on his side, regarded the dog, looked at Hania, and nodded his head regretfully.

"No…" said Hania, but this time it came out more as a wail.

They came out of the grocery store. "Are you going home?" said Konstanty, "I'm walking that way."

They began to walk. "I heard recently that the building administration has plans for the attic. It's going to be renovated––part as storage space and part as apartments," said Konstanty as they headed toward their building. "So the children wouldn't have been able to keep the dog there much longer anyway."

Hania was silent, taking this in.

"The puppies are an additional problem, I realize," said Konstanty as they walked along. "But I should think having the dog is good for Maks. Of course, it's none of my business, but I've been noticing him since I came back to Poland three-four years ago, and I think he has problems. Or rather, that he could easily develop into a child with problems. Perhaps if you explained to your aunt and uncle how important the dog is for him––that it's not just a whim––they would let him keep it."

Yes, thought Hania, that's how it would be with other parents. But not with Ania and Wiktor. Konstanty didn't know that they'd just dumped the children on her, unsuspecting, and been out of touch for––how long was it now?––over five weeks. Concerned parents they weren't. Somehow family loyalty prevented her from saying this.

"You can be very persuasive," he added with a smile.

She felt the compliment but turned the subject and began to tell him about the previous day's adventures. Somehow, in telling it began to seem very funny and Konstanty was even laughing.

They were approaching the building. "Are you going in now, or would you like to take a turn around the block?" he asked. They walked on. His phone rang and she listened to him talking to a patient, his tone calm, kind, concerned. He was so good, she thought. He excused himself, begged her to go on with her story.

She got to the part about Kalina's near faint in the underpass. "I hope nothing's seriously the matter with her," she said, adding that Kalina adamantly refused the idea of medical attention and she had no power to force her.  

"There are many different causes for fainting," said Konstanty cautiously, "mostly they're not serious …it's sometimes thought to run in families. Do other members of your family faint easily?"

No, thought Hania, no, all the adult Lanskis I've known are unusually stouthearted and hardheaded.

But Konstanty had stopped and was standing as if struck by a thought. When she looked up at him questioningly though, he merely began to walk again, his measured stride beside hers.

Why did I tell him all that, thought Hania later, miserably, as she sat in front of her laptop waiting for the children to awake. Why? What a family he must think us. Rushing about like complete maniacs, diving into ponds, running away, children with problems, neglectful parents…he would know that even if she hadn't said anything. She had an image of his own family––not that she'd ever known them––but they would be like other educated Polish families, only more so: Parents very concerned for the children, watching their every behavior––correcting, correcting––encouraging, ensuring that they did their homework, learned to speak English, learned to speak French, stood up straight, spoke respectfully, wore clean clothes, sat still, went to church and really took in the commandments, never ever caused heads to turn, and developed a sense of civic duty and strong family bonds. She had an image of Kalina and Maks quarrelling on the sofa at Konstanty's. She remembered herself barging onto the train in her soiled dress, luggage jammed in the entryway…Enough. They lived in two different worlds and that was that. She could still be friends with him. "You can be persuasive…" he had said that with a smile. She felt a surge of warmth, but it didn't last long. She opened the lid of her computer and began to type:

Poland spent almost the entire 17
^th
century engaged in battle. In addition to the Khmelnytsky rebellion, and wars with the Turks due to incursions in both directions of Cossacks subject to both sides, the main struggles were with Sweden and Russia. The war with Russia began when Ivan the Terrible invaded Livonia toward the end of the 16
^th
century. After Ivan's death, some Polish noblemen helped an impostor, the 'False Dmitri,' usurp the Russian throne, and when he was murdered in 1609 (his remains were shot from a cannon back in the direction of Poland), the Poles took Moscow and ruled there until 1612. A settlement  put the first of the Romanov dynasty on the throne, but Poland and Russia still seized every occasion to fight, and their wars continued on and off across the century, intersected by wars with Sweden, including the invasion called the Swedish Deluge, which was accompanied by great cruelty…

Hania made a note to email a question to Konstanty, glad that she had something besides various persons' physical and emotional ailments to discuss with him:  'Would the consequences really have been worse if Poland had not fought Sweden? Of course, I realize there were no easy answers. Only, I do wonder at the spilling-your-blood-for-the-country gusto with which these events are portrayed in Polish films and books…'

When the century was over Poland had lost a third of its population; its territory had been reduced; agriculture and trade were failing; poverty became widespread; toleration diminished; corruption spread, magnatic families gained in power, and Sarmatism, a frequently regressive and xenophobic world view, became prevalent.

And now, thought Hania, looking up from these images of past disaster, I can go to the window and look out at a stream of shiny cars and well-dressed people walking their dogs. My world seems peaceful and secure. But in Poland's golden age, how impossible all the future catastrophes must have seemed too. What was it one thought of in looking back to the 17
^th
century? Baroque architecture, with its combined swirl and brio and sobriety of bell tower and pediment and buttress? Someone occupied such buildings and attended such churches. In that age too there must have been boys who played with small dogs––before the tides of destruction rolled over their homes, flattening dwellings and harvests; before they took up a sword and, listening not to reason but the spirit of the times, rode off to add their blows in the beastliness.

She shook off the mood. As she reread a line she had just typed from the diarist Jan Chrysostom Pasek, she imagined some of these 17
^th
-century Sarmatian noblemen, with their shaven heads and long, sashed gowns, speaking Polish in a macaronic mix with Latin:
'In decursu Augusti we went to Denmark to help the Danish king, who made an aversionem in the Swedish war...not ex commiseratione for us, but because that nation was ab antiquo well-inclined to Poland…and feeling odium against the Swedes
...' She went on with her work. Here, anyway, was a lighter reference to horrors coming from abroad, by a contemporary poet with a home-grown taste in beverage: