Swans Are Fat Too (2 page)

That had been Hans Bertholdi. As he had finished speaking, shuffling sheet music together to avoid looking at her, and shrugging bony shoulders beneath his too-long gray locks, she had begun to play, unthinkingly, to hide her embarrassment, a piece from the first movement of Beethoven's
Appassionata
, where the climax built on the diminished seventh chord recedes. He had stopped for a second, arrested; then he had given a despairing shake of his head, and left the room with rapid steps. It was the last she had seen of him.

"Wiktor wants you to come. And Ania. They haven't seen you for so long. They're inviting you to stay for a month or two, for the summer." So her father had said. She had been willing enough to fall in with his ideas, eager almost at the thought of spending some time in Warsaw again.

Still, now that she was here, she was beginning to have doubts. The third full landing. This was the door surely. She felt for the bell and pushed it. Her heart was pounding but that was surely from the climb. Nothing happened and now her heart was really beating. She put down her bags and calmed herself, stilling her breathing and her pulse. In a moment the door would open and someone would say, "Hania, come in, come in, welcome." The bell was probably broken. She knocked softly and waited, listening. Nothing happened, no sound came from within. That's what was different––the thing that had bothered her as she came up the stairs. Always, at every moment of her childhood until her parents had emigrated, and on each of her subsequent visits, there had been music in the building, drifting down the staircase and wafting out the windows. She had awoken to the racket of someone's scales and slept to the whisper of a Chopin nocturne. Now there was silence.

She knocked harder, but nothing happened. Well, suppose they weren't home? she thought with a sinking feeling. What should she do? Go to a hotel for the night? Someone was coming up the stairs; she could hear a man's step. A neighbor, no doubt, perhaps someone she would recognize, could ask for information. There was no reason at all to look around in fright and seek a place to hide. Should she go up to the next floor? Nonsense, she told herself, she'd obviously been living in New York too long. Here was the man. She took a step towards him. "Excuse me, sir."

He moved to the side and held down a light switch. He was a tall man in his mid-thirties, very clean cut, with a serious face. He seemed rather surprised to see anyone there.

She didn't recognize him. "Excuse me. I wonder if you live here? If you know my uncle?"

"With whom have I the honor…?"

"Hania Lanska."

The man seemed even more surprised. 

"Do you remember me,
pani
?"

He used the formal expression: '
pani
'––ma'am,
madame
. She was unaccustomed to it. The last time she had been in Poland she had been too young––everyone was still addressing her as '
ty
'––the just plain 'you' for children, family members, or close friends. His look of solidity, the slight incline of his head as he bent courteously toward her, made her feel rather elevated. Did she remember him? She searched her mind vigorously, hoping for a spark of enlightenment.

 "Konstanty Radzimoyski. I live in the apartment above."

It was, it was––the very boy––now a man in his thirties, but still the same. Oh, no. Please not him.

Yes, she remembered her grandmother taking her to tea at
Pani
Radzimoyska's when she had been what––five, six? It had been something of an occasion. The Lanski family, in the centuries before it turned to music, had only been occasional standard-bearers; their 18
^th
-century estates had encompassed scarcely a few villages. The Radzimoyski family had been really grand: Russian titles and inheritances larger than a small country. "Now you mind your manners, we're going to
Pani
Radzimoyska"––as one might say "we're going to visit the queen today." And then there had been a great deal of sitting about being abominably bored while the conversation of the group of adults, like loud radio static, went on over her head, and no one brought the refreshments. At some time she had slipped away, while her grandmother and all the ladies had been laughing inexplicable laughter, and found the kitchen. There had been no one there. The window was open and some flies had come in and were swarming over a platter of cheesecakes. She crossed to the counter and waved the insects away. The flies had been on that one. It couldn't be served. That wouldn't be right. She would eat it. It would be very noble of her. She ate it. Then she ate another. The talk went on in the other room. The platter was empty now and she felt a little ill. She leaned against the sink and looked at the other plate. This one had little cakes with meringue frosting. The frosting looked like crusted snow. If she pushed her finger into it would the crust break? She tried it. The meringue popped with a little crackling noise. She licked her finger and pushed it into the next piece. She didn't notice the teenager until he was standing over her. He was very tall. She jumped guiltily and looked around at the shambles she had made of the refreshments. What would her grandmother say? She wished she were dead. She couldn't say a word––she just stared at the boy with her cheeks flaming red and her finger in her mouth. They looked at each other for a long moment.

"Were you hungry?" he asked. She shook her head, and mumbled something, tears starting to her eyes.

"The refreshments are always too long in coming, aren't they?" he said.

He put down the book he was holding and chopped the meringues into pieces to disguise the holes she had made. He took the platter into the other room and she heard him apologizing to his mother. He was very sorry––he'd dropped the cheesecake on the floor. So clumsy of him.

She had run from the kitchen, found the door to the apartment, heaved it open with difficulty, and fled downstairs to her grandmother's apartment.

Horrible. It had been horrible. A memory that always brought an inward cringe. Please don't let him remember.

"You came to tea once, I think, when you were quite small."

"Yes."

Now she was blushing. Thank goodness it was fairly dark on the landing. And here she was so fat. He was probably thinking she hadn't changed, was still so greedy. Oh, why was she so overweight? There was no dignity in it. However, one did what one could. She pulled herself together.

"You saved me, I remember. I had eaten all the cakes and you covered for me. I ran away and never thanked you. Please accept my sincere thanks now––even if twenty years late." Her slow speech and outward poise gave her a certain majesty.

He smiled very slightly. "That I only vaguely recollect." ("Were you hungry?" he had asked. He had liked her straightforward answer: "No, I just felt like it.") "I believe you were wearing a pinkish dress with ruffley things and had sugar on your face."

Horrible.

He changed his tone, as if suddenly remembering why she must be there. "I'm sorry about your grandmother. I'm afraid I couldn't make it to the funeral––I had a shift at the hospital."

A doctor then. He would be, of course.

"I missed it too," Hania said wearily. "The plane was delayed. And now no one seems to be home."

"Did they know you were coming?" He leaned over and knocked hard on the door. "I ask, because I saw your aunt and uncle getting into their car earlier with luggage. But perhaps they came back...Anyway, the children should be here." He knocked again, harder yet, with the natural air of someone accustomed to helping others out of difficulties.

From within a high female voice called "coming!" in a rather irritated tone.

"There you are, then." Konstanty Radzimoyski gave Hania another slight and distant smile, his eyes already looking somewhere over her head, (problem solved––goodbye,
pani
) and had reached the next landing before the door opened.

With a sinking heart, Hania waited for her aunt to open the door. Instead, it was pulled back only to the length of the chain and a shank of dishwater hair and a pair of eyes, one above the other, appeared in the crack. There was no light in the apartment, and the light had gone out on the stairs again, but she thought the eyes must belong to her cousin.

"Kalina?" she questioned.

"Who are you?"

"Hania. Your cousin, Hania."

There was a long pause, and the sound of whispering behind the door. Then:

"Prove it."

Hania was so taken aback for a second she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But this was ridiculous.

"Kalina, is your mother or father at home?"

"Why do you ask?"

A second, younger voice added, "We're not supposed to talk to strangers." There seemed to be a bit of a scuffle inside and then the door was slammed shut.

She knocked and it opened the six inches again.

"I can show you my passport. Is that proof?"

She heard the younger voice saying, "No, no, don't let her in yet," but the elder said "okay," in a dull tone, and she handed the document through the crack. A while later the light came on, the door opened wide, and Hania found herself looking at a stony-faced girl of around fifteen, dressed in low-cut jeans and a tight, cropped top. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing makeup that looked like it had just been hastily applied.

"Okay, you can come in." She held out a limp hand to shake Hania's.

Konstanty washed his hands, as he always did after being out, but he neither loosened his tie nor took off his blazer. If he was no longer a prince in anything but family memory, it pleased him still to keep up a certain standard. He stood for a moment in the center of the room considering: to watch television or work on his history project? He was tired, but the intellectual exercise drew him more. He sat down at his large desk. It was a very fine desk, made of Gdansk oak––the kind of wood that is seasoned for twenty years in a bog hole before being used for furniture. This one was carved all over with scenes of Sarmatia and was one of his grandfather's few salvages from the estate in Radzimość. At the moment the wood was almost hidden under a load of books and notepads. He sifted through a stack of neatly arranged papers. Strange, he thought, as he read the headings on the papers, strange that he should have remembered that incident when he was a teenager with Hania Lanska. The brain was an odd repository. What had made that stick when so many other things were irretrievably flown? Her childish face had come back so clearly. He supposed it was that his own behavior that day had pleased him. He had felt quite good about himself afterwards. Yes, that must have been it. It was always self in the end, he noted with a touch of wryness, but glad to have solved the minor puzzle. He liked to have his own motives clear and he had no illusions about himself. Here was what he was looking for:

The Neolithic people in the area of today's Poland, like the later Slavonic tribes, are known to have practiced trepanation, the drilling of holes in the skull of a live person
. He began to type, pecking slowly with two fingers.
In this, the early Poles showed their common humanity: trepanation would seem to have been a world-wide practice, encountered from Polynesia to Alsace. Is this where the phrase 'a hole in the head,' originates
? Well, no. He erased the two sentences, and began again.

Poland was then a vast wilderness of primeval forest, of dune and meadow, cut across by the wide-flowing Vistula and dotted with lakes. By the 6
^th
century B.C. the local inhabitants were already the target for raiding Scythians and Sarmatians, Germanic and Celtic tribes. A century later Roman traders were coming too, travelling to the Baltic and beyond in search of amber. Like loose change in a parking lot, the

Amber Route today is peppered with Roman coins.

The pause in the hallway was growing embarrassing. The girl neither invited Hania in nor made any explanations.

"Er…so your parents aren't home?"

"No."

"When do you expect them back? Didn't they tell you I was coming?"

"I don't expect them back." Kalina still spoke in that dull voice. "I don't expect anything from them anymore." She turned abruptly and, leaving the entry way, passed through a door into a small sitting room, where she threw herself on a sofa, and picking up the remote, clicked on the television. It was rather loud, so that Hania would have nearly had to shout to be heard above it. She stood indecisively in the doorway, looking at the girl, who pretended to be engrossed in a commercial.

Should she just turn around, walk out of the apartment, and go to some nice, sane, ordinary hotel? Even if it did mean crossing town on foot at a late hour? Yes, that's what she should do.

The problem was, she thought, she never gave up as easily as she should. With a sigh, she walked over to the television and turned it down, then, puffing a little, she straightened and said, "Excuse me. I suppose you're very unhappy because of Babcia"––she saw Kalina widen her eyes and look up startled––so it wasn't that then––"and I'm sorry to intrude, but I really need to talk to your parents. I mean, I thought I was invited to stay here––obviously I made a mistake. Perhaps I should go to a hotel?"

"Yes, I think you made a mistake," said Kalina. "You'd better go."

The phone rang. Kalina stared at it as if trying to make up her mind, while Hania waited in dismay and suspense. Kalina let it ring five times and then picked it up.

"What?" she growled into the receiver, listened a moment with her eyes rolled towards the ceiling, then at last handed it languidly to Hania. "It's them."

With a sense of enormous relief, Hania put the receiver up to her ear.

Wiktor's warm voice resounded down the line. "Hania! How wonderful that you're here. We're so sorry that we missed you at the airport, but things have been so hectic! You wouldn't believe! But tell us about you first! Are you all right? Did you have a good flight? What a way to treat you! Fourteen-hours delay. I would write and complain to somebody…"