Swans Are Fat Too (28 page)

Hania began uncertainly, still standing. "Hello, I'm Hania Lanska, I called yesterday..."

The woman still did not look at her. "Sit down," she almost snarled, "you can see I'm busy."

Hania sat patiently, hands folded in her lap, her astonishment at the woman's rudeness growing as the minutes ticked by.

Finally, the woman put aside her papers, leaned back in her chair, and looking somewhere in the corner of the room, with her nose in the air, said "What is it that you want?"

"I came because my cousin has a problem with her Polish teacher and as I am looking after..."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Hania Lanska and I'm..."

"I don't care what your name is. What business do you have here? Are you a parent?"

"No, I..."

"Then on what basis have you come here to complain? How is this possible?" The woman was tapping briskly on the desk with a pen. "
Pani
. I am very busy. Please don't bother me anymore." She pulled some papers in front of herself again and pretended to read.

Hania began to feel rather heated. "I may not be a parent, but I know improper behavior when I see it! Kalina's teacher's behavior is unacceptable. And so is yours." She began to rise.

"How dare you be so uncivil to me!" the directress snapped.

"I suppose," said Hania, "that I shall have to seek help higher up." She turned to go.

"Well," said the directress, suddenly smoothing her hair and adopting a different tone, "there's no need to get all upset. Please sit down."

Hania sat, her heart beating in outrage. The directress shuffled some papers. "Lanska, Lanska," she murmured, "that name sounds familiar." She suddenly rose and went to a filing cabinet.

"Ye-es. I have a note here..." There was a considering silence. "Where are her parents?"

Hania had to admit she didn't know.

"You don't know? How can you not know?"

"They're travelling."

"It doesn't matter," said the directress, with an impatient gesture, "We'll have a phone number in our records, somewhere."

Did they have cell phones? Of course they would. But Kalina had said not. Kalina had lied, thought Hania.

The directress waved a slip of paper. "You haven't been looking after her very well, have you?" she added with only a hint of triumph.

So, thought Hania, as she and Maks went into the Łazienki Park later that day. She walked with forced calmness and a feeling of hollow tranquillity. I have messed everything up. I have tried to help and I haven't. The school would contact Wiktor and Ania. And what would they do when they couldn't avoid the truth? Would they just call and make a scene or would they call her father and make a scene and expect him to pass it on? Would they come back? Somehow, she didn't think they were likely to handle the news in any very constructive manner. Now that she had decided to stay with the children and her life with them had settled into a routine, with its own small pleasures and compensations, the thought that it might be disrupted was very unsettling. What was going to happen? But there was nothing she could do.

And in the back of her mind, always, as a subtext to every other thought, was the idea: Konstanty doesn't want to have anything to do with me.

The trees were turning gold and red and darkening, the paths were patterned under their feet with the points of the oak and chestnut and broad maple leaves. The air was cool and full of the threat of colder weather to come. But today, in the September haze, the park was still beautiful. If they turned to the right after the duck pond, and passed over the bridge, they would come out on the far side of the lake and have the Palace on the Water ahead of them, perched on its island, with its lovely proportions and pillars and statues.

Here, high above them, the white Belweder mansion, where Piłsudski had once ruled and Lech Wałęsa had spent his term in office, presided over a vista of lawn and lake. They went down the hill, leaving the city behind, and walked along the wide clay path by the bank of the pond.

Hania said nothing, and Maks did not break the silence, but he kept glancing at her now and then. They stopped beside a weeping willow tree. Its graceful arms brushed narrow yellow leaves against the water. Ducks paddled in and out among the branches and a white swan floated up, dipping and bowing its arched neck.

"Why do you look so unhappy?" Maks finally asked Hania. "I haven't done anything terrible today, have I?"

"No, Maks."

"Then what?"

"I feel old and ugly and fat."

A pause, while Maks considered this, and they began to walk again, the swan gliding beside them.

"I guess you are old," he said at last, "but you have a nice face. I like your face."

"Thank you, Maks, that's kind of you."

"Swans are fat too."

They circled the park and returned home. There was no doubt about it, she thought as they walked back up the hill, she was losing weight and gaining in condition. She wasn't even breathing hard. She had been doing so much walking it had cut her appetite too. She had no desire to eat all day and she was definitely less heavy. But what did it matter now? Even if she could skip up the stairs, she thought when they reached their building, Konstanty wasn't coming down. 

She went into the piano room. Kalina came home and opened the door.

"Well? Did you talk to the directress? What did she say?"

"I'm afraid I didn't do any good. I think she intends to call your parents."

Kalina stood still for a moment in the doorway, her school bag bulging over one shoulder, her stomach protruding over her jeans. Hania couldn't read her face.

"They had to know sometime," she added tentatively.

"But not from the school!"

"I'm sorry, Kalina," Hania whispered.

Kalina shrugged. "Fine." She turned away with an air of unconcern, closing the door rather too forcefully.

Hania began to play the piano.
Ave Maria
, with her own variations.

In the apartment above, Konstanty crossed to the window and unhooked it, pulling it open enough so he could lean out. The cold autumn evening came in with its scent of rain and leaves. He struggled to catch the music. The notes came to him individually, in little groups, some he missed. He imagined Hania in the room below, at the piano, with her brown hair down her back. He didn't know why he hung on each note so. He had made it clear to himself that he wasn't interested in the girl. And because he had seen, in her eyes, that moment when he had touched her cheek, that she––he didn't want to think about it. He straightened abruptly, brought the casements together sharply, and, feeling unhappier than he could remember feeling, snapped the latch into place.

Maks came into the room. He stood beside Hania with his no-nonsense air. He was probably up to some mischief, she thought.

"You love the piano, don't you?" he asked.

"Yes. Once I loved it very much. I hardly thought about anything else."

"Do you love the piano more than you love me?"

She was startled. Did he have some premonition of loss? Had Kalina told him something? Did he think she loved him? Did she?

"It's not the same thing, Maks. One could never feel for music the way one feels for a person." There, she had admitted it. She held love highest. If she had had a choice between love and a career as a concert pianist she would have chosen love. Hands down. She wasn't going to have either, but that was another matter. "Yes, Maks, I love you much more than the piano." And it was true. She reached out to give him a hug but he recoiled from her grasp, adjusted his glasses, and said, "So that's okay then…Are you going to teach me something new? Or am I just going to stand around here all day?"

17

Solidarity, a mass movement of 11 million members, was characterized by the determination of ordinary citizens simply to turn their backs on the regime in power, and is especially memorable because, for the first time in centuries, Poland had produced a truly revolutionary movement. Through restraint and a willingness to negotiate, the movement led entirely peacefully to the collapse of communism in Poland and to the reestablishment of independence. In the wake of the Polish revolution, Communist regimes were sent––peacefully––packing in one country after another across Eastern Europe, in what is called the Autumn of Nations, or the revolutions of 1989
...

Hania finished proofreading the last sentences she'd just typed about the growth of civil society––resolutely keeping out of her mind such mental associations as had to do with the old system and apartments and people who might or might not have behaved one way or another out of gratitude––and booming economics (but not, of course, that everyone benefited). There, that was it. There wasn't any more. She deleted the last period. Put it back again. There was really nothing more to be done on the work. She just had to send it off to Konstanty and that would be that. She opened the email:

'
Respected Sir
...There was no place at all to say any of the things she wanted to say. It had been nearly three weeks now and there had been no exchange between them other than her return of new sections and his acknowledgement of the same. His silence told her as effectively as shouted words that he had decided to put an end to their friendship. She felt humiliated and slightly sick looking at the words. She took a deep breath. Hearts didn't really break.
Respected Sir
,
Here is the remainder
. She pressed send.

Sometime she would have to give him back the handwritten papers, but that could wait. Maybe she could mail it to him, and then she wouldn't have to meet him. It was Saturday morning, one of her gormless little piano students would be coming, and then there was housework to do, and piano practice. She could certainly keep herself busy. Kalina and Maks had gone off to the park to try to give away the puppies. She crossed her fingers that they would be having luck.

And here it seemed her wish came true. A couple of hours later, just as she noticed that it was starting to rain, starting to pour in fact, and wondered what was happening with the children, they burst into the apartment, shaking off water-drops and bubbling with glee and excitement.

"What?" Hania cried, leaping from her chair, and seeing their empty arms, "Did you give
all
of them away?" What a relief.

"Better!" exclaimed Kalina with a laugh, "We sold them!"

"You what? How?"

Maks was bouncing up and down, digging wads of bills out of his pockets. "Look how much! We sold them for four hundred
złoty
each. To nice people in fancy clothes."

Hania looked at him in amazement. Kalina giggled and held up a cardboard sign. It said, '
Rare Breed
!
Chien
Bâtard
.'

"We didn't want to say just 'mongrels' in Polish, so I wrote it in French. And people kept coming up and saying 'what's that? And I said 'Shen Batar' from Ulan Batar, I think, sort of like Shih Tzuh of the Manchu and everyone said 'oooh' and 'aaaah' and wanted to buy them."

"Look. We've got 1200
złoty
."

"
Rany Boskie
! But..."

Well, what was there to say really?

They grinned at each other, laughed, Maks skipped about and sang. It was a moment of camaraderie and solidarity.

Then there was the sound of a key turning in the lock of the apartment door. Their heads all turned and they gazed in surprise at the door. It swung open, and first a large suitcase was thrust in and then Wiktor followed––a man with a neat gray beard and an expensive, rumpled overcoat.

He didn't appear particularly happy to see them. They stood in a group staring, while he reached outside the door and pulled in another suitcase.

"Your mother will be here in a moment," he said rather gruffly, not particularly looking at any of them. "She's getting things out of the car." The charm was definitely not turned on.

Ania walked in then, blonde and pretty and dressed in slightly too young clothes. She had a look of irritation on her face.

The meeting was awkward. No one really knew what to say.

Wiktor and Ania came together and rather sidled over to the group and made perfunctory kisses all around.

"Er…um..." Someone had to say something. "Did you have a nice trip? Did you come by car?" Hania asked. She couldn't very well say, "Why are you here?"

"No." answered Wiktor shortly. "It was a terrible trip. Very inconvenient."

"Oh...um..." She felt the need to act as hostess, somehow. "Could I get you something? Shall I make some tea?"

"Coffee," he barked and turned and headed for the piano room.

Hania watched him go. When she looked back, Kalina and Maks seemed to have faded away somewhere. Ania was saying to her, in an aggrieved tone over her usually rather saccharine accents, as she hung up her coat, "You know we had this really strange phone call from the school. Of course, we don't believe a word of it. I won't even tell you what they said, it's so ridiculous. But as responsible parents we had to come back and it's very, very inconvenient, because Wiktor is so busy, and we can only stay the weekend, we'll have to drive all the way back Monday night, and Wiktor's very upset about it, but I said, we have to come, because how will it look if we don't?

How will it look? Thought Hania, that's what matters to you?

"And we can go right back..."

But here she was interrupted by Wiktor, saying in a voice that began like quiet thunder and ended in a rather high shriek.

"Where is my piano?"

"I...I sold it."

"You what?" Wiktor's eyes were bulging and his voice was shrill, "You what?" he shouted.

"Because Kalina's pregnant and we needed the money."

Ania clutched at her heart, her throat. "It's true! She's pregnant! I can't believe it!" Her voice was shriller than Wiktor's and much higher. "She's pregnant! How could this happen? How?!"

Wiktor continued: "How could this happen? My piano!" He strode about in circles muttering and gesticulating. "My beautiful Steinway grand..."