The Last Girl (4 page)

‘Only just made it,' she said.

‘Yes,' I said, looking up into her face. Not the eyes, I could not look into those eyes. She was still looking at me and I traced in her voice a note of concern, a delicate probing to ask if I was all right.

‘I'm getting too old for running,' I laughed.

She laughed, ‘It's not so easy for me.'

‘You're the picture of health,' I said. ‘It does you good when you're so young.'

‘I don't feel so young.'

I dared then to look beyond the fresh pink of her flushed cheeks, beyond the smooth curve of her nose and the soft hair that downed her face. Beyond the thick, dark eyebrows to her eyes. She was smiling; smiling with her eyes, though there was barely the trace of a curve on her lips. A prickling sweat broke out on my forehead.

My fingers trembled beside hers. Mine blunt, hers elegant. The sun shone through the grimy windows, warming them. And then, on a corner, the trolley bus rocked awkwardly, causing her to lean against me. Her thigh pressed against mine and the tips of our fingers touched as she tried to balance herself. We withdrew immediately. I smiled and she smiled too, before turning and looking out of the window. We were descending the long hill, the green banks rising on each side of us, the trees barely moving in the breeze.

We did not speak again. The trolley bus fought its way through the traffic into the centre of the Old Town. She got up as we lurched slowly into Gedimino Prospect. I let her past me and then followed. When she turned, I looked studiously out of the window as if my getting off had nothing to do with her. She walked swiftly down Gedimino and into the department store. I stood for a moment debating then crossed the road and entered the new American restaurant, McDonald's. It was crowded and I had to wait in a queue to be served. I sat by the large plate-glass windows and watched the department store doors. She did not reappear. Maybe, standing in the queue, I had missed her. The coffee was tasteless and the seat hard. I did not stay long.

I dreamed of her that night. She was walking down the road with her child in her arms, imploring me. I could read in her eyes the fear and desperation. I saw too, in the corner of my eye, the men approaching. I turned my back. But each time I turned she was in front of me again, and behind me the men drew closer. I awoke a number of times but each time my eyes closed heavily again, I had to turn from her once more. In the morning I was exhausted.

Shortly after sunrise I pulled on my coat and walked across the grass, beneath the trees, to the top of Zydu Street. I stopped by the bust of the Gaon and rested my head against the cold stone. My blunt fingers felt the sharp edge of the engraved Semitic sentences. I tried to find words to say to him, but I couldn't. I stood for some time, my back resting against him, glad to have that solid presence behind me. I smoked three cigarettes one after another and then went home.

The next time I saw her was in fact quite by accident. She was again pushing her child. I had been in the bookshop on Gedimino when, through the window, I saw her pass by. I slipped out of the store and hurried after her. I caught up with her at the door of the McDonald's restaurant. I was able to hold it open for her. Only then did I affect to recognise her. “'Hello,' I said. She smiled, remembering me.

‘You're eating here?' she asked somewhat incredulously.

‘The coffee's good,' I lied.

‘The coffee's terrible,' she laughed.

‘Well, maybe I can buy you a cup of America's worst coffee?' I asked. She smiled but seemed to hesitate.

‘Why not?' she said.

Sitting once more by the plate-glass windows, I was able to watch her now across the table. She spooned yogurt into her child's mouth. The baby was blonde. Her small blue eyes sparkled clearly. She watched me while her mother fed her. She was not at all like that baby. That had been dark, its skin sallow and its hair fine. It lay quietly in its mother's arms, in the dark Vilnius alleyway. Had it ever grown?

‘And what's your name, young lady?' I asked to clear my mind. The baby looked at me suspiciously, continuing to eat the yogurt fed into her mouth.

‘Rasa,' the mother answered for her.

‘Rasa, a good Lithuanian name,' I said. ‘A beautiful fresh droplet of dew. And yours?' I asked.

She hesitated a moment again before answering. She looked into my face, as if she would find there whether to trust me or not. ‘Jolanta,' she said. So there it was. Jolanta. Not Rachael. Jolanta. I breathed in deeply, inhaling that name which was not her name, allowing it to fill my lungs with a fresher air than the putrid air of painful dreams.

‘And you?' she asked.

I stood up formally and held out my hand. ‘Steponas Daumantas.' She took my hand and I pressed it. I held it a second. ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance.'

She nodded and withdrew her hand. ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance too,' she said, ironically, but with humour and a smile.

‘And what do you do, Mr Daumantas?'

I laughed. ‘Me, I'm an old man, a pensioner. What did you think I was, a soldier?'

‘You don't look so old and anyway, age is in the mind,' she said with the simple-minded confidence of the young.

‘I'm old in the mind too.'

‘Well, what did you do then, Old Mr Daumantas?'

I toyed with the idea of lying, of creating another person for her. Her eyes were upon me and I did indeed once more feel young in my mind. If being young means confusion and stuttering nervousness.

‘I am, I was a writer,' I corrected myself.

‘Was?' she asked. ‘Surely that's one thing you can do no matter what your age?'

‘Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I find it hard now,' I said, wishing I had not introduced the topic. It trespassed on an area that was far too closely related to why I was sitting in front of her.

At that moment the baby shouted angrily. The spoon of yogurt, which had remained for the past few moments suspended in mid-air between tub and mouth, found its way to its destination. Jolanta fed the baby quietly for a moment. Then she turned back to me and said, ‘Perhaps, then, you could help me?'

‘Help you?' I asked, taken aback. ‘Of course. I would be delighted to help you.'

Tiring of our chatter Rasa began to cry, demanding attention. Jolanta lifted her up and shushed her. She wailed loudly. I waited patiently but the baby was not at that moment going to let us finish our conversation. Jolanta glanced at her watch, awkwardly, holding the baby in her arms.

‘I'm late,' she commented to herself as much as to me. She stood up. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I have an appointment now. Would you seriously be willing to help me?'

‘Of course,' I assured her, standing too.

‘Perhaps we could meet again?' she asked a little nervously, as if she felt that she might be imposing upon me.

‘I would be delighted,' I said. ‘Would you like me to take your telephone number and call you?'

‘No,' she said quickly. ‘No, no need. We can meet again tomorrow if you are free?'

‘Yes, I will be,' I said.

‘Shall we say here then, at twelve?'

‘Perhaps I could take you somewhere a little nicer for lunch?' I suggested. I indicated the polystyrene cup. ‘The coffee here really isn't drinkable.'

‘That would be nice.' She smiled. Her eyes were beautifully bright. My heart pounded. Foolishness, I said to myself once more. Pure foolishness.

Svetlana on Sv Stepono had cleaned my shirts. She took the few Litas I offered her, slipping. them into her palm, folding her fingers over the rumpled notes. She was obviously in need of the money but seemed embarrassed to take it from me. She insisted I stay for tea. I sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, which in the daytime served as both sofa and wardrobe for her teenage son's clothes. The windows of her cramped room were mercifully small. Only one pane of glass was unbroken, the others were covered with plastic bags from one of the new supermarkets in the city. I doubted she shopped there. I had given her one of the bags with my washing in. She had wrapped my washing neatly in brown packing paper tied with string. On the walls of the one room she had hung the three dresses she owned. One was a modern looking black-and-white dress with sequins patterning it. I commented on it.

‘Mrs Pumpetiene gave it me,' she said in Russian. ‘Lovely, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' I agreed, trying to imagine where she might wear it.

I had known Svetlana for a number of years. Often when I dropped off clothes for her to wash, we sat and talked. She did not speak much about herself but she had once told me her father had been arrested when she was a child by the Communist authorities for propagating Christianity and producing samizdat books. Her parents had been moved to Vilnius from Russia under the Communist government's policy of mixing ethnic populations.

In the small annex, which served as kitchen-cum-porch, water boiled on the electric ring. Svetlana poured it into a small, old, blackened samovar. She poured me a sweet tea, and sat watching as I drank it. It was too hot to do anything but take the smallest of sips. Svetlana's cheek was, I noticed, slightly swollen near her left eye. She smelt of vodka.

‘Your husband back?' I asked.

She touched her cheek self-consciously and nodded. ‘Did you find out where he had been?'

She laughed and shook her head. She swore in Russian. ‘Boozing some place, with some tart, I should think.'

‘And Misha?'

I had met her son on a couple of occasions. He was about eighteen years old, with short, cropped hair. He looked like a thug but was unfailingly polite and spoke good Lithuanian, unlike his mother.

‘He's working,' she said brightly. ‘On the building site, five dollars for a ten-hour day. They pay him by the day, but there's plenty of work, he says. Should be able to keep going there just so long as no government sneak goes snooping around, checking on papers.'

I grunted.

‘I don't know.' She shook her head. ‘They keep thinking up these new laws. They want to force us to take exams in Lithuanian before they will let us become citizens. They are just trying to punish us.'

‘They don't know what they're doing,' I said. I drained the last of the tea, scalding my throat. I didn't like talking politics; an old reflex tied my tongue.

‘Thanks for the tea, Svetlana,' I said, taking my brown­ paper package.

‘Don't mind me,' she said, ‘I had a bit of a drink earlier.'

I smiled. ‘I'm going for mine now,' I said.

Her eyes lit up. ‘You want one now? I've got half a bottle left.'

I shook my head and gently pulled away from the grip she had suddenly taken of the front of my clothing. ‘Another time,' I said. She released me. I let myself out of the door into the dirty courtyard. The wooden walkway of the second floor sagged dangerously outside her doorway. Looking back, I saw in the dimness that she had already taken out the bottle and was pouring vodka into a glass. She stood with her back to me in front of an image of Christ crucified, askew on the dirty wall.

Closing the door of my apartment I flung the brown-paper package of clean shirts on to a chair in the small hallway. I opened the windows of the flat to let in some air. Then I started to work on my table. Carefully I replaced all the books in their places on the shelves. I took the many saucers and ashtrays, over-spilling their stale, grey ash on to my papers, and emptied them into the small bin in the kitchen. I gathered the scattered sheets of papers into random piles; they would have to be sorted at some other time. I pulled down the numerous photographs and prints that had been collecting on the walls and stowed them in a drawer. Taking a cloth, I wiped the spilt ash and the coffee rings from the table and placed my typewriter squarely in the centre, in front of my chair.

I sat down at my work desk and fed a clean, blank sheet of paper into the typewriter. For a moment I sat looking at the pristine blankness of the page. I pressed my fingers into my eyes. A shudder ran down my spine. With my eyes closed I was able to picture her. I did not see her figure, or the clothes that she wore. I did not see, either, the subtle flush on her cheeks, or the way her hair was tucked back behind her ears. I saw only her eyes. Those eyes that she shared with a woman fifty years ago.

I opened my eyes and typed out, ‘Resurrection'. I scrolled down the page an inch and wrote, ‘In the summer of 1938 I was living in a small village west of Vilnius.'

We met the following day. I shaved carefully and pulled on a fragrant and stiff shirt, clipping the cuffs with a couple of simple links. I arrived at the American fast food restaurant ten minutes early. She was not there, of course. The weather was fine so I paced about outside wondering what it was she wanted my help with.

At twelve I heard the toll of the cathedral bell. I glanced at my watch, which was spot on. I gazed up and down the street but there was no sign of her. I wondered whether she had thought better of her strange request for my help. The idea that she might have forgotten all about our lunch was passing through my head when she stepped out of the bookshop close by and, seeing me, waved. I waved back, my heart lifting like a nervous schoolboy's.

‘Sorry,' she mouthed.

Her face, I noticed, was flushed. She smiled broadly and touched my arm in a friendly manner.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I was browsing in the bookshop.'

‘You found a book?' I asked.

She slipped a book from its wrapping and showed me. It was Conrad.

‘You've read it?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said.

‘Did you like it?'

‘You know, I find it hard to get beyond the fact that it was a book by a Pole writing in his third language being read by me translated into yet another language.'

‘But isn't that fascinating,' she said. ‘To feel that you have to dig through all those layers of language to get to the heart of what it is about?' She had taken my arm gently and we walked up Gedimino to the crossing.