The Pole and Other Stories, page 5
The rest of the week yawns before her. How are they going to occupy their time? With rambles? With idiot conversations? With visits to the beach, visits to restaurants? How much of such a routine can they bear—two polite, civilized, normal people—before one of them snaps? And this was supposed to be a vacation!
What does the man want? What does she want?
23. It is daytime. They have had breakfast.
‘I have something to show you,’ she says. She conducts him to one of the back rooms, where a piano has stood, covered with a dust sheet, for as long as she can remember.
She removes the sheet. ‘Have a look at it,’ she says. ‘Is it any good?’
He shrugs. ‘It is old,’ he says. ‘It is made in Spain. Spain is not famous for pianos.’ He plays a scale. The keys are slow and sticky, a hammer is missing, the strings are badly out of tune. ‘You have tools?’
‘Piano tools? No.’
‘Not piano tools, just tools like you use for a machine.’
She shows him the toolbox in the garage. He selects a spanner and a pair of pliers and spends an hour working on the piano. Then he sits down and plays a simple piece, made quaint by the click of the missing hammer.
‘I am sorry we don’t have anything better to offer you,’ she says.
‘You remember Orfeo? Orfeo did not have a piano, just a harp, very primitive, but the animals came and listened to him, the lion, the tiger, the horse, the cow, all of them. Congress of peace.’
Orfeo. So now he is Orfeo.
24. They drive down to the port and have coffee on a terrace above the harbour. She asks him about his time in Valldemossa. ‘Did you find the audiences there receptive? I mean, did they appreciate your playing?’
‘I played in the old monastery. The acoustics are not good. But the audience—yes, in the audience there were serious people, some of them.’
‘Is that what you like—serious people? Do I count as a serious person?’
He looks her up and down. ‘In Polish we talk of a person who is heavy, a person who is not made of air. You are a heavy person.’
She laughs. ‘In English they say solid—a solid person or a person of substance. Heavy is reserved for fat people. I am glad to hear you don’t think I am made of air, but you are wrong, I am not solid, not a person of substance.’
She thinks: If you now say I am liquid, then I will begin to believe in you. But he does not.
I am liquid. If you tried to hold me, I would flow out of your hands like water.
‘You, on the other hand,’ she says, ‘are solid. Perhaps too solid for Chopin. Has anyone ever told you that?’
‘Many people think Chopin is made of air,’ he says. ‘I try to correct them.’
‘There is plenty of air in Chopin. And even more water. Running water. Liquid music. Debussy too.’
He inclines his head. Yes? No? She does not know how to interpret his gestures. Perhaps she never will. A foreigner.
‘That is how I see it,’ she says. ‘But what do I know? In music I am just an amateur.’
25. He spends the afternoon in the back room improvising at the piano. Since she hears no clicking noises, she presumes that he is managing to skirt the dead key. Not lacking in ingenuity.
While he is occupied she ventures into the cottage that is now his territory. The bathroom bears a faint smell of eau de Cologne. Abstractedly she examines his travelling kit, neatly laid out on the shelf beneath the mirror. A razor. A hairbrush with an ebony handle. Pomade. Shampoo. An array of pillboxes, each with a label in Polish. A man from another era. Or perhaps all of Poland is like this: stuck in the past. Why is she so incurious about Poland?
26. She asks him to play for her. ‘Play those little pieces by Lutosławski that you played in Barcelona.’
He plays the first three, with a click for the missing F.
‘That is enough?’
‘Yes, that is enough. I just wanted a change from Chopin.’
27. ‘After Mallorca, where do you go?’ she asks him.
‘I have engagements in Russia. One in Saint Petersburg, one in Moscow.’
‘Are you famous in Russia? Excuse my ignorance. I mean, do the Russians regard you highly?’
‘No one regards me highly, nowhere in the world. It’s okay. I am the old generation. I am history. I should be in a museum, in a glass cabinet. But here I am. I am still alive. It is a miracle, I say to them. If you don’t believe, you can touch me.’
She is confused. Who does not believe? Who is being invited to touch him? The Russians?
‘You ought to be proud of yourself,’ she says. ‘Not everyone enters history. There are people who spend their whole lives trying to be part of history and fail. I will never be part of history, for example.’
‘But you do not try,’ he says.
‘No, I don’t try. I am content to be who I am.’
What she does not say is: Why should I want to end up in history? What is history to me?
28. ‘Is there a coiffeur in this town?’ he asks.
‘Several. What do you need done? If all you need is a haircut, I can do it for you. I cut my sons’ hair for years. I am perfectly competent.’
It is, to a degree, a test. How vain is he about that leonine head of hair?
Not vain at all, as it turns out. ‘For you to cut my hair—it would be the greatest gift,’ he says.
She seats him on the porch with a sheet around his neck. He declines a mirror: his faith in her seems absolute. Through the operation he sits without opening his eyes, a dreamy smile on his lips. Is the touch of her fingers on his scalp all that it takes to satisfy him? Caressing someone’s head: an unexpectedly intimate act.
‘Your hair is very fine,’ she says. ‘More like a woman’s than a man’s.’ What she does not say is that he is beginning to grow bald at the crown. But perhaps he knows.
Her father had a nurse to look after him in his last weeks and months. However, it was often she, Beatriz, who was called in to help. It was not a role she had been prepared for, yet she performed it quite adequately, to her own surprise. If the Pole were to fall ill now, she would look after him. She would find that perfectly natural. What is unnatural is that he arrives at her door not as an old man in need of care but as a would-be lover.
29. ‘You have never told me about your marriage,’ she says. ‘Was it a happy marriage?’
‘My marriage is long ago in the past. And in communist Poland too. Nineteen seventy-eight it was over. Nineteen seventy-eight is almost history.’
‘Just because your marriage is history does not mean it was not real. Memories are real—you said so yourself. You must have memories.’
The Pole gives one of his little inward smiles. ‘Some of us remember good memories. Some of us remember bad memories. We choose which memories we remember. Some memories, we put them in the underground. That is how you say it: the underground?’
‘Yes, that is how they say it. The underground. The cemetery of bad memories. Tell me some of your good memories. What was your wife like? What was her name?’
‘Her name was Małgorzata but everyone called her Gosia. She was a teacher. She taught English and German languages. From her I perfected my English.’
‘Do you have a photograph of her?’
‘No.’
Of course not. Why would he?
He does not ask about her own marriage and its associated memories, good and bad. He does not ask whether she carries a photograph of her husband wherever she goes. He does not ask about anything. Truly incurious.
30. That is one of the more intimate conversations they have. For the rest, when they are together, they are silent. She is not normally silent—with friends she can be exuberant, chatty—but from the Pole there seems to emanate a freeze on all frivolity. She tells herself it is a matter of the language—that if she were Polish or he were Spanish they would talk more easily, like any normal couple. But if he were Spanish he would be a different man, just as if she were Polish she would be a different woman. They are what they are: grown-ups, civilized people.
31. She takes him out to lunch in Fornalutx—not to the intimate little restaurant that she and her husband frequent but to one attached to a hotel that a century ago was the residence of a local eminence. At its centre is a courtyard open to the skies: birds swoop in and strut around among the tables or dip themselves in the fountain. No one is curious about the two of them, no one shows any interest. They are free beings, answerable to none.
She visits the ladies’ room. Emerging from the shadows, she pauses in the doorway, waiting for him to catch sight of her, then threads her way towards him through the tables. His eyes are fixed on her, as are the eyes of the two waiters.
She is aware of the effect she can have on men. Grace: not such an antique concept after all. In Poland or Russia, she thinks, he will relive this moment, the moment when, crossing the floor towards him, came a vision of grace embodied. What have we done to deserve this, he will think, guests, cooks, waiters, all of us? Grace that descends from the skies, shedding its radiance on us.
32. It is their third day together in the house. Loreto has done her chores and gone home. She, Beatriz, tries to read but is too distracted. Time moves sluggishly. She wills it to pass.
Dusk falls. She taps at the cottage door. ‘Witold? I have made us something to eat.’
They eat in silence. Afterwards she says: ‘I am going to clear up, then I am going to retire. I will leave the back door unlocked. If you feel lonely during the night and want to visit, do so.’
That is all she says. She does not want a discussion.
She brushes her teeth, washes her face, combs her hair, inspects herself in the bathroom mirror. Looking at oneself in a mirror is something that women do in books and films, but she is not in a book or a film and she is not looking at herself. No, it is the being on the other side of the glass who is looking at her, to whose inspection she is submitting herself. What does that other see?
With an intense effort she tries to send herself through the glass, to inhabit that alien self, that alien gaze. No use.
She puts on her black nightdress, parts the curtains, switches off the light. Moonlight pours in. She is still a good-looking woman: there is that to hold onto. Amazing, the way you have kept your looks! says Margarita. Two children and you still have the figure of an eighteen-year-old! Well, let him marvel at his luck. But what would the two children in question say if they could see her now? Mama, how could you!
She hears the back door open, hears his footsteps, hears him enter the bedroom. Without a word he undresses; she averts her eyes. She feels his body stretch out beside hers, feels the barrel chest against her and the hair that covers it in a thick mat. Like a bear! she thinks. What am I letting myself in for? Too late: no going back now.
She helps him as best she can with the lovemaking. Though she has no experience of old men, she can guess what their troubles in bed will be, their deficiencies. It is a strange experience, and not a little frightening, to have that huge weight pressing down on her, but before long it is over.
‘So now you have had me,’ she says. ‘You have had your gracious lady. Are you at last content?’
‘My heart is full,’ he says. He presses her hand to his chest. Dimly she can feel the beating of a heart, trip-trip-trip, faster than her own steady heart—in fact alarmingly fast. The last thing she wants is a corpse in her bed.
‘I don’t know what a full heart feels like,’ she says, ‘as opposed to an empty heart. But you must be careful. Do you hear me? Do you understand?’
‘I hear you, cariño.’
Cariño. Where on earth did he pick that up?
33. She is not going to spend the night with this huge lump of a man in her bed. ‘I must sleep now,’ she says, ‘and you must go. I will see you in the morning. Goodnight, Witold. Sleep well.’
She watches his shadowy outline as he puts on his clothes. A gleam of light as he opens the door, then he is gone.
Three more nights in Sóller. Is he going to expect her to accommodate him on each of them? A wave of tiredness sweeps over her. She wishes she were back in Barcelona in her own bed, in her own life, without these complications. She wishes, above all, to sleep.
34. She takes particular care, in the morning, with her clothes, with her makeup. By the time she appears in the kitchen the Pole has finished his breakfast. She offers her cheek to be kissed.
‘Did you sleep well?’ she asks. He nods.
Over her bowl of fruit she inspects him. How does he seem? Confused, mainly. Probably sleepless too.
You have only yourself to blame, she chides herself. Two strangers thrown together in the dark, performing an act neither was ready for. Actors. Performers. You thought you would get away scot-free, you thought there would be no consequences, but you were wrong, wrong, wrong.
‘How about we go for a swim?’ she offers. ‘Have you brought a swimsuit? No? We can buy you one in Sóller if you like.’
They visit an outfitter’s. Yellow is the only colour they have in the Pole’s size.
It is still early. At her favourite beach the family groups have not yet arrived. The only people there are the serious swimmers.
It is a strange experience for the two of them, who mere hours ago were naked in bed together, to behold each other semi-naked in the glare of sunlight. What does she see? How thin, even spindly, his legs are. She hopes he will not notice the tracery of blue veins on her inner thighs.
You give me peace. Body wrestling against sweaty body. As much of a shock for the man as for the woman. After a duel like that, no room left for adoration, for veneration. Adoration sent packing.
In the water they part company. He stays in the shallows, she heads straight out into the deep.
Alone in the sea: a profound relief. She could dive down, metamorphose into a dolphin, feel the whole mess she has created wash away. What a stupid idea to invite a strange man to her husband’s childhood home! 35. They are back at the house. ‘I want to speak to you about Loreto,’ she says. ‘Loreto is a woman, she has a woman’s eye. There is no point in trying to conceal from her what is going on. Nevertheless, we cannot be flagrant. Do you understand what I am saying? We cannot insult her by carrying on an adultery—because that is what it is, that is its name—under her nose. She has her pride. She will walk out and not come back. And I will be humiliated.’
‘I understand,’ says the Pole. ‘We do not behave like lovers.’
‘Correct. We do not behave like lovers.’
‘I have been your lover since the day I met you and no one knows. No one in the world can guard a secret better than I can.’
‘If you really believe that then you are a fool. To me you are transparent. To Loreto you are transparent. To any woman you are transparent. What I am asking you to do has nothing to do with guarding secrets. I am asking you to maintain a fiction. Can you do that, in a respectful way?’
The Pole bows his head. ‘Dante the poet was the lover of Beatrice and no one knew.’
‘That is nonsense. Beatrice knew. All her friends knew. They giggled about it, like all girls do. Do you really think you are Dante, Witold?’
‘No, I am not Dante. I am not inspired. And I am not clever with words.’
36. In the afternoon they go for a walk, following the same route up the hillside.
‘Tell me more about your daughter,’ she says. ‘Does she take after you or after her mother?’
‘If she looks like me it would be a disaster. No, she looks like her mother.’
‘And her inner life? Does she follow her mother in her passions or does she follow you?’
‘Yes? No? I cannot say. A daughter does not show to her father her passions.’
She lets it pass. Passion: what does he think the word means? Naked bodies on a summer night?
All their conversations seem to be like that: coins passed back and forth in the dark, in ignorance of what they are worth.
Sometimes she has the feeling that he is not listening to what she says, only to the tone of her voice, as if she were singing rather than speaking. She is not fond of her own voice—too low, too soft—but he seems to drink it in. Always he sees the best in her.
Something unnatural in loving without expecting to be loved in return.
Why is she with him? Why has she brought him here? What if anything does she find pleasing about him? There is an answer: that he so transparently takes pleasure in her. When she walks into the room, his face, usually so dour, lights up. In the gaze that bathes her there is a quantum of male desire, but finally it is a gaze of admiration, of dazzlement, as though he cannot believe his luck. It pleases her to offer herself to his gaze.
She has come to like his hands too. It amuses her to think that he makes his living by manual labour.
There are other features, however, that irritate her: his stiffness, his remoteness from the world around him, above all the pompous way he talks. Everything he says, everything he does has a formal feel to it. Even in her arms he does not seem able to relax. A comical spectacle, the two of them, making their love in English, a tongue whose erotic reaches are closed to them.
Is she too hard on him? Does she lack tenderness? Is each of us born with a certain quota of tenderness, and did she expend all her tenderness on her husband and children, leaving nothing for this late lover?
If she does not love him, what is the name of the feeling she has for him, the feeling that has led her down this questionable path?
If she had to pin it down, she would call it pity. He fell in love with her and she took pity on him and out of pity gave him his desire. That was how it happened; that was her mistake.
37. Her husband telephones. ‘How are you getting on with your musician friend?’ he asks.
‘Not too badly. He came in yesterday by bus from Valldemossa. He has fixed up the piano in the back room, as far as it can be fixed, which will be useful for us. I’ll take him for a drive this afternoon and show him some of the island. He leaves tomorrow.’
