Milo seemed to be enjoying his moment in the spotlight, called out again so that his words carried over these smaller groups, so heads turned back to him and there was even the scrape of chairs as people moved to hear him more clearly. ‘There are rumours that soon Jews will be stripped of their businesses, professional licences, that sort of thing.’ When the guests only nodded, tutted into their laps, he added, ‘I mean, here in Poland too.’
He looked around expectantly, and Jozef felt there was a certain ugly hunger in his face, which turned bewildered as most around the table chuckled and seemed to relax.
‘Well, that isn’t possible,’ Tomas Hartmann said, and sat back in his chair, as though at the end of a long meeting. ‘These lower elements, youths without any direction, you know, and the odd fight, that’s one thing, but a law like that could never be passed here. Even with Piłsudski gone, things can’t get so bad.’ Again the table fed these lines back to itself, a murmuring echo, That isn’t possible. Jozef was sitting too far from Milo to do what he wished, which was to lean in and whisper, Well, that didn’t have your intended effect.
‘The books and beatings, they aren’t always groups of angry young men,’ Milo said. ‘It’s the government too.’ But his spell was dissipating; shoulders had dropped a little, and the table turned to remembering their last scare, when Piłsudski had died, and they had stood at the funeral procession wondering what would happen now that the refrain ran hollow: Piłsudski would never, Piłsudski is a friend to Jews. ‘Do you remember? All that nervous chatter! But it turned out to be nothing …’ Soon determined conversation moved back to this new painting of Alicia, how much the family’s other paintings were admired, how they would like to see them, Oh, could we? They hang in one of the drawing rooms, I think? Shall we take nalewka in there?
As they glided over the thick rugs, the house lit up for the party, the Wawel splendid from the windows, Adam touched Jozef’s arm.
‘Go find the girls, they are in my study, I think.’
‘They aren’t in bed?’
‘We let them stay up; Alicia will never sleep when we have guests. And you should talk about your painting.’
Jozef was surprised by the rush of relief he felt on hearing he had the commission. He must have been more worried about money than he thought. The canvas at home, even the thrill of his strange new idea, had faded. He looked for Milo, hoped to savour his moment of triumph, but he was ahead with the others, and a servant was waiting to show him to the study.
The two sisters were sitting together by the fire, the youngest in the same silly frothy dress. Jozef lingered near a bookshelf, pretending to study the gold-leaf titles and thick leather bindings. The girls hadn’t seen him. Alicia was reading, probably a studied pose, Jozef thought, she’s been told to read and is gazing at the pages to please her sister. But on watching her for a few seconds he saw that she was truly engrossed, biting her lip a little, turning the pages greedily. The older one was dressed more like a servant than a lady of the house, in a dull brown dress, her hair un-styled. This one would be more at home, Jozef thought, in the tenements of his own neighbourhood, the smell of grease in the air, holding a baby or two. He approached them and smiled at Alicia.
‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’
He winced. He sounded like an angry schoolteacher.
Alicia ignored him. The older one smiled at him. Jozef felt a mild panic, smothered by wine: he had forgotten this one’s name.
‘Mama told us to wait up, so you could talk about your portrait,’ the older girl said. She gestured awkwardly for him to sit in the leather chair by the fire, and he gave her a grateful smile.
They sat for a while, watching the embers burn. Despite himself, and his acute awareness of the awkward silence, Jozef began watching the colours with a painter’s eye, imagined the spark of that sunset orange on a canvas, wondered if that particular red could be captured. He felt a kind of hopeless shame at the silence that thickened around them, except for the fire and the stubborn turn of Alicia’s pages. It should have been he who made the effort, but his old sullenness in this house had descended, his heavy dinner weighing him down into the chair.
‘Alicia, would you like to ask Mr Pienta about his ideas?’ the older girl asked, her face red.
Alicia placed her book aside with infuriating affectation, patting it in place like a prissy middle-aged woman. My God, Jozef thought. I will have to find a way not to throw her off that damned balcony. When she looked up at him, he tried to find some interest in the planes of her face in the firelight, some light he could use. She caught his eye, tilted her chin a little, and the effect was so akin to flirtation that he shrank back and folded his hands.
‘Your father has asked for a portrait, something … pretty,’ he said, feeling helpless at the flatness of his tone, but too irritated to rouse himself to false enthusiasm. She nodded.
‘Would you like to hold your little dog perhaps, or maybe a book you like? It is good to have something to do with your hands, or they fall like this,’ and he let his dangle like a broken puppet. The older girl laughed. Alicia caught it and gave a second-long smile that was so open and unstudied she instantly became a child again, free of poise. Then she closed her face again, straightened her back.
‘The last time I was sitting down, and I had my hands in my lap like this.’
She showed him the way ladies folded their hands together.
‘Yes, I’ve heard about the last time,’ he made a vague attempt to tease her. ‘Are you going to chop off all of your hair for me too?’
‘I was just a child then,’ she said, primly. Then she felt cross with herself; she always laughed when Papa mentioned it, and this was Papa’s friend. ‘And Papa really wants this one. He … I really want him to …’ Frustrated, she looked into the flames. She couldn’t explain her clawing need for her Papa to be confirmed in the eyes of Kraków as important, a patron, a rich man, not some dog in the street, without talking about the man who had attacked him. A now familiar flare of rage overcame her and she hid her face in Mimi’s fur for a moment, imagined her little pet biting off that man’s face, his huge hands thrown up to protect him ripped away by the dog’s sharp teeth.
Jozef dug his toes into his shoes. I’m trying, you spoiled brat, he thought.
Alicia was looking into the fire now. ‘I won’t ruin this one,’ she said. ‘I want it to be beautiful.’ I want Papa to love it, she thought. I want it to be famous, I want that man to see it and to be afraid of us.
On his way out, woozy with wine and nalewka, the oppressive heat of the study, the effort of playing his part, Jozef met Milo as they were being handed coats by two tired-looking young servants. Jozef had lost his impulse to crow at Milo and felt shy instead, and a vague panic about having to share a tram or even a long walk back to their part of the city together, labouring over conversation. He offered an awkward smile. ‘I’ll maybe get a cab,’ he said.
‘Won’t they lend a car?’ Milo replied, focused on the buttons of his coat. He spoke mildly, but when he glanced up there was a sharpness to the set of his lips. The servants retreated, probably hoping they could collapse into chairs or beds, drink their cheaper booze, gossip about them all.
‘Well, I don’t want to go back up and ask, you know,’ Jozef said, set his face in a brief grimace, hoping to find common ground. We are both outsiders here; I won, but it’s awkward for me too.
‘Of course, of course.’ Milo’s voice dropped to a loud, drunken whisper, the effort of keeping his voice hushed straining the muscles on his throat and causing flecks of spit to form at the corners of his lips. ‘You can’t trust them to share their expensive things, they sit on piles of gold, they have money sewn into the curtains, there’s gold in the fucking walls. In the walls, imagine, you could punch this through’ – Milo struck the wall with his fist – ‘and coins would spill out, but fucking wait to see if you get a penny of it over what you agreed in your contract, and they’ll probably try to screw you out of t
hat as well.’
Jozef began to stammer, ‘Well, I don’t …’ and Milo waved his words away, lurched at the door. He fumbled with the large, heavy doorknob. ‘Where’re their servants? They can’t even run a house properly, it’s all smoke and mirrors you know, pretending to be upper class, they all come from shoe sellers and market stalls. Good luck with the portrait, but don’t expect anything from these fucking dogs, you know.’
Jozef had unconsciously been nodding, a tic of his nerves, trying to scramble what to say, how to defend his friend, how to deal with the aggression spilling around him. Please, please, just leave, just go, he thought.
Milo took his silence and the nods to mean agreement and shook Jozef’s hand before wrenching the door and stumbling down the steps. Jozef sank for a moment against the coats still hanging from the beautiful oak stand.
His mother had never had much time for Jews, but even she would have been ashamed of him just then, he knew. To allow such a breach of manners, to insult the host who has just fed you, to use such language in their very home: this would have appalled her, although she would have also – later, when he told her about it, in a letter or a visit – reminded him to check his contract and keep a tab on expenses.
Jozef counted seconds, feeling his cheeks warm with the embarrassment of this childish fear of Milo walking slowly, their paths crossing. He buttoned and unbuttoned his coat. He should have said goodnight to his hosts, but his reserves of social energy were used up, and he felt a desperate desire for his small, draughty room, his bed, the silence and the blank walls. He hesitated over a bell he suspected would summon a servant and allow him to pass on a message, or at least be subtly shown how to behave, but weariness from it all made him open the door himself and step into the night.
At the top of the stairs, in the spot his younger daughter took to overhear conversations between him and his wife, Adam Oderfeldt stared at a knot of wood. He’d thought it would amuse him to overhear the two painters and their impression of his daughter, the house, his friends, himself. Pienta in particular he had hoped to impress, liked to have the younger, poorer man around to be generous to, to ostentatiously not comment upon his stained cuffs. He felt a series of small collapses in the solid wood beneath him, as though it was not solidity beneath him at all but a thin crust which covered seething lava. The painter from Warsaw with his news from Berlin and his drunken bitterness, and the man who had struck him on Alicia’s birthday joined many others, smaller, less clear, easy to dismiss, but considered together something began to take shape. Averted eyes. Contracts more carefully checked. Requests for other opinions. A certain gleam in the eyes when sharing news from across Europe, perhaps searching his face for fear. The trickle of news from Germany, someone’s cousin, someone’s schoolfriend, someone’s brother-in-law, and now open attacks, in the streets there, and signs going up around Kraków.
Adam placed a palm on the step, tried to feel the massive weight of the house, how its foundations sent deep roots into the street. Tried to feel the comforting solidity of the Wawel, but found instead only a flimsy seal that could be punctured and peeled away like tissue paper. Adam sat for a while listening to his sleeping house, the only sound the far-away clinks of Dorothea and Janie working downstairs.
He sought out Anna. He wanted the steadiness of his wife’s slim body next to him, her deep breaths. He found her in her room, already with her hair around her shoulders, always thinner than it seemed in its elaborate twists.
‘Goodnight, dear,’ she said. ‘Did your guests leave? I’m afraid I might have abandoned them rather rudely.’
Adam sat on the edge of the bed, felt a dull ache in his back. He looked down at himself: the pristine shirt beginning to crumple, the soft belly beneath, the long, spidery limbs. He had broken his leg skating years before, and the splintering ease of it came to him then, how he had snapped like kindling. He wrapped his arms around his knees like a child.
‘So we’ll ask Jozef to paint Alicia for you. I didn’t like his dirty cuffs tonight or how much wine he drank, but I liked the earlier one he did of us well enough, I suppose.’ She was chattering insistently, the business of the house, their decisions, and he gratefully took the hint. He wanted only to lie down next to her.
‘Don’t invite Milo again,’ Anna added.
Adam started, hung his head. So she had heard it. ‘Of course not,’ he said.
Anna pulled at the skin of her cheeks in the mirror, eyed the reflection of her husband on the bed. She wondered if she could try to describe the revulsion she’d felt earlier: how Milo seemed like rotten meat with perfume spilled across it; how somehow he had insulted her, something in the way he took her hand, some cast to his voice. Instead she only said, ‘I didn’t like his manners at the table, holding court like that.’
Adam watched her, rubbing some lotion into her hands and smoothing it across her forehead. She caught his eye in the mirror.
‘Do you go to France this summer?’
This caught him off guard.
‘I might. Let me know if there’s something I can bring you.’
She made a small sound of assent, turned with a questioning look.
‘May I stay?’ he always asked, a formality he couldn’t shake.
‘To sleep.’
‘I’ve upset you, but it was you who talked about France.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Anna, dearest Aneczka. I’m … please be a friend tonight.’ He spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. For a terrible moment he felt he might cry in front of her, which had happened only once in their marriage, when her mother had died. Anna had cradled him like a baby and said nothing, her face only a little paler than usual.
‘What is it?’ she said now.
He laid back, the canopy of her pretty bedroom, birds and blue swirls in silk, swimming above him. He was drunk. I’m afraid, he thought. A man attacked me, with Alicia there, her little hand wrenched from mine, and I lay sprawled on the ground like a child, and now she lies for me, and another man insulted me in my own house, and even Jozef who I thought loved me, said nothing, nothing, and across the border they are killing people right there in the streets, I can’t wear my kippah now, I’ve hidden it away, and now even you are angry with me over this old problem of France, and I am all alone.
‘What do you think of this rumour, about businesses?’ he asked, into the silks.
‘What, are you worried?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘Perhaps a little.’
He heard her feet on the carpet, felt her weight, cat-like, on the end of the bed. She put a hand on his shoulder. Adam began to lean into her, but then she shook him gently. ‘Well, stop. It will upset the whole house. We’ve already kept the girls inside these weeks, and for what? So they can grow pale and bicker. Go into work. Work harder so you don’t fixate on things like a boy.’
7
IN THE DAYLIGHT HOURS the apartment took on a different mood. Adam was presumably at his factory, lines of fabric and textiles, the crunch of sewing machines; or in some well-lit office with plants and the smell of leather. Anna welcomed Jozef when he arrived, ordered tea and pastries, but had since disappeared. Jozef had painted in Adam’s study last time, his patron at the desk. Now, sitting in the small room Anna had led him to, the plate of pastries demolished, he felt nervous, unsure which rooms he was allowed in, unsure where the girl was, where her mother had gone, or who he was to ask. The pastry, some almond flaky thing, expensive, made a sticky paste at the back of his throat and the tea had run out. Outside the door all was quiet. Should he ring a bell? In the corridor he caught sight of a servant, but she bustled away before he could ask. Fighting the irritation that descended on him, Jozef pressed on, knocking on doors, finding beautifully furnished empty rooms, until he found his way back to the large room which overlooked the Wawel, the huge dining table from the previous night cleared and laid with a pressed new tablecloth. With relief he saw the older girl wa
s curled in a window seat, reading.
‘Good morning.’
‘Oh! Excuse me, Mr Pienta.’ She started to uncurl and closed her book.
‘Please, Jozef, please. Don’t, no, please don’t let me disturb you, only—’
‘I’m sorry, I was supposed to come and fetch you, Mama has gone out but then I lost track of time.’
She was wearing the same kind of simple clothes as the previous evening, her feet bare in a pool of winter sunlight. Her hair was pulled into a messy plait which left curls around her face. She arched her back, stretching out from her reading pose, and glanced at the Wawel with a smile. Jozef could see the composition. The play of light on the grey and brown, warming it like sun on autumn foliage. The strands of hair, the edge of the cheek.
‘I should paint a portrait of you, Karolina.’ He was pleased he remembered her name this time.
She turned from fetching her book. He’d expected a pleased blush, perhaps a smile. Instead, to his surprise, there was an unmistakeable frown for a moment, before her face went blank.
‘I’m sorry if I offended you,’ he stammered, feeling his face grow hot.
‘I’m not offended.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘Some poems. I’ll take you to wait for Alicia, she’s choosing a dress.’
He walked with her, watching her bare feet sink into the carpets. Perhaps, he realised, with a rush of horror, she thought he had been flirting with her. She would tell her parents and there would be uproar. He stopped and she turned to look at him.
‘I only meant, you were accidentally, in that pose reading by the Wawel, it was a good composition. I thought you might like a portrait like your sister’s. That’s all, I wasn’t trying to flatter you,’ he said, feeling like a little boy explaining some blunder, irritated still more by the rules and games of this world that Adam kept pulling him into.
The Light at the End of the Day Page 6
