The Light at the End of the Day

by Eleanor Wasserberg

  ‘Why are you leaving in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Oh, and why is my Ala unpacking all of her dresses in the middle of the night? Are you running away too?’ He laughed.

  Alicia looked around at the dresses. ‘I will tidy them away.’

  Adam gestured at the piles of fabric all around them. ‘Poor little Ala, with nothing to wear! You’re like your Mama, she never has enough clothes.’

  ‘I need something for the painting, Papa.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Well, all right, I’ll bring you a French dress, something pretty. But you know I won’t be home for a few weeks, and I was hoping to be hanging up your new portrait by then.’

  Her eyes slid away. ‘Oh, no, that’s too long.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Gloves are fine.’ She was eyeing the dresses again, trying to see the glint of something, like a bird seeking out silver fish in a river.

  Adam watched her for a few seconds. ‘Are you cross that I’m going away again?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind.’ She slid off the bed and began picking through the dresses.

  ‘Oh!’ he clutched at his heart, laughing. ‘Your poor Papa!’

  Alicia laughed, but only for a moment. ‘Papa, I want the painting to be very good. It’s important.’

  ‘Córeczka, it really isn’t. I only want a pretty picture of you. It’s not for you to be … worried about! Don’t you know you should never worry about anything at all?’ He pulled her gently from her listless picking at the fabrics, into an embrace. Alicia breathed in his smell of cigars and the rich buttery cream he put into his red beard, which tickled the side of her neck as she clung to him. ‘Don’t you know that?’ he repeated, holding her back again, by the arms, and searching her face.

  ‘Do you worry?’ she asked, instead of answering.

  He shrugged. ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Alicia, what is there to worry about? Everything is all right.’

  ‘But my birthday.’

  He stood up, releasing her. ‘That was nothing, Ala. Please, we shouldn’t talk about it.’ He looked at her again. ‘Is there something else?’

  She shook her head. What else was there, but the blood on the ice, that man’s sneering face?

  ‘Then I’ll say goodbye. Be a good girl.’ He kissed the top of her head, gave her nose a squeeze. ‘I’ll see the painting when I’m back. Be good for Jozef and for your Mama and Janie. Jozef tells me you’ve been very good.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘Alicia.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mean it, no more of this sulkiness. Be happy and light-hearted. It’s no good, this worrying. You are not to worry, understand?’

  She looked at him blankly. He was stooping to look into her face, his hands in his pockets. His face looked thinner than usual in the low light. Alicia said, ‘I understand, Papa, of course I won’t worry. Bon voyage en France.’ She found a face to match the lie: open, wide eyes, an easy smile.

  ‘Your accent’s getting better,’ he said, relaxing and smiling at her. ‘Merci. À bientôt, ma chérie.’

  He blew her a kiss, and pulled the door closed behind him gently. Alicia listened to his footsteps on the stairs, heard the low murmur of Robert’s voice, the heavy front door opening and closing. She glanced around her room, its familiar contours and shapes, the dresser with its mirror, the dolls, the boxes of hats and shoes, a few books on a small, painted shelf. Everything was the same as always, and her Papa said she was not to worry, that he wasn’t worried. But she’d felt the grip of his hands on her shoulders that night, crouching in the ice, and heard the way his voice had sharpened in the weeks afterwards, and too many parties, always gathering, drinking. He was worried, and now he was gone.

  12

  THE NEXT MORNING Alicia needled her sister with her late-night goodbye with Papa, reshaped the details: he woke only her, to say goodbye, to ask what gift she would like. Karolina’s face was serene, nodding along as she ate her eggs, one eye on the door. Janie and Dorothea chattered in low voices to each other and to the girls: ‘There will be a thaw today, maybe a walk, you’ve been indoors too long, see what your Mama thinks.’

  Alicia pressed further, like picking at a painful scab. ‘He said he would miss me the most, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But he will bring you some gloves.’

  ‘I like your hair that way, Karolina,’ Dorothea said, as she placed a jug of water on the table.

  Karolina gave her a distracted smile, touched her hair, braided into plaits and knotted at the nape of her neck. The thick curls were escaping already, reaching out like tiny ivy tendrils.

  ‘You look pretty,’ Alicia said, both to soften her crowing over Papa and to get her sister’s attention.

  Karolina became still, her head slightly cocked to one side, a forkful of egg balanced in her hand. She put down her fork as footsteps approached the door, seemed to hesitate outside.

  ‘That won’t be Papa coming back, he said he will be gone for a few weeks at least.’

  ‘That’s good, my old ones are too thin.’

  ‘Karolcia?’

  ‘The gloves,’ she murmured. Janie approached the door as though to open it, and stepped back as Anna came in, rushing, almost hitting her.

  ‘Oh! Sorry, Janie, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Mrs Oderfeldt, excuse me—’

  They all seemed stuck for a moment, the girls sitting at the table, the servants hovering, Dorothea casting glances around the room as though searching for details that might be wrong, and Anna standing like a debutante announced at a ball, her hands clasped together, looking at her children, a little flushed.

  ‘Do you need something, Mrs Oderfeldt?’ Janie ventured.

  ‘Mama, what’s wrong?’ Karolina asked.

  Anna frowned, and then gave a strangled kind of laugh.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Karolina! I only thought,’ she said, approaching the table and putting up a hand to Dorothea, who immediately brought her a napkin and set her a teacup and saucer down, ‘since your Papa is away, I would come and see you this morning instead of sitting upstairs by myself. Isn’t this cosy?’ She laughed again. ‘Perhaps while your Papa is away we should do this every morning.’

  ‘Did Papa say goodbye to you last night, Mama?’ Alicia asked. ‘He came to see me especially.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Anna said, her voice higher than usual. ‘He’ll be in France for—’

  ‘He already told me,’ Alicia said.

  ‘Alicia, do not interrupt me.’

  ‘Is Mr Pienta coming today?’ Janie asked as she brought a jug of milk. ‘Should we prepare a lunch for him?’

  ‘No, I think we’ll have a break from the painting today,’ Anna said, though she hadn’t planned to until Alicia’s smugness had riled her. It had the intended effect.

  ‘But Mama—’ said Karolina, as Alicia slumped in her chair.

  ‘I’ll send a note.’

  ‘But Mama, we were going to begin painting today, it’s already late, and Papa wanted it finished when he came back,’ said Alicia.

  ‘Did he? I don’t suppose one day will make much difference.’

  ‘He won’t get the note in time,’ Alicia said. ‘We agreed to start early today, because the light—’

  ‘Then I’ll ask Robert to telephone to his building,’ Anna said, in a fit of pique, raising her eyebrows at Dorothea, who left to relay this instruction.

  ‘But what is poor Jozef going to do today? He will have been expecting to come,’ Karolina said. ‘Mr Pienta,’ she added, to her mother’s glare.

  ‘I expect Jozef will be glad of a break from the company of two silly young girls for today,’ Anna said, looking levelly back at Karolina, who blushed and pushed her plate away.

  Anna disappeared for the rest of the day, into her own rooms, with vague instructions to her daughters to do something useful like sew or read some French. After stripp
ing and washing in delicious hot water, they devoted themselves instead to exactly what they wanted to do: Karolina began writing, trying to compose a poem; Alicia sent Janie to her Papa’s study for good quality paper and pencils, and began sketching.

  She tried first to draw Mimi, trotting about and whining, but she wouldn’t stay still for long enough. Then she sat in the doorway of Karolina’s room, and sketched her as she wrote, but the perspective was off, the shape wrong, and Karolina shooed her away, ‘I can’t think straight with you huffing and puffing over there.’

  That afternoon Alicia went down to the kitchens, forgetting to tread softly so as to eavesdrop; her clatter on the steps made the servants go silent, and greet her with too-wide smiles. Janie was sewing something, a yellow silk with blue trim, with a pile of mending on the table. Dorothea was rolling sugar paste, clouds of white puffing from the table as though from a magic potion.

  ‘Hello, little one. Here,’ Dorothea said, throwing her the body of a sugar mouse. Alicia held it up to the light from the windows, still sluggish through the rain. It was mint green, shading into blue along the narrow neck. When she bit into it, the paste inside was flecked with white. The sugar was too sweet and grainy.

  ‘Can’t we have shop-bought ones?’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s delicious, only I like the ones from Karlmann’s with the little eyes.’

  ‘And what are you doing?’ Dorothea asked.

  ‘I’m looking for something to sketch.’

  ‘Sketch?’ parroted Janie, as Robert came in, and she sat up.

  ‘Alicia, miss,’ he nodded at her. Robert was shorter than her Papa, but stockier, with a wide chest and thick arms. He always moved slowly, almost delicately, as now when he picked up a mouse, and dangled it into his mouth like a cat, swallowing it whole.

  ‘Robert!’ Dorothea protested, laughing. ‘These are for guests later.’

  ‘Who is coming?’ Alicia asked.

  ‘The painter, of course, and the Friels. Perhaps only Mrs Friel and her daughter.’

  Alicia rolled her eyes. She hated Rebecca Friel and her narrow face and scraggy body.

  ‘Can I have another mouse?’

  Robert weighed one in his hand, and gaped his mouth, fish-like, for Alicia to copy. She laughed and put down her sketching things, put her hands behind her back and tried to catch the mouse in her mouth, missing it as it fell to the floor.

  ‘Stop wasting my sugar!’ Dorothea cried. ‘What are you going to sketch? You haven’t drawn in a long time.’

  ‘No,’ Alicia lied, ‘my painting is making me want to.’

  ‘Well? Shall we pose for you?’ Dorothea put her sugared hands behind her head, and posed with a grin on her face, making Janie and Robert explode into laughter.

  ‘Yes, draw me at my work,’ Janie said, and bent over her sewing like an old woman.

  ‘There are already lots of paintings like that,’ Alicia said, thinking of the ones Jozef had shown her, golden ringlets bent over sewing, a basket of work at the feet, jugs of water on stands next to windows. All of it about the light and the shape.

  But they weren’t listening to her now, tossing the joke from one to the other, until Robert picked Dorothea up, making her shriek so loudly that they all glanced up, and quietened.

  ‘Go on,’ Dorothea said, laughter still in her face, ‘take one up to your sister too,’ and put two mice into Alicia’s hand.

  On the way back up the stairs Alicia mashed the mice together, one green, one yellow, and ate them as a sugary mush. Anna, changed into a beautiful green satin dress, but with an old cardigan thrown over it, opened the door to the dining room as she passed.

  ‘Alicia, won’t you stop creeping about the house like a criminal?’

  Anna crossed to a large mirror that hung on the landing, checked her earrings.

  ‘Can I sketch you, Mama?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to practise.’

  ‘No, I’m going out.’

  ‘But there are guests coming. Dorothea is making sugar mice.’

  Anna stopped encouraging her hair to curl under her fingers, muttering something under her breath. She looked at Alicia in the mirror.

  ‘I’d forgotten. Do you mind very much if we cancel? You can see your friend another time.’

  Rebecca Friel was the only Bernardyńska neighbour around Alicia’s age, and so they had shared language tutors, dancing tutors, and sat together, morose and bored, at a thousand parties, concerts, or winter outings to skate on the frozen river. Alicia felt certain that time became different when Rebecca was there, and flowed as slowly as treacle.

  She sighed. ‘That’s not very nice of you, Mama. I was looking forward to seeing my friend Rebecca.’

  ‘I know, darling, only I’ve made arrangements now—’ She patted her daughter awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘Another time. I know your Papa would prefer it.’

  Anna ran down towards the kitchen to pass on the instruction. Now there would be talk: two cancelled arrangements in one day, with Adam gone, too.

  On her way out, after brazening out the obvious disgust of the servants at the late change of plans, she swapped her cardigan for her mink and checked her lipstick in the hallway mirror again. She caught sight of Alicia there, sitting on the staircase, looking young, with her hair falling around her face.

  ‘Goodnight, Ala,’ she called.

  ‘Mama, who are you visiting?’

  ‘No one, darling, it’s a concert. Goodnight, now.’

  ‘If I stay up, can I sketch you when I get back? I like the green of your dress.’

  ‘Well, green will hardly come out in a pencil sketch, will it? And I’ll be late.’

  Alicia didn’t bother to explain that the sketch could carry colour in it, a promise.

  ‘I’ll wait up anyway.’

  ‘Alicia, go up for your supper and then to bed.’

  Alicia stayed still.

  ‘Dorota has some sugar mice for you,’ Anna added. ‘Go.’

  It was like walking into a memory. Some slant of the light, the gentle lilt of the voices, Polish and Yiddish layering each other like instruments in a duet. Anna felt all wrong in her silk dress and furs. She was struck, as she walked along the Ulica Josepha, by the colourful murals above the shops: peacocks and fruit, which she’d forgotten about but now remembered. In the street there were conservatives, women with covered hair and men in long black coats, their hair in peyas, heading for home as the sun set. Anna felt a rush of warmth for them, these echoes of her grandfather and uncles. Her father had worn a kippah to shul on holy days but that was all; her mother insisted on Friday night dinner, and left the rest. Her mother used to stride along this street, with the practised grace of an insider, weaving between pavement and street, nodding to acquaintances, her purposeful gait making her skirt swing. The address was crumpled in Anna’s coat pocket, taken from Adam’s desk.

  She passed a dumpy woman with a cold smile. Anna heard her name, turned to see the woman looking her up and down frankly. Anna pulled her coat around her.

  ‘Blanka’s daughter? You are Blanka’s daughter? I remember them, all of you, you lived just three or four streets down.’

  Anna nodded. She didn’t recognise the woman at all.

  ‘Blanka was a friend of mine,’ the woman smiled, coming back towards her. ‘But you look very well,’ she said, pausing just enough to make sure Anna heard what she should, which was, You look very rich. ‘Did the whole family move?’

  ‘I live nearer the centre now,’ Anna said. ‘My parents—’

  ‘Yes, of course, I remember, very sad, only a few days apart.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I live on the Ulica Bernardyńska,’ Anna said, unable to help herself, as though this would seep into the cobbles of the old neighbourhood, down through the soil to the cemetery, and reach her mother’s ears.

  ‘How lucky,’ the woman said flatly. ‘What brings you to this part of the city?’
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br />   ‘I’m visiting a friend. In fact,’ Anna said, taking out the piece of paper, ‘I’m not sure of the street, do you know where this is?’

  The woman glanced at the paper, sniffed. ‘Further back, a fair walk from the Remuh. Past our neighbourhood. I wouldn’t be going there as it gets late.’ She looked Anna up and down again, and Anna felt herself blush.

  ‘I’m visiting my friend who is unwell.’

  ‘How kind.’

  Anna glared at her.

  ‘Will you be visiting your mother and father’s plot? I notice it doesn’t get many stones.’

  ‘Do you?’ Anna snapped.

  ‘Oh, yes. I visit regularly; they’re buried next to my dear Frank.’

  ‘Well, I’ll stop by another time. It’s getting late, Mrs …’

  The woman met her gaze, set her mouth in a line. Anna almost laughed: she had forgotten the bluntness of people in this part of the city. It was refreshing after her tiresome dance with Janina.

  ‘Thank you for the directions,’ she said, and swept past her.

  Back at the Oderfeldt apartment, the evening passed in a storm of bad temper. Karolina read and would speak to no one, except for whispering furiously as she wrote notes in some of the margins. Alicia, without Jozef to speak to or any progress with the painting made all day, became fixated again on finding a dress, prodding her sister with questions about which she thought she should choose, until Karolina shocked them all when she exploded, called her a brat, and left to go to bed early, slamming doors through the house as she went. Dorothea was in a rage, her cooking for the evening all wasted, and she and Janie had quarrelled about nothing, all the light-heartedness of the afternoon forgotten. Only Robert was calm, methodically cleaning the cars, singing showtunes. Finally the household, without Anna and Adam to float through it, asking for more drinks and more heat and making telephone calls, darkened, turned cold, and went to sleep.

  Alicia woke to thunder and the satisfying sound of rain against her windows, burrowed deeper under the covers, thinking of Papa in France and wondering if it was raining or warm like the Italian coast they had visited the previous summer. She was sure it was by the coast, where he was, because once he’d sent a postcard with a turquoise ocean on it. In her mind, all of France was by the sea, fields of lavender where sand should be. She stayed with this image for a while, enjoying what painting it might make, the purple against the blue, but a flicker of lightning pulled her back to the room, slicing across her ceiling and showing up the faces of her dolls. She got up to watch from her windowsill, broad enough to sit on. Lightning was playing behind the Wawel, behind its turrets and walls, like huge cameras taking photograph after photograph. There would be a better view from the dining room, she realised, and she pulled on her housecoat.