Downstairs the thunder sounded louder, as though the cavern of the house was echoing the sound and magnifying it, and Alicia froze on the stairs when the lightning came again, tinged with blue from the small window near the back stairs. She wished she had Mimi or Cece in her arms, but the dogs always found their way under the kitchen table in storms. She pushed on to the dining room. There, framed by the huge windows, was her Mama, kneeling on the windowsill where Alicia had spent hours posing for her portrait, her green dress bright against the dark glass and the shock of white mink at her feet. Her hands were pressed against the glass, and her neck arched to better see the sky behind the Wawel.
‘Mama?’
Anna turned, squinting into the dark room, just as a huge lightning fork flew across the sky, making Alicia gasp and point. ‘Oh! Look!’
‘Oh, I missed it! Well, come on, come and watch.’
Alicia, who had already turned expecting to be sent back to bed immediately, raced to the window before her mother could change her mind. She stood next to her in the same pose, watching the sky. Her mother smelled of perfume and cigarettes. She nudged Alicia with her shoulder.
‘It’s been fantastic,’ she whispered. ‘There was just— oh!’
They gasped together as the white gash spread wide across the sky, lighting up the room, their faces, the street below. Anna giggled, bobbed in place for a moment. Alicia caught the giggle, copied the movement.
‘There’s more thunder,’ Alicia whispered.
‘Count now until the lightning comes back,’ her mother replied. She did on her fingers, ‘One, two—’
‘There!’
‘So it’s very close.’
‘Is that how you know?’ Alicia whispered.
‘That’s how you know.’
‘Why are we whispering?’ Alicia asked, giggling again.
Her mother shrugged and smiled across at her. Her red lipstick seemed to shine in her white face. Alicia inched closer to her, cold. She leaned against Anna’s arm, as she did with Papa, a language he understood; he would let her burrow under his jacket or coat, warm her fingers on his belly. But her Mama only rested her head against hers for a moment then stood on her tiptoes again to catch another fork of lightning.
‘Did you see that one?’ Anna murmured. She looked down at Alicia again. ‘Should we wake your sister up? Wouldn’t she like this? Something to write about.’
Alicia shook her head. A lie came to her, blossoming naturally from the stem truth of wanting this moment to herself: Karolina was afraid of lightning; once she’d come to share Alicia’s bed during a storm, and had shaken all night, the tremble of the covers keeping Alicia awake. She knew the lie would hold; their mother never liked to admit she didn’t know things about her children, and would say, Of course, I forgot. Alicia let the lie unfold and drop, kept silent. Her mother seemed content with her shake of the head, and perhaps she, too, didn’t want anyone else to come in, to puncture the strange closeness between them.
‘When I was younger, storms would put out all the lights in the old neighbourhood,’ she whispered. We used to light one candle and put it in the kitchen, and we’d all gather round it, your grandmother, grandfather and me. Sometimes the neighbours came from next door too.’
Alicia stayed still, caught sight of her mother’s reflection in the glass, nodded, Go on. She daren’t speak in case it broke the spell. Her mother rarely spoke about being younger, and when she did, it would be in snatches to Adam or Stefan, or tiny things at dinner parties, never, never just to her like this.
Anna nodded back, looked up at the sky again to catch another strike. ‘Oh! Look at that one,’ she whispered. ‘Your grandfather hated it, would be muttering prayers under his breath. That was one of the only times he prayed. He said he thought the lightning would strike the house, burn it down. But my Matenka, my mama, she was like me and you. Oh, she loved it. She’d count the seconds between thunder and light, and when it got low she’d go to the door and open it to watch the storm, letting all the wind and rain in. Your grandfather would tut but let her do it. I used to stay at the table, because I didn’t want my papa to be angry with me, but when I was Karolcia’s age I used to go and watch with her. We’d jump, and— oh! Did you see that one?’ she laughed, and Alicia did too. ‘Just like that! We’d jump and laugh. I used to wish I could buy her a picture of lightning across the sky, you know, a photograph.’
‘Did you?’
Anna was quiet for a while as three forks spread across the sky in silver tinged with blue. More flickered behind the Wawel. ‘No,’ she said, no longer whispering.
‘I remember her a little,’ Alicia said.
‘No, you don’t. She died when you were very little.’
‘I do. She visited the house and she sat with her coat on. She had very strong hands.’
‘Karolina or I have told you that, and you think you remember.’
Alicia kept quiet. She wanted to steer her mother back to whispering, to bouncing on her toes like a little girl, smiling at her in the silver light.
‘She did have strong hands. She was a seamstress. She made clothes.’
‘I know what a seamstress is, Mama.’
‘Well.’
‘So, she made clothes like ours?’
‘No, simpler ones. She sold them in the market at home, I mean in the old neighbourhood.’
The old neighbourhood held a special glamour in Alicia’s imagination. It was across the river, you could even see parts of its rooftops from her bedroom window, but she’d never been. It was still Kraków, but might as well have been another country. Her mother very rarely talked about it, but almost all of Bernardyńska used to live there, and reminisced about its cobbled streets, and market stalls selling the best borscht in the city, and shortcuts down back alleys, past rickety cafes full of old men playing board games. All this they discussed as though it was a place lost to them forever, not streets away, across the river, and only when the dinner parties were of the later, louder type, when she could easily listen from the staircase without being caught out of bed.
‘Will you take me? To the old neighbourhood?’
‘There isn’t much to see, and you don’t belong there.’
13
THERE WAS NO ONE in the world Jozef expected to see less than Anna Oderfeldt at his door. He had received a message cancelling his invitation to the Bernardyńska apartment that evening, and looked forward to the blank peace of time alone with his thoughts and work. Anna stood in the grey evening light, her dress bright against the stone of his building, flashing him a smile. He was in a half-buttoned shirt, unshaven, holding a paintbrush. He’d been working on Alicia’s piece, from the sketches, worried he’d lose the thread of it. He looked down at himself, lost for words.
Anna laughed in her awful affected way. ‘I’m sorry, I’m disturbing you.’ When he still didn’t invite her in, she took out and lit a cigarette. He glanced behind him at the chaos of his damp-smelling room, wondering what would be more insulting to his patron’s wife: to send her away, take her to a bar, or let her in, make her sit among his laundry and piles of canvas and the stink of turpentine.
Anna laughed again, but she had turned red. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I appear to have shocked you.’
‘I – please, come in. Was I supposed to – I had a message from Robert, from your – I’m sorry if I misunderstood,’ he said, backing into his room, casting about for detritus to pick up and throw into a corner, clearing a place for her to sit. Anna glanced at his bed, the crumpled sheets, unmade, as she sat on his one chair next to the small kitchen table. Seeing this, it was his turn to blush, and stammer, ‘I wasn’t expecting company. I’m a slob when I’m working, you see.’ This was better: take refuge in the artistic excuse, part of his narrative with the Oderfeldts.
Anna rested her chin on one hand, passing her cigarette to the other. She gestured with the cigarette, a question in her eyes, and Jozef took one, if only to have something to do with his hands.
‘I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. Would you like something to drink? I have some vodka, but it isn’t very good.’
She nodded, and he busied himself pouring some out. He swallowed his swiftly at the sink, feeling his annoyance rise. He wanted to work, she had pushed in here but seemed to have nothing to say, she was bringing all of the awkwardness of his visits to Bernardyńska here, to his own home, and he didn’t have Karolina or Alicia, or even Adam, to cushion his distress. When he turned to hand Anna the vodka, he saw she was looking around the room in a kind of dream.
‘I grew up in a room like this,’ she said.
He laughed in surprise. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s true. I just met a woman who knew my mother. She was chastising me for not paying my respects at her grave. She’s buried a few blocks away.’
Anna drained her glass.
‘What are you working on?’
‘Your husband’s commission, of course.’
‘But everything is at our apartment.’
‘I have lots of versions and sketches coming. That’s how I work. We have the shape now, and I’m starting to think about the colour in the composition …’ He stopped as her eyes slid past him and around the room again, clearly bored.
‘Even the colour of the walls is the same,’ she said. She put her chin in her hand again, drummed her red nails against her cheek, meeting his eye. ‘My daughters enjoy your company, I think.’
‘They’re a credit to you.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘How polite you always are.’ She held out her glass, and he refilled it. ‘Go on.’
‘Mrs Oderfeldt?’
‘Anna, for God’s sake. Go on, ask me what on earth I’m doing here.’
He took a sip. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ he asked, using the old-fashioned greeting. She laughed, and he made her laugh blossom by adding a little bow with a flourish of his hand.
‘Adam has left.’
This shocked him. ‘Left? He’s left you?’ The red lipstick, the evening visit started to make some sense. He felt a twitch of lust, but it was quickly taken over by a twinge of regret over his painting, which would now never be finished, and, strangely, by the end of his visits to the apartment across the river, the long hours in the dining room, Alicia’s attentive face. Karolina’s calm presence. He sighed, put out his cigarette in the sink. Would Adam still pay him? Anna was laughing. Was she already drunk?
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she finally said. ‘He’s gone to France for a while. On business,’ she added.
‘And that’s why you’re here?’
‘So it’s fallen to me to talk to you about my daughter.’
Anna was watching him. He kept his face very still as his heart sped up. He had done nothing, nothing to disgrace himself. He admired her, the quiet space she built around herself, and yes, the supple grace of her body, the kind warmth of her brown eyes, the way she became lost in her own world, as he could. But he had never spoken of it, never touched her. He hadn’t even drawn her, except in his head.
‘She’s …’ Anna frowned. ‘I’ve never seen her so obsessed by something before. She’s never seemed all that interested in anything, to be honest. If you ask Adam she’s fascinating but I’ve always found her rather bland.’ Anna lit another cigarette. ‘She’s driving me to distraction hunting for this dress you asked her to find, and talking about colours.’
Jozef breathed in and out, his relief making him break into a rare smile. ‘She’s clever. She’s got a natural understanding of—’
‘Well, stop … involving her. I’ll just tell her what dress to wear. She only needs to stand there, just let her stand there.’
‘Yes, Mrs Oderfeldt.’
‘Anna. Don’t be angry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Can I have another drink?’
He poured her one, as distant thunder sounded.
‘Shall we go to bed?’ she said.
‘You’re very beautiful, but—’ he said, too quickly.
‘Yes,’ she said. She smiled and stood up, putting her cigarette out in the vodka glass. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you have lots of lovers. Models, other artists, that sort of thing. Don’t you all live hedonistic lives, like Parisians?’ She laughed.
He blushed. ‘Yes,’ she answered herself. He felt she was laughing at him, and his little life in his little room. He crossed to the door, opened it just as more thunder rang out, sounding closer. He lost his nerve at this. ‘Perhaps you should stay until the storm—’
‘I have my reputation to think of,’ she whispered in mock-scandalised tones. ‘Perhaps I could borrow an umbrella?’
‘I don’t have one,’ he admitted. ‘Well, I did, but it’s broken,’ he added lamely.
‘What a pity. My mink will get ruined. Goodnight!’ she trilled, and walked out into the night. In a shop window in the fading light, the electricity of the gathering storm pressing on her, Anna touched her face, straining in the dark to see her features more clearly. She knew there were small lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked at her hands, still young-looking enough, and small. Adam loved her small hands, liked to lace her delicate fingers through his own, elegant long ones. She looked into the window again, but the night was too dark to see, and anyway her tears would be swelling and reddening her pale skin. She glanced up at the sky where thick drops had begun to fall. She wanted to be curled up in a clean bed, chaste in silk nightclothes, listening to the storm. She sent a tendril of thought to Adam in his other life, then withdrew it as she set off across the cobbles, slippery in the rain.
14
A PACKAGE ARRIVED from France, expensively wrapped in cloth and sealed with wax, layers of scented tissue paper. Adam’s beautiful handwriting, almost like calligraphy, on cream letter paper, Darling Ala, I hope this is right. My fashionable friend informs me it’s just the thing. Alicia held up the dress, heavy and thick, against the light. It was a dress for a younger girl, a party dress, with billowing sleeves and a high neck. She had lots of dresses like this, the same folds of fabric, the same buttons along the back. But this was what she’d asked for: a deep, rich colour, the colour of spring flowers and fresh blood. The fabric, too, was just right: heavy and thick, velvet. ‘It’s perfect,’ she informed her mother, who was reading the note with a blank expression. It was only later that she remembered it was the same colour she’d been wearing that night, so the man from the steps would recognise her more easily. So perhaps her Papa understood the secret importance of Jozef’s painting: the thought warmed her.
Later, she wore the dress for Jozef’s visit, watched him for his reaction. He was quiet and absorbed in setting up by the window, fussing over pencils and sheets. Karolina was watching him too, running her pen over her lip, before going into her secret written world. Alicia stood in position, letting the red announce itself into the image, pleased with the weak sunlight hitting her arm and the side of her face so that the red seemed richer. She thought of the blood on the ice for a moment, its awful beauty. Finally Jozef looked up and took in the image, meeting her eye. He nodded. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘The richness—’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she replied.
He gave a low laugh, glanced at Karolina, who was laughing too.
‘Really, Ala, you are an arrogant little madam,’ she said.
‘She’s right, though,’ Jozef whispered, and they laughed again.
‘Now can we start painting?’
‘Yes. Now we’ll begin painting,’ Jozef said. ‘You’ll be famous soon,’ he added, as Anna came into the room. She came to stand by Karolina.
‘Karolcia, I do think you need to occupy yourself while your sister is busy with the painting.’
‘I am, Mama.’
Anna leaned over to read from Karolina’s notebook, but she snapped it shut.
The days without Adam slipped by, the routine of the apartment barely affected. Jozef would arrive just after breakfast, Alicia would change, and sh
e, Karolina and the dogs would set up camp for the day in the dining room with him. Jozef would eat pastries they’d saved from breakfast or if Anna remembered, she’d send Dorothea with fruit and coffee. Anna herself would wander in and out, fuss the dogs, exclaim over Karolina’s daydreaming in a fond enough way, and sometimes even doze on the chaise longue, sometimes with a book, sometimes half-read letters.
‘Is that from Papa?’ Alicia called one afternoon, seeing his handwriting.
‘Yes.’
Alicia stayed in position, her hair pulled to one side, catching and sticking on the heavy velvet of her dress.
‘What does he say?’
‘It’s a private letter.’
‘Is he coming back soon?’
‘He doesn’t say.’
‘We should go to France to visit him, once the painting is finished.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s summer soon, and we’ll be going out to the Zakopane house.’
Anna trailed off as the others sank into their now customary concentration, into a rhythm all their own. She watched Karolina carefully. She watched her watching Jozef, in small snatches at first, then in a longer gaze at Jozef’s profile, his broad cheeks, his shaved face. I suppose she’s not used to seeing a shaved face, Anna thought. Maybe something so simple had been the start of it.
Anna wasn’t a fool. Something would have to be done, but somehow she’d been unable to say what she’d planned when she went to Jozef a few evenings before. She supposed it was simply too much to bring up the growing attraction between her eldest and the young man, when she was also there hoping to find comfort and distraction in his bed. She searched for the right word. Schmutzig. Grubby. It would have been grubby of her. The heat of injured pride stirred in her skin as she studied Karolina’s figure, escaping wisps of her daughter’s hair alight in the late afternoon sun. I won’t be jealous of my own child, Anna thought. I won’t sink so low. That other child, the French girl, Edie, was quite enough.
The Light at the End of the Day Page 11
