by Frank Wynne
After a while, Bolesław came in with great commotion, and stormed up and down the room; finally he sat down on the bed, tugging at his beard. Only after a time did he say, ‘You know, I find that piano of yours and all your playing very hurtful. You just don’t seem to appreciate that you’re in a house in mourning.’
‘A whole year has gone by,’ said Staś, without interrupting his playing. His words sounded florid and theatrical, like the opening of a ballad.
Bolesław shuddered. ‘I find that music intensely irritating,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ said Staś and stopped playing. ‘It conjures up a world I’ll never go back to, and which I never really got to know. I used to gaze at it all from my window. I saw some things through the windowpane that would have been beautiful, if only I could have touched them. But I never did, and I never will. It’s like glass, like something made of thin ice … Listen, Bolek,’ he said, in a serious tone, ‘I can tell there’s something you haven’t realised. You don’t know why I’ve come here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know my cheerfulness and my music annoy you, but please let me go on just a little longer. You see, I won’t be here for very long … In my illness, before the final stage there’s usually an improvement. It lasts for a few weeks. The doctors take advantage of it to send the patient off, anywhere at all, back home, or to the country, somewhere private, so that he doesn’t die at the sanatorium. My remission is already coming to an end. I’m very sorry, my dear fellow, but I really can’t help it. I wish I could – at this point he smiled – ‘but I can’t … So please don’t give me too much of a fight. I came here to die.’
Bolesław stood still in the darkness, but Staś wasn’t looking at him; he was still captivated by the dark night beyond the open window, and was thinking of Miss Simons, regretting that he hadn’t fallen in love with her, and humming the Hawaiian tune.
‘Why don’t you have any nightingales?’ he asked after a while.
‘There were some … but they seem to have stopped singing now.’
Bolesław stood up and paced about the room, but his step was calmer and quieter now, as if he were trying to tread carefully. A couple of times he came towards Staś and stared into his face, pallid in the darkness, his expression fixed, as if on another planet. But Staś took no notice of him; an inner lament was reverberating in his sickly lungs. Only later did he say, ‘You see, that’s what happens when it passes from the lungs into the intestine …’
Bolesław left the room without a word and vanished onto the veranda.
IV
The start of summer was particularly beautiful. The days, not excessively hot, ended in sultry evenings and the nights were silent, peaceful and tender. Bolesław was still getting very little sleep. His brother’s confession had failed to build a bridge of conciliation between them. On the contrary, they felt even more ill at ease whenever they sat down to meals together. Bolesław would glance nervously at Staś, but could perceive no symptoms of advancing illness in his brother’s face. He had even started to wonder if what Staś had told him had sprung from his morbid imagination. Staś was still playing the piano a lot and was always writing letters; in the afternoons Bolesław usually caught a glimpse of him and Ola wandering among the white trees in the birch grove. In the evenings, when Staś came home, restless and despondent, Bolesław in his turn would roam about between his wife’s burial mound, the blackened buildings of the forestry lodge and the courtyard.
Sometimes he would pass by the servants’ quarters, whence he could always hear laughter and merry voices. Although the nearest village was a very long way off, Malina was always being visited by one of her male acquaintances. Sometimes, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, there were several of them, and in fleeing from Staś’s piano, Bolesław would fall into the orbit of an accordion, which one of these admirers would be playing. After a time Bolesław started to linger in the vicinity, to listen to the laughter and music. Much as he was annoyed by the Hawaiian songs which Staś kept playing so quietly, the loud droning of the accordion began to give him pleasure. The primitive nature of its tunes touched his soul. He couldn’t write this music off as a source of hopeless grief. On the contrary, he thought, how good it would be if Basia were still alive, and they were walking about the forest and the courtyard together, holding hands. Basia would certainly have enjoyed such a fine summer, as well as the fact that lads from distant villages were coming to see Malina. Basia always had a soft spot for anyone in love, and always enjoyed romantic stories. Whenever someone told her about a passionate Polish village tragedy she enjoyed it very much, even though there was plenty of talk around there of murder, manslaughter and mutilation. For her, love was all. That was what was going through Bolesław’s mind. One day he decided to see which lads came calling at the lodge. He went up to the doorway, where all the inhabitants of the rooms above the stable were sitting around. As he approached the conversation fell silent, and the laughter died away. The assembled company greeted him sincerely, but formally. He noticed that the only outsider was Michał from the neighbouring settlement. He was a solid, resourceful fellow, and Bolesław was very fond of him.
He didn’t know if Michał was courting Malina. But he didn’t even ask; Michał might simply have been there by chance. He might have dropped in on his way to town to find out what was new in this backwater.
For a while they chatted about the weather, and their forecasts for the hay; Bolesław asked Michał what was new at his settlement, but the conversation didn’t develop. Bolesław realised that he made them feel uncomfortable, but he didn’t have the strength to tear himself away from them. He wanted contact with people, and the fact that they, were simple people was all the more pleasing.
Finally he had to leave. Maybe something was starting to age or change inside him, he thought to himself, because he felt so fiercely conscious of a need for company and conversation. He passed the birch grove and walked towards his favourite spot, where he could imagine that the forest had ended. In fact there was a ditch there, beyond which stretched tiny plots of land; past these, in a clump of cherry trees, stood old Maryjka’s tumbledown cottage, hidden from view, chimney and all, behind the trees. Further on there were more fields, sown with oats, and only after that did the forest begin again. These fields belonged to the forestry lodge and year after year, unfortunately, they were sown with oats, which grew more and more feebly, providing rather poor sustenance for Bolesław’s horses.
He had never come here with Basia. Maybe that was why he liked this spot, and as he roamed about each evening (in spite of being tired from working all day) he often came and stood here at the edge of the forest. He gazed into the distance, imagining that the fields went on for ever, that nothing would ever interrupt them, and that there wasn’t really a birch grove on the other side of them. But then he came back to reality with the thought that it was just a clearing, with Maryjka’s cottage as a little island in the middle.
Other evenings were warm as well. He couldn’t stay stuck indoors, where Staś was so often playing on the old, out-of-tune piano. It wasn’t good for the instrument to sit in a house surrounded by dense forest. It was getting hoarser and hoarser, and some of the keys had stopped responding. The waltzes and tangos sounded awful on it, but Staś would never stop playing. Sometimes he did nothing else all day, only rising from the piano for meals or to go to bed. He lay down from time to time now; he especially liked to spend the afternoon lying wrapped in a beautiful chequered shawl, a souvenir of Davos.
Bolesław would retreat into the depths of the black pines, but the hoarse voice of the piano pursued him a long way until, turning a vast circle within the forest, he came out beyond the borders of his district. He sat down beneath a pine tree in silence. His thoughts were empty; the wind was faint and only at the very tops a restless whisper ran through the trees. The black branches of the pines gave a hollow rumble, heralding a change in the weather for tomorrow. He sat there for quite a whil
e. As the wind dropped, he heard the thud of footsteps tramping across the carpet of pine needles; someone was walking about nearby, pacing back and forth among the pines. He turned to face that way and heard a muffled voice, but he couldn’t make out who was talking. He found it faintly annoying; even here there’s no peace, he muttered, and spat.
He stood up and went home. Staś wasn’t playing the piano; he wasn’t in the dining room or in his bedroom.
Bolesław carried a lamp from his room into the dining room and slowly drank some stewed tea. Katarzyna was already asleep in the kitchen, and there wasn’t a sound from the courtyard. Evidently, Michał and his accordion hadn’t come by today; maybe it was him out walking in the woods.
Never before had Bolesław thought so clearly how little his life was worth. Never before had it occurred to him that it really wouldn’t matter at all if he were to die. And of course it wasn’t the fact that the world wouldn’t feel a thing, but that even for Bolesław himself his passage from meaningless existence into meaningless non-existence would have no significance at all – it was just an ordinary, but minor step.
He thought of the rituals surrounding his eventual death, and of the funeral, how the old women would lay him out. Katarzyna, of course, and Maryjka, just as for Basia. And would Malina come? Would she too wash his body, as she had his wife’s? Maybe not, she was a young girl, after all. How old could she be?
For the first time he started wondering about Malina’s presence at the lodge, what she did here, and what she looked like. He couldn’t even imagine her properly. When he closed his eyes and tried to conjure up her image in his mind, her features escaped him. All he could see was the oval shape of her head and her plaits, not covered with a headscarf. He couldn’t even remember if she was pretty or ugly. ‘I must go there tomorrow morning,’ he said to himself.
Stanisław didn’t come home for ages. Bolesław was surprised, and walked about the house, looking into Staś’s room, but no one was there. The grand piano stood with its lid raised, like a bird’s wing. Bolesław went up to the keyboard and with one finger tapped out the tune of a song he used to sing as a youth in the army. At the time they were posted in a small town in the south of Russia, and every day he would slip away from the barracks on the sly to see a lovely girl who came out to meet him; she lived nearby. They used to go up to the loft and sleep together in the hay.
He was a bit startled by this tune, which didn’t sound very loud beneath his clumsy finger, and he was surprised at his own state of mind. I’m afraid it has happened, he thought, Staś’s arrival has completely changed me. Only now could he fully understand Staś’s confession of a few days ago. It meant there would be another death in his house, another corpse lying on the bed, another grave in the birch grove or in town; that Staś, always such a stranger to him, with his ‘European’ smile, would be leaving. And once again the old women would come to wash his corpse, just as they had washed Basia’s. Only Malina could not. After all, that’s no job for a young girl – it’s always done by old women. Nor would she even want to – it was out of the question. Who on earth would come running to wash the wretched body of a consumptive? He was going to die. Maybe it was even for the best; he couldn’t imagine what else could become of Staś. A consumptive – that was the only career for him.
Then Staś came back with such a smile on his face, with such a blush in his cheeks, so like a happy person, that the gloomy thoughts took wing from Bolesław’s mind.
V
The next day there was an unpleasant row between Bolesław and Staś, for absolutely no reason. At breakfast they began arguing about nothing; Staś didn’t like the taste of the butter, so Bolesław called him a ‘dandy’ and reproached him for coming, and even for the cost of it all. Amazed at his brother’s cruelty, Staś left the room as soon as possible. It was early morning and cloudy. The sky was white, the pine trees black. Staś took a roundabout route, tearing up straggly, sorry-looking daisies along the way. He came upon the courtyard from the side overgrown with scrub and nettles, which always grow around rubbish heaps. Just beyond the brick stable block, which looked dark as chocolate, stood a washtub on a small table; Malina was there, doing the laundry. She had her profile turned towards Staś, so he took a good look at her. The line of her brow and nose was very beautiful; she had lovely eyelids which hooded her eyes like flower petals, and fine, classic brows. But the lower half of her face was coarse – her mouth was too big and her teeth too white; in her smile, infrequent in any case, there was something feral, though it didn’t put Staś off her. As he was wandering among the trees, he had unconsciously started thinking about her, and felt glad of a way to forget the nasty row with Bolesław. He must think that money has been wasted because I’m going to die anyway, he had said to himself, but only for a moment had this thought concealed other, happier thoughts, like a dark pine tree hiding the bright backdrop of the sky: thoughts of Malina’s existence.
Yesterday evening, while out walking in the forest with her, he had discovered that on her birth certificate she was really called Malwina, but her parents had preferred the sound of Malina. Staś had assured her that it was much nicer, and that she really did look like a Malina, not a Malwina. She had laughed a good deal at that.
He watched her every movement as she did the washing and saw her arm muscles, arms which were very white; her breasts were crammed into a small, tight-fitting, faded violet jacket, done up with little buttons. Her hands worked briskly and nimbly, with great competence. She was probably washing her own and Janek’s shirts. Or maybe Michał’s?
Staś did not approach her, or inquire about her work or health, or the weather; after standing there for a couple of minutes he silently turned and walked away towards the birch grove, so splendid at this time of day. The birches, slanting this way and that, in places formed the nave of a church, and today the bleached pillars had an intense atmosphere. That was usual on these warm, sunless days, presaging rain, but still hot, hanging over the earth as if drawn close to the ground by a low, white sky. His mind was a blank; he was conscious only of being still alive. He wasn’t even thinking that soon all this would cease to exist for him. He attached no weight at all to his surroundings. What mattered for him was ‘the world’, ‘Europe’ – as he called the gleaming corridors of sanatoria and the cupboards under the stairs where sick people’s leather trunks were kept during their temporary storage. He had liked the air there, steeped in the smell of ether and the tunes of Hawaiian songs. He gazed at the sloping white birches with a touch of scorn; they weren’t like the melèzes that filled the high Alpine valleys. He didn’t even know that in his own language they were called larches.
Not for a moment did it occur to Bolesław that Staś was so good-humoured because he had already been through the worst. He had bid farewell to that world, as if it were the real world. Slender Miss Simons and the silky muslin of her dress, the sheer tract of the lake, the clouds over the glaciers, the records from Paris, the trunks from London … that was real life. But here there were birch trees and burial mounds, miserable flowers and an abandoned child – this wasn’t proper existence. He had arrived here already broken by his farewell to the world; his final link with life was the piano hired in town from his ‘sister in sickness’. That was exactly what Bolesław couldn’t sense or comprehend at all. He had hurt his brother with his brutal words – when his brother, strictly speaking, was no longer alive.
Through the trees he saw someone coming towards him. It was Janek, Malina’s brother. He felt a great liking for him, he even looked like Malina. Bolesław had once told him that Janek had been suspected of murdering someone in the woods; rumour had it he had shot an old woman who was picking berries or mushrooms. Of course, no one knew for sure, but such things are not unheard of. Janek looked nothing like a criminal – he had a round, rosy face and dark, shaggy hair.
He came up to Staś and greeted him, then sat on the ground opposite, casting his rifle aside. He smiled at Stanisław, leaned bac
k and asked, ‘So it was you, sir, out walking with Malina yesterday?’
‘Yes, it was,’ said Staś.
‘Because Michał was looking for her all evening – he was so angry. Because Michał’s courting her now.’
‘Who are you courting, Janek?’
‘Michał’s very angry. Watch out he doesn’t do something to you, sir.’
Stanisław laughed. What on earth could he do to him? Besides, Michał could relax – he wouldn’t go out with Malina any more.
‘Don’t you like her, sir?’ said Janek.
‘Don’t worry. Quite the opposite. I like her too much, and I wouldn’t want to get in Michał’s way.’
‘You can go out with her, sir,’ said Janek confidentially, ‘as long as Michał doesn’t know. Malina likes you, sir, but she’s afraid of Michał.’
‘So why does she care what he thinks?’ said Staś indignantly.
‘What do you mean? Michał’s going to marry her.’
Then Janek left, as he had to walk his beat. Staś was left alone in the glade and started gazing at the birches again, but something in the landscape had changed. It was no longer so neutral; it had grown sadder, and at the same time happier. Staś smiled at his own delusions. But he was glad – the feeling suddenly swept over him – he was glad that he still had a few days left to live. These days had now grown in his mind to infinite proportions; the hours that were left to him until evening had taken on immense length, and every moment felt like a priceless object, a special gift.
