Martin is angry now. With the suspicious boy, his laughing mother. He counts out enough to pay for his meal, including the wine. Leaves it on the table without a tip and goes to his room.
—
In the morning, a man serves Martin his breakfast, but before he leaves for the river again the young mother comes into the café, pushing her son in front of her. She speaks in a low whisper to the boy, who translates for Martin in a monotone.
– My mother say she is sorry. We are both sorry. She is Ewa, I am Jacek. She say you should tell me about the river so I can tell her.
—
Martin is still annoyed when he gets back from the river in the afternoon. Doesn’t expect the woman and her boy to stick to their appointment, half hopes they won’t turn up, still hasn’t analysed day two and three’s samples. But when he comes downstairs after his shower, he finds them waiting for him in the café as arranged.
The boy helps Martin spread out his maps, asks if he can boot up the laptop. His mother murmurs something, and her son sighs.
– She says I should say please. Please.
– It’s okay.
Martin shows them the path of the river from the mountains to the border and where the chemical plant lies, almost a hundred kilometres upstream from the town. Amongst his papers, he finds images of what the metal he has found in the river looks like, its chemical structure and symbol, and he tells them its common name. He says that as far as they know, the body cannot break it down, so it stores it, usually in the liver. He speaks a sentence at a time and lets the boy translate. Shows them the graphs he has plotted on his computer. Waits while the boy stumbles over his grammar, watches his mother listening, thinks: Jacek and Ewa.
– Where do you come from?
Ewa speaks in Martin’s language, points at the map. Martin looks at her, and Jacek clears his throat.
– I am teaching her.
Martin smiles. He shows them where he is studying and then, a little further to the west, the city where he was born. And then Jacek starts to calculate how many kilometres it is from Martin’s university to the border and from the border to the town. Martin asks Ewa:
– How old is he?
– Nearly eleven.
He nods. Thinks she must have been very young when she got pregnant.
– He’s just about bilingual already.
An exaggeration, a silly thing to say, and Martin can see in Ewa’s eyes that she knows it, but she doesn’t contradict him.
– School. He is good student. Also good teacher.
She smiles and Martin is glad that they came today, Ewa and her son. Pushes last night’s laughter to the back of his mind. Sees that Ewa’s smile is wide and warm and that her tongue shows pink behind her teeth.
—
Day five and Martin works his way along the river again. The hot fields are empty, the road quiet. The water here is wider, deeper; flies dance above the surface.
Mid-morning and Jacek crashes through the undergrowth.
– Martin! There you are. I am here.
Martin looks up from the water, startled. He nods, then he doesn’t know what to say to the boy, so he carries on working. Jacek watches him a while, and then pulls off his trainers, rolls up his trousers, picks up a vial.
– No! You shouldn’t come in.
– I can help you. You work faster when I can pass them to you.
– Shouldn’t you be at school?
Jacek frowns.
– Does your mother know you are here?
– She don’t mind.
Martin thinks a moment.
– We don’t know enough yet about this metal, you see. It’s too much of a risk.
Jacek avoids eye contact, rubs his bare ankles.
– You really can’t help me without boots and gloves, Jacek. I only have one pair of each. I’m sorry.
An hour later the boy is back with pink washing-up gloves and a pair of outsize rubber boots, soles caked in mud. He holds up a bag of apples.
– For you. From my mother.
—
In the evening the café is crowded and Ewa is busy; another waitress brings Martin his dinner. His table is near the bar, where Jacek is doing his homework again. New vocabulary, and he asks Martin to correct his spelling. Ewa makes a detour past his table on her way to the kitchen.
– Thank you.
– No problem.
He scratches his sunburn, stops. Feels huge at the small table after she has gone.
Jacek brings his mother with him on day six. Ewa stands at the water’s edge while her son changes into his boots and washing-up gloves. Midday already, and the sky is clear, the sun high. Martin has sweat patches under his arms, on his back. He watches Ewa hold the front of her T-shirt away from her chest, and then flap it back and forth to get cool air at the hot skin beneath. He sees yellow pollen on her shoes, the hem of her skirt, damp hair at her temples.
They work for a while, and Jacek asks questions which Martin answers. Ewa says very little. She crouches on the bank and looks at the water. Lids down, lips drawn together, arms wrapped around her shins. When Martin says it’s time to move downstream 100 metres, Jacek says he wants to come with him and Ewa says she will go home.
Jacek watches Martin watching his mother as she wades through the long grass back to the road.
– She used to swim here with my Tata, I think.
– Your father?
Martin tries to remember a wedding ring. Sees Ewa’s strong palms, her long fingers.
– He is in your country.
– Oh?
– He is illegal. Too much problems at the border, so he don’t come home.
Martin watches Jacek as they unpack the bags again. Fair with freckles. Narrow lips, pale eyes, broad nose. A good-looking boy, but not at all like his mother.
—
Day seven and Martin doesn’t go to the river. After breakfast he sets up his computer, a new graph template, and plots the data from days two and three. Both agree with day one’s graph, with Martin’s predictions, and he starts sketching out a structure for his argument, writes a first draft conclusion. The sample results should have come back from the university yesterday, including the mud and weed from day four, which would speed up Martin’s analysis. He goes downstairs to the small office mid-morning to check for faxes again, but the guesthouse is quiet, café closed, reception deserted. Sunday. So there won’t be anybody at the labs, either, but Martin walks out to the phone boxes in the town square anyway.
Jacek hammers on the glass.
– Where were you?
– Wait.
Martin holds up one finger, but the phone just keeps ringing out at the other end. Jacek peels his pink gloves off while Martin leaves a message on the lab answerphone. The boy cups his hands around his eyes, presses them up to the glass, watching him. It is stifling inside the phone box and Jacek’s hands leave a sweaty streak on the pane outside.
When Martin opens the door, Jacek has his fists on his hips. Rubber boots on the paving stones beside him.
– Why didn’t you come?
– I’ve finished. I only need to do a couple more tests.
– Oh.
Jacek picks up his boots and falls into step with Martin. The sun is strong and they walk together on the shady side of the narrow street which leads back up to the guesthouse.
– I’m going home tomorrow.
– Tomorrow?
He looks up at Martin for a second or two, then turns heel and runs.
—
Martin sleeps in the afternoon and is woken by the landlady’s husband with a message.
– Is it from the university?
– No. From my wife’s sister.
Martin stares at the man. Eyes unfocused, face damp with heat and sleep.
– From Ewa. Jacek’s mother. She works here. My wife’s sister.
– Oh, yes. Yes, sorry.
– She says you should come to her house. She will cook you something to eat this
evening. To say thank you.
—
Martin showers and sits down at his computer again but finds he can’t work. Looks out at the birds instead, washing in a puddle on the flat roof of the building opposite. The concrete is mossy and Martin wonders where the water came from. He has been here a week and it’s been 30 degrees straight through and hasn’t rained once. The skin on his back is damp again, and under his arms, and he thinks he hasn’t anything clean to wear this evening, so he takes a T-shirt down the hall with him and washes it in the bathroom, lays it out on his windowsill to dry.
It is still slightly damp when he goes out to find Ewa’s. Bottle of wine bought from the guesthouse bar under one arm, map and address on a scrap of paper from the landlady’s husband. There is a slight breeze and the T-shirt is cool against his skin. He catches sight of himself in the bakery window as he passes, pushes his hair down over his forehead a little as he turns the corner. An involuntary gesture he hopes nobody saw.
—
Jacek opens the door.
– You’re early!
– Sorry.
He leads Martin up the stairs, two at a time, cartons of cigarettes and cake mix piled high along one wall. The narrow entrance hall of Ewa’s flat is similarly crowded: disposable nappies, tuna fish, toothbrushes in different shades, pink and green and yellow. Jacek sees Martin looking at the boxes.
– The man we rent from. He keep things here, we pay him not so much. Every week is something new coming for him to sell.
A table stands in the middle of the room, a wardrobe in the corner. Mattress leant up against the wall and draped with a sheet. The window is open and the radio on. Martin recognises the song, a current hit, but can’t understand what the announcer says afterwards. He goes into the kitchen, where Ewa is chopping and Jacek stirring.
– Can I help?
– No!
Ewa pours him a glass of wine and pushes him out into the bedroom-dining room again.
– Five minutes.
The wind is blowing into town from the river, and Martin can hear church bells ringing out the evening service.
They eat, Martin and Ewa smiling and nodding, Jacek concentrating on his food, not worried by the silence.
– Jacek, can you ask your mother to tell me a little about the town, please?
The boy looks up with his mouth full, Martin swallows.
– I know very little. I would like to know.
It is not true. He knows what she tells him already, what the boy translates for her about the nine churches, the resistance during the war and occupation, the failed collectivisation of the fruit growers during the communist era.
– There was a jam factory here when she was my age. Everybody was working there, or they were farmers. Apricots, pears, apples, and I don’t know how you say those small ones. Berries?
Martin asks about the communist years.
– You want to hear about no food and unhappiness, yes?
Martin rubs his sunburn, and Ewa slaps her son’s hands.
– Jacek! Sorry. I don’t understand him, but I see he was bad. You translate only, yes? Yes?
Ewa points at her son and then pours them all more wine, offers to make Martin some tea.
– The way we drink it here.
Jacek’s translation is sulky, sleepy. Black, in a glass so you can see the leaves floating. Boiling water, hot glass with no handles so your fingerprints get smooth and hard from the holding. Martin looks at the tips of his fingers, Ewa smiles.
– I didn’t know your sister owns the guesthouse.
– Yes.
Ewa smiles, Jacek yawns.
– She gives my mother work.
– And her husband?
– Tadeusz?
– Uncle Tadeusz does no work.
– Sh! Not true.
Ewa speaks more herself now, interrupts her son’s translations. She tells him her brother-in-law is a plumber. That he put his faith in the church. Her explanations are ungrammatical, sometimes nonsensical, but Martin enjoys listening to her. She says that they built new houses a year or two after the elections, a whole row, right in the centre. New times, new buildings. Flats above, shop spaces below. Brick, solid, good windows. And Tadeusz put in all the pipes, toilets, baths, taps, sinks. He got a loan to pay for all the materials. Copper piping and ceramics, imported from the west. He had the houses blessed when they were finished, but not yet painted. The priest came and threw his holy water around the empty rooms and Tadeusz was so proud. She remembers the wet, dark spots on the pink-red plasterwork, that it was a hot day, and that the dark spots left white marks behind when they dried.
– He never got paid, Tadeusz, and he cries often now.
Each time he defaults on his loan, and the houses are still empty. A while ago there was new graffiti on the wall of the last one in the row: send the nuns abroad and the priests to the moon.
Ewa looks at Jacek, who isn’t listening any more, eyes half closed, head propped in his hands. She whispers to Martin:
– I think Tadeusz write that.
Martin feels her breath on his neck as she speaks, can smell wine and soap mixed.
– My sister, she wanted that Jacek and me should live with her. After Piotr left.
– Your husband?
Ewa doesn’t answer, her eyes are unfocused.
– I couldn’t. Not live with Tadeusz. He’s not a bad man, but so much bitterness.
Martin is drunk and so is Ewa.
– I don’t want my son be bitter, you see. I want that he like his life, this town, his country.
Martin nods.
– There is not so much here now, but I show him places, take him to the river.
Ewa sighs. They sit with the breeze from the open window on their bright cheeks and Jacek has his head on the tablecloth, asleep.
– I don’t make him be at school this week. I think he can’t swim in the river now, but it is good that he speak with you. Has some nice time, learn someone new. More than in a classroom.
Ewa smiles into the middle distance and Martin looks at her. Only half a metre between them, the corner of the table, knees almost touching underneath.
He leans towards her. But Ewa catches him.
– No.
One hand on each of his shoulders, she holds him at arms’ length. Martin blinks.
An empty wine glass rolls on the table. Ewa shakes her head.
– Sorry, no.
She smiles and then Martin sits back in his chair again, sunburn itching, sweat prickling in his scalp.
He doesn’t look at her and for a minute or so they sit in silence. Jacek’s even breathing in the room and the church bells sounding again outside. When Martin looks up, Ewa is blinking, smiling at him.
– I am sorry.
She rights the glass on the table, then covers her mouth with her hand and laughs.
—
In the morning there is a fax from the department lab. Martin has a hangover, asks for coffee and water to be sent up to his room. His eyes skim the figures, cannot settle. He boots up the laptop, plots the lab’s figures onto his graph, though he already sees the disparity between the last set of results and his predictions. Days one and two show serious levels of contamination in mud and water, and correspond with Martin’s own data. Day three’s samples, however, are almost low enough to be considered clear.
Martin sits on the narrow bed a while, trying to decide if he is relieved or disappointed. The weedy water, the pool under the waterfall: Clean. As good as. But the premise of his paper: Void. His headache is bad, the day hot already, the shame of yesterday evening still fresh. Martin presses the heels of his palms against his eyes.
He wants to go home, he needs to get dressed. He goes to the bathroom where the window is open, the air much cooler than in his room. He stands under the shower a long time, warm flow on face and shoulders taking the edge off his headache, filling his ears, closing his eyes, replacing Ewa and her laughter with water falling on
tile.
The room he returns to is strewn with papers and clothes.
Martin works his way round it methodically, folding and sorting into piles. Before he packs, he checks through the lab technician’s tidy columns once more, notes the memo at the end of the fax: the weed sample has been sent on to botany.
On the way downstairs, he reasons with himself: if the weed results are interesting, he can propose to further investigate the river fauna in the conclusion to his paper. Over breakfast, he thinks he could propose a joint venture with botany, perhaps. Something to please the department. Zoology might even be interested: the weed may be thriving, but crowding other species out. At the very least, it is good news for Ewa. She is not working this morning, but Martin thinks he will leave a note for her, tell her it’s okay to take Jacek swimming again. He finishes his roll. Thinks he made a mess of the field study, the week in general, but there are still ways to make amends.
Martin stands in the narrow reception hall with his bags, sees Ewa happy by the waterfall while he waits for her sister to calculate his bill. Then he remembers how sad she looked the day she came with Jacek to the river, and he is shocked at the satisfaction the memory gives him.
There is paper on the counter in front of him. He has a pencil in his back pocket, but he doesn’t get it out. He pays and picks up his bags. While he loads up the car he tells himself it is too soon to know for certain. He has yet to test all his samples, examine all the possibilities; swimming at the waterfall could still be dangerous.
On the road out of town, he sees Ewa’s hand over her mouth, her eyes pressed shut, Jacek woken by her laughter and staring at him.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 33
