Too Many Men

by Lily Brett

  Maybe if Golda Meir had been an advocate for exercise, Edek might have listened. He had held Golda Meir in very high esteem. He had admired everything about her. But the American Surgeon General was not Golda Meir. His opinion would cut no ice with Edek. Cut no ice. What a strange phrase, she thought. Where did it come from? Who had invented it? Why had they been trying to cut ice?

  Edek interrupted her small reverie. “You should listen to me,” he said.

  “You been doing too much running.”

  “Running is very good for you,” Ruth said.

  “If it is so good for you,” Edek said, “why do you look shocking?”

  “I don’t look shocking,” Ruth said. She patted her hair down. Maybe her hair was sticking out. She thought that her father was probably right.

  More than her hair needed fixing.

  “Have some rollmops,” Edek said.

  “I couldn’t eat herring for breakfast,” Ruth said, grimacing at the thought of the rolled-up pickled herring marinated with onions and whole black peppercorns entering her empty stomach.

  “You would feel much better if you was a person who could eat a herring for breakfast,” Edek said.

  “Maybe I’ll mature into one,” Ruth said, with what she hoped was a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

  Edek wasn’t put off by the sarcasm. He was clearly convinced of the value of herring. Even on an empty stomach.

  “Have just one piece,” he said to her.

  “I couldn’t, Dad,” she said.

  “This bird stuff what you eat is not enough,” Edek said. “Birds are very small. They sit all day in a branch. This bird stuff is enough for them. You need food what normal people eat.”

  “Dad, give me a break,” she said. “I’m tired.”

  “That is what I am talking about,” he said. “Since we been in Poland, you been always tired. Eat a piece of herring.”

  “Maybe tomorrow, Dad,” she said.

  “Okay, okay,” he said.

  T O O M A N Y M E N

  [ 3 3 7 ]

  He wandered off to the other end of the buffet. “Look what they got here,” he called out to her. Ruth walked over to him. He was pointing to a very large sausage. A type of salami. “This vurst is very good,” Edek said. “I did eat this sort of vurst in Melbourne when Mum was alive.”

  “Mum let you eat this sort of fatty sausage?” Ruth said.

  “When we did have visitors, she did let me eat some vurst,” he said.

  Ruth knew well that all of Rooshka’s efforts to restrict Edek’s diet had amounted to nothing. Edek ate what she wanted him to eat in front of her, and what he wanted to eat when he was out of Rooshka’s sight.

  Edek ignored the circles of already sliced sausage, on the platter. He picked up a serrated bread knife and sawed off a large slab of the still-intact sausage. Ruth winced. She thought the unsliced sausage was probably meant to be purely decorative. “I don’t like it when it is in such thin pieces,” Edek said, looking at the circles of sliced salami.

  “You’ve got to admire your father’s digestive system,” Garth used to say to Ruth. “He eats whatever he likes. He never feels ill and he stays more or less the same weight.” Ruth’s standard reply to this had been that a bit less rather than a bit more of the weight that Edek maintained himself at would be better. It was never a serious reply. She knew that Edek wasn’t very overweight. And he loved his food. Why was she thinking about Garth? She shook her head to shrug off these thoughts. Garth was part of the past. And she was dealing with as much of the past as she could tolerate right now.

  “That’s it for me,” Edek said. Ruth looked at his plate. Every inch of space on the plate was occupied. Edek couldn’t possibly have added anything else. The contents were already built up. The sardines were in a stack and so was the herring.

  “Take something for yourself, please,” Edek said to her. His voice sounded a bit nasal.

  “Have you got a cold?” she said.

  “No, just a bit of a running nose,” Edek said. “It is nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” she said to Edek.

  “I do get like this, a small cold once or twice every winter,” Edek said.

  “And it is winter, in Poland.”

  “Do you have a sore throat?” she said.

  “No,” he said.

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  L I L Y B R E T T

  “Are you sure?” Ruth said.

  “Of course I am sure,” Edek said. He looked at her. “This is a normal small cold what I have,” he said. “Please, Ruthie, have something to eat.

  Have an egg.”

  Ruth nearly retched at the thought of an egg. “I’ll have some yogurt,”

  she said. She thought that yogurt might settle her stomach. Her stomach definitely needed settling. “I’m going to have some yogurt and some toast,”

  she said to Edek. Edek rolled his eyes. He added a helping of cream cheese to his plate. It sat, like a plank, on top of the pickled onions.

  Edek took his breakfast to their table. Ruth toasted some white bread in the toaster the hotel provided for guests. Toast wasn’t a Polish thing. It wasn’t very American either. Americans ate strange things for breakfast.

  They ate pancakes and sausages with maple syrup. Eggs and sausages with maple syrup. They ate doughnuts and muffins for breakfast, too. It was the more puritanical English and Australians who ate toast for breakfast.

  Ruth wondered if she really did look shocking. Probably, she thought.

  The two slices of toast looked so moderate, so temperate. It made Ruth feel too sober, too temperate. She wanted to be less stinting, less measured. She added some jam to her plate.

  Edek shook his head when he saw Ruth’s toast. “I’m going to go back for some yogurt later,” she said to him. Two women were sitting at a table on their right. Ruth had noticed them staring at Edek. They were probably astonished by the volume of food on Edek’s plate, Ruth thought. It was pretty astonishing.

  “This vurst is very good,” Edek said. He was eating large mouthfuls of the sausage, loudly. Ruth tried to ignore the chewing, smacking, and suck-ing noises coming from Edek. But she couldn’t. She still felt queasy. She hoped he would stop. She would never get her toast down, if Edek kept this volume up.

  Ruth felt the women’s gaze shift. They were looking at her now. Ruth nodded to them. She thought that both women were probably Polish. They looked the same age. In their mid-sixties. One of the women was a solidly built woman. Everything about her was solid. Her arms, her neck. Her chest. She wasn’t fat, just solid. She looked healthy. Her skin was as shiny as a polished apple. Her yellow-blond hair was slicked back in a longish crew-cut. She had pink cheeks and blue eyes. Her mouth was red, without lip-T O O M A N Y M E N

  [ 3 3 9 ]

  stick. Her hair was a contemporary yellow. A white, obviously bleached, yellow. A yellow that could be seen on many young men and young women, in New York this year. It was not the decayed yellow of old women’s hair.

  This woman exuded a health and strength and vigor. Ruth felt tired just looking at her.

  The larger woman’s friend was small. Small and dainty. She had a finely defined face with large eyes and high cheekbones. Her build was slender.

  Almost birdlike. Her mid-brown hair was conservatively styled and her makeup subtle and muted. The two women seemed very comfortable together. They ate their breakfasts with an ease that suggested an old familiarity. Ruth looked at them. They looked like an unlikely couple. The large woman smiled at Ruth. Ruth noticed her breasts. They were enormous breasts. Sturdy, substantial breasts. They stood out, like a shelf, on her chest.

  Ruth wondered if the woman’s big breasts had made her popular with men. For years in America big breasts were passé. Small breasts were considered sophisticated and desirable. At least by women. Now there had been a shift. A change. Big breasts had reemerged. Made a comeback. Big breasts, which hadn’t really been popular since Twiggy and the 1960s, were popular again. S
urgical breast implants, which had waned in America during the early 1990s because of concerns about silicone leakage, were on the rise again. The New York Times quoted a plastic surgeon as saying that women wanted their implants bigger now. Saline implants, pouches of salt-water, were now being used by surgeons to enlarge breasts. Large breasts did look full of life, Ruth thought. Ruth folded her arms across her chest, then realized what she had done. She removed her arms. Her breasts weren’t inferior. She didn’t have to hide them.

  She ate her toast. Edek was three quarters of the way through his breakfast. He had stopped to blow his nose several times, during the meal. “I think you’ve definitely got a cold,” Ruth said to him.

  “I did tell you myself I got a cold,” Edek said.

  “Are you sure you haven’t got a sore throat?” she said.

  “I am sure,” Edek said.

  “Maybe we should see a doctor?” Ruth said.

  “Are you crazy?” said Edek.

  “At your age, colds can develop into pneumonia,” Ruth said.

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  L I L Y B R E T T

  “This cold has to get very much worse before it will develop even into a bad cold,” Edek said.

  Ruth suddenly felt frightened. A fear bordering on terror had descended on her with no warning. She felt frightened of losing Edek. She was on the verge of tears.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Dad,” she said. Edek stopped eating.

  “Everybody has to die one day,” he said.

  “But I don’t want you to die just yet,” Ruth said.

  “Do I look like a person what is going to die?” Edek said.

  “Maybe we could ask the hotel for a doctor,” Ruth said. “We’ll just get the doctor to check you out.”

  “I don’t need to go to a doctor,” Edek said. “When I am in Melbourne and I do get a cold, I don’t go to the doctor.”

  “But you’re in Poland, now,” Ruth said.

  “I know that I am in Poland,” said Edek. “But I got the same cold what I get in Melbourne.”

  The two women at the next table had finished their breakfast. They got up to leave. Both women said good morning, in Polish, to Edek and then to Ruth.

  “Good morning,” Ruth replied, in English. The larger woman turned to her. “Good morning,” she said. “My best wishes to you for the day.”

  “Thank you,” Ruth said.

  “I like to speak English very much,” the larger woman said. The smaller woman nodded. “I like to speak English also,” she said.

  Edek stood up and bowed. He wished both women a good day, in Polish.

  “It was a very good breakfast,” Edek said.

  “Yes, it was,” Ruth said.

  “What would you know about the breakfast?” he said. “You did not eat anything.”

  “I saw what they had,” Ruth said.

  “You do not know what is a good breakfast,” Edek said.

  “Let’s go for a walk around Kraków,” she said to Edek.

  “What for?” Edek said.

  “Just to see where we are,” she said.

  T O O M A N Y M E N

  [ 3 4 1 ]

  “You do need always to see where we are,” Edek said. “I do know where we are. We are in Kraków.”

  “You’ve never been to Kraków,” Ruth said.

  “What is there to see?” said Edek. “Streets and buildings. The same as what is everywhere.”

  “The streets and buildings here are definitely not the same as the streets and buildings in Warsaw,” she said. “And nothing like the streets and buildings in Lódz.”

  “It is the same everywhere,” Edek said. “Everywhere is a street and a building.”

  “You are coming to Kazimierz, the old Jewish section of Kraków with me, aren’t you?” Ruth said.

  “I am coming because you do want to go there,” Edek said.

  “Well, I want to walk in Kraków, too,” Ruth said.

  “Okay, okay, everything is hunky-dunky with me,” Edek said, standing up. “Let’s go.” He said, sounding agitated.

  “It’s not hunky-dunky,” Ruth said as they walked out. “It’s hunky-dory.”

  “It is not hunky-dory,” Edek said. “It is hunky-dunky.”

  “You’re confusing hunky-dory with Humpty Dumpty,” Ruth said.

  “What are you talking about?” Edek said. He looked annoyed. He speeded up and walked ahead of Ruth.

  “The town square is straight ahead,” she called out to him.

  Kraków was a beautiful city. The most beautiful Polish city Ruth had seen. It was an ancient city. There were few new buildings, no skyscrapers.

  The tallest structures Ruth could see were the spires of old churches.

  Kraków had always been considered a major center of Polish culture. The city had art galleries and museums and concert halls. It was also a university town. It had the centuries-old Jagiellonian University and eleven other institutions of higher learning. Ruth felt that she could see the learning, the absorption of knowledge, the serious intent, in the air. She thought that all that learning had to give an educated aspect to the city’s atmosphere. There were more students here in Kraków than she had seen anywhere else in Poland. And fewer elderly Poles. The difference in the population was striking.

  This medieval city was almost as beautiful as Paris, Ruth thought. Her

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  L I L Y B R E T T

  spirits lifted. She found herself feeling happy to be in Kraków. It was easier to forget that it was Poles who inhabited Poland in Kraków. There was a life force in the streets of Kraków, which she hadn’t seen in Poland. They were almost at the Rynek Glówny, the Main Market Square. Ruth could see Edek waiting for her at one of the corners of the Rynek Glówny. She caught up to him. “Isn’t this a beautiful square?” she said. Edek looked up. “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Dad,” she said. “The layout was designed in 1257 and it’s still intact today.”

  “So it is old,” he said.

  “Very old,” she said. They were standing in front of a stand selling obwarzanki, a bread roll that resembled a twisted bagel. “These look wonderful,” she said.

  “Have one,” Edek said.

  Ruth bought one of the poppy seed–coated obwarzanki. “Do you want some?” she said to her father.

  “Not for me,” Edek said. “I did just finish breakfast.”

  Ruth bit into the obwarzanki. It was incredibly delicious.

  Next to the obwarzanki stand, a fruit stall sold bananas and pears.

  “I think I’ll buy a pear, too,” she said to Edek.

  They walked around the Rynek Glówny. Every second building seemed to house a café. Inviting cafés. Cafés with people talking and eating.

  Kraków seemed so civilized. “It is still provincial,” a Polish man she knew in New York had said to her about Kraków. Robert Kostrzewa, a young architect who worked on the same floor of the building that Rothwax Correspondence was in, had been disparaging about Kraków and the rest of Poland. “Leave the old city in Kraków and you’re in the same Poland. The same narrow-mindedness, the same sexist attitudes, the same old anti-Semitism. Don’t be fooled by the eloquence of the ancient stone buildings in Kraków,” he had said to her. “They house the same Poles.”

  Ruth liked Robert a lot. And not just because he was anti-Polish. She found they had similar points of view, similar cultural understandings, similar anxieties. Ruth thought that they shared a European sensibility. It occurred to her, just then, that possibly she and Robert Kostrzewa shared a Polish sensibility. She grimaced. She didn’t like that thought.

  He had asked her out, once. But she had said no. She had said it would T O O M A N Y M E N

  [ 3 4 3 ]

  be too close to an office relationship—their offices were only two doors apart. But the truth was that he was too familiar to her. He felt too much like a brother. Too much like one of the family. It was disconcerting to her now to see how familiar so much abo
ut Polish men was. The bluntness, the directness, the complaints, the resigned and depressed air. They were all traits she possessed.

  Ruth looked around her. She had lost Edek again. She kept walking.

  She was bound to find him, she thought. Robert Kostrzewa was the first Pole she had met who had brought up Polish anti-Semitism in her presence. Most Poles, like most of the taxi drivers she and Edek had encountered, denied the existence of anti-Semitism in Poland today, or at any other time. The more intellectual Poles pointed out how many Jews lived in Poland before the war. They offered this as evidence of the Polish people’s generosity toward Jews.

  Ruth found Edek peering into the window of a shop. It was a Wedel’s chocolate shop.

  “Look what I did find,” Edek said to her.

  “Wedel’s chocolate,” she said. Edek looked happy. Ruth felt so grateful that her father could be made happy by chocolate. It was so hard for most people, including herself, to feel happy.

  “Look, they got those big prunes covered in chocolate what I like,”

  Edek said. The chocolate-coated prunes were still in the same blue wrappers Ruth remembered from her childhood.

  “Do you want to buy some?” she said to Edek.

  “Not now while we are walking,” he said. “I will buy a couple when we finish to walk. How much longer you want to walk?”

  “We’ve only just started,” Ruth said.

  Edek looked glum. Ruth could see that he had had enough of what seemed like an aimless exercise to him. “We won’t walk around for too much longer,” she said. “Maybe we’ll check out the enclosed market in the middle of the square, and then we’ll go to Kazimierz.”

  “Okey dokey,” Edek said. He seemed cheered by the thought of going to Kazimierz. Kazimierz was on their agenda. It was not a detour. It was part of the whole tour. Edek liked an agenda, a destination, a challenge.

  Ruth wondered if Edek was ticking off each of the accomplishments, or ordeals, of the trip. They had done Warsaw, done Lódz. Had Edek ticked

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  L I L Y B R E T T

  them off his mental list of things to get through? Was Edek now waiting to have done Kazimierz and Auschwitz? Had all of this been intolerable for him? Ruth hoped not.