The Ice Saints Page 13

  Though the writer’s wife was not as pretty as she had appeared to be at the hotel, her smart clothes and brightened skin and eyes distinguished her from the other guests. This glitter of distinction, however, was a surface result of Western productivity, for she turned out to be the saddest and least convinced of any of them. She had the cold whining voice sometimes found in conjunction with the East European intonation of English, and the moment she found herself with a foreigner she began to chant forth her litany of complaints. England came late on her list, when the little glasses had been refilled.

  ‘You must forgive me but I did not like your country.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘I was so unhappy there that I had to say to my husband, take me away or I shall probably be ill.’ She had the exile’s voice of talking endlessly about happiness, which she referred to as though it was her right, and everything had happened in conspiracy to keep her from it; they had not been received in English society, her husband had quarrelled with his fellow exiles over some political magazine or other. They had been obliged to work – she offered this bitterly to Rose, as something Rose herself would not dream of. But it had been impossible for her husband, who was a Doctor of Law, to find work and he disapproved of the job she was taking.

  ‘In a bakery, imagine, with all sorts of low people. I had enough of England, I can tell you. I never see such ugly people, with such funny clothes like old peasant women. Whatever you can say, Krakow is better than Ealing.’

  ‘Ealing?’

  ‘We lived in Ealing, of course.’ The woman stared out on to wild spaces of mania. They were left alone. Her troubles were too subjective to command any sympathy and the other guests avoided her. For many of them, she had been given the opportunity of freedom and failed and she was therefore uninteresting and even a little repulsive.

  ‘Then we went to America. America is terrible. I was shocked, so shocked. We have lived there for twelve years but we do not like the people at all. And now my husband earns some money here with his books, so we are back here again.’

  ‘And here?’

  The woman lowered her voice. ‘It is terrible, I cried my eyes out. But my husband wishes to stay.’

  The long discussion on the other side of the room had been vehement but good natured. Everyone kept a respectful distance from the fierce conclusions such arguments seemed to hunt out: they were recognized and let go, and the participants returned to more tolerable themes. At length Adam was able to join Rose. He lowered himself heavily on to the divan beside her, a little glorified by drink and flushed with the excitement of the hunt.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘You know what it was all about. Miss Rose – may I please call you Rose? You know now, don’t you?’ Tears came into his eyes. ‘You can tell them about what has happened to us, the terrible things that have been done to us.’

  She watched him as though about to pick lint off his coat, and was fascinated again at the curious combination of melancholy and extreme high spirits.

  *

  While they were walking home, Halina said: ‘She is exactly like the Ancient Mariner. She must tell her story to everybody that she meets. It is the tragedy about our people who are scattered. We feel that it is too late now, and we can have no more contact with them, which is very sad because they are our own people.’

  ‘Perhaps those two will stay here. She told me her husband wanted to.’

  ‘They will go, I think. They both have American passports still, you see, and they can travel whenever they like. That is the worst thing for us – we have to stay here. We would like to travel but it is not possible. We may only travel when the Government says so. If they would allow us that, it would still be bad, but not so bad. How long are you in Krakow?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘My husband and I would like you to come to our flat—’

  ‘They – the writer and his wife invited me to go to the mountains, you see.’

  The big iron gate of the Wahorska town house loomed up in front of them. Rain had fallen and the trees in the ruined garden were dripping heavily. Beyond, everything was silent, the city plunged early into medieval sleep. The old lady had lent Rose a key to the inner door, and now they went up the back stairs, with the Museum of the Workers’ Party silent and shuttered below them.

  The old lady had been working on a translation. Her eyes were dark rimmed and her skin white, almost transparent- looking.

  ‘They are very small people, from near Lwow, I think,’ she said, when she was told about the Malczareks.

  ‘They invited me to go with them in their car, to the mountains.’

  ‘My dear, you have escaped well. They probably wish to make use of you in some way or other. She is a very tedious woman and I believe partly Jewish.’

  Because the niece did not speak French, the conversation was triangular and awkward. Now Rose had to appeal to her for help.

  ‘Of course you must go. You must see as much as you can of our country.’

  A long interchange ensued between Mrs Wahorska and Halina. The news that the English girl really wanted to go with the Malczareks, small people as they were, came as a personal affront; the old lady felt she was being abandoned, her hospitality rejected. This feeling she must have acquired and enjoyed for its own sake, since she showed no violent affection for her guest. Rose wondered whether Halina was embroidering the situation with any other reasons. She listened hard for Adam’s name or some word that might mean he was being brought into the conversation. But her effort was unrewarded.

  The women turned to her. Their faces were businesslike and unsmiling.

  ‘It is settled then. When do they leave?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  At this the old lady appeared to be offended further. Rose was sorry for her, not liking her much but as usual disarmed by the perpetual defeat. Perhaps that miasma hung thicker over Krakow than either Warsaw or Biala Gora. Escape in a fast car into the emptiness of woods and fields would be the only way to restore anyone’s spirits.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Flying back to Biala Gora, Rose stopped for only two hours and spent them walking up and down in Warsaw Airport, happy with her thoughts and only mildly disconsolate at having finished her last detective story. Again the aeroplane wheeled up out of the drab city, the Palace of Culture spun round half-obscured by flocculent cloud, but now the feelings she had towards all of this were changed. Everything had meaning, each sight was a word in a great poetical tragedy and once you had learned this you could not cease from gazing with devouring eyes.

  Tadeusz was waiting for her, in exactly the same place that he had waited on her first evening in Poland, which was now so long ago. The sight of him once more, all that youth and intensity, was almost insupportable, and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘You have a good trip?’

  ‘I’ve had a wonderful time. Everybody has been wonderful.’

  Of course there was nothing at all she could tell him and instead she turned on him a face of such radiance that he shivered, excited already. He wondered, too, why she was crying.

  ‘I love your country, you know, Tadeusz. I really do.’

  If Mark Tatham had told her that at that moment she was echoing the drunken Miss Handisyde, who had been at lunch on the first day, she would have denied it with violence. She was not drunk but in love. The world spun round, then settled.

  ‘You saw Wawel? And Zakopane?’

  ‘Everything.’ Already Tadeusz had picked up her suitcases. ‘No. This time we are taking a taxi. I simply insist.’

  ‘All right. I catch one.’

  He ran off. Rose was alone. It was growing dark and for a moment the meaning fled out of everything. The street and buildings assumed a matt, dead look, like an old photograph.

  When he returned in the taxi, Rose at last remembered to ask: ‘How are Mummy and Papa?’

  ‘All right.’ He frowned. ‘I will tell you.’


  As the taxi drove off, he said quickly, ‘I think they are worried because two men were coming to our house asking about the Englishman.’

  ‘What Englishman?’

  ‘The one you know.’

  ‘You mean Der—’

  He clapped a hand on her mouth, nodding his head towards the taxi driver’s shoulders.

  ‘Who came?’

  ‘You know who I mean.’

  The walls and bare trees fled back. By now Rose and Tadeusz had become excited and conspiratorial, in an easy and unavoidable way. He smirked for a moment and then said in a high voice: ‘I think taxi drivers are very nice people.’

  No tremor to indicate understanding came from the shoulders in front.

  ‘They sometimes do understand, you know. It is because they were in England in the war.’

  Silence, while they thought about that distant, empty time, and what it had done to their lives.

  ‘Go on about these men.’

  ‘It was the Police. At least not the Police – you know who.’ He made two letters with his fingers.

  ‘But why?’ She was startled and drawn-looking.

  ‘Papa thinks he was selling things on the Black Market. Do you think so?’

  ‘Perhaps. He isn’t very intelligent.’

  ‘Mummy said he was an oik.’

  Rose turned away. ‘Oh God. Really!’

  A little later the taxi driver suddenly spoke. She jumped with fright and Tadeusz grinned; they had already voted the driver incapable of speech and this was as miraculous as if part of the engine had given tongue. But when it turned out to be Polish, her excitement dwindled down to mere apprehension. Tadeusz, however, carried on an intent conversation which lasted until they had drawn up outside the block of flats.

  ‘I told him you were English. He thought you might be German. He has an uncle in Chicago. So now I knew he did not understand anything we were talking about.’

  ‘Just what were we talking about? Who was it who came?’

  ‘The U.B. The Secret Police.’

  ‘About Derek Loasby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Overhead a flock of pigeons was wheeling round in the last sunlight that could seep through the industrial haze. In Krakow the past continued into the present, but living here in Biala Gora was like recolonizing a dead planet, fearfully camping out in an unfinished world. She followed Tadeusz up the cinderpath.

  It was all very like her first evening in Poland except that Janet and Witek both greeted her. They trusted her now.

  Rose, although now quite untrustworthy, was no longer a wincing stranger. She found them happier than she had feared. Of course it is when you concentrate on people that their difficulties appear insoluble. Now she could only give them a part of her attention. Work-worn, small, greyish and smiling, the Rudowskis appeared to belong together.

  They were disunited, however, over the problem of Derek Loasby.

  ‘Elzbieta Barcik gives him Polish lessons, and he told her they wanted to see him. She thought it was because of Black Marketing. He goes round with all sorts of students and perhaps they’ve got him into trouble.’

  ‘But they like him. He’s lots of friends.’

  ‘The students get all sorts of pressures on them. Ask Witek.’

  Witek listened in silence, to indicate that the problem was purely an English one. ‘They are young and some of them have not good backgrounds. I am surprised that the Englishman should do this. We are told always that they have high social morality.’

  ‘They do,’ Janet said. ‘In England.’

  Rose was more doubtful. ‘He’s very unsure of himself and he might easily do something silly, if the others asked him to.’

  ‘Please, silly?’

  ‘Something about money.’

  ‘Speculation is a grave social problem.’

  The sisters tried to ignore him.

  ‘What did They come here for?’

  ‘Who told you?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Tadeusz, of course.’

  Witek shifted about and then said: ‘I am sorry that Tadeusz has told you of this. There are still some aspects which a foreigner may find that it is difficult—’

  ‘Oh, Witek. Please! I am grown up.’

  This was the first time she had lost patience with him and her voice sounded exactly like Janet’s. The small movements of his body checked and became total stillness. The hurt sliced through his eyes, leaving them wounded and terrible, and then he got up very slowly and walked out of the room.

  ‘I – I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Janet said fumbling for a cigarette.

  ‘How are things?’

  ‘We have our ups and downs, but things are going better on the whole. Luckily he wasn’t here when they came round. They wanted to know how we met Loasby. I said he had only been here twice. Hala brought him when he first arrived. Then you. You know I didn’t like him.’

  ‘Yes. You told me.’

  ‘It was a shock when they came. Like going back to Stalin’s time. You see, nowadays we can live from day to day without knowing about all this.’ The match flame quivered in Janet’s hand. She shook it out. ‘I was terribly worried about the passport.’

  ‘Janet, what do you really want to do?’

  ‘I want to get Tadeusz away from all this. For ever.’

  ‘But you?’

  ‘I don’t matter, my life’s finished.’ She blew out smoke and watched Rose. ‘Tadeusz must go.’

  Rose’s face was screwed up with anxiety. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong. I’ve travelled about now and I’ve come to my own conclusions. However bad it may seem, and is, there are so many things to be done here and people to fight for them. A man has to decide this.’

  ‘You can’t ask Witek to decide—’

  ‘I meant Tadeusz—’ Before she could continue, the telephone started ringing.

  ‘He wants to speak to you. Be careful what you say.’

  ‘Who?’ Rose rushed and grabbed the receiver. But it was only Derek Loasby.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Because of the rain, every table in the café was filled. Derek stood outside and was dripped on, and had the usual feeling that rain fell, not alike on the just and unjust, but only on the incompetent. After five minutes the rain was just another aspect of his preoccupation, his sense of the extremeness of life, which kept him bouncing from foot to foot and whistling between his teeth. He was doing exactly this when Rose found him.

  ‘Derek. Hullo.’

  He rushed at her as though he had loved her for years, brought himself up short, slipped and almost fell on his thick rubber soles, still holding her hand. She smiled, blinking the rain away.

  ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit,’ Rose said, ‘And then you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘Then you know?’

  She looked past him into the crowded café. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any room.’

  He muttered something and steered her out through the rain and into another doorway.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Any port in a storm.’ He sounded desperate.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  The place they had now entered had the willed squalor of Slav drink shops. They stopped, feeling already half- smothered by the odours of sour beer and rank bodies. The rain, however, still fell in a solid cascade behind them. Everyone was staring at them and so they sat down, both nervous, at a small table in the middle of the room. At first they did not look at each other; their eyes wandered but soon returned. This squalor seemed exhibitionistic, a denial of anything but the bed-rock upon which life scrabbled to survive.

  Even before a youth had put two glass-stoppered bottles and two smeared tumblers before them the effect of all this went a little to their heads; they were young and it gave them so strong a feeling of pioneering, of being where nobody had been before. She smiled at him quite gaily and he was ready to forget everything they were here for.

  ‘Well
?’

  After this bleak word, he was careful. ‘What have they been saying about me?’

  ‘It’s that Miss Thing – the one who blinks and teaches you Polish – she said something to Janet. And Janet—’

  He gave a patient sigh which suggested that he was more important than all this. ‘I haven’t told her anything.’

  Rose was beginning again, when he drank some beer and spluttered. He really was in a violently nervous state, like somebody who has taken Benzedrine.

  ‘I’m sorry about dragging you into this. But there wasn’t anybody else to tell. I heard you were away so I waited till you came back.’

  Rose realized from this that, rather humbly, he respected her judgement. ‘Don’t worry about me. Anyway, I—’

  ‘I don’t feel I can trust anybody.’

  ‘Derek, what is this all about?’

  ‘They’ve asked me to stay on, you see.’ His fingers drummed up and down on the table. His smile was triumphant, and crafty.

  ‘Is it something about your scholarship?’

  ‘No, no.’ He shook his head until his cheeks clicked. ‘To come over, to work here – like those Missing Diplomats and people. They offered me a job. Not much money, but their standards are different. Girls, too.’

  ‘What girls?’

  ‘They said there were a lot of nice girls here. I said I knew.’

  They were off on the wrong subject again. They guessed that both had felt the sexual touch of the place but the evidence was inadmissible to this conversation.

  She tapped at her cigarette thoughtfully. ‘Janet and Witek thought the trouble was that you were selling things.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘You mean you were?’

  ‘Of course. I told you, you remember. Everyone does here, they keep asking you. Then I found I was being watched.’ His face warmed through like an electric fire. ‘This bit makes me look rather foolish. You remember that girl Wanda, I think you met her? Well, I left her in my room while I went to get cigarettes and half-way down the stairs I found I’d forgotten my money so I went back and when I opened the door I saw she was going through my letters.’