The Ice Saints Page 4

  ‘I suppose not.’ She looked away from him, her eyes hot with nervous excitement, and down into her glass of tea. ‘What do you want to do, Tadeusz?’

  ‘Engineering. Engineers can go everywhere. There is here an engineer who Mummy teaches, who was to China and India and last year he was to Ghana. He builds dams.’

  ‘You’d like that?’

  ‘Only for a time. I would not want to live with niggers. I always want to come back to Poland.’

  Tadeusz stood up and washed his plate and glass. He came and stood beside Rose. Wherever he was, his physical presence was turned on to her, like a beam of light. He was hungry-looking. Not perhaps in the immediate physical sense, though he was certainly thin, but because the unfinishedness of adolescence seemed more acute in his case. He was gasping for more of life, as though the atmosphere he breathed lacked some chemical constituent he could barely live any longer without.

  Because of his incompleteness, he was always worried about other people.

  ‘How do you think Mummy is looking?’

  ‘She seems quite well, but I think she works too hard.’

  ‘Everyone works too hard. I think she is unhappy. Did she love Grandfather very much?’

  Rose was surprised at this. ‘Yes, at least, I suppose she loved Daddy. But not specially, if you see what I mean. You see, she was so seldom there. Always at boarding school, or being a nurse. I can’t remember her before that.’

  The boy frowned and sat down again opposite her.

  ‘Then why has she changed so much since she was in England two years ago?’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Do you know, all through the Stalinist time, when they tried to collectivize the farms and there were only potatoes to eat, and we had U.B. – that is Secret Police – watching our house, all that time Mummy was wonderful. She hardly ate. She put a little on her plate and went out to the kitchen to look for something, and when she came back we had nearly finished and she finished too. Papa did not notice, he does not notice things like that, but I notice. You know eight years ago I was going to have a brother but he died because Mummy was working all the time and so weak?’

  ‘Yes, I knew that. Of course I didn’t really know until I came here. It is difficult to imagine these things from outside.’

  ‘And now everyone here is getting happier and she is still unhappy.’

  ‘But why, Tadeusz?’

  ‘I think it was because she went to London. It is a very beautiful place?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I know I have been there, when I was three. To the zoo. But I can’t remember.’

  ‘Would you like to go again?’

  ‘For a visit. But not before my exams.’ He stopped, hot-faced. ‘I am sorry. I talk too much. But it is not like you being my aunt.’

  ‘I should hope not. Do you smoke?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He walked up and down the kitchen, preparing to say something. ‘Since Mummy comes back from England, she does not like being Polish any more. I am very proud of being Polish. Do you know Polish history?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Later on I will tell you. What time is it?’

  ‘Half past nine.’

  ‘I am to take you to the University for Papa to show you round.’

  ‘Good! Is it far away?’

  ‘Only one kilometre. Less than last night.’

  *

  The Rudowskis’ flat was on the ground floor of a block forming part of a recent housing development. Other blocks, all exactly the same, blotted out the distances, and the only way you could tell which was which was by a number roughly whitewashed beside the door. Between the blocks there was raw earth and rubble, with cinderpaths leading to an unpaved road.

  It was a sunny morning and swarms of small children were playing outside. They were still wrapped up in heavy clothes, some so solidly that their arms and legs were forced to the corners, as though they had recently been blown up with bicycle pumps. They had no toys but were apparently able to cover empty space with self-contained and purposeful activity. Farther on, there was one tricycle, whose owner was riding savagely round in wide circles, isolated already in the loneliness that great possessions bring.

  These children looked healthy, far healthier than Tadeusz, whom the bright sky seemed to oppress.

  ‘We were lucky to get a new flat,’ he said. ‘We had to wait many years on a list.’

  Rose had not realized the flat was new. Its plaster was cracked and it had already taken on the drab unpainted look of the city.

  They set off away from the road, between broken-down palings and the backs of single cottages. The black earth was mostly bare but there were clumps of yellow coltsfoot. Away from the blocks of tenements, the sky looked enormous and the view to the horizon was interrupted only by the little hill that gives Biala Gora its name in German and Polish.

  Rose and Tadeusz arrived at the broad Jan Kochanowski Avenue which almost encircles the town. There were market carts, some lorries and one or two taxis. The University buildings stood opposite and over the main portico was written ‘Universytet Biala Gora im. J. Kochanowskiego’.

  On the steps, they were stopped by a most extraordinary female. She was all of six feet tall, with a slight stoop, and dressed in a mustard-coloured knitted suit. She had bright, inquisitive eyes and a nose which gave her the look of a fierce lady-eagle.

  ‘Tadeusz! Tadeusz? And Rose! I must call you Rose, I think, because I am already knowing you so well. How pleased our dear Janet must be, isn’t Mummy pleased, Tadeusz? How lovely you are, my dear, you cannot know how exciting it is for all of us to have you here. You come to us for coffee this morning—’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I know, I know, dear Janet has telephoned to me already. What must be, must be. But it is all right, we are doing it then instead this afternoon. Tadeusz will bring you—’

  Tadeusz looked uncomfortable. They had not yet enough confidence in each other to unite against this stranger.

  ‘No,’ Rose said quickly. ‘Give me the address and I’ll find it.’

  The café turned out to be in the market-square.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Rose said. If she did not go, Janet would be angry with her. It was obvious that promises had been made for her, expectations were to be fulfilled.

  ‘My dear, that is wonderful. Only a few of us. Janet’s true friends. We are all so excited and we hope you will be so happy here. How long do you stay?’

  ‘My visa’s for two months.’

  When she had gone, Rose said: ‘People think I’m a fool, incapable of moving round by myself.’

  ‘I must study with my colleagues this afternoon.’

  ‘I know. I feel guilty about keeping you from work. Who is that woman, anyway?’

  ‘She is Mrs Kazimierska. Her husband is a doctor here. She is Mummy’s greatest friend.’

  ‘You don’t like her much?’

  ‘She talks very much. She does not always say good things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  Tadeusz wriggled uncomfortably. He was really very thin, almost snuffed out by the Marks and Spencer sweater Rose had sent him a few months ago. ‘It is still difficult to be a foreigner here and I do not think Mummy realizes.’

  ‘But what is wrong with this Mrs Mazi-Kazi—?’

  ‘Mrs Kazimierska? Nothing. She is one of the pre-war people. But we’d better go up. Papa will be waiting for you.’

  Chapter Six

  Because Witold Rudowski admired Rose and wanted to interest her, he could only imagine doing this by telling her about his work. In fact there was little else he could talk about. He had always been too busy to go anywhere where opinions were exchanged. His only outside experience had been as a soldier in the war.

  He had first spoken English with the girls in Manchester dance halls. At the back of his mind, unvoiced because there was absolutely nobody he could share it with, was the memory of those girls with the shou
lder-length hair of the war years, the short swinging skirts and the wedge shoes. He had explored their soft bodies through interminable American patriotic films, This is the Army, Two Girls and a Sailor, Up in Arms (he remembered the titles because he was improving his English from them). Often he had held a blonde girl called Rose; for the last time, during a film in which the Andrews sisters, singing gamely, went down on a troopship torpedoed in mid-Pacific. He remembered that because the next day he broke his arm falling off a Bren gun carrier, and in hospital he met Janet. Later, when he was already engaged to Janet, Witek looked up the Manchester Rose again, but by then she was only interested in Americans.

  Witek had no idea of the number of girls in England called Rose. It might be as frequent as ‘Marysia’ here. The little girl he came to know as Janet’s sister was called Rosemary; it was only when she left school that she became Rose.

  Now, fresh from her walk, she came through the door of his office, ushered in by Tadeusz, who once again made one of his sudden disappearances. Rose and Witek were left facing each other. There was always a lack of ease, something ponderous and embarrassing in his manner, but his face shone with happiness.

  ‘Here is where I work. I am afraid it is not up to the standards of an English Speech Training Department. We have to put up with what quarters we can get.’

  Rose did not know what an English Speech Training Department looked like. There were rows of dusty books, mostly in late nineteenth-century bindings: dictionaries of English place names, Anglo-Saxon texts, the works of the English philologists, Skeat, Sweet and Weekley, whose very names screech like chalk on a rough blackboard. A large number of the books were in German.

  ‘Those are from the library of the late Professor Rozwadowski. They are intended to form the nucleus of the English Department’s library.’

  ‘They look rather old.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t think they will be very much use.’

  ‘Does anyone read them?’

  ‘No. But Mrs Rozwadowski comes in and dusts them from time to time. There is no room for them in her flat.’

  ‘Doesn’t anybody else come here?’

  ‘You see we have no English Department in Biala Gora yet. I am teaching students of history who must learn to read books in English. Most of them have no interest but some make good progress. We work together on tape and with gramophone records.’

  Two tape recorders stood on a desk, one of the Russian type, in which the spools are one above the other, and an East German ‘Smaragd’.

  ‘Please sit down, Rose. Would you like some Nescafé?’

  Witek came and sat on the desk opposite Rose. ‘You must forgive me but this is rather a hobby-horse of mine. You see, I know we could have a good English Department here, but there are many persons who do not want it. The professors of Russian and French are afraid English will become too popular. The professor of Comparative Philology thinks that no one should learn English without first having mastered Anglo-Saxon. Then they say I haven’t the correct qualification, I have only a doctorate. But I have taught English all the time when nobody else did. Rose, you see I came back to Poland to do this. I am sure I could make a good department, perhaps the best one in Poland.’

  He was carried away by his enthusiasm; he went over to the kettle and shook it fiercely to make it boil.

  ‘For instance, I am in constant contact with Mr Pilkington of the British Council and Mr Golombek of the American Embassy. I think none of the English departments at the other universities avail themselves of such opportunities.’

  He opened a drawer in his desk and showed Rose a pile of brightly coloured magazines. ‘Mr Golombek has sent these to me last week. Holiday. Harper’s Bazaar. Good Housekeeping. Screen World.’ He picked them up one by one and let them fall. ‘I cannot lend them to students, of course, because they would sell them on the Black Market. Also I do not think the English style is a good one. Mr Pilkington too has sent me several records by a composer named Vaughan Williams. Unfortunately we have not a suitable gramophone for these. But you see, they are ready to help.’

  The kettle boiled and Witek mixed two cups of Nescafé. He stood close to her while she stirred and drank it. When he spoke of his ambitions the expression on his face was lively and attractive, though his breath was very bad.

  ‘The Ministry of Higher Education, too. There my friend Mrs Goldberg is very helpful and has good ideas. The Ministry supports me. It is the University that is against. The Rector wants a man who did philosophy and wrote his doctorial thesis on “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. He lectures at Warsaw but most of the time he is a journalist. But his uncle is professor at Krakow and has many friends here. The students don’t learn anything from him, but these people don’t care about the students. The professors come into the room and deliver a lecture and go out again and do not know the name of any students. They leave the assistants to correct the examinations. So the students graduate without speaking the language. I am sure that this should not happen in Biala Gora. Here they must learn by the best modern methods.’

  ‘What do people do who want to learn English now?’ Rose asked.

  ‘They must have private lessons. The younger generation – or, as we call it here, the new generation, the young people whose parents were not educated, they are anxious to learn. But now they are following other courses because there is no English course. And it is two years since the Ministry gave permission to start.’

  ‘What will happen, do you think?’

  ‘Nothing, while we have this Rector. He has five months more to serve. Then it will be too late for next year.’ Witek stared into Rose’s eyes. ‘Rose, life has been very difficult for Janet and me. But I am sure if I can get this job everything will be all right.’

  Confused by his vehemence, she turned away. ‘Look, you haven’t finished your coffee.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Now let me show you some things we have done.’

  He opened the East German tape recorder and switched it on. It hummed for a little, then spun to a halt, with the tape flapping frantically like a butterfly between two panes of glass.

  ‘I must fix the correct tape, which will take about three minutes. Perhaps you would like to give me your opinion on this.’

  He handed her a book. First Moves in English by Witold Rudowski, Doctor of Warsaw University. State Publishing House.

  Rose opened a page at random. It was a reading text.

  ‘In England and America the workers are working for the gain of capitalists or “bosses”.1 Only in the Peoples’ Democracies do they get full value2 for their work and share in all the benefits3 that it brings.’

  After all he had been saying, it was a little shock; almost as if a dirty postcard had been left in the book by mistake.

  At the end of the exercise there was a list of questions:

  1. What is it only in the Peoples’ Democracies the workers get?

  2. What is a ‘boss’?

  3. What has Dickens told us about the position of the English workers?

  She closed the book and sat rather hopelessly with it on her lap. It was as though she had suddenly discovered Witek to be wearing a toupee.

  ‘Of course there is a lot of things that may seem strange or perhaps silly to you. But I must put them in, in order for my book to be accepted by the State Publishing House. Otherwise they would have the book done by a Miss Makula, a very nice lady who knows rather little English.’

  ‘I see.’

  He turned away, but worry was written all over the back of his threadbare suit. A moment later he faced her again.

  ‘I am sorry, perhaps I give the wrong impression. I know now that it is not a good book. There are several errors in the treatment of the anomalous finites, for instance. But shall we say, it is better than any of the others?’

  He turned to the tape recorder and soon had it working again. ‘Here we have the student who speaks and the teacher who corrects him.’

  A voice said:
‘The trees are greener since Easter.’

  ‘The student,’ Witek said.

  There was more whirring but otherwise silence. Rose was apprehensive, for to her the voice had been unmistakably Witek’s.

  Half a minute’s silence told him something was wrong. He looked worried, then pressed the reverse button, and they started all over again.

  This time the confusion was increased. Both voices were male, and Witek could not remember whether the teacher or the student had spoken first. Finally a female student took over. Now it was clear that Witek’s was the better pronunciation, though by not very much. He was unusual among his compatriots in not having a musical ear.

  Rose listened patiently through a series of exercises, until suddenly a girl’s shrill voice broke in, there was an unidentifiable verse of ‘Clementine’, then a tempest of wild giggles.

  Witek pressed the button hastily. ‘That is nothing. We were having a little fun.’ He quickened the speed and the whole tape ran through until the butterfly sounds started again. ‘You can see, in any case, what we are trying to do.’

  ‘It is very interesting.’

  The girl’s voice on the tape had infected Rose with a violent desire to laugh too, a thing which rarely happened when she was alone.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Mrs Blaut.’

  ‘Blaut.’

  ‘Miss Barcik.’

  ‘Barcikowna.’

  ‘There. And this is Miss Rose Nicholson whom we are all feeling we know so well already.’

  The three women gleamed at Rose across the corner table in a crowded café. Rose did not like the unmixed company of women and seldom sought it if it could be avoided. She had come here for Janet’s sake, as part of the balancing of favours to which the Rudowskis seemed to have committed her.

  ‘Coffee? And cakes?’ Mrs Kazimierska asked. She waved for an elderly waiter who shuffled towards them.

  ‘How do you like Poland?’ Miss Barcik leaned forward with a helpful smile and a sudden excess of blinking. The negotiation of unfair and leading questions was not a thing Rose was good at. She was about to plunge in, when Mrs Kazimierska came to her aid.