Get Lenin (3 page)

The room was dimly lit. Somewhere in a room above a woman was keening. Occasional sounds rang out, followed by cries. Christian had somehow shrunk in stature. An ill-fitting jacket seemed to flap about him on a hidden breeze. With a sigh he slumped into the chair behind a large desk and from a drawer he produced a cheque book. He scratched across it with a pen to the slow tick of the grandfather clock in the gloom. ‘Thank you for bringing him safely to the border, Eva.’ He handed her the cheque. It was twice the value of her engagement ring.

‘
Thank you, Mr. Zamoyski,’ she stammered with tears pinching the corners of her eyelids, ‘this is too much.’

‘
The family are waiting for you in the kitchen,’ Christian whispered as he rose unsteadily. Sighing deeply, he seemed to lose some more of his body mass as he walked toward the door. He guided her through the hall, past the staircase where she and Jonas had chased each other as children, past the cellar door where they had enjoyed their first kiss, and into the kitchen.

Zoya sat motionless at the table. Behind her, standing in rigid attention, was the family. Her voice broke several times and rose in register as she spoke to Eva. ‘You are never to call, never to visit the grave, never to contact us for any reason again. Never, ever again.’ Jonas’ brothers and sisters all stood stone-faced and unresponsive to Eva’s pleas.

‘
Vidma!’ hissed Zoya, crossing herself three times, her rosary beads rattling in her thin white fist, her ferocity silencing Eva.

Eva left the house, her world spinning. These people, who had welcomed her, now sent her away vilified. She was an outcast from the family that had adopted her since she was thirteen.
Vidma
, a witch - that wounded her deeply.

She returned to her grandparents' house on the outskirts of the city. Henk stood at the doorway and held her close as she wept. This was now the third tragedy within a year: Henk and Aga losing a son, then a daughter-in-law, and now Jonas, the bright lad who dreamed of being an actor. It was almost too much for the three of them to bear.

Something became numb, dead and lifeless inside Eva. All she could see was a creeping darkness. It started at the edges of her vision, peripheral shadows drawing in closer like curtains. She thought at first it was a trick of the light as she brushed her hair first thing in the morning. The mirror on her dresser seemed to have developed a smoky frame.

Her weight dropped and Grandmother Aga fretted. ‘Eat, child, eat,’ she’d whisper into her ear as she placed warm soup and bread on the table, tutting quietly later as she’d take back the untouched food while maintaining a silent perseverance. Any morsel consumed was viewed as a victory.

Before his retirement Henk had lectured English and Classic Philosophy at the Jan Matejko Academy in Krakow. He managed to secure a librarian’s assistant position for Eva there.

Amid the Trappist-quiet halls, Eva began her gradual recuperation. She hid amid shapeless clothes and a plain brown head scarf. She never made eye contact. She sought sanctuary in the library’s books. Drawn to languages, she immersed herself in books alone in her bedroom at night. Henk and Aga began to help her, his natural ear for language beginning to build a bridge to his broken granddaughter. Aga’s German, stilted and guttural, gave Eva a feel for a language. She could sometimes guess ahead of her grandmother what the next sentence was going to be.

For the first time in her life she entered her grandfather’s library, to her simply a vast oaken door secured by a Gothic black lock while she was growing up. Beyond the door stood high bookcases, beautifully fashioned in mahogany, containing wall-to-wall leather-bound volumes accessed with the help of a sliding ladder.

Henk touched her shoulder, the reassurance and strength flowing from his digits into her soul. ‘Stay in here as long as you want, Eva.’ His voice was gentle and mellow, his Polish still carrying a Dutch cadence. It had made her laugh as a child. She loved its sound; it reminded her somehow of treacle.

She whiled away the autumn and winter months there. Henk procured a large well-worn leather armchair for her to coil up in. She read by the firelight. Aga would leave food and tea for her, stepping in quietly and touching Eva’s arm gently, as silent as a ghost.

Henk moved in the piano, a family heirloom, upright and ornately inlaid with delicate flowers, and Eva discovered old studies she’d learned as a child. All the manuscripts of sheet music Eva uncovered were dusted down for her. Sitting at the stool, she set the old wooden metronome and began to learn how to play again. She would lose herself for hours in the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, beginning with the Anna Magdalena notebook.

Slowly as a flower buds, Eva’s soul began to heal.

* * *

The following spring semester brought Theo Kassinski. He was tall and lean. Dark curls flowed around his handsome features and he had an innate assurance of his place in the world. He was an unkempt, handsome artist with a smile for her every time he came up to borrow a book. He was looking for a model to draw and he guessed correctly that under her shapeless clothes Eva was a goddess. He asked her to model for him, assuring her he wasn’t interested in her other than her being his contract model. At the desk he had scratched out a quick pencil sketch of her to prove that he could draw. She merely glanced at the sketch - it didn’t move her in any particular way - and agreed with the briefest of nods. On the back of the page he wrote out the address of his studio and handed it to her.

That Saturday she went to the address. The studio, a reconditioned garret above a warehouse, contained a cold water sink, a brass bed and basic kitchenette. Trestle tables lined the far wall with the paraphernalia of his vocation. The room had a co-ordinated chaos about it, where food, drink and clothing lay piled amid oils, canvas, brushes, reams of paper and sheets of hardboard. A screen covered an ornate ancient commode, though rarely as their relationship developed did they avail themselves of it, preferring to take a break at the small caf
é
across the road, Theo more often than not dappled from head to toe in paint.

She disrobed in the spring sunshine in his studio, moving in poses as Theo sketched her quickly. Both subject and artist took a dispassionate view of each other, and yet Eva found herself every weekend in the studio. They were alone for hours on end, the scratching of pencil, charcoals and pastels marked by the passage of the sun across the wooden floor, the easel a barrier between them.

She allowed her mind to close. Every breath was measured, timed - sometimes short, other times for as long as her lungs would allow. She started to push the limits of her body, twisting herself into complex poses, this breathing exercise making her focus her concentration on the pose relishing, the challenge it presented. A subtle chemistry developed between them where she could almost guess what he was going to ask next. At the end of each session, he would proudly display his renderings as he turned the easel around to her.

For Theo, this arrangement was perfect. Eva never uttered a word, nor sighed, nor complained about having to stand still. He was a rich, bored scion of a local clothing factory owner, though he showed real potential according to some of the gallery owners he had shown his work to. He was Jewish, and always at odds with his father for not attending synagogue and eschewing his heritage and studies. They didn’t square with his chosen nihilistic existence. He would tell her this from behind the easel, usually when he was struggling with his materials. It eased the tension within him. Other than his clashes with his father, she learned he was an only child like her and devoted to his mother.

The months drifted slowly and she watched herself appear more life-like as Theo developed and honed his skills on paper and canvas. Crude charcoal outlines disappeared; shadowing and light became more subtle until he produced a piece unlike anything else he had done.

He had captured her perfectly; Eva was lying naked on the floor, her legs together twisting away from her torso, one arm draped across her breasts, the other arm behind her, spilling lush auburn tresses. It was if she was caught in mid-leap across the sugar paper. He had fashioned a smile on her features, telling her that when she did so, which was rarely, she was a radiant. He opened a bottle of wine and, for the first time in a year, she smiled briefly and Theo was duly mesmerised.

On an impulse, she accompanied him to his bed at the rear of the studio as he took her hand, but the dark edges still hung about her peripheral vision despite his gentle attentive efforts.

‘
You know, Eva,’ he said, an ashtray resting on his chest as they shared a cigarette in the tiny metal bed, ‘you should try for the movies. They have a film unit in the university. They’re always looking for actors and actresses.’

She exhaled with one eyebrow raised and a sceptical moue. Smiling, he swept his hand around the room. Eva hadn’t looked around it much. Across every wall pictures of her were pinned up - nude, clothed, sitting, lying, posing, and head and shoulder portrait studies. In every one of them her eyes had a haunted quality, the last and most beautiful image of her at her most wistful.

He stubbed out his cigarette and rose to dress,

‘
With your grace, beauty and theatrical training, Eva, it’d be academic you'd have no problems being accepted. I know some of the film students; I could introduce you.’

Chapter 3

That summer she travelled to Paris with Theo and Dariusz Spzilman, a film student that he shared digs with. 1930s Paris was a Mecca for Theo, the epitome of art and beauty, for Dariusz, the centre of film.

Theo’s French was rudimentary and Dariusz’s non-existent. They needed a translator and Eva agreed to accompany them. They took a two-bed cold water apartment in La Pigalle, Eva with a room to herself, the men sharing a room with two single beds. Her room was more of a corner garret, cramped and warm, the bed a recovered hospital cot, robust and basic. The wardrobe contained a few new dresses and her prized blue raincoat Henk and Aga had bought for her before her departure. All three would swim in the nearby public pool every day to perform their ablutions. Theo, armed with his notebooks and charcoals, managed to persuade most of the men to allow him to sketch them while drying themselves, some taking the sketch in exchange for a cigarette, but never for cash, at his insistence.

One late summer afternoon, Theo and Dariusz posed theatrically at the top of the Eiffel Tower as they pointed out landmarks over the shimmering roofs of Paris, the wind catching their hats. Eva, snatching Dariusz’s precious camera, squeezed off a shot of the men. It developed perfectly and she pinned it to the cracked and faded mirror on her battered dresser in her room. The other pictures, now creased and faded, were of Henk and Aga, and of her deceased parents, Maria and Pytoir, with Eva as a grim-faced toddler. Below them was a picture of a smiling Jonas. Every morning when applying her make-up, she would touch the photograph tenderly and reminisce.

Eva’s idea of heaven was getting lost in the numerous bookstores around the city, wrapped in her trusty blue raincoat, when the men were off drinking. Theo, walking in the footsteps of his hero Toulouse Lautrec, would frequent the bordellos, restaurants and his drinking haunts that peppered the city.

By night they would gather at the Caf
é
Procope on Rue Buci with their French counterparts, the hours spent discussing cinema, philosophy and politics over simple food and carafes of wine. Eva had to grasp the language quickly as the debates got heated and found she could, becoming more often than not the referee.

Theo, perhaps caught up in the zeitgeist, announced he was a Communist, content with his bohemian lot and, as a reflection, his art became more de-structured and free-flowing. He stopped using colour, developing a tonal two and three tone style. Refusing to purchase picture frames, he set up a scrap wood stall along the Pont Notre-Dame with the sketches pinned and fluttering in the breeze.

He squandered his allowance from his father in reckless abandon. Purchasing a bicycle, he travelled around the city, his long thin legs pumping the pedals in determination, his free arm clutching his materials. For her birthday he bought Eva a camera, a simple box brownie, and she thrived on travelling around the city alone by foot, bus and metro, capturing it. Dariusz had built a dark room in the apartment and he allowed her time to learn how to develop pictures in between his projects. Theo had paid for all of the wood from his father's allowance, helping Dariusz to haul the lumber up the flights of rickety stairs and hammering the whole thing together. The apartment’s window remained open most of the time after that owing to the smell of the processing chemicals.

Eva's wanderings gave her a new fulfilment, making her aware of not only her own beauty but the beauty of the city and its people. She would buy all her of dresses from the flea markets and slowly she began to eat again, filling out and regaining her superb figure. The summer nights were balmy and the bright lights of the city somehow soothing. She truly loved Paris, loved being anonymous amid its streets. Theo would smile appreciatively, charcoal poised over paper as she undressed when Dariusz was out of the apartment haunting a cinema somewhere.