Spring Will Be Ours (60 page)

They found a wooden bench and sat listening, as the sunlight grew richer and more golden, and the shadows lengthened. Every now and then, in the breeze, a few yellowing leaves fell, spinning gently, to the ground.

Wiktoria had closed her eyes. Her hands rested on the handle of her walking stick, held before her; after a while, it began to sway a little, and they realized she was asleep. They left her sitting there, and walked slowly round the lake.

‘What were you dreaming about?' Elizabeth asked.

Jerzy bit his lip. ‘I can't remember it properly, but … I suppose it was my life, and everything I am afraid of. Not having courage. Not … living up to the kind of people my father was, my uncle was. Or as I think they must have been. Jerzy was following me – when I turned and saw him, his face was my face …'

The last notes of a nocturne hung on the air. Across the lake Wiktoria had woken, and was waving.

‘Do listen to this,' said Jerzy. They were sitting in an open-air café in the Centrum, in a side street off Jerozolimskie Avenue; they had spent the morning in the State Museum of Art, and browsing in bookshops. Elizabeth was turning the pages of a book of photographs of Warsaw as it was when the Russians entered, in 1945, showing how it had been reconstructed. Jerzy was reading the text of a large glossy paperback full of colour photographs, called
Poland Today.

‘“Whoever does not understand the nineteenth century will not understand today's Poland,”‘ he read aloud. ‘” The constant insurrections then have created the cult of armed heroics and, at the same time, a dislike for slow, patient work whose effects will be visible after many years. The foreign authority caused a certain distrust which has now disappeared in the basic issues but is still there in matters of secondary importance.”' He raised an eyebrow. ‘What do they want us to understand by that, I wonder?' He read on: ‘“The years of captivity have invested Polish patriotism with suffering and sacrifice; someone has maliciously but not without reason remarked that ‘it is easier for Poles to die for their country than to live for it'.”'

He grimaced. ‘This isn't a tourist book, it's a lecture to the Poles, it's published in Polish as well. Listen: “Who knows but perhaps this excessive looking back has an adverse effect on our prospects, perhaps it would be better not to constantly hark back to war memories … Poland was left alone in the face of Hitler's blackmail because her sympathies lay where no help was forthcoming. It was only the change in the political system and the acceptance of socialist orientation that bound us to the Soviet Union and other countries of Eastern Europe with the same political and social system. Now Poland is safe.”'

He flicked back to the introduction. ‘“Compared with Poland's modern history the present exceptionally long period of peace has created a mood of sunny and stable optimism, unknown to previous generations.”' He banged the book down on the metal table. ‘Riots in Poznań, 1956. Riots in Gdańsk and Gdynia, 1970, with shipyard workers shot by the police. There were food riots and strikes here in Warsaw only four years ago, and workers were shot in Radom, then.'

‘Someone is watching us,' said Elizabeth.

Jerzy stopped. ‘What?'

‘Over there, two tables away. No, don't turn round, wait. He's reading a newspaper.'

‘And he's wearing a raincoat with a turned-up collar and a hat pulled down over his eyes.'

Elizabeth shrugged. ‘All right, don't believe me. But he's been listening to you.'

Cautiously Jerzy turned. A waitress went past him, carrying a metal tray; he waited until she had gone. ‘The one in the grey suit?'

‘Yes.'

Jerzy shook his head. ‘I don't think … I really don't think he is.'

‘I do. Can we go?'

‘No. Let's outsit him.'

After the incident with the currency exchange on their first day, Elizabeth did not like to argue. She sat, nervous, sipping a fizzy and synthetic orange juice. The man turned the pages of the newspaper; they had bought a newspaper this morning, and read column after column of stories from factories and workplaces where production was increasing; photographs of local party officials sprinkled the pages.

‘He's gone,' said Jerzy.

She turned to look at him, and saw the empty table beyond. ‘Where did he go?'

‘He's just walking away down the street – look.' She followed his eyes, and saw the man in the grey suit, among many other men in grey suits, walking away until he came to the intersection with the avenue, and disappeared round the corner.

‘I'm sure he was watching us,' she said.

‘Well – even if he was. I think we're all right. What would you like to do now?'

Elizabeth stretched. ‘Let's have a lazy afternoon.'

‘What about going to Łazienki Park? The palace is closed, but the gardens are open – we could wander.'

They walked back into Jerozolimskie, and caught a tram down the last few blocks of Nowy Swiat, and through Three Crosses Square. ‘Where Mama was stationed,' Jerzy said. ‘This is where she looked through her binoculars, and saw the tank, moving towards them up Ujazdowskie Avenue. Has she told you that story?'

Elizabeth nodded. ‘Yes, I think so.' She looked out of the window as they swung down the avenue, bordered with tall, beautiful trees, just turning yellow and gold. Beneath them, a few people walked along broad paths. The tram moved past parks and gardens. Jerzy glanced down at the map.

‘Here we are – we can get off and walk through.'

The park was large, with a network of paths beneath the trees and a long, meandering lake, fed by the Vistula. They stood beneath Chopin's monument; a great stone cloak billowed round his head. ‘They give Sunday concerts here, too, it says in the guidebook,' said Jerzy. Swans glided slowly over the lake; it was hot, now, the yellow leaves very still. Squirrels scampered across the paths, and from the distance they could hear peacocks. When they reached the eighteenth-century palace they found the terrace before it full of tourists; families threw bread and ice cream cones to fat carp, breaking the surface of the lake. Jerzy and Elizabeth watched for a while, then walked on, passing an open-air theatre with broken columns.

‘Shall we stop and rest?' Elizabeth asked.

They lay on the grass beneath the trees; after a while, Elizabeth, her head on Jerzy's shoulder, heard him breathing deeply. She raised her head, saw he was asleep, and lay, looking up at the branches stretched out above them.

Jerzy seemed calmer since his nightmare – if you discounted his outburst in the café this morning, and she did discount it: better to shout about hypocrisy than brood over – over what, exactly?

‘I told you I wasn't very good with people
…'

Nothing could have prepared her for the deep sense of isolation Jerzy felt, and she still didn't know how much of it sprang from the way he had absorbed the proud Polish sense of loss and exile within the world, and how much came simply from the family and his place in it. She closed her eyes. The early flash of intuition, illumination, which had enabled her to paint the picture of the figure at the door, beyond the sleeping children, seemed extraordinary: even now, she was only just beginning to understand.

Did she want to spend a lifetime trying to understand?

‘Proszę, Państwa
…'

Elizabeth opened her eyes to see a woman standing over them, telling them something. She nudged Jerzy awake.

‘What?' He sat up, yawning, saw the woman, and listened. Then he pulled Elizabeth to her feet.
‘Dziękuję, Pani
…' He led Elizabeth away, half laughing, half irritated.

‘What was all that about?'

‘If you lie on the grass you're fined three hundred złotys.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Seriously.'

They had tea in a café in the park, then walked through the maze of paths towards the embankment. They stood, watching the sun sink beneath the broad calm waters of the Vistula, and then they went back to Wiktoria's, to pack. Tomorrow they were leaving Warsaw, and driving south.

‘Would you like liver, liver or liver?' Jerzy asked. He put down the typewritten menu on the plastic tablecloth, and they looked at each other.

‘Liver …' said Elizabeth. ‘Any vegetables?'

‘It doesn't say so.'

‘Oh well, you'd better order it.'

Jerzy got up and walked across the campsite dining room to the counter at the far end; Elizabeth watched him, yawning. It was eight o'clock, and they'd been driving for most of the day, through an endlessly repeated scene of families harvesting with scythes and horse-drawn haycarts under a burning sky; all the way along, plaster shrines stood on corners and grassy verges adorned with flowers and picture postcards of the Pope. Every now and then, outside small towns or villages, they passed a drunk, sprawled in the grass, oblivious to the traffic. Now, they had pitched their tent on the bank of the river Pilica; from a couple of tents away a transistor radio blared, and there was much laughter and shouting. Jerzy listened. ‘They're Russians,' he said after a while. There was another burst of laughter.

Most people seemed either to have brought their own food or to have eaten already – the vast dining room was nearly empty. Bright blue shiny curtains separated it from the kitchen; the walls were painted in orange, much scuffed and covered in fingermarks; unhemmed net curtains hung at the windows, which needed cleaning. Jerzy came back from the counter.

‘There's soup as well, apparently, so I've ordered some.'

After a while, a waitress appeared from the kitchen, and put two dishes before them. From two battered, steaming tin mugs came a rich, meaty smell; they peered into them.

‘Liver soup!'

The waitress upturned the mugs and departed. They tasted, warily. It was delicious, very rich, very substantial. A slice of stale white bread accompanied each mug.

‘Well,' said Elizabeth, when they had finished, ‘I feel much better now. I thought there was a meat shortage.'

‘But not of liver, clearly.'

They went out, past log tables and benches set on scuffed earth beneath pine trees, past their first sight of Polish litter, and past the camp disco, now in full swing. They stopped to go to the lavatories. In the women's, which stank, an old woman sat on a metal chair with a few sheets of paper draped over the back. She nodded to Elizabeth, and gestured to the paper. Elizabeth took a sheet, and gave her five złotys. The paper was brown and rough; she thought perhaps the shortage was something peculiar to the campsite, but found it later in public lavatories in many places, restaurants and museums.

Afterwards, she and Jerzy walked down past their tent, along the river bank. Flocks of snow-white geese were settling in the bushes for the night; across the broad river the sun had almost disappeared behind trees, behind the tiled rooftops of the town and the cupolas of a medieval monastery. From the campsite, the disco throbbed. They made their way back to the tent, and switched on the battery lamp they'd bought with the tent from a camping shop in the Strand. It hung from a loop in the middle, and cast a bright, cold light; Jerzy bumped his head on it as he undressed, and they could see the dark shapes of moths outside begin to gather round it. Their funds had not run to a double sleeping bag: he had brought the one he used to take to Polish Scouts, circa 1966, and Elizabeth one she'd found in the cupboard under the stairs at her parents'house. They unzipped them and scrambled in; it was already quite cold. They lay in the bright light from the lamp, listening to the disco.

‘Perhaps we should have gone,' said Elizabeth.

‘I couldn't face it,' said Jerzy. ‘We'll try to find somewhere more secluded after this.'

‘You are the most deeply antisocial person I have ever known.'

‘I did warn you.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I was thinking about it yesterday, in the park.'

‘Oh?' He rolled over on to his elbow, and leaned over. ‘And what were you thinking?'

The light above them was cold and flat, casting no shadows. ‘Why don't we turn that thing off?' she asked. ‘Or put it down in a corner. Hang on, I'll do it.' She reached up and untied it, then stretched to tuck it towards the front, near the flaps, half under the ends of the sleeping bags. The tent was transformed: a warmly lit nest, enclosing them from the noise outside, and the night sky. She moved back towards Jerzy, and they lay with their arms round each other, watching the moths which had beat against the sides begin to flutter away and then bump against the flaps, still struggling to reach the light.

‘My mother and her brother used to go camping,' Jerzy said suddenly. ‘I can remember her telling us – they were camping by a river near Wilno with their father when the war broke out. And he'd been reading them a story about exile – isn't that strange? And now … here we are.' He moved closer, and turned to look at her, their faces almost touching. ‘What were you thinking about, yesterday?'

‘Just – how lonely you still seem to be. I was trying to work out why.'

He frowned. ‘I don't feel lonely.'

‘Don't you? Apart, then. Perhaps that's what I meant.'

‘Am I really so difficult to live with?'

‘Sometimes. You know you are. I can't stand it when you're so – unreachable.'

He rested his cheek against hers. ‘You shouldn't take any notice.'

‘That's impossible. Anyway – let's not talk about it any more.' She rubbed her face against his, and he began to stroke her hair, her eyes.

‘I do love you,' she whispered. ‘You only have to touch me, and I know that.'

His tongue slid hard between her lips; they clung to each other in their separate sleeping bags, rolling against the sides of the tent. Elizabeth broke away, laughing. ‘Unzip me now.' Jerzy unzipped her, pulled down his own sleeping bag and rolled on top of her, very warm.