The Girl from Krakow (8 page)

“That depends on how many other people off that train want to go there with you,” the man replied. They waited in silence, but the handful of passengers all diffused into the night. Finally, the trucker said, “One hundred pesetas. It’ll take all night.”

“Fifty,” was Gil’s reply. He was going to pay whatever it cost, but he was not going to show urgency.

“What’s in the case?” The driver looked at Gil’s bag. “They don’t need hams in la Vella.” That was the only town of any size in Andorra.

“Medical instruments.” Gil didn’t need to lie.

“All right, I’ll take you for seventy-five pesetas. I’m Josep. You?”

“Romero, Doctor Guillermo Romero.” He lifted himself to the seat, putting the valise on his lap, with his briefcase beside the driver. Then Gil undid the two belts holding the valise closed. When he opened it, a speculum reflected what little light there was. “So, not much value to anyone but a doctor, friend.” Should he have said “comrade” instead of friend?

It was an old gravel road, running one lane west along the valley, but with no late-night traffic coming the other way to make the truck have to lay by. By midnight, Gil and the driver, Josep, had traded enough lies about themselves to become conspirators.

“Friend,” Gil ventured, “if someone wanted to make it into France through Andorra, could he do it from Urgell?”

“Le Sue is what they call it. But if you want to make it over the border, you are going the wrong way.”

“What’s wrong with Andorra?”

“The French border patrol at the Andorra frontier is tough. They know they can shake down every traveler for drink, smokes, scent. You want to go through Puigcerdá, not La Seu.” It was a place Gil had never heard of. “Besides, it’s half the distance.” Josep brought the truck to a stop. “We just passed the turn for it.”

“Can you take me there instead?” Gil was now making himself a hostage to Josep’s trustworthiness.

“
Sí
. Same price though.” He shifted into reverse and made a careful K-turn on the narrow road. As the truck started up, Josep went on, “Something else you probably don’t know. Just across the border at Puigcerdá, there is a little part of Spain, really Cataluña, a sort of landlocked island, Spanish but surrounded by France. It’s weird. The reason goes back to some treaty four hundred years ago.” He stopped the narration to concentrate on the road, which had become more tortuous now that they were climbing due north directly into the Pyrenees, instead of skirting them to the west.

Gil was silent, hoping that Josep would tell him how to manage the border without his having to ask.
Stupid being reticent now
, he thought.

“This little piece of Spain is called Llivia. It’s two kilometers from the border. Best thing about this border is that so many people go back and forth between Llivia and Girona on this side that all you need is an identity card and good Catalan. I’ve seen them take away people just for showing a passport when they try to cross. Your Catalan is good enough to fool the French. Show me your identity card. For an extra twenty-five pesetas, I’ll be glad to drive you right to the border.”

Gil pulled out the identity card from his coat pocket along with some Republican banknotes—he wouldn’t need them anymore. The passport was in the briefcase, and the briefcase was locked. He said nothing.

At 1:00 a.m. Josep pulled the truck up to the border three hundred meters beyond the single street and stillness of Puigcerdá. The town behind them looked like it had slept soundly through the whole Spanish Civil War, every window dark.

The border gate barred the road, and Josep had to honk. After a minute or so, a dim light came on in the border hut. Then the door opened, and a man emerged, in a dirty undershirt, wearing the distinctive patent leather hat of the Guardia Civil—Franco’s Guardia Civil, or maybe Stalin’s. Josep must have felt Gil’s shudder. “Not a
Guardia
. Just likes the hat, I think.”

The man turned on an electric torch, shined it up to the cab, and put out his hand. Josep handed down the papers.

“What are you doing crossing at this hour?” He looked from the cards to their faces.

Gil could think of nothing to say and did not trust his imperfect Catalan. After a moment of silence, Josep volunteered.

“Doctor. Midwife sent for him. A patient delivering a baby with complications.”

Coming around the truck, the border guard climbed the running board and looked at Gil, asking in Catalan, “What’s in the case?”

Gil gave a one-word answer, “Look.” He opened the case.

The guard shuddered slightly at the sight of the speculum. He jumped down.
“Pasad.”
He raised the barrier and turned back to the hut.

Josep stopped at an intersection, leaned across Gil, and opened the door. “You are in France; in another minute you will be back in Spain.” Gil held out his hand. Josep took it. “
Bon viatge.
” Good travels. Two minutes later, Gil was still at the crossroads when Josep drove by in the other direction, going back to Spain. Each gave the Popular Front salute: a clenched fist, arm raised.

A month later, in November 1938, Dr. Guillermo Romero was a gynecologist on the staff of the Municipal Hospital, Lvov, Poland. It was remarkable how welcome Spanish doctors were in Poland. A medical man with Catalan certification had to be a good Catholic, unlike so many candidates for these positions.

CHAPTER FIVE

R
ita, we must talk.” Urs had just returned from the office. No doubt he had stopped at his mother’s home again, she thought. Eager to deflect him from whatever subject his mother had put in his head, she turned toward the kitchen.

“Dinner is ready . . . It’s
coq au vin
.” It was a decidedly un-Polish way of cooking chicken, one that reminded Rita of other countries, other mores.

As they sat down, Urs cleared his throat. Rita could tell that he was not to be deflected. A set speech was coming. “In the two years since we married, we have made love approximately eighty-four times.” He was going on, but all she could focus on was the fact that he’d been counting. “I know you have been worried about not becoming pregnant. I have not brought it up before because I thought the problem of our having no children might be mine.” Evidently, for this automaton, sexual intercourse really was just for procreation. And suddenly the careful structure supporting Rita’s equanimity collapsed beneath her. She could feel herself sucked down toward a question she could never answer:
Why have I done this? How could I have made this mistake? What was I thinking?
The emptiness of things was overwhelming her, and it must have showed.

Urs made matters worse by mistaking the source of her anguish. He moved toward her and surrounded her with his long arms. She resisted his embrace. Without really noticing, he continued, “So, I read. I made a study.” He spoke with clinical dispassion. “I have subjected my sperm to microscopic inspection in the clinic. They are sufficient in concentration per cubic centimeter and in motility.”

Rita pushed free from Urs and stood. “So, the problem is with me?” She heard the inward command,
Get a grip on yourself!

“I don’t know. It could be a problem between us. But I want you to go to Lvov. I have consulted a physician there. No one here needs to know about our problem. Anyway, no one in a small town like this can help.”

“Lvov?”

“Yes, there is a medical school, a large hospital, a women’s clinic. After all, it’s the third largest city in the country. No one will need to know anything but the doctor examining you. I knew him slightly in Krakow. Now he practices in Lvov. His name is Pankow. We have exchanged correspondence about the matter, and he wants to examine you himself.”

Rita wanted to remonstrate. Urs had opened a correspondence with a stranger on the most intimate of marital relations. It hadn’t occurred to him to secure his wife’s permission first.

But then she thought,
Don’t make an issue of this.
There hadn’t been any issues between them, never any hard or harsh words, never any arguments, scenes, tears, or anger—in fact, no emotion whatever. Urs never seemed to have any, and Rita had by now taught herself not to. She had convinced herself that the lack of strong feeling was a sign of maturity. People driven by emotion, she had convinced herself, were less content than those whose lives were calculated. Now, recovering quickly from her momentary despair, forcing herself to think about matters this way, she tried to see Urs’s point. Having married for comfort, she really had to earn it. Besides, she did want children—Urs’s children, for that matter—both to fulfill the unspoken terms of the agreement and because he had many fine qualities. Yes, the course Urs had outlined was perfectly reasonable.

And then she thought,
At least I can get away from Karpatyn for a day. Spend a day in a bustling city, one much bigger than Krakow.
Calmly she asked, “When does he expect me?”

A week and exactly one bout of marital intimacy later, Rita was in Lvov. It had been a one-and-a-half-hour train journey through the flat, steppe-like countryside of Southeastern Poland, bare since the harvest. Each village they passed looked like the last—slattern hovels of stuccoed timbers huddled around a Ukrainian Orthodox church. Hardly anyone alighted or descended at any of the half dozen stops between Karpatyn and Lvov.
And why should they?
Rita thought.

Lvov was a refreshing surprise. Why hadn’t she come before? It was a metropolis. Electric streetcars slid noiselessly past the main station and ran down cobbled streets in three directions. Large black automobiles and still larger trucks moved quickly past the few farm carts. The buildings across the street from the station were four and five stories high, faced in dressed stone, with arched windows from which glowing lights shone into the gray midday. There was a café at the corner, crowded inside, but with a few tables still braving the chill. The street was alive with shoppers, a newspaper kiosk doing a lively business, even a chestnut roaster plying his trade at the curb. She looked wistfully at the café. No time for a coffee. Rita found a cab, an old but shiny Peugeot, and gave the driver Dr. Pankow’s address.

Five minutes from the station, the taxi stopped before one of these formidable stone-clad buildings. Rita paid and stepped out. At the entry under an overhanging balcony, she sought the doctor’s brass plate and entered. Beyond the lobby, white marble slab stairs wound around a wrought iron elevator cage, something she had not seen for almost two years. She waited till the cabin descended. It took her to the second floor, where she knocked at a frosted glass door. The physician himself could be heard to say, “Come in.” He looked up at her from his desk, neither smiling nor frowning. “
Pani
Doctor Guildenstern?”

Rita was taken aback momentarily by a form of address reserved for her mother-in-law. “Yes, Doctor. How nice to meet you.” It wasn’t really nice. He was a formidable, stern-faced character, heavyset, with deep parenthetical wrinkles on either side of his mouth, eyes hidden beneath a heavy brow. Who did he look like? she pondered. Then she had it: Otto von Bismarck! To complete the image of unapproachability, Dr. Pankow was wearing a frock coat and wing collar. When had she last seen someone dressed this way? At an undertaker’s?

With no ceremony, Dr. Pankow motioned to the cloth-covered folding screen at the side of the room and said, “Be so kind as to undress, and put on the gown you will find on the examining table.”

She could hear water running as he washed his hands, and then Pankow came around the screen, now wearing a white coat and pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. As he examined her, he asked several obvious questions. “How regular are your periods? Are they painful? Irregular in their flow? Ever been pregnant and miscarried? Is intercourse painful?” She thought,
Why don’t you ask any of the important questions? Why is your husband uninterested in sex? Why is he no good at it when it does occur to him? Why did you marry him in the first place?

Dr. Pankow’s examination seemed no different from others she had experienced, and she was beginning to wonder what special knowledge he might have. When he had finished, he put his instruments aside, pulled off the gloves, and said, “You may now dress,
Pani
Guildenstern.”

A few moments later, they were again facing each other across the broad, heavy desk. “Well, everything seems in perfect order to me. But I want you to see a specialist.”

Rita looked surprised. “I thought you were a specialist.”

“My practice is limited to women. I want you to see someone who specializes in reproductive problems. I understand you have traveled some distance. I will call and try to get you an appointment today.” He picked up a telephone on his desk and opened a notebook next to it. Meanwhile, Rita took a train schedule from her purse and began to see how late she could stay. By the time she had located a nine o’clock evening train, he was putting down the telephone. Pankow picked up a pen, dabbed it in an inkwell, and scratched out a few lines on a pad.

“Here is the address. It’s the gynecology department of Central Hospital. A cab will get you there. Your appointment is at three o’clock.” He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat, glanced at it, and went on, “May I suggest that you spend the intervening period at the George Hotel, an excellent tearoom? My wife enjoys it very much. Good day.” He did not rise.

Rita took the address, her departure, and the advice. Outside she found the same old Peugeot taxi. Within three minutes she found herself at the George Hotel. She might have walked and saved a zloty. It was another four-story stone structure, with three ranks of balconies above the main entrance. Rita swept across the entry as though she really were
Pani
Doctor Guildenstern. The doorman bowed slightly and stood expectantly. “The tearoom, please,” she said. Her eye followed his gesture beyond the arched stairway to double doors with triple brass bars across panes of frosted glass. As she arrived they were swung open by another liveried hand to reveal a scene of late Victorian probity. Elderly dowagers pouring tea for spindly spinster daughters, while fatter daughters-in-law polished off crustless watercress sandwiches. This was not a place Rita wanted to fit into, but it was too late to turn back.

She took a seat and looked around again. Here on display was the life she was now being relentlessly sucked into. Correct and censorious, these women were dressed in so many layers that motion was almost impossible. They were squinting at menus through lorgnettes and looking down on almost everything. If she were lucky and her husband took her to Lvov often enough, surely she would become accustomed to this room.

It took the better part of an hour to do justice to a pot of tea and a few buttered brioche. By then the thick damask of the tablecloths, the uncreasable starch of the napkins, the overbearing gleam of the silver metal tea service had begun to oppress her. She could not make herself remain at the George Hotel another minute, no matter how early she would be at the specialist’s clinic.

It was a ten-minute walk to the Central Hospital through what still seemed to Rita like a teeming metropolis. When she arrived without a wrong turn, there was still a half hour to spare. She found the main entrance and searched the directory for the obstetrics and gynecology department. Finding it on the first floor, she advanced to the sweeping double stairs. They were in the same proportion as those at the law faculty in Krakow. As she glided up them, she tried to recall the feeling of being a student again, instead of a matron.

Presenting herself at the reception desk, Rita began to address herself to a nurse obviously too preoccupied to look up at her. But when she explained that an appointment had been made for her that morning by Dr. Pankow, the nurse looked up with a start. “I have instructions to show you into the doctor’s cabinet immediately.” She rose and led the way down a wide hall. Its marble floor was flanked on one side by doors and on the other by tall windows, through which much of Lvov seemed slightly to shimmer in the aberrations of the wide panes of glass. The nurse stopped at a door, knocked, and without waiting entered, announcing as she did, “
Pani
Doctor Guildenstern.”

A youngish man with a still slightly sunburned complexion, in a dark, well-cut suit with a velvet waistcoat, black mustache, and dark hair, stood to receive her. Rita could only gasp, but the nurse did not notice as she formally introduced him, “Dr. Romero. Dr. Guillermo Romero.”

Rising, the doctor said rather too quickly, “Thank you, nurse; that will be all for the moment,” and taking her by the elbow, hurried her out of the room. Then he turned and smiled.

“Guillermo Romero?” Before Rita could say another word, he put his forefinger to his closed lips and took her hand, leading her to a door that opened up to an examination room. Gil turned on the light, closed the door, and threw the bolt on the lock. He took both of her hands and looked intently in her eyes. She was reading the same look in his eyes, now gleaming as a tear welled up at each corner. Suddenly they were both weeping with delight. Gil leaned forward to kiss her, and Rita’s mouth opened at the same time. It lasted fully a minute, after which Rita began to move Gil’s fingers over the buttons and hooks that held her oppressive clothing to her body.

Skirt dropped, blouse opened. It was too much for both of them to wait till he had removed slip, camisole top, stockings, garter, underpants
 . . . 
She brought her hands to his fly and deftly undid every button as he loosened his belt. Leaning back on the examining table, Rita pulled down her underpants and drew up the slip for him. He took her—or more aptly, she thought later, she took him. Their mutual passion welled up too quickly to be paced or channeled. Almost before he had much penetration, climax overcame him, leaving her moist and unsatisfied.