The Last Girl (28 page)

‘Hey!' she protested. But I paid no heed. And when I had finished we lay together on the floorboards and cried.

Later she showed me the painting that she was working on. It was of a young woman seated on a vivid, red, plump chair. Her eyes were large almonds and her hair was caught up in buns on either side of her head. Yellow ribbons held the buns. In her arms was a baby. It was planted there almost like a doll. A Russian doll from which might be pulled another. The painting radiated warmth and love.

‘This is beautiful,' I said.

‘Madonna and child. The priest in my village asked me to paint it for him. Do you think that is shameful? I haven't shown Alexei. He would be furious. It's part of a triptych. Would you lik to see the central section? You won't tell Alexei?'

I shook my head. She rummaged in the dark corner of the room and pulled out a larger canvas. She turned it around and I illuminated it with the stub of candle.

‘But you have crucified the Madonna,' I said.

‘Yes.'

Christ was cradled still, a Russian doll. The young girl was no different. The plump red chair had gone and in its place hovered a yellow cross that matched her ribbons and a cobalt sky.

‘The Madonna has always been crucified,' she said, her eyes as blue and untroubled as before.

‘I would have thought that Jankowski would have liked this kind of thing.'

‘Oh no, you're wrong,' she said earnestly. ‘You're reading it wrong. Does it seem blasphemous? No, no.'

When I returned home on New Year's Day, Jerzy was crouched on the floor by the bed. His body shook. When I lifted him he was frail and edgy. I laid him on the bed and made some soup. He shook his head when I brought it for him. His face was grey. His eyes were hollow pits. His lips thread-like. His hair hung in oily, spidery curls down the sides of his face.

‘You must,' I whispered, trembling with fear at the state of him. He allowed me to spoon him some of the warm liquid. Just minutes later he turned his head, attempting some decency, and vomited it back up again.

I hovered over him, a nervous nurse. He lay for many hours motionless on the hard dirty bed. When night fell he opened his eyes again and I once more tried to feed him the soup. I lay through the night beside him, listening to the catch of his breath, holding my own when I did not hear his.

As the year grew older Jerzy grew a little stronger. For much of the day he sat at home brooding. He remained weak and did not put much weight back on to his body. I took a job at a hospital and it was only the groschen I earned that kept us from starving. The winter months wee bleak. The heating had disappeared from our flat and in the mornings our breath rose in little fragile clouds. The Soviet government continued its programme of compulsory nationalisation and the icy rain lashed the faces of the dispossessed. In the forests the partisans froze.

Often, after finishing work, I walked to Rita's studio. Invariably I found her painting. Many times I simply lay on the sofa watching her work. At other times we pulled on our coats and scarves and boots and gloves and went to trudge our way along the frozen Wilja. It was whilst walking there one Saturday evening that we bumped into Rachael and Ira. I had been skimming pebbles across the dirty yellow surface of the ice. Rita called from higher up the bank. She was shivering in her old coat. For many minutes I ignored her, listening to the electric click of the pebbles on the ice. When I turned there were two other figures on the bank behind her.

‘Steponas,' a familiar voice called out.

For a few moments I did not recognise the voice, for while it was familiar there was something strange about it too. The figure silhouetted against the weak sun was also strangely familiar. As I drew closer I realised that the small stooped figure was Ira. It was impossible to hide my surprise. He looked at least ten years older than when I had last seen him. Perhaps more. He was completely bald on top and the hair at the side of his head grew in untidy grey tufts. His face was sallow and his previously upright, stocky figure was thinner and bent. He held out his hand. I took it firmly, almost crushing it in my own.

She did not look so different. In fact she looked more than ever like the young girl I had known from the village. She was not dressed elegantly, but her hair was luxuriant. Its fresh curls burst from the plain kerchief that she had tied over it. Her eyes were luminous. She was radiant. My heart contracted. A spasm of pain almost brought tears to my eyes. When Ira said something, I missed it. My heart rooted itself painfully in her and I could not draw my eyes away.

‘I'm sorry?' I said.

‘You're looking well,' Ira repeated, jovially, his voice reedy, older.

She laid her hand softly on my sleeve. ‘Thank you.'

‘For what?' I said, my heart labouring to squeeze each painful beat. She did not answer and I shrugged. Only then did I notice that her figure had changed too. Ira noted the track of my eyes. He grinned. Reaching over he patted his wife's slightly swollen stomach.

‘What do you think?' he said joyfully. ‘Doesn't she look beautiful?'

‘Oh, you must come and sit for me,' Rita begged.

‘You're a painter?' Rachael asked.

For some while we walked slowly together along the frozen riverbank. Rachael took Rita's arm and they swung along chatting before us. When we parted we went back to the studio. I made love to Rita so angrily, so violently, that she cried and would not speak to me. I left her in the darkness and walked the silent city. I walked for so long in the snow that I developed a fever and lay for the next couple of days in bed, sweating and hallucinating.

By March there was a rumour of green in the trees and bushes. The city uncoiled tentatively from the numbness of winter. It snowed again, briefly, in the middle of March, the small crystal flakes glittering in the nascent spring sun. Children appeared and their shouts sounded oddly loud in the streets after their long absence. By April the last of the grimy snow drifts, packed in dark comers, had melted away.

Jerzy managed to get his hands on a car and we drove out to Trakai, with Rita and Lunski. The lake shimmered in the sunlight and the trees were fresh with colour. We hired a small boat and rowed out onto the lake. We did not speak of the war. We had all heard the rumours, the stories, speculation, but we spoke of art, of plays, of poetry and beauty and all the things that normal young people may speak of in times of peace.

In the afternoon a sudden shower surprised us and we were forced to row to a low, wooded island for shelter. We sat beneath the trees and listened to the rain approach us across the surface of the water. I lay on my back, cushioned by thick layers of pine needles, and Rita lay by my side. Listening to the softness of her breathing and the patter of rain on the water it struck me that I should be content. While half the world was fighting, I was there beneath the trees savouring the loveliness of being. However, rather than feeling joy, a heavy weight oppressed me. I closed my eyes and thought of her – the soft swell of her belly, the quiet pride that flushed her cheeks.

‘You're crying,' Rita whispered in my ear.

‘No,' I said. ‘It's just my eyes watering.'

When the shower had moved on we rowed back to land and drove into the small town of Trakai. Whilst Jerzy and Lunski settled down to a beer in a café overlooking the lake, Rita and I wandered across to the section of the town inhabited by Karaites. Their houses shone brilliantly in the sunshine, yellow and blue, each with three windows looking out onto the road. Legally the Karaites were not Jews though they were great Hebrew scholars. They differed from the Jews in that they rejected the Talmud. Legend had it that the Grand Duke Vytautas had brought them back from Asia, and they retained their Turkic culture. I sat on a grass bank and watched as Rita sketched their prayer house.

Vilnius was enjoying a wary spring. We drove back to the city, the car loaded with flowers. So overpowering was their perfume to our deprived senses that we had to open the windows. Rita arranged bunches around her studio, and their petals were liked polished gold in the sunlight. Jerzy wanted to take an armful to sell, but Rita refused to give them up.

‘Go fuck one of your shop girls, if you want bread,' she said to him.

‘You don't need to eat?' he answered morosely, eyeing her.

Rita had lost weight over the winter. She had lost the soft fullness of her body; her shoulders were sharp and her cheeks slightly sunken. The paleness of her skin had begun to look unhealthy as opposed to richly virginal.

‘I need to see something beautiful,' she said, her hands ranging delicately over the fresh petals, caressing the swelling buds with a hunger she did not display for food.

‘Artists!' Jerzy spat, angrily.

Late one afternoon I returned from drinking with Jerzy to find her painting a young woman. The woman was bent with her back to the door and I did not recognise her. Rita, seeing me, looked around uncomfortably. With a swift, deft flick of her arm, she turned the canvas that she had been working on and covered it with a loose cloth so that I could not see.

The young woman straightened up, her arms resting at the base of her back, as though she found it difficult or painful to rise. I noticed then the large swell of her stomach, the way that her hair fell back across her shoulders, and before she turned, recognised her.

‘Rachael,' I said.

She glanced over at me, surprised.

‘Steponas,' she exclaimed and sneezed. She grinned and sneezed again.

I noticed then that she had been bending to smell the flowers. She must have pushed her face deep into the bunch as it was dusted all over with golden pollen. Rita noticed and stepped over to her. She drew out a handkerchief and caught Rachael's face in her hand to wipe away the pollen. My chest tightened.

‘Rachael has been sitting for me,' Rita explained.

She was heavily pregnant. Whilst Rita looked drawn and pale, Rachael was radiant with health. She sneezed again, and laughed.

‘The pollen has got up my nose,' she explained.

Rita smiled and handed her the handkerchief, which was prettily embroidered, with Rita's initials in the corner.

‘Keep it,' she said.

‘Thank you,' said Rachael. She admired the needlework then slipped it into her pocket.

Rita took her arm and moved her past me before I could say anything. She turned at the door and smiled. I slumped into a chair. The mixture of feelings that assailed me was bewildering. At the same time I both loved and hated her.

I longed to go after her, yet felt a mounting, irrational fury that Rita had invited her here.

Hearing their voices, soft outside the door, I jumped up quickly and strode over to the canvas stood on its easel in the light, by the window. Stealthily I pulled back the cloth to look at the painting. Rachael sat looking out from the picture, her hands resting gently on her swollen stomach.

I heard the door close and turned, letting the cloth drop. Rita watched me. She was angry, I could see, that I had stolen a look at her painting, but she said nothing. She turned from me and busied herself cleaning some brushes at the sink.

I longed to speak, to ask about Rachael, to talk about her, but I knew that if I said anything it would come out angrily. I paced about the room for some minutes. Rita did not turn to me. She was tight-lipped, her attention focused on the yellow paint running into the sink as the tap water washed through the bristles of her brushes. I left.

She came around to see me later. ‘I'm sorry,' I said.

Rita raised a finger to my lips, silencing me. ‘I don't know what you have got against her, it isn't my business.'

‘I haven't…' I began.

‘Don't, Steponas, I don't need you to explain. She, too, is tense when you are around. She told me you knew each other back in the village, but she didn't want to talk about it more. So let's forget it. Leave it.'

We said no more, then. We went for a stroll in the town. At Rita's suggestion we walked to the Dawn Gates. The upstairs grotto was thick with people: peasant women, crying out in Polish and Russian. The warmth of the day, the candles that burned in profusion, the incense and the heavy stench of perspiring bodies made me feel nauseous. The Black Madonna gazed down upon us, impassive, regal. The gold of her gown glowed against her dark skin. The sword-sharp rays of glory, which haloed her inclined head, were at odds with the peaceful grace of her crossed-hand posture.

Rita bent to her knees by the side of a wrinkled Russian woman, who was beating her breasts, and weeping, reciting her petitions to the mysterious, beautiful Mother of God. Rita closed her eyes and I saw her lips stir in silent prayer.

‘Come on,' I said, after a few minutes, unable to stand any longer the smell and the heat. Rita looked up and grinned.

‘I can never tell if you are serious or not,' I said. ‘About what?'

‘The pictures, the icons and all this,' I said.

‘Do you ask Jerzy if he is serious about his poems?' ‘That's different.'

‘Because he's obscene to cover his embarrassment?'

There were other times, I knew, when Rachael went to the studio. Her baby was born, a girl, Rita told me one day. Though she didn't tell me when Rachael would be sitting for her, she would at times cautiously suggest I occupy myself for a few hours away from the studio, and, understanding, I would.

I awoke one morning, the summer sun shining bright through the dirty windows of Rita's studio. For a moment I wondered what had woken me. It was June. June 22 1941. Rita lay sleeping beside me, her hair iridescent in the fresh sunbeams. Abruptly the air was filled with the heart-lurching wail of air raid sirens. I shook Rita awake.

‘Forget it,' she said sleepily, not turning over. ‘It's just the drill. It was on the radio yesterday.'

I struggled from beneath the thin cotton sheet. The glass in the window had begun to rattle. The air buzzed. I stood and looked out, rubbing a small circle in the dust. The sky was full of planes, flocking like birds in the autumn.