She was sad up until the evening. Then, she looked intently at my silver scallop and said:
“Do not leave home without it. It will protect you and remind you of me always. Even when you are gone, I will always be close to you.”
I asked her what was wrong, sensing a deeper meaning behind her words, but there was nothing more I could squeeze out of her.
Meanwhile, the second snail showed up. And then a third one. And every time we brought them outside on the lawn, Rusalka had on a sad expression, though she was not so sad as the first time. I sensed in her something new, a growing atmosphere of anticipation. I also noticed that when she combed her greenish hair, more often than before they stayed wet for a long time and I knew that this was not a good sign.
***
The autumn rains came. Rusalka becomes clearly animated. We left on long autumn walks and brought down on the lawn more and more snails, which strangely kept coming to our apartment. We went out despite the rain, she straightened and happy, exposing her face to the raindrops falling from the sky, and me, with my head hid behind the ridiculous pink umbrella found under my bed, the kind I certainly would not dare to wear in the street normally. Going so once along the waterfront of the Danube river, we passed just beside one of the gasthauses. The door of it opened and one happy and boozy Bauer went out into the street right in front of us. He looked at Rusalka and I saw that he could not tear away his sheepish eyes from her face.
“I'm hungry,” she said suddenly. “Let's go in here. I want something to eat.”
When we were inside of the gasthaus, she asked me to sit down at a table and order something before she got back from the toilet. She walked away quickly.
I was worried, because she was strangely excited and talked differently than usual. I waited a short while and then went out to find her, not because I did not trust her, but because I was worried for her. For anything, I did not want to lose her. She didn’t go to the washrooms of course. I opened the door to the street and saw her silhouette running after the dark shape of a stranger disappearing in the darkness.
I ran also in that direction, hiding in the shade of the trees growing along the waterfront. Before I could reach them, though, I heard a splash and a strangled cry.
She returned briskly, I could barely take refuge behind a tree.
When she passed by my tree, I ran to the waterfront. At the same time, a pair of hands desperately struggled over the water. I gave the end of my umbrella and helped poor Bauer scramble on the shore, pulling him by his Austrian doublet. His Tyrolean hat with its tassel unfortunately sailed down the river.
He shook himself like a dog out of the water, clattered something I could not understand and with chattering teeth, galloped towards the taxi stop. I went back to the gasthaus. My Rusalka was already sitting at the table, and the waiter just brought our favorite noodles "mit Leberkäse und kleine gurken" and two viertels of white wine to wash it down.
She did not ask me anything. I also did not mention a word about what I saw. I thought I would eventually figure everything out by myself.
***
In the meantime, I lost my colleagues. Rusalka intimidated them too much. They did not know how to keep her company. She was just too beautiful. And her turquoise eyes, the gaze of which seemed to penetrate through every surface, caused desire and anxiety on every guy on which it fell. I saw it all in their behavior. Me, I simply loved her. Others were afraid of her. It did not bother me. I liked it the most when we were alone. Then, I was really happy.
Several times it happened again that she escaped from the house all by herself under the pretext of evening meditation in the solitude of the banks of the Danube. I let her go out in the evening rain, then ran after her in the shade of the trees and pulled out some poor fellow out of the water, grabbing him by his Tyrolean suspenders. I do not know how many of them I pulled on the shore this way. Maybe five, maybe six. Until one evening, when we watched TV together, we heard on the news that the police were looking for a witness, "Auslander" with a distinguished pink umbrella. Not a word more.
We looked at each other. I got up, wrapped my umbrella in old newspaper and immediately carried it to the trash.
***
This was no ordinary week. Everything was different. It got warm, supposedly warmer than usual for this time of year. I received the Canadian visa of my dreams. Rusalka returned from an evening walk wet and happy. Had she finally managed to drown someone?
In our apartment, next to snails showed up little green frogs. Those jumped over our old, tattered carpet amusingly. We had a lot of fun hunting for them, the skillful beasts constantly managing to escape from between our fingers and run hiding under the beds. At the same time, we had to be careful not to trample on any snail. They wandered about wherever they liked because we became bored of bringing them down to the lawn.
Suddenly, I found myself facing a dilemma, the worst problem to solve. I did not know what to do. I had already resigned from my work. I had said goodbye to my friends at one goodbye meeting with Austrian white wine, in one of the Vienna heurigens, and my Canadian visa was sitting in my pocket.
Rusalka did not request me to tear it. Quite the opposite, she led me to travel agencies and told me to buy a one-way ticket to Montreal with the Canadian airline "Air Canada", and so I did.
On Saturday, we went to Grinzing. I suspected that this would be our farewell evening. We drank white wine in the same gasthaus where we spent time together for the first time. We kissed while the sound of Tyrolean music drifted all around. She was happy and I pretended that I was too. She noticed my make-believe, however. She put her hand on mine and said:
“Enjoy this evening with me. You know that afterwards, I have to go back. Over there is my home.”
“They forgave you your sins?”
“Yes. I 'm free now. I can go home.”
“How will you get to Czerniakowskie lake?”
“That is not a problem. All the waters of the world are one big body of water, somehow all connected together. It is easy to get from one to the next.”
“I thought you were going to fly with me to Canada.”
“I have to go to my place. I cannot even make it to next week. Tomorrow, we part.”
We drank our white wine holding hands, and the tears from my eyes formed puddles on the wooden table like small, carefully shaped Czerniakowskie lake.
After leaving the restaurant, we took the tram to Vienna center. Both of us said goodbye to the city. We stopped at Kärtnerstraße, probably the most beautiful Viennese street.
Here, my mermaid stood under a streetlight, leaned on her back and began to sing "Lili Marlene".
She sang as if she had known the song from childhood, and the crowd that had gathered around listened in silence. After she finished, the applause was great and warm.
“It was for them,” she said. “My goodbye to them. I really liked them, and their city also.”
We returned home on foot, and after returning, we made love half of the night in the midst of green frogs and sweet flags that in the meantime had grown around our bed. We made love to each other tenderly, fondly and for a long time, wanting to remember it for always, up until we fell asleep.
In the middle of the night, I opened my eyes. Rusalka stood over me and stared at me with those turquoise eyes shining like lanterns, in which I could see the moonlight flowing into the room through the open windows.
I tried to move, but I was not able to. I could not even raise my head nor move my hand or foot.
She leaned over and kissed me on my lips.
“Farewell” she said. “And do not forget me.”
She was covered only with a pale green shawl, which she had received as a gift from me, nothing else. She looked again in my eyes, smiled and walked out of the apartment. I collapsed back into a deep sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, the apartment was empty. There were no frogs or snails, even the sweet flags from around our bed had emigrated somewhere.
>
I jumped up, threw on my clothes and ran down the street. It was empty. When I came to the quay of the Danube, I saw her scarf hanging on a tree branch but before I could approach it, a gust of wind tore it from the branch and gently lowered it to the surface of the water. For a moment, it remained on the surface, but quickly spun out with the current and disappeared into the depths. This was our farewell. I had to go back home and to pack my only suitcase. I had a flight to Montreal waiting in the afternoon with a transfer in Zurich.
I put my hand in my pocket and took out the shell she had given me the very first time we met, gripping it tightly. For sure, I would never forget her.
Back to ToC
Long, Black Veil
This story is inspired by the beautiful American ballad "Long Black Veil" from 1959.
***
She left her bike leaning against the entrance gate and walked in. Surely, no one would steal it now, late at night. She walked as quickly as she could down the narrow alley under the light of the stars and the moon. It was good that she remembered this path well, good that the night was cloudless. Even so, she still felt foolish. What in hell came over her to be hanging around at night here, at Wilanow cemetery, with a long black veil on her head? She probably looked like a ghost from a pre-war movie in her ancient, black dress that had only one ornament - a small gold brooch with a cameo carved in ivory and pinned under her chin.
She looked at her watch, holding it closer to her eyes. Five minutes to midnight. Yes, she was just in time. He was born 80 years ago, precisely on September 15. Who knew? Maybe this was going to work? True, that seemed quite unlikely, but it could nonetheless. After all, in books, things like this often went well. And life, as they said, was more improbable than the most fantastic novel.
Just what should be done now?
She found the grave, a simple stone slab, near the fence. It was at the very end of the cemetery, a place for "the others". Why? A long time ago, when the fence was somewhere else, the tomb was outside the cemetery wall. That was why. She knelt down so that she could see what was engraved on the plate. Even in the light of the day, the inscription was barely visible, much more in this faint light.
But she was sure that it was the right tomb. On the corner of the stone slab stood a stump of wax, what remained of the candle she had left there during her recent visit along with a few withered stalks, all that was left of the flowers she had brought.
She took from her coat pocket a new candle, lit it and put it in the middle of the stone slab. Then she covered her face with black muslin, made a sign of the cross on her chest and folded her hands in prayer, remaining very still. If at that moment she had turned suddenly, she would have noticed that she was not alone, that someone was watching her intently from afar, but she did not. She knelt there frozen like a statue, lost in her thoughts and focused at the same time.
***
Grandma Ludmila was always dressed in black. Ever since Tereska could remember, her beloved grandmother wore only black dresses. Once more decorative, with flounces, over the years more simple and ordinary, but always black.
"Why?" wondered Tereska.
Grannies of her friends were also dressed in dark colors, so it was a custom that all grandmothers wore dark - that way, you could tell that they were grandmothers - but not necessarily always black. But grandma Ludmila was dressed so even when she was not yet a grandmother. True, the old photographs did not yet have any color, but black has been always different from brown in the sepia pictures. Even when she was still young and beautiful, she wore black dresses and hats. Sometimes, her face was even covered with a light veil of black tulle. Why?
"It's mourning," was always the answer to Tereska’s question. As if that explained everything.
"What a terrible disease, this mourning," she thought, particularly since there were so many wonderful colors which would look lovely on her grandmother. She was, after all, still pretty despite her wrinkles and gray hair. In fact, she was certainly the most beautiful grandmother in the world.
They lived together, her mother, grandmother and her in the office annex of the former property administrator. Her mom, as one of the few people around after the war, who was capable of reading, writing and arithmetic, graciously received from the newly created municipality an accounting job, although she received some frowns of disgust because of her origins, and a modest apartment in this building next to the palace, which now belonged now to the municipal authorities.
Her grandmother, having seen the palace looted of furniture and everything that had once belonged to her, with her own eyes, often stared blankly out the window at the large building that was once her family home. For her, nothing material mattered anymore. She had been "in mourning" for a long time and after losing in Katyn her son (Tereska's father), she had already lost everything that she could lose. Well, not quite completely everything. Her granddaughter, after all, still remained. And whenever Grandma looked at Tereska, her eyes took on a special glow, as if she still had a tinge of pride and hope that maybe not all was lost, that maybe this little girl would be able to do something that she had not succeeded in doing, something that would make her life still worth living. They played with rag dolls together, and in the evening, told stories about the balls in splendid palaces, where the young princes danced quadrilles with beautifully dressed ladies, once upon a time that would never return (if it ever really existed at all).
Fortunately for them, Tereska's mother was a completely different person. Once she had acquired a certainty that her husband would not come back (even though she had never received an official notice of his death), she decided that for the good of her child and all of them, it would be better to go with the flow of the political current, not swim against it. She took proposed her job in the community, received a modest salary and housing and after some time, at the instigation of the chairman Sojka, with whom she was on good terms, joined the Communist Party and attended the party meetings where she spoke often and loud so that soon nothing could endanger her family. To her friends from the old times, few of who still remained, she would say: You have to surrender the past to win the future. Better that, than be destroyed immediately. Was she right? Maybe so. Tereska was never sure. Those who really fought to the end no longer existed. The others had made their choice.
In Tereska's room, Comrade Stalin hang on the wall, gazing benignly at her, and at school she learned of the first readings - how good Uncle Soso liked the kids. And it was not true that he ate them for breakfast as some whispered in dark corners. Some of them were simply malicious, such as this nasty Franek, the son of a tractor driver. Well, they threw him out of his lessons for such talk and told him to come back with his father.
In a nutshell, that was the world of Tereska: fun with her grandmother, a Mom who was always too busy for her and her school.
Wait, there was someone else. It was Tomek. He lived not far away, in the old manor carriage house that, after the war, had been converted to housing for workers of the Production Cooperative, a very special organization created by the communist system. Tomek was about two years older than Tereska, and it was a big difference. He was already so big that he was almost an adult, though he still went to primary school. When they met for the first time at the stream, Tomek showed her tadpoles and said that when they grew, they would become very real frogs. She did not believe him at first, but when she found out later that he was right, she believed his every word from then on.
Tereska differed from the rural children. She spoke and dressed differently, and so was often ridiculed by them. "The Heiress" – some spoke of her with contempt. But when Tomek taught her how to give a strong blow to someone who was laughing at her, the jokes stopped. And when she learned to kick in the ankle so that the stars appeared in one’s eyes, her authority increased immeasurably.
Tomek had his passion: bred rabbits. He kept them in wire cages near his house, and after school he would feed them with weeds and carrots stolen from
the fields of the cooperative.
He let Tereska play with them, and she learned to love them for their long ears and cuddly faces to their always-twitching noses and busy mouths.
Sometimes, when one rabbit was jumping on the other, and Tereska asked why they were doing it, Tomek, who, after all knew why, blushed and could not answer her. Or did not want to.
Tereska realized then that the rabbits were doing something she should not do, and she felt ashamed, too, but did not stop loving them.
Once, Grandmother, returning from an afternoon walk, saw them together. At home, she asked Tereska who the boy with whom she was playing was. Tereska replied that he was Tomek from social housing, and that everybody knew him well. After that, Grandma took Tereska on her knees, hugged her tight and enveloping her with her scent of lavender, she said:
"Remember this, Tereska, because you’ll hear it from me only once."
"It does not matter whether you live in social housing or in the palace as we used to. There is only one thing important in your life. Love. I hope you will never forget it."
And Tereska remembered that forever.
Grandma had her own secret. Once a month, always on the fifteenth, she escaped from the house in the evening to go for a walk, as usual dressed in black. When Tereska became big girl, having grown older and bigger while her grandmother became older and smaller, she began to worry about those walks.
Her mother was generally too busy to care, taking extramural studies for working students on University with the intention to be an accountant and break free from the provincial office where she worked, maybe go somewhere to Warsaw.
Tereska once tried to persuade her grandmother to let her accompany her on this evening trip, but she firmly refused. The next month, Tereska decided to go after her grandma without her consent. Once the old woman had left home, Tereska put on a coat and followed her stealthily. It was not hard. The black silhouette of her grandmother was visible from a distance on the dirt road. At this time, Wilanow had no many housing estates, only cultivated fields and some small, rural buildings. Tracking her grandmother happened to go smoothly. Actually, tracking was not the right word. Tereska was not spying on her grandmother. Her only concern was that nothing bad happened to the old lady during her evening walks.