On Monday morning, there are no tourists. I eat my kanapki and watch Irena neglect hers. I have never seen her this nervous. She takes a sip of her tea and puts it down. She goes into the front hall, straightens the line of slippers, and comes back. She opens the refrigerator, closes it, and sits back down.
"How long will it be before she hears?" I ask.
"Hears about what?" Irena says.
"The exam. Whether she passed."
"Phooh," Irena says. "For all I know she didn't even go."
"She wouldn't do that."
"Ach, she'd do it just to spite me. Never mind that she's the one who wanted to become a prosecutor in the first place. Anyway, that doesn't concern me. Let her arrange herself. She made her bed, now she can sleep in it."
Pani Bożena wants me to do her hair like Brigitte Bardot, and I have to do it over a few times because she isn't satisfied. I wash a load of laundry and hang it out to dry. I wander around between the freezers in Hipermarket Europa to escape the clinging heat. A lot of foreigners come to Hipermarket Europa, and I think the cashiers and the girls standing sentry at the ends of the aisles sometimes mistake the jeans, trainers, and athletic jackets I buy at the secondhand shop for firsthand. So I try to play foreigner. I walk slowly, as if I'm on vacation and have nowhere else to be. I squint up at the signs in Polish as if I'm having trouble deciphering them. I pick up the boxes of frozen dinners and the bottles of wine, and I either frown or nod my head at the quality while taking a furtive glance at the price. As I go from the bakery hut to the butcher hut to the wine hut to the cashier, the voices of the salespeople traipse after me with "Thank you, Pani" and "As Pani judges" and "If I can be of service," and when I answer them, I try to press the mountains out of the words until my accent is as flat and smooth as the bluestone on the Rynek. I even add a French accent sometimes and stumble on my words, and when I do, the cashier smiles more and counts the change slowly into my hand.
I end up buying a package of Spanish seafood stew for obiad, which Pani Bożena says reminds her of the singer who used to play the part of Don Pasquale at the opera.
"He asked me to marry him," she says, "or would have if I weren't already married. Anyway, it was his dream when he retired to go back and live in Katowice with his mother." She wrinkles her nose.
"And Katowice is ... bad?"
"Horrible. Unlivable." And then she begins to list the other men who wanted to marry her, along with a detailed list of their faults.
"So how did you know that your husband was the right one?"
She takes a long drink from her wineglass. "It was just after the war. There was nothing left in Warsaw for me. He and his brother were coming to Krakow to make a fresh start. And he loved me so. He would have done anything for me."
I wait for her to say more, but instead she turns her attention to the last two shrimp she's been saving on the plate. "My compliments. The fourth-best paella I've ever had. I hope you've had time to make dessert. I feel a sweet tooth coming on."
"Crème caramel."
"That will do." She holds out her glass for more wine.
While Pani Bożena is napping after obiad, I crumple the boxes and bags carefully and quietly, and I sneak the evidence down to the trash cans in the courtyard. Her naps are becoming longer and longer, and if she doesn't wake up in time to watch Dynasty, I have strict instructions to watch it for her and report what happened that day. For a while, I did just that. I told her about Blake being released from jail and being nearly run off the road on the way home. I told her about Krystle escaping from the mental hospital in Switzerland, but only after she'd been hypnotized by the evil doctor, which compelled her to call her location in to the bad guys anytime she saw a ceiling fan. I told her about Alexis collaborating with the sinister worldwide economic network run out of a cellar somewhere in California, and Sammy Jo, who is modeling jeans and sleeping with as many men as she can in order to get back at her family.
But the past few weeks, I've become so deathly bored with the Carringtons that I've been flipping instead to the classic films on Channel Four. After all, how can Linda Evans compete with Ingrid Bergman or Maja Komorowska? How can John Forsythe hold a candle to Marcello Mastroianni or Daniel Olbrychski or Bogusław Linda? Once in a while, they show something American or French or Italian, but mostly, they show all the great Polish directors: Zanussi, Kieslowski, Łozińiski, Wajda, Holland, and Polariski, even if he did do what they say with that young American girl. At least now he can forgo the humiliation of having to line up in front of the consulate on Stolarska Street and beg for a visa.
Today, somehow, Pani Bożena manages to go without a nap after obiad, and she crinkles up her nose and tries to reconcile what's on the screen with the stories I've invented.
"And John? I thought you said last week that the bad men finally ran him off the road for good. But he looks fine..."
"That's his twin."
"And Sammy Jo? Why isn't she modeling and sleeping around anymore?"
"Alexis's worldwide economic network shaved her head. She's embarrassed."
"Shaved her head?"
"No one has hair that blond. It's a wig."
"Oh, poor Sammy Jo."
My mind has been wandering to Magda the entire day. I think of her sitting under the spires and gargoyles of the law school, hunching over her exam, sweating, struggling against the thoughts in her mind, grasping for the dream just above her head, the dream of a Big Life.
I used to want a Big Life too. When I was a little girl, I'd try to see it by climbing anything I could. I'd hike up Old Baldy Hill to the old sheep camp, cling to the roof of the barn like Spider-Man, and sit up in a pine tree for hours, pressing my fingers into the pinesap, letting my mind wander for hundreds of kilometers before reeling it back in. At different times I dreamed of becoming a fire watcher, an airplane pilot, a soaring eagle, a guardian angel. Anything that would allow me to see far and wide.
"And what about the homoseksualny son?"
"What?"
"The pedał. Where is his boyfriend?"
"Oh. He met Edyta Górniak when she was on tour in the U.S. Now he's straight."
"I knew it! That Edyta Górniak. So elegancka. You know, I used to turn many a pedał straight in my day too."
But I know now there will be no Big Life for me. Even when I try to picture myself five years from now, I can't see past the Carringtons' beach house, past my days at Pani Bożena's, my nights at Stash's, my Friday afternoons at Mikro, and my weekends watching Irena and Magda bicker back and forth. At least when I was in the village I could imagine something on the horizon. Here in the city, the dreams that once swelled inside me now feel like nothing more than a dried-up little kernel rattling around, and the only thing I can see is the crumb trail of obligations leading me from one day to the next.
On Wednesday afternoon, I run into Kinga at the Square of the Invalids, also on her way to Stash's.
"Did you get Magda home okay on Saturday?" she asks.
"Yes, but she was a mess."
"When is her exam again?"
"It was Monday. I don't think she has much of a chance, though."
"Poor thing."
"Poor thing?"
"It's not her. It's the system. They make the first-year exams impossible in order to free up spots for the tuition-paying students. And that's everywhere, not just the law school. The only ones who have a chance in this pieprzony capitalism are the rich and the very well connected."
"Well, it's not like Magda really tried," I say. "You saw her on Saturday. Her mother says she's been like that all year."
"Try or no try, it wouldn't have mattered anyway," Kinga philosophizes. "It's all going to shit in the end. I'm telling you, Baba Yaga, the best option is to get out while you can."
"Who would pour the drinks then?"
"Speaking of which, did Stash find someone to replace me yet?"
"He told me he had the sign in the window for only an afternoon, and ten girls applied. But I haven't seen anyone yet." It's like that all over now. Ten girls for every job. Unemployment is ... well, unemployment is a sad story my grandmother wouldn't want me to tell, and if I did, Irena would make me mention that there was no unemployment before capitalism. And here, I would have to spit on the ground.
We knock on the window a few times and Stash comes out of the office, rubbing his eyes. He can't stand doing any of the paperwork or the inventory.
"Is there a new girl coming in?" we ask him.
"She already came in."
"When?"
"On Saturday. While you two were off at your festival."
"And?"
"Jacek caught her stealing from the kasa. Imagine. The first night."
"So is there another one?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. I think I'm going to wait until I find someone I can trust."
"I'm sorry, Stash."
"Małe piwo," he says. Small beer. "There are worse things. How was the wianki festival?"
"It was fine."
"Anyone fish your wianki out of the river?"
I shake my head.
"Don't worry, someone will." He winks at me, and I wonder how much he knows.
The heat creeps down from the street and in through the makeshift screen door that Stash built himself. By the end of the first set, Kinga and I are both sweating, and I try to keep my face dry with a few crumpled tissues. I'm much faster behind the bar than when I first started. Kinga and I have worked out an implicit choreography in our movements, and I will miss it, and her, when she's gone.
"I'll be back for the holidays," she says. "Or maybe you can come and visit me in Rome."
"That would be fun," I say, but to say the truth, Rome might as well be Mars.
She and Stash go into the office between the second and third sets, and she trades her apron for her last pay packet. When we say goodbye, we are full of kisses and ciao-ciaos, and for the rest of the night, I start to think that maybe she has it right. Maybe the only way is to leave. Even if she comes back someday, maybe by then the country will be booming, and she'll have a suitcase full of foreign currency and another language.
"Co słychać?" After the third set, he catches me off guard. His cheeks are pink, and the edge of his hair is damp.
"Not much," I say.
"How was the Festival of Virgins?"
"Fun. Crowded."
"Hmm," he says, and then he just stands there.
"Orange juice?"
He shakes his head. It's a few minutes before eleven, and he taps at his watch, the same old aluminum watch that he'll probably wear until he's a pensioner.
"The bus?" I ask.
"The bus."
"Na razie."
"Na razie."
I'm resigned. Resigned to the shelf, destined to be an old mushroom, to let my wianek disintegrate as it floats on down the Wisła, past Jubilat and out of town, never to be rescued. But as he reaches the door, he turns around, his sloping shoulders framed in the doorway.
"Listen," he says, suddenly very serious. "Listen ... I was wondering if you wanted to meet for coffee sometime. I mean, coffee, tea, beer, whatever you wanted. Well, maybe not beer. I'm sure you're sick of pouring it all day, and I don't really drink much. But maybe we can meet somewhere on the Rynek some day."
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"That would be great."
He smiles triumphantly, his misty pink complexion glowing in the low light. He must drink kefir and juice all day long. "How about Sunday then? I'm free on Sunday. In the afternoon, that is."
"Sunday's fine."
"Meet at Adas?"
"Okay," I say again. I feel like a grinning dupek.
"At three?"
"Great."
"Great." He turns away quickly and bumps into a square man who is also on his way out. "Przepraszam," he tells the man sheepishly. The screen door sticks and wobbles in the heat, and Tadeusz is careful not to look back at me as he ducks outside.
"Did he do it?" Stash comes up behind me and drops two more glasses into the sink.
"You knew?"
"I'm just glad you were finally able to put him out of his misery. He's a nice boy."
"Shy."
"Yes, shy, nervous. But you don't want the smoothest one in the room either, Baba Yaga. Ask Irena. Strike that. Don't ask Irena."
Up on the street, there's finally a cool breeze picking up. On the way home, I replay the conversation with Tadeusz over and over in my mind, substituting wittier things I could have said, thinking about what I'm going to wear on Sunday and what Nela would think of him. The only advice she ever gave me was never to marry a "But." That was just after we saw the film He Doesn't Hit Me, He Doesn't Drink, But... and I guess she had enough faith in me to know I would avoid the first two. She herself never settled. Even though my grandfather died so long ago, I would sometimes catch her standing at the clothesline or in front of the stove, still as a statue, the loneliness surfacing in her eyes. When I asked her what was wrong, she would simply smile at me and reach up and touch the soft fur of her collar, soothing whatever sad thought had come to mind.
She hardly ever talked about him directly, as if even touching him with her voice was too much sadness to bear. Growing up, I only knew that his name was Czesław, that most people called him the Pigeon, that he was a carpenter, that he had a crooked nose like mine and wore jodhpurs and a forage cap during the war. And that he wasn't a "But," because with only his memory and the one sepia photo she kept under her pillow, Nela had adamantly refused almost every man in the surrounding villages. The married ones she sent back to their wives, of course, with a slap on the face and twice as many Hail Marys as the priest would give them. The single ones she would allow to hover a safe distance away. They would chop our wood, they would butcher our chickens, they would turn over our garden, but that was the closest they would ever come to Nela's heart. After my father left, the only man who ever set foot in our house was Uncle Jakub, and that was only because he was my grandfather's brother and a half-wit, and she felt sorry for him.
Magda has been gone for three days, and the tourists are out, so the flat feels enormous with only Irena and me. When I come in, she's watching television, or rather, she's lying on the love seat with her eyes closed and her knees hugged to her chest while the television happens to be on.
"What are you watching?"
"It's stuck on the station."
She picks up the remote and slaps it against her palm, stretches her arm out, and presses hard on the buttons. Nothing happens, and neither of us gets up to change the channel. It's a contest called Mister Poland, and at the moment, the contestants are giving interviews in front of a fake meadow, smiling coyly at the interviewer and trying too hard to be funny. Irena leans her head back on the arm of the love seat and closes her eyes again.
"Guess what, Irena," I say.
"Unless you won the Toto Lotek, save it for tomorrow."
"What's the matter?"
"I have my damn period again. I must be the oldest woman on earth with her period still. Cholera jasna."
"Can I get you anything? Tea maybe?"
"How about a new daughter? That głupia gęś failed her exams. And she knew she would. That's why she hasn't been home. Pani Kulikowska told me. She probably doesn't even care. She's probably shacked up with that little boy as we speak, forgetting that she ever wanted to be a prosecutor in the first place."
It's on the tip of my tongue to tell her about Magda, about Żaba and Ruda Zdzira, that she was just preoccupied for the exam, and she will surely pass the last-chance exams in September. But I don't say it. I swallow the truth, and it sits as a lump in my throat. Because the more important truth is that I'm relieved that Magda has failed the exam. I'm the responsible daughter, and Magda, the prodigal one. I am the one that Irena prefers, maybe not the star, but the understudy who always comes through. Nela would be ashamed of me for even thinking this.
Irena sighs. "Two years lost," she laments. "She can't even get into a new program for next year now. Two years lost because of a stupid boy."
She cocks one eye open. "What were you going to tell me?"
"What?"
"You came in and said 'Guess what?'"
"Oh. Tadeusz asked me out. The klarnecista I told you about."
"That's great," she says, completely without enthusiasm.
"We're meeting on Sunday."
She doesn't answer. She watches the young men on the screen with their highlighted hair, strutting down the runway in tight swimming costumes and tank tops.
"You know what?" she says.
I lean forward. "What?"
"I should have voted for the damn communists. This crap would have never happened under the damn communists."
I don't know if she means Magda or Mister Poland. Maybe it's all the same.