By the end of July, Tadeusz and I have fallen into a routine. He meets me after Pani Bożena's on Fridays and we go to Mikro together. On Sundays, we meet at a milk bar near Nowy Kleparz. Our conversations are always the same. Always about the future—his future as a klarnecista—as if every time we mention it, we are incubating the idea with the warmth of our breath. And then afterward, he walks me back to Irena's, where he continues to assassinate me with small pecks on the lips. Like Chinese water torture, Irena adds.
It's been almost a month since Magda left, and Irena grows increasingly agitated with each passing day.
"I can't believe that głupia panienka is shacking up with that Frog. Who knows, she could even be married or knocked up by now. At twenty. Well, that's a fine life for you. And after everything I've tried to do for her."
"Irena, you don't know that she's pregnant. Or even with Żaba for that matter."
"If she isn't with that little boy, then why doesn't she come home?"
"Maybe she's afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Maybe of what you would say about her failing her exam?"
"Afraid? Magda has never been afraid of anything in her life, certainly not of my opinion. She would do better to have some fear of something. Of having a dead-end future, for example."
We are silent for a minute. She looks up at me from the love seat. "What? Say it."
"It's not my business."
"Say it."
"I don't know. Do you think that maybe it's possible that you are too hard on her sometimes?"
Irena laughs. "Of course I'm hard on her! If I wasn't, she wouldn't have gotten this far. Let me tell you, she would have never even made it through primary school or liceum without me pushing her constantly."
"But maybe for the exam you were on her head too much sometimes?"
"Maybe the problem was that I wasn't on her head enough. Phooh! Maybe that's why your entire generation is so damn apathetic," she continues, "because you don't have anyone trying to push you in the opposite direction."
"We're not all apathetic."
"Yes, you are. At least half of you. The other half are too busy squandering all their freedom on the moment."
"Well, maybe that's not apathy. Maybe we're just paralyzed by too many choices."
"That's ridiculous," Irena says. "There's no such thing as too many choices. You just pick one and live with it."
She sits back on the love seat and turns on the television. "I don't care anymore anyway. It's her life, let her mess it up."
"Except you do care."
"No, I don't."
"Then why do you sit here grumbling about it every night?"
"And who taught you to talk back to me?"
"You did."
"Yes. I did. And if you remember that was only after weeks of pushing you until you pushed back. And that is exactly what I'm trying to do for Magda."
A man with white hair fanning out of his nostrils appears in the doorway.
"Excuse. Excuse. Sorry. You half Tee? Kamillentee?"
"Yes, yes." Irena smiles broadly. "I make you. I bring you to room. To Zimmer. Your wife too want?"
"Ja, ja. Wife too. Danke. You will door close?"
"Yes. Door close," Irena says.
The old man smiles and closes the door on his own beaming face.
"Damn brownshirts," Irena mutters.
I get up from the chair, click my heels together, and give the Nazi salute. "I'll get it," I say, but Irena doesn't even crack a smile.
"That's okay." She pulls herself up off the love seat.
"Irena, really, sit. I'll get it."
"No, you won't." She pushes past me.
"What was that for?" I follow her into the kitchen. She lights the stove and bangs the kettle on the burner.
"I said I'll get it."
"But why did you just push me?"
"Today it's tea. Tomorrow it's ironing their sheets. Next year you will be standing at the station waiting for the trains."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Everything."
"But you do that."
"I was built for it."
"Maybe I was built for it too."
"No. I've already raised one permanent bar girl, I won't be responsible for another." She purses her lips together like a child refusing to swallow.
"Irena, I know you're upset about Magda, but..."
"Magda. You. Your whole generation. You have freedoms we only dreamed about. The whole world is open to you, and what are you doing with it? You go to the same mediocre jobs every day and sit around my living room."
"Maybe this is the life I want."
"Then you suffer from a lack of imagination."
The kettle whistles, and Irena arranges two glasses of hot water on an aluminum tray along with two new tea bags, the sugar bowl, a saucer, and two spoons. She carries the tray to the door of the guest room and knocks gently.
"Oh, danke, thank you."
"Pleasure my."
"Wait, wait, my wife, she have Fragen. Tourist Fragen."
Irena invites them into the living room, and a minute later, they are caught up in the rat-a-tat-tat of English, of Auschwitz and St. Mary's Church, tram routes, restaurants and cafés. Irena is smiling at the Germans so widely, it looks as if her face just might split. They stay for half an hour while I sit politely on the love seat, and when they leave, we immediately make up the ottoman and the love seat and get into bed. Irena shifts and clears her throat a few times as she always does right before she falls asleep. She's never talked to me the way she has tonight, and I guess I'm waiting for her to smooth things over, just as my mother did when there was an argument in the house.
"You know something, don't you?"
I shift on the ottoman. "What do you mean?"
"You know something about Magda." Her eyes are leveled at me in the darkness.
"What makes you say that?"
She doesn't say anything. She lets her eyes do all the work.
"Okay," I say quietly. "She's not at Żaba's. She's not even with him anymore."
"What else?"
"They broke up a couple of days before the exam. He cheated on her with one of her friends, and she was really upset, and she knew she was going to fail. That's why she hasn't been home."
"And all this time, I've been worried sick. Where is she then?"
"Please don't tell her I told you. I swore I wouldn't say anything."
"I don't care what you swore. Where is she?"
"At her friend's. At Monika's."
"Monika, the one who also studies law?"
"Yes."
Irena turns over to face the wall. "Głupia gęś."
"What?"
"I just called you a głupia gęś. Don't you understand? She only told you because she thought you would tell me. And instead, you've let an entire month go by."
"I'm sorry, Irena."
She doesn't answer.
"I said I'm sorry, Irena."
I press my back against the wall and feel the pressure of it against my whole body. I want to feel enclosed again, protected, safe, as I was in the village. I wrap the blanket tightly around me, and I try to comfort myself by thinking about Tadeusz, but the loneliness that has opened up inside me is bigger than one person can fill. I try to soothe myself by listening to the breathing of the flat—the wheel of the electric meter, the creaking of the floor above, Irena shifting and sighing a few meters away—but it only makes me feel more alone, as if from here to the love seat is the greatest distance in the world.
She's already gone when I get up in the morning. Stash can tell something is wrong as soon as I walk in the door that afternoon.
"What's eating you?" he asks.
"Do you happen to know a babcia with a room for rent?"
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I think I might have to move."
I tell him everything, and he just listens. When Stash listens, you can tell that he's really listening to you and not just making faces.
When I'm finished, he smiles calmly. "Did she actually tell you to leave?"
"No."
"Listen, I'm sure she said some things she regrets now. I'm sure by the time you get home, everything will be in the past for her. You know she does everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, and that includes getting angry and getting over it."
I hope he's right. As I'm walking home that night, I prepare what I'm going to say. I'm sorry, Irena. I should have told you. If you don't want me to live here anymore, I will understand. I try to follow the trail of ifs in my mind if I have to move out, but I can't bring myself to imagine Irena's absence, just like I could have never imagined her presence in my life a few months ago.
I see the glow in the window from the Street of Kazimierz the Great, and I imagine her sitting on the love seat reading one of her newsmagazines. My heart starts to beat faster. The conversation I have been methodically laying out in my head all the way home starts to cramp and knot together. When I come in, though, the living room door is closed, and I hear low voices.
"Baba Yaga, is that you?" Irena calls when she hears the front door open. "Baba Yaga, chodź tu."
I hang up my rucksack, change into my house slippers, and open the door of the living room. Magda is there. She's sitting next to Irena on the love seat, her eyes swollen from crying, her head resting on Irena's shoulder while Irena strokes her hair.
"Cześć."
"Cześć."
I stand there for a minute in the doorway, not knowing what to do. I've never seen them not arguing.
"Come. Sit," Irena says.
"I don't want to interrupt."
"It's okay," she says.
"I think I'm going to bed anyway," Magda says. "Dobranoc." I stand aside to let her pass.
"Dobranoc," Irena answers.
I sit down in the armchair by the door, but Irena has already started changing into her pajamas, so I stand up and start preparing the ottoman.
"And how was Stash's tonight?" she asks.
"Fine." I try to remember everything that I had rehearsed on the way home, but only one thing surfaces. "Irena, I'll move out if you want me to."
"Why in the world would I want you to move out?"
"I just thought you might."
"Well, don't think then." She snaps a sheet over her head and lets it drift down onto the love seat.
"But, Irena, I feel terrible that I lied to you."
"Good. But you also told me the truth. Magda and I had a long talk today. A long talk. And I talked to Monika's mother too. And do you know what she was doing the entire time she was gone? The entire time that I was not getting on her head?"
"What?"
"Studying."
"Studying?"
"Every day. The whole day."
"For what?"
"For the last-chance exams in September."
"You really think she has a chance to pass after she's failed them once?"
Irena turns around and gives me a strange look. She pulls the duvet from the wardrobe and tosses it on top of the sheet. "Well, maybe it will be my biggest stupidity of all to believe she can."
"I'm really sorry I lied to you, Irena. And if you ever want me to move out, you can just tell me."
Irena stops her motion and puts her hands on her hips. "Baba Yaga, did your grandmother ever tell you about the day she fought off a Nazi skurwysyn who was trying to rape my mother?"
"No."
"Did she ever tell you about how your grandfather shot the Soviet skurwysyn who was trying to burn down the house with my parents and me inside?"
"No."
"Well, you're not going anywhere." She turns out the light and gets into bed. I can just make out her silhouette across the room, and this time, she's facing me.