‘Why don’t you join us,’ Ira said. ‘We were just going for drinks. It’ll give you two old buddies a chance to catch up.’
I shook my head quickly. Though it had been my very intention to somehow insinuate myself into their company, now the opportunity had arisen I felt ashamed; the thought of going for drinks horrified me. Ira opened the door of the Tatra for Rachael. He held it while she lingered.
‘Come on,’ she said quietly.
Mutely, I got into the car, feeling my legs sticky against the soft cream leather of the seats.
We drove to a quiet restaurant on Giedyminowska, not far from my aunt’s. It was early evening, the city was quiet but for the small groups of young communists exultantly wandering the streets. Ira laughed at them good-humouredly. I considered telling him Fisk’s views on his capitalist activities, but did not. At the restaurant Ira drank German schnapps and ordered champagne for his wife.
‘What are you drinking, Steponas?’
Since arriving in Wilno I had drunk little other than cheap vodka, but I indicated that I would join him with the schnapps. He raised his glass and we drank a toast to old friends. I struggled to keep the irony from my voice. Rachael sat in silence as Ira chatted, regaling me with his opinions on the Soviet occupation. We had not been sitting long before Ira glanced at the smart watch on his thick wrist. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Got to be going,’ he said. ‘I’m running late.’ He stood up and leant over to Rachael. ‘Why don’t you stay and chat?’ he said, kissing her briefly on the cheek. He shook my hand warmly, looking me in the eye. ‘Nice meeting you, Steponas.’
As he passed I smelt the subtle scent of his aftershave. Rachael studiously inspected the champagne she had scarcely tasted.
‘I should go too,’ I said. The schnapps was sweet and I found it quite undrinkable after the samogonas.
I had risen from my chair before she spoke.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not looking up from the champagne.
‘What do you have to be sorry for?’ I replied, belligerently.
‘Just sorry,’ she said. She looked up. ‘Sorry for this whole mess.’
‘It doesn’t look such a mess for you.’
‘You think you are the only one to feel anything?’ she said. ‘Do you think that I never felt anything? What was I supposed to do, would you like to tell me that? Would you like to tell me why what I did was so wrong?’
‘I loved you,’ I said petulantly.
‘And I loved you, Steponas. But we were children. We were playing. This is not a world for children. I don’t know whether you noticed but there are soldiers in the streets. They are Russians and God knows what that will mean for us, but, thank God, at least they are not the Germans. And still, if it were not for the war, this is Poland. I am a Jew and you are not. What are you asking for? I don’t understand.’
‘How can you be so cold?’ I dropped back into my chair, opposite her. ‘You reason about love and then just cut it from your heart?’
‘Ach, you are a poet! What is reason to you? But do you remember where your poetry led, Steponas? Reason is important. Maybe for you there is more room for risk, but I do not want to sit up at nights cradling my children, fearing for what might happen to them. I fear life without reason. I fear your poetry and all you poets. You are dangerous.’
She looked at me furiously, filled, perhaps, with the resentment she had felt the night of the poetry competition when she had sat holding her young cousin, listening to the jeers of drunken village men outside her window. I regarded her, stony faced. Shamed but bitter. She reached out her hand and rested it on my own.
‘You’re right,’ I relented.
‘Sometimes I wonder,’ she said, half burying her face in her hands. ‘I mean, I wonder if there is right and wrong. I have such dreams at night. I have such fears for the future.’
‘Things will turn out fine.’
‘I pray to God.’
‘Ira seems confident. He doesn’t seem to be worried about the communists.’
Rachael smiled. ‘Ira is incurably confident.’
‘He seems like a nice man, anyway,’ I said morosely.
‘He is a good man, Steponas. He is kind and hardworking.’
‘And rich.’
The corner of her mouth screwed up. ‘How did you get so cynical? Is that how the poets must be here?’ She regarded me disparagingly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said and paused. ‘Rachael, the things I would like to say just don’t come out. I’m afraid. My friend read me a poem, he said it reminded him of me: “I shall stand with him there, a stray wanderer, and silently we shall yearn”. I am afraid of being that – a stray wanderer, forever outside the window.’
She placed her hand on mine again and smiled faintly.
‘I used to enjoy the talks we had,’ she said. ‘I miss them.’
‘Me too.’
‘Maybe you will come for dinner with us one day? Ira would be pleased, I am sure.’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
Rachael pulled a jacket across her shoulders. ‘I have to go,’ she said. I nodded. She turned and waved, briefly, as she left the restaurant. I downed the schnapps with a grimace and ordered vodka. Rachael’s champagne stood barely touched, a semi-circle of her red lipstick printed at its rim from where she had sipped at it. I rubbed it, smudging the lipstick onto my finger. I brought it up to my own lips and tasted it. Sweet.