IT WAS A WHISPER of a knock, fingers rather than a fist, as though lightly drummed on a table. Anna turned over, still half in a dream of swimming. She often had the same dream: dropped into an ocean, a cold one, but turquoise like a summer shore. She knew somehow that her children were with her, but she could never find them among the waves. She’d drop her head below the surface of the water, trying to see their legs kicking. She would realise that she had to swim home. In her dream, home was always her father’s house, never her own. Anna turned over a silk-covered pillow, heard the rain outside. The fingers rapped again. She opened her eyes, watched the door without urgency. It was the dead of night. The servants wouldn’t wake her unless for some drama, and this was a polite, hesitant sound. Adam opened the door, skulked through with the slow, deliberate movements of one awake in a sleeping room. He was always considerate. She watched him through the fringes of her eyelashes. He was looking for something on her writing desk by the window. In the dim light from the lamps outside, she saw that he was fully dressed.
‘You’re not going into the office at this time of night?’ she murmured, her voice gravelled by sleep.
He turned and peered at her; bent over and thin, he looked like the gaunt figure of a spectre. ‘I’m sorry to wake you,’ he whispered. Do you have our identity papers and passports in here? They aren’t in the study.’
She sat up. ‘What? Where are you going?’
‘Do you have them?’
‘No, why would I? They should be with Robert.’
Adam turned and went to her dresser, his face flashing white in the mirror. He began rifling through the objects on it, and opening and closing drawers.
‘Adam! I said I don’t have them. Come here.’
Anna switched on a light, wincing at the loss of the dark. She rubbed her eyes, still under the lull of sleep and its disordered thoughts. It took her a moment to look at him, obediently sitting on her bed, and reach out her hand.
‘What is this? I told you not to be afraid. What, are we all going to run away, like in a children’s book?’
He wasn’t looking at her. She saw that he had taken the time to wax his beard and moustache, and smelled aftershave on him.
‘Come on, take your shoes off.’ She lay back, ready to have him lie in her arms, stroke his hair like a small child. It had been like this one or two nights a week since Kristallnacht. But he had always come to her straightaway, and not dressed or distracted like this, not talking about leaving. His weakness infuriated her but she would stay calm to keep peace in the house, and besides, he looked so sad and small.
Adam stayed still, looking at the space where her offered hand had been.
‘Adam.’ She spoke sternly, from fear that he was becoming, as her mother would say, soft in the head. ‘You didn’t come in here to look for papers. You want me to calm you down, and I will, but then you must stop this nonsense. It isn’t manly or right. Do you understand?’
He took a breath, and then addressed the wall. ‘I’m going to France. Edie has had a baby. She sent a telegram.’
Anna sat up then, fully awake. She fiddled with a loose thread on the coverlet, snapped it off. She visited the tiny space she allowed Edie in her mind for a moment, where the French girl slept cramped and small.
‘You must go to her then. She’s very young and it’s her first. She’s probably afraid.’
‘Anna, you’re too good.’ He ignored the jab about Edie’s age.
‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’
‘I knew I didn’t deserve you.’ He took her hand as though to kiss it.
‘You impossibly stupid man,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘Didn’t you know she was expecting?’
He looked stung. ‘I did. I think he’s early.’
This broke through the thin layer of calm she had swiftly constructed. ‘We agreed you would tell me,’ she said, snatching her hand away as he reached for her.
‘I know. Only when I’m here, it all seems …’ he was getting into danger now, so he opted for a boyish shrug. ‘I know it isn’t ideal,’ he continued. ‘I would rather not leave you all here.’
‘And it’s a boy?’
He gave a tiny smile, again to the wall. ‘Yes.’
‘I see,’ she said, and the bitterness in her voice made his stomach shrink with fear. This could be too far. He could lose everything.
‘There’s no question of it changing anything for Alicia, you understand. I mean in terms of inheritance, or … I would never—’
‘Nor Karolina?’
‘Nor Karolina, though I always think she’ll take care of herself, she’s so clever. I think Stefan imagines her as president of the university one day. Well,’ he went on after a pause, ‘I’ll ask Robert about the papers.’
He kissed her hand, and she felt a coolness in her heart, imagining the girl in bed like this, sitting up, her baby on display in her arms, her baby son, waiting to be kissed. When Adam moved to kiss her lips, she turned away.
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘A few weeks.’
He kissed her arm where she had turned slightly from him.
‘Aneczka, I love you. There’s no question of me leaving you, ever, ever. You know that.’ She gave a tiny nod, her humiliation seeming like a buzzing in her head.
He paused at the door. ‘Will you indulge me, and not take the girls into the city while I’m gone? Just visits from Jozef and Stefan.’
She stared at him, a small smile on her face. ‘Well that will certainly indulge Karolina, who likes to imagine she’s living in a novel. Perhaps I should lock them in a dungeon?’
‘Be reasonable. I don’t want you all walking around Kraków. Remember what Milo—’
‘We all agreed he’s a bitter little nobody,’ she said. ‘Adam, for goodness sake, please find some bones in your spine. I know I didn’t marry this jellyfish of a person. Off you go to France and we’ll be fine. Robert is with us, and we live in the best neighbourhood in the city. I won’t be shut away.’
It was late, the house asleep. Even the servants’ chatter and rush had calmed. Alicia’s dresses were wrapped in tissue paper and packed into large trunks, ready for Janie to pick out, air and press the ones for wearing that week. Inside each tissue fold was a cloth bag stuffed with lavender or cloves. When she opened the first trunk she’d thought to tear at them all, ripping the tissue and laying the dresses on her bed, like Mama in preparation for a trip. Instead she found pleasure in holding each package up to the lamplight, trying to see what colour lay inside, and carefully unfolding the envelope-like ends to reveal the fabric inside if it seemed, as Jozef had said, bright.
Alicia felt by instinct that the fabric also mattered, though Jozef hadn’t mentioned it. The texture of these things must matter too, even the imagined texture, as a way to absorb or reflect the light, but also to make layers of weight. She sat back on her heels, on the floor next to the trunk, thinking. She closed her eyes. The heavy curtains would be behind her, the window to her left. There her hand would rest on the window ledge, cool and smooth to the touch, the white paint. But Jozef had said these things would melt away to leave only the light and her figure. So it wouldn’t be the view of the Wawel at all, but a kind of blank backdrop. She opened her eyes. It would need to be a rich, heavy fabric too, rich and deep like the colour. Otherwise the whole image would be too weightless, fly away from the canvas, be a failure.
Around her, there were small stirrings in the house, the creak of feet on floorboards. Alicia glanced at the windows, where the darkness was still absolute, too early for the servants to wake again. Since her birthday she had imagined intruders, mobs, violence in the rooms full of their pretty furniture and glass ornaments. Blood on the carpets. The intruders wore the face of the man on the steps. Her door opened.
‘Oh dear, what’s this, a midnight tantrum?’
Her Papa leaned against the doorway, his arms folded, slightly bowed in his usual way, always cramped by the scale of rooms. He was gesturing to the floor, where despite her careful unwrapping, layers of tissue and abandoned clothes lay in piles, as though thrown there in rage. He wasn’t dressed for sleep – the dressing gown he sometimes wore on days of no visitors was not flung around his shoulders – but as though for the office: suit trousers, a jacket, a scarf.
She steadied her breathing. ‘No, Papa.’
‘Now Janie will have to clear this up.’
‘No, Papa, I’ll do it.’
She moved to sit on the edge of her bed as he came into the room.
‘And why are you up so late?’
‘I need to find—’
He waved away her words. ‘I’m glad. I came to give you a kiss as you slept, but now we can say goodbye properly. I’m going away for a few weeks. What present would you like me to bring back?’ He sat next to her on the bed.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, business. France again. Do you want a dress or a new coat? Gloves?’
‘Why are you leaving in the middle of the night?’
‘Oh, and why is my Ala unpacking all of her dresses in the middle of the night? Are you running away too?’ He laughed.
Alicia looked around at the dresses. ‘I will tidy them away.’
Adam gestured at the piles of fabric all around them. ‘Poor little Ala, with nothing to wear! You’re like your Mama, she never has enough clothes.’
‘I need something for the painting, Papa.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s important.’
‘Well, all right, I’ll bring you a French dress, something pretty. But you know I won’t be home for a few weeks, and I was hoping to be hanging up your new portrait by then.’
Her eyes slid away. ‘Oh, no, that’s too long.’
‘Yes?’
‘Gloves are fine.’ She was eyeing the dresses again, trying to see the glint of something, like a bird seeking out silver fish in a river.
Adam watched her for a few seconds. ‘Are you cross that I’m going away again?’
‘No, I don’t mind.’ She slid off the bed and began picking through the dresses.
‘Oh!’ he clutched at his heart, laughing. ‘Your poor Papa!’
Alicia laughed, but only for a moment. ‘Papa, I want the painting to be very good. It’s important.’
‘Córeczka, it really isn’t. I only want a pretty picture of you. It’s not for you to be … worried about! Don’t you know you should never worry about anything at all?’ He pulled her gently from her listless picking at the fabrics, into an embrace. Alicia breathed in his smell of cigars and the rich buttery cream he put into his red beard, which tickled the side of her neck as she clung to him. ‘Don’t you know that?’ he repeated, holding her back again, by the arms, and searching her face.
‘Do you worry?’ she asked, instead of answering.
He shrugged. ‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘Alicia, what is there to worry about? Everything is all right.’
‘But my birthday.’
He stood up, releasing her. ‘That was nothing, Ala. Please, we shouldn’t talk about it.’ He looked at her again. ‘Is there something else?’
She shook her head. What else was there, but the blood on the ice, that man’s sneering face?
‘Then I’ll say goodbye. Be a good girl.’ He kissed the top of her head, gave her nose a squeeze. ‘I’ll see the painting when I’m back. Be good for Jozef and for your Mama and Janie. Jozef tells me you’ve been very good.’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘Alicia.’
‘Yes?’
‘I mean it, no more of this sulkiness. Be happy and light-hearted. It’s no good, this worrying. You are not to worry, understand?’
She looked at him blankly. He was stooping to look into her face, his hands in his pockets. His face looked thinner than usual in the low light. Alicia said, ‘I understand, Papa, of course I won’t worry. Bon voyage en France.’ She found a face to match the lie: open, wide eyes, an easy smile.
‘Your accent’s getting better,’ he said, relaxing and smiling at her. ‘Merci. À bientôt, ma chérie.’
He blew her a kiss, and pulled the door closed behind him gently. Alicia listened to his footsteps on the stairs, heard the low murmur of Robert’s voice, the heavy front door opening and closing. She glanced around her room, its familiar contours and shapes, the dresser with its mirror, the dolls, the boxes of hats and shoes, a few books on a small, painted shelf. Everything was the same as always, and her Papa said she was not to worry, that he wasn’t worried. But she’d felt the grip of his hands on her shoulders that night, crouching in the ice, and heard the way his voice had sharpened in the weeks afterwards, and too many parties, always gathering, drinking. He was worried, and now he was gone.