Á Sophie,
Pour que tu puisses toujours me retrouver.
Sta
No one spoke in the car. Rebecca drove along St. Clair Avenue back to Sarah’s house, the only sounds the engine humming, the radio buzzing beneath comprehension. The sun hung behind them, its heat receding in the late afternoon. It amazed Rebecca how the street, the sky with its high elusive clouds, looked the same as before. Nothing had changed: women shoppers still laughed on the sidewalks, kids licked ice cream cones in the shade of awnings.
Saturday afternoon traffic bunched up in Little Italy heading toward Dufferin Street. A red light stopped them at every block; pedestrians crossed laden with grocery bags.
Every now and then she glanced in the rearview mirror: Natalka gazed out the window with a blank stare.
Rebecca drove mechanically, the street, the stores a blur, the only clarity Michael at the bottom of the pool, her jumping in, kicking, kicking in slow motion to get to him, his hair floating around his dead face.
She pulled into Sarah’s driveway, thankful for the automatic impulses that had kicked in to get them home. Sarah rushed out of the car and ran ahead to unlock the front door. Natalka, in no hurry, trailed inside after Rebecca.
“Halina!” Sarah called out at the foot of the stairs leading to the bedrooms.
No reply.
She climbed the stairs, Natalka watching. Rebecca took a quick look around from where she stood: everything appeared as they had left it.
After a minute Sarah returned to the top of the stairs. “She’s not here.”
Natalka sighed and began to climb; Rebecca followed.
Sarah had given them a room with a queen-sized bed. A valise stood in a corner. Everything looked in order.
“She’s gone!” Sarah said, puzzlement in her voice.
Natalka stared at the made bed, her hands clasped in front of her. Wisps of white hair trailed from the bun at the back, framed her face.
“There’re no signs of a struggle anywhere,” Rebecca said. “Did she take anything with her? Some clothes?”
Natalka’s small, elegant head trembled on the stalk of neck, her bravura gone. She had turned very pale.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, are any of the bags gone?”
Natalka glanced at the valise. “The smaller one is inside the bigger one.”
Rebecca thought of all the years of squeezing together into a small space, the accommodation that must have become instinct in Poland.
“What did your mother say on the phone?”
“At Michael’s. You called her.”
Natalka sat down on the bed, staring into the distance. “She was upset. She was shocked.”
“Did she say she was going somewhere?”
“My mother is genius at having secrets. She’s Communist, after all. But I suspected something wrong. I just didn’t know what.”
“Why would she leave?” Rebecca asked.
“She was afraid,” said Natalka.
“Of what?”
She shrugged.
“What did she say on the phone?”
Natalka lowered her eyes, embarrassed. “We live in country where one must have suspicion to survive.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘If he killed Michael, I am next.’”
Rebecca and Sarah exchanged glances.
“Did you tell her it was an accident?” Rebecca said.
“She would not be convinced.”
“Did she say who she thought it might be?”
Natalka opened her mouth to answer when a pounding exploded at the door downstairs.
Sarah ran to answer it. The others followed.
Janek rushed into the living room out of breath, arms flailing. “Where is she?”
Without waiting for an answer he marched through the first floor into the kitchen, the den, his heavy footfalls resounding in the house. He retraced his steps to stand before them again, his fire hydrant body undisguised in the blue sports jacket.
“She’s not here,” Rebecca said with a firmness just short of rude.
He glared at her, his thick neck twisting to the stairs. “I’ll find her!” he growled.
With surprising energy for a body that stout, he jumped up the stairs.
“Now just a minute… !” Rebecca began.
The three women ran up after him. They watched from the hall as he trundled from room to room on his stubby legs, his jowls shaking with each step. Then he found the room with the luggage and his focus shifted.
Without hesitation he began pulling out drawers in the dresser, the nightstand, rifling through the clothes.
“I’m calling the police,” Rebecca said. She turned to leave the room.
Natalka put a firm hand on her arm. “Please,” she said. “Don’t.”
He picked up the valise and unzipped it. A smaller piece of luggage lay inside. He unzipped that too but it was empty. Disgusted, he threw it aside and surveyed the women, the mess he’d made, the drawers hanging out with sleeves and bras trailing over the sides.
“Where is it?” he demanded.
Now what? thought Rebecca.
“Excuse me?” Natalka asked.
“Don’t play stupid,” he said. “The compass. I know she brought it. So where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying!” he shouted.
Natalka jumped at the sudden blast.
“We had an agreement!” he yelled. “I gave her money for the trip and she was supposed to bring it for us.”
“For Michael,” Natalka said quietly.
He sneered. “Oh, so now if Michael’s dead, she thinks that’s it? She doesn’t have to give it to me?”
Natalka didn’t react.
“Maybe she killed him.”
Natalka’s eyes widened slightly, but she was in control. “You know her better than that.”
Rebecca couldn’t stand by any longer. “It was an accident,” she said. “Michael drowned.”
He narrowed his eyes, as if she were a naive child.
“Mama was still here when we left for Michael’s house,” Natalka said. “She was exhausted from the whole night out. She didn’t come back before dawn.” She watched him until he fidgeted, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
He stepped up to Natalka and grasped her arm tightly in his hand. “You tell her it’s mine! If she thinks anything different — I’ll find her.”
Natalka pulled away from his grip, rubbing her arm. He glowered at them, then stamped down the stairs. The front door slammed.
The three women stood in the sudden silence that followed the echo of the door. Rebecca turned to Natalka, trying to frame a question that wouldn’t upset her. Natalka saved her the effort.
“Mama was desperate to help me. She did nothing wrong.”
“What is this compass he wants?” Sarah asked.
Natalka sat down on the bed and winced, her shoulders slouching forward. Rebecca knew the enlarged spleen would be tender. Natalka sighed before speaking.
“I have to explain. Mama knew Michael’s aunt in Kraków. They kept in contact until the aunt died about ten years ago. Aunt Klara. She lost her family in the war, Michael went to Canada, so she took interest in us. She told Mama stories of the family, they came from very noble people. She told her about compass. It belonged to family once, but then ended up in museum in Kraków. She said it proved who they really were. When Klara died, Mama wrote Michael to break news to him. They began correspondence. He told her about his book, how he was trying find out information on his family. When we found out I was sick, when Mama realized we must come to the west, she offered compass to Michael.”
“In exchange for bringing you here?” Rebecca asked.
Natalka nodded. “Michael was willing to pay for tickets, and we could stay in building Janek owned, but the treatment, doctors… only Janek could afford such costs.”
“But the compass was in a museum, you said? Did she offer it under false pretenses? Never really intending to bring it?”
Natalka blinked at Rebecca, glanced at Sarah. “Again, I must explain,” she said. “Remember Mama works for Orbis, she arranges for workers’ travel? She has other duties also — she arranges visas.” Natalka stopped and watched them as if assessing their reaction to an important detail.
“You probably know travel restricted in Poland. The government afraid people not come back. Someone who prepares visas has much power. She… befriended… one of cleaners in the museum. Czartoryski Museum. Very well regarded museum in Kraków. From collection begun by Czartoryski family in eighteenth century. Anyway, this cleaner very unhappy. She had son who escaped to the west and she wanted see his children. So Mama promised her visa.”
“In exchange for the compass,” said Rebecca.
“You must understand — it was not on display. It was lying in carton in storage like thousands of other objects. They don’t have room to put out everything. No one would miss it.”
“So it’s here?” Sarah said.
Natalka drew her arm across her abdomen and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Rebecca asked.
She opened her eyes, gave Rebecca a hint of a nod.
“Maybe she took it, I don’t know.”
Natalka rubbed her eyes. “She hid it soon after we arrive. You were in kitchen.”
“Then it must be in the living room,” Sarah said
Natalka looked down at her feet, pressed her arm tightly against her stomach.
Rebecca waited through a moment of silence, until all hope of a response had died. She touched Sarah’s arm lightly and led her to the door.
“Let’s let Natalka get some rest,” she said. Over her shoulder she added, “You should lie down and take a nap.”
She closed the door to the bedroom and led Sarah down the stairs.
They stood in the centre of the living room glancing around.
“She might’ve told me where it was in a few more minutes,” Sarah said.
“She wouldn’t betray her mother.”
“I left them in here that first day,” said Sarah, lifting up the sofa cushions, poking around under the coffee table.
“That burglary the other night,” Rebecca said, watching her mother-in-law checking out nooks and crannies. “Maybe that’s what they were looking for.”
Sarah straightened up, blinking at her. “If Halina isn’t back tomorrow I’m calling the police.”
Rebecca began to examine the room more carefully. “Whoever the intruder was, he didn’t find what he was looking for.”
“How do you know?”
“Natalka said maybe her mother took it. That means it was still here after the break-in.”
“The bookcases were turned upside-down,” Sarah said looking around the room.
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t put it there,” Rebecca said.
She began with the top shelf of the first bookcase, pulling out two books at a time to check if anything was stashed behind. She went along the row of books methodically, then down to the next shelf.
Sarah watched for a minute before parking herself in front of the second case. She began to pull out two books at a time, checking behind. There were four cases, two with doors enclosing the bottom shelves, which made them harder to search.
Sarah groaned as she crouched down to go through the bottom of the fourth case.
“Go sit down,” Rebecca said. “I’ll finish this one.”
“You know you’re an old woman when people tell you to sit down.” But she obeyed, wobbling to the sofa.
After a moment, she carefully pushed herself off and bent down to kneel in front of the chesterfield, peering beneath it. She placed her hand under its flat skirt and moved along the length of it on her knees. Disappointed, she stood up with a groan, smoothing out her skirt.
“You’re right. I’m too old for this,” she said.
Nevertheless she stepped behind the couch and took hold of the damask curtains, giving them a shake.
Rebecca sighed out loud and fell, exhausted, into the couch. Sarah plopped down beside her.
“I give up,” Sarah said. “Maybe it isn’t here.”
“Never give up.”
“But we’ve looked everywhere.”
“Not everywhere.”
Sarah followed her gaze across the room. They both approached the piano on tiptoes.
Sarah lifted the mahogany lid and propped it open. They both craned their necks to survey the workings inside, the felted levers that controlled the keys — not an inch was wasted. There were no gaps that could hold anything bigger than a finger.
Rebecca groped blindly beneath the keyboard, her fingers searching for hollows. Unsatisfied with that method, she crawled under the piano on her knees, ducking her head between her shoulder blades. She looked up at the unstained wooden framework. First one side, then the other. The wooden support beneath the keyboard stopped before it reached the end on the far left, forming a little cavity. She held her breath and thrust in her hand. Something moved. Her fingers touched something small and velvety.
“Do you see anything?” Sarah said, her voice floating from above.
Rebecca wrapped her fingers around the object and pulled. The gap in the wood was irregular, and it took several tries before she managed to coax the thing from its resting place.
When she emerged from under the piano she held in her hand a dark blue velvet bag pulled tight with a drawstring. Something hard-edged was inside.
“So let’s see already,” Sarah said.
She followed Rebecca to the dining table, where she deposited the bag.
“Michael said this thing would change the history books.”
Sarah glanced at her with impatience. “Well then, let’s have a look.”
Rebecca loosened the drawstring, opening the bag. She reached in and drew out an octagonal gold box, about three inches long, trimmed with the most brilliant blue lapis lazuli she had ever seen.
“Wow!” she said.
Sarah took in a sudden breath.
The blue, which ran along the side panels and edging on the lid, seemed lit from within, an extraordinary blue like a twilight sky or a lake during a summer storm.
Rebecca lifted the lid. On a bed of purple velvet lay a small silver instrument, coffin-shaped, with roman numerals etched around the border in black.
“Why it’s a little sundial,” Rebecca said.
“And a compass,” Sarah added.
A round glass eye took up half of the instrument. Inside, a tiny needle hovered at “Nord.” A triangular piece of metal decorated like a bird lay attached across the length of the instrument, its narrow end pointing to the compass.
“This looks very old,” Sarah said.
She lifted the thing out of its bed of velvet, then slowly drew up the bit of metal lying across it, so that it sat perpendicular to the base, the beak of the silver bird pointing to numbers ranging from forty to sixty. A shade fell across the black etched numerals.
Sarah turned it over. The back held the base of the little compass, a tiny silver flower. The silver back, smooth with age, was engraved with the names of cities beside a number: “Paris 49, Londres 50, Hambourg 54, Cracouie 50, Venise 45.” At the bottom was “N. Bion. A. Paris.”
Rebecca turned back to the box. Now she noticed the engraving on the inside of the lid:
Á Sophie,
Pour que tu puisses toujours me retrouver.
Sta
It was dated December 9, 1758.
Rebecca translated with her high school French. “‘To Sophie, So that you…’ I’m not sure of the verb tense… ‘So you will always be able to find me again. Stas.’”
“That’s a Polish name, short for Stanislaw,” Sarah said. “It’s pronounced with an ‘sh’ at the end. Like Stahsh.”
Rebecca ran her finger absently over the engraved letters. “There was a Sophie in Michael’s manuscript,” she said.
Sarah stared at her, waiting. Rebecca was suddenly self-conscious.
“I read the first few pages at his house. Sophie was a young girl on her way to Russia.”
On her open palm, Sarah balanced the silver ornament worn smooth with time. “So how does this change the history books?”
Rebecca brought Michael’s black binder in from the car when she got home. Still in her shorts, she was shivering now that the sun had gone down. The middle of September was deceptive that way — bright hot sun in the afternoon and temperatures that dipped after dark. She threw a sweater around her shoulders but was too impatient to change into jeans.
Standing at the dining table, she threw open the manuscript. A new world was opening up to her, and she felt a frisson of excitement in her stomach.
She made herself some tea and nestled into the nubbly beige of the sofa in the den, the manuscript on her lap. She began to read.