The Fourth Courier Read online

  Jacek barged in. “I gotta piss. I can’t wait.”

  “Lift the seat, Jacek!”

  “Fuck off.”

  “And please refill the bucket.”

  “Who says I’m gonna flush?”

  Lilka left the bathroom.

  Jacek finished relieving himself and, grabbing his crotch, shouted through the open door. “You want some of this?”

  She dropped her keys into her purse. “Go to hell.”

  He lunged at her and grabbed her arm. “Go to hell yourself!”

  “Let go!”

  He forced her hand to his crotch. “Tell me this isn’t as good as your first-class tricks and I know you’ll be lying. We were always good.”

  She squirmed. “Jacek, please, stop—”

  He fell back on the couch and yanked off his muddy boots. “Fucking first-class whore.”

  Lilka rubbed her wrist. “Where’s Aleks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wasn’t he with you last night?”

  “I’m not his babysitter.” Jacek flung a boot against the wall. “I’m sleeping in your room today.”

  “No, Jacek, please.”

  “No, Jacek, please,” he mimicked her. “I drive a fucking truck all night. I have a fucking right to a fucking bed.”

  “We have an agreement.”

  “Call the police.”

  “You’re impossible.” Grabbing her overcoat, she slipped into the hallway before his second boot could hit her.

  It hit the door instead.

  “Kurva!” he called after her. Whore!

  Lilka fought back tears, not wanting to smudge her makeup. She headed for the stairwell—its door was missing—and smelled her neighbor’s warm bread before she saw her. Agnieszka emerged a moment later, out of breath from climbing six flights. Two bread loaves protruded from a bag slung over her shoulder. To Lilka, they smelled like mornings, when families woke up, sipped coffee with toast, and talked of the day ahead. Her father had always gone out to buy the bread for breakfast. Agnieszka’s yeasty loaves reminded Lilka of the happy family she didn’t have herself. No one went out for bread; no one sipped coffee with toast. No one cared what she would do that day or any day. That unhappy realization brought on the tears she had struggled to hold back.

  “What happened?” Agnieszka asked. She tried to look at the side of Lilka’s face. “Did he hit you again?”

  “He didn’t hit me.”

  “Not this time.”

  “He was just being his usual mean self.”

  “They shoot mean dogs, don’t they?”

  Lilka dabbed her eyes. “He’s not worth the bullet.”

  They both laughed, knowing their black humor was a cover-up for what they were really feeling. “Come in and have a coffee,” her friend urged. “It might be your last chance to see Wojtek in his Mickey Mouse pajamas before he puts them away for summer.”

  Agnieszka had a repaired palate, and whatever she said had the comforting sound of shushing a baby to sleep. Her “Mickey Mouth pajamath” cheered Lilka, and she kissed her cheek. “I’d love to, but I can’t be late for work.”

  She started down the stairs. The smell of fresh bread had already been overcome by the more familiar stench of old piss, to which no doubt her husband—ex-husband, she reminded herself—had contributed. They had been divorced over three years, in itself something close to a miracle in Catholic Poland. At least the secular communists had recognized that the sanctity of marriage could be sacrificed on the altar of wife abuse. Still, Lilka had been forced to remain in the same apartment with Jacek: the communists had a waiting list for housing longer than the Church’s list of sinners.

  She felt dirty by the time she reached the ground floor and pushed the bar on the door to let herself outside. A thin layer of virgin snow covered everything. She brushed it off her windshield, using the snow to wash Jacek off her hands. She pulled on her mittens and got into her old and dented Lada.

  Lilka prayed the car would start. It had been acting up lately, and had stalled out the day before. She pulled out the choke, turned the key, and tapped the gas pedal.

  As soon as the engine turned over, it sputtered and died.

  She tried again and it died again.

  The third time, it turned over, coughed, and stayed running. She let the engine warm up before backing out of her space. The sun shone through a break in the clouds, reflecting brightly off the new snow. She slipped on sunglasses and turned into the street.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  SNOWPLOWS HAD PILED MUDDY SLUDGE on the median dividing the road to the airport. Cars passed at hell-bent speeds, spraying the windshield with snowmelt and salt, which the wipers only managed to smear. Jay leaned over the front seat to peer into the muddy twilight.

  The international terminal came into view. No doubt it had been a showpiece when it first opened, the communists wanting to prove that they were equal to the West with such a modern building: all glass in alternating clear and red-tinted horizontal bands, and a control tower shaped like a praying mantis perched over it. Over the decades, it had clearly suffered from neglect: where paint was needed, none had been applied, and broken windows had been replaced indiscriminately, making a hodgepodge of the linear design. Floodlights, blurred by a dusting of snow in the early twilight, added a touch of prison-yard ambiance.

  The driver pulled to the curb.

  Jay asked, “Where will you wait?”

  The man pointed vaguely ahead. “There. How long?”

  “Hopefully not long.”

  He entered the terminal through cracked glass doors repaired with packing tape. Birds nesting in the overhead rafters had splattered the floor with chalky droppings. Everything was the color of grit. Poles, it seemed, didn’t so much argue as grumble, and there was a fair amount of that going on in the long lines. His airline’s bright blue logo hung over an empty counter where a note had been taped: Mr. Porter please come to The Lounge.

  “The Lounge,” he muttered, and looked around. He headed in the direction of the gates and a minute later was ringing the bell on the lounge’s door.

  Lilka answered it. “You are Mr. James Porter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, you come inside.”

  He followed Lilka into an empty lounge filled with upholstered chairs patterned with tropical birds. Next to each was a lamp in the shape of a flamingo. Jungle wallpaper surrounded them. “Boy, this is different,” he remarked.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Like it? It’s great. I’m sorry, I have to do this.” Suddenly he beat his chest and bellowed like Tarzan.

  Lilka laughed. “You are not the first man to make that joke, but you make it the best.”

  “Good, because I can’t believe I just did that.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Porter, about your suitcase.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Now there is a strike.”

  “A strike?”

  “For suitcases.”

  “Ah, the baggage handlers,” he said, guessing what she meant.

  “It will finish in one hour.”

  “And there’s no one else here? It’s just you and me and the birds for an hour?”

  “Until the next flight. Also in one hour.”

  “I’ll take a drink.” Jay gave a look at the bottles on the shelf behind the bar. “Do you have Black Label?”

  “You are lucky, the plane from London is very late.”

  “Lucky?”

  “We are allotted only one bottle a day.”

  “And the British drink it?”

  “It is their last chance not to drink Polish vodka. Please, you sit?”

  He slid onto a stool and watched her pour a hefty shot.

  “Do you want ice or water?”

  “Straight. I only ice Johnnie Red.”

  “You are an expert on scotch?”

  “Only in airport lounges. I can’t afford Black Label at home. Can I buy you a drink?”

 
; “I am not permitted to drink when working.”

  “Not even a glass of wino biały?”

  “Pan movi po polsku?” she asked, surprised at his Polish.

  “Only tak and nie, and white wine. You sure no?”

  “Yes, I am sure.”

  “Well, cheers.” Jay raised his glass to her before taking a sip. He was warming to the situation. No longer just a beleaguered traveler in search of lost baggage in a gray and dreary city. Things were looking up. “You know my name but I don’t know yours,” he said.

  “I am Lilka.”

  “And I’m Jay, not Mr. Porter.”

  “Ja-ay,” she said, testing it, making it sound new. “You are first time, Ja-ay, in Warsaw?”

  “Yeah, first time, and I know nothing about Warsaw. What’s fun to do?”

  She sipped her wine. “Do you like old things?”

  “Old things?”

  “Maybe castles?”

  He wanted to be agreeable, but castles? Looking at her, he wasn’t thinking about old things or castles. “Are there any good restaurants?”

  “Oh yes! Now we have restaurants from French and Italian. You will like them.”

  “What’s your favorite one?”

  “There are so many,” she said, and he knew she had been to none of them. “Do you go to Disneyland?”

  “Only once.”

  “Tolek wants to go. Always he talks about Disneyland.”

  “Tolek?” Jay checked her hands: no ring. “Is Tolek your husband?”

  “He is the husband of my sister, Alina. He has dreams for America.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  The lounge’s buzzer interrupted them.

  “Please excuse me one moment,” Lilka said and disappeared into the entry. He heard her speaking to a man before reappearing to tell him, “Your driver has your suitcase.”

  The embassy driver stepped into the lounge, grinning and displaying the lost suitcase. “All finished,” he said.

  “All finished?” Jay didn’t want it to be finished. He wanted to stay in the lounge with Lilka. “How did you finish it?”

  The man flashed his embassy ID. “No problem with this.”

  “Five minutes, okay?”

  “No problem.”

  When the driver stepped out, Jay asked Lilka, “Maybe we can go to a restaurant?”

  “Go to a restaurant?”

  “Yes. You and me. A date.”

  Her thoughts played across her face. She measured him with the same eyes that had assessed countless offers and come-ons. He wanted to think he was different, but he knew he wasn’t, he was exactly what he was: a lonely guy talking her up because she was beautiful.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?” He had passed her test! “That’s great! What time do you get off work?”

  “Midnight.”

  Six more hours. He would never make it. A tsunami of weariness already threatened to sweep over him. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yes, tomorrow is better. I will not be so late. You will telephone me here?”

  He grabbed a napkin off the bar. “What’s your number?” As he wrote it down, the ink bled into the soft tissue. “I’ll call tomorrow,” he promised and went out to join his driver.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  THE STREETCAR CLAMORED TO A stop and the doors wheezed open. Alina stepped down, jostling cumbersome bags that rubbed against her legs. The wind tugged at her neck scarf. She pinned it with her chin as she crossed the tracks, remembering too late to look for an approaching tram—had there been one. Even in that weather, cars tooted their way down busy Aleje Jerozolimskie at reckless speeds. Pedestrians, shielding their faces from blowing snow, hurried along the sidewalk. Alina followed where they had tamped it down and soon turned into her neighborhood.

  A long park ran between rows of dreary Soviet-style apartments. The fat, wet snowflakes landing on the leafless branches reminded Alina of the linden blossoms of summer. The park had been abandoned by all but a boy throwing sticks across a frozen pond for his dog to chase. Each time, the puppy skidded on the ice on its big clumsy paws and the boy hooted with amusement. Alina laughed with him and was still smiling when she reached her building.

  The unheated hallway was no warmer than outdoors. She pressed a switch and a dim overhead bulb flickered on. A faint hum signaled the start of her minute of light. By the third landing it failed, and only the pale illumination seeping under doorways guided her up the last flight. Outside her door, she set her shopping bags on the floor and, relieved of their weight, stretched her neck.

  She was bending to the right when Tolek opened the door and instantly tilted his head to peck her lips. “I’ll help you,” he said and picked up the bags.

  “They’re heavy,” she warned him.

  “I noticed.”

  Alina hung her coat and cap on hooks inside the door and plucked free the limp hairs stuck to her forehead. She was a thin, nervous woman, and her movements were quick. She followed her husband into the kitchen. The room, painted a faded green, was cramped with their two-burner stove, a small table, and Alina’s prized full-size (albeit ancient) refrigerator that clanked whenever the compressor started up.

  The last of the day’s feeble light barely brightened the window. Tolek heaved the bags onto the counter as Alina told him, “It’s all potatoes and onions. There was nothing else fresh today, and the girl didn’t know when any more would be coming. I bought as much as I could carry.”

  Tolek dumped the potatoes into a bin. “I want you to be careful, and carrying heavy bags isn’t being careful. You could have slipped on the ice.”

  “I was careful and I didn’t slip. You’re home early. Did the power go out again?”

  “They made it official today.”

  “Today? Without any notice?”

  “Today without any notice.”

  “That’s not possible.

  “We knew it was coming.”

  “Knowing it was coming doesn’t change things. What are we going to live on?”

  “We have savings.”

  “Savings?” For a moment Alina was too anxious to say more. All her worries were creeping up on her. She shook as she unloaded a bag of onions into a basket and snatched up the papery brown skins that landed on the counter. “What savings, Tolek? Do you know how much food costs these days?”

  “What’s it matter what food costs, if there’s nothing to buy?”

  “We still have to eat.” Alina sagged into a chair. “I don’t know how we’ll manage when prices keep going up.”

  Tolek rubbed a spot clear on the window. Everything outside was blurred by the slow drifting snow. His shoulders seemed too wide for the narrow kitchen; almost as wide as a bear’s, and like a bear he was afflicted with a natural awkwardness. “I’ll go to the embassy tomorrow and ask about our visas,” he said.

  “I teach English, Tolek. They don’t need English teachers in America.”

  “So, you teach them Polish! Think how many Americans don’t speak Polish!”

  “You will look for a job here, won’t you?”

  “Not before a kiss.” He pulled Alina out of the chair to embrace her. “Don’t worry so much.”

  She stood stiffly in his arms; but smelling him, his peculiar dusty scent, she gave way to his comforting embrace, imagining that his arms, thick as tree limbs, shielded her from the worries and fears that threatened to roust them from their small kitchen. Alina could have cried, had she let herself. She could have cried for the food they couldn’t buy, the jobs that didn’t exist, the mourning doves which had yet to return for spring. Times had been worse and she hadn’t cried then, not even when Tolek was arrested. She loved him, and trusted him, and opened her mouth to his. She wanted to take him by his hands and draw him to their bed; his big-knuckled hands that for fifteen years had held her and loved her, protected her when she was frightened. They kissed hard and long, and when he started to pull away, she pulled him back, using his mouth to s
top a buried cry.

  When their kiss finally broke, Tolek said, “I should lose my job more often.”

  Alina slipped from his arms. “I’ll start supper.” She ran water into a pot, lit a burner, and checked the potatoes for rot. “I suppose they have potatoes in America.”

  “Meat, too,” he said cheerfully.

  “Who can afford meat? Here, make yourself useful and peel these.” She carried some potatoes to the table and handed him a knife.

  The front door opened. “Is that you, Tadzu?” she called.

  “Yes, Mama.” The boy dropped his book bag by the door and stepped into the kitchen. “Hello Mama. Hello Tata.”

  “Don’t track in,” Alina reminded him.

  “I wiped my feet,” he said, exasperated by her familiar nagging. He pulled off his cap, freeing the black curls he had inherited from Tolek; his watery blue eyes came from his mother. He watched his father finish peeling a potato with a single cut.

  “Why are you home early, Tata?”

  Tolek held up his long ribbon of potato skin. “Now your father is part of the unemployed majority, unless someone is hiring a potato peeler!”

  “Hush, Tolek. You’ll worry him.”

  “How did you do on your test today?”

  “I missed three questions.”

  “Did you ask for the answers afterwards?”

  “Yes, Tata. I stayed after school and Pan Czarniecki explained my errors.”

  Tolek turned another potato in his big fist. “Explain them to me.”

  The boy straightened and held his hands at his side. He recited the equations he had answered incorrectly, which were easy enough, and then explained his mistakes. When he concluded, Tolek said, “Didn’t I teach you that when you do something on one side of the equation, you must do the opposite on the other?”

  “I forgot, Tata, I’m sorry. May I practice piano, please?”

  “You have time to start your homework before supper,” his father replied.