Florian's Gate (33 page)

“You have a driver?”

“It's part of my inheritance from Alexander.”

“He's dead?”

“Come on, wake up, Katya. No. You spent this afternoon with him in the shop.”

“Oh yeah,” she said around an enormous yawn. “I remember now.”

“I've had to take over for him.”

“He wouldn't tell me why you had to stay there all alone.” Katya yawned again. “Can't this wait until morning?”

“No!”

“There's no need to shout, Jeffrey.”

“Take a deep breath, Katya. You have
got
to wake up.”

There was a long pause. “Katya?”

“I'm here, Jeffrey.” Her voice sounded more focused.

“I need you. Can you come tomorrow?”

“You want me to fly to Poland? Really?”

“Desperately really. Can you meet me here in Cracow?”

“I've never been to Cracow.”

“I sure hope you're awake. Can you come?”

“Yes, I'm awake.” There was another pause, then, “Yes, all right. I'll come. If you really need me.”

The pleasure he felt at her words bordered on pain. He had not even wanted to admit how much he had been missing her. “I do. In more ways than one.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Let's leave the discussions for your arrival. You need to call Alexander at Claridge's first thing tomorrow morning. He will make your travel arrangements and fax me your arrival details. And, Katya, it's very important that you don't discuss this with anyone besides your mother.”

“You've explained the need for secrecy. I haven't forgotten.” Her voice took on the tone of a little girl's. “It will be nice to see you again, Jeffrey. Especially in Cracow.”

CHAPTER 16

Greeting Jeffrey with a fierce hug upon her arrival, Katya allowed him to take her first by the hotel and then into the center of town. She made no attempt to hide her excitement. “I've always wanted to come here.”

“Gregor suggested we walk to the central square and have lunch there,” Jeffrey said. “Then we meet with him, and afterward get back to work.”

Following the hotel receptionist's directions, Jeffrey led her the seven blocks to where entry into the city's old town was announced by a return to cobblestone streets. Katya walked slowly, her eyes bright with discovery, her gaze touching everything.

She pulled him over to one side. “Look at this old state-run store. That's how drab everything looked the last time I was in Poland. You can't believe how startling it is to come back and find so many new signs of capitalism springing up. Let's go inside, so you can see for yourself how it used to be.”

The lamp store fully retained it's stodgy socialist style. Wares were displayed on unpainted plywood shelves. “This is everything the shop has,” Katya whispered. “There isn't any back room for extra stock, and there's no need to ask the shopkeeper anything. She's here just to take your money. And don't expect her to thank you or ask you to come again.”

The glass globes were dusty, the wares outdated, the bulbs packed in little gray cardboard boxes stamped with smeared Russian Cyrillic. The shop was empty save for a bored young woman camped behind her magazine, the air dusty and undisturbed by change. Katya picked up a hand-blown ceiling light and read the tag. “This translates into thirty-seven cents. They set the price before the government changed, and they never bothered to alter it. They'll just sit here and wait for
the government to get around to selling the shop and putting them out of business. It's called Communist initiative.”

Next door was a new store, its window set in a shiny copper frame on a marble base. Its wares suggested the shop was still so new that the owners were not yet sure what would sell—women's high-heeled shoes competed for space with Japanese watches, cordless telephones, electronic pocket games, pressure bandages, and bras.

No one on the street smiled. People stared at shop windows, darted their eyes everywhere, or stared at nothing. Everyone they passed seemed to give him one swift glance, recognize in an instant that he was foreign and Western, then turn determinedly away.

An old woman in a filthy woolen shawl came by, begging with a tear in her eye and a crack in her voice. She shuffled from one passerby to the next, never raising her steps from the stones, her feet encased in men's work shoes that slapped softly against her feet. Jeffrey gave her the equivalent of twenty cents, and was rewarded with a sign of the cross made by hands knotted with arthritis.

When they entered Cracow's vast central square, Katya pointed to the tall age-blackened church with its two spires of totally different designs. “It's called the
Mariacki
, and it's over a thousand years old. Part of it, anyway. There's a living legend attached to it, as there is to a lot of this city. Most of the stories are based on fact. So much has happened here that they don't need to make anything up.”

“I thought you told me you hadn't ever been here before.”

“When did I say that?”

“On the phone last night.”

“I don't remember.”

“I'm surprised you remembered which city to go to, you were so asleep.”

“I was awake by then. It's true, though. This is my first visit to Cracow.”

“So how do you know about all this?”

“I read, Jeffrey. They have books about Poland. It's not the middle of darkest Africa or anything.”

“So tell me the living legend.”

“Legend isn't right. Legend has to be fiction. Living history is better.” She pointed at the left-hand spire. “Every hour a trumpeter comes out and plays the
Hejnal
, which is an old Hungarian word for reveille. He plays it to the four corners of the globe. The trumpet call always cuts off in the middle of a note. It symbolizes the time the Tartars invaded Cracow—I'm not sure when, I think around six hundred years ago. A Tartar arrow stopped the trumpet call when it pierced his throat.”

“That's a pretty grisly story to repeat every hour for six hundred years.”

“A study of Polish history is a study of war.” She looked up at him. “There's a lot of sadness, but a lot of beauty, too.”

Like you, he thought. “I'm really glad you came,” he said.

She allowed her gaze to linger a moment longer before pointing to the square's central structure. “Let's go in there.”

As they walked toward the massive edifice, she said, “This is called the
Sukiennice
, or Cloth Hall. It was built in the fourteenth century to house the cloth, thread, cotton, wool, silk, and dye merchants who clothed the upper half of Central Europe. At that time, Cracow was the capital of the second largest kingdom in the world after the Holy Roman Empire, and cloth was a very important industry.”

Wrought-iron lamps hung down the hall's narrow hundred and fifty-foot length. The merchants' stalls were converted into shops selling crystal and amber and tourist trinkets and silver and hand-knit lace. The vaulted ceiling was lined with the old royal shields from the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, which at its height had stretched from the icy wastelands crowning Europe through modern-day Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Rumania, the Ukraine, and parts of Turkey.

“There isn't the danger I used to feel here in Poland,” Katya said as they crossed from the Cloth Hall to a large cafe at
the edge of the square. “There is still sadness, though. Too much of it.”

“You'll be meeting Gregor later,” Jeffrey replied. “That's one thing the two of you will certainly agree on.”

The Café Kawiarnia Sukiennice was a series of bright white and red chambers. The ceilings were domed, the rooms small and interconnected, the windows decorated with wrought-iron, the atmosphere splendidly foreign.

“Look around these rooms,” she said. “Every face is a character, an individual. When I go out in London, I feel as if everybody has spent hours polishing off all their individuality. They wear stylish clothes, they fix their hair just so. Then they sit somewhere and pretend that everything in their life is perfect.

“Here they can't, Jeffrey. It's a luxury they can't afford. They come as they are, they sit here because they want to be with a friend or talk with family or just have an ice cream. They don't seem to have on the false facade. They sit without the lies which wealth creates. You look around here and you see a roomful of extremes. Every face is a story. I
love
that. I am sorry for the hardship that created it, but that does not make me love the result any less.”

As they waited for Gregor to buzz them into his apartment building, Jeffrey warned her, “As far as Gregor is concerned, you are something of a risk. I imagine he's going to test you a little.”

“Of course he will,” Katya replied, and pushed on the door as the latch sounded.

By the time they made their way up the two flights of stairs, Gregor had returned to his bed. He sat propped up by a half dozen pillows, wrapped within a voluminous shawl. Still he greeted them with a genuine smile. “You must excuse me for not rising any more than absolutely necessary. When my joints become inflamed, there is no better healing salve than rest.”

“Can we do anything to help you?” Katya asked.

“Thank you, my dear. That is most kind. But I have a very sweet old woman who would mother me to death if I let her.” He shook Katya's hand, inspecting her frankly. “My cousin was most impressed with you. I can see why. Sit down, my dear. Take the comfortable chair there.”

He turned his attention to Jeffrey. “You had your walk around central Cracow? What did you think?”

“I feel as if I've been sent back to school,” Jeffrey replied, bringing over one of the straight-backed chairs. “I never realized how little I knew. I think before I came to Poland, my clearest impression of the East was of people standing in line.”

“It was quite a true image,” Gregor replied. “Before, when people saw other people standing in line, they automatically assumed it was for something worth buying. If they had time, they got in line too.”

“It was a favorite way of passing a few idle hours,” Katya agreed. “If you got to the head of the line and it was not something you needed, you'd buy it anyway. There was always someone you knew who could use it.”

Gregor gave Katya a thoughtful look. “You built up obligations—in a good way, of course. The word is
Rewanz
, a positive revenge.”

“Reciprocation,” Katya offered. “Returning a favor.”

“Exactly. You balanced obligations. You helped out neighbors because you knew they in turn would help you out.”

Jeffrey asked, “So what happened if someone always took and never gave in return?”

“That very seldom happened,” Katya replied. “Too much was at stake.”

“No one would ever remind you,” Gregor agreed. “You were simply expected to remember.”

“You were always conscious of when it was your turn to give a gift or extend an invitation,” Katya explained. “There was a sense of honor and duty involved in not allowing the relationship to get out of balance.”

There was a moment of silence, with Gregor smiling and nodding. “So, so. Tell me, my dear. When were you last in Poland? This is most certainly not your first visit.”

“No. It was two years ago, just before the first cracks in the Communist power-structure appeared.”

“Things have changed,” Gregor said mildly.

“I've noticed.”

“Yes, we passed through our period of euphoria, and now we're in a period of worry. Already we are forgetting what we gained, and are spending all our time wanting for more.”

“Many of the people I've seen on the street look shell-shocked,” Jeffrey said.

“Indeed they do,” Gregor agreed. “They have come to realize that with the opportunities of change comes the darkness of uncertainty. That was one thing which the Communist regime stifled, you see. Change. Security for the worker was achieved by imposing iron-bound laws backed by fear.”

“I have never seen so many people on shopping streets,” Katya said. “Everybody stops and looks at all the windows, standing there for hours.”

“The shortages are gone,” Gregor said. “Nowadays the only thing that is hard to come by is money. Unemployment is rising daily as more and more obsolete factories are losing their government subsidies and are being forced out of business. The government is in virtual bankruptcy, services are being cut back, and with the West in recession there is little help coming. People are worried over how to make ends meet, and afraid of being hungry.”

“Not just for food, from the looks of things,” Katya said.

“Exactly. They are hungry for things they have seen in television and magazines and never had the chance to try or taste or wear or drive or own. Their hunger for experimenting in all these new Western wares is immense. Overwhelming is a better word. They are overwhelmed by desire for things they now find in stores, which before were nothing more than
wispy visions of a world they weren't sure really existed at all.”

“I remember,” Katya said. To Jeffrey she explained, “Russia was always sending propaganda throughout Poland about what a great life communism was giving them. Poles
knew
this was a lie. But when they saw pictures from the West—on television or in a magazine or from a cousin in Chicago—they not only believed that the wealth was there, but also that it was easy to have.
Everybody
in the West was rich, in their eyes. There was this misguided notion that dollars were lying along the American streets just waiting to be picked up. And this has been the great disenchantment. All these fabulous goods are now on display here in Poland, but almost no one can afford them. Simply to be joined with the West does not guarantee immediate wealth.”