A Meal in Winter (8 page)

Bauer nodded to him. ‘That's not all. Come over here and look. Our soup is going to be magnificent, but it'll cost you.'

The Pole moved towards him and carelessly handed him the flask, not even looking as he did so. As I already said, this stuff fell like rain in Poland. Bauer drank a mouthful, gasped like a horse, then passed the flask to Emmerich. He gasped like a horse too, and moaned with pain. And while I, in turn, burned my throat, the Jew sniffed and
coughed in the storeroom, as if he were the one who'd just drunk the alcohol.

The Pole took a step forward, almost touching us, then looked inside the storeroom, through the half-opened doorway. Because, up to this point, the Jew, though very close, had been invisible to him. The Pole stayed there now, motionless in front of us, staring with his black eyes at the squatting Jew, who stared sadly back. After a moment, the Pole turned his gaze on us, and the distinguished handsomeness of his face vanished. He opened his mouth and bared his gums in a kind of monstrous smile, like a dead fish without teeth.

He looked at the Jew again.

‘What's up with you?' Bauer asked. Then, a few seconds later: ‘What did you see that made you grin like that?'

The Pole seemed unwilling to stop staring at the Jew, and his peeled-back lips expressed a sort of satisfaction. Bauer demanded, ‘What's got into you?'

The Pole, looking at Bauer, quickly said a few words before his gaze swung back to the storeroom. And then he spoke, in the universal language of malice, his head nodding maliciously too.

The Jew stared at him for a few more seconds, before lowering his eyes. And then, with his elbows on his knees,
his chin in his hands, his back bent, he seemed to completely ignore all of us. He was looking at a point in the storeroom that we couldn't see. But that did not dry up the flood of the Pole's words.

‘Do you know him?' Bauer asked impatiently.

The Pole went silent and turned to Bauer, who pointed at the Jew with one hand, then at the Pole with the other, and then, bringing his two index fingers together, asked, ‘So, do you know him?'

The Pole shook his head. He looked stunned by the question.

‘So shut your mouth a bit,' said Bauer. ‘Leave him in peace, and us too.'

The Pole began to speak to the three of us.

‘No, shut your mouth,' Bauer said nastily, ‘or we'll chuck you outside, and I'll beat the shit out of you.'

The Pole kept silent. He glanced once more at the storeroom, then went back close to the stove. He did not peel back his lips any more. His face returned to the serious, distinguished expression it had worn before, but it no longer had the same effect. It no longer meant the same thing.

I still had the flask in my hand. I leaned across to hand it back to him. But, without resentment, he signalled that
I could keep hold of it. I put it on the table in front of me.

The dog had woken up and raised its head when Bauer spoke, and I noticed that the little balls of snow had begun to melt. They were no longer as round as before. There was a small puddle of water between its paws.

Bauer had seen it too. I could sense his astonishment, next to me.

‘Oh, Emmerich!' he gasped.

‘What?'

‘Does it hurt?'

‘Does what hurt?' demanded Emmerich, at first failing to grasp, as before, the joke about his balls.

Crossing his arms high around his chest, so his sides wouldn't split, Bauer pressed his mouth into his sleeve. His stifled laughter shook his body so strongly that the bench began to shake too. We could feel his laughter beneath us now.

Emmerich, sitting on the other side of Bauer, leaned forward so he could see me and silently ask me what was going on. I didn't feel that it was up to me to tell him, so I pretended not to know.

‘What?' he shouted at Bauer.

But Bauer could no longer speak.

WOOD BURNS FASTER
than coal, so it is deceptive when you cook with it. The stove was hot, and we felt warm now – on our faces and chests, at least, because our backs were still shivering. But, at this rate, the soup would not be cooked.

Behind the mica window, the flames had died down again. And, distracted by the Pole and by everything that had happened, we hadn't noticed. What we'd drunk on our empty stomachs had put us in a good mood, and we'd forgotten about the soup needing to cook. I got up. It was the shelf's turn now. After that, it would be the table or the bench – we'd see.

It gave way easily. I hit it twice on the side with my shoulder, and it fell from the wall. It wasn't very heavy, though, so it wouldn't last long. Soon we would have to
choose between the table and the bench. Or maybe we'd have to burn both, and swallow our remorse.

While I smashed the shelf into bits, Bauer suddenly thundered: ‘Has he got any uncles?'

To begin with, Emmerich and I had no idea what he was talking about. I even thought for a moment that he might be referring to the Pole, and that what he had said made no sense. Emmerich was quicker to catch on than I was. He replied to Bauer: ‘No, he hasn't. I wish he had right now. It would be a big help.'

He went silent, and nodded as if deep in thought.

‘I think about that sometimes.'

Then he looked at Bauer. ‘Why?'

‘Listen,' said Bauer, pointing at me to indicate that he was talking about me as well as himself, ‘tell him you're going to come home with two uncles.'

Emmerich was startled. Bauer went on: ‘From this day on, we are his uncles.'

‘Hang on a minute,' I said.

I was pretending, of course. I had finished breaking up the shelf and half of it had gone into the stove. I blew and blew on the wood until the flames rose up again, then I turned towards the bench. Emmerich lowered his head. Bauer, I could see, was pleased with himself for having
come up with this idea. We could thank the potato alcohol for that.

‘So what do you think?' he asked me.

I pretended to think a bit longer, then said, ‘All right.'

Bauer clapped his hands and leaned towards Emmerich. ‘Write to him that he now has two uncles. And not just any uncles.'

Then he patted Emmerich's thigh. Emmerich was so moved that he lit a cigarette. He passed one to each of us.

‘But wait,' Bauer said, lifting his in the air. ‘Tell him it's only on the condition that he doesn't touch a cigarette.'

‘Yes,' Emmerich replied.

‘Don't forget to tell him that.'

‘Yes.'

Emmerich was unable to say any more than that.

But Bauer could: ‘There you go! And when you write to him in future, we can write him a few words too. When we get back home, we can see him and give him a bit of money.'

Emmerich shivered and rubbed his head.

‘Give it to me now,' he said, to play down his emotion.

I was still standing in front of the stove. I could hear the flames. They made little hot spots in my back. Why should
I go and sit down again? A warm hand was stroking my back, up and down, and the cigarette that Emmerich had given me tasted good. I looked at him. He had kept his hand on his head. He was smiling, but had he dared, he might have sobbed.

The Pole had not looked away from us during all this time, I'd noticed. His gaze moved from one to the next as we spoke, probably searching for a word he knew. But while he might have grasped the odd phrase, he would never understand what we were talking about or what we had just decided, still less the fact that it had been partly triggered by his potato alcohol.

He asked us, using gestures, if he could smoke.

‘Fuck off and die,' said Bauer.

But Emmerich offered him a cigarette. Bauer's suggestion had moved him, making him generous and goodhearted. He was already like that by nature, but now his benevolence had increased a notch.

In fact, we were all quite moved, even Bauer, because it now felt like the three of us were family. I mean, with Bauer and me becoming uncles to Emmerich's son. We'd almost forgotten how hungry we were. I looked at the window. In places, the frost was melting. Drops of water were forming and sliding down the glass. It would have
been even warmer – the frost on the window would have melted even faster – had we not broken off the trapdoor, since some of the heat was disappearing up there into the attic.

We didn't forget our hunger for very long. I took out my spoon and stirred the soup. The lard had melted, and the pieces of onion were coming apart. The salami was fine too, but the cornmeal was still floating. We didn't want a broth, but a thick soup, and I was now afraid that this would end up being like something in a dream. As in a dream, we could see it, so close to us, but no matter how far we moved towards it, I had the impression we would never reach it.

The bits of shelf I'd put in had already burned up. It was going faster than I'd expected. I shoved the rest in before the flames died down completely.

‘That wood must be made of paper,' I said. ‘There's nothing left now. What shall we do? The bench or the table? We need to decide.'

They got up, and Bauer touched the table appraisingly.

‘It's thick,' he said. ‘We'd need a saw.'

Emmerich lifted up the bench. ‘This too. We won't manage otherwise.'

‘With three of us, we'll manage,' I said.

But no matter how hard we threw it on the floor, or from what height, it didn't break. I thought about the fence outside for a moment, but then I gave up the idea. Why go back outside and freeze my blood to wrestle with a fence that wouldn't move anyway?

So, we would be eating broth. Hot, of course, but not very filling. Leaning on the stove, smoking Emmerich's cigarette, the Pole watched us impassively. His dog was asleep. The snow sleighbells on its neck had disappeared.

‘What about the door to the storeroom?' Emmerich said suddenly. ‘What use is that?'

‘He's right!' Bauer shouted.

Emmerich and I shoved it wide open. Seeing us coming, the Jew sat up and moved away from us, against the back wall. He watched us while we took the door off its hinges. It was heavy, but it looked easier to break than the table or the bench. We leaned it with its top propped on the bench.

‘Go ahead,' I told Emmerich. ‘I'll hold you.'

I took hold of his coat. He bent his knees, jumped up and landed on the door. It did not move. Not a crack appeared.

‘You need to jump from higher up,' I told him.

He climbed up on the bench. Bauer and I each got
hold of one of his shoulders. He jumped, and this time we heard something.

‘Keep going!' we shouted, practically at the same time.

He did it again, I don't know how many times. He jumped, picking up momentum by jumping upwards from the bench. Each time, we heard the door crack a bit more. Fissures appeared. He was putting so much effort into it, you could tell, as much for us as for himself. We held him tightly, each by a shoulder. Finally, he went through it. We'd been afraid he would injure himself, that a big splinter would pierce his boots. Luckily, although he was winded, he ended up standing and unhurt, in the middle of the broken door. We gleefully smashed it into smaller pieces because there was now no doubt: with all this wood, the soup would be thick and we would eat it sitting on the bench. What a door it was! We had enough wood to fill the stove five times over.

HOW WELL THE
fire burned after that! The smell of it was in our nostrils, the sound of it in our ears. It gave us light too, as the sun was going down outside. Steam rose from the soup. It would be thick and nourishing – we were sure of it now. Among all the different smells, the onion was the strongest. We each drank a mouthful. It burned our tongues, but transported us to a gentler world. So we drank another. The Pole had put one elbow on the bar of the stove and was resting his temple on his hand, as easy in his mind as we were now that he knew he would be getting some soup. I no longer thought about the flash of malice I'd seen on his face. His dog sniffed occasionally.

Suddenly I realised that, without the door that we had taken down and which was now cheerfully burning, the house had changed. Was it the storeroom that had entered
our space, here around the bench? Or was it the other way round? Either way, it felt very different now.

While I looked around, attempting to pinpoint the cause of this change, the Jew in the storeroom began to unbutton his coat. And then, after a moment's hesitation, he took it off, rolled it up, put it on the floor and sat on it. Because, of course, even if it was warm now in the storeroom, the floor was still freezing. It would have taken a day and a night with good coal in the stove to warm up the concrete slab.

He still wore a heavy reefer jacket under his coat, orange and dirty but very thick, and quilted, which was unusual. There were undoubtedly other layers beneath that. But it was his reefer jacket that had saved him in the forest. He had pushed his wool hat even further up his forehead. It was folded now, and from here the embroidered snowflake was invisible.

We no longer stirred on the bench, we no longer spoke. Not a single movement or sound. Each of us had been isolated from the others by the heat, the smell of the soup and the potato alcohol, and sleep was calling to us. Even the Pole was beginning to fall asleep, while leaning against the stove.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds. My imagination
began to see things that weren't there. Better open them, I thought. The Pole's dog had woken up. It was still lying with its head on its front paws, and it was observing Emmerich, Bauer and me, and its kindly blinking eyes reminded me of a dog I'd once had, a long time ago.

In order to think about something else, I whispered, ‘I hope he has a spoon.'

‘What?' Emmerich asked, also in a whisper.

‘The Pole,' I said. ‘What's he going to eat with?'

‘If he hasn't got one, we'll chuck him outside,' replied Bauer. ‘I don't want that ugly mouth of his touching the soup.'