In America (23 page)

It was not in Maryna's nature to be charitable to herself, ever, or forbearing with others. But how petty it seemed under this unrelenting sun to be fretting that Barbara and Danuta made reluctant milkmaids.

Fatigue and the drone of communal preoccupations seemed only to fatten her immense sensation of physical well-being. More absences: words, self-dramatization, amorous energies. Healing absences. Carnal presences. The piercing reek of fresh dung and their own sweat. Panting over the kitchen range, at the milking stool, behind the wheelbarrow, and the harmonies of collective fatigue exhaled at the end of a day, in silence, at the dining-room table. All sonorities reduced to this: the sound of breathing, only breathing, theirs, her own. She never felt so attached to the others as then, feeling herself enclosed in a cube of noisy breathing; never felt so optimistic about the life they were laboring to build. Easy to say: it will not last. Every marriage, every community is a failed utopia. Utopia is not a kind of place but a kind of time, those all too brief moments when one would not wish to be anywhere else. Is there an instinct, a very ancient instinct, for breathing in unison? The ultimate utopia, that. At the root of the desire for sexual union is the desire to breathe more deeply, deeper still, faster … but always together.

*   *   *

IN NOVEMBER
, Maryna and Bogdan received a letter from a compatriot who had been living in San Francisco for almost twenty years, Bruno Halek, a shrewd impertinent old man of indeterminate occupation and, plainly, some means. He had befriended Ryszard and Julian when they were first in San Francisco in July, and had shown the larger group about when they arrived in late September.

Halek asked if he might pay a visit to his friends in their wine-producing Rhineland village in the desert. He had not stretched his mighty legs for a time, he said. He would not have dreamt of making such a long trip if the only transport for his admittedly large self were still that pokey side-wheeler—three days of dried beef and parboiled beans!—as far as the harbor near Los Angeles, and
choo-choo-choo
only for the last thirty miles. And picture this, he said. When the Germans went south in 1859 (he had met some of them then, hardworking dullards all; it would be amusing to see them now), their ship had gone right past Los Angeles, anchoring three miles off the coast where Anaheim was going to be, and the colonists had been taken by rowboat near the shore, where a party of Indians hired by those two clever Germans with the wine company in Los Angeles in which the San Francisco people had bought shares were waiting for them waist-deep in the water, poor devils, and then each German man, woman, and child had been lowered onto the shoulders of an Indian and carried to land. But those epic days were past (though he'd like to see even the brawniest brave with the strength to carry him!), and since there was now a train to Los Angeles he was eager to make the trip, not that he meant to impose on them, he was not one for sleeping in a tent or a log cabin, he expected to stay in a hotel, but come he would, dear Madame Maryna permitting. If only, he added jovially, to sample the wine.

And could he bring them anything from San Francisco?

Out of the question for their guest to stay at the Planters. Maryna and Bogdan had the sofa removed from the parlor and replaced by a bed; during his visit Piotr would sleep in the kitchen with Aniela. Despising that part of herself that wished to impress Halek (more exactly, not to disillusion him), while convinced that it would bolster everyone's self-esteem to participate in the effort of making their new home as attractive as it could be, Maryna took his arrival as an occasion to goad the others into some long-postponed tasks. The henhouse must be repaired (their large guest would undoubtedly ask for four eggs at breakfast); the house repainted, furniture polished, more books unpacked—farm work was put aside and everyone drafted to make the house fit to be visited. And their larder was to be properly stocked, and bottles of the good aguardiente and tequila available in the Mexican settlement laid in (Halek would certainly turn up his nose at Anaheim's profusion of German beers). Then, a week later, leaving Danuta and Barbara to arrange the cut oleander in pretty Cahuilla baskets, Maryna went off with Bogdan in the buggy to the depot. Their visitor descended from the train, even larger than they remembered and further bulked out with a clutch of packages tied with brown twine containing newspapers from Poland, books, kerchiefs and scent cases for the women, a lace mantilla for Maryna, lead soldiers for Piotr, dolls and lollipops for the little girls.

“I'm ravenous,” he said as he entered the house.

Aleksander laughed. “We're always hungry, too.”

“That's because you're working too hard,” cried Halek. “I'm hungry”—he slapped his immense belly—“because I'm hungry.” And then he made a sound, something like a bark, something like a groan. “I remember that,” said Piotr happily. The sighting of sea lions roaring on rocks from the terrace of a cliffside casino outside San Francisco was an obligatory pleasure for every visitor to the city. “I can do a coyote, Mr. Halek. Listen.”

Their chance to show their visitor around. First things first: they took him for a tour of Anaheim's irrigation system. “I see,” he chortled, “a Rhineland village with Dutch canals. We're in Holland here.”

They showed him their two cows, their three quick-tempered saddle horses, and the sickly mule. He asked them how they got on with their neighbors.

“We don't see much of them,” said Cyprian.

“I should hope not,” said Halek. “What would you have in common with these moneygrubbing farmers and shopkeepers? Contrary to the legend spread by that journalist Nordhoff, another German, who came here a few years ago and wrote a lot of nonsense about Anaheim, there was never, as you know, anything ‘communistic' about this village.”

Of course, he was right—to the disappointment of the Polish settlers, their heads full of Fourier and Brook Farm. The Germans in San Francisco had been recruited by a land surveyor working for two of their compatriots who owned vineyards and a wine company in Los Angeles and were looking to expand their business. With the money put up by the fifty investors, a parcel of land was bought and made fit for settlement: Chinese and Mexican workers were engaged to dig the irrigation ditches, Mexican workers to plant the vines, Indian workers to build the adobe houses where the fifty families would live. When they arrived two years later the houses and vineyards were waiting for them. At first the society owned everything, but after a few years, when the place was showing a profit, the cooperative was dissolved, and each of the original settlers recouped his investment and became the owner of his own stake. Anaheim was never, not even at the beginning, an experiment in communal living.

“Now you, Madame Maryna, you and the esteemed Count Dembowski and your friends, with our irrepressible Polish idealism, have decided to make the legend a reality. And for that I take off my hat to you. But I implore you, do not forget the stage, still in mourning for the departure of its queen. I suppose you would not consider, after a year or so of this adventure, again—”

“Not you, too! I didn't expect to endure the same reproaches in America, even from a countryman. No, this is not an adventure, my friend. It's a new life, the life I want. I don't miss the stage.”

“You don't miss the comforts to which you were accustomed, Madame Maryna?”

In reply she tossed him, in English:

Ay, now am I in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shakespeare, Mr. Halek.
As You Like It.
”

“And so I do, which is why—”

“But I am teasing you, Mr. Halek! I repeat: I don't miss the stage.”

“You are very brave,” he said.

He was delighted, delighted to see his friends so lean and healthy. Undoubtedly it was all the exercise they were getting, which his girth ruled out for himself, alas, although, he admitted, even when he was young and slender, yes, he had been slender once, he said, staring at Wanda (much of this was directed at Wanda, who looked stunned that Halek was flirting with her), even slender he loved nothing more than loafing. Eating, talking, and playing chess (he would sing as he pondered his next move) were favorite pastimes. “It's your little rustic Athens that seduces me,” he said. “Not your little Sparta.” They enjoyed regaling him with stories of their ineptitude—actually, Halek made them feel like seasoned country folk. “I like the views,” he said from the hammock that had been specially reinforced the day after his arrival. “And the animals too, as long as they keep their distance.” He was as disconcerted by the charming young badger that Ryszard had captured and made into a household pet as by a truly terrifying giant scorpion scooting across the yard. “I confess to being as afraid of animals as a Jew is of water,” he said. And, turning to Jakub: “I haven't offended you, I hope.”

For their turkeyless first Thanksgiving—Piotr wept and the shrieking bird was spared—Maryna laid out the damask linen she had brought from Poland and allowed herself to be exempted from kitchen chores. All the other women shared in the cooking, and Halek astonished them by volunteering to prepare the dessert. “How do you think an old bachelor like me would ever get what he wanted if he couldn't do something for himself?” It was called, he told them (a sliver of English), a shoofly pie—“Shoo fly, shoo fly, shoo fly,” Piotr began to chant—because one will have to shoo away the flies attracted to its molasses and brown-sugar filling.

“Shoo fly, shoo fly—”

“Stop it, Piotr,” said Maryna.

“Sweet on the inside,” crooned Halek. “Stuffed with sweetness. Can't keep the flies away.”

“It's very tasty,” said Wanda. “I'd be grateful if you wrote out the recipe for me.”

“Do, Mr. Halek,” said Julian. “This will keep her mind occupied for at least a week.”

After dessert, when nothing remained but the crumbs on the cloth and the sticky plates and the empty coffee cups, Bogdan recalled that they had neglected the ritual with which this most American of dinners should begin. “I give thanks that we are all here together,” he said. “Who will go next?”

“Piotr darling,” said Maryna, “tell us what you're thankful for.”

“That I'm taller,” he said joyously. “Aren't I taller now, Mama?”

“Yes, darling, yes. Come here and sit in Mama's lap.”

“I give thanks to America,” said Ryszard, “a country insane enough to declare the pursuit of happiness to be an inalienable right.”

“I give thanks that the girls are healthy,” said Danuta.

“Amen to that,” said Cyprian.

“Barbara and I give thanks to Maryna and Bogdan for their vision and their generosity,” said Aleksander.

“Friends,” murmured Maryna, holding Piotr tightly and burying her face in his hair. “Dear friends.”

“Mama, I want to sit in my own chair.”

“I give thanks for America's dream of equality for all its citizens, however far that dream must go to be realized,” said Jakub.

“I give thanks to Mr. Halek for the dessert,” said Wanda.

“Trust my wife to lower the tone,” said Julian. “I suppose that I should give thanks that in America it is legal to divorce.”

“Don't, Julian. I beg you!” cried Jakub.

“Aniela,” shouted Maryna.

“And I thank Mrs. Solski for her gracious compliment,” said Halek, grinning. The girl emerged from the kitchen.

“Aniela,” said Maryna in a furious tone, “we are giving thanks for our blessings.”

“Blessings, Madame? Blessings? Have I done anything wrong?”

Julian buried his head in his hands, then looked up, grimacing. “I apologize, Maryna. I don't mean what I say. I'm sorry.”

“It's not just Maryna to whom you owe an apology,” said Bogdan.

“Husbands”—Halek roared—“husbands!”

“Are the blessings over, Madame? May I go back to the kitchen?”

“And I shall come with you, child,” said Halek, “and you can say your blessing to me.”

Of course, he had been brazenly paying court to Aniela as well as to the wretched Wanda (which enraged Julian), but he had his comeuppance the following day. When he took his erect penis out and lunged at Aniela in the kitchen, she bolted and he lumbered after her, trousers agape, as far as the field beyond the barn, where he slid into an irrigation ditch. Aniela halted a little downstream and stared in amazement at the penis bobbing in the water. The wide ditch was only a foot and a half deep but the near-supine Halek, for all his grunting and sloshing about, was incapable of righting himself. “Your hand, child!” He was wetter than a sea lion. “Your lovely hand!” Sure that this was all her fault and that she would be punished—for having been attractive to the fat man or for having fled his attentions, which caused him to fall in the water, she wasn't sure which: all she knew is that she felt guilty, which meant that she must have done something wrong—Aniela turned and ran back to the kitchen.

The barking of the house dog, a stray they'd adopted which Bogdan, to the puzzlement of their German neighbors, had named Metternich, brought Ryszard and Jakub to Halek's rescue.

“I'm an old scamp,” he sputtered after they hauled him out of the water. “Madame Maryna, what must you think of me now? Can you forgive me?”

She did. It was easy for Maryna to pardon Halek his scabrous antics: he was ludicrously obese, he was returning to San Francisco in a few days. He became more difficult to pardon when they discovered, an hour after seeing him off at the depot, that their merry friend was a kleptomaniac. Bogdan was missing the brass knuckles he'd brought from Poland, Julian his compass, Wanda her book of recipes, Danuta and Cyprian their older child's christening cup, Jakub a volume of Heine's poems, Barbara and Aleksander a bottle of black currant vodka, Ryszard a leather belt hung with bears' claws and snake rattles he'd bought on one of his trips into the San Bernardinos from a Cahuilla trapper. Halek even went off with Piotr's favorite jigsaw puzzle, The Smashed Up Locomotive. Only Aniela was spared, unless one counts the jar of sugar he filched from the kitchen. And Maryna lost a matching necklace and pair of pendant earrings of oxidized silver: Polish women of fashion had worn such mourning jewelry, as it was called, after the failure of the 1863 Uprising. A present from Bogdan's grandmother, they were among her most treasured possessions.