Swans Are Fat Too (12 page)

"Don't have anything to do with them. Those are low, mean, sly, despicable people––every one of them. It's a bad family. Stay away from them."

"It's like this," explained her neighbor from across the road, a large bald man with a walrus moustache who had waylaid her early in her stay to set her straight on all the village intrigue.
Pan
Piotrek always left off tying dahlia stalks or sweeping a walkway to chat with her when she came out of the house. "
Pani
Ola and
Pan
Wojtek are cousins––the same grandparents. And there was a dispute about the inheritance. You see that fence line on
Pan
Wojtek's? According to
Pani
Ola it's supposed to run not to that tree but to the next post over there––oh, that one there." He pointed. "For a year after the grandfather––God rest his soul––passed on we lived in daily anticipation of a massacre. One day
Pani
Ola was chasing
Pan
Wojtek with a kitchen knife, the next he was hollering below their windows that he was going to burn the house down. Ah," he waved a hand with a slight air of disappointment, "they've calmed down a lot since then."

"But," said Hania, looking at the markers he'd pointed out, "the difference isn't half a meter's worth––and there's all this space about…"

Pan
Piotrek gave her an intent look. "It's the principle of the thing,
pani
––the principle. You have to defend what's yours. You can't just lie down and let someone walk all over you. Why I––when there was an inheritance in my family...My brother-in-law––may lightning strike him! tried....
God's wounds
..." Suddenly his eyes were dilating and he was beginning to swipe angrily at the flower beds with his broom. She quickly changed the subject.

A curious flaw, she thought as she walked back to the other house, in many Poles' characters; they were usually argumentative but not physically aggressive––until one touched them in certain ways, and then everything flared up, unreasonably, and boiled over.

Respected Madam,…It's not only in the village that people get so unreasonable over things that don't matter. Some of my colleagues at the hospital had their scalpels out the other day over the way their titles were listed on a board. It's rather surprising here how the instant someone disagrees with someone else that other becomes 'uncultured' and 'uncivilized.' It's quite true, as you say, that we have only to open the newspapers to see how the spirit of spite and envy can overrule the ability to see the larger picture or to value issues at their true worth.

Have you got to the Socinians yet? I don't mean to hurry you, only I had an idea in connection with the Museum of Polish History. Sorry, my thoughts are jumping about but I know you'll be able to follow.
(Hania read this line ten times).
I think I'll suggest a room dedicated to alternative solutions. Perhaps my sister could get involved in the funding; she's good at that sort of thing. 

Hania wrote to Konstanty again that evening. Here in the village there was no lack of material; something was always happening that seemed to her strange, worthy of comment, or illustrative of some quality already revealed in Konstanty's writing. That morning, for instance, a police car had taken up its station at one end of the village, hidden in a ditch, with waiting radar. As the neighborhood had been much bothered by the speed with which tourist cars zipped along the paved road between the houses, it was viewed with mild approval. But when elderly, very elderly Pan Józek hobbled to the other end of the village on his cane, and sat down on a bench there, lifting a slow bony hand to each passing driver in warning of the police car ahead, his public spirit was even more strongly approbated.

Respected Madam,…yes, we like our rebels. My heart warms to Pan Józek, I admit. In Poland we're allowed to defy any authority but convention...Do I talk too much about 'in Poland?'––it's only that coming from some years spent abroad, I am struck by certain facets of my own country, and think perhaps the situation is the same for you...And speaking of rebels, how is Maks?

Hania made a quick check. Maks was playing some game in the dirt with the other children, so that was all right then. Kalina was sleeping in a chaise longue. She went back to her typing. The disaster was to come later in the day.

…
One group which was eventually subjected to persecution and chased out of Poland in the 17
^th
century were the Socinians, later called Arians, who became forerunners of the Unitarians in America. Although their total numbers were not large, one historian lists over forty of the major Lithuanian magnatic families who were followers, and they also found converts amongst the gentry. They were anti-trinitarians and pacifists: they did not believe in eternal damnation or original sin; they objected to spilling blood, to war, to capital punishment, to carrying weapons (some nobles wore symbolic wooden swords); they believed in equality before the law, and, as some members became more radical, the return of the land to the peasants. They believed in applying reason to the Bible and attempting to live by the teachings of the Evangelists, and even their enemies had to admit that the Socinians were 'characterized by virtue, devoutness, and scholarship.' According to a contemporary, Archbishop Tillotson, 'they could be taken as a model of the manner for honest disputation and touching on religious questions without excitement and indecorous slander of their opponents
…'

Maks came into the house looking disgusted. "What's wrong, Maksiu?" said Hania, guessing that he had quarreled with his friends. This happened fairly frequently; words would fly, maybe a slight blow or push or two, noses would go up in the air, there would be a cooling-off period, and then everything would be forgotten and everyone would be best friends again. It puzzled Hania a little, accustomed as she was to the permanent falling-outs and lasting animosities of American childhood. Maks flung himself into a chair and crossed his arms, "They're all a bunch of rooster eggs."

"Maks, roosters…" Hania began and then stopped, not certain how to proceed.

"They're pond scum."

"Okay, well, why don't you just cool off a little. I want to finish what I'm doing here, all right?"

He shrugged and took himself off angrily.

…'
They ordinarily argue with moderation and seriousness, without excitement and temper…clearly and precisely, carefully, skilfully, and decently, sometimes with a subtle emphasis or moderate enthusiasm, but without rude or cutting comments…Some Protestant writers, all Catholic polemicists, and particularly Jesuit writers…are bunglers in comparison with them.'

Hania came to the end of the section and paused, feeling uplifted and encouraged. Yes. There were people in the world––even back then––who were capable of behaving like rational beings.

Her pleasant reverie was shattered by an ear piercing shriek. Aaaaaaeeee! Heeeeellpp! And sobs. She surged from her chair, the laptop flew off and hit the floor with a crash, and she tore in the direction of the shrieks. Aeeeeeiiii!

She reached the kitchen. Water was spraying everywhere. Maks was leaning across the sink on his stomach and had his finger in the faucet. Aaeeeeiiiii!!! The spray soaked her as she pushed through it to the sink.

"My finger. My finger's stuck!"

Hania grabbed for the knob and turned it but nothing happened; the water continued to gush and spray. She tried to reach for Maks' finger and got such a quantity of water in her face that she was momentarily blinded.

"Pull it out!" she gasped.

"Aaiiiii!" Maks sobbed, "I can't."

She caught his finger and tried to wiggle it out, but Maks screamed louder. "Stop! It hurts! It hurts!"

Water shot to the ceiling, hit the floor, spattered like machine gun fire along the wall. She was soaking wet and so was Maks.

A gaggle of children's faces appeared in the open window, then ducked in unison with loud screeches as the water flew in their direction.

"Run!" Hania said to the group collectively, trying to hold Maks so he wouldn't slide off the sink, "someone call someone to help!"

A moment later and the room was full of people,
Pan
Gienek,
Pan
Piotrek,
Pan
Wieboda,
Pani
Ola, and many others, each one giving advice, cursing and dodging the water. "Where's the shut-off valve,
kurcze blade
?" No one knew.

Someone said it was under the sink,
cholera
jasna
.
Pan
Gienek dived under the sink and in a moment emerged with a piece of pipe in his hands.

"Idiot!" shrieked someone, "that's the catch-basin, what'd you take that off for?"

"
Kurcze
, the knob won't work," said someone.

"It's a faulty washer,
cholera
," said someone.

"Get a hacksaw," said someone.

"Noooooo!!!!" screamed Maks in a panic.

"Blllaaagh!" said Hania as the water caught her full in the mouth.

"Cholera take the washer!" said
Pan
Gienek, applying his wrench to the base of the faucet. A second later and the top of the faucet came loose, and Hania could pull Maks away from the sink. He still had the spout stuck on his finger, and from the decapitated water inlet the water now pumped into the sink, down through the dismembered run-off pipe, and onto the floor.

Maks waved the pipe around and cried. Someone said to pour soap on it. They poured dishwashing liquid on it and pulled till Maks screamed. No luck.

"Try oil," said someone, as they all stood about Maks in a quarter-inch of running water.

Someone found the oil. Pop! His finger came out.

"
Kurde
, it was I, I who said to use oil," said someone in a pleased voice.

"Oh thank you, thank you," said Hania in relief, as the participants began to depart. "Thank you so much."

"Thank you, thank you."

And then, as the last one went out the door. "But, but…wait, wait a moment! Please!"

Pan
Piotrek turned. "Yes?"

Hania gestured towards the faucet, where the water was still pumping vigorously over the floor. It made a flood out the back door and was creating a pool in the yard.

"The water…"

Pan
Piotrek shrugged. "Have to call a plumber, I guess."

"Do you know a plumber?"

"No. We do all our own, here in the village."

"But…" Hania clung to him as her last hope, "where will I find a plumber?"

"I can't help you." He shrugged, then, as if touched a bit by her despair, he added, "You can walk to the grocery at the crossroads; they might be able to tell you. But around here…" He shook his head and took himself off.

Late that evening Hania sank exhausted into a chair and closed her eyes. She was too tired even to get undressed and go to bed.

After
Pan
Piotrek disappeared, she had left a reluctant Kalina minding a bucket placed under the sink and had trudged along the road to the end of the village and along the highway to the grocery store. It had been hot, the sun had beat down on them, Maks had whined about the heat and complained about his finger, and dawdled so that she had to catch his hand and practically drag him along with her.

They'd passed the two policemen by the radar car. "Could use her as a roadblock," she'd heard one of them snigger behind her back. Of course, he hadn't meant her to hear.

When she had come in through the door of the grocery the plump fiftyish woman behind the counter had looked up and asked where she'd come from and told her she shouldn't have walked there at that time of day, it was very bad for the health to go out in the noonday sun, and "
pani
being so fat and all" it wasn't a good idea at all, and what could she do for her? A plumber? She had looked doubtful, taken a step or two into the room behind, and had a loud, shouted conversation with someone in the back purlieus. "Kowalczyk?"  and the reply, "
Niiiee
, he's a rascal, that one."

The woman's voice again. "Stąpek?" and the reply, "
Nie
, he's a cad, that one."

"How about Zbyszek?"

An explosion of anger from the man: "That
skurwysyn
! He still owes me ten
złoty
." A pause, then, "There's Włodek might be willing, but I wouldn't trust him…"

A moment later the woman reappeared and handed Hania a piece of paper on which a name was written in ill-formed block letters. "STĄPEK."  The cad. Great, Hania thought.

A phone number? No, the woman didn't have it, but she could tell Hania where he lived. It was the next village over––only a matter of two kilometers or so.

The cad, however, when they'd arrived panting at his gate, had got up out of a lawn chair and said he couldn't come that day. "But the water is pouring all over the floor," said Hania.

The cad had rubbed his head, and looked into the distance, and said that it was hardly worth his while, but if she wanted to pay emergency rates he could come the next day.

Maks had made the walk back so miserable that she had felt several times like leaving him along the side of the road in the hopes he'd be picked up like a stray dog by some kind and unsuspecting passer-by.

And then there'd been an afternoon of emptying buckets and of mopping and mopping the floor. It was only some time in the evening that Yola had put her head around the open door and spoken to Hania as she rose from her knees with a wet towel.

"Excuse me,
pani
." She pulled forward a little brother. "Hubert says he thinks he knows how to turn the water off."

Hania just stared, unbelieving. "If he does, please tell him to do so."

"We have to go in the bathroom."

They all proceeded to the bathroom. Hubert pointed to the wall. Yola said, "He says he watched our uncle when he renovated the bathroom last year. The turn-off-thing's behind the tiles. Nice, isn't it?" She smoothed the tiles with a hand, "It doesn't show at all."