The Lullaby of Polish Girls (24 page)

“Let’s have a party at the country house before you guys leave on Monday. An engagement party. It’s been too long since we partied up at the
chatka
, don’t you think, Jolusia?” Norbert winks.

Jola twirls the skinny cigarette between her fingers, her French
manicure gleaming, and nods vehemently in agreement.
“Za długo!”
she thunders. Kamila is fascinated by her cousin Jola, by her two-inch-long nails (“Acrylic tips! Asian-owned salon. Kamila, I’ll tell you what, those Orientals know what they’re doing”), by the way she flounces into a room in three-inch high heels, and by the fact that Jola is schtupping her forty-two-year-old boss, a bona fide Polish millionaire, who has his own plastic surgery practice, as well as his own wife and two kids.

“But my procedure is scheduled for tomorrow,” Kamila reminds them.

“Then we’ll reschedule it for Monday. Jola, you can set it up, can’t you,
kotku
?” He laughs loudly because of course Jola can. If she could, Jola would pull up the office calendar now. She’d do anything to keep her job with all its perks, including weekend getaways at the
“chatka”
Norbert has in Suruck, on the outskirts of the city. Chatka,
my ass
, Kamila thinks. It’s not a hut, not even close. The vacation home where she and Emil have been staying for the past two weeks is more like a castle, with turrets and balconies and a stable in the fields surrounding the grounds.

Norbert motions for the waitress, and Kamila excuses herself. Jola hops up and follows her. “It’s like they need help with wiping or something,” Kamila hears Norbert say to Emil. Kamila cringes as Emil erupts in a fit of giggles.

The bathroom is all polished porcelain with perfectly folded hand towels. White cans of Rexona deodorant perfume and Elnett hairspray sit in neat rows next to the sinks. It’s like a five-star spa, not a bathroom; even when it comes to its shitters, the Warsaw area is shiny, effusive, and impossibly chic compared to Kielce. Kamila is suddenly overwhelmed. She stands in front of the enormous mirrors and examines, among other things, her painfully short bangs and big paws.

“I can’t believe you’re getting married, Marchewska. I didn’t wanna say it back there, but it’s about fucking time.” Jola snickers, reapplying her bright pink lipstick.

“Joluṡ, please don’t call me by my last name. ‘Marchewska’ wears a kerchief and brings jars of cabbage to the bazaar every Sunday, okay?”

“You’re so fucking funny, Marchewska—I mean, Mrs. Ludek!” Jola laughs.

“No. I’m so fucking nervous,” Kamila whispers, as the bathroom attendant does her best to appear occupied.

“It’ll be
superosko, kochanie
. You have to come back here to buy your dress, obviously. You won’t find anything couture in Kielce. Who’s gonna be your maid of honor, huh?” Jola widens her eyes theatrically. “Okay, don’t answer that now, but keep in mind,
kuzynko
, that I’d throw a fucking dynamite bachelorette party. There’s this place that opened last year called Fantom. It’s like a gay nightclub where you can watch guys go down on each other! There’s no sign or anything, you just ring a little bell. And some of the guys paint their balls with glitter!” Jola scoops and rearranges her breasts. For a moment, Kamila doesn’t know what to say, about any of it.

“I’m nervous about
tomorrow
,” Kamila corrects her cousin.

“Oh my God, Kamila, Norbert’s the best there is. You’re gonna love your new nose! Let’s face it”—Jola titters—“the
nochal
you’ve got doesn’t do you any justice. Out with the old, honey, and in with the new. You’re in Warsaw now.”

“My
nochal
. Right.” She wonders what her father will think next time he sees her. She is getting rid of
his
nose, his genetic stamp. All her life Kamila has dreamed of transformation, of physical metamorphosis, because beauty was not just skin deep; it burrowed underneath tissue and muscle. Kamila liked her personality just fine, thought of herself as insightful and enterprising; but ever since Maciek Toboszycki told her she was ugly, calling her
brzydula
in front of the whole fourth grade, Kamila has wanted to erase her face and start over. And now, she is going to do just that. She thinks about the picture she has had tucked in her wallet for weeks now—a close-up of Michelle Pfeiffer’s tiny, button-sized nose. When she nervously showed it to Norbert last week, he smiled. “Well, I’m not a miracle worker, Kamila, but I’ll try.”

Jola straightens up and looks at herself one last time in the bathroom mirror. “We better get back, Kamila, they’ll think we drowned.”

“Would you marry Norbert, if you could?” Kamila asks. Jola stares at her for a minute, before bursting out in a peal of laughter.

“Are you kidding,
dziewczyno
? He’s like a hundred years old.” In that moment, Kamila realizes that she’s underestimated her cousin. Jola’s dalliance with Norbert is dirty and wrong, and it will all probably end quite soon, but that’s why it is so good. Kamila briefly tries to imagine a life where nothing else matters but the thrill of living.

By the time Norbert and Jola drop them off at the villa, Emil is sloppy drunk, falling into Kamila’s lap in the car and groping her. It’s all for show, and it’s what Emil does best. Whenever they get behind closed doors, Emil curls up on the couch and complains about headaches or bellyaches. Kamila is used to it, and yet she is still constantly disappointed.

“We’ll stay at a hotel tonight,
kochanie
. You two can have the house to yourselves.” Jola winks at Kamila.

“Let’s not reschedule tomorrow, Norbert. The idea of a party is tempting, and we appreciate it, but I just want to get this over with, okay?” Kamila asks, lightly tapping the tip of her nose before getting out of the car. Norbert concedes quickly, his hand already somewhere under Jola’s dress, and then speeds off into the night.

The villa is dark but Kamila refrains from flicking on any lights. She’s suddenly feeling lost and worried, wishing that she could just flop into her bed back home.

“I should shower. I can still smell those cigarettes,” Emil says and makes his way toward their bathroom.

Kamila helps herself to some whiskey from the bar and goes out onto the terrace. The night sky is speckled with stars. She listens to the sound of the cicadas chirping and the running water upstairs, and somewhere underneath all that noise, she can hear the sound of her own pounding heart. On the eve of what she has dreamed of for years—a marriage proposal today and a new face tomorrow—she feels uncertain.

In the hushed night, she can hear Anna’s and Justyna’s voices, she can see their sixteen-year-old faces, on the cusp of real life but not quite there yet. The last time she saw Justyna was months ago, randomly ran into her on Sienkiewicza Street. She had Damian in tow,
but she had stopped and grabbed a beer with Kamila.
Pamiętasz, pamiętasz?
, they laughed and sipped their
piwo
. They didn’t talk about Justyna’s mother or Kamila’s problems with Emil. They talked about the only thing that they had in common now: the past. The conversation was nice but in the end neither of them mentioned meeting up again.

Kamila pours the rest of her whiskey over the balcony and walks back inside. She finds Emil in their bedroom, reading a book. Kamila undresses quietly and slips under the covers, naked, shivering. She can’t even remember the last time they made love. It was months ago, maybe years.

She finds Emil’s penis with her left hand and with her right she begins to fondle herself. Emil turns a page of his book.

“You
have
to.
We
have to. What will we tell our children about the night we got engaged?” Kamila pleads.

“Children? We won’t be telling our children anything about this sort of thing,” Emil answers.

“Well, then, it would be a personal travesty, my husband-to-be, if you left me yearning on the night of our betrothal. Don’t make me go hunting through this castle for a banana.” Kamila laughs, hoping to lighten the mood.

“
Fe
, Kamila.”

“You know, they say sex goes out the window once you’re married. So I guess we’re ahead of the game,” and then she dissolves into a fit of laughter. Emil sighs and puts his book down on the nightstand.

“Kamila, Kamila,” Emil whispers, and his fingertips trace the contours of her nose with its dips and valleys. When he parts her lips and leaves his finger in her mouth, she stops laughing.

“Kamila, you are my soulmate. Let’s not debase that. In the second grade you stood up for me and I knew then that we were destined to be together. I didn’t need a blow job as proof of that then, and I don’t need one now. Animals fuck for the sake of their existence. But we are more than animals. We are beyond skin, beyond flesh. And if that isn’t enough for you, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

Kamila feels her heart hammer in her chest. She thinks back to the spectacle in the square earlier that day. Emil was grinning like a fool,
flailing as he spoke, the sweat flowing down his face in torrents, as he clownishly exclaimed, “Marry me!” Kamila had always imagined him proposing during a private moment, because Emil was most truthful and most himself when they were alone. She had imagined him quiet and focused, vulnerable in his desire to make her his wife. She imagined happy tears, and a kiss. She never imagined a gaggle of Saudi tourists snapping their picture as he got down on one knee.

She wants to flat out ask him if she is signing her life away to celibacy. Is that what he means? That they will never have sex again? But Kamila is afraid to ask, afraid to know more. Emil strokes her forehead.

“I’m nothing without you, I want you beside me forever, and I can’t imagine not having you as my wife. And I’m sorry I called your hands paws tonight. That sounded callous because it
was
callous. But your hands, Kamila …” He reaches under the covers and retrieves both of them and places them on his face, till she is cradling his head. “Your hands are my armor, my comfort, my everything. And they are meant for better things than that,” and he smiles.

“Okay,
kochanie
. Another night.” She sighs and closes her eyes.

In the morning, Kamila wakes up to the smell of coffee and sausage. Emil is in the kitchen, already dressed.

“Sweetheart, I can’t eat or drink before the surgery, remember? But thank you.” Emil serves himself a big helping and chews his food in silence. She can tell he’s jittery too.

“Turns out I can’t eat before the surgery either. But I sure could use a drink.” He laughs his giggly, high-pitched laugh.

“Kamila, I’ll say this once and I’ll say it here because I’ll be too anxious at the clinic, but listen, I love you the way you are. I love your face. And I know you aren’t doing this for me, that this is something you want for yourself, but I want to reiterate that I will not be more attracted to you afterward and therefore …” And he lingers, leaving things unspoken, but she hears him, loud and clear. A better nose will not guarantee better sex. And for a minute, Kamila just wants to go home.

On the cab ride over to the clinic, Emil calls their friend Wojtek, who is staying at Kamila’s while they are away, watering plants and
such. Emil gushes to him about the coolness of the capital, the racy nightclubs and the swanky restaurants, already planning a mini vacation for the three of them, perhaps in October.

“
Mówię ci, superosko!
And maybe Norbi will let us stay in the villa again.
Brachol
, and when I say
villa
, I mean castle … 
tak!
A freaking turret and everything … Now? Now, we are off to see about a new nose for my gal here.” Emil turns to Kamila and winks exaggeratedly.

“For my fiancée, you mean.” Kamila corrects him and Emil’s hand flies to cover the speaker as he shakes his head vehemently and mouths,
Not now
. “Wojtus, I gotta go, we’re almost there. I’ll call you after … I’ll tell her.
Buziaki
.” He hangs up and sits back. Kamila stares at him.

“It’s strange that you say
buziaki
like that.
Buziaki
for him from who? From me? Kisses from us? I don’t get it. It sounds
—weird
.”

Emil glances at Kamila from the corners of his eyes.

“I want Wojtek to be my best man. So I didn’t tell him because I want to tell him in person. Because I know that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Nothing gets past you.”

Immediately, she feels remorse.

“I’m sorry. It’s my nerves. I’m all twisted with them,
kochanie
. I won’t say another word.” And she doesn’t, until they get to reception, where Jola greets them with a giant grin.

“Norbert is taking me to Ibiza!” she whispers giddily to Kamila and then continues full voice. “Now get started on this paperwork, it’s a fucking bitch, but we gotta do it. After that Kinga will take you in the back and prep you. You didn’t eat or drink anything, right?”

Kamila nods as Emil drums his knuckles on the front desk. She wishes he could be stalwart, but he’s even more nervous than she is. She places her hand on his to calm him but he flinches.

“
Chłopie
, you’re not the one going under the knife. Settle down,” Jola orders and directs her next question back to Kamila. “So nothing, right? Not even a little liquid protein.” Jola winks at Kamila, who turns red.

“Nothing.”

Jola laughs and hands Kamila a clipboard and pen. She sits down in the empty waiting room and Emil plops down beside her, peering over
her shoulder. After a few minutes of trying to concentrate, Kamila feels like swatting him away like a fly who is buzzing in her face, and suddenly Emil jumps to his feet, as if she had.

“Hey! I’m gonna go grab a
herbatka
from next door. You want one?”

Kamila glances up from the papers, incredulous.
“I can’t eat or drink—”

“Right. Sorry. Right.” And with that, he pecks her cheek and sprints off, giving her a preposterous thumbs-up before he disappears through the front doors.

“Ibiza, Kamila! We’re staying at a nude beach resort!” Kamila smiles as she continues filling in the blanks: name, age, date of birth, allergies, sign here, sign there, sign away your life on the dotted line, please print. Her head spins.