6. It was on April 2nd last year that I discovered you had a dimple in your right cheek. You smiled at me for some reason. (Why? I had done nothing to deserve it. Please explain, if you remember April 2nd.) On the calendar in my office I made a note: “M.F. revealed dimple today.” What do you think of sentimental men? I’m sure you hate them. And you’d be right to.
Mary sat bolt upright. Was Mr. Pizarsky a dream, or not? She studied her surroundings. She had no idea where she was. There was a vase full of foxgloves on her bedside table, their petals the pale, shocking blue of the veins in a wrist. She moved on to the next pillow.
7. I learnt English when I went to war. People think I’m lying when I say that, but that’s how it was. We were in Galicia, Poles in Russian uniforms, trying to court independence; we managed to occupy only a slice of the place while the Germans and the Austrians made off with the rest. We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter. I studied to take my mind off things. At dead of night in the mess hut—Pride and Prejudice, an English-to-Polish dictionary, and a candle. I could have burnt the place down. But I had to do it. I needed words, lots of words to think about while I was going about the rest of the day. And I didn’t want anything affected. I wanted nothing to do with those Romance languages. I wanted clipped words, full of common sense. Thoughts to wear beneath my thoughts. Allow, express, oath, vow, dismay, matter, splash, mollify. I liked those words. I liked saying them. I still do.
8. I helped to load cannons. People are not good at war. Can I really say that, when all I know is that I and those around me were not good at war? Don’t say our hearts weren’t in it — they were. But we got sick, some of us unto death. Spanish flu and the rot of trench foot, and there were such smells, they made us sick to our stomachs. A few of our men dropped cannonballs and broke their legs. That sort of thing. And then there was my cousin Karol. The first time he successfully shot a man, he didn’t see a way to stop shooting; he knew he had to do more, and with greater speed than the first kill. He couldn’t aim steadily at anyone else, so he turned his rifle on himself — and missed, and missed; each time he did it was as if he were playing some sort of horrible trick on himself, the worst kind of bluff. He told me all about it. “Calm down, Karol,” I told him. “You must keep your head.”
9. Wake up, Mary.
10. I had a great-uncle; he was rich, and we shared a Christian name. He liked me. I made him laugh, without even trying. I said naive things that I really believed in. Things about life, and money. He almost killed himself laughing at me. He liked to slap me on the back and tell me I looked like a peasant. When he died he left me a lot of money. I liked him then. Before that, I must say I had often daydreamed about punching him in the throat. His neck was very fat. He owned factories, and I used to think that people like him were the source of all that was evil in the land.
11. Wake up, wake up. .
12. When I was in Galicia I tried not to think of my fiancée. I didn’t write to her much, and in her own way she reproached me for that. She had every right to, so I won’t dwell on the maddening, indirect ways in which she reproached me. Anyhow, I lost her. When I came back she looked through me and seemed displeased — I might have been the ghost of Banquo for all the pleasure she took in my company. She’s happy now — she married my cousin, a good boy, who is tender with her. (Yes, Karol — I believe I mentioned him in point 8.)
Round and round. Blissfully, Mary rolled in the words, propped her head up on some and her heels on others. She liked this man.
13. When I saw you for the first time, I thought you had a secret life. You had your hair up out of the way and you were wearing your reading spectacles and your dress was buttoned up all the way to your chin. Still, I noticed — if you will excuse my noticing — the fullness of your lips, and the way they parted every now and then as if responding to changes in the breeze. And fleetingly, so fleetingly that it’s possible you weren’t aware you were doing it, you moved your hand from your cheek to your neck to the centre of your chest; you held your own waist and smoothed your skirt over your hips. Yes, you looked as if you had a secret, or you were a secret in yourself. I had seen better lodgings farther out — better lodgings for a bachelor, that is. A set of rooms I would have had all to myself, and I could have cycled to work and back. But I rented this house because of the lady who lived in the attic. To see if I could catch her out.
14. I took a lot of my inheritance money and I told everyone that I would be a lawyer. And I came here to study. When I got here I was restless and nothing interested me. At the end of every evening I got very drunk and vowed to give up my studies, and every morning I was back at the books. I am just trying to show you that my nature is not a consistent one. Sometimes I do what I say I’m going to do, but more often I don’t. It’s a failing. The least of my failings, and the only one I feel up to admitting at the moment. The rest will emerge if you choose to see it. I don’t know if I’m the kind of man that is acceptable to you; I have heard that your father was a priest.
15. Shall I tell you how many times I came up these steps while you were typing? Vowing that today would be the day that I asked you to the pictures. And I’d buy you a pound of violet creams, two pounds of them, whatever you wanted. But then I’d hear you at your typewriter, and I’d go away again. I decided that since I could not approach you, I would make you jealous. I asked my sister Elizaveta if it would work, and she said no. She also said you sounded too old for me. My mother and sisters are all very concerned about who I will marry. I am an only son.
16. This Mr. Fox. Is he better-looking than me?
Cold blew onto Mary Foxe’s blood, as if she had no skin at all.
17. My hand is getting tired. That must be why I slipped up just now.
18. You’re slipping yourself, Mary. Good thing you woke up before our little picnic on Murder Hill. A blue-eyed poet with some stories, a good line in wry humility and some English-as-a-second-language bullshit. . Is that all it takes to turn you fickle these days? Never mind. . We’ll pretend it didn’t happen. A hundred years hence (or a hundred washes, whichever comes first) these words will be gone. .
The game was still on.
FITCHER’S BIRD
Miss Foxe referred to herself as a florist, but really she was a florist’s assistant. She swept plant debris off the shop floor, and she wrapped flowers for the customers and did everything else that the shop owner, Mrs. Nash, didn’t feel like doing. Miss Foxe wasn’t allowed to cut and arrange the flowers used in the window display; nor was she allowed to advise people on the perfect floral gift. Miss Foxe knew much more about flowers than Mrs. Nash, but all she could do was listen while Mrs. Nash told the anxious relatives of springtime invalids to send pink azaleas. Evidently Mrs. Nash was not aware that in the language of flowers azaleas meant “take care of yourself for me.” A touching thought, but by giving a sick person a bunch of azaleas you were telling them that they were on their own. Mrs. Nash’s agenda was simply to shift stock. In summer Mrs. Nash prescribed marigolds left, right, and centre — for birthdays, apologies, and romantic overtures — even though those flowers were better as especial comfort to the heartsick. But Miss Foxe kept all that to herself, for fear of losing her job. As it was, Mrs. Nash snapped at her and called her slow and asked her if she was an idiot nineteen times a day. Miss Foxe liked to be near the flowers, especially in winter, when it was easy to forget that there had ever been such a thing as a flower.