He climbed in, turned around and sat down. Facing out into the room, he drew the curtain. Daylight filtered through the thin grey fabric. Bold brightness lit the striations in the weave. And sitting cross-legged in the dimness of his cave, he watched the strips of gleaming light.
While she worked, Maryte would think about her parents. Rolling her metal cart over the concrete floor, she remembered her mother’s kiss on the top of her head, her father’s proud smile. It was hard to be without them. She wished she could see them again. She would speak to them, tell them she loved them and show them that she and Dobilas were alright.
She walked home along streets where her parents had never lived. Wishing she could see her father standing on the corner, talking business with a neighbour while her mother chatted to the wife, she would welcome their ghosts. She stopped to look up into the trees. The leaves rustled peacefully. One day she and Dobilas would return to the land that held their parents’ presence.
Mrs. Moynahan was waiting in the lit kitchen doorway at the end of the hallway. Looking Maryte up and down, there was distaste in her manner and voice. Dobilas had tried to take advantage of her. He had tried to force himself upon her. Luckily she had been able to fend him off.
Maryte had to stifle a giggle at a bumbling Dobilas overpowering the mighty Mrs. Moynahan. In their village such attentions would have been received with a sharp, good natured smack. The story would be passed around, a joke told at farm weddings. No harm done, the villagers would have said. Just a curious idiot boy. But their landlady was no farm girl and this was not Lithuania.
“I tell him no good,” Maryte said.
“Not good enough. I want you out of here.”
Maryte’s heart leapt with fear. This was too harsh a punishment. Dobilas didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. His action didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean what Mrs. Moynahan was implying.
“Mrs. Moynahan, please.”
“You can have a few days to find a new place but I’m sorry, you have to go.”
To Maryte, the woman didn’t seem sorry at all.
“Please,” she said, fear growing to alarm, “he no bother you again, I promise.”
“I don’t see how you can rightly guarantee that. He shouldn’t be on the loose. In fact, he should be locked away. In the loony bin. That’s where he belongs. 999 Queen. And that’s where he’ll end up if he doesn’t watch his step.”
Maryte was pitched into panic.
“Please, Mrs. Moynahan. We no make trouble. We go.”
Mrs. Moynahan sniffed. “You have to be gone by Saturday. In the meantime, keep that pervert out of my sight. He’s a menace to women. He’d better stay out of my way if he knows what’s good for him.”
Afraid of being kicked out then and there, Maryte suppressed a rising anger. Where was the kindly woman who taken them in, the friendly woman who had offered advice on dresses, hair and shoes, the understanding woman with whom they had shared lemonade and stories? Mrs. Moynahan, understanding no more. She seemed a different person. Flushed and upset, Maryte went upstairs to look for her naughty brother.
She stood in the hallway, listening to the exaggerated scuffling coming from the guest bedroom at the end of the hallway. Going into their room instead, she moved chairs back and forth, opened and shut the closet door. She played hide-and seek. She calmed herself. And gentling her voice, she called out in sing-song as she went down the hall.
“Where’s my Dobilas? Where could he be? I know! I know where he is! And I’m coming to get him!”
Maryte stepped into the small back bedroom which Mrs. Moynahan kept unrented in case her brother came from Ireland for a visit. Seeing the single bed neatly made, the bureau kept dusted and uncluttered, the clean curtains opened onto the sunny outdoors, she felt the emptiness of a room to which a brother never came. Mrs. Moynahan had only lodgers and lovers. She had no one who mattered. And standing before the cupboard in which Dobilas hid, Maryte watched the curtain swaying slightly with his breath.
“Dobiluk, are you in there?”
A giggle came from behind the curtain.
“Dobiluk, come out.”
He scuttled further back inside the cupboard.
“Dobiluk. Come out now. Please.”
She bent her head in patience, waiting at the curtain. Thrusting out his hand and climbing down, he came into her arms. I must get him away from her, she thought as he rubbed his grinning face against her chest. It is no longer safe here.
Chapter 5
Maryte hovered in her bedroom doorway, waiting for Steponas to pass. Intercepting him on his way back to his room after dinner, she asked to speak to him. She invited him to step into her room. She closed the door quietly with both hands. And leading him to the table by the window and lowering herself into the chair opposite, she described the day’s events.
“You’d like me to speak with Mrs. Moynahan,” he said.
Maryte looked down at her hands, grateful not to have to ask.
“She’s stubborn. She might not listen,” he said
But you are a man, Maryte thought. And her lover.
“Perhaps she will listen to you. You are closer to her.”
He gave her a swift look, his expression cocky and amused.
Her eyes flitted over the contours of his chest. How she wanted to rest her hands upon it, to lay her head against its lovely undulating landscape. Help me, she wanted to say. Tell me everything will be alright. And feeling him soften, she understood that he had agreed.
Steponas returned to his room, shutting the door behind him. Thinking of Maryte’s slumped, dumpy figure, pitying the earnest beseeching look, he had almost held her. It would not do to become entangled. He did not wish to lead her on. It would not be right to raise the hopes of this good woman who was already an old maid.
He lay on his bed, listening to the clank of pots and pans rising from the kitchen below. Feeling a sudden stab of loneliness, he turned away. It was no good to get attached. Mrs. Moynahan was okay for now. And there were plenty of pretty young Lithuanian girls gathered in this city, far more than he would have encountered back home.
He had become enamoured of such a girl once, a maid in this mother’s kitchen, a girl who had shyly returned his glances. Giving the girl a good scolding, his mother next turned to him. Marry upwards, she had said. And respecting her wisdom, he left off with the girl with the sweetly pointed chin.
He thought of his mother standing at the stove, stirring a pot. Playing on the floor at her feet, stirring an empty bowl with a wooden spoon, he had recited his prayers. She had corrected him when he got it wrong, guided him when he got stuck. Her manner had been calm, loving and gentle. And thinking of his landlady, a spasm of irritation passed through him at this hysterical Canadian woman.
Mrs. Moynahan would be just as unkind to him one day. Knowing how to gauge danger, he always left before getting hurt. War had only sharpened his senses. It was time to move on. And resting on his bed, arms behind his head, he decided not to visit his landlady tonight.
Steponas watched without comment as Mrs. Moynahan served dinner the following evening. Removing a casserole from the oven, she banged the door shut with her knee. She slopped two spoonsful onto his plate. She smacked it down in front of him. Ignoring her, he ate while she sat glowering at him across the table.