Necessary Lies Read Online Free PDF

bordering on tears, “I have a three-year-old son and a husband who are trying to leave before the doors close. I’m praying every day that they make it.”
    The McGill library was getting hot and stuffy. Anna shifted in her chair, her back muscles begging for relief.
    Round two in Poland
, she read.
Warsaw puts military patrols in the streets as Solidarity resumes its rebellious national congress.
Military officials were being deployed in every Polish village, amidst uneasy explanations that their sole purpose was to combat corruption. General Jaruzelski, whose hollow face and dark glasses she now saw regularly alongside Solidarity leaders, announced the formation of a Committee of National Salvation. Hopeful stories were recalled of his family estate confiscated by the Soviets in their 1939 invasion of Poland, of his family deported to Siberia, of his youth spent in Soviet camps where his eyelids cracked from burning sun, of slave labour that injured his back and took the life of his father. Was the man in dark glasses, she read, a faithful servant of a powerful master, or a man waiting for his chance?
    No, Piotr would never think of leaving. No matter how long the line-ups for food, however easily whatever freedoms they still had would be crushed. Oh, yes, he would agree with her that their lives were outrageous, would fume at the necessity of nights spent sitting on folded chairs in front of stores to secure a place in a line-up for a car battery, a refrigerator, a bed. But shortages, he argued, were nothing more but another proof that Communism had failed, gone bankrupt, and would have to go.
    Their last evening in Wroclaw, they drank the warm beer in
widnicka Cellar and
held hands across the table, the top now smelling of the rotting rag with which the waitress had wiped it. Piotr chose to ignore the foul smell and the obvious resistance of the waitress.
    I’ll miss you, darling,” he whispered. “Why am I letting you go? Come back soon!”
    They had been married for ten years. They had never parted for long.
    â€œI will.”
    She stopped herself from saying anything else. In the car his hand was already making its way inside her blouse, brushing her breast. She could feel her nipples stiffen, making their delicious pulsating promise.
    If anyone had told her that this was the time she might fall in love with another man, she would have laughed. Friends she would make, of course, that she knew. But love?
    Newcomers to McGill were all invited to an afternoon at the Faculty Club, and Anna arrived there slightly resentful of having to waste the whole afternoon she could have spent in the library. She never liked big parties and now when Canadian writers were beginning to intrigue her, she felt she had so little time left. From Poland, Canada seemed like a vast, blank sheet of prosperity. Only with its writers did the whiteness take on the first shades of colour. She read, mesmerised by what was emerging before her, the sharpening contours, the hues.
    Marie I’Incarnation dreamed of walking into a vast, silent landscape of precipitous mountains, valleys and fog until shecame to a small marble church. The Virgin with Jesus sat on its roof, talking about Marie and about Canada. Then the Virgin smiled and kissed her three times. It was a sign, the French nun wrote, to come here and make a house for Jesus and Mary, among the Hurons.
    Anna read stories of forced conversions, of New World blankets harbouring the killer germs, decimating the Huron villages. Of French farmers clinging to their language and religion amidst a sea of English. Of being told one was only good to carry water and serve one’s betters. Of the revenge of the cradles and the Quiet Revolution. Of the miracles, shrines, and protests. Of martial law and fervent, thwarted hopes for independence.
    â€œIsn’t it just like in Poland, now,” Marie’s friends often said. Anna liked them a lot, these men with bushy