Necessary Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

long hair, chain smoking Gitanes, and the women who, hearing she just came from Poland, hugged and kissed her, assuring her the Polish people were
marveilleuse
and
formidable.
They made her admit that
Le Devoir
had far more coverage of the crisis in Poland than
The Montreal Gazette.
    â€œYou should understand us so well, Anna! We, too, are struggling for our independence, here. For our way of life! Our very survival is at stake!”
    â€œNo, it isn’t like Poland,” she kept telling them. But only Marie would agree with her.
    At the entrance to the wood-panelled hall she was given a name tag to stick to her dress. It said,
Anna Nowicka, Poland. Visiting scholar. Department of English.
Her resentment evaporated. She was charmed by the ease with which conversations started. “I just thought I would come up and say hello,” was all that was needed.
    â€œNo, my husband couldn’t come with me,” she tried to explain if anyone asked. Passports were not easily given to families, and, besides, Piotr couldn’t really just leave. He was teaching civil law at Wroclaw University, he was a legal adviser to a local Solidarity chapter. No, of course it wasn’t the best of solutions, but what else could they do.
    â€œA girl from Breslau!” That was William’s voice, raised in amazement. “Where are you from in Poland?” he had asked,and she said, “Wroclaw,” prepared for the need to explain once again the shifting borders of post-war Europe, the story of the territories gained and lost in which a German city became part of Poland. But he did not ask her for explanations.
    â€œA girl from Breslau!” he repeated. “What a coincidence!”
    â€œWroclaw,” her mother would protest, each syllable a distinct, resonant beat. Vro tswav! That’s how she would say it, Vro tswav, her face locked in a tense grimace of mistrust.
    William’s eyes narrowed with pleasure as he smiled at Anna. He was wearing a black turtleneck under an open shirt — yellow and red patches twirling on the fabric as if spun by a juggler’s hand. His beard, trimmed short, made her think of the plumage of some rare silver bird. He had brought her a glass of wine, and she was holding it so tightly that the shape of the stem imprinted itself on the palm of her hand.
    She knew he liked her, felt it in his eyes, in his smile, in the growing intensity with which his blue eyes took in the curls of her hair, the movements of her head. As if, with every move, with each simple gesture, she was accomplishing something truly extraordinary, something no one else, ever, could have done.
    â€œSo you
do
know where it is?” she asked him, brushing her hair back, away from her face.
    The days were still warm and she was wearing a loose Indian dress she had bought in a store on St. Laurent. It was a black cotton dress with purple patches, the shape of falling leaves.
    â€œAre you surprised?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI was born there,” he said. “When it was still Breslau, that is. So we are really from the same place.”
    She was playing with the beads in her hair, turning them with her fingers and then letting them go, thinking of an old photograph she had of herself, a tiny figurine, a white dress, a halo of curly hair.
    In the black and white picture, she is holding her mother’s hand. Behind her are the ruins: piles of rubble spilling into the streets, clusters of red bricks, some still paired together with mortar,slabs of concrete and granite. A sea of ruins, surrounding small islands of still-standing buildings. Bent pieces of wire stuck out of cement blocks, ripped from the foundations. Underneath the crumbling plaster of what used to be walls of apartments, a wicker lattice revealed itself like a web of veins under the skin. Some of the houses were cut in half, gutted, with discoloured patches on the walls where balconies had fallen off. Where rooms had been