Necessary Lies by Eva Stachniak Read Free Book Online Page A

oratorio,
Dimensions of Love and Time.
On the back of the record was a photograph of William from fifteen years before. He was sitting in an empty room, on a carved antique armchair, looking away from the camera. His face was longer, she thought, with a touch of austerity about it she had never noticed. It must have been the absence of beard, she thought.
    William Herzman is one of the most promising Canadian composers of the decade. His music draws its inspiration from the act of questioning. It rings with the profound distrust of thesacred. It allows for no comfort, no escape; it demands the suspension of emotional involvement as we seek to understand the essence of the human experience.
    She ran her finger along the contours of his face.
    â€œAnything else?” Marie asked. “Has he written anything else?”
    Anna said she didn’t know. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” she said, lightly. “I just thought you might have heard of him. At Radio-Canada. That’s all.”
    A week later, he was waiting for her in front of the Arts Building on the McGill campus, sitting on the stone ledge, looking at the city below. She could see him from afar, motionless, hands folded on his lap, in his beige coat and a brown felt hat. A fedora. In her grandmother’s stories of pre-war Warsaw, men wore fedoras and foulards, they lifted their hats to greet women. He looked at his watch. She was late, but not too late yet, not beyond hope.
    â€œI can still turn away,” she thought, “There is still time.” It was getting dark already, and the beam of light circled the sky over the downtown office towers. “We can be friends,” she kept telling herself. “Just friends.”
    There was nothing wrong in seeing him, she decided. They liked to talk, that’s all. They liked the same books, the same movies. For hours they talked of Elias Cannetti, Günter Grass, Apollinaire. “You absolutely have to see it,” he would say and take her to all his favourite films. In the red velvet seats of the Seville Repertory Cinema she laughed at
The Life of Brian.
With amazement she watched the rituals of the
Rocky Horror Picture Show
, when at the cue from the screen the audience threw rice, lit cigarette lighters or squirted water. William took her for evening drives up the Mountain to show her the lights of the city. They lined up for hot bagels on St. Viateur, had late dinners in restaurants along Prince Arthur. When they walked, they were still careful to keep a distance between their bodies, conscious of every swerve that could bring them closer together. All that time he never asked her about Piotr.
    He smiled when he saw her approaching, a smile of relief.
    â€œDinner?” he asked.
    She loved these long, unhurried dinners, with dishes arriving one by one, filling her with delicate flavours. For the first time in her life she tasted escargots, black bean soup, the pink flesh of grilled salmon, green flowers of broccoli. She was insatiable, always looking hungrily at the colourful plates, eating far too much, as if to make up for lost years.
    She nodded. If there was already something irreversible about this evening, something that made it different from all the others, she was trying not to think about it.
    â€œSo,” he asked when they sat down, the flame of a candle wavering between them. The day before she had promised to tell him why she was so fascinated by her emigré writers, stories scattered in emigré papers, thin volumes of poems printed by the small presses of London, Chicago, Montreal. As if the mere act of leaving anointed people with some mystical, unexplainable superiority. As if they could see more.
    â€œIsn’t it a prisoner’s dream?” he asked.
    The question troubled her. In Poland she would never think of the need to defend the importance of these exiled voices from abroad. Her interests might be declared suspect or embarrassing to her