Swans Are Fat Too by Michelle Granas Read Free Book Online Page A

Wiktor, you know, Babcia just died and––"
    "I know. Should I call the police?"
    "About Babcia?"
    Why had she called? She'd known how it would be. Between a theoretical physicist and a composer of weird music there wasn't much to choose. She said good-bye quickly and put down the phone.
    She went into the kitchen. She should have been ready for an emergency. She should have stocked up on chocolate.
    After making herself a cup of tea, she ate four slices of toast with sugar, and then because Maks still hadn't come back, she ate four more, and then she went into the piano room, sat down by the Beckstein, and leaned her head on the rim. On consideration, she didn't think Maks was running around the streets. Maks slept with the light on in his room. He was hiding in the building or he was with Kalina. There was nothing she could do but wait. Sometime, in the early hours of the morning, she lifted her head for a moment and watched as two figures tiptoed into the apartment.
     
    Konstanty, seeing Hania at the grocery store in the morning, considered that she looked like a heart patient after an unsuccessful operation. Not one of his, of course.
    "Good morning pani , any luck with the job hunting?"
    "No, I think I'm stuck as a babysitter for the moment. Unless I can get something to do at home."
    On a sudden impulse he thought he'd probably regret later, he said, "I may have a job for you––of course, I don't know if you'd be interested…it's not much, a little typing and editing really…"
    "I'm sure I'd be…" don't sound so eager, she told herself, and ended the sentence on an entirely lower key––"interested."
     
    So, thought Konstanty on his way to work, maybe that was a mistake, but probably not. He wondered what she'd make of his writing, felt almost a little anxious about it––not very, just that tiniest little uneasiness. He had asked her some question; he forgot what, something about her reading habits, to see if she actually had any literary interests. He'd got more of a reply than he expected.
    Pianists, she said, were supposed to know literature. There were so many links between literature and music. The themes of novels, she continued, went by nations. English novels were about requited love, she said. (Any other Polish woman would have batted her eyes at him at that point. She didn't even blink. There was no need for him to let a twinkle show in his eye, to smile his three-quarter Mona Lisa smile. Had he missed it?) French novels, she said, were about love, disillusionment, and self-knowledge––and more love, and more self-knowledge. American novels were all about struggle––for money, position, survival, something. In American novels it was always a battle. In Russian novels it was all suffer, sin, and suffer. Polish novels, whatever their ostensible subject, were only about Poland, always and toujours Poland. And then he'd had to admit that indeed, he was writing about Poland, but it wasn't a novel…
    So, okay, maybe he, like other Poles, had his country a bit too much on his mind, but really, where else in the world would one find a prince and a pianist discussing literature while standing over a barrel of pickles? Or was that just his romanticizing view? If one looked at them differently, weren't they just two perfectly ordinary people chatting as they waited in line? Or––an unintentional illustration of Jack Sprat and his wife?
    Although Konstanty could be charming when he wished, his general austerity of manner was such that few people realized he had a sense of humor.
    He walked into the gray-floored hall of the hospital, down the corridor toward his examining room in the cardiology department. His colleague Jacek, middle-aged, round, and jolly, was ushering in a patient while humming a tune––something about a "heart beating to the rhythm of the cha-cha." Jacek was always singing, and he told his patients off-color jokes in a way that rather scandalized Konstanty, trained in a