That was how she always explained it. She claimed her father’s face had turned to a body of water. The deep wrinkles, the eyes. Even the mustache. All of it drowned in sunshine, and cold, cold water.
* * *
—
For a good hour, she looked out the window of the carriage, at Eastern Europe passing her by. She thought of her father many times, but it wasn’t till she saw another man—something like a Lenin—that she remembered the gift. The suitcase.
The train trotted on.
Her eyes met the underwear first, and the socks, and then the brown package, and still she hadn’t pieced it together. The extra clothing was possibly explained by the eccentricities of an older man; a happiness came over her when she read the note about Chopin, Mozart and Bach.
But then she opened the package.
She saw the two black books.
The print on their covers was in English.
Both had Homer written at the top, and then respectively, The Iliad, The Odyssey.
When she thumbed through the first one and found the envelope, the realization was sudden, and severe. She rose to her feet and whispered “Nie” to the half-crowded train.
Dear Penelope,
I imagine you reading this letter on your journey to Vienna, and I say from the outset—do not turn around. Do not come back. I will not receive you with open arms, but rather push you away. I think you can see that there is another life for you now, there’s another way to be.
Inside this envelope are all the documents you need. When you get to Vienna, do not take a taxi to the camp. It is overpriced and you will arrive far too early. There is a bus, and that will get you there. Also, don’t say you are seeking to leave for economic reasons. Say only this: you are afraid of reprisals from the government.
I expect it will not be easy, but you will make it. You will survive and live, and one day I hope we will see each other again, and you will read these books to me in English—for I expect that to be the language you will speak. If it turns out that you never come back, I ask you to read it to your own children, if that is to be what happens out there, on the wine-dark sea.
The last thing I will say is that I taught only one person in this world to play the piano, and although you were a great mistake maker, it was my pleasure and privilege. It is what I’ve loved best, and most.
Yours sincerely, with much love,
Waldek Lesciuszko
Well, what would you do?
What would you say?
Penelope, the Mistake Maker, stayed standing a few seconds longer, then sagged slowly back to her seat. She kept quiet and shivery, with the letter in her hands, and the two black books in her lap. Without a sound, she started to cry.
Into the passing face of Europe outside, Penelope Lesciuszko cried her stray, silent tears. She cried all the way to Vienna.
He’d never been drunk, and therefore never hungover, but Clay imagined this was probably what it was like.
His head was next to him, he gathered it up.
He sat awhile, then crawled from the mattress and found the heavy plastic sheet next to him, in the grass. With tired bones and shaking hands, he made his bed with it, he tucked it in, then walked toward the fence line—an obligatory white sports field divider, all rail and no palings—and rested his face on the wood. He breathed the burning rooves.
For a long time, he tried to forget:
The man at the table.
The quiet background noise of brothers and felt betrayal.
It came from many moments, that bridge of his, but there, at The Surrounds that morning, it came from last night most of all.
* * *