CYRIL FALLING

Awakening, Cyril knew the time had come to settle down at last. In the dream he'd been carrying trays of food out of the kitchen with uncharacteristic haste, the dishes heavy as buckets of coal. Sweat poured down his face, soaked through his shirt and into his black jacket. He was being moved by a terrible urgency, as if the fiends of Hell marched behind him with pitchforks, yet he might have been wearing stone shoes. Around him the Old Hunter, practically empty, lay under a spell: Anja was dreaming by the cash register, Brodski and Wujek, towels over their arms, leaned together against the wall. The entire restaurant dozed. Even the fierce boar's head over the entrance, the stuffed fox and quail, were frozen in a supernatural stillness, their glass eyes heavy with torpor; and a distant, slumbering shine came from the leaded windows that looked out into Chopin Street. Only Cyril was aware that the little sour-faced man with the crooked mustache and the old-fashioned suit was God Himself.

"I ordered the chicken," he insisted when Cyril presented the pork roast.

"But, sir..." In real life Cyril believed he could handle any situation he might encounter in the restaurant, he despised truculent customers and he didn't hesitate to answer back. But there was something about this little stranger that turned Cyril's tongue into a block of marble.

"I ordered the fish," the diner complained shrilly. Cyril looked up to his tray, sure that he'd brought the fish: it was the chicken. The man scowled witheringly. In the distance Anja slumped beside the cash register, her head on her shoulder; Wujek and Brodski hadn't moved.

"I'll get the fish, sir," Cyril said.

He awakened sweating, tangled in his bedclothes. It was 4:00 A.M. The coming day that was still hidden behind the darkness promised little. Listening carefully, he heard a faint drizzle--the same weather for a week. Sympathetically his nose began to drip. Here he was, as he often reminded himself, in this town that would never be mistaken for Warsaw, living in a damp climate that was bad for his health, and all he could do was to dream of escape to other places--but no, this dream hadn't been of escape. He remembered the little man getting to his feet like an evil rooster, fooling with the button on his double-breasted brown suitcoat with the wide stripes of another time. He fussed for a few moments as if he were removing a dagger from his chest; then, cocking his head the way a swimmer does when he's shaking the water out of his ear, he gave Cyril a strangled little bark of a laugh before leaving. And Cyril knew--wait, he told himself in the dream, I don't even believe in God--knew with an absolute certitude that it was God Almighty who hurried out of the restaurant while everyone else but he remained wrapped in an enchanted sleep. Even now an ice-cold flame crackled up his back as he thought about it, the hair in his ears straightened when he remembered leaning down toward the table, seeing the money in two distinct piles, one he knew at once to be the exact amount for the meal and the other a tip--though tips were supposedly not permitted at the Old Hunter--of thirty-three zlotys. His own age.

And standing in the silent, empty restaurant, looking at the money on the table, he became aware of an unpleasant taste in his mouth that lingered into wakefulness and that he identified simply as the taste of death.

What could the dream have been telling him but that time was passing, that perhaps it was his awful destiny to live out the rest of his life in this town, among the picturesque marsh-ringed lakes and shady forests that the tourists loved to visit for a bit of simple refreshment, like children, splashing each other, picking mushrooms; before returning to their busy, exciting lives in larger cities where people danced all night and friends were quick-tongued and madly inventive.

If that was so, if there was to be no escape for him, what a foolish mistake it would be to let Maryszia slip away. In the early morning, under his blanket, the persistent chilly rain drizzling away in the darkness outside, Cyril didn't think, as he often did, of Maryszia's more than generous hips, of her surprising inability to see the humor in many of his jokes, or her habit of smoking that made his eyes water and his nose twitch with irritation; rather, he remembered their quiet times together, the pale blue scarf she gave him last winter because, as she'd said, it made him look like a romantic Frenchman, he found himself thinking of the way that, when listening to music, she settled back on a pillow of thick brown hair, her eyes closed, her mouth curved into a smile of invitation, her perfume unable to mask the exciting smell of her skin.

Yes, he decided, it was time to act.

Before the arrival of this engineer, she called him, this distant cousin from Lublin she kept talking about. Lying there amid the layers of blankets Cyril, who moments ago was becoming more than comfortable in the dark cave of his voluptuous meditations on Maryszia, suddenly raised himself, attempting to hurry the day along. The engineer(what was he really? a plumber, a construction worker? But who could tell? Maybe he was a handsome chap, big, muscular, with quick, decisive movements, the kind who wore a hard hat and gave total strangers hearty slaps on the back)this cousin might already be traveling northward through the drizzly morning toward this town, preparing to snatch Maryszia away, leaving Cyril to spend the rest of his days here with people like his uncle Figlak, sitting in a rowboat whacking at mosquitoes while Figlak, getting mildly drunker by degrees, talked first about the fish that he wasn't going to catch, then about his arthritis and finally about those glorious days when the hated Nazis infested the country and every Pole was a hero.

Cyril jumped out of bed, scooped up the watch that lay on the night stand as if it had been the tip in his dream and said aloud, "Maryszia, it's time..."

Hours later he'd done it, during his lunch break. "Maryszia," he declared, "it's time...," having already calculated that the two of them could make do in his small apartment, especially when one figured the combined income from his job at the restaurant and hers driving a bus. The prospect of all that money made the juices flow!

Still it was disappointing that the day had remained dismal: he made his declaration in his oversized raincoat, which was somewhat dashing though drops fell icily from the umbrella to his balding head. Because of his cold his eyes were swollen, his face puffy--he wasn't at his handsomest; but Maryszia too was wet-eyed and damp-nosed from her own cold(or, he supposed, to put it more accurately, theirs), even before the emotions intensified the symptoms. "Oh, Cyril," she cried stormily and his own heart made more clatter than if he'd fallen down the stairs carrying a dinner for four. Yes, it was a romantic scene out there in the rainy street(like a movie, he thought--in black and white). Their raincoats crinkled when they kissed, like tents blown together in a tropical typhoon, he paid almost full attention to her inclined head, closed eyes and full lips, though he couldn't be unaware of the umbrella he held at a precarious angle, its black points swooping down toward them like savage birds who plucked the eyes from the living as well as the dead.

"We'll be so happy," she said minutes later in the tea room, one hand in his on the table, the other holding a cigarette, which she put quickly to her mouth.

"Yes," he answered bemusedly. She exhaled, he coughed.

"I'll see you tonight after work," she reminded him as they parted. "Won't my parents be pleased." As she turned into the street he put his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss. Parents. Family. Sunday dinner with the relatives. His heart sank, he wanted to dream again of long brown legs and bare bosoms on the beaches of the Riviera or at least of brightly colored umbrellas on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia. Who knew? There would be savings if they were careful about having children, the political climate could change, there might be travel--one had to hope to live. But instead he thought of the wallpaper in the dining room of Maryszia's parents' house, a curling complicated design in green on a background of dirty yellow, rather like stale sprigs of parsley on scrambled eggs that have been left on the table since morning.

He was depressed until he remembered his dream. Thirty-three zlotys. The taste in his mouth. Life was passing. Maryszia was seven years younger than he. No great beauty perhaps but a real woman, a healthy woman who appreciated his good points, who felt no false sense of shame, with a good head on her shoulders. You couldn't fool around all the days of your life and simply dream. Did he want to be like a priest and live forever celibate? He thought of Father Pikula, who'd been sent here from Krakow, with his sad face of a horse that's been rejected not only by the sportsman but by the farmer as well. Sitting at the table of the Old Hunter looking into his soup, melancholy about something. Masturbation, perhaps.

"Hah," Cyril laughed, feeling like a man of the world. He let the drizzle strike his face, the wet street was glazed with happiness and water gurgled from rainspouts like the wildly joyous songs of angels.

"But, Cyril, what wonderful news." Roman, the manager at the Old Hunter, took him into the kitchen and they toasted the coming change with ice-cold vodka that brought tears. And again.

"You reprobate," Roman teased, "you Don Juan, prepare for the leash." He was a beefy, thick-mustached man in his sixties who affected an English look with sweater vests and tweed jackets. A recent widower with dark circles under his eyes, he had his sorrows--he'd lost a child in addition to his wife, and there'd been the war, of course--but he had the gift of making the most of them. Though he charmed the tourists with his innkeeper's manner zlotys were like mice to his cat-sharp glance. "Ah," he said in response to the second vodka. "I'm joking, of course. This is wonderful news."

"Thank you," Cyril answered with dignity, turning up his face. His large nose, which Maryszia had compared to that of the late General De Gaulle, pointed with distinction to a place high on the wall where an ancient stain resembled the Italian boot; but he'd become uneasy: it was when Roman was most ardently proclaiming his seriousness that Cyril most suspected he was laughing behind his brown, vaguely tweedy eyes.

"Ah," the manager sang to himself in a soft bass, "ah," and Cyril realized he was back in his memories of earlier times. "Life," he said at last, blinking, "life is strange, my friend. Clutch it." He made a gesture with his hand. Thinking no doubt of lost comrades, smoldering rubble, the war.

When he stepped back into the dining area Cyril was summoned almost immediately by a solitary customer, a careful Czech who looked as though he was expecting to be robbed. Maryszia was going to tell her mother and father about the engagement and Cyril was going to join them later that evening at their place. Regardful of parents' suspicions about future sons-in-law, he was carefully considering exactly how to present himself on this occasion. He wasn't inclined to give a great deal of attention just now to this disappointed Czech who'd come here for the fishing only to find rain. Well, they were a hardy people, they could adapt to almost anything. Still as he went through the motions of serving the man, who unsurprisingly settled for soup, Cyril found that he couldn't settle his feelings about the upcoming announcement: he couldn't hold on to the anticipated joy of being with Maryszia, which might mean he was no longer to be vexed by loneliness or doubt; but neither could he fix his mind on his anxiety about surrendering his freedom, the final acknowledgement that he was never going to see the Italian coast, the south of France or California.

Standing beside one of the low arches decorated with pictures of game birds, he examined what it was that so bothered his concentration and he realized, the vodka causing a bit of an echo chamber inside his head as he thought about it, that Roman, with his sigh and oblique allusion, had somehow brought the war into his moment of happiness, diminishing it. How he hated all those heroes! He was luckless to be born here where his nose, distinguished as it was, dripped unceasingly as he looked out in the direction of the sunnier horizons toward which his soul yearned. And he and his generation were luckless too, having been born in the wake of the great conflict that had made saints and martyrs out of all their parents and grandparents. There were times when he'd thought the unthinkable: that it would be better if the history books simply omitted those chapters and the monuments were torn down to be replaced with--what? sports stadiums, cinemas, restaurants--anything that would obliterate the heavy black shadow of the past and simply allow the present to take its ordinary course. God knew there were times when he'd had enough of his people's heroic legacy and would have given it all up for a world without heroes where you could look at a streetcorner and see only a streetcorner and not a shrine. Life, after all, was for the living.

Heroes, he said to himself, God save us from heroes. And suddenly, mysteriously, he remembered his cat Fajka, recalling a moment of time so small and distant it was like a speck of dust on the back side of an instant, his one remembered act of courage. "Fajka," he said aloud, because it had all come back to him.

As a boy of not much more than ten he was home alone that spring afternoon, walking in the field behind his house, whistling to himself, when he heard yowls of terror coming from the sky. Glancing upward, he saw Fajka high in the leafless tree like a child's birthday kite snatched from the air on the very day of celebration. Nobody was near and the boy became convinced that within seconds Fajka, driven by fear and despair, was going to lose his grip and plunge to the earth.

He listened to the animal's fearful cries until he couldn't stand it any longer and, though he was more terrified than the cat, he began climbing the tall tree, making an Act of Contrition with every meter of his ascent, hoping at least to prevent his falling all the way into Hell(he still believed then, it seemed incredible now). His heart pounded, breath came fast, he was sweating and shivering at once. He didn't dare look down but when he'd got as high as he had to go he realized that what lay ahead was even more difficult: the little gray cat was still just out of his reach, a puff of smoke on a limb, its cries somehow sounding more distant even though Cyril was near. Fajka, a wild look in his eyes, was fearful of his would-be savior, he seemed on the verge of panicky retreat into nothingness; while Cyril sent clouds of vaporous breath into the strip of cold March sky that separated him from the animal, certain that he was going to fall to his death. Then somehow he had the cat, the little creature pressed against his chest, two hearts sending messages of terror to each other, and he resolved that if he should fall with Fajka in his arms he'd toss the animal upward just before he himself struck the ground, saving the cat at least.

When his feet were planted on the earth and Fajka had ungratefully run off Cyril stared dumbly for minutes at the tree looming above him, unable to believe he'd actually been up there. He might have been a soul gazing from Hell at the gallows that had brought him to the place of eternal punishment. But time didn't stop and even before summer came to their part of the world Fajka was gone, crushed beneath the wheels of a truck headed for Gdansk. When his parents asked if he wanted another pet Cyril said no.

Now, called back from his reveries by the slurping noises of the Czech making his way methodically through his soup like a man trying to empty the ocean a tablespoon at a time, Cyril took some relief in the brute, sober fact of time's passing. The memory of his adventure with Fajka in the tree had brought back a surprising residue of pain. He found himself looking into the face of the boar whose head was mounted on the wall, a savage, ugly animal that seemed to sneer even in death, its curved tusks and vicious teeth conveying a sense of menace, a sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain, its dark fur looking singed--he might have been staring into the face of the devil himself. Cyril was grateful that time indeed passed, that there was no eternity, he hadn't been forced to stay in that tree forever, trembling, contemplating an inglorious death as he quaked with terror, feeling stupid for having gotten himself into such a situation in the first place, praying with the fervor of a man who stands against a wall facing a grim band of helmeted strangers with rifles in their hands. No, and he wasn't forced to mourn Fajka forever.

"Coffee, please," the little Czech signaled. His eyes moved watchfully around the room.

Cyril brought the coffee, grateful for the distraction, hoping that his performance of the ordinary tasks that he did so skillfully would help him to re-knit the world of daily life, the small pleasures and modest hopes that had been ripped apart surprisingly by his sudden memory of that episode with the cat. It was necessary to recover the ordinary before he could repossess the sudden joy he'd felt in the rainy street with Maryszia.

"Is everything satisfactory?"

"Fine. Yes, fine."

Catching an enticing whiff of the coffee, Cyril was happy once more. Yes, he thought, answering in his mind the assembled heroes of the past, yes, courage is its own reward and marrying Maryszia when I have no way of knowing for certain whether it's the right thing to do--that's an act of bravery. Courage, he told them in an imaginary exchange, is merely the ability to make up your mind to do something. Thinking this, he felt settled, substantial, as if he'd been married for years.

The Czech, after lingering over his coffee, left at last and Cyril accepted Anja's good wishes for the impending union. "Look," she said, pointing to the street outside. "An omen," she beamed. The drizzle had stopped and for a moment Chopin Street was glazed with a light like that of liquid roses. Above the shops clouds of dappled gray moved swiftly to the east.

"Yes," Cyril nodded, adding to himself that wet streets and a momentary respite from drizzle wasn't exactly the sunny Mediterranean of romance but when he craned his neck he glimpsed the outline of the steeple atop the church of the Sacred Heart, its gold cross gleaming in the mysterious light that softened the ancient sculpted shape of the pale green dome, gray clouds visible through the belfry, moving so fast that the tower seemed to be sailing in the sky like a kite. His heart lifted. Yes, an omen.

Cyril Pokarski hadn't always been a gloomy, thoughtful child but his father's death shortly after Fajka's had taught him that life wasn't to be trusted and from that time on when the tall, grave-looking boy appeared beside his mother in the street a person of imagination could convince himself that the child was the older of the two. Little Cyril became intensely religious after the death of his cat and that of the strong, laughing man who loved singing so much that he'd go on, louder and louder, even after his wife had begged him to stop. The town was poor, life was wretched, though he could bear this; but the successive losses of Fajka and his father left him flinching in expectation of the next terrible surprise, so he went often to the old church where in the flickering light of the candles he could have sworn that he'd seen the wings of the archangel Michael move, gently, no great flopping like that of the pigeons in the schoolyard but a single soft ruffling of the angel's feathers that caused the air to stir and the candleflames to dance, the mere understated promise of flight far grander than that of birds.

At first the boy in his terror simply asked God to send him no more surprises, he wished only to be allowed to sleep through the night without fear of awakening in Hell. Then gradually he began to understand what he wanted of the Creator and he asked for tangible things: that when he returned home he'd once more find his father at the kitchen table, a bottle before him, a song on his lips. Smiling, the man would roar, "Where have you been, you little devil?" before jumping up with mock anger. Or if not that, Cyril prayed, at least he might find little Fajka curled up on his bed as he'd used to. At the very least God could remind his mother of all this sadness and she'd feel properly mournful instead of seeming so relieved, preparing picnics for the two of them, telling him, "Now you're the man in the house." He didn't want to be the man in the house.

He prayed for these things at first without raising his voice but when, after what seemed to him a good while, none of them came about he grew more insistent. Though he made demands the situation remained unchanged. The demands became an ultimatum and still nothing happened. He gave up on God at last, realizing how foolish he'd been to hope, though he continued to go to church, where he was now apt to dream of sunnier places. He recognized with bleak satisfaction, though, that the wings of the archangel moved no more than the dead move.

Still it was a satisfaction that brought no joy. He'd become a gloomy boy, big-eyed, dark-haired, taller now and grave. Chmielnicki the undertaker once remarked that Cyril had the perfect physique and disposition to become a member of his own profession. It had been intended as a compliment. But Cyril, though outwardly gloomy, dreamed of a larger life: there would be cigars and women, jolly friends who drove sports cars recklessly, there would be the south, the sun, the warm sea. While Uncle Figlak was still more or less capable he got his nephew a job waiting on tables. Soon Cyril recognized he was skilled at this kind of work. Yet when the undertaker saw him in his dark uniform, a huge baked carp on the tray on his shoulder, he smiled. "Ah," Chmielnicki declared with satisfaction, "I always knew that in the end you'd be carrying the dead." To which the young waiter returned a cool, professionally indifferent expression.

Life, he'd thought as a child, was going to be unbearable. Once launched into adulthood he realized that it didn't take much to manage. Things were more or less under control: he was never going to be surprised the way he had been as a boy. He made too little money but so did everybody else. His job was trying at times but always manageable. The condition of things in the country was wretched in many ways but of course, everyone agreed, it was better than it had been a generation ago. There were friends now with whom to meet and complain, to drink and play cards with. He had an old car, he could drive along the shores of the nearby lakes. There were women, who could bring worries though in general the pleasure outweighed the trouble. It was the life, he might have concluded had he thought about it consciously, that the little boy had prayed for years ago in the church where the angel's wings were as still as death.

He was a man in his twenties, scowling confidently at the world, though his dark hair thinned alarmingly, promising early baldness. Behind the grave, dignified face of an undertaker he dreamed of Italy, he joked about the backwater place where he lived: "Even the fish in our lakes have the manners of barbarians: we all know they swallow the entire hook as well as the bait so that you have to pull out their entrails to retrieve your line; the fish caught in Warsaw are considerate: they take a civilized nip at the bait, like guests at an embassy reception." His friends laughed. And then somehow he was a man in his thirties telling the same joke and his friends continued to laugh.

At odd moments throughout this day he remembered the face of the man in his dream: his eyes saw with ruthless clarity. At a table crowded with people who were laughing at that joke those eyes above the crooked mustache would be as cold and unforgiving as the sightless eyes of the boar on the wall of the Old Hunter.

The day, it seemed, was less decisive that he. Now, in the evening, flowers in his hand, he held an umbrella once more to shield him from the drizzle that hovered like wet smoke in the narrow streets of the town. The moment of clearing hadn't lasted, though Cyril reminded himself that its beauty had been no less real for being transitory--in fact it was all the more so in recollection. Anja had said it was an omen and so might it be: he reminded himself that though his own emotional weather could change from hour to hour the brightest moments remained true--he remembered the bell tower of the church scudding through the gray clouds.

Because now, just outside the home of Maryszia's parents, Cyril knew that if he permitted his concentration to lapse for a moment he would be struck from behind like the victim of an Indian in an American Wild West story, the arrow driving the stone head between his shoulder blades, his cry of pain coming almost before the sound of the feathered weapon striking. "Am I really in love with Maryszia?" he'd cry, falling to the earth.

Knowing that though he'd asked that same question dozens of times before the stakes were now incomprehensibly higher.

It upset Cyril, who'd been planning each step methodically, to find that there was already a small gathering at the Kopicki household, accidental, as it turned out, but a kind of spontaneous celebration to which he, the guest of honor, was arriving late.

Maryszia's father, lame of foot from an industrial accident, embraced him at the door before leading him inside. "Be good to my daughter," he said tearfully.

"Janek, Janek," his wife consoled him and gave Cyril a distracted kiss. He handed her the flowers and kissed Maryszia chastely before the eyes of her overwrought parents.

A large man was soon upon him. "So this is the Romeo, eh, this is the Don Juan?" Cyril was introduced to uncle Leo, a man in his sixties who wore workman's clothes that could scarcely contain his bulk, though for all his size he seemed reptilian, his gray, slow-moving eyes looking out from under heavy lids as if he were a bloated crocodile.

"This is the spider who's luring little Maryszia into his web," he laughed. Cyril took an instant dislike and responded with formal politeness, offering his hand.

"Oh-ho, Mr. Spider," the man pursued, and now it was clear he'd been drinking, "we're not fooled by your manners."

Cyril was happy to be ushered to the other guest, who'd been hidden from view by the large uncle Leo. "This is my cousin Mr. Edward Totski," Maryszia said, "an engineer from Lublin."

When Cyril realized that this was the famous cousin his heart sank. The man was his own age and handsome enough but he was startlingly short, little more than a child in size, his sports jacket, green tie and trim mustache making him look like a schoolboy taking the part of a man in a play, all the more so because he held a glass of vodka in his hand. Why, this Totski had never been any real competition and it seemed foolish now ever to have been worried about him.

"An engineer, are you?"

"Yes, a civil engineer."

"Lublin?"

"Yes. Have you ever been there?"

The man asked politely about the fishing in the local lakes and the talk drifted on, Cyril paying hardly any attention to what he said since he felt simultaneously an immense relief and a sense of having been trapped. A moment of panic passed over him: seeing his flowers already in a vase on the table he wondered if it were too late to declare that his intentions with regard to Maryszia were in fact provisional.

No, he reminded himself: he would have chosen her even if there had been no cousin at all. He hoped it was true.

This Totski, it appeared, was an outdoor enthusiast, passionate about climbing in the Tatra mountains. "Have you ever done it?" he asked Cyril.

"Oh, no," he shook his head. "I'm not a sportsman."

"Ah, my friend, neither was I at first." He sighed. "In no part of my life have I felt such a satisfaction." Cyril noticed his eyes for the first time: there was a strength he hadn't seen before.

"But I'd think it would be dangerous." He was getting used to talking to the engineer. Surprisingly, he was becoming interested in what he was saying.

The little man shrugged. "All life is dangerous. Climbing simply requires that you be conscious every second."

Cyril nodded, wondering whether unflinching consciousness was so desirable a state.

Totski gestured with his hand. "When you're alone at the top, nothing but you and the bare rock, the wind, snow and mist--" He looked at Cyril. "Sometimes one gets the feeling that up on the summit, standing on bare rock, one is in touch with the only realities." He smiled without seeming to see those around him. At last he took a quick drink and fell silent for a moment.

Surprisingly, the man's account was vividly convincing to Cyril, who imagined himself alone on a solitary peak looking out over sharp points of rock jutting through the clouds like waves on a frozen sea.

"It does sound like a sport with its attractions," he heard himself saying.

"If I may say so," Totski smiled, "you have the look of a climber, sir."

Cyril was willing to contemplate this new idea but his train of thought was interrupted by uncle Leo, who had managed to intrude on their conversation. Shaking his head, the big man declared, "All heights must look a little more formidable to our engineering friend than to most of us." He laughed. "All in fun, Mr. Totski." But Cyril saw the engineer's look, the dark eyes glinting like quartz while a thin smile played about his lips. Uncle Leo was obviously a vicious and boorish drunk and Edward Totski had obviously heard his share of insults and had his own scale of measurement for how seriously to take them.

"Sweetheart," Maryszia said, "can you help me with these dishes?" In the kitchen they stole a kiss, though the price he paid was a mouthful of cigarette smoke. When she stepped back he looked at her with puzzlement. What was he doing here? What had he done? Would he be equal to this task? Yet as he studied her face Cyril guessed that Maryszia understood all this, that she was able to gauge the subtle shades of feeling in him, just as he was able to tell without a word's having been spoken when she'd had a trying day and it was best to let her slowly get used to him again. This recognition made him feel better. He saw too that her own eyes mirrored his fears. Cyril and Maryszia were quiet together for a moment in the kitchen, as if they'd said all this aloud, and they listened to the sounds outside the room.

"Your uncle Leo is...a difficult man," he said.

"He's led a difficult life."

Cyril made no answer.

"But we," she said, "we will have a wonderful life." And they embraced again, though quite surprisingly as he buried his face in her hair he recalled waking this morning with the taste of death in his mouth.

When they returned the little engineer was talking to Maryszia's mother. Cyril imagined him climbing, with the greatest of care, handhold after handhold, through the swirling snow that drove needles of cold into his face. He could imagine the exaltation--the largeness, he realized--that the man would feel alone on the summit. At first it seemed silly that he should try to compensate for his size by climbing, then it seemed poignant; at last it seemed simply what the man had chosen to do. The little engineer had a frank face with clear skin and a trim mustache that went well with his compact, efficient movements. It was evidently the very face he would have designed for himself. Cyril liked Edward Totski and believed that if the engineer lived here the two would be friends.

He'd decided after the initial toast to confine himself to soda water--he didn't want to do anything foolish. Seeing uncle Leo become more loud and belligerent only confirmed his decision. He was, after all, celebrating a major step, a grave responsibility, he reminded himself as he talked with Maryszia and her mother. He was beginning to feel more comfortable about the choice he'd made.

While his future mother-in-law related tales of Maryszia's youth Cyril kept hearing fragments of the conversation across the room. Uncle Leo was speaking in a voice more appropriate to an outdoor rally. "My brother here has made his contribution to our country's efficiency: if all our workers were declared disabled like him productivity would improve at once."

The engineer and Maryszia's father laughed politely. The family dog came up to uncle Leo and received for reward a pull on its ears, which caused it to yowl. "Even our dogs today are weaklings," he sneered.

Cyril was looking at pictures of Maryszia as a child. "We don't need half-hearted measures," uncle Leo thundered from across the room. "If our so-called revolutionary leaders had the nerve they'd call a real general strike that would only end when the government had been brought to its knees. If the Russians want to send in their tanks, let them. Our streets have seen blood before."

Cyril felt a shiver of dread. By what right was the old boor bringing talk of blood into this celebration? The husband-to-be was looking at a picture of Maryszia in her First Communion dress. There was the same long mouth and straight nose but her large eyes were still those of a child. The thought of that bloated fool railing about tanks irritated him. He felt like saying that anybody could face down parlor tanks, after-dinner tanks. He glanced from the album and caught a glimpse of uncle Leo's reptilian eyes as he said, "Russian tanks, Nazi tanks, what's the difference?"

"But we must move carefully," Totski was saying as if he were still talking about climbing. "Rashness and bravery aren't enough. We must know exactly what we want and then do it."

"There won't be any more tanks," Maryszia's father said. "We've seen all the tanks we need to see in this century."

Uncle Leo laughed. "You dream, Janek." His voice was unaccountably milder.

Cyril, looking at a pageful of school pictures, had a sudden vision: he saw the engineer lying dead at the bottom of a snowy canyon. "Doesn't she look like a little gypsy there?" his future mother-in-law said but Cyril instinctively glanced toward Totski to reassure himself that the man still lived.

The bell announced another visitor. It was Father Pikula, the sad-faced young priest who was new in town. He began shaking hands all around but uncle Leo refused. "I cannot stay long in the same room with these black vultures," he announced. "Who have you come to rob tonight, Mr. Priest?"

"Leo," his brother said none too subtly, "weren't you about to leave?" He directed him toward the hallway, the large man continuing to hurl general insults at the priest, whose gloomy expression made one feel he'd expected nothing more.

Maryszia's mother was fluttering around the cleric with the news of the coming wedding and Father Pikula beamed sadly over the happy couple, his hands held together as if in readiness to pray.

"Very soon," the woman declared, "the two of them will have to speak to Father Skupny about arrangements for the wedding." Cyril nodded blankly. He saw himself, formally attired, captured beside Maryszia in her mother's book of snapshots.

"Watch out for that wily spider, little Maryszia," uncle Leo called from the hallway. "He has many tricks up his sleeve."

When he returned to the room Maryszia's father took Cyril aside. "You must make allowances for my brother," he said, his eyes heavy with sorrow and embarrassment. "In his time he was a very brave man, a patriot." He hesitated, as if considering whether to go on. "Leo lost his dearest friend during the war and he dedicated himself to revenge." The man shook his head. "His comrades used to call him the Avenging Angel. He killed his first Nazi at nineteen--the first of many." Cyril saw a slender, younger version of uncle Leo, hands in his pockets, the sneer of youth on the mouth that held the cigarette, those same reptilian eyes--eyes that had looked at Nazi tanks.

"Leo was immense," Maryszia's father went on. "He didn't know the meaning of pain." He shook his head as if in disbelief, he seemed to be talking to himself now. "I was a boy. I remember a friend telling of how Leo went around for days with a broken arm before it could be attended to: he made a makeshift sling out of his scarf and fired his pistol with his other hand." The man's head was lowered for a long time and after he'd finished he looked up at Cyril as if surprised to find him there. "May you never know times like those," he said.

The priest had had a glass of vodka and now that his attacker was gone he seemed to have relaxed without losing his sad expression.

"Edward is going to sing for us," Maryszia announced. Her father got out his accordion and accompanied the engineer, who delivered a half dozen folk ballads in a surprisingly strong and melodious bass. "Splendid," the priest declared. Cyril and Maryszia held hands furtively as Totski sang a sad song of the Polish mountain folk, for which occasion he donned his alpine hat. His soft, deep voice filled the room while the accordion wheezed quietly in the background. Watching the man, whose singing had transported him so that he looked with glazed eyes as if into the furthest corners of space, Cyril remembered his earlier image of the engineer's small body lying at the bottom of a snowy canyon and made a silent prayer for his safety.

"Beautiful," Father Pikula said when Totski indicated that he was finished. Then the priest suggested that they all join in "Bozie, Cos Polskie," the old hymn whose public singing was banned by the government. Their voices blended as they sang, first quietly, then with a fervor that surprised them as they asked God to watch over their country.

They were all silent for a time after that. The priest smiled sadly. "I'm afraid there are difficult days ahead," he said to no one in particular, looking into his empty glass. It was said around town that he'd been transferred from Krakow because of his political activities. "I believe God loves our dear nation very much yet He tests us always." He sighed. "There are difficult days ahead," he repeated.

"Ah, yes," said the engineer. "But we have the people who will be equal to the times." He bowed. "Like the future bride and groom." He smiled at Maryszia who, Cyril saw, was very happy.

The priest turned toward Cyril. "Yes," he said "you are our future."

Cyril had no wish to take on that responsibility but he simply nodded. "Thank you," he said.

When the priest got up to leave the engineer joined him. He shook Cyril's hand vigorously. "It was fortunate meeting you on this auspicious day," he said. He'd picked up his briefcase and now he spent a few moments digging something out: it was a shiny metal object. "This is a piton," Totski said. "I carry one wherever I go to remind myself of the pleasures of climbing. If you should ever take up the sport this will give you a foothold on the rock."

Cyril was moved. "But surely you need it."

Totski laughed and made a gesture. "Not while I'm here. Your region is very beautiful but there are no significant heights."

Cyril took the piton and held it. The metal was cool and smooth. "Thank you," he said. "Though I must say it's difficult to imagine myself in that position."

The engineer laughed. "You probably didn't imagine yourself in this position either," he said, indicating Maryszia.

Cyril looked at the little man. "Take care," he said.

"Oh, but you're the one embarking on the dangerous journey," Totski answered. He left moments later with Father Pikula, who blessed the couple before departing.

After they'd helped with the dishes it was time for Cyril to take Maryszia home. He wasn't coming up with her tonight and they stood together before her apartment building for a while, silent in the drizzle. When he pulled her close he felt not only her body pressing against him but also the heavy metal shape of the piton. A dog barked in the night, a tired, spiritless repeated yap. Cyril kissed Maryszia.

"That was very nice, Mr. Spider," she said with a little laugh. The cold and damp made their way through his raincoat and he shivered, his nose was becoming uncomfortable. "What's going to happen to us, Mr. Spider?" she asked.

His first impulse was to confess to her how frightened he was. He wanted to tell her how much it was going to cost to give up his dreams of the sunny Mediterranean but he guessed that she had her losses too. He glanced up as though he expected to find an answer to all life's riddles in the skies above them but clouds and fog hid even the shapes of buildings and suddenly it thrilled him that he didn't know, absolutely didn't know, what was going to happen to them from that moment forward.

"Maryszia," was all he said aloud though his heart sang with terror.