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meet her cousins; they would feel the bond of blood, of family.
    Obviously not. The future was an empty void, and she had nothing, not the piano or any person, to furnish it with purpose. She tossed and turned on her uncomfortable bed and eventually slept.
     
     

 
     
    3
     
     
    Konstanty, his tie dangling over his computer keyboard, was thinking a number of thoughts at once. Should he include that bit by the Roman geographer, Pomponius Mela, describing the women of Sarmatia who accompanied their men in raids on Byzantium? These were the people from whom the Poles once liked to think they were descended:
    As the country's climate is severe, so the character of the people is wild. The people are belligerent, freedom loving, indomitable, and so wild and cruel that even women take part in wars at the side of men…Every grown girl is required to kill an enemy. If she does not, she is covered in shame and as a punishment is unable to marry.
    Ah, Polish women.
    Actually, he quite liked Polish women. No––correction––he really liked Polish women. He liked their femininity, their competence, their self-assured flirtatiousness. He'd been surprised, coming back to Poland after years in London, at the beauty of Polish women. He'd forgotten that. The only thing they lacked was the responsiveness of English women, those pleasant, pear-shaped women in their long cardigans. He liked the way English women actually listened, took what one said and gave it back to one with a new twist. He'd come to appreciate that sort of wit in the years he'd spent at medical school in London. Of course, it had taken him awhile. He hadn't realized at first that not everything was to be taken literally. There had been the time, for instance––no, he wouldn't remember that. There were memories that had to be bashed down into the subconscious the second they stuck their heads up. Still, he had got used to a certain humorous way of looking at the world and now he rather missed it.
    The pianist girl had it. He'd met her again today. She'd quite enlivened his day with her strange tale of Maks and a practical joke. It wasn't so much the story itself but the way she told it that was amusing. He'd repeated it to a rather depressed patient and got a laugh out of him.
    Still, the boy had problems, he thought. The girl had dealt with it well. He could sense her weariness but she had told him with a certain gusto that when Maks got up in the morning she had met him with a big hug––he had writhed out of her grasp––and every appearance of great pleasure: "Oh Maks, thank you so much for the nice surprise. That's just what I like best––how did you know? It makes my skin feel so smooth in the morning. It's better than a beauty treatment." And then, at breakfast, regretfully, "I'm afraid we'll have to eat bread without butter, because I can't afford to buy any more."
    No, Maks definitely had problems, and his sister too. And the pianist girl presumably also or she wouldn't be that shape. But she wasn't a warrior-type and that was a mark in her favor.
    His fingers paused, poised, over the keyboard. Thinking of shapes had brought his mind around to his occasional date Agata, whose very shapely, perfect, curvy body was certainly in no danger of ever suffering from heart problems, either physical or metaphorical.
    Why did he continue to see her, he wondered? The motives were, let's see, physical attraction…how did women get into clothing that tight? That white tee shirt molded to her round bosom––the image hovered before him, hampering for a moment his ability of consecutive thought––okay, very nice, but those tight jeans? Strange the way women thought the corsets of yore so appalling. Surely jeans like those Agata had been wearing on Sunday were worse, grabbed and squeezed in more uncomfortable places? He'd certainly hate to wear them. He stifled a slight shudder. If research were done would it show that the narrow hips of Polish women were