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inscrutable.
    I want out of here, thought Hania.
     
    Ten minutes later Hania left the apartment with Maks trailing reluctant and resentful to the rear. On the stairs down they came across a middle-aged man stumbling up, a bottle clutched in one hand. He raised the bottle at them in salute. "I wish you…your very good …very healthy…healthy…health." And staggered past. "Thank you," thought Hania, rather pleased, every good wish helps.
    Then they were out in the street, blinking in the sunlight after the dim interior. "Where are we going," Maks whined. "I don't want to go anywhere."
    "We're going to sit on a park bench and eat ice cream."
    She saw him open his mouth to say, "I don't like ice cream," but then he shut it again and began to walk. Aha.
    The trees of Ujazdowski Park were cool and overarching and green. The water of the shallow lake was a dark mirror surface broken by the flickering movement of golden carp. A small waterfall trickled over boulders. Wide gravel paths stretched away in calm serenity. How good it is here, thought Hania, closing her eyes. I could sit in this spot unmoving for hours; I could imagine myself in tune with nature and the humming humanity beyond.
    Maks scrambled over the rocks of the waterfall, lost his shoe in the stream, and shrieked. Hania tried to help him and got her skirt wet. A gray-haired woman left her own tidy and obedient grandchildren and came to scold them both loudly.
     
    Tomorrow Wiktor and Ania will come back, Hania thought, as she made dinner later and Maks ignored her. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, she thought, mangling Shakespeare, or I'll light someone the way to dusty death. Only she wouldn't, of course. And poor children. What was it that made them the way they were? Most Polish children were so polite and sane. Destined, perhaps, to grow rather narrow, but that was the average lot in every country. These kids were… emotionally disturbed wasn't exactly the word for Maks, or was it? And what was eating Kalina? Why did they both repudiate her so aggressively? Okay, so she was a bit repulsive with her great bulges and tent of a dress, not the kind to appeal instantly to a teenage girl or a small boy, but still––you'd think they'd be glad of any sort of support in their situation. Only, as she well knew, neither children nor adults could be expected to behave rationally. So it was no surprise to her when Kalina didn't reappear at once.
    But nine o'clock came, and then ten, and no Kalina. Maks refused to go to bed and Hania didn't feel like insisting. She was drooping with weariness. The effort of keeping her eyes open seemed superhuman and prompted images of propping the lids apart with toothpicks. If only Kalina would come back, then she'd just have Thursday to get through. She wouldn't expect Wiktor and Ania tomorrow, but they'd come on Friday. Please, please, please.
    And maybe she'd meet Konstanty Radzimoyski again at the grocery. At seven. He'd been there at seven twice. A small voice told her that it would be wiser to go at seven fifteen and avoid him––that it wouldn't do at all to develop a crush on him––and although that is the sort of small voice that young women almost always ignore, she had a strong desire not to be ridiculous. The crush, though, she admitted to herself––the crush was already firmly in place. It had been in place since she was six, since that day in the Radzimoyskis' kitchen when Konstanty had saved her. It had remained there all through those years abroad, through her teens and early twenties, through music and studies. She had always had the incident at the back of her mind, always thought that if someone else came along she would measure him by that standard. Would he be capable of behaving like that?
    Of course, no one had come along. She had had her yardstick ready and not a single taker had come by to be measured. There had been no need for her to turn anyone down. No one had even asked her for a date. And yet she was