Except that it didn’t feel right to be taking out my watch and saying, oh look, it’s eight, or nine. She might have gotten embarrassed and started apologizing:
“Oh, I’m really sorry for keeping you so long, Mr. Szymon. But you’ve been a big help. Thank you. Please go now if you’re in a hurry, I’ll stay behind. I have to finish today.”
There was still a big pile of receipts between us that needed going through. All I did was, whenever she’d lean over more than usual I’d pretend I was lost in thought and I’d secretly stare at her hair. It was like a field of grain, much brighter by the light of the lamp than during the day, I felt as if I was standing at the edge of a wheat field. She must have been tired already. A couple of times she asked, how much is such and such times such and such again? Another time she got annoyed at the receipts because they weren’t written clearly. But they’d been like that from the beginning. Then she shifted the lamp over, saying it was too dark.
I was copying out a receipt from a Jan Bielak, village of Zarzecze, three thousand five hundred and eighty-two zlotys. Second installment. With her head bowed over the desk, she said quietly:
“Kiss me, Mr. Szymon.”
I put down my pen. I thought she was making fun of me. Just in case, I answered as if I was joking as welclass="underline"
“Maybe I’m not worthy of kissing you, Miss Małgorzata?”
“Please,” she said even more quietly.
So I stood up, raised her head from the desk and I kissed her, but like I’d kiss a sister. Because I was more unnerved by her having asked for it than if I’d kissed her by force, but of my own free will. And I didn’t enjoy it at all.
Anyway, she jumped up right away.
“It’s late,” she said in a kind of artificial voice, as if to show that nothing had happened. “We’ve been sitting over these receipts for hours. I didn’t think it would take all that long.”
“I’ll walk you home, Małgosia,” I said.
“No thanks, I’ll go on my own. I’ll be fine. I’ve often walked back at this hour. What’s there to be afraid of? That bit by the woods isn’t very nice, but I’ll be all right. The moon’s bright tonight. Then right after that is the village, the dogs’ll be barking. No. Another time, when you feel like it. But please, Szymek, not today.”
She’s an odd one, I thought. She tells me to kiss her then she won’t let me walk her home. Try understanding any of that. Go home on your own, be my guest! Except what kind of young man lets a young lady walk home on her own in the night. But go anyway! If something scares you in the woods you’ll regret it. In the woods there are graves from the first war. Didn’t old Pociej used to tell how one night he was coming back that way after walking a girl home, and all at once there’s a soldier with a bullet hole in his head standing in his way saying:
“Stop this hole up for me, it’s been all these years and it keeps bleeding.”
Pociej never went back to that girl. He married someone else, from our village, from across the road.
I met her the next day in the hallway, she was coming from the other end. I stopped and gave her a big smile and said good morning. She nodded and smiled back. But she quickly went into one of the other offices, and I felt I’d been slapped in the face. Maybe those receipts yesterday had just put her in a funny mood, I thought, all those names, villages, acreages, installments, amounts, that was why she told me to kiss her. And today she’d had a good night’s sleep and forgotten all about it. There was evidently no point in me worrying my head over it.
A few days passed, it happened to be a Tuesday and it was looking like rain. I leave the building and she’s standing out there in front, seemingly looking at the sky to see if it’s going to rain or not. The clouds are dark and swirly like they often are in the fall. I stopped next to her and I started looking at the clouds as well. All of a sudden, high up a wind appeared and began blowing the clouds and scattering them, driving them from the sky.
“You know, I think the rain’ll hold off,” I said.
She looked at me at first a little surprised to see me standing right by her. A moment later she gave me this nice smile.
“Then maybe today you’ll walk me home, Szymek? If you feel like it.” She opened her umbrella and held it over the two of us. “Even if it rains we’ll be fine.”
“You can fold it up again,” I said. “See, the wind’s already blown the clouds away.”
And luckily it didn’t rain, because a little umbrella like that wouldn’t have had a chance of protecting us. Even if we’d held close to each other our backs would still have gotten wet. Besides, who was supposed to make the first move? I didn’t even have the courage to take her by the arm, and she didn’t seem willing either. We probably would’ve ended up getting soaked, and the umbrella would have been folded up between us.
We walked the whole way like distant acquaintances that just happen to have met and be going the same way. As for talking, we pretty much talked about nothing at all, about the office, about the fall, she told me a bit about her girlfriends from school, and her teachers, and I told her about being in the resistance, though only the cheerier parts. And before we knew it we’d reached her house. Her mother was just lighting the lamp, because a glow like a will-o’-the-wisp started dancing about in the window, then the window lit up a moment later.
I said they had a nice house. It had a brick foundation, with an asbestic tile roof, wide windows, and a verandah. It looked like it was recently built. I said I was planning to build a house as well, except I didn’t yet know when. First I needed to get ahold of the materials, then have someone make a plan for me, then hire masons, and these days there weren’t any good masons except maybe in other nearby villages. After that there didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about so I shook her hand.
“Good night, then. See you tomorrow at work.”
“Good night,” she said, but there was a quaver in her voice.
I’d gone maybe a dozen yards or so, in any case I’d passed the end of their fence and reached the edge of the field, when all of a sudden I heard behind me:
“Wait.” She trotted up to me. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
I had an urge to throw my arms around her and hold her close, and be held close, and maybe more, not to look at anything else at all, maybe even just pull her into the field that was there, just beyond the edge, because who was she, was she any different from the others, she was the same flesh and blood, I was the stupid one. But something held me back, no. No, Szymek, like it was her voice, but it was mine. If I’d at least been drinking, but no, I was stone-cold sober. I even regretted not going with Winiarski when he tried to drag me out for a drink at lunchtime. I kissed her goodbye, and I said again: