Swans Are Fat Too Read Free Page A

"We're not supposed to talk to strangers." There seemed to be a bit of a scuffle inside and then the door was slammed shut.
    She knocked and it opened the six inches again.
    "I can show you my passport. Is that proof?"
    She heard the younger voice saying, "No, no, don't let her in yet," but the elder said "okay," in a dull tone, and she handed the document through the crack. A while later the light came on, the door opened wide, and Hania found herself looking at a stony-faced girl of around fifteen, dressed in low-cut jeans and a tight, cropped top. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing makeup that looked like it had just been hastily applied.
    "Okay, you can come in." She held out a limp hand to shake Hania's.
     
    Konstanty washed his hands, as he always did after being out, but he neither loosened his tie nor took off his blazer. If he was no longer a prince in anything but family memory, it pleased him still to keep up a certain standard. He stood for a moment in the center of the room considering: to watch television or work on his history project? He was tired, but the intellectual exercise drew him more. He sat down at his large desk. It was a very fine desk, made of Gdansk oak––the kind of wood that is seasoned for twenty years in a bog hole before being used for furniture. This one was carved all over with scenes of Sarmatia and was one of his grandfather's few salvages from the estate in Radzimość. At the moment the wood was almost hidden under a load of books and notepads. He sifted through a stack of neatly arranged papers. Strange, he thought, as he read the headings on the papers, strange that he should have remembered that incident when he was a teenager with Hania Lanska. The brain was an odd repository. What had made that stick when so many other things were irretrievably flown? Her childish face had come back so clearly. He supposed it was that his own behavior that day had pleased him. He had felt quite good about himself afterwards. Yes, that must have been it. It was always self in the end, he noted with a touch of wryness, but glad to have solved the minor puzzle. He liked to have his own motives clear and he had no illusions about himself. Here was what he was looking for:
    The Neolithic people in the area of today's Poland, like the later Slavonic tribes, are known to have practiced trepanation, the drilling of holes in the skull of a live person . He began to type, pecking slowly with two fingers. In this, the early Poles showed their common humanity: trepanation would seem to have been a world-wide practice, encountered from Polynesia to Alsace. Is this where the phrase 'a hole in the head,' originates ? Well, no. He erased the two sentences, and began again.
    Poland was then a vast wilderness of primeval forest, of dune and meadow, cut across by the wide-flowing Vistula and dotted with lakes. By the 6 th century B.C. the local inhabitants were already the target for raiding Scythians and Sarmatians, Germanic and Celtic tribes. A century later Roman traders were coming too, travelling to the Baltic and beyond in search of amber. Like loose change in a parking lot, the
    Amber Route today is peppered with Roman coins.
     
    The pause in the hallway was growing embarrassing. The girl neither invited Hania in nor made any explanations.
    "Er…so your parents aren't home?"
    "No."
    "When do you expect them back? Didn't they tell you I was coming?"
    "I don't expect them back." Kalina still spoke in that dull voice. "I don't expect anything from them anymore." She turned abruptly and, leaving the entry way, passed through a door into a small sitting room, where she threw herself on a sofa, and picking up the remote, clicked on the television. It was rather loud, so that Hania would have nearly had to shout to be heard above it. She stood indecisively in the doorway, looking at the girl, who pretended to be engrossed in a commercial.
    Should she just turn around, walk out of the apartment, and go