Rozdział XXVI

The plane had been circling over Calgary for some time. Each time it seemed to begin its descent, a solid wall of cloud rose beneath the wings once more and the engines gathered power. Piotr looked through the small window, but instead of the city he saw only a milky-gray void. The passengers were silent. Some glanced at their watches; others pretended to read. He tried not to think about how many things might still go wrong before he truly set foot on the ground.

When the wheels finally struck the runway, he felt an almost physical relief. Customs and immigration took a long time, but after months of conversations, invitations, forms, and uncertainty, even the officials' questions sounded like the last obstacle before something that had once existed only in his imagination.

He walked out in front of the terminal with a suitcase and a bag slung over his shoulder. Jarek was not there yet. Cold air struck him in the face. He stood alone in a foreign city, thousands of miles from Legionowo, and only then allowed himself to think what he had not dared say aloud before: he was the first of his line to find himself on this side of the Atlantic.

It was not the United States, which he had dreamed of since his youth, but Canada—a country that until recently had been almost an abstraction to him. Even so, the word "America" entered his thoughts of its own accord. It smelled of the airport, cold air, and wet asphalt. It did not resemble the movies or postcards. It was harsher and far less ceremonial.

He had left Poland in the full bloom of spring. Lilacs filled the streets with their scent, the grass was already green, and children went outside without jackets. Calgary welcomed him with snow. In the neighborhood to which Jarek Bucholc later drove him, white patches lay on lawns and roofs, while young spruces stood among them like decorations forgotten after Christmas.

—Sorry, it took me a while—Jarek said when he finally appeared outside the terminal.—Distances look different here than they do on a map.

They drove along broad streets toward the southwest of the city. Piotr studied the low buildings, the rows of nearly identical houses, and wooden posts joined by ordinary wire. Some of the solutions seemed makeshift to him, almost rustic. He had expected impressive modernity, but what he saw was concrete, vastness, and suburbs that from a distance resembled an enormous model assembled from repeating pieces.

Dolores Habrun's house stood at 536 Shawinigan Drive. The address itself was Piotr's first lesson in the unfamiliar city: the abbreviation "SW" was not an ornament but part of a system, without which one could end up in an entirely different place. A small room upstairs had been rented for him at four hundred dollars a month. It was to be his home for three months.

Dolores welcomed him warmly, though without excessive familiarity. She lived with her husband, a Croatian man in poor health who had withdrawn into himself and rarely left his room. The rest of the house followed an ordinary rhythm: coffee scented the kitchen, coats accumulated on the hooks, and relatives and friends of the hostess came and went through a room painted pink. Standing among them with a slightly stiff smile, Piotr looked like a man who did not yet know what part he was meant to play in this new reality.

His first evening on Shawinigan Drive passed among people whose names he could not yet remember. In the pink-walled room, Dolores held a small child in her arms, someone spoke on the telephone, and an older woman adjusted her coat before leaving. Piotr stood in the background, tall and silent, wearing the expression of a guest who wished to be polite but feared taking up too much space. Only when he was alone upstairs did he discover how deep silence could be in a house full of unfamiliar voices.

He unpacked very little: a few shirts, toiletries, documents, and his computer. Every object brought from Legionowo immediately acquired significance. Even an ordinary sweater smelled of home. He placed a photograph of the children on the small table, then slipped it back into his bag. On that first night he did not want to look at the faces from which he was separated by eight time zones and an entire ocean.

Jarek could not take him in permanently. For several years he had been living with Kasia, who was Chinese, and they had no spare room. He did, however, invite his friend to dinner. At the table, Polish dishes stood beside foods and spices unfamiliar to Piotr, and different languages and customs met. Kasia spoke quickly, Jarek paused every few moments to explain something, and Piotr smiled as he tried to keep up with the conversation.

—You'll get used to it—his host assured him.—At first everything seems different. Then you begin to wonder how it could ever have been any other way.

The next day Jarek brought him the bulletin from the Polish parish. Between notices of services and community announcements were short advertisements for work. They called several numbers. The second conversation already produced a definite result.

—Tomorrow morning we're driving to the other side of the city—Jarek announced.—They need a helper to paint a house.

Piotr knew that no desk or computer awaited him. He had not anticipated his own reaction, however, when he entered a newly built house that smelled of plaster, wood, and paint. Empty rooms opened one into another. Plastic sheeting covered the floors; buckets and ladders stood against the walls. He felt as though he had suddenly been stripped of every skill on which he had previously based his sense of worth.

Apart from a brief spell helping renovate a garage in 1988, he had never done physical labor. He had never worked on a construction site, did not know the tools, and could not judge how much paint a wall required or how to guide a roller without leaving streaks. Now he was supposed to act like a man who knew what he was doing.

Jarek introduced him to two Poles. The younger man, Ludwik Celeda, looked him over carefully but without hostility. Adam, older and more cautious, grimaced when he heard that the applicant had never painted a house before.

—Then what use is a helper like that to us?—he muttered.

—He'll learn—Ludwik replied.—And we need another pair of hands. We're not going to put him on the ceilings right away.

Piotr made no attempt to pretend he was a tradesman.

—I know nothing about it—he said.—But if you show me, I'll do it exactly the way it ought to be done.

On the first day, the most important thing was to last until the end and ruin nothing. His arms began to ache sooner than he had expected. Paint ran down the roller handle, his hands stiffened, and each hour lasted longer than the one before it. Even so, he corrected his mistakes, watched Ludwik's movements, and did not step away from the wall until he was told it was enough.

Adam showed him how to load the roller without splashing paint, how to cut in along the ceiling, and how not to rest a ladder against a freshly painted wall. He spoke briefly, sometimes impatiently, but never maliciously. Ludwik joked more often.

—Just don't think too much—he advised.—This wall doesn't read your articles. It only has to be even.

By the end of the day, Piotr had stopped fighting every movement. He began to understand the rhythm of the work: plastic, tape, primer, first coat, touch-ups. When he looked at the room where bare boards had stood that morning, he saw a bright interior that was nearly finished. For the first time he thought that he had left something visible behind, even though no one would ever sign his name on that wall.

That evening he was paid. Eight hours at sixteen dollars an hour. The one hundred and twenty-eight dollars in cash weighed more heavily in his hand than many an editorial fee for which he had waited weeks in Poland. His fatigue did not disappear, but suddenly it had meaning.

The next morning he rose without hesitation. For the first few days Ludwik picked him up in his car; later Piotr had to learn how to get around by public transportation. Calgary was sprawling, streets were marked differently than in Poland, and similar names recurred in different parts of the city. He knew very little English. At bus stops he compared route numbers with the paper in his pocket, and when he did not understand something, he showed people the address and relied on their patience.

On the way to the job site, he watched the people on the buses. Most sat alone, earphones in their ears or a cup of coffee in one hand. No one paid attention to the man clutching a slip of paper with an address. Once, when he got off several stops too early, he had to walk for nearly an hour through a neighborhood of identical houses. In Poland he would have cursed such a mistake. Here he treated it as part of the lesson.

He brought the simplest food for his breaks. Sitting on an upturned bucket or on the steps leading into the garage, he listened to Ludwik and Adam discuss rates, clients, cars, and taxes. It was a practical education in emigration, far more concrete than all his earlier imaginings. He learned how much a room cost, how long a man might wait for better work, and why someone with a degree began with a paint roller if he wanted to pay the rent.

In time the work became less humiliating. At first he was entrusted with the simplest tasks; later he was more often given a roller on a long pole and painted whole walls by himself. Ludwik and Adam expected no miracles. They could see that he was trying. When they finished one house, they found another. There were jobs, there was pay, and Piotr began to believe he could support himself in a place where his education and previous experience meant very little.

Evenings were the hardest. In his rented room he opened the computer and launched Skype. The picture from Legionowo was sometimes grainy and the voices broke up, but through that small window on the screen he could see Małgorzata, Rozalia, and his mother. The younger boys quickly lost patience, Paweł found other things to do, and conversations with his wife often turned into discussions of bills, children, and matters that could not be resolved from a distance.

Rozalia spoke with him the longest. His nine-year-old daughter told him about school, her siblings, and the tensions at home. She complained about Grandmother Marianna, who was once again trying to "help," but Paweł worried her most. With their father absent from the apartment, the eldest brother increasingly behaved as though he alone made the rules.

Before leaving, Piotr had forbidden his son to use the internet because of his problems at school. Rozalia told him that almost immediately after his departure, Paweł had run a cable from the router to his computer again. Their mother knew about it.

—Rozalka, get a knife and cut the cable—Piotr said.

Silence fell on the other end.

—I don't want to.

—Why not?

—Because he'll hit me again.

Piotr heard how powerless a father's prohibition sounded when delivered through a computer from the other side of the world.

—I'll speak to Mom. If he does anything at all, tell me at once. Don't be afraid.

—All right...

He heard his daughter push back her chair. The image on the screen remained empty. For several minutes he saw only part of the room, a wall, and the flickering light of the monitor. When Rozalia returned, she was visibly subdued.

—Done.

—You cut it?

—Yes.

—Then why are you so angry?

The girl looked away.

—Because Dad isn't here. I had only just managed to arrange things so Paweł wouldn't take everything out on me. Now it's going to start all over again.

He could not convince her that everything would be all right. He did not believe it himself. She had obeyed him, yet instead of regaining control he felt only the distance between them. For the first time he understood so clearly that a father's presence could not be replaced by a voice from a speaker.

After the conversation he sat for a long time before the darkened screen. In Poland he would have been only a few steps from Paweł's room. He could have gone in, torn out the cable, faced his son, and accepted the consequences of his own decision. In Calgary all he could do was wait for the next call. Distance did not relieve him of responsibility; it took away the tools with which he had tried to exercise it.

The next day he painted faster than usual. Physical exhaustion became a way to silence his thoughts. Every even strip of paint offered the illusion of an order he could not restore in his own home.

On his days off, Jarek and Kasia tried to show him a Canada beyond construction sites and suburbs. At the end of April they set out for the Rocky Mountains. Even from afar Piotr saw white peaks rising above the plain. The Tatras, which until then he had considered immense, suddenly seemed to belong to a different scale.

The road wound between forests and walls of rock. Snow lay around Lake Louise, and the lake remained frozen. A grand hotel rose behind Piotr; before him stretched a pale expanse in which it was difficult to tell the ice from the snowy shore. He stood in a light sweater, a bag slung over his shoulder, absorbing a view he had previously known only from films.

—Well?—Jarek asked.—Do you still regret that it isn't the States?

—A little less today—Piotr admitted.

They stopped in Banff, at scenic overlooks, and in Cochrane, where Piotr bought an enormous ice-cream cone while standing before a map of the world covered in colored pins. Later he visited Heritage Park in Calgary.

What struck him most was the space. In Poland, nearly every road passed through a village, fields, bus stops, and houses along the roadside. Here one could travel for mile after mile between forest and rock, seeing nothing but a river, railroad tracks, and snowy slopes. Piotr repeatedly asked them to stop the car. He wanted to look longer, as though afraid that once he returned to Legionowo he would not believe his own memory.

Heritage Park delighted him for another reason. An old train stood beside a wooden platform, signs styled after the turn of the century hung along a broad street, and a green bus carried visitors between the different sections of the reconstructed town. Piotr, who had devoted years to genealogy, peered curiously into the houses and workshops. He knew it was a re-creation, yet he valued the effort made to preserve the details: lamps, tools, furniture, and the ways in which people had once arranged their daily lives.

The past in that park was not hidden in a lost book or scattered among other people's attics. It stood repainted, described, and opened to visitors. The difference hurt him more than he wished to admit.

Later outings took them farther west. In Kelowna, Jarek and Piotr sat at a marina among rows of boats while heavy clouds hung over the water. On another occasion, near Postill Lake, they spent time with a group of acquaintances at a wooden cabin surrounded by forest. There were conversations in the sun, shared meals, and a fleeting sense that Piotr was no longer merely a newcomer renting a room, but a man admitted into someone else's circle.

The trip to Postill Lake was less like sightseeing. Several people from different countries sat near the wooden cabin in the forest. Someone had brought meat, someone else a salad, and children ran across the grass. Piotr found himself in the midst of a group in which everyone had a story about coming to Canada. They spoke of work, house prices, and homesickness, but also of how quickly a foreign country ceased to feel foreign when one had people with whom to sit at a table.

In the evening the forest smelled of resin, and the silence over the lake was different from the silence in his rented room. That silence meant loneliness. This one brought rest.

Meanwhile, daily life in Legionowo arranged itself without him. On May twentieth, Rozalia marked the anniversary of her First Holy Communion. After the service, the family gathered on the grass in front of the apartment blocks: Paweł with little Krzyś, Tadeusz with Kacper and Tomisław, Urszula, Rozalia in her white dress, and Jadwiga and Adam with Czarek. Only the girl's father was missing from the group.

Rozalia stood among her relatives and smiled for the camera, but earlier, during Mass, she had watched the parents of other children sitting together. Piotr learned how the celebration had gone only during a conversation on Skype. His daughter told him about the white dress, the guests, and the family dinner. She tried to sound cheerful.

—I wish Dad had been there—she said at the end.

That simple sentence stayed with him longer than all the news about work and money. Emigration was meant to improve the children's future, yet from the very beginning it was taking away their present.

Not long afterward, Marianna Andrzejuk came to Legionowo. She announced that she wanted to help her daughter while her son-in-law was away. In the cramped kitchen on Sowińskiego Street, she moved among the pots while Krzesisław and Tomisław tangled around her feet. Another pair of hands might have been needed, but with her came the old tensions Rozalia described to her father during their evening conversations.

Marianna had her own way of helping. She rearranged things, peered into pots, and commented on the children's behavior and her daughter's decisions. In the small kitchen every gesture became visible, every sigh sounded like a reproach. Krzesisław and Tomisław hovered near the table, asked for food, and got in the adults' way, while Małgorzata tried to maintain order amid work, the children's schooling, and her mother's presence.

Piotr heard about it all in fragments. His wife spoke of exhaustion, Rozalia of quarrels, and Jadwiga asked when he would return. Each person described the same home differently. He had no way to determine which version came closest to the truth.

Piotr tried to ensure that his journey brought the family a tangible benefit. Twice he sent home part of what he had earned. Each time, he felt greater satisfaction than he had at the moment he was paid. These were not promises or plans. It was cash that would reach the household and pay for groceries and bills. At the same time, he saved as much as he could so that he would not return empty-handed.

He began keeping a simple account: rent for Dolores, bus fares, food, incidental expenses. Everything else was to return to Poland. He bought nothing he did not need, although shop windows and friends' stories tempted him with goods that seemed so readily available. His greatest pleasure came from adding another sum to the envelope.

When he told Małgorzata that he had sent money, he heard relief in her voice, but not a final conviction that their problems had been solved. Canada proved only that one could earn money more quickly abroad. It did not yet answer the question of how long the family could endure separation.

On July thirteenth, Jarek and Kasia held a farewell gathering for him. The three months that before his departure had seemed like a long trial passed more quickly than he had expected. He had gained no certainty that Canada would become the future of the entire family. He did know, however, that he could work, earn money, and survive in a foreign country.

For the farewell, Kasia prepared food, Jarek opened a bottle of wine, and the conversation continued late into the night. They recalled the first day at the airport and the construction site where Piotr had not even known which end of the roller to hold. Now he could tell the story with humor.

—When you come back, you'll already be a professional—Jarek joked.

—When I come back, the first thing I'll do is find a job where I don't have to climb a ladder. Well—unless it's after I come back to Calgary—Piotr said with a laugh.

They laughed, though all of them knew there was no certainty that he would ever return to Canada. His visitor's visa was nearing its end. Piotr was going home with experience, contacts, and savings, but without permanent status or any definite plan for bringing over his family.

The return journey began badly. The flight from Calgary reached Toronto so late that the passengers bound for Warsaw missed their connection. For a long time no one at the airport was willing to take responsibility for the group left without lodging. Only mounting protests, threats, and increasingly loud arguments forced the airline to provide a hotel and access to a VIP lounge.

They decided to use the free hours for a brief visit to Mississauga. The name of the city held a special appeal for Poles. In emigrants' stories it appeared as an almost mythical center of Polish life. On Dixie Road, however, Piotr saw an ordinary line of stores, parking lots, and signs. Magic yielded to everyday reality, and the old Polish community no longer resembled the world he knew from stories.

The next day the passengers arrived at the airport well ahead of time. The VIP lounge proved better stocked with alcohol than with food. Piotr and the married couple traveling with him took advantage of what was available—perhaps too enthusiastically, for during boarding one LOT employee indicated the buffet and said politely:

—You may still help yourselves at our buffet.

A second man looked at the travelers and interrupted him:

—I think they've already been there.

This time no one protested. The rest of the flight passed without incident and ended in Warsaw.

When Piotr entered the apartment on Sowińskiego Street, he was struck by the familiar smell, the cramped space, and the noise. The children all spoke at once. The youngest wanted to touch him, as if making sure he had truly returned. Rozalia stayed close, but there was something cautious in her joy as well—the memory of the months during which she had been forced to manage without him.

Unpacking the suitcase became a small celebration. The children pulled out trinkets, asked about every object, and interrupted one another. Tomisław wanted to know whether bears truly roamed everywhere in Canada. Krzesisław climbed onto his father's lap. Paweł kept more of a distance, as though unwilling to reveal that his father's return changed anything in him.

Piotr noticed that a new hierarchy had formed in the home during his absence. Małgorzata made decisions without consulting him, Paweł had grown accustomed to greater freedom, and Rozalia had learned to avoid conflict. His return did not simply restore the old order. It had to be built again from the beginning, and no one knew whether the father would leave once more in a few weeks.

A few days later, all three younger children splashed together in the bathtub, laughing and spilling water across the floor. On another occasion Rozalia fell asleep beside Krzyś beneath a navy-blue comforter patterned with suns and moons. Piotr looked at them and felt that such ordinary scenes drew the sharpest line between home and emigration. Across the ocean he had earned money. Here was the life that could never be made up later.

He had brought home savings and the knowledge that for three months he had managed his own earnings. When the children had gone to sleep, he sat down with Małgorzata.

—You were alone with them for three months—he said.—Now you ought to rest. Go somewhere by the sea. I'll stay with the children. We can afford it.

Małgorzata accepted the proposal without objection. A few days later she was walking along the Baltic shore near Gdańsk. The wind tugged at her jacket, waves broke on the empty beach, and she carried a red umbrella more like a walking stick than protection from the rain. She did not spend the entire trip alone. For part of the time, Stanisław Stachnik kept her company.

Piotr kept his promise and took over the daily responsibilities. He drove the children where they needed to go, prepared meals, watched the younger ones, and tried to make up for the conversations they had missed during the previous three months. The home soon recovered its old rhythm, though the broad streets of Calgary and the silence of the rented room remained in his memory.

Małgorzata's trip was meant to give her rest after months of caring for the family alone. Piotr did not treat it as a reward or a settling of accounts. He simply believed that, since he had brought money home, it ought to provide something more than paid bills. He wanted her to spend at least a few days without being responsible for everyone.

Meanwhile Piotr was already thinking about another journey. In Canada, Ludwik Celeda had argued that Ireland would be the more sensible destination.

—It's closer, and the pay is better—he kept saying.—You can fly home for Christmas, a First Communion, or a funeral. From Calgary you can't simply come over for a few days.

Piotr was not enthusiastic. For years America had occupied his imagination. Ireland seemed smaller, a substitute, stripped of myth. He did have the contact details of a possible employer, however, and he knew that the distance from Poland might matter more than he wished to admit.

Rozalia had long spoken of a dream of her own. She wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. Piotr decided to fulfill it during the trip he would present to Małgorzata as a reconnaissance journey toward Ireland.

—I have to go and speak with the man Ludwik put me in touch with—he began cautiously.—A telephone call isn't enough. I need to see whether the job actually exists.

—And that is why you want to go through Paris?—Małgorzata asked.

—Since I'll already be on the road, why not? Rozalka will see the city she talks about so much. It may be her only chance.

The idea of taking their daughter did not please her at first. Her resistance, however, was neither long nor firm. It was more diplomatic than real—enough to register her concern, but not meant to stop the journey altogether.

On August first, Piotr and Rozalia reached Grevenbroich, where they stayed with Janusz Kielak. The next day they passed through Luxembourg. The girl stood beside a broad street in a T-shirt bearing the British flag, impatient and excited. Every road sign and every new border brought her closer to Paris.

At Janusz Kielak's home they enjoyed their first restful night after the long drive. Their host showed them around the area, and Rozalia walked beside her father along a narrow lane between high brick walls. The German town was orderly and quiet. For Piotr it was a stopping place; for his daughter, the beginning of a great journey.

Their passage through Luxembourg was brief, but the girl insisted that they stop. She wanted proof that she had entered another country. She stood beside a nearly empty street while Piotr checked the map and calculated how many miles remained to Paris. Borders vanished more quickly than they had in his youth, but distance was still measured in weariness, fuel, and hours behind the wheel. It was then that an unexpected gift of the girl revealed itself: while her father drove, she stared at the map and unfailingly spotted the approaching junctions. "Left here," and "Oh, there's a junction coming up," she called out every few minutes.

When she first saw the Eiffel Tower rising above the trees, she stopped without a word.

—Is that really it?—she finally asked.

—It really is—Piotr replied.—Especially for you.

Rozalia stood on the grass, the steel structure rising in the distance behind her. The next day they crossed the square before Notre-Dame Cathedral, threading their way among the tourists. Later they reached the glass pyramid of the Louvre. Piotr watched his daughter more closely than the monuments. Her delight confirmed for him that the journey was not merely a pretext or another attempt to flee their problems.

Paris did not permit itself to be viewed calmly. Cars forced their way into every open space, horns echoed off the buildings, and the crowd carried them toward one monument after another. At Notre-Dame, Rozalia studied the carvings above the portals for a long time. Piotr tried to tell her how old the cathedral was, but the girl was more interested in the pigeons and the people lining up to enter.

At the Louvre they stopped beneath the glass pyramid. Piotr, who had previously known the place only from television, felt as though he were taking part in a scene from someone else's life. Beside him stood the daughter whose grandparents had bought her a bicycle much too large for her at the Legionowo market only a few years earlier. Now they were traveling across Europe together.

By evening they were tired and hungry. They ate simple food while sitting on a bench, and Rozalia kept looking back toward the Eiffel Tower.

—Now I can tell everyone at school that I saw it—she said.

—You can tell them you went there with your father.

—That too.

From Paris they headed toward the northern coast of France. Rozalia went into the cold water and later sat on an inflatable mattress among the waves. They continued through Belgium and the Netherlands. The route that, in Piotr's conversation with Małgorzata, was supposed to lead to professional matters increasingly resembled a father's journey with his daughter—an attempt to gather memories before further departures separated the family for longer.

The wind on the coast was stronger than in Paris. The sea was the color of steel, the beach stretched wide, and waves overturned the light mattress on which Rozalia tried to keep her balance. Piotr watched from the shore. He was more afraid for her than he allowed himself to show, but he did not want to take away her joy.

The journey through Belgium and the Netherlands passed in the rhythm of highways, service stations, and brief stops. Rozalia fell asleep in the car, woke in another country, and asked where they were. Piotr began to understand that for her Europe was not made up of political borders but of images: the tower, the cathedral, the sea, Janusz's house, and her father's face bent over a map.

After returning to Poland, they stopped once more beside the Baltic near Koszalin. Rozalia stood on the beach with a bottle in her hand, tanned and tired, yet clearly proud of the distance they had covered. In Legionowo she spread the album across her bed and looked through the pictures for a long time, as though making certain that Paris had not been a dream.

On August eleventh, the whole family traveled to Janów Podlaski for the wedding of Małgorzata Olchwiruk, his wife Małgorzata's niece, and Jan Jóźwik. Before the ceremony Piotr sat with Rozalia, Tomisław, and Krzesisław at a small table in the garden. The children ate from colorful plates, and all around them reigned the particular confusion that precedes a family wedding.

Janów filled with relatives. Tables were arranged in the yard, children changed clothes and disappeared every few minutes, women adjusted their hair, and men asked who was taking whom in which car. After weeks on foreign roads, Piotr once more found himself in a world where every face had a place in the family's history.

During the reception Rozalia moved from table to table, Tomisław and Krzesisław soon tired of sitting still, and Paweł stayed close to the younger adults. Marianna and Krystyna spoke about relatives Piotr had not seen for a long time. In the noise of the hall, names mingled with old grievances, wishes for the newlyweds, and questions about Canada.

—So what was it like there?—he heard again and again.

He answered briefly: cold, far away, hard work, good money. He did not say that what he remembered most was the empty screen after Rozalia had gone to fetch the knife.

Different branches of the family met in the hall. Marianna Andrzejuk sat beside her daughter Krystyna Sołoduszkiewicz, raising a glass and talking across the crowded table. Paweł posed with Andrzej Sołoduszkiewicz and other young guests. For a little while the music, the press of people, and conversations carried on in several voices covered every misunderstanding.

The next day the children were still running around the yard in Janów. Rozalia climbed onto the roof of the red Opel, and Piotr looked at her with feigned indignation.

—Get down, or we'll have to return to Legionowo without a roof!

The girl only laughed. The car that two years earlier had meant independence for the family was now carrying father and daughter beyond Poland.

Soon it was time to prepare for another departure. On Ludwik's advice, Piotr decided to try Ireland. In the end, however, Małgorzata's position proved decisive. She announced that she would never move to Canada. She was willing to consider Dublin, however, since it would place her much closer to her mother and sisters.

Małgorzata did not immediately agree that her husband and daughter should leave for Dublin together. Piotr had already found a room with a Polish family, so he was not going entirely into the unknown, but the plan still carried risk. Rozalia was determined. After Germany, Luxembourg, and France, Ireland seemed to her merely another point on the map. Piotr, too, had no intention of leaving her behind in an environment where she had not always been able to find her place.

Since returning from Paris, his daughter had rarely left his side. She helped pack the bags, watched over the documents, and asked how many days the journey would take. Małgorzata saw her excitement, but she also saw the risk: Piotr had no certain job, and the rented room was merely an address received from strangers.

—It will be easier for you alone—she argued.—First go and see what is actually there.

—I went alone to find out about Canada—he replied.—This time I don't want to leave her feeling that I've disappeared again.

Rozalia listened from the adjoining room. When she entered, she neither begged nor cried.

—I'm going with Dad—she announced, as though the decision had already been made.

—Either we go together, or I don't go at all—Piotr said.

Małgorzata yielded.

On August twenty-second, the coach carrying them drove onto a vehicle shuttle train beneath the English Channel. The metal walls reflected orange light, and Rozalia stood in the narrow aisle, looking along the closed railcars.

The coach remained motionless inside the railcar, but the knowledge that the train was racing deep beneath the water gave the journey an unreal quality. Rozalia touched the metal wall and tried to imagine the dark sea above the tunnel. Piotr watched her and remembered his own first border crossing, from a time when a journey to the West had been an almost ceremonial event. For his daughter, a border had become simply another door opened during a single journey.

—Is the sea above us?—she asked to make sure.

—Yes.

—And nothing is leaking?

—Not yet—Piotr replied, and his daughter burst out laughing.

On the other side they stopped beside a red telephone box. England looked familiar and foreign at once: brick walls, traffic moving on the left, and signs that had to be read more quickly than their command of the language allowed. The next day they reached Dublin.

After many hours on the road and a ferry crossing over the Irish Sea, they saw the lights of Dublin. They were tired, but neither wanted to fall asleep before they reached the proper address. Nor did time permit it. Dublin greeted them at dawn.

The coach that had brought them from Poland pulled into the Dublin bus terminal early in the morning. Piotr and Rozalia were among the last passengers to get off. Five enormous pieces of luggage stood beside them on the pavement—almost everything they possessed for the beginning of their new life. A computer, carefully wrapped in clothes, was hidden inside one suitcase; a monitor filled another. The remaining bags contained basic clothing and enough food to see them through their first few days.

Someone at the station pointed them toward the right city bus.

—You'll get almost all the way there—he assured them.—After that, it's only a short walk.

The "short walk" proved far longer than they had expected. The bus dropped them at the end of the route, leaving them with a considerable distance still to cover through an unfamiliar neighborhood.

After the first few hundred yards, Piotr felt a sudden, piercing pain in his right foot. With every step, his little toe seemed to come down on a swarm of red-hot needles. He clenched his teeth and kept moving, unwilling to tell his daughter how badly it hurt. They could not leave any of the suitcases unattended or risk losing everything they had brought with them.

And so they moved their luggage in stages. Piotr carried the two heaviest bags several dozen steps and left them with Rozalia. The girl stood beside them like a guard while her father went back for the others. Then he carried another pair forward, returned once more, and began the process again. Each stage multiplied the distance they had to walk, while the pain in his foot grew sharper with every journey.

In this way, step by step, inching their modest possessions deeper into the unfamiliar city, they finally reached a walled estate of terraced houses. Behind one of its gates stood the house that was to become their first address in Dublin.

In front of the brick house where they were to rent their first room, Rozalia stood beside the luggage. The journey had ended, but nothing resembled a triumphant arrival. There was an ordinary sidewalk, a small front garden, and a door leading into a place they did not know.

They set the bags on the sidewalk. Rozalia adjusted her backpack and looked at the house with a mixture of curiosity and disappointment. There was no hotel or elegant apartment, only an ordinary brick façade much like many others on the street. Piotr felt a familiar pang: as in Calgary, the beginning of emigration held nothing grand.

The room proved cramped. It contained a bed with a metal headboard; near the window they set up the small computer brought from Poland, while bags and clothing quickly appeared on the floor and chair. Rozalia sat on the edge of the bed and looked around carefully.

—So this is where we live now?

—For the time being—Piotr replied.

In the following days they went out into the streets of Dublin. The girl studied the crowds, shops, and monuments, while her father tried to see the city as a place of work rather than another attraction. In their first house they met Sebastian and Iwona. During a Sunday gathering, a grill was set up beside the bare wall of the yard, and old chairs and a small table were carried outside. The modest meal had something of an emigrant ritual about it: people who had recently been strangers shared food, advice, and addresses.

In the city center, Rozalia stopped beside street musicians and monuments. Dublin was loud, colorful, and far more compact than Calgary. Piotr studied windows displaying job advertisements, prices in shops, and the distances between neighborhoods. His daughter looked at the city; he searched it for a way to support the family.

Sebastian and Iwona explained the first rules to them: where to shop more cheaply, how to use the buses, which neighborhoods to avoid, and whom to call about work.

—First you must obtain an insurance number for yourself and your daughter—they advised, adding that only then could Piotr work legally and Rozalia begin school. During the barbecue in the yard, plastic cups stood on the little table and the chairs were mismatched and old. No one apologized for the modest conditions. Everyone knew that beginnings looked exactly like this.

Piotr looked at his daughter sitting among their new acquaintances and understood that the Canadian trial had not ended with his return to Warsaw. It had opened a door he no longer knew how to close. First he had stood alone on the other side of the Atlantic. Now he was leading a child there, step by step, across one border after another.

He did not yet know whether Dublin would prove a stopping place or the beginning of a longer emigration. He knew only that from then on every decision would have two addresses: the one where he found work, and the apartment on Sowińskiego Street, where the rest of the family remained.