Chapter XXVIII

This time, the flight from Warsaw to Dublin was supposed to be the easiest part of the journey. No stuffy coach, no endless swaying along European roads, no stiff neck, and no counting one border after another. A few hours in the air, a landing, collecting the luggage—and the beginning of a new stage. After their previous experiences in Ireland, Piotr wanted to believe that everything had been planned more sensibly this time.

In the arrivals hall, however, time came to a standstill. First the formalities dragged on, then the black baggage carousel stopped moving. People shifted from one foot to the other, glanced at their watches, and stepped closer, as though staring hard enough might make the suitcases appear sooner. Piotr felt his irritation mounting, but stronger still was his craving for nicotine. With every passing minute, a cigarette became, in his mind, the only thing he truly needed.

The addiction had begun nearly fifteen years earlier, in circumstances so absurd that he could never recount them afterward without bitter irony. He was then a young instructor in the Riflemen's Association and the only adult supervisor at a camp. Among the participants were two teenage girls who smoked openly and ignored every warning. Sergeant Aneta finally announced that they would stop only when they ran out of cigarettes, because they had no money for more.

Piotr treated the matter like a tactical assignment. If their supply was meant to run out, someone had to help them use it up faster. He began smoking with them. The girls did indeed soon find themselves without cigarettes, but the victory proved peculiar: they stopped, while he no longer could.

Later, he tried many times to quit. Rozalka took it hardest. She was not yet five when, with a child's solemnity, she declared that she would join a pilgrimage on foot to Częstochowa and ask God for one thing—that her father stop smoking. His daughter's promise shamed him more than all the doctors' warnings, yet even then he failed to defeat the addiction.

Now, at Dublin Airport, common sense lost again.

— Stay by the carousel and hold our place. I'll only be a minute — he told his ten-year-old daughter.

He passed through the automatic doors and lit a cigarette almost immediately. The first lungful of smoke brought relief; the second calmed the trembling in his hands. Only after he stubbed out the cigarette and turned back did he understand what he had done. Security stopped him at the entrance. He was not allowed to return to the restricted baggage-claim area.

— My daughter is in there! Alone! — he explained, his voice rising. — She's watching our belongings. I have to go back for her.

The uniformed women repeated the regulations. To them, he was simply another agitated passenger who had ended up on the wrong side of security. The women at the LOT Polish Airlines desk sympathized, but they could neither leave their post nor enter the restricted area in his place.

Piotr pulled out the phone he had bought during an earlier stay in Ireland. The display showed its last bar of battery power. He dialed Rozalia's number and waited, listening to the ringing with his heart pounding as though her safety depended on that call.

— Rozalka, they won't let me back in! — he blurted when she answered. — You have to take all the bags yourself, load them onto a cart, and come out in front of the terminal. Do you understand? All of them.

He did not have time to hear her reply. The phone went dead.

For the next several minutes, he paced in front of the glass façade, cursing his own stupidity. He imagined his daughter standing helplessly by the carousel, suitcases scattered around her and strangers walking past. At last, the doors slid open. A small girl emerged from the hall, pushing an overloaded metal cart. The bags were piled high, one of them slipping to the side, but Rozalia gripped the handle firmly and moved forward, step by step. She did not cry. She did not call out. She completed the task.

Piotr ran over and seized the cart. His shame was stronger than his relief. He was supposed to be looking after her, yet because of his addiction he had left her alone in a foreign country with all their luggage.

In his pocket were pills intended to help him stop smoking. He had been taking them for several weeks, but without much faith. The image of his daughter emerging from the airport with that heavy cart lodged more deeply within him than all his previous resolutions.

They moved into number 70 Bulfin Road. The conditions were better than during their previous stay: space of their own, a private bathroom, a little privacy. For a brief while, they could even believe that the worst was behind them. It soon became clear, however, that this time it was not the accommodation that had failed them, but everything else.

The job Piotr had been promised before leaving no longer existed. Someone else had been hired in his place, and the Irish labor market, which only recently had absorbed people willing to take any work, suddenly contracted. The first heavy clouds of the economic crisis were gathering over the country. Job advertisements dwindled, employers stopped returning calls, and acquaintances could do nothing but shrug.

Every morning, Piotr and Rozalia went out into the city. They bought newspapers, copied down telephone numbers, looked into businesses and construction sites, and asked everywhere a worker might be needed. Because they were even saving the cost of bus fares, they crossed Dublin on foot. The girl kept pace with her father, though after several hours her legs hurt.

The windows of bars and restaurants were the worst. Warm light, people sitting at tables, plates carried by waiters—all of it belonged to a world from which a pane of glass separated them.

— Dad, when you find a job, I'd like to eat that — Rozalka sometimes said, pointing to an ordinary hot meal.

She did not demand anything or complain. She spoke the words as though describing a plan for a better future. Piotr looked away so that she would not see his helplessness. Now and then, he scraped together enough coins for a one-euro burger. Such a meal became a celebration.

At last, a three-day job appeared. Only three days, but they meant money for food and several more days of breathing room. On the first morning, Piotr stepped outside before dawn. One cigarette remained in the pack. He lit it, looking down the pale street, and wondered not whether he would quit, but where he would get the next ones.

He smoked it to the end, crushed the butt, and went to work.

Only several hours later did he realize that he did not feel the usual panic. The medication, his shame after the incident at the airport, Rozalka's childhood promise of a pilgrimage, and his growing conviction that he could no longer give cigarettes money needed for food—all of it came together in a single moment. He did not buy another pack.

That cigarette, smoked at dawn before the three-day job, proved to be his last. Not for a week or a month, but for many years.

The employment situation, however, continued to worsen. Their tenancy ended before the date of their flight, and they had no money for another month. Then their friends Tomasz Zagroba and Wioletta Laskowska helped them. They took them into their home, fed them, and allowed them to survive until their departure. Piotr was grateful, but he could not free himself from a sense of defeat. He had come to earn money and provide his daughter with a calmer life, yet he was returning penniless and dependent on the help of others.

On March 17, they boarded a plane to Warsaw.

Piotr expected that at home he would hear everything he himself feared most: that he had proved incapable, that he should never have left, that he had wasted money and time. Małgorzata reacted differently. Almost immediately, she began pressing for another trip. Piotr was to take Rozalia again and return to Ireland—to the country from which they had just come back after weeks of unemployment, hunger, and humiliation.

To him, it made no sense. Without a good command of English, at a time when jobs were disappearing from one day to the next, Dublin offered no hope. Małgorzata, however, would accept no objection. Every argument bounced off her like a wall.

Piotr and Rozalia therefore began devising a plan of their own.

Ludwik Celeda, for whom Piotr had previously worked in Canada, made it clear that a job was waiting for him in Calgary. It was not a vague promise, but something concrete: painting houses and being paid from the first days. Canada meant a long journey, a risk at the border, and another lie to Małgorzata. It also meant work.

Urszula, Wioletta Laskowska, and Ewa Warzyńska joined the preparations. Urszula was to drive father and daughter to the airport while Małgorzata was at work. Ewa planted false leads: in conversations with Małgorzata, she mentioned being in touch with Piotr and suggested that he was still in Ireland. Wioletta was given the task that would allow them to preserve the secret after the flight.

Rozalia knew the plan and accepted it with the solemnity of a co-conspirator. She was a child, but after the incident at the Irish airport Piotr knew that, at a critical moment, she could show more composure than many adults.

At Canadian border control, that confidence was put to the test. The officer spoke quickly, used words Piotr did not understand, and returned to the same questions in increasingly detailed forms. Piotr answered in fragments until, at last, he became completely tongue-tied.

Rozalia stepped closer to the counter and joined the exchange, answering the officer's questions. She had learned English at school and, although she was only ten, handled the conversation better than her father. The officer looked from her to Piotr and back again, then stamped their passports.

Only after they had walked several steps away did Piotr dare to ask:

— What was he actually asking about?

— Whether Mom knew we had flown here.

Piotr stopped.

— And what did you tell him?

— That of course she knew — Rozalka replied, as though it were the simplest answer in the world.

Their first lodging was with Dolores, in a house on Shawingan Drive. From the beginning, the landlady complained that the room was too small for two people. She was right: the bed, their belongings, and two suitcases filled almost the entire space. After Dublin, however, the mere fact that they had a roof over their heads and work within reach was enough to keep them from being choosy.

Ludwik kept his word. Piotr returned to painting houses and negotiated a raise from sixteen to twenty dollars an hour. He worked long hours, often to the point of exhaustion, but every hour had a clear purpose. Bills ceased to be an abstract threat. They could buy food, put money aside, and think about returning with more than an empty suitcase.

School remained a problem. While still in Poland, Piotr had called the Canadian embassy and asked whether his daughter would be able to continue her education. He was told that there should be no difficulties. Once there, however, when he and Jarosław Bucholec went to a public school, the answer was unambiguous: a child staying in Canada as a tourist could not be admitted under the ordinary rules.

Rozalia therefore entered the John Paul II Polish School run by the parish. On Saturdays she studied Polish, history, geography, and religion. In a photograph taken on May 10, she stands in a school corridor between rows of yellow lockers, one hand on her hip and the expression of someone determined not to show uncertainty. A few days later, she practiced on the rollerblades she had dreamed of owning, on a quiet sidewalk along Shannon Drive. Her first attempt ended in a fall, but before Piotr could reach her, she was already trying to get up.

That was their Canadian arrangement: he worked, she studied, and they spent their free hours together. They talked over meals, on buses, during walks, and in the evenings in their cramped room. Piotr discovered that his daughter saw far more than adults would have liked to admit.

During one of their conversations, Rozalka returned to the subject of Paweł. She had long been jealous of her older brother, and above all of the place he occupied—in her view—in their mother's heart and within the family in Janów. Piotr, too, saw an imbalance, although he could not always determine how much of it was real and how much was a child's pain. In Canada, he tried to make up for his daughter's earlier sense of being pushed aside by devoting almost all his time outside work to her.

Rozalia explained at length why she wished she were the oldest. Finally, she summed up her reasoning in a sentence that left her father without an answer:

— If Dad hadn't made Paweł too early, I would be the oldest.

She said it with complete seriousness. Piotr fell silent at first, then burst out laughing, and finally had to admit that his daughter's logic, peculiar though it was, was flawless.

For Rozalia, the Polish school became more than a place for Saturday lessons. During the Mother's Day program, the children performed for their parents and, at the end, presented their mothers with white roses. Rozalka approached her father with a flower. Piotr accepted the white rose from his daughter and felt his throat tighten. Emotion mingled with the pain of separation.

On June 14, during the ceremony marking the end of the school year, Rozalia was to read the Scripture lesson in the Polish church. She stood at the lectern beside the catechist, who adjusted the microphone. The great cross above the altar seemed to hang directly over her head.

— I'm a little afraid — she admitted beforehand. — But there has to be a first time someday.

Her voice trembled only at the beginning. Then she read clearly, sentence by sentence, without lifting her eyes from the text. Piotr listened from the pew and felt a pride that needed no words.

In their free time, they explored Calgary and the surrounding area. On June 1, they went up Calgary Tower and looked down over the city, as though from that height it were easier to take in the road that had brought them all the way there. They walked through downtown, stopped at Olympic Plaza, and watched the animals at the zoo. With Jarosław Bucholec, they went to Cochrane and Ghost Lake, where Rozalka stood on the deck of a boat, her hair blowing in the wind and a broad smile on her face. At Heritage Park, they saw old railway cars, wooden houses, tipis, and rooms furnished as they might have been a century earlier. Thanks to those outings, Canada did not consist for Rozalia solely of secrecy, her father's work, and a cramped room.

At the same time, life continued in Poland—a life from which both of them had been excluded.

On May 18, Tomisław received his First Holy Communion at the parish of St. John Cantius in Legionowo. After Mass, he stood in a white alb, holding bread in his hands, between eighteen-year-old Paweł and Paweł's girlfriend, against a display representing the Blessed Sacrament. The girl was well known to his parents, although not all the circumstances associated with her met with their approval.

After the ceremony, the family gathered around the table. Present were Adam and Jadwiga Korycki; the godparents, Krzysztof Włochiński with his family and Dominika Sęczyk with her husband and daughter. No one came from Janów Podlaski. Stanisław Stachnik, however, appeared with his wife and daughter—something Piotr, aware of the earlier family tensions, interpreted as a demonstration rather than an ordinary visit.

From Piotr's perspective, the most painful thing was that Małgorzata, aware of the complicated and, in his opinion, improper relationships connecting some of those present, posed for photographs with evident pride. One image in particular remained in his memory: Paweł, his girlfriend, and little Tomisław stood against a Eucharistic decoration. In Piotr's eyes, the image joined a family celebration with a falsehood he could not accept.

During the reception, words were spoken that soon took on a life of their own. The Włochiński family drew further conclusions from Małgorzata's account, added interpretations, and passed them on. By the time the news reached Canada, it had become a set of accusations directed against Piotr and Rozalia.

A telephone call from his brother-in-law reached them in Calgary. Piotr listened to the account, gripping the phone more tightly with every moment. When the conversation ended, he said:

— I'm going to see a lawyer.

Rozalia looked at him in alarm.

— Why?

— Because enough is enough. We can't allow people to say such things.

The Canadian lawyer took the matter seriously. She asked about witnesses, dates, exact statements, and whether it would be possible to establish who had started the accusations. She explained how they could demand an apology and what bringing the matter before a court might entail. Rozalia sat beside her father, although that whole world of documents, evidence, and liability was too heavy for her.

In the end, Piotr abandoned the lawsuit. Tadeusz asked him not to drag his family into court. Małgorzata firmly denied that she had spoken the words attributed to her: "never, ever"; perhaps someone else had added something, perhaps she had been misunderstood. Piotr did not entirely believe her, but he decided that legal proceedings might poison the family even further. He responded differently—by publishing a mocking reply on the internet, ridiculing the most absurd versions of the story in circulation.

On July 20, Tadeusz arrived in Calgary. He wanted to earn money on construction sites and find out whether Canada might become an opportunity for him as well. Together with Piotr, Rozalia, and Jarosław Bucholec, he went to Banff. In the photographs, he stands beside a white horse-drawn carriage with the mountains behind him, and later sits with them at a table. The outing did not solve the fundamental problem, however. Without English, Tadeusz could not manage either at work or in everyday affairs. His longing for Urszula proved even stronger. After a short stay, he gave up and returned to Legionowo.

Małgorzata still believed that her husband and daughter were in Ireland. She called Wioletta Laskowska's Irish number and asked about Piotr's work and Rozalia's progress at school there. Wioletta forwarded the calls to Canada, sustaining the illusion that they were several thousand kilometers closer than they really were. The conversations required constant vigilance. They could not mention Calgary, dollars, mountains, or the time difference. Rozalia answered briefly and then put down the receiver with relief. Sometimes a single word was enough to nearly expose the truth.

— Yes, Ludwik is paying me twenty dollars an hour now — Piotr said once.

— Dollars?

— Oh, euros, of course — he corrected himself quickly.

— Exactly. I was listening and wondering…

The secret could not last forever. Before the end of the summer, Małgorzata learned where they really were. Her anger was fierce. She did not demand their immediate return to Poland because she believed that her daughter was attending school. Piotr, however, had no intention of abandoning the job just when, for the first time in months, he was actually earning money. To gain a little more time, he announced that Rozalia had been awarded a two-week summer camp for her excellent academic results. It was a story as daring as their entire conspiracy, especially since his daughter had not been admitted to a Canadian public school.

He managed to prolong their stay until the end of August. He worked as much as possible and saved money. When they finally closed their suitcases, they were no longer returning like castaways from Dublin. They brought savings, photographs from Calgary, Banff, and Heritage Park, and the experience of several months during which father and daughter had been almost the whole world to one another.

In Poland, Małgorzata had purchased a therapeutic stay by the sea for Tomisław, intended to help with his speech impediment. Before it ended, she had to return urgently to Janów Podlaski, so she instructed Piotr and Rozalia to travel directly to Łeba after landing. The boys were waiting there. In photographs from the end of August, Tomisław stands on a dune; in earlier pictures, he and other children examine a strange vehicle built from wood and branches. After many months, Piotr once again had more than one of his children beside him.

From Łeba, they traveled to Janów and then to Legionowo. On September 10, a cake with candles appeared on the table in the apartment on Słowackiego Street. They celebrated Rozalia's name day, and several days later the children had a joint birthday party. Piotr served his daughter a slice of cake, while her brothers and cousins sat behind her. After the hunger of Ireland and the secrecy of Canada, an ordinary family table looked like a promise of normality.

Then Małgorzata said something that Piotr received like a door opening after a long wait.

— You go back alone now. I'll come with the children in November.

He knew how many times earlier plans had fallen apart after only a few days. He knew how easily declarations turned into grievances and how often each of them understood their shared future differently. Even so, he believed her. He wanted to believe her. The prospect of moving the entire family to Canada gave meaning to the work, the separation, and all the earlier humiliations.

Soon after his daughter's birthday, he returned to Calgary alone.

He worked from morning until evening. After work, he returned to an empty room, ate in silence, and looked at the calendar hanging above his bed. There were two months left until November. Every evening, he crossed out another day with a thick marker. He no longer counted the hours he had worked or the dollars he had earned. He counted the time until Małgorzata and the children arrived.

Toward the end of October, he fell ill. His fever reached forty degrees Celsius, and for several days he lacked the strength to get out of bed. He lay alone in a foreign country, with a thermometer and water placed within reach, repeating to himself that he had to recover before the family arrived.

As soon as he was back on his feet, he and Jarosław Bucholec began searching for a larger apartment. Not a room, not a makeshift corner, but a real home for Małgorzata, Paweł, Rozalia, Tomisław, Krzesisław, and himself. They viewed one place after another until they found the right one. Piotr signed the lease, arranged furniture, bought the basic necessities, and for the first time in a long while felt that the plan was truly taking shape.

He sat down at the computer and connected with his parents in Poland over Skype. The camera showed a blurred image and the sound broke up at times, but Piotr could not contain his joy.

— Mom! I did it! I've rented a beautiful apartment for all of us!

Silence fell on the other end. It was not the silence of a delayed connection. Jadwiga looked away, as though searching for words she did not want to say.

— Piotruś… — she finally began softly. — But she said she would never, ever go there.