glancing at every piece of furniture that was being taken from her. It was clear that the objects she was leaving behind had not only material value for her; she was parting with them as with the still-visible signs of the vanished and irretrievable past, the mute witnesses of lost happiness. The pale, dark-eyed child pulled harder at her mother’s dress.
“Mama!” she whispered. “Look! Papa’s desk!”
The porters carried a large, masculine desk down the stairs and put it on a wagon. It was handsomely carved, adorned with a gallery back, and covered in green cloth. The woman in mourning looked at it for a long time and the child pointed to it with a thin finger.
“Mama!” whispered the girl. “Do you see that big black stain on Papa’s desk? I remember how it got there. Papa was sitting in front of the desk holding me on his knees, and you, Mama, came in and wanted to take me away from him. He laughed and did not hand me to you. I was playing and spilled the ink. Papa was not angry. He was good. He was never angry at me or at you . . .”
The child whispered these words with her little face hidden in the folds of her mother’s mourning dress and her tiny body huddling up to the woman’s knees. It was evident that memories were exerting their power over her childish heart, wrenching it with pain of which she was not fully aware.
Two large tears fell from the woman’s eyes, which had been dry until now; her child’s words had evoked the memory of a moment once lost among millions of similar everyday moments. Now she smiled at the unhappy child—smiled with a mixture of delight and bitterness at the thought of that lost paradise. It may even have occurred to her that the freedom and joy of that moment were being paid for today with the last bites of bread that were left for her and her child, and would be paid for tomorrow with hunger; the ink stain that had appeared amid the laughter of the child and the kisses of her parents would lower the value of the desk by more than a dozen złotys.
After the desk, a Krall piano appeared in the courtyard, but the woman in mourning looked at it indifferently. Probably she was not a musician, and the instrument awakened the fewest regrets and memories. But when a small mahogany bed with a colorful yarn quilt was taken out of the house and put on a wagon, her eyes were riveted to it, and the child burst into tears.
“My bed, Mama!” she cried. “Those people are taking my bed and the coverlet you made for me! I do not want them to take it! Mama, take my bed and my coverlet back from them!”
The woman’s only reply was to press the head of the crying child more firmly to her knees. Her beautiful black, deep-set eyes were dry again and her pale, delicate lips were pursed and silent.
The child’s pretty bed was the last piece of furniture to be taken out. The gate was open wide; the wagons filled with furniture were driven out into the pleasant street, followed by porters carrying the remaining items on their shoulders. Behind the windows of the neighboring houses, the heads of people who had been looking curiously at the courtyard vanished.
A young woman in a coat and hat came down the stairs and stood in front of the person in mourning.
“Madam,” she said, “I have taken care of everything. I paid those who were supposed to be paid. Here is the rest of the money.” And she handed the woman a small roll of banknotes.
The woman slowly turned her head toward her.
“Thank you, Zofia,” she said quietly. “You have been very good to me.”
“Madame, you were always good to me!” the girl cried. “I have worked for you for four years and no place was ever better, or ever will be better, than with you.”
She rubbed her wet eyes with a hand on which the marks of the needle and the iron were visible, but the woman seized her rough hand and pressed it firmly between her own small white ones.
“And now, Zofia,” she said, “be well.”
“Madame, I will go with you to the new apartment,” the girl exclaimed. “I will call a cab.”
A quarter of an hour later the two women and the child got out of the cab in front of a building on Piwna Street. The four-story tenement was narrow in front, but tall. It looked old and sad. Little Jasia stared at its walls and windows with wide eyes.
“Mama, will we live here?”
“Here, my child,” the woman in mourning replied in a voice that was always quiet. She turned to the concierge who was standing in the gateway.
“Please give me the key to the apartment that I rented two days ago.”
“Ah! In the attic, surely,” the concierge replied. “Please follow me upstairs, madame. I will open it right away.”
The small, square courtyard was surrounded by a blind wall of brick red on two sides and, on the other two, by old woodsheds and granaries. The women and the child went into the building and started up the narrow, dark, dirty stairs. The younger woman took the child in her arms and went ahead; the woman in mourning followed her.
The room whose door the concierge opened was quite large, but low and dark, and poorly lit by one small window that opened onto the roof. The walls, which smelled of dampness from a fresh covering of whitewash, seemed to contract under the slanted ceiling.
In the corner next to the simple brick cooking stove was a small hearth. Across the room a wardrobe of modest size stood in front of one wall. There was a bed without a frame, a couch covered with torn calico, and a table painted black. There were several yellow chairs with sagging rush seats that were partly ripped away.
The woman in mourning stopped for a moment on the threshold, surveyed the room with a long, slow glance, then took a few steps forward and sank down on the couch. The child stood still and pale next to her mother and gazed around with surprise and fear in her eyes.
The younger woman dismissed the driver, who had brought two small leather bags from the carriage. She bustled about, taking things out of the bags and arranging them. There were not many things, and it took only a short time to put them in order. Without taking off her coat and hat, she put a few very small dresses and some underclothing in one of the bags, then moved the other one, which was empty, to the corner of the room. She made the bed with two pillows and a woolen coverlet and hung a white curtain in the window. She put several plates and cups, a clay water pitcher and a large bowl, a brass candle-holder and a small samovar into a cupboard. Then she took a bundle of wood from behind the stove and made a cheerful fire in the fireplace.
“Ah, yes,” she said, rising from her knees and turning her face, which was rosy from blowing on the fire, to the motionless woman. “I have made the fire and you will soon have warmth and light in here. Behind the stove you will find enough wood for about two weeks. The dresses and underclothes are in the bag. The kitchen crockery and dining dishes are in the cupboard, and a candle in a holder is there as well.”
The honest servant forced herself to speak cheerfully, but the smile was vanishing from her lips and her eyes were filling with tears.
“And now”—she said more quietly, folding her hands—“and now, my dear lady, I must go!”
The woman in mourning lifted her head.
“You must go, Zofia,” she repeated. “Indeed you must.” Glancing through the window, she added, “It is growing dark. You will be afraid to walk through the city at night.”
“Oh,
