things, one of which is to walk on her left, cantering along beside her like her personal Saint Bernard. If she decides to make a left turn, either to go around a corner or enter a shop where something has captured her attention, she drops her shoulder and nudges him in the proper direction. The single time he remarked upon it, she said, “What’s a person my size to do when walking with someone like you?” He told her she could just say, “Hey, let’s go in there,” or “Why don’t we walk down that street?” She responded that she liked how her approach was working, and he abandoned his inquiry because, basically, he did too.
Back in the ’80s, when the country was under martial law, she had carried an extra toothbrush everywhere she went in case joining a demonstration led to her arrest. She has never been fainthearted, nor has she ever been one to conceal her opinions. There’s a particular way her mouth twists when she thinks you’re full of shit. He doesn’t see that expression very often these days, but it’s definitely on display when she steps into the flat this evening, her cap and the shoulders of her sheepskin dusted with snow, and spots him and Anna standing there in the darkened living room, admiring the brightly lit tree, neither of them dressed for dinner. He’s wearing slippers and an ancient pair of red Boston University warm-ups.
“Does either of you have the slightest idea what time it is?” she asks. She sets her shopping bag down in the hallway, then shrugs out of her coat.
He and Anna exchange glances. They had promised to be ready at a quarter till seven, and he knows it’s at least six-thirty now. “I don’t,” he says.
“Me either,” says Anna.
Julia lays her scarf aside, then bends to remove her boots. “It’s six forty. The reservation’s for seven thirty. You two are both hopeless.”
“But what about our tree?” Anna asks.
Her mother pulls the boots off, stands them on the mat, then walks into the living room for a closer look. They await her assessment, pretending that it matters, even though all three of them know that this annual festive act belongs to him and Anna.
“The tree,” she finally concedes, “is not hopeless. Unlike both of you, it appears to have a bright future, if only a very short one.”
The Car is a ’79 Mercedes diesel that they bought several summers ago. For much of each year it rests under a tarp. Until yesterday, he’d never driven it in cold weather. Mostly white, it features a beige rear quarter panel from a salvage shop and is missing its back bumper. The upholstery is a fungal shade of green, and at some point in the distant past, somebody had deemed the dashboard lighter the perfect tool for artistic expression, using it on the front passenger seat to burn little rings in the vinyl arranged to spell the name Klaus. Mercedes or not, it’s a wreck, but it runs and is that rare European vehicle with an automatic transmission. He hates stick shifts. Truth be known, he can’t drive one.
Julia and Anna climb in while he brushes snow off the windshield and the back glass. Five or six inches have fallen. It’s coming down pretty hard now, but the forecast calls for it to quit by eight or nine o’clock.
He starts the car and pulls away from the curb, heading toward the Old Town. While he drives, Julia calls Monika, and from the conversation, he can tell that Stefan is still in the shower and that they’ll be late too, something you can generally bank on. He thinks the world of his brother-in-law, but if he had to hold a real job, his life would be ruined. Fortunately, he doesn’t need one. He’s a successful crime novelist, his work published in more than thirty countries.
In Krakow, with the exception of approved vehicles, automobiles are banned in the Old Town. So they have to go around it rather than driving straight through. Traffic is surprisingly heavy. Everybody must be doing last-minute shopping. Stores will be open again tomorrow—Saturday—but virtually everything will remain closed on Sunday for Christmas Eve. He finds the country’s transformation into a consumer culture both exhilarating and disquieting. Sometimes it seems that the profusion of color and the proliferation of choices have come at the cost of clarity.
“We’re going to be pretty late,” he says. “You better call the restaurant. The reservation’s in my name. Ask for Mustafa and tell him who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“The wife of the guy who wrote an article about his establishment for the L.A. Times. If Brad Pitt ever eats there, it’ll be because of me.”
She pulls out her cell, and from memory he rattles off the number. It used to amaze her that he could recall such minutiae, but she long ago accepted it as a by-product of his profession.
While she’s on the phone, they pass the café where they met. It’s called Bunkier and is attached to an art gallery that represents the purest example of Brutalist architecture in the city. Open to the air in warm weather, it’s presently protected from the elements by clear plastic drop panels. The heaters must be turned up pretty high. Icicles hang from the eaves, and steam is rising off the roof. He’s promised Anna they’ll stop by for dessert tomorrow afternoon. They’ve logged many an hour beneath that canopy, whenever possible sitting at the table where he met her mom, whom he’d gone to interview for an article about women in the Solidarity movement. A couple of summers ago, while they waited there for their order, Anna rapped the tabletop. “So,” she said, drawing the syllable out, “this is where the idea that resulted in me began to get a little traction. Right?” She told him later that he looked like a figure in a Renoir, with a scarlet splotch on each cheek.
Julia ends the call. “They’ll hold our reservation,” she says. “Your friend Mustafa’s exact words were ‘Please inform refulgent Mr. Richard that upon arrival he will receive supreme justice.’ If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think he was threatening to execute you.”
“You probably should’ve spoken English to him.”
“Why? Is his English better?”
“No, but it’s considerably less florid.”
They cross the Vistula, then start west on Monte Cassino. Once they reach the outskirts, traffic begins to thin. Before long, they’re traveling through the countryside on a two-lane highway. A lot of the nouveau riche have built villas along this route, many of them with four or even five stories. Interspersed among these new constructions are traditional Polish farmhouses.
Twenty kilometers from the city, he slows down. They turn onto the narrow blacktop and drive up the hill, where they finally see the sign. He takes a left onto an even narrower road and drives another half kilometer, and they find themselves in the snowy parking lot.
The popular dining spot is housed in a pseudo-alpine castle built by the Nazis, originally as a vacation site for Luftwaffe pilots. By the end of the war it had become a Wehrmacht hospital, and under the Communists it had served as the Institute of Forestry. Now it belongs to a wealthy Kurdish family who fled Saddam in the ’90s, then bought and remodeled the rundown structure and established a Polish-Kurdish restaurant. The idea was disjunctive enough to make it wildly appealing, which explains why even on a night like this, the parking lot is jammed. He eventually locates a place between a Maserati and a Land Rover, the latter displaying a Croatian license plate. Someone else has come a long way for dinner.
Bogdan Baranowski is sitting on one of the checkout counters in the dimly lit grocery, watching it snow. The store occupies the ground floor of a dingy gray block that was purchased eighteen months ago by a young developer. So far he’s succeeded in evicting over half the tenants from their flats. He plans to renovate the property and turn it into luxury condos.
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