Necessary Lies Read Online Free Page B

was a photograph of Russian missiles, pointed west.
    Refugee camps in Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Austria were filling up. Every day more Poles jumped ship, defected, extended their holidays abroad. Tens, hundreds of cars with Polish license plates arrived at the entrances to the camps,whole families poured out and pushed through the gates, terrified that there wouldn’t be enough space, that they would be turned out, told to go back. Inside, photographed and fingerprinted, they surrendered their passports for a room, food rations, and immigration interviews. Until the day when their names would appear on the list for a flight to the United States, Canada, or Australia they would wander the streets, looking hungrily at shop windows, at supermarket shelves, at colourful stalls filled with oranges, watermelons, peaches, and grapes.
    Piotr would say that the West was merely panicking. That stories like that were exactly what the Communists wanted to frighten everyone into submission. That all the West really cared for was their fat asses, their precious market shares and interest on Eastern European loans. Haven’t they betrayed Poland in 1939, and then again at Yalta? She must not lose heart. Not now. Not when victory was so close at hand. When they finally, finally, had a fighting chance for a normal country.
    â€œYou are not thinking we could leave, are you? Like these cowards who beg the Austrians or the Italians to take them?”
    â€œAre you?”
    For Piotr, Anna composed her little descriptions of Montreal, the grey stone buildings of McGill, the beam of light travelling across the sky, rotating under greying clouds. Everything she saw excited her. By the time each day ended, its beginning was already a far-away memory. Transformed by the sounds of English and French, nothing around her was ordinary. Not even a simple walk along Sherbrooke Street, past chic Victorian townhouses with their art galleries and boutiques where the prices — mentally exchanged into Polish
zlotys
— multiplied into unreal, unattainable sums. Her eyes took it all in — the red brick façades, the bay windows with black frames, the stores she didn’t dare to enter.
    Along St. Catherine Street she felt more courageous. The carpeted interiors welcomed her with music, and she fingered the soft cotton of Indian summer dresses, asked to try on thick-soled brown leather sandals, wrapped a muslin shawl around her neck and then returned everything, guiltily, apologetic at not having the strength to curb her desires. Only on the Main,dizzied by the bargains of St. Laurent, where signs
Two for a dollar
were scribbled in black marker, did she really let her hands dive into the cardboard boxes spilling into the street, fishing out the splashes of colour, the promising shapes from which she concocted her new look.
    That’s where she bought white, green, and yellow beads which, in the morning, she carefully braided into her long hair. That’s where she found the mauve cotton dress and black leather sandals with steel studs. Wire glasses, a round, grandmotherly type, gave her what she liked to think of as an artistic appearance. It suited her. It drew looks.
    You would not believe it, darling
, she wrote.
It’s a world straight from pre-war Poland I thought I would never see. I heard haggling over prices, in Yiddish, and Polish. They still sell pickled herring, here, from barrels, wrapped in old newspapers! Measure out fabric with wooden rulers! Yesterday I saw Hassids in black coats and hats, their beards untouched by scissors and it was as if I were transported right into my grandmother’s Warsaw. They walked with their eyes cast down, to avoid temptations.
    She rented an apartment on the corner of De Maisonneuve and Rue de la Montagne, right above a Hungarian restaurant that served spicy goulash and
sp
ä
tzle.
Marie pointed out to her that the location was perfect. Anna could walk to McGill. Across the