Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

‘Danuta is gone. Do you know where she is?’

So, the young man has no time for introductions. For a moment he thinks about chastising him, but given the distracted look in Rolf’s eyes he deems it politic to just answer.

‘I saw Danuta maybe three or four days ago. Is she all right?’

‘This is a serious matter.’ Rolf takes a small step forward. He raises a finger. ‘Do you know where she is?’

He now understands that there is no possibility that he will be inviting this hot-tempered man inside, so he makes sure that he can slam the door shut if necessary.

‘I’ve just explained, I haven’t seen Danuta in a while. She told me that she was going to check into a hostel, apparently the same one that she stayed in when she first came to London. Have you tried there?’

‘She spent one night there, but nobody has seen her since then. Did you go somewhere with her?’

‘Go where with her?’ He laughs now. ‘I’m here. I’ve been away, but it had nothing to do with Danuta.’

The man takes another half-step towards him. ‘I come here every day to look for both of you. Because you are a rich man, you think this is funny?’

‘Look, Rolf. It is Rolf, isn’t it? Maybe she’s gone back to Poland. Have you checked with her friends or family back there?’

‘Do you think I am stupid?’

Rolf speaks with an accent that becomes heavier and more difficult to understand the angrier he becomes.

‘Nobody said that you were stupid.’

‘She gave me a telephone number in Poland and I called. Apparently, her husband and three children left Warsaw last year. The people who answered the telephone had no address for them, and they did not even know that Danuta was in England.’

‘She has a husband and three children?’

‘You are just as foolish as she said you were.’ Rolf laughs and then he shakes his head. ‘Of course she did not tell you.’

‘What do you mean?’ He opens the door a little wider. ‘I don’t think I’m following you.’

‘She told everybody at the language school that you were in love with her and also obsessed with some stupid book about music.’ Rolf points. ‘Maybe she took your things too?’

‘Took what things?’

‘I let her stay with me, and I slept on the floor next to her like an idiot. She pays no rent. I buy all the food, I buy presents for her, and then she takes my wallet and my credit card and disappears. I am not a rich man like you. I work in a building site and to begin with I am a rough sleeper in England. Anywhere so long as I can sleep, under bridges, in the park, I do not care. But then I get a room. A room with a divan, and I wash, cook, eat in this one room, but this is not civilised even if it is how the English do it. Then I must get a second job as a cleaner to pay for the stinking room, and so I invite Danuta to share my room and come and help with the cleaning job, for she is not happy. I help her, but then she takes everything. I thought she had come to you, or maybe she has done the same thing to you, I don’t know?’

The Polish girl did nothing to him, except provide a distraction. He was tempted. Can he admit this? Will this make him Rolf’s enemy?

‘I asked her to leave, but not because she took anything. Look, do you want to come inside?’ He moves to one side, but Rolf stares blankly at him.

‘Come inside for what?’

‘Well, it is cold.’

Rolf shrugs his shoulders. ‘I am not cold.’

‘Well I am.’ He looks at Rolf, who continues to stare back at him. He can see that the teeth of the plastic zip on Rolf’s anorak are misaligned, so that the front of his jacket is poorly secured and exposing the overwrought young man to the biting wind. He decides that he will not bother to point this out to Rolf. ‘So she used to laugh at me?’

‘Well, you waited outside the language school for her.’

‘Only once. Perhaps twice, but I didn’t know that she was married with children.’

‘Danuta uses men. She is not a respectable woman.’

‘I see. Well what about the police? You could report her as a missing person. They must keep files on such people.’ He can feel Rolf’s eyes boring into him. ‘Well she is missing, isn’t she?’

‘I just want my things. My CD player, my DVDs, my sunglasses, my watch. She took one thousand pounds of my money from a cash machine and now she is gone. I have only my clothes, but why should the English police care what one foreigner does to another foreigner? She is probably somewhere in Poland with her family, so what are your English police going to do? I will tell you the truth, English attitudes disappoint me. Do you know what it is like to stand in a shop with money in your pocket and discover that nobody wants to serve you? Telling you with their eyes before you are even asking for anything. Do you know what this is like or how it feels?’ The man points to his head. ‘Can you imagine this?’

He wonders if he should offer Rolf some money, but maybe this is part of some elaborate ruse that Danuta and Rolf have concocted together. He looks again at Rolf, who exudes both anger and hangdog confusion in equal part. A watery line of sweat decorates the young man’s upper lip. No, he is sure now that Danuta has stolen from this Rolf, and that the poor fellow is not going to get his money back. One moment of weakness, such as offering to let her stay at Wilton Road while he went away, or even falling asleep while she was under his roof, could have led to his being the one who was frantically charging about London in a futile attempt to track down his possessions. Finally, he has been the recipient of a stroke of good fortune, but it seems somewhat insensitive to revel in the moment while poor Rolf hops anxiously from foot to foot before him. He decides that he should offer Rolf a few pounds to help him out, but before he can frame his proposal in a manner that suggests kinship as opposed to charity, Rolf offers a hand, which he shakes.

‘Okay,’ says Rolf. ‘I will leave you now. I am sorry to disturb you.’

‘It’s not a problem. I’m just sorry this has happened to you.’

Rolf looks as though he is going to say something further, but the distressed-looking blond boy simply turns on his heel and half walks, half runs down the path and then disappears from view leaving him marooned on his own doorstep.

He pours the hot water on to the instant coffee granules and stirs vigorously, then he carries the steaming cup into the living room. At least crazy Rolf has enabled him to get out of bed before any more of the day is wasted. He pushes the magazines and articles about hip-hop to one side and he rests his cup of coffee on the table. He had deliberately left the research material there before going north to see his father, his rationale being that the sight of the books and papers might give him a rolling start back into the book once he had returned, but suddenly he is embarrassed. This book will never be written. He hears himself say the words out loud. This stupid book will never be written. He wants to pick up the magazines and articles and dump the lot of them in the tall swing bin in the kitchen. Just clear everything out right now and stop messing about. It’s not as though he has been getting out of bed in the morning with a burning desire to revise what he has done the previous day, before enthusiastically pressing on to a new chapter. This has happened maybe twice, or at most three times, but during the past few days with his father he hasn’t given the book a second thought. Now that he is once again faced with the evidence of his self-appointed task he feels slightly nauseous. He stands and gathers up the magazines and articles, and then he opens a drawer and pushes everything in. It is a sort of halfway compromise between actually throwing the stuff out and temporarily getting it out of his sight, but having made the material disappear from view he now feels relieved. The books that are stacked like a precarious chimney on the floor beside his desk will have to wait. They are not so easily dispensable. He picks his watch up from the coffee table and he is startled to be reminded of the time. He will take a shower and get dressed, and then he knows what he must do.