Jim Crace - Genesis

This “private roof patio” was the landlord’s justification for the scarcely manageable rent. They’d had to borrow from the bank and made do at first with thinly furnished rooms. They had a bed, an electric stove, two bamboo chairs, a pair of bicycles, a fly larder, and little else to make the first months of their marriage comfortable, except their books, their gramophone, and what Paul Knessen has called “the conciliating rigors of the flesh.” Well, they had love, of course, the most essential furnishing of all, especially when poverty and hardship share the home. It was a calmer and less threatening love than Lix had had for Freda, but a thorough love, nevertheless, and one that would not soon be ripped apart by passion.

They could have had a river view quite easily and a fully furnished apartment on the embankment. The Lesniaks were made of money Alicja’s parents, despite their mistrust of Lix (‘Actors never pay — and actors never stay!”), would have cleared the rent and swallowed all the decorating bills rather than have their daughter share a staircase with waiters and shop assistants on a street unfashionably “mixed.” They had a friend who ran an import/export enterprise and who, if leaned on not too gently, could sort out some stylish furniture. (“And no bamboo!”) A new business colleague, eager to impress, might well be happy to provide a television and a fridge. “You want a telephone and no delays with the connection?” her father asked. “For me a working telephone is just a call away. I only have to whisper in a friendly ear. I only have to say our name.”

The Lesniaks would pay to have Lix’s cheek “spruced up” as well. A fashionable surgeon was in their debt. How could their son-in-law expect to succeed on the stage when he was branded like that? Besides, a birthmark such as Lix’s spelled trouble and adversity for anyone who came too close. A Polish prejudice, perhaps, but never wrong. It seemed a pity that their pretty daughter had ended up with such a curiosity. Every problem could be fixed, however. Mrs. Lesniak would make the phone calls; Mr. Lesniak would write the checks. Alicja only had to nod and she could have an apartment and a husband, neither of which would offer much offense to the eye. Polish parents are the best.

Alicja, despite her husband’s counsel of caution, turned every coin down. “I like things as they are,” she said. She meant she loved the man she’d married, would not want to change a cell of him. More than that, she wanted freedom from the Lesniaks, a chance to flourish as herself and be resolute on her own account. Finding a husband such as Lix would set her on her way. Her married name, Alicja Dern, provided instant anonymity Anonymity was exactly the base upon which she was determined to construct her successes and achievements — for this was something hidden from the world: buried underneath her sweetness, her patience, and her eagerness to please, Alicja was driven by a need to climb and conquer a different, higher summit than her father had.

Lix’s ambitions, however, were not concealed. How could they be concealed? To be an actor, even one who’s not in work, is to declare a public dream and purpose. But he had not yet got his call from Hollywood. He’d not recorded his first album. He’d not been cast as Don Juan or hosted any television shows. In his late twenties now, he’d ended up a table singer, as dependent on tips as any waiter, and — no more the Renegade — a minor, disappointed stalwart of touring theaters and the city’s lesser ones, famous only in his dressing room. So Mrs. Dern could still be judged mostly by her own achievements and campaigns and by the impact she’d make on platforms of her own. She took up causes in the neighborhood, chased complaints, investigated failures of the city government, but never made a nuisance of herself. His sweet, plump, tireless wife, Lix said unkindly to her face when they’d been stopped once too often in the street by troubled locals, was “a problem magnet.” She’d be upset to know his nickname for her was the Quandry Queen. Yet she was more respected and well liked than any Lesniak had ever been. That was more important than a sunset and a river view — and harder to acquire than foreign furniture.

Now, only three months later, finally, they had a river view without the help of Lesniaks.

On the same day they gained their river view, they conceived their son as well. Five years ahead of time. Much sooner than they’d planned or wanted. We can be sure it was Alicja’s first child. She was a virgin when she first met Lix, a lapsed but well-trained Polish Catholic, fearful of the wrath not so much of God as of her all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful mother. It was true that Alicja had “sacrificed herself” to Lix, “surrendered herself immodestly” while the family was “dining” (her mother’s later version of events), before they’d married. But only a month before. She was hardly dissolute or precocious. Despite her hidden appetite for change, she would not consider sleeping with anyone apart from the man she married, for three more years at least.

Lix was not a virgin, as we know. Already he’d had sex, penetrative sex, with Freda (even if the penetration had only been a short P.S. on all but one occasion). Nineteen times, in their not-quite-a-month of passion, on and off the picket line. And twice with the nameless little clerk, who back then would have been about the age Lix was now, approaching thirty

This would not be his first child, or even his first son. It would be the timid actor’s third mistake. His first — his birthmarked daughter, Bel, the product of binoculars — was undiscovered still, undiscovered by Lix anyway, though very nearly nine years old already and full of life while Lix’s life, to tell the truth, was emptying. The vessel full of dreams and plans had sprung a leak — no wad of fame to plug it.

Several times the girl had been within a hundred meters of her father. This city isn’t all that large. You meet and pass and meet again. They’d shared a crowd, a streetcar, a shopping street, a flu virus, they’d strolled the same catalpa avenue in Navigation Park one Sunday afternoon, bought nutcake from the same vendor. And recently, when she’d been in the Play Zone by the zoo, her mother had seen Lix walking past, beyond the roses. Unmistakable. Not a face she could forget. If it hadn’t been for the roundfaced woman on his arm, she would have found the courage to go up — for Bel, for her daughter’s sake. A blemished child has a right to meet the author of her blemishes — and introduce the pair of them, acquaint their family nevuses.

His second grand mistake — Freda’s six-year-old son, George — was still an awkward and rancid secret that Lix had kept from Alicja. What was the point in telling her? He never saw the child himself, had not even been identified as its father by anyone other than its mother. Alicja had hated Freda, anyway, and Freda despised her, “Lix’s dreary compromise.” A little clear-skinned boy, especially if he had his mother’s neck and hair, would not appeal to his wife, nor would it delight any of the Lesniaks. So Lix was happy to keep his past secret and resigned to being not so much an absentee parent as an evicted one. It had been Freda actually, when she was six months pregnant and her relationship with Lix was long dead, who’d commanded him to stay away: “The child is mine, not yours. My pregnancy My body. My responsibility My private life. My kid!” she’d said, rapping out her arguments on the palm of her hand with knuckles that had once shown love for him. “You understand?”

“Five very eloquent mys,” he’d said as mordantly as he dared. Her throat and earrings tortured him. This had been the dream once — to be with Freda and his son, a sort of neofamily. “Consider me as good as dead.”