Across the Bridge - Mavis Gallant [62]
As soon as Marie-Louise rings the front doorbell, the dog drags the leash from its place in the vestibule and drops it at his feet. Hector is a young schnauzer with a wiry coat and a gamesome disposition, who was acquired on their doctor’s advice as a focus of interest for Magda. He is bound to outlive his master. M. Wroblewski has made arrangements: the concierge will take him over. She can hardly wait. Sometimes she says to Hector, “Here we are, just the two of us,” as if M. Wroblewski were already among the missing. Walking Hector seems to be more and more difficult. Parisians leave their cars along the curbs without an inch of space; beyond them traffic flies by like driven hail. When Magda, of all people, noticed that those few trees were missing, he felt unreasonable dismay, as if every last thing that mattered to him had been felled. Why don’t they leave us alone? he thought. He had been holding silent conversations with no one in particular for some time. Then the letter came and he began addressing his friend. He avoids certain words, such as “problem,” “difficulty,” “catastrophe,” and says instead, “A state of affairs.”
The Nansen passports are being called in. Three people he knows, aged between eighty-one and eighty-eight, have had letters from the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs: the bureau that handles those rare and special passports is closing down. Polish political refugees do not exist any longer. They have been turned into Polish citizens (this is the first they’ve heard of it) and should apply to their own embassy for suitable documents. Two of the new citizens are an engraver, who still works in an unheatable studio on the far side of Montmartre, and another artist, a woman, who once modelled a strong, stunning likeness of Magda. She could not afford to have it cast, and the original got broken or was lost – he can’t remember. It was through a work of art that he understood his wife’s beauty. Until then he had been proud of her charm and distinction. He liked to watch her at the piano; he watched more than he listened, perhaps. The third is a former critic of Eastern European literature who at some point fell into a depression and gave up bothering with letters.
“… and so, ipso facto, Polish citizens,” the engraver told M. Wroblewski, over the telephone. “What are they going to do with us? Ship us back to Poland? Are we part of a quota now? At our age, we are better off stateless.” Perhaps it is true. They never travel and do not need passports. Everyone has a place to live, an income of sorts. Two of the three still actually earn money. In a way, they look after one another.
No one has made a move. As the engraver says, when you are dealing with world-level bureaucracy, it is smarter to sit still. By the time you have decided how to react, all the rules may have been changed.
It is true and not true. One can quietly shift a pawn without causing a riot. M. Wroblewski’s attitude runs to lines of defense. Probably, some clerk at the Ministry is striking off names in alphabetical order and is nowhere close to the “W”s. After several false starts, he has written and mailed a letter to the Quai d’Orsay asking for French citizenship. He might have applied years ago, of course, but in the old days refusal was so