Free Loves of Yulian by Julian Padowicz

me. She was telling me not only her own secrets, but Mr. K’s, meaning that she was becoming friendlier to me than she was to him.
    “I told Tadek that we should take her with us because the Germans were coming, and it was dangerous, but he wouldn’t. We just drove off without telling her.”
    Now my Irenka was lying there with her eyes closed, and I had the fantasy that she was waiting for me to say something comforting to her. But I had absolutely no idea what to say. I tried hard to think of something. Irenka—my Irenka—was feeling guilty and sad because they had left Alicia, the cook, behind, and I had no idea how to make her happy. I knew that pulling a brass washer out of her ear wouldn’t do it. Besides which, I didn’t have the washer with me.
    I realized that I had started tracing and re-tracing a small circle in the sand with my finger. I had made a little hollow, but, as my finger continued going around, the sand kept sifting in from the sides and prevented the hollow from getting bigger.
    It was interesting the way that worked. Just turning my finger around in a tight circle had created the hollow. If I lifted my finger out of the sand, the hollow stayed there until, I supposed, something came along to disturb it, like someone stepping on it. But when I put my finger back in and continued turning, it wouldn’t make the hollow any bigger. The faster I turned it, the faster the sand sifted back into the hollow.
    I cupped my hand and scooped out a handful of sand. It made a bigger hollow, and sand, again, sifted in from the sides, filling in part of the hollow, but not all of it.
    “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Irenka was saying.
    I shook my head, without turning to look at her. And I hoped she wouldn’t tell me anything more.
    Then I thought of going into the cool water. Ordinarily, I would have asked for permission, but I had the sense that my relationship with Irenka was such that it wasn’t required. On the other hand, my simply announcing my intention to her seemed unfeeling. And to just stand up and go, would have been rude. I pondered my course of action.
    To ask permission, as had been my custom with Kiki, certainly would not have been in any way rude, but it would also mean the surrender of a certain prerogative that I felt in this unique relationship. The term, prerogative, of course, was not a part of my vocabulary at the time, but I had an unmistakable sense of its presence there on the blue hotel blanket with Irenka and myself. Now that I knew her to not be married to the nasty Mr. K, I saw Irenka, lying there with the straps of her bathing suit unbuttoned and, possibly, asleep, as someone needing my protection. While I, kneeling at the edge of the blanket, was someone desperately in need of protecting her.
    And then the solution to my dilemma presented itself in all its obvious logic, while I chided myself for not thinking of it sooner.
    “I. . . renka?” I asked, not sure that she was awake enough to hear me. I saw her open her eyes. “W. . . ould y. . . ou l. . . ike to g. . . o into the w. . . ater wi. . . th me n. . . ow? Just don’t f. . . orget to do up y. . . our sh. . . oulder st. . . raps.”
    To my relief, I watched Irenka’s hands feel for the straps on the blanket without her raising either shoulder. In a moment she was kneeling, safely secured within her bathing suit. “I saw how well you swim, on the ship,” she said. “Would you teach me?”
    I lowered myself from my kneeling position to sit on the blanket, as Irenka was doing. There was a definite purpose in this. I wanted to compare my height to hers and to see if, by some phenomenon, a length of time had elapsed without my realizing it, and I was now a grownup. The things that my companion had said to me since leaving our hotel would, certainly, support such a conclusion.
    But, as I had to tilt my face up in order to watch Irenka tuck her long hair into a rubber bathing cap, I realized that the suspected