Spires

I keep thinking of spires. How they must have appealed. That she might have wished for one to press her cheek to. I keep seeing rooftops, slate sharply pitched, as gray as high clouds, as a gathering storm, smokestacks, the university's turrets, tram lines spoking out from the center of Warsaw, north toward the apartment we shared, ten years ago now. I keep seeing the city from air.

Ten years ago this All Soul's Day we took the train out to spend the afternoon with her family. It got dark very early. At the cemetery in Skierniewice, the candles, graveside, sent up a glow, a warm light without edges. There were so many people we pushed our way through. So much going on. The mums at each plot and the tidying up. The villagers with rakes and trowels and bags. Silk flowers, carnations, evergreen boughs. The newly-turned graves, their dark soil, wet. The picnics on graves, the deceased as host. Sitting down with the family, and the vodka brought out. Meat wrapped in paper and hunks of hard cheese. Pickles in jars. The blackberry jam. The plum wine and fruit brandies. Orange rinds in thick syrup. Sour tomatoes. Hardboiled eggs. The cabbage in spices, vinegar, salt. This return every year to keep company, faith. To keep solace going.

The church's thin spire against early night. The dark overtaking and honing the point. Filing it. Spire: the harder I looked for it, the more quickly it seemed to dissolve.

And after, back to her grandparents' farm. The lean-to with bathroom, coats hanging and workboots. Inside, the kitchen's wood stove in a blaze. Soup going, and noodles. Walls stenciled with vines. Two small, high beds with crewelwork covers. Round tables with books, dried flowers, medicine. Steaming duck soup, blood sausage, pâtés, vegetable salads, brown bread, and more pickles. A hard bagel blessed and hung on a string along with the key to the wardrobe.

A spire. Ascent. A holy sendoff. But the letter that came today said nothing of spires. Mentioned just an apartment. That she jumped from up there. Apartments in Warsaw are flat-roofed and blocky, each one like the next. Apartments are boxes and the stairs lead you up. We lived together like that. Weekends, we'd hear the knife grinder's bright bell as he wheeled his cart through the courtyard below. The long whine as he'd hold the blades to the stone. Then the noise growing faint as he pushed his cart on to the next courtyard and the next.

Once, visiting her parents, hours from Warsaw, we heard it again, from up on their roof. I think it was something she always did—go up for the quiet, the solitude, even in winter. Go up to isolate one sound among many. Knife grinder. Train whistle. From the living room's balcony you could see—nothing. They hung their pheasants and quail out there, the meat so tender it fell from the bones and we picked shot from our mouths as we ate that night. Out there, the preserves and wrapped cheese stayed all winter. But you could see nothing. Just rows and rows of balconies piled with food and boxes and tools. So we went to the roof.

And from there we saw—nothing. From there, Skierniewice was snow-patched and half-built. The stark land was flattened and scarred with trenches. The train station a blotch of coal smoke to the east. Kids crawling through drain pipes, kicking tangles of wire. Frozen tire-track humps, hardened in cold. Greasy puddles half-frozen, fumes heavy in air and the oil drums toppled. The dream of trees was years and years off. You walked past the blocks and blocks of apartments, not looking until you got to your door and then you ducked in and went up.

From the roof you could see, she said, the whole town. The whole blasted site. The scandal of progress, the terrible...