The Girl from Krakow by Alex Rosenberg

could. By the time I got to the shore, he was up to his neck.”
    “Thank you for saving my husband,” Rita heard herself saying.
    The policeman looked at her. “Does your husband know how to swim?”
    Rita caught the tense of the verb. “He’s all right?”
    “He’s out of danger now,” said the physician.
    “No, he can’t swim, Officer.” Turning back to the doctor, she asked, “Can I see him?”
    “Follow me.” The doctor turned, and Rita followed him.
    “Officer.” Gil cleared his throat. “I’ll vouch for my colleague. No need to trouble yourself. Thank you.” He tried to say it with authority.
    It seemed to work. “Very well, sir. I suppose there’s no need to take this further.” The policeman clicked his heels, bent slightly at the waist, and left.
    There was only the cabby left to deal with. “What did your passenger owe?”
    “Well, he paid for the journey out. But there is the fare back.”
    “How much?” Gil found the money and added several zloty. “For your trouble and your wet clothes.”

    Darkness descended, and then the streetlight came on, a sphere of white surrounded by purple. Gil could see his breath as he stood beneath it, waiting, smoking.
    Rita was in Urs’s hospital room for over an hour. She emerged shriven. Seeing Gil, she walked over to him. “It’s finished.”
    He had realized as much. Had she returned to him in only a few minutes, he would have known that they could remain together. The longer he waited, the vainer grew this hope. Well before the hour was past, he was beginning to prepare himself for the end of their idyll.
    “I am going back to Karpatyn with him tomorrow morning,” she said. She bit her lower lip to stop the tremble. Once in control again, she continued, “He’s completely in command of himself. He said he would find a way to finish it   .   .   .   so coolly, no bravura   .   .   .” Gil did not speak. Rita continued, “I couldn’t live with that. I told him I’d go back with him.”
    “So, it’s you or nothing for him? I can’t think of Urs as driven by love.”
    “I’m afraid it’s not love. It’s shame. Mostly he talked about what people would say, what people would think. His parents, his patients, the whole town. When I said I’d go back with him, it was as though a coffin lid had been pried open. He started living again.”
    Now Gil knew what he was dealing with. His counterattack was ready. “So, he doesn’t love you; it’s amour propre that nearly killed him. Well, is that a reason for you to go back with him? Is it for his self-esteem that I   .   .   .   that we have to sacrifice our happiness? I can’t say I care much for how a market-town doctor deals with his personal misfortune, even if I did grow up in the same market town. I don’t live there anymore. You don’t have to either.” The words subsided. Gil waited a moment, gauging their effect on Rita. She was evidently not ready to reply. Perhaps it was moving her from her resolve.
    Gil continued, “And what about you? What do you really owe him? Don’t you have a right to a life? Why should he be able to trump your happiness just by threatening to throw himself into a reservoir? Rita, we need to break with this petit bourgeois morality.”
    Now Rita finally interrupted. The words came almost with contempt. “Stop lecturing. Listen to yourself. What you are saying is sheer hypocrisy, selfishness dressed up as moral philosophy.” Before he could reply, she started again, now calm. “Remember what you said this morning? Doing right means nothing more than minimizing human misery. Well, that’s what I am going to do.”
    “What about my suffering? What about yours? There are two of us. He is just one.”
    “You don’t understand. I’m not adding up his misery on one side and our happiness on the other, and then seeing which way they balance out. That’s no better than bourgeoisie morality.”
    “Then why are you going to do this to us?”