The Institute

by Jakub Żulczyk

  At the words “a bit of a joke”, the old man starts to chuckle; his laugh resembles the squeal of a small animal being strangled.

  “He’s remembered something.” The man in the suit solicitously wipes the dribble off the old man’s chin. “He’s remembered something. I think I know what.” He laughs, too.

  “Kiszczak,” says Marta, and she gazes at the standing man, for a fraction of a second, with a certain tenderness. “That’s it, he’s remembered Kiszczak. Go on, tell her, it’s a great story.”

  “Kiszczak, the minister of the interior and prime minister, knew about us. He was very scared of us,” explains the man, “but he wasn’t stupid. He knew how to evaluate things. Thought that joining forces with us would pay off.”

  “We had about one and a half thousand properties in Gdańsk, Warsaw, Cracow, and Łόdź in 1939,” says the woman. “And millions of hectares of land all over the country.”

  I don’t care about anything she’s saying. I just want to see my daughter.

  “There’s history and there’s true history,” sighs Marta.

  “Let’s get back to Kiszczak. You’re right, it’s an amazing story,” says the man whom I met as Banicki. “The Counsel and I told him that in order to become an Observer, he’d have to go through an initiation. A ritual to get in. We don’t do things like that, there wasn’t anything like that, but we agreed to do it as a joke. About two weeks after martial law was declared, Kiszczak came to Cracow at night in a government car, to a villa in Wola Justowska. In civilian clothes. He was guarded by two men from the secret police. He was nervous, kept smoking – Carmen cigarettes. And when he wasn’t smoking, he chewed American gum. We don’t do things like this as a rule, but on that occasion, we dressed in costumes hired from a theatre. Pretended we were masons. He was terrified.”

  “It must have been so funny,” says Marta, who is still aiming the gun at me.

  “So I’m sure Daddy is remembering Kiszczak.” The standing man almost chokes with laughter. “Kiszczak in the middle of the drawing room, surrounded by Observers, naked as a newborn baby and fucking his dog.”

  The old man bursts into fitful laughter. He bounces in his wheelchair as if he’s being lifted by a pair of enormous invisible hands.

  “We don’t like communists. They’re vulgar. They belong in the pigsty with the other pigs,” adds the younger man.

  “A mistake.” The old man speaks, inhaling before every word, his half-dead fingers drifting in the air. “My one and only mistake. Vera. Vera…” Saying this, he points at me. “A mistake,” he repeats.

  “I want to see my daughter,” I demand.

  “Fine. Let’s go.” Marta finally lowers the gun and, with a slow movement of her hand, she indicates the darkness beyond the metal door.

  “Love is a mistake. Vera,” says the old man, quietly again. His chest rises and falls as though there wasn’t a body beneath the shirt, only wind.

  “Let’s go,” Marta encourages me. “Let’s end all this.”

  “End what?” I ask.

  “Throw that screwdriver away,” she orders. She opens the metal door wider. “It’ll scare your daughter.”

  I nod and drop the screwdriver. Hear it hit the floor.

  I walk in after her; out of the corner of my eye, I see the younger man follow us, pushing the wheelchair in front of him. The room is quite small. On the opposite wall are several kinescopes built into an enormous wooden cupboard. Something like a console. On the flat wooden surface are red plastic buttons with dirty fingerprints on them. There is masses of dust. I smell a mixture of fungus, dust and mould. There are boxes on the floor, files. And a messy pile of surgical instruments by the wall: nails, pliers, hammers.

  The observation room.

  Only after taking all this in do I see Ela. She’s in the corner, bound to a chair with tape.

  “Mummy!” she yells.

  She’s pale, shivering. She doesn’t blink. Beneath her unfastened jacket is her Thelma and Louise T-shirt, cut off at the waist with scissors. Between her legs, which are clad in thin pink leggings, is a large wet stain. But even taped to a chair and covered in piss, to me, my daughter is bright, strong, glowing. My daughter becomes a saint from a holy picture, becomes an angel.

  “Darling,” I say, “darling, it’s alright now, it’s alright.”

  She doesn’t reply. I tear the tape off her, rip it off with my teeth, throw pieces of it behind me. I press Ela to my breast, crush her into my body and, at that moment, I start to feel like myself again. My body’s wet. My breath and pulse are like that of someone who’s about to jump from the tenth floor. My heart pounds like a pneumatic hammer. I’m shivering like my daughter. We’re shivering together. I move her face away for an instant, stroke her cheeks, her hair. Her lips stop trembling; consciousness is returning to her eyes as she finally finds her way to me.

  “Mummy,” she says, saliva dribbling from the corner of her mouth.

  “Darling, it’s alright now, it’s alright.”

  “Dad’s dead,” she whispers and looks at me. I know her eyes don’t recognise me yet, nor do her ears. She knows I’m her mother thanks only to an inner animal instinct.

  “What have they done to you? What have they done to you?” I ask, still touching her face, her hair.

  “Dad’s dead and so are Gran and Grandpa,” she says. “I was running for the train. I had to come here, Mum, I had to. I tore myself away from Dad; he was arguing on the platform with Gran and Grandpa. Somebody got on after me, and somebody else followed them. I saw it on the phone. They’re dead, Mum. Somebody followed them and killed them.”

  “We’re alive, darling, we’re alive.” I stroke her face; I can’t stop, can’t stop checking that we really are alive.

  “Like Thelma and Louise,” she replies, twisting her lips into something like a smile.

  “They die,” I remind her. “They die.”

  “No, Mum,” she whispers and nestles into me again. “They go to heaven.”

  I get up and turn away. Only now does it get through to me that there’s something happening on the convex screens mounted to the wall. On each screen, there is a different black and white film. Each one is a camera feed. Except for one screen in the bottom right-hand corner, which is switched off. But I’m not interested in the screens. I’m interested in my daughter.

  “What have you done to my child, you bastards?” I ask.

  “No doubt you want to know why this apartment, why here?” Marta puts the gun away and walks towards me. “Why this tenement? It’s ours. It’s always been ours.”

  “What have you done to my child, you bastards?” I repeat, my words like rusty knives.

  “Look,” says the woman, and she waves her hand at the screens.

  People appear on the kinescopes. People in other apartments like mine. Other Institutes.

  I press Ela to me, cover her eyes.

  “We’re getting out now, love,” I say.

  “That’s ours, too. In Lublin.” She points to a screen where a young woman is swaying to and fro, cuddling a small child, and a man is smashing a chair against a bricked-up window.

  “And this is Zamość.” She points to another screen where a large man with a moustache is stabbing an old woman who is hunched over, trying to protect herself with her arms, but in vain. The knife strikes blindly, in her back, face, breasts. A third person, a fat, middle-aged woman, is pressed against the wall, screaming. In the background are piles of shattered plates, pots, cupboards torn from the wall.

  On each screen is a different Institute, different people locked in their own apartments, people bricked in with no food, no electricity, people driven to madness, harming themselves and those closest to them, driven to extremes. People being murdered. I see what has been done to us being played out on each screen.

  “Why are you filming all this?” I ask.

  “Because it’s interesting. Didn’t you ever enjoy watching ants? Or insects?” asks Marta.

  “
It’s an experiment. Like setting fire to an anthill,” says the man I’d known as Mr Banicki, and he adds, “We’re experimenting, sort of on the side. We’ve been doing it for a long time: installing cameras when there’s nobody at home, hiding them in airshafts. We observe the occupants for a month, then start liquidating. Carry the bodies out at night. Burn all the furniture. Their relatives quickly learn that there’s no point asking questions.”

  “Everyone knows we’ve begun and nobody’s going to stop us,” says Marta. “Nobody. No one in government. Everybody’s scared of us. Everyone knows what we’re owed.”

  “This is precisely what the Institute is.” The man waves at the convex screens with clear pride. “The Institute for the Observation of the Lower Classes.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Mummy,” says Ela. She presses herself into me so hard that a bone in my leg is about to snap. Let it snap. I love my daughter more than anything in the world. Nothing else matters.

  “Don’t look, Ela. We’re getting out, we’re going,” I promise.

  “Vera,” the old man interrupts again.

  “Now, now, Dad,” replies the younger man.

  “This is Warsaw.” Marta switches on the screen in the bottom right-hand corner. Despite having no strength left, I scream – on the kinescope I see a man howling silently. He’s naked, surrounded by lit candles. Where there used to be eyes and genitals, there is only black emptiness, bloody stains. The man, covered in blood, shuffles slowly like an animal, and only now do I see that somebody’s standing behind him with a gun, somebody who, after a long pause, shoots him in the back of the head. The man falls to the floor like a sack of potatoes, and the somebody shoots again at someone cowering in the darkness. I put my hands to my mouth to stop myself vomiting again.

  “We did more or less the same to the father of your child. And her grandfather and grandmother,” Marta says.

  “It’s a good way to teach obedience. It always teaches obedience,” adds the man. “Cutting off their balls so they can’t multiply, the swine. Shit-eaters. An excellent idea. Brilliant.” He strokes the old man’s head tenderly.

  “Vera,” repeats the latter.

  “Now, now,” the younger man soothes.

  “But that’s only an extra. Only a game. People disappear and there’s no way to look for them. Nobody’s surprised by bricked-up windows. Nobody’s surprised by sealed doors. Nobody’s surprised when places change. Everybody gets used to it. Everybody gets used to absence.”

  “Vera! Vera!” wails the old man, and he points his trembling hand towards me.

  As he does, the air in the room congeals.

  Marta pulls the gun out of the holster beneath her jacket. Hands it to the younger man.

  “Let’s get it over with,” she says.

  The man I knew as Mr Banicki takes the gun from her. Aims it at me.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. Ela is sobbing. I press her to me as hard as I can.

  “My father wants vengeance. Revenge for being deceived and rejected. Vengeance is owed to him. According to the old law.”

  “But it’s not me who deceived him, not me who humiliated him,” I reply quietly and truthfully.

  But nobody here cares about the truth.

  “You look very much like your grandmother; you’re so beautiful,” says Marta, and again she assumes that voice, the squeaky voice of a retarded little girl.

  I swallow. Shake my head.

  “Wait. Wait. We had a different agreement. We had a different agreement,” I repeat. “We were supposed to get out. We were supposed to get out in one piece. Ela and me.” I stare at the gun.

  “And you really believed me when I said I never lie?” says Marta, in her normal cold voice.

  “And if I’d agreed to take the money?” I ask. “The two and a half million?”

  “You wouldn’t have got any. We’d have killed you anyway. We just wanted to check you out, out of curiosity. We wanted to know whether you’re as stubborn and proud as your grandmother was,” she answers.

  “You’re all sick,” I murmur.

  The old man tries to stand up, tries to touch me with his hand, but falls back into his wheelchair. He is heaving. Froth runs from his mouth. He looks on the verge of death.

  “Vera, my love,” the old man says to me. “Dearest.”

  “I’m not Vera. I’m Agnieszka,” I say, tasting rust and fear on my tongue, and then the younger man yells:

  “Don’t argue with Mr Waraszyl, you whore!”

  Ela screams. I stroke her head. I’m shaking.

  On the screen in the bottom right-hand corner, somebody is squatting next to the man’s body and sniffing it. He puts his head to his neck. I can’t carry on looking. I focus on the crown of Ela’s head, pressed against my hip. She’s trembling. I feel tears running from my eyes, an abundant, salty stream. I can taste them in my mouth.

  “Agnieszka, the apartment is unique to us, especially to the Great Observer; but above all, it was about you,” says Marta.

  She stands in front of me. I can smell her. Foul. She smells like vomit, like sugar mixed with shit.

  “You’re going to die first,” says the younger man. He’s panting heavily, seems aroused. “It’s a mercy granted to you by Mr Waraszyl. You’re going to die first so you don’t have to watch your daughter die.”

  “You left me, Vera, my sweet,” the old man rasps heavily, and his eyes seem momentarily more open, more present. “And nobody does that to me.”

  My whole life flashes in front of my eyes, in badly lit, grainy slides. My life is mainly made up of images of my daughter. On the slides in my head, my daughter is growing up, growing up faster and faster, gaining weight, hair, height. She’s growing up while standing next to me. I feel her warmth. The gun is at my head. My mouth is full of salty water. I feel faint. Try to breathe. Feel my daughter’s warmth. I try to breathe but can only grab shallowly at the air.

  I’m scared.

  “Ela, my love, calm down. Ela, love,” I tell my daughter. I love her more than anything in the world. She is my world.

  “Dad, look, the time has come. You’ve waited so long.” Mr Waraszyl’s son is holding the gun to my head in one hand and still stroking the old man’s head with the other.

  “Vera, my love, you made an idiot of me. And nobody does that, nobody,” groans the old man.

  My brain continues to project my life, no longer in frames but in sentences, black words on a white background, clear as lightning flashes. I look at the woman, the old man, the younger man. I’d caused them to be here by making the wrong decision. Because I was scared, because, like most people, I’d spent the whole of my life following instructions. I’d spent my life in fear. I was scared of being disobedient. Scared of taking a step forward. A real step. The words flash before me one after another. We’re all here, here in the Institute. All of us. Me. We. You. You, too. We’re all treading water. Treading water until we die. I’m going to die in a minute. And then so is my daughter.

  “I love you very much, Ela, darling,” I say quietly, my head buried in her hair, my voice breaking.

  Suddenly I hear a loud, dull thud. Marta screams. Mr Waraszyl Jr’s hand droops and the gun falls to the floor.

  Marta keeps screaming and I try to understand what’s happened.

  “Give it to me,” says Sebastian, who had unexpectedly sprung up at the door like an enormous white tree. “Give it to me, Hat.”

  The gun. I pick it up from the floor. It’s unnaturally heavy. A gun’s weight. That’s what comes to mind when you hold one for the first time.

  Marta is leaning against the dusty cockpit. She doesn’t say a word, just breathes rapidly. Mr Waraszyl Jr is lying on the floor, twitching, his head hammered into his neck.

  “Cover your eyes,” I tell Ela, but again it’s somebody else speaking, somebody concealed in my throat. “Cover your eyes, darling. Don’t open them until I tell you.”

  “Am I to do it, or do you want to do it yourself, Hat?�
�� Sebastian’s voice is dull, husky. Half-naked, the lower part of his torso bound with a T-shirt, he clutches his belly; he’s pale, trembling.

  I look at my daughter covering her eyes. My daughter in her piss-covered leggings. My daughter glowing like an angel.

  “Me,” I say. “I’ll do it myself.”

  The first time you put your finger on the trigger, you feel resistance, realise that the trigger’s like an old, unoiled handle belonging to a door that should never, ever be opened.

  Sebastian puts his arm around my daughter and gently leads her out of the room. As they disappear around the corner, I see Sebastian gently, tenderly place his hands over Ela’s ears.

  I can move my legs and arms. I can move my head.

  “Agnieszka, if you do this, something terrible is going to happen,” says Marta, glaring at me. “If you do this, your daughter’s going to die in front of your eyes. A very slow death. She’s going to suffer a great deal, and you won’t be able to help her. I promise you. So, think it through. Think it through before you shoot.”

  The old man in the wheelchair is wheezing, saliva streaming from his lips.

  “Vera,” he mutters quietly.

  “You know that this time I’m telling the truth,” warns Marta.

  “Shut up, you old whore!” I retort and pull the trigger. Red splatters across the silvery-blue kinescopes. Something pushes me backwards and I rest my hand against the wall to stop myself falling. “Whore,” I repeat, but she’s no longer there; there’s a body lying on the floor. My breathing is even, the gun totally weightless.

  Sebastian comes back into the room, holding on to the wall. He stares at the body. Spits on it.

  Mr Waraszyl Jr is lying prone on the floor, moaning. He tries to get up, but Sebastian puts his heel on his spine, turning him into a cockroach, an insect, a fraction of a second before it’s crushed. It’s only now that I see that blood is dripping onto the floor from Sebastian’s stomach.

  “So, you want to tell me that you can do anything you want?” I ask Mr Waraszyl Jr, lowering my face towards his. He is moaning but still smiling.