“I feel as if I spent my own childhood there.”
“You moron. Agata told me an extraordinary story about her brother, Robert. They’re these friends of mine. She said that ‘when things go wrong, everything goes wrong,’ but it reminded me more of that David Fincher movie where everything falls apart.”
“The Game.”
“Exactly. A regular guy, wife, daughter, small house in Purda. Suddenly the bank withdraws his loan, an ordinary, personal loan. They don’t have to give a reason, that’s in the contract. They can do that. So Robert thinks: Screw you, I’ll go get it somewhere else. He has a full-time job. He goes to the HR department to get a form signed, and there’s a termination letter waiting for him. They’re cutting jobs. All in keeping with the law. It’s in his contract, and so on. Guess what happened next.”
“The tax man.”
“How did you know?”
“Every story where ‘when things go wrong, everything goes wrong’ always involves the tax man. Simple.”
“That’s right. He used to run a firm, and they say they’re doing an audit, there’s been an incorrect calculation of VAT. Of course he quickly divided the assets, transferred it all to his wife’s name, but even so it was pretty bad. Especially because the wife divorced him soon after. Not that I’d have complained—there was something wrong with that relationship. It was too sugarcoated somehow, like for show, as if there was something wrong under the icing. Everything seemed OK, but in reality—you get my drift.”
She sighed and glanced at his book. He’d forgotten the title was all too meaningful in their situation. The Wedding Gown. He drummed his fingers on his crossed knee.
“How about a quickie?” she said.
“Do I have to put my book aside?”
“If I’m going to have a decent orgasm, then no.”
He put it aside. Title facing downward, just in case.
11
Meanwhile, dusk had long since fallen on Równa Street, the children were asleep, the lights were out, and most of the homeowners had retired for the night. But not all. The man was still bursting with the energy he’d built up during the day. Sometimes he had a sense of such—what a dumb word—potency. As if he took up more space than usual. As if he could hear more clearly, see more sharply, feel everything more intensely. This day, the dinner, this family, this perfect home—he felt like a charged-up battery. All the needles were quivering in the red zone.
He went up to his wife as she made the bed, and ran a hand down her spine. He knew there are erogenous zones there, and women like it. But she did not arch her back like a cat, just froze, and gently withdrew from his touch. Gently, but he understood it wasn’t the right day. He couldn’t remember, but maybe it was her period. That would explain the ATM—hormones are thicker than water.
He was a modern man—it would never have crossed his mind to force his wife into sex when she didn’t want it. Sure, sometimes he was sorry she wasn’t as—another dumb word—randy as he was, and sometimes he dreamed of wild, demented sex. But whatever, in reality his wild sex would probably have ended in snoring after half an hour anyway. Nor would it have occurred to him to go looking for stupid adventures. And it wasn’t just desperate women who had given him the come-on look at conferences. And not just the look. The memory alone was enough to boost his energy even more. But so what, nothing had ever happened. The family meant a lot, but the family also meant duties.
Luckily, long ago, right at the start of their relationship, they had found a way to cope with his excess energy. It meant he could calmly get to sleep, and she didn’t have to perform her marital obligations if she didn’t want to. In time, though he didn’t admit it, it had started to suit him so well that oh, oh, oh—who knows—perhaps they were the Warmian record holders in this particular discipline?
He didn’t even have to say anything—by now it was their little ritual, every relationship has them. She lay on her back on the bed, with her head hanging over the side of the frame. The bed was high enough for him not to have to kneel, just stand with his legs astride.
It wasn’t so much a blow job as an Olympic sport. They had practiced for a long time so she could control the gag reflex, and they’d spent a long time looking for the right throat pastilles. So that he could enter her as deep as possible, so that her throat took in the whole length of his dick. Sometimes—like now—he could feel the pulse in her esophagus, as if she were trying to swallow him.
He watched her from above. She was lying with her legs and arms spread, her head suspended, her mouth wide-open, her eyes closed—like a corpse, like a drunk who has fallen asleep after collapsing on the bed. Only the violent trembling of her diaphragm—she used a special technique that stopped her from vomiting—betrayed that she wasn’t asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
On his opposition rival Yulia Tymoshenko’s fifty-third birthday, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych confirms that in December he will know if Ukraine is going to sign the association agreement, but nobody takes this quasi-dictator seriously anymore. In Germany a major coalition of the CDU and the SPD is formed, in Italy Silvio Berlusconi loses his seat in the senate, and roars: “This is the death of democracy!” In Great Britain the prime minister announces cuts in benefits for immigrants. Five percent of Polish sixteen-year-olds admit to stripping in front of live cameras on the Internet, and the Polish TV news shows the seedy side of Warsaw, including a traumatized girl who has been the victim of attempted rape. After protests, the TV channel apologizes for its tactlessness. There’s a scandal in Kraków: they call off the premiere of Krasiński’s classic play The Un-Divine Comedy because it has leaked out of rehearsals that, in this production, the Polish national anthem is sung to the tune of the German one. In Olsztyn the police arrest a man who reported planting a bomb. He was so drunk that he told the policemen where he was calling from. The renovated exit road to Klewki and Szczytno is reopened, unfortunately without being finished, because there wasn’t enough money for the last two hundred yards of asphalt. In the nationwide “Pearls of Medicine” competition the city hospital is judged best hospital in the under-four-hundred-beds category. The temperature is around 32 degrees, there’s a dreadful wind, and there’s fog. And freezing drizzle.
1
Pretty much every day there are people on television shouting that “you should go and complain to the prosecutor.” Prosecutor Teodor Szacki knew from experience that shouting was rarely where it ended—these people really did come and complain to the prosecutor afterward. And he reckoned the worst nightmare of the profession was the opportunity granted to Joe Public to just come in off the street and report a crime, reducing the highly qualified guardian of the law to the role of a beat cop.
And so he found it hard to keep a professional look on his face when he saw a visitor at his door, picking at the handle of her purse. He wasn’t on duty, but the desk clerk informed him that the duty officer would be late—she was stuck in a traffic jam, all because of the repairs at the junction of Warszawska Avenue and Tobruk Street, and besides, you know, typical Olsztyn. All Szacki’s emotions must have been printed on his face, because the desk clerk leaned out of his little window and added as a consolation:
“But they’ll have the streetcars up and running soon, and everything will be different, you’ll see.”
Szacki invited the woman into his room, smiling, and sincerely hoping it was just a trifling matter he could tell her to take to the police. Or even better: advise her to find herself a lawyer. He couldn’t wait to get down to Warszawska Avenue to find out what Frankenstein had discovered.
“Yes?” He wanted to sound cold and professional.
“I’d like to report a crime,” she said at once, as if she’d been practicing that sentence the whole way there.
“Of course.”
As he took out the relevant form and a pen, he eyed the woman sitting opposite him, trying to guess what it was about. She wasn’t on
the margin, she was well dressed, tidy, with a neat, simple hairstyle. The sort of woman who prefers to go to the prosecutor than to the police because she feels better in this environment. About thirty, with the looks of a perfume store assistant: pretty enough to reflect well on the firm, but not pretty enough to make the female customers feel reluctant to shop there.
“Well, I wanted to report that my husband . . . that my husband, well, the thing is, I’m afraid of him.”
Great, some paranoia to start the day. He spitefully imagined the content of the nonexistent law: “Anyone who, through persistent frightening of another person, prompts a sense of threat in them, is subject to a penalty of deprivation of sense of security for up to three years.”
“Maybe you’d prefer to talk to my female colleague?” he said. He had an innocent lie on the tip of his tongue that, according to new directives for recording cases of domestic violence, women must report them to female officials. He swallowed it, partly out of shame, partly out of a sense of duty, and partly out of fear that he would give himself away.
The woman shook her head.
He took down her personal details. First name, last name, address. A village outside Olsztyn, on the road to Łukta as far as he remembered. Age thirty-two, a speech therapist by training, riding and sailing instructor by profession.
“That is until recently,” she corrected herself. “Now I’m caring for a child.”
“I’ll cite you a regulation that might be relevant,” he said. “Article 207 of the penal code concerns physical or mental harassment of a family member. The penalty for that is from three months to five years. Up to ten, if the prohibited act is combined with the use of particular cruelty. I understand you want to report a case of harassment.”
“It’s just that I’m afraid of him,” she repeated.
“Do you have proof of physical abuse?” Szacki had no time to play psychoanalyst.
“Sorry?”
“A medical report after being hit, or at least the paperwork following treatment for breaks or injuries. If you don’t have it, we can get the relevant details from the hospital.”
“But he’s never hit me,” she was eager to say, as if she’d come here purely to defend her husband.
“So we’re not talking about physical violence?”
She looked at him helplessly and licked her lips.
“Are we talking about physical abuse or not? Bodily injuries? Wounds? Bruises? Anything?”
“No, I said not.”
He folded his hands and mentally counted to five, telling himself that this was the price for choosing a profession that involved serving the public. All of them, without exception. Even the ones who treated the prosecution service like divorce counseling.
“So it’s mental abuse. Does he insult you? Or threaten to apply physical abuse?”
“Not directly, no.”
“Do you have any children?”
“A son of almost three.”
“Does he hit him? Shout at him? Neglect him?”
“Nothing of the kind, he’s a great father, modern. He’s really good with him.”
“Ma’am,” he began, wanting to say that she’d come to the wrong address—the Olsztyn Gazette was sure to be holding a poll for Husband and Father of the Year, but at the last moment he restrained himself. “I understand that your husband doesn’t hit you or your child, doesn’t insult you or shout at you. Does he keep you prisoner? Lock you in the house?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“But you feel threatened.”
She raised her trembling hands in a gesture of helplessness. Her cuticles were bitten to the quick. Neurosis, he figured. But neurosis doesn’t amount to proof of a crime. He should have put his last remark in the form of a question, asked more questions, and given her time to say what she wanted to say. Outside, a world full of real crimes was waiting; he had no time to waste on imaginary problems.
“Because he controls everything so much, he doesn’t give me any space,” she finally said. “For instance, he tells me to pay for things with a credit card, because then it says on the statement where and how much I paid. And I have to put the receipts in a notebook recording expenses. They’re all small things really. And everything has to be just the way he wants it, everything . . .” She paused, as if waiting for encouragement.
Szacki looked at her expectantly.
“But you know, it’s also true that I’m a bit ditzy sometimes. With money, too, you know how it is. If you break a hundred, you no longer have a hundred.” She laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, I got myself all psyched up, and here I am, wasting your time. I’m hopeless.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” he said in a sarcastic tone.
She nodded. He felt he should say something.
“Ma’am, I know these are delicate matters, but there are no public services that can help you make difficult decisions. I understand you’re feeling very distressed in your marriage, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here. But your . . .”—he searched for the right word—“your mental discomfort does not signify that your husband is going to commit a crime. It only testifies to the fact that perhaps you made the wrong choice. But then there’s no law ordering anyone to live with a person with whom they don’t feel happy.”
She put her purse on her knees, tightly gripping the handle. She looked as if she knew she should leave, but was incapable of forcing herself to take that step.
“It’s just that I’m very frightened.”
Szacki glanced at his watch. He had to be at the hospital in an hour, and he still had a stack of paperwork to get through.
“I know,” she said quietly, and got up. “There’s no such service.”
Shortly after, Szacki threw the uncompleted statement form away, and instantly forgot the matter.
2
Meanwhile his visitor left the prosecution building, and instead of turning right, to where she had parked her car at the bottom of Emilia Plater Street, she walked toward the shopping mall. An ordinary woman, neither chic nor unkempt, neither beautiful nor ugly. She melted into the crowd of other ordinary people. And that was a good thing; she always felt safer in the crowd. She sat down in one of the impersonal cafés and ordered an absurdly expensive coffee—she only had a little cash of her own. She had borrowed it from her mother on All Saints’ Day, using some stupid excuse; her parents knew they were doing well. They always stressed how proud they were that she’d found such a fine husband. He’d built a house, planted a tree, fathered a son—a real man. Suitably traditional, and suitably modern.
As she drank the hot coffee, she winced—her throat still hurt from yesterday. She had fallen asleep so resolutely determined to go to the prosecutor and sort this out, to get herself out of this mess. Thinking that even if she was a hopeless, ungrateful, clumsy, messed-up bimbo, she didn’t deserve this. She’d had a speech therapy practice and worked with young people. She’d loved the sailing camps, showing the teenagers the same knots over and over, making bonfires at the same sites each year, singing shanties off-key, and finding out, to her joy, that you never sail through the same inlet the same way.
That was how life had been less than three years ago, but now it seemed like ancient history. It was incredible to think how natural and harmless everything had seemed. She’d spent a lot of time with her husband because they hadn’t been married for long. She’d stayed at the building site a lot because someone had to supervise the work. Then she’d spent a lot of time watching over the interior decorating, as it needed even more supervision. She’d spent a lot of time out in the boondocks because their dream house was out in the goddamn boondocks. She’d kept an eye on the expenses because a house consumes money, as everyone knows, and then there’d been a child on the way. And she couldn’t go out to work, because someone had to see to the house, and then the kid. Anyway, the state of the job market meant that to earn enough to pay for a sitter and the commute to work and back, she would have had to be a speech therap
ist in Warsaw, or move to the Canary Islands, where the sailing season is year-round. There was a time when she really had dreamed of teaching sailing somewhere far away, like Croatia—the sailing was totally different on the open sea.
As well as the notebook for expenses, she should really have had a notebook for all the things she screwed up. Today she’d have included the visit to the prosecutor. On the one hand that white-haired flunky hadn’t been very encouraging—he’d looked at her as if she were nuts and his only thought was how to get rid of her. On the other, what had she expected? That the prosecutor could read other people’s minds? She should have pulled herself together and said, “My dear Mister Prosecutor, every day my husband sticks his dick so deep down my throat that I’m forced to swallow my own puke. Do you think there’s a regulation for that?”
Would that have changed anything? Maybe. He would have asked if she had a medical report and bodily injuries, and advised her that, regretfully, there were no services to combat injuries sustained while performing oral sex. Or he’d have smiled dumbly, made a stupid joke, and told her that worse things can happen in a marriage. She had confided in a girlfriend right after it first began, because he’d developed a disgust for her pussy after the birth. Her friend had laughed, saying that she still had it easy. At least she could avoid the taste of sperm because it went straight down her throat.
As she drank the pricey coffee, it occurred to her that the white-haired flunky had been right about one thing. No public service was going to sort it out for her. Time to deal with it. Once and for all.
3
Szacki parked outside the regional beer center so he wouldn’t forget to buy himself something for the evening on the way back. The Kormoran Brewery was a very nice discovery he’d made since he had migrated to Olsztyn. Some of their products were sweeter than an éclair, but some were first-rate. He’d always been a bit of a wine snob, but he realized that living in Olsztyn was a lot like being on vacation, and beer was more suited for that. He did worry about putting on weight, but every time he found himself standing at the checkout he swore to take up running again, and that was how he satisfied his conscience.
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