1
The sun had risen long ago, and was shining down on cloud-covered Warmia, but despite shining with all its might, it couldn’t get through to Równa Street. Here there was no light, and no air; the whole place was dark, dirty, and dreary. The ordinary woman’s view through the kitchen window was sucking out the last of her strength. The longer she gazed at the black fog, and their mud-covered yard, which was supposed to be a vegetable garden, she felt even more fed up.
The little one was still asleep, the big one was off to work. For breakfast she’d made coffee, toast and cheese, and squeezed a little orange juice. He’d thanked her politely. She’d said he was absolutely welcome, while thinking she’d give ten years of her life to spend a month on the sort of vacation he enjoyed.
He’d go off in his car, listen to music, buy a chocolate bar for later. Then he’d sit in the office with his coworkers, tap at a keyboard, answer twenty important emails, and go out to lunch. He’d come back, do a bit of flirting, and swap a few jokes at a meeting. He’d call home to say he’d be an hour late, because he still had to “get his head around a project”—sounding pained and tired, to spell out the scale of his sacrifice and devotion.
She would go shopping, make dinner, do two loads of laundry, clean up two turds, soothe fifteen sorrows, stick on one Band-Aid, extract the kid five times from places that were out of bounds, wipe the floor three times and the table after his meal—she’d be on her feet nonstop, slightly out of breath, with a sweaty forehead, to the tune of the child’s squawking, always wanting something different. If she were lucky, he’d nod off at home, and she’d be able to have a sandwich while stirring soup with the other hand. But usually he only fell asleep on a walk—he’d be wrapped in a blanket, protected from the wind and rain, pink and snoring. She’d be pushing the stroller, frozen to the core, breathless, and rain-soaked, because on the dirt road it was impossible to push the stroller and hold an umbrella.
She watched him eat his toast. He had the sad look of a man who devotes himself to his family, and she thought that if he had to do real work as she did, in a few weeks they’d be looking for a sanitarium where he could recover.
He finished breakfast, stretched, and got up, leaving crumbs, a coffee stain, and his plate and mug on the table. She tidied up without a word, stood with her coffee by the window, and mentally pushed him out of the house. There was a chance that if he left right away, and the little one slept a while longer, she’d have fifteen minutes to herself. A whole fifteen minutes! She needed that time to gather her thoughts, to think about how to play it, how to choose the best moment.
In the hall she could hear him pulling on his woolen coat, then zipping up his ankle boots, and the rap of his umbrella as he took it off the shelf and set it on the floor.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them tight, as she waited for the metallic sound of the lock. But she heard steps approaching. She mentally cursed—a compound, vulgar expletive. Even her father would have been shocked.
She stood leaning against the kitchen counter, facing the window; in the glass he could see the reflection of her face and her closed eyes. He smiled. He realized she was ashamed to go back to the warm bed while he was still bustling about the house, preparing to go out into the November crap, pulling on his coat like an uncomfortable suit of armor or special overalls designed to protect him from the Warmian climate.
He didn’t want to go. He’d rather stay here and revel in idle warmth, drink coffee in the kitchen, smell the aroma of dinner cooking, and watch his son playing on the rug, looking up from his building blocks only to smile at his parents. He felt warmth flooding him—the scene was so unreal. Outside there was gray hell, and in here paradise. The subtle light, the smell of mildly charred toast, the warm color of the beechwood kitchen furniture, his wife in a hoodie, with her eyes closed, good and quiet like the goddess of the domestic hearth in her still-sleeping kingdom, drawing strength from the harmony of the world.
He gently embraced her, nestling his head in her ruffled hair.
She sighed.
He knew he’d never tire of this harmony—that he could have more of it, lots and lots, as much as possible. The family was like a drug that he could never get enough of. The certainty filled him with joy and strength again.
He took her hand.
“You know what the good news is?” he asked softly.
She shook her head without opening her eyes. He breathed in her warmth and fragrance and thought of wet spring earth, of swollen buds, ready to burst into bloom.
“We’re going to have a big family. People will laugh at us, they’ll say we’re running a preschool, but we’ll be laughing at them, because we’ll be so happy. Would you like that?”
She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide-open, but he couldn’t see the domestic goddess in them, or fertile soil ready to procreate. He saw derision and determination.
“I very much . . .” she whispered, “I very much need to tell you something. Right now.”
2
She squeezed him tight between her legs, put her arms around him, and pushed off. They managed to roll over without coming apart, and now she was on top. She straightened up, pressed down on him as tight as she could, and began to move rapidly to and fro, moaning—as he saw it—far louder than the situation demanded. He wondered if he should make noises, too, so she wouldn’t tease him afterward, saying they’d had deaf-and-dumb sex again, but he realized that at this stage it was all the same to her anyway. So instead of that, he grabbed her hard, slender butt and squeezed it tight—she gave a loud scream, which aroused him so much that they soon came almost simultaneously. Wonderful.
Żenia moved on him a little longer, purring and laughing, and Szacki thought of how he envied women’s orgasms. He took the opportunity to check the time and read a text from Dr. Frankenstein.
“I can see you,” she muttered, without opening her eyes.
He wasn’t sure what to say, so he put down the cell phone and mumbled in a way that he thought expressed sexual satisfaction. To make it clear: he felt immensely satisfied, but he couldn’t understand why that should be a reason to be late for work.
Żenia sighed one last time and climbed off.
“I’d love to fuck you when you’re wearing your lawyer’s gown one day.”
Her voice, always a bit throaty, was even huskier after sex.
“Best of all in the courtroom. I don’t know why, but it gets me really hot. Do you think they’ll let us in there after hours?”
He scowled at her and got up.
“Well? Don’t make that face. It’s not a cassock. In fact, they’re both just bits of rag from a certain perspective. Besides, cassocks don’t make me feel at all horny—yuck! They make me think of men who don’t wear aftershave.” She got up too. “Not that I have experience, but I’ve never noticed a priest smelling of anything when I’ve gone past one. Not that I’ve gone out of my way to sniff one. Are you listening to me?”
“Not that I’ve gone out of my way to sniff one. Are you listening to me?” he said, putting on his shirt. He always had three outfits in the closet ready to go. A pressed suit and shirt, a polished pair of shoes, a tie, and cuff links in a little plastic bag tied to the hanger. She made fun of that, but if he kept his cuff links in his jacket pocket, the material could lose its shape.
“And before that?”
“Smelling of anything when I’ve gone past one.”
“I don’t know how you do that—it’s some kind of a trick, because you don’t listen to me at all.”
“To me at all.”
“Ha, ha, thank you.” She kissed him on the lips. “I’ve wanted to have a good scream for ages. Lately we’ve only had deaf-and-dumb sex, if at all.”
“I’d rather not . . . you know . . .” He made a vague gesture.
“You’re right, it would be terrible if your daughter found out her father has sex.”
“Oh come on, don’t talk about Hela and sex while we’re standin
g here like this.” He pointed at the naked Żenia, then at his penis, dangling under his shirt to the same rhythm as his tie.
She shook her head and went to the bathroom.
“You’re even afraid of her when she’s not here. It’s pathological.”
He felt his irritation rising. Something was wrong again.
“Here we go. You cannot be jealous of my daughter.”
“You can’t be talking about jealousy and your daughter while we’re standing here like this,” she mocked.
He counted down from five in his head. For some time he’d been promising himself to try calming techniques before exploding.
“If you think there’s something wrong with our relationship,” he said, “then maybe we should all sit down and talk about it.”
“How do you imagine that? You’ll say she’s right before she even opens her mouth. And she’ll be embarrassed by how easy it is to manipulate you. Besides, I’ve got no problem with Helena, she’s great, she’s a smart girl.”
“So who do you have a problem with?”
She raised an eyebrow in her trademark way. Really high. He thought it must involve training the right muscles.
“I really don’t know. What the fuck do you think?”
She started swearing very easily—he found it cute.
She turned to face the bedroom, put her hands on her hips, and aimed her small, pointed breasts at Szacki like additional arguments.
“You’re doing her wrong, Teo. You treat her like a child because you have no idea how a mature father should relate to his mature daughter. She doesn’t either, but she doesn’t have to. She’s confused and has no idea how to behave, so she takes advantage of your weakness. I don’t blame her, just to be clear. I’m sorry to say it, Teo, but the time when she was a child who needed her daddy is over. I get it, you’re sorry you had other things on your mind then, but it’s been and gone.”
He was trying not to explode, and he knew Żenia was right. What was he supposed to do? He loved Hela, he wanted everything to be the best for her. He accepted the idea that he spoiled his daughter as a way of appeasing his own pangs of conscience after splitting up with Weronika.
“And to be clear,” added Żenia, “don’t go thinking it has anything to do with your divorce, blah, blah, blah, all that psychological baloney for people who feel sorry for themselves. Bullshit! Your daughter is brave, modern, strong, and self-confident. You’re doing her wrong by demanding nothing of her and treating her like your darling little girl. You’re just doing the same as your sexist father and your sexist grandfather. You’re afraid of strong women, and you’re trying to push your daughter into a mold that’s totally alien to her.”
“How do you know my father and grandfather were sexist?”
She cast him a look and burst into husky laughter, even louder than her recent moaning.
3
He woke up the same as always. No tossing and turning, no sleeping in, no wondering whether to lie there a while longer or to get moving right away. He simply opened his eyes, confirmed that it was light now, and got up, as if he didn’t want to miss a single second of the new day.
The bedroom was empty, which rarely occurred at this time of day, but sometimes did. He went into the hallway and looked around. The house was quiet—he couldn’t hear anyone moving about, or the radio or television. He wanted to go to the bathroom, but instead he stopped at the top of the stairs and hesitated. He looked down them, wondering whether to call out or descend unnoticed and find out what was happening. The fifteen wooden steps were tempting. He decided to go down them quietly.
He sat on the highest stair and waited a few seconds. Nothing happened, so he slid down to the stair below. Once again, nothing happened. He looked around, but heard nothing. He decided to take advantage of this opportunity, and using the same technique, he slid on his little butt from one stair to the next, until he was at the bottom.
Earlier he’d had a plan to look inside the utility room, the most mysterious place in the house, but he was so excited from coming down the stairs that he forgot. Not only had the gate at the top of the stairs been open, so at last he could go down them on his own, but for the first time in his life he’d remembered how to do it. He felt proud of himself.
“Momma, I’m come alone!” he shouted. “Momma, daytime! I’m come down the stairs on my butt. Don’t shout,” he added, just in case it turned out he’d done something that wasn’t allowed.
The house on Równa Street was quiet and deserted.
4
Even for Warmia this was going too far. He figured this was what a nuclear winter must look like—ominous and dark. A few minutes after nine the streetlamps were still on, and such a feeble glow was breaking through the clouds that he regretted not bringing a flashlight with him. He imagined that from a bird’s-eye view, Olsztyn must look as if it were coated in a thick layer of dark-gray felt torn from the inside of a shabby rubber boot.
Szacki had never imagined the weather could be this bad.
He quickly ran a few paces to get inside the illuminated building as fast as he could, nodded to the desk clerk, and without slowing down reached the first floor, where he bumped into his boss in the hallway. He nodded, certain their meeting was a coincidence and that she’d just come out of the restroom. She was camouflaged in her beige suit, standing near the beige wall.
“My office, now,” she said, pointing toward the front office.
He took off his coat and went in. This time she didn’t play the warm and open boss; he had barely crossed the threshold when she shut the door.
“Misterteo! One question. Why is your junior, a jumped-up, weird little shit who recently coerced me into letting him work with you, now filling out a formal application for you to be reprimanded?”
Szacki adjusted his cuffs.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I have no question. I don’t want to hear the answer. I’ll give you an hour to get it straight. Falk is expected to come see me by noon to withdraw the application, apologize for the misunderstanding, and run along.”
Szacki stood up and straightened the coat hanging over his arm so it wouldn’t get creased.
“I don’t know if that’s possible,” he said.
“One hour. Then I’ll write a request to the regional service for them to take over your investigation into the Najman case, considering its complexity. You’ll be able to read about its progress in the Olsztyn Gazette while you’re busy bringing all the force of your authority down on college kids smoking dope. Good-bye.”
He turned without a word and left. He was just about to close the door behind him when he heard her chirp with merry optimism, “Misterteo, please leave the door open, I don’t want anyone to think I’m not here.”
5
Unlike his mom or dad, who were in some ways apostles of the ordinary, the little boy from Równa Street was rising above the average. It took him only about fifteen minutes to change the family home into a theme park. For starters, he got into the cat-litter tray, something he’d always dreamed of, behaving like a cat, scattering the pink granules in all directions. Then he took advantage of the open laundry-room door to overturn the vacuum cleaner, knock some of the mysterious liquids off the shelf, and press enough buttons on the washing machine to make the word Error light up.
Still placid, from the laundry room he went into the kitchen, where he saw a blue mineral-water bottle on the counter beside the stove. By holding on to the knobs for controlling the gas and the oven, he managed to knock the bottle off the counter. Finally he sat down on the kitchen floor with the bottle of water between his legs. He felt thirsty, but his mug was nowhere to be found. He grunted and groaned as he tried to unscrew the plastic cap, but he didn’t have the strength. Besides, he wasn’t sure if he was turning it the right way. He tried both directions, but even though he tensed his muscles as hard as he could, not just in his hands but in his entire body, the cap wouldn’t budge.
“Can’t do it!”
he cried, but the deserted house gave no answer. “Help me, Momma, can’t do it!”
Upset, he threw the bottle, hoping that would get it open, but it just bounced and rolled away. He got up and went after it, but as he was crossing the hall he caught sight of his three-wheel bike, and in a split second he’d lost interest in the bottle. Each successive activity engaged him totally—nothing that came before or after mattered.
He dragged the bike out from under the stairs and set it upright, which wasn’t all that easy, pointing it toward the kitchen. He took off the helmet hanging over the handlebars, put it on back to front, and rode toward the kitchen and dining area. It looked like a game, but in fact he was carrying out a plan. His aim was to ride the bike to the refrigerator, stand on the seat, open the door, and take out the milk. Every morning he always got warm milk in his platypus mug with a blue-striped straw.
He gathered speed, went past the kitchen island, and turned right toward the corner of the room where the fridge stood.
Suddenly the bike ran into something and stopped. The child was thrown forward, hitting his belly against the handlebars as the badly secured helmet slipped over his face.
“No,” he said, struggling with the helmet.
Once he’d finally pulled it off, he saw that the bike had stopped against Momma, who was lying across the dining area.
“Momma, you can’t!” he cried. “I’m on my bike here.”
He put the helmet on again, backed up, rode around the island the other way, and parked by the fridge. He took off the helmet and hung it on the handlebars, then climbed onto the seat and opened the fridge, only to discover that he couldn’t reach the milk.
He stood on tiptoes, straightening his legs and stretching as far as he could, but he was still a couple of inches away from the shelf in the door of the fridge, where the milk was kept. His total engagement prevented him from calling for help, so instead he tried shifting his body into all sorts of different positions to reach higher; finally he managed to stand a foot on the back support of the seat, pull himself up, and grab hold of the shelf, on which there were two bottles, whole milk for him and skimmed for coffee.
Rage Page 15