Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  The shelf couldn’t take the strain. The plastic compartment broke free, the milk crashed to the floor, and he slipped, landing by pure luck on his butt on the seat. It didn’t hurt, but it would have been enough of a surprise for him to burst into tears, if not for the sight of the white puddle. The glass bottle had smashed, and milk was flooding the kitchen.

  The white pool grew bigger, and when it reached the red pool around his mother, it began to create incredible patterns, changing the gray kitchen floor into a fabulous carpet with oriental designs, woven with threads in every shade of pink and red.

  He gazed at it spellbound, but only now did he feel anxiety. He had never gotten away with anything like this before.

  “I wanted milk,” he said quietly, foreseeing the fuss to come. His big brown eyes were glistening with tears—one tear, as round as in a cartoon, trickled down his cheek. “I wanted milk, Momma?”

  Nothing happened, so he got off the bike, stepped into the puddle of milk and blood, and stood by his mother.

  “Momma, it’s daytime!” he cried. “Wakey, wakey! Get-up time!”

  His mother didn’t move, and he felt very much alone. He wanted his momma. He wanted her to cuddle and kiss him, so he’d feel safe and warm.

  “I wanna do a poop,” he said through his tears.

  Nothing happened, so he ran to the bathroom, leaving a trail of wet pink footsteps. He opened the door, took off his pajamas and pissed-in diaper, and sat on the potty.

  “No hard poop!” he shouted toward the kitchen, sharing the considerations that were always part of the potty ritual. “’Cos I didn’t eat choclit. Just apple. And fruit does a soft poop.”

  “Ready!” he cried.

  This tactic always worked in the morning. Even if Momma hadn’t gotten up when he had, even if for some strange reason she hadn’t reacted to the message about wanting to do a poop, at the word ready she came running with a handful of wet tissues.

  “Mommaaa, reaaady!”

  Nothing happened. He sat there a while longer, then got up, completely confused. He ran back into the kitchen, his little feet pattering against the floor.

  “Momma, I done a poop. Get-up time!”

  He slipped on the puddle of milk and blood, lost his balance and fell, hitting himself painfully. As usual he didn’t feel the pain in just one spot—his entire body hurt, sending his brain a deafening siren signaling injury, danger, and the need for help. In the same nanosecond he started wailing, the alarm call that for tens of thousands of years the world over has invariably informed grown-ups that a little one needs help.

  This time, nobody came to the little one’s aid.

  6

  Szacki’s phone call with Dr. Frankenstein was short and almost fruitless. The scientist informed him coldly that there are 206 bones in the human body, and if the prosecutor thought he could take samples from each one and do DNA tests on all of them in a single day, he must need a neurological examination himself. Which wasn’t a problem, by the way—they had an excellent neurology and neurosurgery department, and they’d be happy to help. The only thing he did manage to confirm at high speed was that yes, the bones in two fingers of the right hand did not match Najman’s DNA.

  Next he got in touch with Bierut, and told him to draw up a list of people missing from the area over the past year and collect DNA samples from their relatives for comparison tests. Never in his career had he come up against a serial killer like something out of an American movie, a madman who plays weird games with the detectives—like wanting to complete the victim’s skeleton to avoid spoiling the effect, for example.

  He decided to put off looking into Najman’s past. As for now, he had to deal with Falk. To his own surprise, he didn’t really hold a grudge. Mainly because the young lawyer’s reasoning had convinced him.

  He thought for a while, as he gazed out of the window, at the lights of construction machinery moving about in the dark fog. And he realized he had no alternative other than to go see yesterday’s “pseudo panda”—anyway, what on earth had induced him to use that phrase? He’d go there, inspect the scene, apologize, and tell her what the state could do for her.

  He looked through the papers on his desk in search of the address, but he couldn’t find yesterday’s transcript anywhere. Had he written one? He must have. Then what had he done with it? He’d been in a hurry to get to the hospital on Warszawska. Maybe he’d taken it with him? No, that made no sense, he wouldn’t have done that—his briefcase was in perfect order and he never kept anything in his pockets—they might as well not exist. In other words, he’d thrown it out.

  He knelt down and pulled the wire wastebasket from under his desk. The plastic bag lining it was empty.

  He sighed.

  7

  Every leash has two ends. Sea captain Tomasz Szulc had no desire to pull his other hand out of his warm pocket, so he used the one holding the leash to zip up his waterproof jacket and protect himself better from the weather. As he did it, he tugged at the neck of his stupid Labrador, who jumped about joyfully, causing Captain Szulc to slip and almost fall headlong into the river of churned-up mud that passed for Równa Street.

  At the last moment his wife grabbed him by the elbow.

  “Do you know what I’m thinking?” he asked.

  “Sadly, I’m living in ignorance.”

  “I’m thinking how many places in the world we’ve been together.”

  “If our map is to be believed, twenty-eight different countries.”

  He nodded. He’d counted yesterday, and it had come out the same. Their map was a sort of secular altar—on a huge elliptical map of the world they’d marked every place they’d visited with colored pins. Red where they’d gone as a family with the children, orange if they’d gone as a couple, blue for her alone, and green for him. When the children had grown up and started to travel on their own, they’d added white for their daughter and yellow for their son. The six colors of the Rubik’s Cube.

  “Have we ever seen a place where they’d put up houses in the middle of a field? Where mansions clad in sandstone, with wrought-iron fences and granite driveways, stand along a river of mud?”

  She said no, they hadn’t.

  “Tell me what’s wrong with this goddamn country. What sort of a quagmireland is this, where they let people build houses and connect up the water and the power, while the road’s always a decade behind? It must be some kind of plot! Do they take bribes from the companies that make off-road vehicles? Or suspension-repair shops? Car wash centers? Dry cleaners?”

  “Don’t forget the orthopedic surgeons.”

  “And what are we doing out in this sort of weather anyway?” Szulc found it hard to stop grumbling once he’d started.

  “We have a dog.”

  True, they had a dog. And now they were wading through the mud on the ugliest, foulest, ghastliest day of the year. All because they had a dog—Bruno.

  They walked away from the road. Tomasz let Bruno off the leash. Now they were in the new part of the village, as populated at this time of day as Pripyat. The residents were out trying to earn money to pay off the next loan installment, and if any children were left at home with mothers or grandmothers, they were probably well protected from the miserable climate.

  Bruno raced through the muddy potholes, splashing in the puddles, changing his chocolate coat to cream, for that was the color of the mud in this part of Warmia. All of a sudden, the dog came to a halt and began to bark.

  They stopped, too, and exchanged glances. Bruno very rarely barked. Once they had even asked the veterinarian if everything was all right with his vocal cords. The vet had laughed at them and said Labradors aren’t really talkers.

  But now he was standing by a fence, barking.

  Tomasz went up and silenced the dog by patting him on the head. He looked at the small house on the other side of the fence. It was new, quite ordinary. It had a ground floor, a loft with skylights, and a carport. Of course, it was bigger than their old G
erman shack.

  The house had a classic layout—through a window next to the door he could see a kitchen that opened onto the dining area and the living room. Tomasz noticed that the fridge was open. There were lights on in the kitchen and in the bedroom upstairs.

  He thought he could hear the monotonous wailing of a child.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “I can’t hear a thing, my ears are frozen.”

  “Sounds like a child crying.”

  “In my experience that’s mainly what children do. Come on, or I’ll freeze to death.”

  “But it’s crying and crying.”

  “Because its balloon burst, or it’s got an earache, or Mom switched off the cartoons, or didn’t give it a Snickers bar for breakfast. You’re talking as if you never had kids.”

  He stroked Bruno. The dog was still gazing toward the house, but he wasn’t barking anymore, or growling. Maybe he really was being oversensitive.

  “I’ll try ringing the bell,” he said, putting a finger to the intercom button.

  “Give it a break, that’s all the woman needs.” She gently took hold of his arm and pulled him away from the gate. “A howling brat and a nosy neighbor—for me that’d be too much in a day.”

  He thrust his hand into his pocket, along with his wife’s hand, and thought maybe he really was being too sensitive. He had always been a bit of a protective dad—the whole family made fun of him. He’d thought of nothing but the kids.

  They passed three more properties before they noticed that Bruno still hadn’t moved from the spot. Tomasz had to whistle three times before the wayward dog ran after them.

  8

  This day was different from all the others on Równa Street, definitely unusual. A day when anything could begin, or end. And the more time went by, as she drifted in and out of consciousness, the more she reconciled herself to the fact that it was all irrevocably coming to an end. The first time she came round, she was still hoping for the best; she mainly felt rage toward that prick, who had, of course, turned out to be a wife-beater. Not only had he punched her in the face, he’d also pushed her, causing her to hit her head and lose consciousness.

  The anger was soon replaced by fear when she found she couldn’t move; something must have gone wrong in her brain or spine. She couldn’t feel her body at all, not counting the dreadful, intense pain in her head. She’d managed to move her eyelids, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  She realized it was serious and passed out.

  She came to again, feeling very weak, when the milk bottle landed near her head. A solid piece of glass, from the bottom, flew so close that it hit her eyebrow. She found herself looking at the world through it, as if through thick glasses—everything was distorted and out of focus. Her heart stopped in horror when she saw her son’s chubby legs trotting through the pool of milk, among the shards of broken glass. Drops of milk splashed on her face. She realized that cretin had left her alone at home with the child, and a wave of terror ran through her. In a split second she remembered everything she had ever read or heard about domestic accidents. The wet floor in the bathroom. The staircase. Power sockets. The boiler in the utility room. The toolbox. The knife on the tabletop. The cleaning chemicals.

  Had she poured cleaning fluid down the drain yesterday? Had she put the bottle back on the highest shelf? Had she screwed the cap on until she heard the click securing it? Had she put it away at all or left it beside the trash can?

  “Reaaaady!” she heard him call from the bathroom.

  She strained her entire will, but all she could manage was to blink her right eye. What would he do if she didn’t come? He’d probably get up, try to wipe himself, smear a bit of poop on his butt, no great tragedy. He’d want to wash his hands. He liked to feel independent. He’d stand on the toilet seat to reach the sink. Would he put the lid down? If he didn’t, would he fall in? And what if the soap were to fall into the toilet bowl? He’d lean in to try and get it out.

  Her head was spinning. In panic, she looked in all directions. In the corner of her eye she noticed the oven—switched on at full blast; inside, the hot air shuddered and rose with the scent of yesterday’s leftover sponge cake.

  She drifted away again.

  Then the sound of barking brought her back to consciousness. A large dog with a deep voice. It must be barking right by the gate, very near—nothing but barking and crying were getting through the fog surrounding her. The fog was making the world go dark and lose its contours, and the sounds were blurred, too. She felt as if everything were drifting away from her, but at least her head had stopped hurting.

  Then the barking stopped, and she realized help wasn’t coming.

  She would never go to his preschool celebration or drop him off for his first day of high school, never catch him smoking, never meet the girl he brought home, never take the grandkids for the weekend to give him and his wife a break, and she’d never have the sort of Christmas she remembered from childhood, with four generations gathered at the table, all talking at once.

  A shadow appeared in her field of vision. She managed to move her eyeball enough to see her child grab the handle of the heated oven to reach for the one-gallon carton of apple juice on the counter.

  She realized that her death was not the worst thing that could happen that day. A day so different from every other that it didn’t seem part of her life at all.

  9

  He felt like the ultimate moron. As he’d left the house, to be on the safe side he’d pulled the hood of his thick cotton sweatshirt over his head in case anybody recognized him. He set off at a rapid pace down Emilia Plater Street, without looking up at the prosecution service windows. When he reached the corner of the building, he looked around vigilantly like the spy in a comedy crime movie and turned toward the black-and-green hole. Which at this time of year was simply a black hole without a hint of green; against the gray fog the leafless branches looked like the set of a horror film, a weird spiderweb on an alien planet, waiting to catch the unsuspecting intruder. Actually, there was one green element here. The dumpster.

  Szacki went up to the dumpster, looked around one more time, raised the lid, and jumped inside.

  Of course the prosecution service had a special machine for shredding documents, but the regular trash collected from under the desks, in other words, apple cores, empty soda cans, used tissues, crumpled notes, and incomplete transcripts of interviews with freaking victims of domestic abuse all ended up in a regular dumpster.

  He stood among identical black bags, tied at the top with identical knots, and wondered if there was any way to identify his own. By the volume? He’d tossed a few bits of paper in there yesterday, an empty tomato juice bottle, and an empty tub of cottage cheese.

  He felt a few of the bags. In one he could feel a small bottle. He tore it open, and cautiously peeked inside. An empty vodka miniature, hmm, interesting.

  He put it aside.

  He felt out another bottle. He raised the bag, which was indeed tied at the top, but also torn at the bottom. The first thing to fall out onto his pants was an empty energy drink bottle, followed by a yogurt—unfortunately, only partly eaten, then a filter full of coffee grounds, a large blob of mayonnaise, and finally the remains of a triangular sandwich from the gas station. It bounced off his pants and landed on his shoes, mayonnaise side down, of course.

  Szacki cursed aloud, wishing his colleagues would take better care of themselves.

  “Get the fuck out of there or I’ll call the police.” Szacki shuddered as he heard a voice right by his ear.

  He turned to face the security guard, who must have noticed him on the monitor inside and had come to restore order.

  “Mr. Prosecutor! What are you doing here?”

  “A legal experiment.”

  The security guard didn’t seem convinced. He stood and stared suspiciously.

  “Can I go back to work now?” asked Szacki, pointing at the mixture of discarded food scattered at
his feet as if it were the files for an important case.

  “Yeah, sure thing,” said the security guard. “Good day, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  The guard walked away, and Szacki went back to groping the bags of trash. Among the interesting things he went on to find were a prayer book and a green-and-white Olsztyn volleyball team scarf. He was starting to get dangerously sucked in, when at last he found his tomato juice, and his heart began to race. Waiting for him in the cottage cheese tub was the interview transcript form, crumpled into a neat ball.

  10

  He passed a couple out for a walk with a muddy Labrador, and a few hundred yards farther down this road resembling a four-wheeler track, he found house number seventeen—the plate was in the style of Paris street signs, edged in green. In a semicircular field above it was written “Avenue Równa.”

  Szacki shifted into Park, but he kept the engine running. Firstly, he wasn’t eager to get out into the land of ice and mud, and secondly, he needed to think about what to say. Above all, what to say if the woman was at home with her husband or if only the husband was there. “Excuse me, could you please pass on some information to your persecuted wife about the procedure for putting herself on the at-risk register? I’d be much obliged.”

  He sighed, buttoned his coat, and looked toward the house. There were lights on in the kitchen and the upstairs bedroom. He switched off the engine and got out of the car—he had to hold on to the door to avoid slipping.

  He rang the bell.

  Silence.

  He waited a while and rang it again. He stood there for a few minutes, thinking she might be changing the baby or putting him down for an afternoon nap.