“Don’t say you remember that!”
“As if it were yesterday.”
“I lost my temper, but I was half joking. I brought him right back, anyway.”
“I know, I know. But that time I was afraid. Not that you’d hit me, just ’cos it was so awful. You were shouting and waving your hands around and all that.”
He didn’t know what to say. To him it was just a comical anecdote—he told it now and then to amuse his audience. He thought that was the end of it. He’d lied his way out of the one and only incident, and now he could breathe easy. But Hela had more to say.
“Sometimes I’ve been afraid you were gonna shout at me. You could say I’m always afraid of that.”
“I’ve got a temper.” He was trying to trivialize the matter.
“You don’t know what it’s like on the receiving end. When someone’s leaning over you, looking huge, and making loud noises. A man’s face looks so animal when he’s angry. I remember you scowling at me late at night, so close I could see your stubble. And the sound of it. I remember not being able to hear words, just that sound, as if those noises were attacking me, holding on, refusing to let me get away.” She said it calmly, dispassionately, and slightly pensively, as she carefully remembered. “That made me feel afraid. I sometimes used to wait for you to get home at night, and on the one hand, I’d be longing for you to get there, I’d be wanting us to do something together. Make those little pictures out of plastic beads, remember? But as soon as I heard the elevator doors open and your footsteps coming down the hall, I’d feel a touch of anxiety too. I used to wonder if you were going to be bad.”
He said nothing.
“I mean, ‘bad’ is the wrong word. You’re not bad, you’re a very good man, you know? Really.” She patted his hand. “But you’re . . .” She paused, looking for the right definition. “What’s the word I want? Not annoyed, not aggressive. Oh, I know—enraged. Maybe it has to do with your profession, but if I had to choose one feature that characterizes my father, I’d say it’s rage.”
Luckily, just then the waitress set down two steaming plates of broth with dumplings. Droplets of fat and shredded parsley were pushing their way to the surface, and there were so many piroshki in it that “dumplings in broth” seemed more justified than the traditional “broth with dumplings.”
Hela started eating heartily, as if nothing had been said. But he was feeling totally crushed.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I never meant it.”
“Jeez, Dad, you look as if you’re about to cry,” she said with her mouth full. “You asked if I was ever afraid of you, so I told you. If you’d asked about cool stuff, I’d have told you cool stuff. Are you having a midlife crisis, or what? Maybe go find yourself someone younger. Then at least I’d have someone my own age at home—Żenia’s older than me. Not much, but still.”
In his mind, he couldn’t help applauding her. First she’d softened him up, and then she’d gone straight for the jugular. Regretfully, he had to admit she hadn’t gotten that from her mother. Those were his genes, no question. She’d gotten her fair share from her mother, too, and she’d be sure to cry at least once before the evening was over and try emotional blackmail again as well. Why hadn’t they gone to the movies? They wouldn’t have had to talk.
“You’re being unfair.”
She shrugged. For a while they ate in silence.
“One thing does make me wonder,” he said at last. “I’m not asking out of spite. I don’t want to argue, so don’t take it as an attack. I’m not blind, I can see that you two get along quite well, and maybe you’re even friends. Why is it that as soon as I appear, it’s like stepping onto a battleground? Why do I always get that kind of treatment?”
“Eat up, cold broth is useless.”
He shuddered—he’d heard the exact same words, uttered in exactly the same tone of voice, from the girl’s mother a decade ago. Eat up, cold broth is useless.
“Since we’re being honest,” she began after a while, “I do like Żenia. I don’t think she’s pretty, and she’s not particularly brilliant, but she’s really smart and perceptive.”
“So why the act?”
“It’s not an act. I just can’t stand seeing the two of you together. It’s a physical reaction, like someone stroking me with barbed wire. I can’t understand it. Don’t ask me to explain.”
He didn’t.
“Sometimes the worst things are really small, just stupid little things.”
He looked at her inquiringly.
“You’re going to laugh.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Whenever you watch Friends I feel like running away. Seriously, I wanna put on my coat, climb out the window, and run away.”
This was unexpected.
“That old crap? We only watch it because it’s Żenia’s favorite show. She has the entire series on DVD, and I took them off the shelf as a joke. You shouldn’t even know that ancient junk exists.”
“Dad, I used to fall asleep to that music, didn’t you know?”
He didn’t.
“I used to fall asleep while you and Mom were watching TV. There must have been a million different shows, but that’s the one I remember. Not the show itself, not the people or the jokes, just the music. To me that music means my home, my childhood, my sense of security that my mom and my dad are right there, watching TV together, and everything’s OK, and that’s how it’s always gonna be.”
He started crooning the signature tune.
Hela dropped her head and began to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, and ran to the restroom.
His heart sank. As he ate his food, he wondered what Hela was really missing so badly. Even if he was defined by rage, as he was inclined to agree, then the second pillar of his character was sadness at the transience of life. For as long as he could remember, from early childhood he had nurtured it in himself like a rare and beautiful plant that needed constant care. It looked as if he’d also passed on the gene for this unique, never entirely evaporating sorrow.
After that they talked for another hour. He realized this was a day to commemorate in future years—the day he’d had his first real conversation with the wonderful woman who had done him the honor of being his daughter. They sat there for such a long time that eventually they felt like ordering dessert. They didn’t usually want any, because the sweet flavor clashed with the aftertaste of the dumplings.
“I’m sorry for all the fights,” said Hela, once they were standing in the arcade outside the café. “You’ve never hit me and all that, but I still make a fuss.”
He kissed her on the forehead.
“Quit talking nonsense. Better bundle up.”
For once she obeyed. The temperature must have dropped below freezing; the thick fog had solidified on the sidewalk, coating it in a glistening sheen. In this sort of weather, even teenage girls buttoned up their coats.
“Sometimes I think I’ll find a husband who’s like you.”
He thought about that sometimes, too. He sincerely hoped she wouldn’t. But he figured it would be wrong to say that, and he wasn’t entirely sure how to respond.
“You’re a wonderful, clever woman. And I’m proud you’re my daughter.”
“Does that mean tomorrow I can . . . ?”
“No. Tuesdays are sacred. I’m expecting two courses and a dessert.”
CHAPTER SIX
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
It’s International Day of People with Disability, and in Poland it’s Oil and Gas Workers Day. Birthday celebrations for Jean-Luc Godard (83) and Trina (35). It has been exactly twenty-one years since the first text message was sent. In Ukraine the opposition fails to force out the government, and the protests intensify. When Berkut special police units beat the demonstrators with batons, the number of people in Kiev’s Independence Square increases. Poland has moved up on Transparency International’s corruption index from forty-first to thirty-eighth place, a
head of countries including Spain and Greece. And Polish teenagers rank first in Europe in terms of numeracy and literacy in skills tests conducted by the OECD. In Olsztyn the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Warmia and Masuria announces a call for professional patients to do simulations for the students—the requirements are good health and acting skills. It’s cold, and the number of crimes committed in the region by people who want to spend the winter in a nice warm cell increases. One such desperado has set fire to the door of a convent in Szczytno. For technical reasons, decking Olsztyn’s number one Christmas tree, on the square outside the Town Hall, is delayed. Apart from baubles and lights, there will be crocheted snowflakes hanging from it. There’s no real snow, just fog and freezing drizzle.
1
Every city has its wrong side of the tracks—an area that’s poorer, inferior, uglier, more parochial, usually hiding its complexes behind showily displayed pride in its otherness. Every place has its backyard, backstage, backwater, or backwoods, separated by a distinct border. Whose residents invariably say, as they head downtown, that they’re “off to the city.”
Olsztyn was divided by the railroad, and here the Polish name for the area on the other side of the tracks was Zatorze—literally “beyond the tracks”; clearly nobody had ever tried to think up a more romantic name for it.
Szacki left home by car at daybreak, though the sky was still as dark as in the middle of the night, battled his way through the city center, passed the Town Hall and the theater, and finally crossed the tracks, making use of the recently renovated viaduct.
He crossed several junctions and just before reaching a gloomy-looking park he turned into a small street that—if the map on his cell phone was to be believed—was called Radiowa Street. He was curious to see this place. He took a gentle curve, and on the right he passed a park with a large, frozen pond, and on the left a row of fabulous villas. Before the war this must have been an extremely beautiful district—the villas looked grand compared to the usual single-family housing the Germans had built.
A few hundred yards later, he reached the end of the street and his destination. The building clashed dramatically in this attractive district—it was a pseudo-modern glass-and-plastic nightmare, part blue, part red, and bizarrely asymmetrical, as if the architect were suffering from a rare combination of color blindness and astigmatism.
He parked and turned off the engine. He had no desire to get out of his Citroën. It was warm, cozy, and safe in there. On the radio some gal kept singing over and over that she was here to stay. Szacki thought it was a grim prophecy, as if fate were trying to confirm his suspicion that he’d spend the rest of his life in this city of eleven lakes, a thousand showers, and a million fogs.
“As we’ve just heard, Christina Aguilera isn’t going anywhere, and that’s awesome, ’cos we’d sure miss her,” said the DJ, and Szacki snorted with laughter so abruptly that he spat all over the steering wheel. “Next up, the news, and then our guest will be Teodor Szacki, the one and only star of the legal system, recently appointed press spokesman for our local prosecution service.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
2
Edmund Falk didn’t like making changes to his routine. Not as the result of neurosis or obsessive-compulsive disorder. He simply knew himself well and was sure that as soon as he eased up once, he’d do it again, and soon there’d be nothing left of his routine. He’d been through it so often that finally he’d come to accept that he had to be his own sentry. Otherwise everything he undertook would end the same way as his dance career. He’d started young and talented, one of many in Olsztyn, which has a reputation for producing professional dancers, and then he had advanced to be a rising star and won some junior competitions, but then, between the partying and the love affairs, in a few months it had all been reduced to ruins.
Not that he regretted his dance career, quite the opposite, but there had been a time when he’d thought nothing worse could ever happen to him. And so he’d changed. People laughed at his obsessions, while in fact there was nothing obsessive about his behavior at all. Nothing but the logical choice.
And so now, just as he did every other day at this time, regardless of the weather, he was running through the woods with a steady pulse of 140 beats per minute. He’d already covered two miles and had another four to go.
He never listened to the radio or music while running, but this time he’d brought his phone with him and had put the buds in his ears. He wanted to hear what Szacki would say after the news on Radio Olsztyn.
For now they were still broadcasting music, and he was wondering whether or not he should meet up with Wanda. In theory he’d already made a date with her, but in practice he could call it off. In theory he’d done it for his father’s sake, but in practice he was very curious to find out if there was anything left of what had once existed between them. And something really had existed.
In theory he understood that, in his case, commitment was impossible—that was the logical choice. But in practice he’d have latched on to any excuse to see her.
He ran out into Wojsko Polskie Avenue and decided that instead of cutting across the road as usual, he’d run along it for a while. He was feeling strangely anxious, and the lights of civilization seemed more tempting than the deserted paths in the wet woods.
As he ran in the direction of the city center, to his right were the park and the radio building, and to his left the mental hospital. He glanced at the hospital’s illuminated windows. And then at his stopwatch. One hundred and sixty beats per minute.
He knew he shouldn’t run past here.
3
Szacki took his seat in front of the Radio Olsztyn microphone feeling tense, worried that a badly conducted conversation on the topic of Najman could lead to media hysteria. One incautious word, and the case of the Warmian serial killer would get out of hand.
Luckily the local radio station turned out to be just as uninterested in controversial topics as the local press. Szacki replied to a few general questions about the city’s crime profile. When he was pinned to the wall on the issue of local patriotism, he got out of it by joking that he aimed to become a real Warmian as soon as winter let up and he could learn to sail, because for now instead of eleven lakes it had eleven ice rinks. He brushed off the political question about conflict at the top between the prosecutor general and the prime minister by explaining that as an ordinary investigator he had a different perspective.
He was pleased that his first official media encounter was going so smoothly, but he was pretty bored. The journalist had the low radio voice of a hypnotist, which, combined with the warmth of the cozy little studio, was making Szacki’s eyelids droop. He needed coffee.
“The listeners are sending in live comments on our conversation,” said the journalist, glancing at his computer screen during the break while a song was playing. “Some about how the system functions in general, critical rather than not. But there’s also a joker here asking if there’s a serial killer on the prowl in Olsztyn.”
The journalist smiled, and Szacki smiled, too, nodding his head. He put as much amiable forbearance into this smile as he could summon, as long as he wouldn’t have to answer that question. He couldn’t lie, and to say that “at this stage I cannot provide any information on specific inquiries” would throw all Poland’s media into a state of alarm.
“And there’s also a call from a listener. May I?”
Szacki nodded. Someone was probably going to shower him in abuse because some colleague of his at the other end of Poland had let their town hold a pride march, but better that than having to talk about a serial killer.
All he could hear in the receiver was white noise, and as it crossed his mind that the connection might have been lost, he and all the Radio Olsztyn listeners sitting in their cars in traffic heard the wavering voice of an old lady: “Good morning, I’m calling to let everyone know that not every prosecutor does nothing but sit at his desk shuffling docu
ments. Mr. Szacki isn’t going to say it himself, but a few days ago he saved a woman’s life. Not just on paper, but in actual fact—he went into her house and saved her life. A wonderful life saved. Thank you very much, good-bye.”
The journalist stared at him in amazement.
“Is that true, Prosecutor?”
Szacki hesitated. He imagined Szarejna and Bikoz at that moment, sitting by the radio, raising their hands in a gesture of triumph, giving each other a high-five or a fist bump. They were right, hurray, success, and more success, Prosecutor Teodor Szacki will be the new face of justice, the sheriff of a new generation, and every prosecutor will want to hang his portrait in their office next to the national emblem. All he had to do was confirm it.
“It’s not true,” he said. “It is a fact that on the morning of November the twenty-eighth I proceeded . . .” The journalist scowled at Szacki’s formal tone, so he broke off abruptly. “In short, on Thursday morning I went to see a woman who the day before had sought my help. I found her dying, having been severely battered by her husband. There was a small child playing beside her. Five minutes later, and he’d have been playing beside his mother’s corpse.”
There was an awkward silence. The journalist stared at Szacki in astonishment. The producer in the control room started making desperate signs at them to say something.
“I can only congratulate you,” said the journalist at last.
“Not necessarily. The woman is still in a critical state. If I weren’t such a mindless pen pusher and had listened to that lady the day before, instead of ignoring her cry for help, there’d have been no need to save her. If I had behaved correctly, that woman, a victim of domestic violence, and her child would have been guaranteed legal and psychological help. She wouldn’t have had to return to her husband, and she wouldn’t have had to lie dying on the kitchen floor. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize in public to that lady, her son, and her family. I’m deeply ashamed, and I wish I could turn back time. I’m sorry.”
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