Rage

by Zygmunt Miloszewski

  He stopped on a stretch that looked dry and used his hydropneumatic suspension to raise his gas-guzzler a few inches.

  For once in his life, this goddamn gadget had come in handy.

  He drove on.

  The road quickly disappeared into the forest. If he hadn’t checked the lot number in the cadastral survey before leaving, he probably would have turned back, convinced it couldn’t possibly be leading anywhere.

  A few hundred yards along, he came to another clearing, where there were two new shacks, totally identical. Roofed building shells for some hideous cabins, teleported from an American subdivision. Someone had probably decided to become a developer in the days of plenty by building a “luxury woodland oasis for the discerning homeowner.” And had wound up like all the rest.

  He switched on his high beams and saw a huge, glaring banner reading “For Sale.”

  He passed the banner, passed the houses, and drove into the forest again. The road reached a new level of difficulty, and even his monster, which could usually cope with potholes, was mercilessly swaying in all directions, as if trying to turn on its side.

  Two hundred yards on, he drove into another clearing and stopped the car.

  The green figures on the dash showed 23:52. He figured showing up a few minutes early wouldn’t be taken as an affront, so he switched off the engine and got out of the car.

  At first it seemed pitch-dark as he fumbled his way toward the house. But his eyes soon adjusted to the gloom, and then he found that the visibility was surprisingly good, as it always is when snow clouds hang overhead with their unusual capacity to reflect the least bit of light from the ground and bounce it back.

  He stopped in the spot where there must once have been a gate. Now there was just a gap in the fence.

  So this was the place.

  He thought of Hela. It came to him with difficulty. All day long she’d been in his mind, but after the conversation with Wiktoria Sendrowska, something had happened. His brain had cut off the steady flow of images prompted by his paternal imagination. Just as it cuts off consciousness when physical pain becomes unbearable. He realized that he was probably going to find her corpse in there. But this realization was deeply buried, foggy, and unreal. Like our imagination of a place we only know from mythology.

  He walked through the gap in the fence.

  He thought about little Paweł Najman, the boy who had decided to stop living. He thought about Piotruś Najman and his drawings. He thought about the child doing the jigsaw puzzle while his mother lay there in a pool of blood.

  He thought about a child who has to hide from those he loves. He does everything other children do. He makes towers out of building blocks, crashes toy cars together, has his teddy bears hold conversations, and paints houses under a smiling sun. A kid like any other. But fear makes everything look different. The towers never tumble. The car crashes are more like gentle bumps than major collisions. The teddy bears converse in whispers. And the water in the paint jar rapidly turns to dirty gray sludge. The child is afraid to go change the water, and eventually all the paints are smeared with sludge. Every little house, every smiling sun, and every little tree comes out the same nasty black and blue.

  That was the color of the Warmian landscape tonight.

  NOW

  Prosecutor Teodor Szacki felt calm because he knew that one way or another, here in this house, it would all come to an end. The number of possible variants was finite, and although logic was telling him to assume that in almost all of them his daughter would die, and so would he, even so, he still held on to the thought that somehow he was going to triumph. That he’d think of something. Something would happen that he hadn’t yet foreseen. Or it would all turn out to be a monstrous joke.

  It was a stupid hope. His experience as a prosecutor had taught him that nothing in life ever turns out to be a joke—it’s always deadly serious. Things were not improved by the fact that the crazy avenger was a girl of only eighteen. At that age, people are inclined to be solemn, to have fixed, intransigent beliefs and radical views that only a decade later would seem comical to them. Which meant that however twisted a plan had developed in her homicidal mind, either she’d already carried it out, or she definitely would.

  Unless something happened. After all, something unexpected can always happen.

  He walked across the lot and stopped at the front door. The area between the fence and the house, which might once have been a yard or a garden, was like an experimental nursery for weeds, now withered, rotten, and dead, ominously black in the winter night.

  Up close, the house didn’t look quite so bad. From a distance it looked like a German cottage built in the early twentieth century, a forestry lodge perhaps, which had had a hundred years to fall apart. Now Szacki could see from the architecture and the building materials that it was from the 1990s, and its poor state was the result of the fire from ten years ago. He could see that the fire had raged on the right-hand side of the house, where there weren’t any window frames. They must have burned up, and the roof had collapsed when the truss was engulfed in flames.

  He was surprised that all the windows were tightly secured by wrought-iron bars. He wondered if they’d been installed when the property was vacated after the fire, to protect it from thieves and vagrants, or had been put in earlier. More likely the latter. Nobody would add fancy metalwork to a gutted property; they’d block the gaping holes with rebar, or board them up.

  He glanced at his watch. Midnight.

  He opened the front door and went inside, hoping he wouldn’t stumble over his daughter’s corpse.

  He didn’t. He was greeted instead by feeble light and an intense aroma of strong, freshly brewed coffee. He followed his nose and found himself in an empty room that must once have been the living room.

  An almost empty room. In the middle stood the sort of camping table that folds into a neat little carry case, and on it a portable gas lamp, screwed onto a small cylinder, a thermos, and two thermal cups. And on either side of the table were camping chairs—two pieces of green canvas stretched on an aluminum frame. One chair was empty, and on the other sat Wiktoria Sendrowska. Young, beautiful, serene. With her hair loose for once. The long black strands fell to her waist, and combined with her pale face in the flickering lamplight, it made her look like a character from a Japanese horror movie.

  “Good evening, Prosecutor,” she said, pointing to his chair.

  He sat down, crossed his legs, and adjusted the crease in his pants.

  “Hello, Monia.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He shrugged.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “You’ll find out. I promise. Coffee?”

  He nodded and looked around. The lamp didn’t produce much light, so the corners and walls were lost in the dark. Someone could be lurking there or standing behind the door. Someone could be aiming a gun at him or clutching an iron bar. Everything implied that this really could be the last conversation he was ever going to have. And yet, suddenly, he felt weary—he desperately wanted to sleep.

  She pushed a cup of coffee toward him.

  “Any questions?”

  He sipped the coffee. Strong, black, and delicious. He could drink it every day. He thought about what she’d just said. For all her rare qualities, Wiktoria Sendrowska wasn’t free of the megalomania typical of criminals. She was tapping her little feet like a preschooler, eager to be admired for her cunning.

  “No,” he said. “I already know the answers. I want to get my daughter and go home.”

  “Well, I never, what a smart prosecutor you are. So what are those answers?”

  Jesus Christ, he really didn’t want to do this. He forced himself, thinking that maybe, if he could satisfy her crazy ego, the whole thing might end better than he had figured.

  “The abridged version, all right? You were born Monika Najman, you lived”—he gestured to indicate their surroundings—“in this charming house of horror wi
th your parents and younger brother. You were probably the victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse, or maybe just the witness to what happened to your mother. Ten years ago there was a fire. Your mother was killed, your brother died soon after at the mental hospital, and something went screwy in your head. A bright, pretty child, you were soon adopted by the Sendrowskis, who didn’t notice, or refused to notice, your flaw. I don’t know why your father lost custody rights, I haven’t got to the files at the family court, only the documents at the Public Records Office. From what I’ve seen and heard, your adoptive parents guaranteed you ideal conditions to develop, thanks to which you grew to be a clever and beautiful young woman—endlessly burning with desire for revenge. On your father in particular, and on those guilty of violence in general. You waited until your eighteenth birthday, because only then could you gain access to the adoption records and the files relating to your father’s loss of custody rights.”

  “You underestimate me. I’ve had those files for the past three years.”

  He was very tired, yet in his prosecutor’s mind, the lie detector was going off. Something wasn’t right. He had no idea what, but it was the first moment when he thought he must have incorrectly connected the facts. Unfortunately, drained and exhausted, he couldn’t pursue that thought.

  “I waited until I was eighteen because it seemed symbolic, apart from which I was observing him. I considered the idea that maybe he had changed and would guarantee Piotruś what Paweł never had.”

  “Well, yes, Piotruś.” He didn’t let her crank up the drama, because he wanted to get this summary over and done with. “You befriended the Najman family, above all Piotruś—you may even have been his babysitter. Despite appearances, it was a safe solution. Najman was always away on trips, and his wife needed someone to help out. You managed to avoid your father—you probably never met face-to-face until the very last moment.”

  Wiktoria nodded.

  “The little boy took to you. It’s understandable, you treated him like a brother, which in fact he was. I suppose that, one day, either before the kidnapping or just after, you told Teresa Najman your tale of woe. She believed you and didn’t lift a finger when it came to her husband’s fate. On the one hand, she may already have known what sort of a man he was—her child told us in his interview that she was sent to the attic as a punishment. On the other, there’s something about you that makes people believe you and want to do what you tell them. Evidently a family trait. Right, Wiktoria?”

  She nodded, taking the compliment with a smile.

  “After which you dissolved your dear daddy in caustic soda, prepared a fine theatrical prop for us out of his bones and those of other perpetrators of domestic abuse, and planted it in the city center. It’s curious that from the start I was swayed by the fact that the underground tunnel led to the hospital. I thought the solution was there. Knowledge of anatomy and all that. Meanwhile, the other end leads to the dorm.”

  “And what could be more natural in a dorm than an eighteen-year-old?” she added, smiling.

  “Quite. Regrettably, only today did it dawn on me in detail. And that’s it, really. For several days I’ve suspected all this is just preparation for something really big. My daughter and I are part of this plan. I suppose I’m going to be punished as a symbol of the incompetent, heartless legal system. Excuse me for saying this—I realize you’re acting in good faith, but can’t you tell how weird all this is? Aren’t you too smart for this charade?”

  She regally tossed her hair over her shoulder.

  “That’s exactly how I think of the legal system,” she said. “They seem to have the right answers, but it’s all dry, bland, devoid of emotion.”

  He shrugged. It occurred to him that if he made that gesture once more, he’d be left with a tic for the rest of his life. Not that he was planning to live to a hundred—right now even his forty-fifth birthday seemed out of reach. But a new defect right at the end? The inane spitefulness of fate.

  “I wasn’t abused, nobody ever hit me. Or Paweł either, just for the record. My mother was a different case. She was weak, she let anything be done to her. She was a little country mouse who never imagined things could be different. I don’t have an ounce of pity for her. Nature shouldn’t let people multiply if they’re too weak to take care of their young.”

  Suddenly he understood.

  “The female bones in your stage-prop skeleton?”

  “That’s right. She didn’t deserve to rest in peace. She let the whole house be filled with fear. Constant fear, day after day.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “Yes, I said he never touched us. But we were sure one day that would change. Rising tension all the time, a sense of threat strong enough to drive you mad.”

  “The fire?”

  “Yes. She was too stupid to get out, just take the children and run. She had to announce it with such drama. And when he realized she meant it, he locked her in the same room as usual, and then set the house on fire. Did you see the bars to the right of the entrance?”

  He nodded.

  “She died up against those bars. She smashed the window—because as I’ve said already, she was pretty dumb—and she didn’t know that an extra blast of air intensifies a fire rather than putting it out. Then she hung on those bars and fried there. Paweł and I stood by the gate, watching the whole thing happen. Now, of course, I know I shouldn’t have let him see it, but I was eight years old, frozen to the spot.”

  She paused.

  “But I’m going to pay for it too,” she said quietly, as a shadow of fear and regret crossed her beautiful face. “You know, Teodor . . . You’re not angry with me for calling you that, are you? Great. Everyone always adored my father. He really was the kind of guy everyone wanted to befriend, listen to, and hang out with. He could wrap people around his little finger. The salesman type. But then he did work in a service industry—he wouldn’t have gotten far if he’d been an off-putting, dreary kind of guy. As a result he knew a huge number of people; he had lots of contacts. So after the fire, it all moved very quickly. He was the great victim of the tragedy—nobody would listen to me. They separated me from Paweł, and I was taken to a children’s home because our father pretended to be too grief-stricken to take care of us. As a daughter I didn’t matter to him anyway—all these assholes despise women of any age, they’ve got the mentality of medieval peasants. When Paweł died, our father quickly got rid of me, used his contacts to have his custody rights revoked, and had it all arranged really fast. Would you believe I was only told about my brother’s death a month after the funeral? That was when I swore I’d get revenge. I’d make sure he suffered more than our mother, more than Paweł, more than me.”

  She paused for a moment, staring into the darkness.

  “That lye works pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”

  He agreed. What else could he do?

  “Yes, I know you don’t believe in vigilante justice and so on, you’ve got your penal code and your suit, blah, blah, blah, boring.” Her eyes were shining. “I was this close to his face when he died, you know?” She held her hand in front of her. “Until I felt faint from the fumes—my throat stung for several days. But I couldn’t miss a single second. I was afraid he would soon pass out, but it took him a good fifteen minutes to dissolve. I could see his teeth through his cheeks, and he was still squirming. Unfortunately he didn’t scream, because he’d swallowed that crap too soon. But it just heightened the drama.”

  He knew that encouraging her to be effusive was a mistake; regardless how unimaginable her losses and sufferings, she was just a lunatic. But one question really did interest him.

  “How many of you are there?”

  She cast him a hesitant look. He should have read that gesture correctly then. As the gesture of a person suddenly thrown off-balance and starting to lose their way. But he was so tired. And he’d gotten so many things wrong that night.

  “Well, of course, I couldn’t have done it all
on my own. I knew from the start I’d need allies. Allies with a mission. Some . . .” She hesitated, as if there were certain things she wasn’t allowed to betray.

  “Some of them I’ve known for a long time. Some I found. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to find people with the right motivation—how widespread evil is, how ordinary, how universal.”

  She paused again.

  “I soon came to the conclusion that vengeance doesn’t solve anything. Afterward you’re left with a void—Dumas described it in detail. And as I needed people, I decided to give them a purpose: to reform the world. I’ve always suspected that all those dicks are just cowards. And that’s the truth. I don’t want to deprive you of your illusions about the effects of your work, but the fact is, just one real pounding is worth a hundred times more than a three-year suspended sentence, a fine, or putting someone away for a time. Anyway, you’ve seen the effects of our work. They literally shat themselves. I bet they were afraid to tell you anything after that.”

  He confirmed it. He felt grief. In spite of it all, he felt sorry for this crazy, injured girl.

  “We’ve seen the effects, too, and it only confirms our belief that we’re doing the right thing. We really are changing the world for the better. We react faster and more forcefully than the state authorities, and we do our best to take action before a tragedy occurs.”

  “We, meaning who?”

  She hesitated.

  “Various people.”

  He thought about what he’d heard that afternoon from the merry widow on Mickiewicz Avenue. A virus. Everyone who’s a victim or a perpetrator in adulthood experienced violence during childhood. One hundred percent. And who is Wiktoria Sendrowska? Who are her friends? Definitely not victims, that was for sure. But could they be equated with the perpetrators? Yes, in a way—after all, they had allowed the virus to become active and force them to inflict terror on others. Only this time, the terror wasn’t aimed at the vulnerable, but at the offenders. A bit like the superheroes in movies who have to choose whether to use their special powers for good or evil. Legally the cause was obvious: these people were criminals, and they should be locked up before they got too full of themselves and started cutting people’s feet off for the deadly sin of jaywalking.