B008GRP3XS EBOK

by Wiesiek Powaga

  Rud found himself back at the hospital. Luckily, his injuries were not serious. This time he had more freedom and could follow the course of treatment. The plastic surgery done on this occasion was successful and even improved his looks. The stitches were so skilfully sewn there was no sign of red scars. He no longer looked like a monster. He also agreed to the cosmetic removal of his three split fingernails. The operation was done without anaesthetic but he had known worse pain. When the fingernails grew back his hands should also regain their normal look. Only two of his fingers were missing-their- last two joints.

  On the whole he was lucky. The enraged Eckhardt might have killed him. Even when Rud was lying on the ground, covered with blood and unconscious, he did not stop beating him. Maria tried to restrain him but he pushed her away, and only her screaming attracted the guards who finally overpowered the attacker. The entire stock of tobacco he had saved and kept in his pocket had disappeared. He did not know if Eckhardt had managed to frisk his pockets or whether he had been robbed in the hospital.

  The stay in the hospital turned out to be a generally pleasant experience. The food was excellent: every day a litre of turnip soup with a proper meaty supplement - a thick slice of liver sausage in which he could sometimes find fragments of print, or a solid cut of faintly putrid brawn. And on top of that a pound of black bread. In the evenings, another quarter of a loaf of bread and a saucer of very sweet beetroot marmalade. He could drink strong, bitter coffee to his heart's content. He could even get it between meals if he took his mug to the kitchen. The big, heavy-breasted cook, Marusia, grumbled but in the end always lifted the lid off a huge pot and with an enormous ladle covered with dried drips poured out the dark, lukewarm liquid. He had to fish out the flies himself; a whirling mass of them was constantly swarming around the pots.

  There was always something left from those generous portions and Rud, bartering with others, quickly managed to put away a new stock of tobacco and three packets of chewing gum, which was enough to arrange the transfer to Panfilova. He did not like her as much now when he thought about Maria, but he trusted her. She was an excellent surgeon and Rud's appearance still required a lot of corrections.

  When he had managed to save more, he bartered it with a guard for a leather jacket. It was a good deal: the jacket was worn, the leather thin and cracked here and there, but it fitted him perfectly. The obligatory letters ZP, the number and a small, neat pentagram were embroidered by the old ladies from the women's ward, who also carefully stitched up the cracks. They did it in exchange for tobacco and for the flowers from the hospital garden. The stench on the wards was unbearable and the flowers did not help, but at least the old ladies liked looking at them. Keeping flowers on the ward was forbidden and they had to accomplish feats of ingenuity to hide them during the doctors' rounds. Rud could not comprehend this love for dying flowers. He noted however that it didn't diminish with age. And anyway, it was thanks to this love that instead of the grey camp garb he now wore the guard's jacket. He could not leave the hospital's grounds so the exchange took place at the end of the garden, where Rud would sit on a bench, a few metres away from the path used by the healthy. He would sit there also for another reason: he hoped to see Maria passing. He never did, though. He had some chewing gum for her; the nicotine sort, there was no other.

  The healthy inmates could sit on that bench too, but they hardly ever did; maybe they were afraid of catching something. That particular day he found an Un-born there, a girl. He sat next to her.

  "Sit on the other side and give me some shade. I don't want to get sunburnt again," he heard her voice in his head.

  He complied with her request and the little human body was swathed in deep shadow.

  "Tell me a story about when you went to school," said the voice in his head. The little girl stared at him with her dark green fish-eyes, sucking her pink, almost transparent finger. Rud noticed the tiny fingernails.

  "I don't remember much," he said. "I never liked school. Once, I had a frog in my pocket and it escaped. I shared a desk with a boy who used to catch flies and pull their wings out and then drown them in drops of ink. The wretched flies would go round and round drawing blue circles and lines on the desk. Then he would spear them with a nib. Later, we had biros. It was difficult to stick the flies on a biro. Only our history teacher forbade us to write with biros. He said they weren't proper pens."

  "Did the girls spear flies too?"

  "No. They were always busy doing sums. They were more serious than the boys, apparently. It changed later."

  "They started to spear flies?"

  "No, that's not what I meant ... Once, it was a history lesson, when one of the boys got up to answer a question I stuck about twenty drawing-pins through a page and made a sort of fakir's mat. He sat down and jumped in the air. The teacher gave a long speech and threw me out of the classroom. I was very proud of myself. I wanted to show off before one girl, and I think it worked. During the break I had a fight with that boy. I tore off his collar and he two of my buttons."

  "I've got a problem," interrupted the girl.

  "What problem?"

  "I have to choose my age, which I'll stay in for ever. I can't decide. There's no rush but at some point I'll have to make my mind up."

  "It's easy, isn't it?" he said without a moment of hesitation. "Choose the age at which a woman is most beautiful. That is, when you would be most beautiful."

  "That's just what I don't like," he heard her answer. "You see, Ruder, when they are most beautiful, that's when they kill us. I don't want to look like that."

  He wondered what to say for a while but decided not to continue with the subject.

  "How do you know my name?" he asked.

  "You're that guard Ruder who was beaten up by another guard and now you're recovering from the attack. Maria told me.

  "I'm not a guard, or an Interrogator, or a Leader. I've only bought the guard's clothes because they're nicer than the camp-issue. Tell Maria. Please."

  She nodded her disproportionately big head of a foetus.

  "I shall," her voice came out from the middle of his brain. "Listen, how about being a little schoolgirl, or an elderly lady: silver hair, glasses, well-preserved figure, lovely hands. It would be nice, wouldn't it?"

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "I've chosen Patricia, because it's strange."

  "But pretty, nevertheless."

  "You see, Ruder, the foulest thing they've done to me is that they deprived me of my childhood. It must be a great time. Everybody I ask tells me such interesting things, even those who complain that they had an unhappy childhood. I'll always look the age I choose, but any one can do it. But others have already lived their lives and they've already looked like that, first they were young, then they were old. With me it's different, strange, artificial, as if I had to become another person..

  Rud thought that he too must have chosen the age he was in ... Only those damn effects of Greater Punishment .. .

  She asked him to put her down on the ground. He took her tiny body in his hands. Dressed in the regular, camp-issue jacket, little trousers and miniature clogs, she easily fitted on the palm of his hand. He put his hand on the path so she could safely step-out.-

  "Thank you," he heard in his head.

  "Patricia, who sat you on the bench?"

  "A nice old man," she explained. "I like sitting on the bench talking to the Born. They tell interesting stories. When I see Maria I'll tell her. Bye, Ruder."

  She opened up a tiny parasol which shaded her bald head and toddled off. Rud stretched till his joints cracked.

  That bench could be called the Bench of Interesting Meetings. During his trading activities he met so many people. Rud was the only patient on the ward who had no restrictions on his movements. He made good use of it. The whole trade between the patients and the world of the healthy passed through his hands. He was an honest middle-man. From each transaction he would take only a small provision for himself but e
ven with that he managed to amass great quantities of the precious commodities available in the Centre. It came to the point where he did not know what to do with it all. He experienced a strange feeling of possessing everything that it was possible to possess. He could afford anything, any object in the Centre, except a gun. He could even buy a dog from a guard, if he so fancied. Perhaps even a gun, if he dared to risk it. All he was missing was Maria, so that he could impress her with his riches. But for some reason she did not come.

  Instead, he met other people. They often crossed the path for a chat. He tried to avoid the really old men. Most of them were gaga and had nothing interesting to say. His dislike for the Un-born had gone, but they too were boring, asking him about different, trivial details of everyday life, about all the things they were barred from experiencing themselves. There was an Un-born boy, named Albert, who used to wear him out with his questions about skiing. At the first meeting Rud had carelessly mentioned that he used to ski. He only wanted to show off, for in fact he did not remember much. Since then he had to describe to Albert all the kinds of slopes, snow, everything about the equipment and anything remotely connected with skiing. The little one was very quick and immediately thwarted all Rud's attempts at confabulation with the invariable: "Cut the crap, mate. Tell me what it's really like." Albert was a ski fanatic. He was interested in everything to do with skiing. Sometimes he would invent stories about how he skied himself, and he told them to Rud. He would question him afterwards as to whether he had made any material errors and whether he could really ski like that. Rud nodded, occasionally throwing in a detail or two.

  But he could not wait to see the Little Brown Riding Hood, as in his thoughts he called Patricia.

  One day a young man came up to him, who reminded him of someone; he was only a bit shorter than Rud, and thinner.

  "Hi, Ruder. I'm leaving here. I've come to see you and say goodbye," he said.

  "Have we met? Remind me." Rud half shut his eyes to see better and to help his memory.

  "Never mind, I know you. You didn't want to teach me fishing. You were a good angler and I could be one too."

  "But there are no fish here," responded Rud, still unable to remember where he had met him.

  The other shrugged his shoulders.

  "That's exactly the reason. Now it's too late. Well, ciao Rud. See you around. Perhaps," he added walking away.

  "What's your name?" Rud shouted after him.

  "Rolf. It won't mean anything to you, I chose the name myself."

  Rud followed him with his eyes for a long while. The figure, the look, were very familiar. When next day he was shaving in front of the mirror he made an amazing discovery: Rolf looked almost like a copy of Rud, maybe a bit thinner, a bit younger. The only difference was the eyes - blue-green, like Dianna's.

  Maria still did not come. Once, lazing out on the bench, he spotted the characteristic toddling figure in brown hood and a tiny parasol.

  "Patricia!" he called after her.

  She turned her hairless face of a foetus, wincing as a gust of bitter-sweet smoke blew over from the crematorium.

  "Do you want to sit with me?" he asked her.

  "Yes, but not for long. I'm in a hurry," he heard her voice in his brain.

  She came closer. He lowered his hand so she could step on it and lifted her like a crumb to the seat of the bench. Then he sat next to her protecting her from the sun, though at first he forgot.

  "Where are you hurrying then?" he asked.

  "I want to see the new transport. I like watching the new arrivals."

  "Watching?" he was surprised. "I've never seen the Un-born watching a transport ...

  "There's a place where we can wait unnoticed. It's a viewing gallery for the Un-born, though they hardly ever go there ... It's on the roof of that building where they bring the new arrivals; the gallery is just behind the gutter."

  "That's the committee building where they announce who's going for Greater Punishment and who doesn't need to," explained Rud.

  "Does the Committee decide?"

  "No, the documentation with decisions is already there. The Committee only administers: this one goes there, that one there and so on ... Piles of paperwork."

  "I've never seen when the Un-born arrive," he heard Patricia remark.

  "They come in those metal buckets with hermetic clasps," he told her, and immediately regretted it.

  "Why do they bring us in buckets?" she asked, as if automatically, but then added: "I thought they sewed us up somewhere else, before ..."

  "Have you given Maria my message?" he broke the silence.

  "Yes."

  "What did she say?"

  "Maria is rather poor. She wants to save some food to make you a present."

  "Food? ... Present?" He could not comprehend it. "Listen, Patricia, tell Maria that I have enough food. I want to see her, not presents. I can give her whatever she likes. I've got plenty of food, up to here," he raised his hand to his throat.

  "I must go. Put me on the path."

  "Please, don't forget to tell her that," he called after her. Patricia nodded her little head in the brown hood and walked away towards the Committee building.

  Rud started cleaning his fingernails. He had just had more plastic surgery for which he had paid with the food he'd earned. Now his hands had a complete set of fingers, each with a shapely fingernail. "I didn't have better ones even before the Punishment," he stated with pleasure as the black lines changed into white.

  Maria came a few days later. When she stopped before him, Rud did not know how to start a conversation. She was so delicate, so feminine, so unsuited to the surroundings.

  "Hi," she greeted him and sat down next to him on the bench.

  He still could not find his confidence. He noted Maria's grey, unhealthy complexion.

  "I couldn't wait to see you," he said at last. "You don't look well."

  "I rarely leave the barracks," she answered after a moment's silence.

  "Don't you go to work?"

  "I don't have to."

  "Maria, do you want some food? You don't look well."

  She thought for a while.

  "OK," she said, "I'll take the food. It's never enough. When may I collect it?"

  Her voice, full of fear, had a chilling effect on him. "Doesn't she trust me?" he thought.

  "Maria, I'm not a guard, nor am I a Leader, and never was," he tried to convince her.

  "I know. You told me before." Again that tone and the distrustful face. It began to irritate him: "Can't she trust me, or what?"

  "Come tomorrow. I'll give you some food," he told her.

  "OK," she said, and quickly left.

  The following day Rud gave her four big loaves of black bread, almost his entire stock. He added to it two thick slices of brawn wrapped up in brown paper. She did not want to eat it in his presence and put everything into a big kerchief. She refused the tobacco and chewing gum. He helped her to hoist it over her head and shoulders so that the load was resting on her back and the knot below her neck. Rud was annoyed: he wanted to talk to her and the meeting had turned out to be nothing more than repacking the food. It hurt his pride.

  They had several meetings after that; each the same. Altogether they exchanged no more than a hundred words. He suspected she knew how he had been crippled during Greater Punishment, and he managed to come to terms with the fact that their meetings had to be limited to the exchange of goods. He was content with seeing her, catching the fleeting fragrance of her hair, a glimmer in her eyes, watching the way she moved.

  Once, he asked about her past.

  "Nothing particular," she shrugged her shoulders, "A quiet girl, eighteen quiet years. I was a bit of a loner. Nothing to interest you."

  He didn't pursue the subject although soon afterwards he realised that that was precisely the interesting part.

  Another time he asked her what she did with the food.

  "There's hunger on the barracks," she answered. "Do you
know how they damage women during Greater Punish ment? How they mutilate them? What state they're in? Literally in shreds. And on top of that they starve them ..." She stopped abruptly, as if afraid she had said too much.

  "I know about Greater Punishment," he said emphatically. "They damage men too."

  "Did you take part in the interrogations? ..." The familiar expression of fear returned to her face.

  He turned his head in denial. "I'll never convince this silly girl," he thought.

  "Maria, I served Greater Punishment," he stressed, perhaps too anxiously. "I too was released mutilated and crippled."

  "It doesn't show."

  He realised how difficult it was to convince her, since all the signs of torture had been carefully removed during a series of plastic surgeries. Even his piss-pipe, after several surgical corrections, looked little different from the original. The old scars had faded, and the post-operation scars were so thin and skilfully hidden in the folds of his skin that he could hardly find them himself. Perhaps his teeth might be considered too straight and a touch too white. Perhaps his ears were not ideal, but they were hidden by the long, thick black hair which, after a series of implants, perfectly covered his previously bald head. "In fact my hair is even thicker now than the hair I had towards the end of my stay on the other side ..." he thought, passing his hand through his hair.

  "What's all this rubbish on your head?" he changed the subject and began to comb through the strands of her hair, pulling out straws and dry leaves. She did not object and even moved closer so that he did not have to stretch his hand. But at the same time she grew tense and stiff.

  "Where have you picked it up?" he asked, putting all the straws one by one on the palm of her hand.

  "The pillow must have a hole," she answered, "or it comes out of the mattress, from the bunk above me. An old lady sleeps there. She coughs all night and every time she has a cough she leaks. In the morning there's always a new, wet patch on the mattress." Maria's voice changed. He noticed that for the first time she was relaxed.