B008GRP3XS EBOK

by Wiesiek Powaga

  "It never drips but it's always wet through," she said. "She must have a good measure in her eye to know how much she can drink before going to bed-. .."

  "She has a measure in her bladder," he joked.

  For the first time she laughed.

  "Milankiewicz!" Behind them stood Panfilova. "Talking to the healthy is forbidden outside visiting hours. Report to the registry immediately."

  It had to be important if Panfilova bothered to inform him personally. He followed her. Once more he turned his head to see Maria walking in the opposite direction, slightly bent under the weight of her bundle. She too turned her head to see him and he caught a glance of her green eyes. Normally dull, now they shone. Her jaw was still a bit too square.

  As long as he traded food nobody bothered him. When he started supplying it for free to Maria's mates in the barracks he was released from the hospital. It was a disciplinary removal. He had long recovered and felt fine, but he kept signing up for cosmetic surgery which cost him a lot of liver sausage, bread, tobacco and chewing gum. Someone must have become scared people would start talking and the same day Rud found himself back on the barracks.

  Neuheufel was not around. Others, those more active, had gone to work, and there were only old infirm men left on the ward. They lay or squatted on their bunks rocking rhythmically. The ward, unaired since the morning, stank like hell. Most of those left behind were incontinent. By now Rud had forgotten how powerful was that ordinary, everyday barrack smell; in the hospital, he had shared his ward with eight patients.

  He could not bear the stink much longer. He went out to the kiosk for a drink of orangeade. He was hoping vaguely to see Maria there.

  As usual, there was a lively crowd at the kiosk. The conversations were a garbled torrent of mumbled words issuing from the old toothless mouths. "How do they communicate?" Rud often wondered.

  The day was hot. Rud joined the queue behind a fat victim of a heart attack who was perspiring and gasping like a fish. A moment later two terribly emaciated women of over fifty stopped behind him. They were talking with a female Interrogator wearing a hat with the pentagram about the new transports.

  The Interrogator was saying that any day they expected huge new transports of different ages: young, old, women, children, but most of all - a lot of young men. Something would be happening at last. Rud watched the wood behind the wires with aversion. The mere memory of the expedition for timber made his nose itch. One of the thin women pulled up her shirt to show the other women a horrific long scar across her back. She said it was from the removal of a kidney tumour.

  Someone jumped up from a table and moved towards him.

  "Dandy!" the voice roared. "Gotcha, you shit!"

  Eckhardt, red with fury, was pushing towards him like an enraged bull.

  "You fuckin' shit! So you fancy other people's girlfriends? I'll cure you," Eckhardt took a huge swipe. The queue scattered. The female Interrogator didn't even try to intervene; she was unarmed.

  Rud dived under the huge arm which swung at him like the hammer of a bell. He did it so deftly Eckhardt could not stop the blow in time and crashed his fist full swing into the kiosk's wooden wall. The boards rattled. The surprised saleswoman put her head out and started screaming.

  Eckhardt grimaced with pain as he clasped his bruised fist. His handsome face, distorted with suffering, seemed less thought-resistant. He waited through the first pain and took another swipe. He did not pull out his truncheon; the last time he had, he was deprived of his position as a Leader and had his food rations cut for a whole month. Rud knew that and was not afraid of the black rubber truncheon behind Eckhardt's belt.

  All the time Eckhardt threw insults, cursing Rud, trying to frighten him, and encourage himself. He called him a "bozo of the infirmary", "a greedy skirt-chaser", "a crab-louse playing a guard" and so on. He also shouted out a litany of less refined invective. Rud would not be provoked and stayed calm. Eckhardt waved his arms like a windmill but his imprecise punches were either missing Rud or were easily parried. Rud did not hit hard, saving his strength for one big slug. A couple of times he checked Eckhardt with perfect left jabs on the chin till the latter's head bounced back. But he was still being forced back by the heavier and stronger, though slower, opponent.

  He waited for the right moment until, after one of the countered punches Eckhardt lowered the guard on his chin. This time Rud swung it. The powerful blow stopped Eckhardt dead in his tracks. Half-conscious, he only managed to wave his hand in the air trying limply to connect, before a second, even more powerful blow felled him to the ground.

  Hissing with pain, Rud clutched his right fist; he had smashed his knuckles on his opponent's jaw He only wished Maria could see his victory.

  Rud had no unpleasant consequences to face because of the fight with Eckhardt. He was saved by the female Interrogator who had seen how it all started. Her name was Kohlengruber. She was the typist at Rud's first medical examination after the transfer from below.

  "I didn't recognise you, Milankiewicz," she said after the preliminary hearing when they stopped for a chat. "Your artificial leg doesn't show at all."

  "They didn't cut my leg off," he said.

  Kohlengruber reeked of perfume and had long bright red fingernails. Maria cut her fingernails short and never painted them.

  "Fancy that." She was surprised. "They managed to save even such a smashed up leg. How economical. Do you know, Milankiewicz, how much you would have had to pay for a new artificial leg? A fortune. You would never pay it back," she answered her own question.

  "Crazy woman," he thought. "Lucky she testified with some sense.

  After a break he had to go back to correcting Neuheufel's essays. He hated the job but dared not refuse. The new confidence he had acquired while in hospital was not enough to tackle Neuheufel. And so he struggled with the messy print-outs of tables. The complicated rules of calculation seemed muddy and unduly complex.

  "Not bad, Milankiewicz, you've got back your old looks from before Greater Punishment," said Neuheufel, looking at him closely. "Practically no difference ... no scars ... Excellent job."

  He pulled out a big, colour photo of Rud from his briefcase.

  "Stop staring at the papers, raise your head," he said and carefully compared Rud's face with that on the photo. "Practically the same," he repeated. "The Punishment has left no trace."

  "There is one. And an important one," he burst out. "I piss through a stuck-on pipe."

  According to an unwritten rule this subject was taboo. Even the oldest of inmates avoided it and pretended there was nothing amiss, despite the big wet patches of urine drying on their trousers. On top of that, some of them stank of the excrement constantly escaping from their artificial recta.

  "Have you still got the same pipe?" asked Neuheufel ironically.

  "Well, no ... I've had some plastic surgery," admitted Rud.

  "Exactly. And what? What does it look like now? Different from before?"

  "It looks good, the same as before the Punishment, but that's not the point ..." Rud stopped, embarrassed.

  "Ha ha ha," laughed Neuheufel. "I'm sure you don't get up to much if you gobble up all that bromine. Marusia puts that shit into coffee with a shovel. What did you think, Milankiewicz?" asked Neuheufel emphatically. "Why does everybody drink coffee here? A fine mess we'd be in if you all started chasing skirt. We won't have it."

  Rud was speechless with astonishment. Seeing that he had not convinced him yet, Neuheufel added with emphasis:

  "You're a normal, healthy man now and from the medical point of view the treatment of the after-effects of Greater Punishment can be pronounced a complete success. These things are parts of your own body - not grafts or implants. You look exactly the same as when you were thirty, and this age and these looks suit you best. They do, don't they?"

  "Yes," answered Rud. He felt wings growing out of his shoulders. "Does this mean that not only my physical looks but my general state have returned to norm
al?" He was trying to make sure.

  "It means exactly what I said."

  There was a silence. Rud returned to work. He wanted to see Maria as soon as possible and tell her what he had just heard. He wanted to shout out that he was a healthy man again. He was carefully rewriting long columns of figures and then adding and multiplying them.

  "Anyway, your injuries weren't really objective ..." muttered Neuheufel all of a sudden. "You only felt like that since that was your punishment..

  Rud didn't answer. He didn't understand.

  "Besides, I thought you'd already figured it out yourself, Milankiewicz," carried on Neuheufel, "since you went completely bonkers about that kid from 971C."

  You mean Maria?" he let it slip.

  "I don't like that name," Neuheufel winced. "They shouldn't give it to anyone. And let's say it openly - she's ugly," he added, rummaging through his briefcase. "So pale, her skin grey and transparent, you can see all the fat ... And her hair ... Weird colour. In fact, it's no colour at all if she forgets to put her highlights in . . ." Neuheufel carried on with disdain. "And that protruding jaw, she must be a pretty mean character ... Fishy eyes, dull, no spark in them, kind of torpid, like in a foetus ... Pale lips, pale nipples . . . " he continued as if remembering the details. "Terrible figure: bum like a chest of drawers, and sort of cracked the wrong way ... Left tit twice as big as the right, one pointing up, the other down . . ." Neuheufel let out an obscene cackle, illustrating what he meant with his thumbs.

  "You're lying, you filthy swine! Leave her alone!" screamed Rud, and like a cat he threw himself at Neuheufel, aiming for the throat. The chair flew back, papers on the desk scattered. The old men cowered terrified on their bunks.

  Neuheufel nonchalantly swung his hand, hitting Rud in mid-air. Rud bounced off like a ball and rolled across the floor. The power of Neuheufel's blow was unbelievable.

  "You? Getting at me? At an Interrogator?" he asked. He didn't even raise his voice.

  Rud, bruised and aching, picked himself up from the floor which oozed with the stench of urine. He had cut his head on the corner of a wooden bunk.

  "Come here, you shit," ordered Neuheufel. "Have a look yourself."

  He handed Rud a large sheet of paper. Rud was silent. He looked at a big colour photograph of a naked Maria. It must have been one of those documentation photos Jose had talked about. In the top right corner there was a little pentagram and Maria's number. The photo showed her standing astride, in four shots: front, back and two sides. She was not built well: breasts of unequal size with disproportionately large nipples; wide, ungainly hips. Despite that, Rud looked at the photo with great interest: it was the first time he had seen Maria naked. Her face had something subtly repulsive in it, a sort of half-smile of repressed animal lust.

  "Enough," said Neuheufel and took the photo from Rud's hands. "Now you can clean up, Milankiewicz. Pick up the chair and put the papers in order."

  The punishment for the attack on Neuheufel was a week's ban on leaving the barracks. It seemed to Rud surprisingly mild.

  He spent the week inside in stinking twilight; all that time the offended Neuheufel did not appear. Instead, Holzbucher turned up regularly, telling him to scrub the floor. Rud did not protest since he had expected something worse, and the floor only gained from the extra attention: it became lighter and did not smell of urine so much.

  Only then did he realise that the old men were being starved. During mealtimes they were often left out or were given watery portions of soup from the top of the pot. Those who could not move from their bunks suffered most.

  After seven days Holzbucher ignored Rud's presence on the ward and stopped giving him any orders. It meant that the arrest was over. Rud decided to look for Maria. Luckily, he remembered the number of her barrack mentioned by Neuheufel. He put on his guard's jacket, the same sort of trousers, the boots of artificial leather and the military hat. He wanted to look his best. Finding barrack 971C should not be difficult, as each row was clearly marked.

  The day was sunny but cool. White cirrus clouds sailed across the sky. It had not rained for a long time and the strong wind drove billows of dust along the camp streets. Rud walked for over an hour before he reached row 971. Only then did he understand what a lucky coincidence that meeting at the kiosk had been. He decided to ask Maria what had made her venture so far away from her barrack that day. He spent another hour looking for Block C, asking the women and female guards on the way. They all looked at him suspiciously, as few men strayed so deep into the female camp, and his guard's uniform made them especially cautious.

  As a man, he was not allowed into the women's barracks, so, following the regulations, he asked one of the inmates wandering outside to call out the Curator. A short, corpulent woman with a broad face came out fastening the last buttons on the blouse of her uniform. One of the lenses in her glasses was cracked. Seeing Rud, she adjusted her cap, squeezed it onto a bun of brown hair, and was about to salute him when, noticing the lack of the pentagram on his cap, she realised he was not a guard.

  "What do you want?" she snarled, regaining her confidence.

  "I want to speak to Maria."

  Hearing the name she winced.

  "We have a dozen of those here. Which one do you want?" she asked. "What's her surname?"

  "I don't know," Rud was confounded. "A young. .

  "An Un-born?"

  "No, young, that is eighteen at most; beautiful."

  "Without scars after the post-mortem? Hasn't done Greater Punishment?" she glanced at him keenly.

  "I don't know ..." He was not sure of that either.

  "Do you or don't you know who you want to speak to, Milankiewicz?" she asked harshly.

  "I want to speak to Maria. I can describe what she looks like ..."

  "There's no need," she interrupted him. "I'm the Curator here and I think I know who you mean. She used to bring stolen food from the hospital, didn't she?"

  Rud didn't answer but it was taken as confirmation.

  "The food wasn't stolen," he said after a while, realising that his silence might cause further problems for Maria. "I gave it to her."

  "Never mind. It doesn't matter now. She's not here any more.

  "What do you mean? What have you done to her? Was it because of that food?"

  "Calm down, Milankiewicz. We haven't done anything to her. She simply finished her preparation programme."

  "Finished ..." he repeated, as if still trying to understand the word.

  The curator shrugged her shoulders.

  "Entry to female barracks is forbidden, remember that," she said over her shoulder and disappeared inside.

  He tried to get in nevertheless, but it proved impossible. Each attempt was thwarted by some inner resistance: he was sweating and shivering, and could not cross the critical line. "Have they hypnotised me or what ... ?" he wondered in disbelief. In the end he gave up. Crestfallen, he dragged himself back, down the dusty road along the barracks made of black rotting boards.

  "Ruder!" he heard a shout inside his head.

  He stopped and looked around.

  "I've been out on a walk for over an hour, but if you put me on the bench it would be nice to have a chat with you," the voice spoke again in his brain. Then he noticed the characteristic tiny figure of Little Brown Riding Hood standing in the shadow of the barrack wall.

  "Patricia!" He was pleased to see her.

  The little figure climbed onto the palm of his hand. He sat down on the bench and put Patricia next to himself. This time she lay down, curling up into a tiny bundle.

  "I'm tired of wandering around. I'll have a bit of rest," she explained.

  The Un-born never adopted the foetal position in the presence of the born, trying in this way to emphasise their full human status. That she did curl up like a foetus next to Rud was a sign of great familiarity.

  "Tell me what happened to Maria," he began, "I need to see her."

  "Sorry, Ruder, Maria is no longer here. She fin
ished her stay in the Centre. She said goodbye to me yesterday."

  "And she forgot about me," said Rud in a hollow voice. "She only needed me to get food for her friends."

  "Don't be so hard on her," the voice admonished him from inside his own brain. "For the whole week, day after day, she went to your barrack to see you, but you never came out, not once. Two hours getting there, and two back ... remember."

  "She was so close . . ." he was shocked. "I was sitting out my punishment, exactly a week of arrest; today's my first day out.Ifshe'd only come to the window I could have seen her..

  "If she'd known you wanted to see her ..."

  "Those bastards!" Rud got angry. "What did they tell her about me? What? That I didn't want to see her?"

  "Maria told me that you probably got into trouble for giving her food and had had enough of her."

  Rud was silent.

  "I'm surprised," he said after a while, "that she could think that. I would've done anything she asked me to. For her ...

  "You were always so sure of yourself, so firm and confident . . ." carried on Patricia. "You simply said what you wanted of her and she gave it. She was afraid of that. You see, Maria confided in me a lot. She fell in love with you from the start, at very first sight. She fought this feeling because she thought you were a guard, and she didn't want to have anything to do with them. That was why she tried to avoid you at the beginning, though it was beyond her endurance. That's what she told me."

  "But I'm not a guard. I've never been a Leader even. I only dress like this because it's nicer than the camp garb."

  "Who can tell nowadays. The Interrogators, the guards, the Curators, they all use different methods. She couldn't be sure until you told her yourself."

  "I too fell in love with her at first sight. Now it's too late to tell her."

  "Who knows? I do know that Maria loved you. And what about you, Ruder? Yesterday Diana, today Maria, tomorrow there may be another girl on the new transport?..