‘That’s putting it nicely,’ Ryszard said. He flicked his tongue over his front teeth. ‘It seems I’ve fallen out of favour.’ He said that his latest project, about a steel factory worker who lost his job following a conflict with the boss, had been deemed “contrary to the interests of national welfare”. The Party had banned the film in Poland and pulled the funding for his next project. ‘There’s nothing left for me here,’ he said.
Małgorzata elbowed him. ‘Excuse me, what about your wife and baby? And all this.’ She gestured around the apartment.
‘You know what I mean.’ Ryszard lowered his voice. ‘A man has to work, has to support his family. Otherwise what use is he?’
‘If you want to be useful, pour me a nip.’ Małgorzata held up her glass. ‘Half a nip. It helps with the nausea believe it or not.’ She patted her belly, its flatness belying the life that had sparked within.
I was in awe of her. Over these next months, she would double herself. She would make a pair of hands and feet, a mouth and neck and spine. There would be two hearts pulsing inside her body.
9
‘Are you sure this is still Wrocław?’ I asked Krzysio as we got off the tram at Fabryczna. Dariusz hopped off behind us. Stray weeds skidded along the tram tracks. A young boy came our way, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with bricks. A girl in a tatty green dress was perched by the bricks, her bare legs dangling over the side of the wheelbarrow.
Krzysio waited for them to pass us before stepping over the tram tracks. ‘This is why they call it the Wild West.’
For me, Wrocław was the epitome of sophistication, so I’d never understood the term. However, out here things were different. The buildings by the tram tracks were crumbling, their windows boarded up. They were flanked by mountains of rubbish: wedges of concrete and planks sieved with dust. This was a place the rest of the city wanted to forget.
Dariusz kicked a broken bottle out of his way. ‘Next time I’m choosing where we go on a date.’
‘Come on,’ Krzysio said. ‘This will be educational.’
Like me, Dariusz was from a small town. When Krzysio found out that neither of us had been far beyond the city square, he decided we needed to see the ‘real Wrocław’. I wasn’t convinced it was worth the trip. We had to catch a bus and two trams to get here. Before we reached Fabryczna, a couple of militiamen had approached us on the tram, demanding that Krzysio remove his badge of a peace sign. ‘I didn’t know it was illegal,’ Krzysio said. His fingernail made a flicking sound against the plastic badge. The militiamen barricaded us from the other passengers, their legs spread ostentatiously. Dariusz made a point of meeting their gaze. The militiamen exchanged glances before one of them smirked and tilted his gun at the badge. ‘It’s a bit fruity for men to wear jewellery, isn’t it?’
Now, as we made our way along the rubble path by the tram tracks, Krzysio dug the badge out of his pocket and pinned it back on.
He and Dariusz walked side by side, Dariusz stopping to flick a bit of dirt off his shoe. In many ways he and Krzysio were a mismatched couple. Yet when they held hands, their differences seemed right together.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘About what happened on the tram. I should have done something.’
‘It’s not worth getting arrested over a badge.’ Krzysio bent to scratch behind the ears of a skinny dog that was trailing at his heels.
‘It wasn’t just the badge,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Krzysio said. ‘But men like that are always going to be scared of guys like us.’
Dariusz said, ‘You know what I was tempted to do? Fix the badge to one of their jackets. It would look good against green, wouldn’t it?’
‘I would’ve loved to have seen that,’ Krzysio said with a laugh.
Krzysio’s grandmother had lived in Fabryczna before she died, so he knew the area well. As we walked, he pointed out a pile of rubble where a church had been bombed during the war. A couple of slashed tyres lay on top of the debris.
‘We should have brought Małgorzata along,’ I said. ‘I can see her taking photos of all this. ‘The Wild West – not a bad name for an exhibition.’
‘You’re starting to think like her,’ Krzysio said. ‘Who knows where that will lead …’
The dog, which had stopped to inspect the grass, now ran over to us. It bounded onto the tyres before losing interest and jumping back down. The dog scurried over to a ditch at the side of the road. It sniffed around the edge and then slid out of sight.
‘If he got in, he should be able to get out.’ Krzysio kicked of pebble towards the ditch.
‘Even so …’ Dariusz said.
We followed Dariusz towards the ditch and peered over. The dog looked content, prodding a pile of metal scraps with its nose. When it caught sight of us it scrambled out.
‘You see, he’s fine,’ Krzysio said.
As the boys talked, I crouched by the ditch, my sights set on the metal. I took off my coat and folded it, arranging it on a patch of grass. ‘Give me a hand,’ I said.
They gripped my wrists, lowering me down a muddy bank the height of my chest. Mud sucked at my shoes as I examined the metal pieces. They were all the same shape: a circle studded with holes around the perimeter and set with a hexagon in the middle. I held up a piece of metal to the others. ‘Take it.’
‘Really?’ Dariusz said. ‘It’s filthy.’
I passed the metal to Krzysio, then another, and then Dariusz caved in and helped, periodically stopping to wipe his hands on the grass. They pulled me out of the ditch, the dirt scraping against my chest and legs.
‘You look a sight,’ Dariusz said with a laugh. ‘Let’s hope we don’t bump into any more militiamen on the way home. We won’t exactly blend in – two queers and a woman covered in mud.’
Krzysio was squatting by the collection of metal I’d passed up. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘these are car parts. Clutch discs by the look of it. I don’t understand why someone would dump them like this.’
‘They’re incredible shapes,’ I said, joining him. ‘You know, I could use them in a sculpture.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You could do that. How about you use some for your art and we’ll sell the rest. Help our friends in prison.’
It was a selfish impulse, wanting to keep the car parts for myself. I tried to put aside my regret that I wouldn’t be able to work with metal after all. ‘Your idea is better,’ I said.
We decided to return in a car to collect the metal and keep our fingers crossed that no one else got to it first. Even though I couldn’t use the discs for my art, I was still entranced by them. Identical objects, but for the markings of water and rust. Each one a sculpture in its own right.
10
‘Where did they come from?’ Dominik asked. We were in Krzysio’s bedroom and he was inspecting a photograph that Małgorzata had taken of the car parts.
‘We know as much as you do,’ Krzysio said. ‘It’s strange.’
‘It’s a story, that’s what it is,’ Dominik said.
‘We can all rest easy now that Dominik’s on the case.’ Małgorzata rearranged herself on the floor. She placed her hand on her small belly, the way she did these days.
Krzysio’s plans to sell the parts had come to nothing. Małgorzata had spoken to a mechanic who’d told her they weren’t worth much. Clutch discs were just about the only car part available in the shops. They usually lasted for years anyway, so there wasn’t a need for them on the black market.
I couldn’t help but be excited. Ever since I’d seen the discs, I’d been thinking about the possibilities they offered. I didn’t know if I had the technical skills to work with metal but I wanted to try.
Dominik slipped the photos in his satchel and then wriggled up behind me, looping his arms around my waist. The press of him sent a heat through my body and I strained to concentrate on the music that Krzysio wanted us to listen to. A friend of Dariusz’s had gone to a concert in Berlin and recorded it on a tape deck. It was an Engl
ish punk band and Dariusz said that once we heard their music we would never be able to forget it. The recording was muffled, as though we were listening to it over a bad phoneline. It was layered with the sounds of the audience: the low buzz of voices and a girl’s incessant laughter. I strained to hear the lyrics. Isolation … Isolation.
‘What does that mean?’ Krzysio asked. Unlike Dominik and me, he had learned German at school, rather than English.
‘It’s about being alone,’ I told him. ‘Where no one can reach you.’
‘Goes to show that Poles don’t have a monopoly on suffering after all,’ Małgorzata said. She straightened up and said, ‘I might as well tell you our news.’
Krzysio patted the small mound of her stomach. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got more than one baby in there … Now that you’re showing, does it mean you get to push to the front of queues?’
Dominik grazed my earlobe with his lips before he spoke. ‘Maybe after the baby’s born you can go shopping with a pillow stuffed under your dress so you don’t have to wait in line.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Małgorzata spread her legs and shifted position on the floor. ‘There are no queues in Paris. You walk straight into a shop and buy whatever you want. Easy as that.’
The tape crackled, and in the pause between songs, a male voice from the crowd said in English, Fuck I need a beer.
Krzysio turned it down. ‘What?’
Małgorzata’s cheeks flushed. It was the first time I had seen her look self-conscious.
‘It’s Ryszard,’ she said. ‘You know he can’t get work anymore. And when he’s not working he gets depressed. He puts on a good show when other people are around, but when we’re alone all he does is lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling like he’s a man who’s sentenced to be hanged. I can’t have him bothering me all day long. I need my space. I want him to go back to being the man I married. Someone who’s busy. Someone who’s excited by life.’
There was an exhale of breath, hot against my neck. ‘You’re moving there for good?’ Dominik asked.
‘We’ve got visas to leave the country for three months. If we stay longer, we won’t be allowed back.’
There had been times, in the past, when I entertained the notion of Małgorzata going away. Leaving me here with Dominik. Now that it was happening, a different type of jealousy pricked at my chest. I had missed out on going to Paris because of everything that was happening in our country. And now Małgorzata was moving there. Why was it that for her, everything was simple?
‘Paris,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been. You’ll have to write to us, tell us what it’s like.’
My disappointment must have been clear because Dominik squeezed my hand. In a low voice, he said, ‘Sorry.’
Without a word, Krzysio walked out of the bedroom. Małgorzata picked at a cuticle with her teeth while Dominik examined the tapes in Krzysio’s collection.
Krzysio returned, a bottle of Krupnik in hand. ‘We should celebrate.’ He gave us each a glass and poured us nips.
Dominik pointed his drink in the direction of Małgorzata. ‘Na zdrowie to the little Parisian.’
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m going to make sure he knows he’s a Pole.’
The Krupnik warmed my lips with its cinnamon and honey. I wasn’t being fair on Małgorzata. This was the best thing for her and her family. Besides, I had no reason to be jealous – she was giving up her home. Though I would have loved to visit Paris, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my country as a result.
I took another sip of Krupnik before asking Małgorzata, ‘You’re counting on a boy?’
‘It better be. Girls are too much trouble. And they have all these weird hang-ups about their mothers.’ She tapped me lightly on the leg. ‘You know how it is.’
‘My mother’s dead.’ I gave her a tight smile.
‘Oh God, sorry, I forgot.’ Małgorzata clapped her hand over her mouth.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Dominik stroked some hair away from my cheek.
Krzysio glanced at me apologetically and then said, ‘Małgorzata’s right about one thing, this baby’s going to know its roots. We’ll feed them the best of Polish punk.’ He pushed himself up from the floor and inserted a tape by Deadlock into the mouth of the deck.
‘More booze while you’re at it,’ Dominik held up his glass.
Krzysio poured us each a shot of the tea-coloured liquid. I drank mine while Dominik looked on, his glass already empty.
11
Now that the weather was warmer, the other students were spending more time in the studio. I missed the days when I worked here alone, wrapped in two jumpers and a pair of fingerless gloves, trying to order my thoughts in the cold.
With the help of Krzysio, I’d transported the car parts to the studio. I’d spent the morning arranging them in different patterns, trying to see what looked right. I was laying out the discs concentrically when Professor Jankowski appeared. He headed straight for the girl who was going to Paris in my place. From my corner of the room, I had been keeping an eye on her progress. She had chosen an unconventional material for her sculpture: nettles. There was a huge pile of them on the floor; they had long stems and ridged leaves and the other students took a wide berth of them when they walked past. As the professor approached, the girl pulled off her pink rubber gloves and explained the piece to him. She said that she was weaving the nettles into a long dress which would hang from gallery ceiling. The sculpture was called, A Walk Through the Polish Fields.
Professor Jankowski pressed his fist to his lips before saying, ‘It’s not your most original piece.’
‘I can change it,’ she said quickly.
‘No need. It will go down well in Paris. Especially with that title – it’ll give the critics something to write about.’ The professor bent over and picked up a nettle stem in his ungloved hand. He shuddered and held it a moment longer before letting it fall to the ground. ‘Nettles remind me of my childhood. My grandmother had a garden full of them. Even though I knew they would sting, I couldn’t stop myself from touching them. What do you make of that?’
The girl looked at the ceiling as though it would give her the answer. ‘Well, Jung would say that …’
‘Jung.’ He exhaled loudly. ‘Jung didn’t drink enough, that was his problem.’ He inspected his hand and then said, ‘The sting’s gone now.’
The girl watched the professor walk away. She stroked a nettle leaf against the back of her hand and winced.
I tried not to think about Paris and went back to rolling a clutch disc along the floor, listening to the scrape of metal against wood.
‘I see you’re taking my advice about making a sculpture that won’t melt,’ the professor said, giving me a start. He was always so quiet when he walked around the studio, deciding who to pounce on. I wondered if he was still annoyed with me for turning down Paris.
‘Metal is an unforgiving material,’ he went on. ‘Very masculine. Do you know how to work with it?’
I shook my head. I had no idea how to tame metal and that was part of the attraction.
He said, ‘I’ll show you how to weld. My friend has a workspace we can use. We’ll go next week.’ He got up and strode over to a girl who was standing at the table, sketching.
The professor was right. Metal was a masculine material, the stuff of guns and tanks. If I was going to work with it I had to find a way to use it slyly, with a wink in the other direction. Take the notion of hardness and turn it on its head.
That afternoon, Dominik and I met for obiad at the bar mleczny near the Academy. We sat at a table in a back corner of the room and while he excavated a boiled potato I told him about my day in the studio.
‘I can’t wait to see what you come up with next,’ he said. He screwed the lid off a shaker and used his finger to scrape salt into the potato.
‘You’re worse than Father. Do you want a heart attack?’
Dominik forked some potato into his mouth and g
ave a happy sigh. ‘What’s the point of living a long life if you don’t get to enjoy your food?’ He took another bite. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing him again. To tell you the truth, I was a bit out of sorts last time. It’s a big deal, meeting the father of the woman you want to marry.’
When he said this, the diner got smaller, enclosing just the two of us, enclosing me in the warmth of his smile. ‘You did fine.’ I reached for his hand, feeling the ridges of skin in the middle of his fingers and the bones underneath. ‘Father loved you.’
My travel permit had finally been approved. I was going back to the village as soon as the university term ended. Dominik had also applied for a permit and we hoped he would be able to join me. The other day I had called Father at the post office to tell him I was coming home soon. ‘What about Paris?’ he had asked. ‘I can’t go,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t feel right.’ When he didn’t say anything, I added, ‘You didn’t raise me that way.’ Father had sighed and said, ‘Don’t follow my example or you’ll end up a poor gravedigger.’ His breath sounded raspy and I asked him what the doctor had said about it. ‘Just a cold,’ he said. ‘Everyone in the village has had it.’
Dominik speared some boiled carrot from my plate and brought it to his mouth. ‘When I finish this story we’ll have earned ourselves a holiday in the country. The editor thinks it’s going to be big news. She’s talking about putting it on page two.’
For the last few weeks, Dominik had been investigating the engine parts we’d found in Fabryczna. I didn’t see why they warranted so much of his time, especially given everything else that was going on in Poland. ‘Are dumped car parts really such a big deal?’ I asked.
‘Not on their own they’re not. But they’re symbolic.’
‘Of what?’
‘Waste.’ He punctuated the word with his fork. ‘Corruption. A massive economic crisis. You know how much debt our country is in? Twenty billion American dollars. The government is borrowing and borrowing and spending and spending without actually planning what we need. That’s why the clutch discs are important, because they’re part of a bigger problem. It turns out that the same thing has happened with other goods. Televisions, saucepans and even, it pains me to say, cigarettes. Can you believe it? When some bureaucrat orders too much of a certain product they dump it somewhere to cover up their mistake.’ He leaned forward and cupped my chin. ‘It’s a big story, Aniusieńka. And I’ve got you to thank for it.’
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