‘Were you smuggling drugs?’ continued Lentz.
‘Why smuggle when you can buy them anywhere?’ he replied, amused and rocking away on his chair. ‘If I happened to want to make some money today I’d more than likely speculate in the price of rice by the ton, not powder by the kilo. It’s more profitable. I was simply flying in from Colombia, a hospitable country where they offer you the best of what they’ve got. Besides, I think the hospitality’s still got a grip on me. The rest must have stuck to my clothes and that’s what the dog smelt, but since there were only traces there was only enough to hold me for twenty-four hours, so I didn’t get to see much. Whereas I’m curious as to how long I’m going to be entertained here.’
‘Is Antoniusz Mikulski your father?’ Lentz posed another question.
Bartol couldn’t remember ever having been so disorientated. Unless this comedian was an actor, and a relatively good one, he couldn’t be the person they were looking for. The palm trees on the man’s shirt undulated with the chair.
‘Antoniusz? In a way, yes. He took me in; the kind benefactor. But I don’t have any respect for him even though he’s dead, irrespective of how he died. He didn’t even deign to tell me about Aurelia’s death and I practically thought of her like a mother. And now I’ve seen he’s got rid of everything from the house which could have been associated with me. Nice, don’t you think?’
‘Did you come across a sealed door by any chance?’
‘I did indeed, and an unsealed window vent which I’d used ever since I was little. Apparently some lawyers were looking for me, but after the way he disrespected me it’s hard to believe he left the house to me. I just wanted to go in and walk around a bit. After all, I did live there for fifteen years.’
‘I don’t know much about law, but since Mr Mikulski invalidated his earlier will, the house belongs to you. Did you know that?’ asked Lentz.
‘So that’s your game.’ He grinned broadly and blew a bubble with his gum. When it burst, he added: ‘No, I’m not the one who treated him to such an original parting. I was in South America all of last year. A great change after Asia, I assure you. So much for my alibi. As for the motive… I didn’t like him much, true enough, and where money’s concerned the dollar’s been pretty low lately but not low enough to worry me. I’ll have enough to pay for the promotion of my jail guide.’ He’d grinned all along but now started laughing to himself. ‘What do you think, what would I have to do to get twenty-four hours in a Czech jail? I’ll probably start there, I fancy a beer.’
‘I don’t know. You’ll think of something,’ replied Lentz, also laughing. ‘Do you know Edmund Wieczorek?’ he asked with a secretive expression.
‘I don’t think so but hold on, hold on, wasn’t that the name of our postman? I liked him.’
‘No doubt. You can ask him, he’s got a lot of good ideas.’
‘So the old fellow's still alive?’
‘He is, and occasionally doesn’t know what to do with his time either. You’ll get to like each other again.’
Lentz was clearly enjoying the conversation, Bartol quite the opposite. For ten minutes he’d thought he was done with the case, but only for ten minutes. Now he just wanted to hear anything, anything that would get him out of the place where he was stuck. Nothing came to him so he merely asked ’Did you ever get lost in Gniezno Cathedral?’
‘No, not me. I was careful; after all, that house was better than the orphanage.’ His laugh, this time, was insincere, ironical. It was obvious these were memories to which he didn’t want to return. ‘The kid before me got lost. He’d probably just taken him in as a trial run. The run didn’t prove a success. He even told the kid to call him ‘dad’ then gave him away.’ He stopped rocking in his chair. ‘He was a piece of shit. I was the shrewder, but things turned out better for the lad because some aunt took him in, so my mother told me later. She was a good woman, suffered her fair share through him, too.’
Bartol didn’t hear the last sentence. He’d already disappeared.
Waiting since early morning, Elżbieta Ogrodniczak asked herself whether this was, in fact, the day. The reply arrived in the afternoon, with the postman whom she glimpsed pushing something into her letterbox. She waited, walked up to the letterbox and extracted the envelope. She knew the sender. A moment later, she also knew his address. She went back and started preparing for the journey. She was in no hurry. She took a long shower, calming her body which shook and sweated as never before. She approached the chest of drawers where she kept her underwear and took her time choosing some knickers. All seemed inappropriate, bearing in mind that total strangers might shortly be looking at them. The rest was easier.
She watered the flowers in the house and on the terrace. Turned on the sprinklers.
She decided to pack. Then realised she wouldn’t really need anything for this particular journey.
Finally, she closed the door behind her, slipped the keys into her handbag, only to take them out again a moment later and place them on the little wall nearby.
She climbed into the car and drove off. Only once did she look back.
The sun was setting.
Night was falling slowly, stealthily, as it usually does in summer.
Maciej Bartol’s second conversation with Mrs Gawlicka-Sęk was even less pleasant than the first. He drove out to see her although he didn’t expect to hear anything other than what he’d heard one and a half hours earlier over the phone. Her son, as before, apparently still wasn’t in, and when asked whose son Jan Maria Pilski really was, she replied that he was hers and that she wasn’t going to talk to Bartol anymore. When he said he’d find out anyway, she retorted that he could go ahead and find out, she didn’t have to talk to him. She turned him out threatening to loose the dogs on him. The mention of suspicion and danger didn’t help. She said she’d already once made a mistake like that and wasn’t going to do so again. She’d talk to her son herself because she didn’t believe a word of what Bartol said. He didn’t know whether she said this because she’d long got it into her head that she was his mother and he her son, or because she’d been carefully instructed in what to say.
How efficiently Pilski could manipulate people and reality, Bartol was to experience for himself. He’d planned it out pretty well. Dressed in a pink tie, coat, Oriental-patterned scarf, he looked like the member of a club for careerists of various kinds; and the invented fiancée fitted in well. Nor did he have to invent much here: all the couple had in common was a common staircase, and he must have passed her numerous times. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the sort of conversations they’d have and what a great problem the lettering on wedding invitations would create for her, not to mention the colour of the wedding dress. The idiotic ringtones announced news of idiotic things and begged to be treated indulgently, just like the scraps of conversation overheard by everyone. It was hardly surprising that the dog trader, shamefully concealed, did not fit in. Bartol himself had been caught out. He thought he’d spared Pilski Polek’s teasing, and that’s what he’d been supposed to think. Pilski had gained time, although God only knows what he needed it for. He could have done it all in three days, but no. Maybe the action was meant to unroll slowly, create the unease inspired by random messengers and the acceptance which comes with time. According to a formula known only to himself, he’d chosen the messengers carefully. The gigolo Rudzik had probably brought the sunflowers, which is why Mikulski kept the business card; the glasses were delivered by a woman so nondescript nobody even remembered her; Bartol wondered who the third person would be. He also wondered whether everything was going according to plan. Did Pilski want to remain in the shadows, thinking that nobody would guess what connected him with Mikulski? Who, after all, would remember that Mikulski had taken in a little boy, given him hope, then deprived him of it? Did he want to cast suspicion on the son, Jan Mikulski, so as to stir things up a little, or did he know the latter would remember? Had he expected the police to find and bury Jan Maria Gawlic
ki – a fallen priest who had killed faith, and not Lalek – Mirosław Trzaska? Was he waiting that long so that Elżbieta Ogrodniczak, a mother who’d bestowed her love unevenly, would know what she was paying for and be prepared?
Bartol pondered all this as he drove with Lentz in the night towards Fun Factory. He called the local police for a second time, asking whether Elżbieta Ogrodniczak was at home. For a second time, he heard that she was in Paris. This time, however, he asked how they knew – and discovered that they hadn’t checked her house but merely phoned her company, where a manager had informed them that this was so – so it must be true. Bartol was furious, screamed that he could have done that much himself! The local big shot, not put off by any of this, retorted that he could indeed and could also stop bothering them because they had their own vice investigation to deal with, with the regional leader figuring in the main role, all the female staff to interrogate, and three television channels on their shoulders since morning.
Lentz drove. Without a word. In his own way, he was a little surprised by the whole situation. And not even so much by the fact that another suspect had suddenly appeared, which he acknowledged with one sentence – that Polek had suspected him all along – but by the fact that Bartol hadn’t told anybody about any kinship between Pilski and Gawlicka. Lentz didn’t have to add that this was going to cause problems; and he didn’t. Bartol was grateful. He didn’t want to think about that now; he wanted to find himself in Elżbieta Ogrodniczak’s house as quickly as possible and, more importantly, find her alone. The only thing he knew was that she hadn’t flown either to Paris or anywhere else.
When they arrived, only the garden lights were on. She could have turned them on herself, but they could equally well have turned on automatically with the dusk. They couldn’t be sure. They drove around twice. It looked as though nobody was in. Nobody apart from the crickets which tried to drown the sound of sprinklers as they stubbornly turned and turned, watering the grass, plants and, in places, the paving stones. The men entered the porch. Bartol grasped the door handle; there was no bell. He yanked but it didn’t yield. He was just about to walk around the house and enter by the terrace when Lentz showed him the keys lying on the wall. For a moment longer, he hoped they wouldn’t fit. But they did.
Dawn was already breaking when they returned to Poznań. Bartol didn’t want to go home; there, domestic problems which he didn’t want to face, awaited him. Once more he found himself behind his desk and, having sat down, thumped it with his fist.
And so what if he’d found that bloody mirror – inscribed, so he guessed – since he hadn’t thought of it sooner? He hadn’t found either Pilski or Elizabeth. Neither in one house nor the other, nor even in the cathedral; he’d called there, too.
He struggled with his thoughts for a long time before falling asleep in the chair. He woke briefly and, out of the corner of his eye, caught sight of the letter still lying on his desk. He read the four sentences ten times.
I’m always at your disposal. I now have to take care of my mother. You know the address at which to find me. See you soon.
He read it for the eleventh time and still was none the wiser. The only thing he knew was that he ought to know and that soon it would be too late. Too late for everything.
In the end, he dozed off. He had no idea for how long: ten minutes or an hour, it didn’t matter. He’d managed to dream of all the mirrors and hand mirrors he knew, including car mirrors, before he was abruptly woken by a thought reflected by he knew not what.
‘It’s there! Where it all began! Where he began! Yes, it’s there!’ Of this he was now certain.
He sprang to his feet. He wanted to protect her, whether she wanted it or not. He was just scared he’d be too late.
And rightly so.
‘look, ANd I wAs so scAred I wouldn’t be able to make you up so well. Oh, I forgot, you can’t see anything anymore. Never mind, I’ll look – that’s what counts,’ he said as he kept walking away, then approaching the armchair again. Meticulously adjusting every fold of her wide skirt. So that it lay well, broke up the faint light well.
‘How beautifully you’ve sprawled out. A true materfamilias.’
He gazed, slowly tilting his head to one side then the other.
She looked good from every angle.
He walked up closer.
‘Well, maybe the head should be a little lower, like this. A hideous grimace has distorted your face, but that’s no problem. You’ll be gazing at the child with care and concern in your final moments.’ He gently leaned her forward.
‘Like this.
‘Good, you can’t see it now.
‘It’s a good thing I finished before she started sobbing,’ he said, untangling the rope still wound around her neck.
‘What? Did you think I’d be touched? How touching!
‘Look! The rope’s tied well. Triple twine doesn’t break all that easily.
‘You know what moderation, renunciation and being prepared for a journey mean. Now I’m ready, too.
‘At last,’ he added after a while, plunging the thin blade right into her heart.
‘No need for more holes, this one’s enough, just right. There, it went in smoothly. Maybe because there’s nothing there, there’s never been a heart there, at least not for everyone,’ he laughed out loud. ‘I forgot to ask, do you prefer Alter or Alterius.’ He studied the inscription on the blade. ‘Or maybe I didn’t forget, I’m starting with you, so we’ll go in turn. Alter for you, Alterius for me.’
He stepped away again, ecstatically, to gaze at his work from a better perspective.
‘Of the three, you’re the most important. You’re my Love. You, you, you, you, you, you,’ he laughed, threatening her with his finger.
He glanced at a corner of the empty room.
‘And you took away my Hope. To take in and give away like that, not nice. You’re no better.’ He turned in the other direction. ‘You deprived me of Faith, bad man. What – screwing, screwing then no doing?
‘I put you to shame with my morality, I, the discarded fruit!’ he yelled, still laughing. ‘Yes, it’s me!
‘Done. The time’s come,’ he said, calmly sitting on the floor next to her and pressing himself between her parted legs. Between the folds of her wide skirt, deeply, as deeply as he could.
He raised his head.
‘There, I’m not standing behind your back anymore. You’re looking at me now. Even gazing at me with care and concern. Because I’m all you’ve got left. Well, look, look.’
He rolled his sleeves up to the elbows.
‘Take a look.’ He stroked the laddered scars on each arm, one at a time, slowly recalling the shallow, momentary, old, still timid, now pale cuts, and the deeper, newer, pinker slashes. ‘You think it hurts, hurts, no, no, it soothes, soothes. I assure you. Now look at the relief. The top level.’ He laughed, severing and tearing the veins first of one arm then of the other, on a level with his elbows, at the highest rung of the ladder scarred with cuts.
He closed his eyes, laid his head comfortably on her knee.
‘I told you. It doesn’t hurt. It’s a relief.’
‘Can you hear my heart beat, it’s beating fast, too loud, it’ll slow down soon… There, it’s already slowing down, boom, boom, boom… boom, boom. Divine rhythm… three.’
‘There, I can see you… Justice of mine…
Why are you… Why are your lips pursed so tight? Smile… it’s for…’
zofIA pItuch woke up just as tired as she had gone to bed, no differently. She bore the night shifts less and less well. It wasn’t so much the dissecting of the chickens as the cold of the freezer-room, which penetrated the bones and was at its worst in the summer. She didn’t even warm up waiting half an hour for the bus to Moczanowo. The early morning, too, had taken its time to grow warm.
The heat of the day, as well as the persistent flies, didn’t let her sleep in. She got up and shambled to the kitchen thinking she was alone. She hadn’t e
xpected to see her daughter home at eleven o’clock.
‘Samanta, what are you doing here?’ ‘Painting my nails, are you blind or something?’ The girl didn’t even raise her eyes from the table.
‘No, I’m not,’ replied her mother, looking at the daughter fastidiously gluing glittery beads onto her two-centimetrelong talons. There wasn’t enough room for all the beads; two fingernails were broken.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked. She wanted to scream but had no strength left.
‘Because I’m not going anymore. Pawecka’s bought herself a new car. Thinks she’s found herself an idiot who’s going to work for what she pays,’ she answered, combing her outspread fingers through the air.
‘Maybe that’s because it’s her shop,’ replied the mother, although she no longer felt like talking. She went up to the kettle full of water. Turned it on and wanted to take a clean glass from the cupboard. There weren’t any; she glanced at the sink.
‘I don’t give a shit,’ the girl explained after a while. ‘I’m getting ready now. Looks good, eh?’
The mother didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking at. All she could see was a protruding belly, oozing out of a too-short blouse; protruding, so that the pink ring wouldn’t dare lose itself amidst the folds of fat. She had no strength left; she didn’t even feel like washing a single glass ,but she did. She didn’t want to waste the boiled water.
‘What’s that for?’ she finally asked, seeing the expectant eyes of her daughter.
‘What for, what for! Television’s coming soon, ain’t it? At long last something’s happening in this shit hole. We’re neighbours, like, so they might ask us questions.’
‘My God, what are you talking about?’ Zofia Pituch was ready to drop and, supporting herself, collapsed onto a chair.
‘Found two corpses in the old cottage next door, didn’t they, the one with a curse on it, the one nobody lived in. It must be important cos it’s crawling with police.
Polychrome Page 25