That’s another word that means one thing sometimes and something else at others. Water can foul up gin machinery. You can commit a personal foul in a football game like the one she went to with her friend Grace Ann’s family one Friday night in the fall of ’81. Which is why she was not at home when someone whose face she’ll never see, whose name she’ll never know, induced her father to open the door. He’d just finished ginning the last scrap picking. He was too tired for a ball game. Angel, your old daddy needs some rest.
The house stood on a badly maintained blacktop road about halfway between McGehee and Dermott. She and her parents lived there three years. For a few months, her older brother did too, but then he enlisted in the Marines. It wasn’t a big house, it wasn’t a nice house, it was cold in the winter because they only had space heaters, and there were stains on the ceiling where the roof leaked. Why anybody would think there was anything in that house worth so much trouble was never explained. All they got was a wallet, a purse, and a metal box that couldn’t have had more than a few hundred dollars in it, if that. They tore her room up, but nothing went missing.
Foul play, the article said, as though you could make everything right by throwing a flag and blowing a whistle. It was news for quite a while, and the sheriff appeared on the Little Rock stations as well as the one in El Dorado. He’d get to the bottom of it, he promised, but he never did, though the following year his tough-on-crime campaign won him a seat in the state legislature. By then, she was living with her aunt. Later, a different aunt took her in, and then she went back to the first one. They handed her off as if she were a football. That game again.
“So your friend served up my backstory,” she says.
“He was working for the Arkansas Gazette at the time. He didn’t cover the story. But he remembered it when I said your last name. They’ve got a pretty good archive, so I paid for online access and found the articles. Is this what you would have told me the other night if I hadn’t turned into a stuffed shirt?”
She wraps her arms around herself and her lips jut out. She’s fighting tears, and it’s clear that doing it is making her angry and that at least some of the anger, if not all of it, is directed at him.
He rises from his chair, bends over, and puts his arms around her. Her hair smells like orange peel. There’s also a hint of feminine perspiration. Some people might not think it smells that different. But it does. It’s one of the things he used to know and had all but forgotten, in the way you forget certain sensations when the sources of them are long gone.
“My folks didn’t matter much,” she says. “My daddy was just somebody who ginned other people’s cotton. If he’d owned a plantation, they would’ve busted ass to catch whoever did it. Nobody gives a shit what happened to the Aguileras either. They all just crave their goddamn championship. They don’t want their golden boy fucked with.”
“I have a feeling you’re right about that,” he says. He stands and looks at her, surveying the damage. Her cheeks are damp, but her eyes are clear. “Why don’t we take a walk? It’s such a nice evening.”
“All right,” she says. While he watches, she turns the beer up. It wouldn’t be accurate to say she chugs it, but it wouldn’t be that far off the mark either. He takes a few sips of his, just to be polite.
They walk around for an hour or more on narrow streets in her neighborhood. It’s getting dark, but there are quite a few kids out playing, many of them Hispanic. The cars and trucks parked in the driveways aren’t fancy, and a few look pretty old, but this neighborhood is a lot more stable than the one where the Aguileras lived. These folks have been here longer. Most are probably native-born.
“Was it all black and white where you grew up?” he asks.
“You mean racially? Or morally?”
He laughs. “Racially.”
“Pretty much. During the Mariel boatlift, some Cuban refugees were housed at Fort Chafee, but they weren’t there long. It’s different now, so I hear. I haven’t set foot in the state for fifteen years. If you want the current demographics, I guess you’ll have to ask your friend who told you all about my tragic past.”
“If you met him, by the way, you’d like him.”
“I have no doubt. I’ve liked a lot of guys I shouldn’t have.”
He decides to let that one go too.
If she’s disappointed by the lack of response, it doesn’t show. “You know what puzzles me about the Aguilera investigation?” she asks. “They didn’t even have to request a search warrant. They had probable cause. But they did it anyway.”
“The more high-profile it is—and five dead people are plenty high-profile—the likelier they are to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”
“Or make it look like they did.”
They’re back on her block now, and he’s been smelling Mexican food for the last hour. He’s thinking they should climb in his car and drive down to a little hole-in-the wall that he used to go to with his family. Their chile verde is the best around.
But before inviting her to dinner, he tells her that since he now knows the names of the officers who responded that night, he’s going to get in touch with one whose son used to play in the string ensemble with Anna. “A guy named Danny Scanlon. I don’t know if he’ll discuss it with me or not, but it’s worth a try.” Then he recalls something else he intended to bring up. “When you talked to the guy at the body shop,” he says, “did you think to ask him if Andres had a cell phone? If he did, his boss would surely know it. And he’d probably still have the number.”
She stops in front of her house, so he does too. “No,” she says. “I didn’t do that.”
“Then I think tomorrow, I’ll pay him a visit and see what he says.”
“There’s no need.”
It’s the finality he hears in her voice, rather than anything he sees in her eyes, that alerts him. “There’s something else you haven’t told me,” he says. “What is it? Don’t bullshit me anymore, Maria.”
Rather than answer, she turns and heads for her front door. With a rising sense of alarm, he follows. Once inside, she disappears into her bedroom, then returns a moment later with an envelope. In the upper left-hand corner, he sees the familiar blue-and-white striped logo of AT&T Wireless. It’s a phone bill addressed to Andres Aguilera.
The Palace of Culture and Science looms over the city of Warsaw like a giant soot-stained wedding cake. Two hundred thirty meters high, with forty-two stories and a total floor space of 125,000 square meters, it’s one of Europe’s tallest buildings as well as one of the ugliest. For more than half a century, it’s been the butt of jokes.
Q: Where do you go for the best views in Warsaw?
A: The observation deck at the Palace of Culture and Science. That’s the only place in town where you don’t have to look at the building.
She and Stefan are here for the Polish Festival of Books. Today also happens to be their twenty-fifth anniversary. They’re staying at the Bristol for three thousand zlotys a night. This evening, they will have dinner at a restaurant called the Great Unknown, which is in a secret location and has only one table. Dining is by invitation only. The chef is a fan of Stefan’s novels.
Her husband doesn’t know that she decided to visit the festival. She said she preferred to stay at the hotel and read. But she grew tired of their suite, has never been inside the Palace, and started to feel curious.
The book exhibition consumes three floors. For half an hour, she strolls around the lowest level, passing booth after booth. Most of them have few if any guests, and many of the publishers look depressed, especially the purveyors of poetry. There is, however, a huge crowd waiting for autographs from a famous actress who starred in films by Wajda and Kieslowski. She doesn’t look at the autograph seekers, just scrawls her name and pushes her memoir back across the table.
Spotting an information desk, Monika picks up a schedule and discovers that her husband is signing on the floor above. She climbs a marble staircase, steps into a colonn
aded hall that was probably designed for party gatherings, and scans the aisle markers.
He’s drawn quite a crowd. Unlike the actress, he looks his fans in the eye and chats with them. If they happen to be women—and most of them are—he pats them on the hand before saying good-bye. A couple of times, he rises and gives them a hug and a peck on the cheek. Two women ask to have their photo taken with him, and he obliges, standing between them, an arm around each. You’d have to be watching closely to notice when one of them slips him a scrap of paper.
“Do you like his work?” someone asks in English.
The person who spoke to her is a tall man of about sixty, with a finely chiseled chin and silver hair. He’s wearing a gray suit and a silk shirt and tie. She has the feeling that if she glanced down at his shoes, she’d see her reflection.
“Not particularly,” she says. “What about you?”
“I find it always predictable, frequently pretentious, and occasionally disgusting. He probably thinks he’s writing literature.” He offers his hand. “Enrico,” he says.
She returns the gesture. “Monika.”
“I’m from Rome. And you?”
“Krakow.”
“Now, that’s a lovely city. My late wife and I went there twice. The last time was probably at least ten years ago.”
“It’s changed a good bit since then.”
“No doubt. But I’m sure it’s still beautiful.”
He asks if she’s here in an official capacity, and she says no, that she just wanted to see what this building looked like on the inside. Then she asks if he is. He says yes, that he owns a small publishing house. “Nothing very sexy, I’m afraid. We specialize in cuisine and travel. Right now, our best-selling title is a history of the olive.”
“Well, olives could be sexy. Hasn’t their oil sometimes been put to amorous use?”
He laughs. “I think maybe you and I should have a drink.”
Why say no? It’s two thirty, and Stefan told her not to expect him back at the Bristol until seven, though his signing is supposed to conclude at three.
On the other hand, why say yes?
She thanks him but politely declines, and he accepts her decision with grace, then bids her good-day and wanders away.
She decides to have a drink anyhow, in a small bar in the Old Town. She orders an eighteen-year-old Glenlivet on the rocks, then calls the waitress back and asks for it neat. She never drinks whisky. Except when she does.
She sips it, enjoying the chocolatey aftertaste as she watches people walk by on the cobblestone street. For every person who passes alone, she sees ten or twelve pairs. Most are young, in their late teens or early twenties. One couple goes by seven or eight times, heading north, then south, then north again. The girl talks with her hands, as if she were a mime. The boy, whose sandy hair laps over his collar, looks captivated. He could be watching a total lunar eclipse, a blood moon, the kind of thing you might get a look at every couple of years. But now it’s all his. Block after block.
The bar is empty except for a couple who sit in a distant corner, beneath a poster of Joel Grey strutting with his cane in Cabaret. Their fingers are intertwined. He’s drinking beer. She’s having white wine. Two or three times, Monika hears the word “baby.” Hears “temp job,” “budget,” “brainstorm,” “masseuse.” She orders another Glenlivet. She seldom drinks whisky except when she wants it.
She pulls out her mobile, which has been on silent all afternoon. There’s a text from Stefan:
lets meetin the lobbya t sven twenty five as the car is due to be there to pickyps upat svenetythirty looking for ward to a special evening with thelove of my life
Whatever else one might say about his novels, they are impeccably punctuated. As a rule, his texts are too. The sloppiness of this one could be due to the urge to escape an adoring crowd, the eagerness to escape with an adoring member of that crowd, or both. What it can’t be attributed to is a lack of regard for the recipient. She doesn’t doubt for an instant that she’s the love of his life. He’s probably never loved any other woman except his mother and his sister. What being the love of his life means is open to question. If she had to guess, she’d say it means she’s his best female friend, the one he feels he can say anything to. Except for one thing.
She also has a couple of e-mails. The first is from Franek, asking if it’s all right for him to go to Disneyland the first weekend in November with his “friend” Sandy and her parents, as he’s never been there and Sandy says it’s something every kid should see and it’s a shame he didn’t get to. The second is from Richard, posing the same question and assuring her that he’s known the girl’s parents for many years and that her dad is an excellent driver. He also tells her that he’s pretty busy these days, working on a story that has become more and more absorbing. She suspects he’s working on it with the female journalist. She sends him a quick note telling him that it’s fine for Franek to accompany his friend’s family and that she’ll reply to her son tomorrow. Rather than closing with Love, Monika, as has been her practice for the last couple of years, she writes, Best, M.
She puts her phone back in her bag, takes another sip of whisky, then notices that there’s a newspaper on a nearby table. To give herself something to do besides looking out the window or listening to the couple in the corner, she goes and gets it.
The lead article announces that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Beneath that, there’s one about inflation. Idly, she begins to flip through.
“‘Cleaners’ Becoming Nationwide Problem,” a headline says. “Harassed Residents Often Elderly, Infirm.” The report has a Krakow dateline. It takes up an entire page and is accompanied by two photos. In the first, a figure perches on top of a steep roof, wearing a Darth Vader helmet. The second is a close-up of a man with thinning gray hair, flaccid cheeks, small but intelligent eyes, and a strange-looking mole.
She stares at his face for a while. She’s sure she’s seen him before, though she doesn’t know where or when. He could be anybody, really, just one of those hapless people you walk right past in Planty or the Market Square and never give another thought to. Wherever she saw him, he probably hadn’t given her another thought either. Why would he? She’s just a small, dark-haired woman on the brink of fifty.
The day they release him to await trial, he goes for a long walk in Planty, making three complete circuits. The afternoon air has some bite in it, the temperature a few degrees above freezing, a strong breeze raking dead leaves across the paved footpaths. The cafés have fired up their space heaters and lowered clear plastic drop panels to break the wind. Most people are wearing coats, scarves, and gloves. He has only the nylon jacket he wore the night of his arrest, but he’s not uncomfortable.
The police have returned his mobile phone along with his belt and wallet. He assumed they’d subject the mobile to forensic analysis, going through his text messages and voicemails, but they evidently didn’t. After turning it on a couple of hours ago, he found several unread texts from Marek, the final one sent the same day Bogdan’s face hit both the local papers and Gazeta Wyborcza, where it would’ve been seen all over the country. There were numerous texts from his sister in Zakopane and two from Krysia. Also, a new voicemail left just this morning from a number marked Unavailable. “If you’ve squealed,” whoever it was said, “you better ask for life in prison. Meantime, watch your ass. Try to keep it clear of everything but your own shit.”
He’s infamous, yet no one he meets appears to notice. When he stops to buy a pretzel, the old woman behind the stand looks right at him and behaves as if he’s worth exactly one zloty, no more and no less. When he sits down at Bunkier Café and orders a beer, the tall, dishwater-blonde waitress treats him just as brusquely as he saw her treat those at the table nearby. None of the other patrons pays him the slightest mind. He’s every bit as invisible as before his crimes came to light.
That a lesson should be derived from his continuing anonymity seems obvious, and he res
olves to think more about it soon, just not today. He liked both of the men who’d been in the cell with him—one a pickpocket, the other a hacker who maintained that cybercrime was the only way to go, so much easier on the body, he said, as long as you got up from your chair occasionally and did some exercises for the back and neck—but he hated the cell itself. It was in the basement, damp and poorly lit, and the toilet emitted an odor that only fresh air could make you forget.
When he finishes his beer, it’s growing dark, and the streetlights have come on. He pays the check and strolls toward the Market Square.
The stalls in the Cloth Hall are closing, but the shops and restaurants that line the Square are brightly lit and busy. In autumn, it used to present a gloomy, colorless sight, mostly deserted at sundown or shortly after. This evening there are still plenty of people out and about. Close to the Town Hall Tower, a man and two boys are examining the large sculpture known as the Head. Cast from bronze, it lies on its side, the eyeholes big enough to accommodate a child’s body. While Bogdan watches, the man lifts the smaller of the two boys and lets him peek in.
Normally, he wouldn’t engage a complete stranger. But there’s nothing normal about being released from jail or knowing that before long, you’ll be back behind bars for a lengthier visit. “I’ve always wondered whose head that’s supposed to be,” he says.
The other man shrugs and hoists the bigger boy so he can see inside too. “Some Greek god, I think. Or maybe it’s a Roman.”
“I can’t even remember when they put it here.”
“Three or four years ago. It was supposed to go in front of Galeria Krakowska. But the sculptor objected.”
The Unmade World Page 15