A red neon light at fifteen-second intervals. Also a night-light atop the radio in the apartment. They sat opposite each other at the table, their shadows on the bare wall blowing smoke. Faint old music from the radio.
“He had a gun,” said Paweł.
“Who?” Jacek turned to him like someone waking up.
“The guy chasing you. When he went down, it fell out. Maybe he had it under his jacket. It slid across the ground. Black . . .”
“Why didn’t you take it?”
“I was running.”
“It would only have taken a moment. You could have.”
“Yes.”
“Then shown it to me now.”
“You don’t believe me? That I stopped him?”
Jacek got up, went to the radio, changed the station. It was Wolność with Wiesiek Orłowski, but they didn’t know that. He turned the red dial to the left, found something classical.
“She told me everything,” he said.
“You don’t believe me,” said Paweł, following his own thought. He regarded the other man’s face in the dim light.
“That’s not the point. We could have had a gun.”
“What do we need a gun for?”
“Better to have something than not to have it,” he said with a smile.
It was violins, lots of them. The sound couldn’t get out of the room. It buzzed high, then dropped suddenly to the dark double basses stumbling in the poor-quality speaker. He upped the volume to a rasp, listened intently to the noise, and turned it down again.
“You say something?” he asked.
“No. What did she tell you?”
“Everything. They were at your place, smashed it up, said they’d do the same to you. Who was it?”
“I don’t know, never saw them before. Hired. One did the talking, the others didn’t say anything.”
“Who you borrow from?”
“This guy from Falenica. We were sort of friends.”
“And now he’s after your blood.”
“I’m six months behind.”
“Even so, he’s not asking for that much interest.”
“We knew each other. I met him at the pool.”
“You swim?”
“Then we went to a bar. That was how it began.”
“You could use a gun.”
“He was into all kinds of business. We talked about stuff. You know how it is. I visited his home; he had dogs and cats . . .”
“A 92 Beretta, fifteen rounds in the clip. Or you can get a bigger clip—holds twenty.”
“I was doing this and that, getting a loan, getting a ride; business was going to save the world. Then later, when things took off . . . I needed money from one day to the next, and I’d make it back right away. But with the bank things always drag on . . .”
“Why did you go to a pool if you don’t know how to swim?”
“I was with someone.”
“The clip with twenty rounds sticks out of the grip.”
“He told me there was no problem, to him it was nothing. I thought it was nothing to me as well . . .”
“What is it you actually do? You told me, but I forgot.”
“I sell.”
“What?”
“It varies. Used to be wool, now it’s cotton.”
“Panties?”
“Among other things.”
“Long johns?”
“Everything.”
“You spent five hundred million on underwear?”
“It’s not that much. Do you know how much the shipping alone is?”
“Pity you didn’t take the gun. Black?”
“Yes. I tried getting another loan to pay it, but they all knew there was something not right about me. Besides, I didn’t really have anyone to borrow from.”
“Maybe it’s still there on the ground?”
“No, it’s bright as day there. Why was he after you?”
“I don’t know. He started running, so I did.”
“How did you know he was chasing you?”
“One knows.”
The red neon calmed, stopped flashing, filled the room with an even light. Jacek said, “It’s broken again,” and the two fell silent, listening to the street noise—the momentary quiet of Nowogrodzka, the murmur from Krucza, and the incessant bubble of the traffic circle, which never sleeps, except perhaps briefly before dawn, when it wheezes like a sick windpipe. The sounds are a reminder that space is infinite, it’ll swallow everything, that no Russki long-haul truck, no convoy from the Reich can smuggle through a human sound, there are only echoes on the stones, the rumble of garbage trucks, shouts, the whistle of the wind in the overhead tram cables, the underground groan of trains, cars wailing, screeching around bends as they try to catch one another on the fog-slick curve of the Solec ramp then disappear in the darkness of the Wisłostrada, while the Vistula reflects sound and light as if it were quivering metal, as if this was what caused insomnia, the infinite nature of the world, in which any piece of shit can grow beyond the boundary of the visible.
So they smoked and listened to it all, because it’s always a consolation to be here and not elsewhere, in an endless number of other places, which makes you nuts to think about.
Jacek went to the window and closed the curtains. The red grew pale. He put his hands in his pants pockets and circled the table. The air moved. On the table, a plate with leftovers looked like a big ashtray. He went to the bathroom, came back right away. From the shelf he took a candle stuck to a saucer. “The bulb is out,” he said, and left again. A glow filtered through the glass door into the living room. Paweł thought someone was standing there. He went to check but didn’t find anyone. For a moment the darkness had taken on human form. He went back to his chair and lit up again. The pack was almost empty. It was quiet in the next-door apartments. Garlic in the air. The smell of her sweat lingering in the apartment. Jacek returned, blew out the candle, and put it back in its place.
“That girl,” Paweł began.
“Beata.”
“Have you known her long?”
“Six months, a year. She comes here sometimes. You like her?”
“She talked nonsense, but I guess.”
“I taught her.”
“What?”
“What she says. All that crap about energy and everything.”
Paweł looked at him intently, though it was too dark.
“You’re kidding. You believe all that?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Jacek laughed, went to the window, parted the curtain, looked down into the street.
“What matters is that she believes it. Half a loaf is better. Am I right?”
“I don’t get it.”
“It doesn’t matter. You will. And you should get yourself a gun.”
Paweł jumped up from his chair and shouted:
“Fuck that gun! What do I need a goddamn gun for? I’m a normal guy.”
The neon went out, came on again, resumed its fifteen-second rhythm.
“You see? Sometimes a shout does it.” Jacek moved away from the window, continued: “Listen, I don’t have any money to give you. All I can offer is advice. That’s it. Theoretically I could sell something, but you see for yourself there can be problems with the buyer.”
“Then at least let me stay here tonight,” murmured Paweł.
Meanwhile Beata was sleeping. In Praga. In the darkness, her body like the moon. Kijowska was quiet now. Cars entered Tysiąclecia, some never to return, a one-way trip. First to the viaduct at the Radzymińska intersection, then to Zabraniecka and on to Utrata, between the willow trees and the garbage cans, out under the starless sky, where the lads did what they had to quickly and dawn found only the gutted chassis. The sheet covered her to the waist. The great sarcophagus of East Station in a dirty glow. The light rubbed the window but could not get in, because her body was too young, no thought of death yet, not even in a dream. Her mother slept in the other room.
There was also a kitchen. That was it. On the floor, plastic tile and rugs; in the shiny credenza, crystal. Her room was cramped, cluttered, unlike her mother’s, where words thinned like cigarette smoke. Things all piled up, overlapping, squeezing together, embracing. Sometimes she would wake at night, sit on the bed with closed eyes, recognize them by touch: the gray teddy bear that ten years ago she medicated using a dropper with a light-blue rubber bulb; the small guitar, or ukulele, that no one could ever tune, so occasionally she’d play a song on a single string; a vase for keeping things that were not supposed to get lost, an accumulation of forgotten stories, errands to run, things to examine, finger—buttons, loose rosary beads, ticket mementos, old lighters, change, earrings without backs, green bills with the picture of a general, empty oil bottles, half a nail clipper with a gold fish embedded in green enamel, a postcard with faded lettering in Arabic. By the sofa bed, a bookcase with a bedside lamp and a few books on diet, philosophy, the philosophy unopened. It was enough that they were there, that she could touch the spines and covers showing gods or the faces of men with half-closed eyes and orange flowers around their necks. A clay ashtray she made herself, now empty, clean, because a month ago she gave up smoking. A china ballerina missing an arm. A glass heart with a hold for two ballpoint pens, red and green. Her possessions. And the tape player, and the cassettes in a neat row on a shelf of the wall unit that held her wardrobe, and the woven basket filled with cheap cosmetics that she hadn’t used for weeks, and the hand mirror, and the three cacti on the windowsill. All hers. Also the walls, or actually just the one above the bed, free of shelves, and the one by the window and door, where she had painted a huge yellow sun. Her mother came home from work and was furious, but nothing happened—it was too expensive to call a painter. Two years ago the sun, and a year later, across it, a jagged green cannabis leaf. This time her mother said nothing; she may not even have noticed. Then the Kurt Cobain picture. She cried all night when he died, took the tape player to bed with her, hugged it and played “Never Mind” all night. In the early morning she fell asleep bathed in tears. Her mother came into the room, saw the wire snaking from the socket into the sheets, and shouted, “You little idiot, you’ll electrocute yourself!” Beata waited for her mother to go to work, took the Sacred Heart in its gilt frame down from the wall, pulled out the backing and the picture, and put in Cobain instead.
Some time later Jacek gave her a picture torn from a book: Krishna with a blue body, in garlands. From that time on she stopped dreaming of Cobain. At first she missed the dreams, because she would wake from them in tears, a little sad and a little happy. But then it occurred to her that screwing with a guy was one thing, screwing with a god another. Even in the daytime, in the city, or at school she imagined the blue body. “It would be like doing it with the sky,” she thought with a smile. When she told her girlfriend once, her girlfriend gave her a look and said, “I’d prefer Cobain, though he was so messed up, he probably couldn’t do it.” They sat in the playground and watched the boys gather and talk about the man found hanging from the swings that morning with twelve stab wounds. The discussion was whether he’d been stuck before or after. Those close to him knew that it was a warning, and they said little.
Now she lay on her stomach, and her body filled with blue like moonlight. It was hard to imagine anything bigger than the city night and anything smaller than her in it, because the night moved in all directions to join with the darkness of the universe. A cold fire burned inside East Station. A man in a light suit came out unscathed and tried to get into a cab, but the driver locked the door. The next driver did the same, and the next. Then several men ran up and dragged him off down into the dark concrete yard where during the day deliveries by train are dropped off. From the port the wind brought the stench of foul water mixed with the nervousness of Downtown. Among the lights on Zieleniecka a group of Russians drove in an overloaded Lada, towing a trailer, heading east. In the next room her mother stirred.
Paweł lay on the floor, Jacek on the bed. They spoke softly, trying to remember old times, but everything they recalled was flat, as if trapped behind glass. Paweł listened for the clanking of the first trams. They were supposed to come before four. He imagined them leaving the depot in Mokotów and the one near Huta; they would speed up, move slower, then finally, as in a dream, move yet stand in place, and the day would never begin.
Meanwhile Zosia was talking to her cat, but it had had enough. It jumped from her lap and, tail stiff, went into the kitchen to sit by the refrigerator. This was how it spent most of its time—staring at the white enamel and licking one paw, then another. Then staring again. Always the same. At such times Zosia was left on her own. Like now. The desk lamp was on, and she sat in the armchair opposite. The small apartment was just the right size. She only wished it wasn’t so high up. The trees didn’t reach the fifth floor. Once she dreamed of waking up and seeing her carpet dappled by sun through leaves. Or in rain, branches whipped by the wind tapping the window and leaving wet marks. But the fifth floor wasn’t bad, especially in spring and summer, when kids hung out till late on the benches with their boom boxes. The foul language and dirty jokes were muffled when they reached this high. You could open a window and look out at the apartment buildings on Pięciolinii. In the evening, a fascinating view. She imagined that the far apartments were toy houses and the people sitting down to supper living dolls in perfectly stitched little clothes. They would visit one another, invite one another in for coffee in tiny cups or tea in glasses the size of fingernails, while their books were printed in pinprick letters.
But now her curtains were drawn, the bedding crumpled. She had tried to sleep, but couldn’t put the light out, things are too clear in the dark. She had taken the cat on her lap and talked to it, but cats have no interest in human stories. As if they just arrived and are on the point of leaving.
When she came out of the Stokłosy metro station, she called. No reply at Paweł’s place. The sky over Stegny and Wilanów was the color of the public telephone and as cold as the receiver in her hand. Nearby, a red mailbox mounted on the wall, an empty Królewskie beer bottle on top. The wind blew; from the phone, from somewhere deep in the city, an electronic beeping. The number began with a twelve, probably Praga. She hung up, and the machine with polite boredom returned her card. She didn’t shop on the way home. Now she was reading but couldn’t understand the simplest sentence, because they all left the book, went into the past, and said what happened a few hours ago. She also had a radio, but the sounds did the same. She had made herself some muesli and tea, but both remained untouched. She paced between the hallway and the kitchen. She ran a bath but was afraid to undress. She couldn’t stand the mirror in the bathroom. She thought about her girlfriend on Wiolinowa, her sister in Gdańsk, her acquaintances in Rembertów who had the house with the yard where in summers she drank jasmine tea under a white parasol, but it was always the moment when the men entered the store, when the first one gave her a broad smile and placed his hands on the counter. He was so big, she could barely see the other, who stood with his back to them looking out at the street.
“You have something for us, kid?” asked the big one. “Something special.”
She asked what it was supposed to be.
“For me.” He laughed, pushed back, turned around, lifting the tails of his jacket.
“Like this!”
She set a few of the largest in front of him. He took each in turn, spreading it as he lifted it, looking inside.
“You understand, they have to be airy, that’s important, otherwise—ha—you know yourself what can happen.”
He put each pair down on the counter and looked at the shelves. On his right hand, a gold signet ring; in his eyes, nothing.
“No, these are no good, honey. What about something a bit more”—he pointed to a pile of women’s panties wrapped in plastic. “Those.”
She brought him a few items. He flipped through as if they were old magazines. He tore open one
or two.
“Sir, please . . .” But she didn’t finish, because his smile was lifeless. “All right, sweetie, let’s see what you have.”
He swept away several pair to make room. She took the opened ones, spread them out slowly in a row: three, white lace. He chose the middle pair. Touched it with his finger. Looked from it to her, stroking the fabric. The other man stood by the door, his face to the street. She wanted to scream, but the scream would only bounce back off that huge body and die before it left her throat. She tried to look at him, his close-cropped blond hair and pink forehead, but lowered her eyes, because of his smile. His hand groping the material, his breathing. The hand crumpled the crotch of the panties. She backed up against the shelves.
Then the big man told the other to lock the door. Hearing the click of the bolt, she ran for the back room, but he blocked her with his hip, caught her, as if he had been waiting. The panties hooked on the long, manicured little finger held out to her.
“Shall we try them on?” he asked.
She pressed against the shelves; things fell. Wide-eyed, shaking her head no, because words wouldn’t come.
“If that’s how you want it,” he said. He spun like a dancer, put down the underwear, barked, “Turn around.”
She turned, pressed her face into green cotton blouses, for a moment happy not to know what was going on. As in childhood—you close your eyes, and the bad disappears.
But he shouted at her to turn back. She saw and screamed. The other man came and grabbed her by the blouse and pulled, his face white and featureless. In his free hand was a billy club. She felt it on her cheek, a delicate touch, like a caress almost. She fell silent. The black rubber went over her closed eyes, her nose, then her mouth.
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