“Boss,” he called, “I could stick this up his ass. A nice surprise when he wakes up.”
Bolek was sitting on the edge of the table smoking a cigarette. He rubbed his chin with his hand and said no.
“Why not, boss? I can’t leave him like this.”
“You’ll spoil the tool.”
“What?”
“You heard. Didn’t you ever do time?”
“No. And I don’t plan to.”
“Exactly. You’re all like that these days. When something’s spoiled, it’s no good anymore. You have to throw it out.”
“So we throw it out. What’s the problem?”
Bolek sighed, put the cigarette out, got up.
“The problem, son, is that things are divided into yours, other people’s, and things I tell you to break. The cue isn’t yours. It belongs to Mr. Max. Like everything here,” he said patiently, and headed for the door. He stopped in front of the man cowering in a corner.
“You saw?” he asked. “Go and tell who you need to tell it to. And take him away.”
In the barroom he went up to the counter. As usual Storkie stood still, his hands doing something. Bolek patted him on the cheek and said:
“Good boy. Now unlock the door for us.”
The bartender took the key and went toward the exit.
“There’s something I need to take care of,” said Jacek, when the sliding doors from Emilii Plater opened automatically in front of him. In the main hall they were immediately immersed in figurines. He left her by the sandwich stand and went downstairs. The smell of coffee, perfume, subterranean air. She went up and asked for something without meat, was given a cheese sandwich, ordered tea as well, and sat down at a table. The poisonous white bread was surprisingly good. An unwavering light fell from above and made cadavers even of the clean and rested people. Though in motion, they were the dead from a sunken city. She went back for another sandwich, another tea, added three spoons of sugar. She tried reading the big timetable over the ticket counters: too far away. She realized she had never been anywhere. To the country near Siedlce a few times while her grandmother was alive, and once she visited her mother in the sanatorium for a couple of days. She hid in the room, and her mother sneaked food for her. She couldn’t recall the name of the place, only remembered flower beds stretching out endlessly. They came back in a crowded train. They got out at East Station, crossed the street, and were home. Now she remembered that in her mother’s bedroom a souvenir from the place still hung on the wall. Plastic, with the name of the town.
An elderly man in a dark-blue overcoat came up to her. He inclined his head in her direction and sat down on the chair next to hers. He glanced, now at her, now at the people passing by. She swallowed and said:
“If you’re wondering if I have a place to sleep, don’t bother.”
The man gave her a flustered look, got up, and left. She went on eating and trying to remember the name. When Jacek returned ten minutes later, she said to him:
“Let’s go away somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Today. For instance to the mountains, Zakopane. I’ve never been.”
He sat down opposite her and toyed with the empty Styrofoam cups from the tea. She smiled: as if she were asking him to go to the movies or for a walk.
“I have almost two million,” she said.
“Not enough for Zakopane.”
“I’ve never seen the sea either, Jacek. Honestly. We’ll manage. We don’t have to buy tickets.”
“I’m too old for that kind of thing, kid. I need a ticket.”
“Fine, we’ll buy one. For you.”
“And then? Where do we sleep? It’s winter there.”
“I know, you’re old. You need a bed.”
Both laughed. He set the cups aside, drummed his fingers on the table, and looked around the hall as if he were waiting for an answer.
“All right,” he said. “There’s one to Zakopane in an hour or so. I’m meeting a guy. He’s not here yet but will be. If all goes well, we’ll have some money”
“I didn’t bring anything,” she said, passing her hands over the pockets of her army jacket.
“You can buy yourself a toothbrush,” he said. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, OK?”
“OK. I’ll buy a toothbrush.”
The woman disappeared. Maybe she’d moved to someone else’s dream. Now he was in an endless field, and it was much earlier, because he was wearing short pants with crossed suspenders. His knees bruised and sore. Kneeling on the hard, parched earth while others passed, overtaking him. When he reached the halfway point, they were already on their way back. Some paused by the edge of a wood to smoke a cigarette in the shade and talk, but even so they were always faster. The high sun didn’t seem to be sinking. His shadow was a small patch at his feet. Sometimes he ate a strawberry to quench his thirst. The fruit was covered with dust. He chose the biggest, which were watery. In the middle of the field, a wooden shack, the stink of chemicals and fertilizer. The people took full baskets there and got empty ones in return. The man had a ruled notebook and put crosses against names. Paweł had the fewest. The deal was simple: for a full basket you got four zloty. That was a loaf of bread in those days. At church, you put two zloty on the collection tray. He got that much from his mother on Sundays. He would clutch the aluminum coin with the crossed sheaves of corn, making it hot and damp. One Sunday he didn’t move as the sacristan in the surplice passed. Fear afterward, but nothing happened: the heavens were indifferent, and the two-zloty coin didn’t disappear from his pocket or burn up in the fire of a curse. From that time he didn’t move. Bambino ice creams cost exactly two zloty. An old man in a white apron sold them outside the church. He looked like the twin brother of the sacristan, and with time the two men became a single person, so the money ended up where it was supposed to. Later the ice cream changed, to a double flavor, a stripe of vanilla and a stripe of pink fruit. It cost one zloty eighty, and when he got his twenty groszy in change, his conscience stirred, but then went back to sleep.
The pages of the notebook were old and stank of pesticide. The paper disintegrated as crosses were added. The man wore broad khaki shorts and a cycling cap sewn from colored wedges. He didn’t speak. On his finger, a death’s-head signet ring. He smoked Wawels. One day Paweł swiped one of the small flat packs with the golden castle on the inner lid. He carried it in his shorts pocket till it fell apart. He used it as a purse, though the most he ever earned was ten zloty. The coin was big and heavy and had the profile of a man with an upturned nose. It rattled pleasantly inside the box. With it he bought a red plastic racing car shaped like a cigar. Underneath, the words INCO-VERITAS, and for a long time he thought that was the make of the car. He called it that during his solitary games. He sped the little car across the asphalt and shouted, “Inco Inco Veritas!” One day it broke in two, he cried, pressed the two halves together but they wouldn’t hold.
In the evening a dusty Żuk truck would come and take the crop. He would watch it from far off as he stood on a dike between two ponds. Sweet marshy shade, cool and close. Wild ducks started up when he appeared, only to settle a few feet away. The dark water received the birds in utter stillness. Loud, contented voices from the shack. He couldn’t quite see, but thought there was a woman or two inside. Giggles, squeals, shouts. Curious, he tried to get closer along the edge of the strawberry field. The trees gave cover, but the gathering dusk concealed things and magnified sounds. He’d never heard grown-ups so loud. At home it was always quiet. His mother never laughed, his father never spoke.
When they left, he sneaked across the open space, pressed himself against the wooden wall. The smell of gasoline still in the air. He thought that money must be somewhere inside, hidden in a round metal tin, coins and dark-green bills. A padlock on the door. He touched the windowpane, held in its frame by a few rusty nails. All around, quiet and deserted, the sky red between the trees. He picked up a piece of wood from the groun
d and smashed the glass.
“I was here earlier,” the man in the purple tracksuit said to Bolek.
“Yes, people go in circles and get diddly,” answered Bolek. The sliding doors closed behind them. They crossed the hall, went straight to the steps, not looking around, like travelers without luggage hurrying to catch the train. In the passage they turned left.
“I gave a ride to some bastard who wouldn’t pay,” continued the man in the tracksuit.
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. He paid in the end.”
“That’s how it is with people,” said Bolek.
They turned left again.
“If it were up to me, I’d arrange things better,” said the man.
“For now just go in there and get me that guy standing by the phone. The one in the light pants,” said Bolek, stepping back against the wall. The man went into the snack bar, into the red light, and clapped the pinball player on the shoulder. The player didn’t look, just shrugged the hand away, so tracksuit grabbed his jacket, turned him to the window, and pointed at Bolek.
The three of them went out into an empty Jana Pawła. A sprinkling of light above, but on the ground, darkness, as if they could vanish at any moment. Cars hurtled overhead.
“Tell me what happened,” said Bolek, and tracksuit stood behind the kid.
“Well, this guy came yesterday and said he had a few grams.”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing.” The kid shrugged. “What was I supposed to tell him? I know how things are. Rats saw him too.”
“There you go. And Rats followed him and pointed him out to Waldek.”
“I was waiting for a client.”
Bolek took a step forward; the kid retreated and bumped into tracksuit behind him.
“And Rats called and gave the information.”
“Boss . . .”
The kid flew forward. Bolek had to stop him from falling.
“Boss, Waldek chased him . . .”
“But didn’t catch him. And he didn’t say anything to anyone, and he never called.”
The kid’s head jerked left, right. On the overpass, the monotonous whizzing of the cars. A man in a drab Subaru changing cassettes. In four minutes he would turn into Wawelska, then Grójecka, and drive down Krakowska, out of the city, heading south. “Six Blade Knife” started from his speakers.
“Let him be for a moment,” said Bolek, and tracksuit stopped what he was doing. Grabbed the kid by the hair and held him.
“He’s supposed to come today—that’s what he said. He said he’d bring the goods. Let go . . .”
“Did Waldek know about it? Talk!”
“Yes. Rats told him.”
“So he knew and didn’t say a word,” Bolek murmured. “Wanted to keep it for himself.”
“That’s right. He thought he had the goods on him, but the guy told me he’d bring it today. Let go . . .”
“Fuck him,” said Bolek. “And fuck you too. You thought you’d sell some stuff that wasn’t ours?”
“I didn’t think that . . .”
“You didn’t? Then why is he coming today?”
“I’ll show him to you,” said the kid.
“Always the waiting,” thought Jacek. At night the station became small and cramped. People brushed against one another. Darkness gathered, and the people hid from it, recouped, plunged back into the gloom. No one spoke. The passages filled with uneasy silence. The rustle of clothing, the whish of air, the echoes of a million insect footsteps. “Whether you’re selling or buying, you always end up standing like a dick.” At a kiosk he looked at naked women: beautiful, vulgar, glistening. “They’re waiting too,” he thought, and imagined the life of one of them. She’d get up in the morning, brush her teeth, get dressed, go out, and people would have no idea what her body looked like. Boring, like the rest of the world. Imagining the mountains in the south worked better—a sunny morning, the rails ending, then nothing but snow-covered ridges, the smell of smoke in the clear air, and golden glints on distant peaks. But he realized that he was looking at this image through a glass pane, that it was as lifeless as the naked women.
People kept coming, as if there would never be an end of them. He counted them, to shorten the time. He tried guessing their destination but couldn’t. The human tide made him want to puke. “Fuck all of you to Gdańsk or Komańcza or whatever godforsaken suburb is at the end of the line. Where’s that bastard?” His eyes sought a curly head and light pants. He put his hand in his pocket and touched the box of oxazepam. With him permanently now. For four months, since the time he crossed Poniatowskiego Bridge in the middle of the night and felt like jumping. The water black and viscous. Light scuttling across it like lizards. The hot hand of panic slid into him and felt for the tenderest spot. He hadn’t slept in a week, had been walking the city, and then his mind broke free of his body. He ran, but the glow of Downtown came no closer and the water beyond the railing was blacker than black. He ran, pushing away from the barrier, which shrank to his knees, to his ankles. Halfway across the bridge the cops stopped him. He gave them a story, didn’t let them get a word in, but one cop whacked him in the head, so he started again from the beginning, politely, convincingly, but still too fast and making no sense. When they got to Nowy Świat, they told him to beat it. They probably saved his life. He forced himself to go home, locked the door, and paced between door and window till morning, when he dropped to the floor in his clothes and woke at midday in a pool of sweat. Later someone told him you need relanium or oxazepam, something like that.
Nothing much inside. He groped, knocked something over. A rattle of matches. He got down on his hands and knees and searched for them. The smell of chemicals, even from the packed earth beneath his fingers. Like smoke, as if the shack were on fire. It stung his eyes. Finding the matchbox, he was afraid but he lit one anyway. The flame went out. In the flare of the next, he saw an upturned crate littered with stuff. By the light of the third he found a votive lamp and lit it. An improvement, though everything was hazy, shaky. He put the light on the floor and rummaged on all fours like a dog: cardboard boxes, empty paper sacks. Rakes, spades, and hoes, all caked with old soil, rough and crumbly to the touch. The stink came from the plastic containers. He crawled into the next room. Living quarters: a low table, two stools, a rough bed made up with blankets. He found mustard, tumblers, a knife, tin utensils, but the box was nowhere to be seen. The corners all in shadow—only trash there, sweat-soaked overalls, rubber boots. The little wine left in a bottle was awful, he spat it out. A can full of cigarette butts. He put a thick purple wineglass into his pocket, but it was uncomfortable so he took it out again. It never occurred to him before that grown-ups didn’t have anything interesting. Nothing to play with, to imagine over. Thinking they had everything, he had envied them. Shadows jumped across the wall. He found a bucket and a basin full of soapy water. He could hear the beating of his heart. He turned, crawled over to the bed, slipped his hand between the blankets, which were still warm, felt something smooth and soft, pulled it out: in the yellow light, panties. A surprise, because only the owner of the farm slept here, but then the memory of women’s voices ten, fifteen minutes ago. He spread out the panties on the bed, lifted the lamp, pictured her body, hips, stomach, thighs, and for a moment he was not alone, caught red-handed. He looked around. Outside the window, the sky now dark blue. Through the thin walls he could hear the croaking of frogs. He put the lamp down and started rooting in the bed, not sure what he was looking for. Blankets, a thick sheet, some striped material. Nothing under the pillow. Crumbs, a flattened roll of newspaper. He threw it all on the floor. The mattress was torn. He ripped it open more, dug his hands into the coarse horsehair, pulled out handfuls, threw them behind him. Someone once told him that people hid their money in mattresses. He also remembered what other boys said about women having hair down there, there was even a dirty song about it they would scream out when no one was listening. The mattress sank inw
ard, and the floor was covered with tangled tufts. Finally he reached bare boards, got a splinter under a fingernail, felt a rage and strange excitement he had never known before, tipped the table over, with a clatter of glass and tin, pulled the overalls from their nail and tossed them on the pile of junk. He tried to move the bed frame, but it was fastened to the wall.
Unable to catch his breath after running, he took a few stumbling steps in the darkness, to the edge of the woods, turned back to see the fire now coming out of the broken window.
But not even the flames could wake him. Sweat ran down his back, it was from that distant summer, when he lay curled up at home, waiting for the morning so he could go there and see how the place looked.
“Really it’s Lucyna,” said Syl. “What about yours?” They were face-to-face and moving to the music. Iron Man put one foot forward, then the other, thoroughly contented.
“Mirosław. But no one calls me that. As far back as I can remember, it’s been Iron Man. Even my mom called me that.”
“Iron Man’s nice,” said Syl. She was moving her hips in a lazy twist, from time to time rearranging the strap of her dress when it slipped off her shoulder. “Mirosław’s nice too but kind of rare these days. You don’t hear it much.”
Iron Man tried to look away but without success, because Syl kept circling and staring into his eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell like anemones—that was how she imagined it. She often thought of herself as an exotic plant, growing in a warm room and not having to do a thing. Everyone admired her, and some tried to touch her.
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