Nine

by Andrzej Stasiuk

  Paweł pushed himself higher with his hands a few times, but finally gave up: it was better to lie and listen to the new silence. His nose was bleeding. A red drop on his lip. He tried to touch it with his tongue. “We can’t even fight right,” he thought. “There was no one to teach us. Always being pushed around—bring this in, take this out, sweep it up, carry the suitcase down the platform. Now it’s too late.” He put his hand in his pocket to find something familiar. He took out a small amount of money and started counting: he always did that when he had time. He smoothed the bills, put them in order, folded the wad in two and put it back in his pocket. That calmed him. His breath had settled, his muscles had stopped twitching. He got up, went over to Jacek, and squatted down.

  “All right, easy,” he said as naturally as he could. No response. He patted him on the shoulder, but that had no effect either, so he shook him a little, then more. Slowly, heavily, Jacek rolled over on his back, full length, his arms out.

  “Asleep,” Paweł said.

  Jacek was actually snoring. He lay like one shot, but he snored. The sleeve of his jacket was ripped, something spilling from it. He slept like an empty shell, cold air entering and leaving. The clocks in the city showed seven. Not a cloud in the blue sky. Mothers entered rooms and woke children. People sat in their cars listening to the morning news, or glancing through newspapers at red lights. Everything in place, fifteen channels, ten news programs, no surprises, everything matching. Express trains set out in all four directions. A long-distance train pulled into Central Station after an overnight journey. Nothing needed to be added or subtracted. There was no wind. The flags over the gas stations hanging motionless. It was promising to be a nice day.

  “Porkie’s pissed,” said Syl, rolling back to her warm spot. “He doesn’t like anything, though this is his best time.”

  “I didn’t get enough sleep,” said Bolek.

  “Couldn’t you have come home sooner? I thought something happened.”

  “What could happen?” Bolek grunted.

  “You never tell me anything. I know you have a lot on your mind, important stuff, but you could tell me sometimes.”

  “Uh,” said Bolek, and turned his back on her. Syl took the corner of the blanket and held it to her cheek.

  “And you haven’t bought me anything for ages. When we first me, you said you’d buy me things.”

  “And what, I didn’t?”

  “But not recently. I can’t keep going out in the same clothes.”

  “You never go out at all.” Surprise in Bolek’s voice.

  “Exactly. You don’t take me anywhere. I have to stay here and clean and cook.”

  “The cooking hasn’t been great lately.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Iron Man had a stomachache yesterday.”

  “He kept taking seconds and didn’t say anything.”

  “It didn’t hurt then. Later.”

  “It was from all those seconds. Not everyone can eat like you, Porkie.” Syl tried to put her arms around Bolek. Against his huge white back she looked like a doll. “You know what I mean. A scrawny little guy can’t compare with you. You could pack away half a dozen seconds with no problem.” She moved her hand lower, murmured:

  “Porkie, I saw these really neat shoes . . .”

  He rose on his elbow and cocked an ear.

  “Where did you see them?”

  “On TV, silly. Where could I have seen them?”

  He fell back, reassured.

  “What were they like?” he asked.

  Syl perked up.

  “You know, really smart, all black with little stuff here . . .” She threw the blanket aside and lifted a foot to show him. He watched her quick, precise gestures.

  “And here they had . . .”

  Sunlight began entering the room, through a crack in the curtains. Gold fell across their bodies like an eerie mist. The world was telling them something, but, like all lost souls, they saw only themselves, in their simplicity believing that only they were beautiful. Syl’s pale skin took on the hue of honey, and Bolek reached out. The whirl of sunlight came to the center of the room. Particles of dust rose and spread in a trembling fan. The light submerged them, and a moving edge of shadow passed like a razor over Syl’s breasts, then passed on.

  “All right,” said Bolek, “we’ll figure something out.” Syl clapped her hands, scrambled onto his belly, slapped it with her bare ass, hugged it with her knees.

  “Porkie, you’re great! When are we figuring it out?”

  “Maybe today,” Bolek mused. “We’ll see.”

  “Today, today!” exclaimed Syl. “We’ll go and find them.”

  She started to knead and mold him between her skinny thighs but didn’t hear the groan that always started it. He lay and stared at the ceiling, from which Irina was descending. She wore gold stiletto heels and a black brassiere. Chunky earrings dangling. Her figure, half flesh and half balloon, wore a precious stone in its navel, and Bolek knew it was no fake, just as Irina was no fake, an incarnation of the ideal woman. She swayed, enticing, hovering near the chandelier. Her French perfume tumbled down like silk and covered his face. He closed his eyes, sighed, and hope stirred in Syl’s heart. He took her by the scruff like a kitten and moved her. Now the smell of fish and chips was added to the perfume. Irina did a somersault, and now he saw her from behind, swaying from side to side as if teasing. He moved his head to the same rhythm, but she avoided his eyes. He remembered a joke about two sailors in a whorehouse, but this time it wasn’t funny. He tried to concentrate, to regain control, but Irina had put on some clothes and now was sitting in her dress with the silver threads, legs crossed, ignoring him completely, which made him angry. He liked people to do what he told them. He put his arm under his head and snapped.

  “Cut it out and bring me a cigarette.” In his thoughts adding: “I’ll get you those shoes, and then it’s good-bye. I’m not living with a woman who doesn’t do anything for me anymore. And you’re not much of a woman. We learn from our mistakes.”

  When Syl came back with a lit cigarette, he took a long drag and blew smoke at the ceiling, but nothing happened. He tried again, but this time he coughed so hard, he had to get out of bed.

  “Poor Porkie,” said Syl.

  “Go to the kitchen and fix breakfast. Feed Sheikh, wake Iron Man and tell him to get in here.”

  She went without a word, unaware that she was going back. She knocked on Iron Man’s door, waited a moment, cracked the door, and said that Bolek wanted to see him. She put the coffee on and started examining the contents of the refrigerator. She was always surprised at its size: standing in front of it was like being at the entrance to an additional room. She did all the things she did every morning, but her time and space had frozen. In a dirty courtyard four kilometers away, a bench, at this time of day still unoccupied. On the wall of the apartment building, in black spray paint, her name and something else besides. The writing partly rubbed off, because she’d worked at it all night. Learning that spray paint was more enduring than memory. They sat and drank wine till late at night. When it ran out, they were bored, did things, but the dark covered them so well that the next night they could start again. So the bench was waiting, with the wall of the apartment building and the other walls that had windows with the faces of grown-ups and her father, who never came downstairs but always waited for her to come up. He would shout, like all old men who have no strength or money and can’t cry because no one taught them how. The courtyard was waiting for her, and the windows with the women in rollers and the men in undershirts. Nothing had changed. The trash cans, the carpet-beating frame, the hard earth. She put Sheikh’s food in his bowl and changed his water. He sniffed at it and walked away. People did the same. One day she went down to the courtyard and saw a cat hanging from the frame and some boys shooting at it with an air gun. She was going to say something, but they might write her name in black spray paint again. The cat moved, tried to reach its rea
r legs, where it was tied. With the next shot, she heard the smack, and the cat jerked. She understood it was a game. They called her over and put the heavy gun in her hand. She pulled the trigger, the shot rattled in the trash, and they laughed. One held her hands to help her aim. She tried to close her eyes but couldn’t. Shouting, applause. She giggled and wanted to do it again, but they were low on pellets. They forgot about her, but the giggling wouldn’t stop, it was deep inside. She went to the sandpit and threw up. No one noticed. Now she had to go back there.

  It’s eight in the morning. Shadows shorten, and a breeze begins from the east, cold but driving no clouds. A gray Ford Fiesta circles the Starzyński traffic circle and exits toward Targówek. A woman in a light-colored jacket glances in the rearview mirror to check her makeup. She overtakes a 176 bus and turns on 11 Listopada. On the seat beside her, sunglasses and a handbag containing a lighter and a pack of Davidoff lights. She’s crisscrossing the city because today she decided to be unfaithful to her husband and is putting off the moment. Probably to remember it better.

  A yellow baby Fiat with a customized exhaust pipe pulls up outside Ruy Barbosa High School and parks on the sidewalk. A kid with a ponytail gets out, slams the door, checks the inside pocket of his jacket, glances quickly to either side, and enters the school. A kid in a similar jacket but with a shaved head is waiting for him at the gateway. They stand together, talking and watching the street, then disappear behind a rusty white delivery van that says ROWOHLT GMBH BERLIN and moves slowly. When it passes, the shaved kid is gone and the one with the ponytail is getting into his car, turning on the music. He drives off, catches up with the van at Stalingradzka. From Gdański Bridge you can see the skyscrapers. An old man in the backseat of an Opel Vectra doesn’t recognize the buildings. He asks his son, who’s driving, but the son only shrugs. In a moment they’ll turn on Okopowa, drive as far as Wolska, and half an hour later go in the direction of Poznań to settle a complicated family matter concerning an inheritance. On the far side of Kutno they’ll be hit by a truck, and the young man, dying, will think that he’s been unkind to his father all his life and now has no time to tell him he loves him. The father will survive, but the rest of his days will be poisoned by guilt.

  On Profesorska a woman wakes up and, lying in bed, goes through all the French names she can think of. First the names of film directors, actors, writers, then perfumes, fashion designers, producers of lingerie. She makes sure she hasn’t forgotten anything, that “Picardie” is as firmly in her memory as “cinéma vérité” and “bois de Boulogne.” Then she gets up and tiptoes to the refrigerator.

  At ten after eight the blond man emerges from a gateway on Białostocka, which is deserted. He presses a button on his remote key and the car responds with a joyful beep. He presses again, and the vehicle flashes submissively. He puts the key in his pocket and walks toward the Wileński station. Passes long-distance bus stops, turns right. By a stand selling sausages three buddies are polishing off a bottle, drinking from a plastic beaker. They call him over, but he just nods. He buys cigarettes at the kiosk, goes out onto one of the platforms. A blue-and-yellow local from Tłuszcz is opening its doors, and passengers pour out. Hands in pockets, feet slightly apart, the blond man is taller than all the people arriving. They part in front of him, merge again behind his back. He looks at their cheap clothing, knockoff shoes, fake gold, plastic briefcases, watches from Hong Kong, the girls’ worn high heels and the boys’ imitation leather jackets, the plastic bags, generic Popularne cigarettes lit with matches, dyed bangs. When they all pass, stooped figures hurrying for the underpass to catch trams and buses, he spits. He returns the same way. The three buddies have finished their bottle, and one comes up sheepishly, but the blond man reaches into his pocket, takes out loose change, and says, “Here, now beat it.” With the money he took out his keychain, but doesn’t put it back. He twirls it on his finger until he sees his Audi.

  “It began with 7 and 6,” said Jacek, at the window. “That makes 13, an unlucky number. Not a good start.”

  “But if you add the next numbers,” said Paweł, “it’s not 13 anymore.”

  “Right. The last one was a 6, maybe a 9. The one before it . . .”

  “Either you remember or you don’t.” Paweł’s hands were wet again. He waved them in the air.

  “If I could get a little more sleep.”

  “We have 7, 6, then a 6 or 9 at the end. What about the middle?”

  “A 4, maybe, a 5? It wasn’t a zero. A zero I would remember. I notice them. Empty inside. With a zero you can draw around things. Remember when we played amoeba?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think and think, but in the end it can be drawn around and made a circle. That was the point of the game.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” said Paweł. He looked through his jacket pockets, found a pack, took out a cigarette.

  “Give me one,” said Jacek.

  “The pack’s almost empty,” said Paweł.

  Jacek took the cigarette, lit it, continued pacing. “Empty like a zero.”

  Paweł felt the world slipping away, from the chair beneath him, from the apartment. The two of them would go on sitting there until their lives were completely used up.

  “She’s waiting for you to call,” he said, trying to create a thread of meaning.

  “Where?”

  “At home. She said she was going home to wait.”

  Jacek paced.

  “All right. I’ll call.”

  “You remember her number?” The joke was weak.

  “It adds up to 10. Divided into three parts, and each starts with a 1.”

  Paweł got up to block Jacek. Jacek passed him, brushed against the wall, went into the dark kitchen, where he said:

  “What’s your problem? You count money, I count numbers. Each to his own.”

  Something dropped, shattered. “I see no contradiction,” Jacek went on, and something else fell, something tin. “If you thought about numbers once instead of bills, you wouldn’t be standing here now like a complete idiot.” Another object hit the floor. “If you relaxed a little, went to bed without knowing what you would do in the morning, didn’t give a flying fuck about tomorrow, you wouldn’t be in such shit today.” He appeared in the doorway, his face cold. Paweł stepped aside to let him pace again, but Jacek said: “Okay. I’ll try one more time. We’ll go find a phone. Seeing the dial may work. Visual memory.”

  In the living room, he picked up his coat from the floor, examined the torn sleeve. “While we’re there,” he said, “I’ll call her.”

  They stood for a moment, patting their pockets though there was nothing to pat. A knock at the door: regular, calm, not especially loud. Three times. It stopped, then repeated. They both counted, and the air grew colder.

  They left her. The rattle of the glass pane in the door, a hum from the street. She still saw the faces from ten minutes before. The woman with long, almost white hair, carrying something under her arm, wearing perfume that was too strong. Women shouldn’t smell like that: men start sniffing like animals. Under her arm, a red leather handbag with a gold clasp. The memory of the smell like a lemon drop dissolving on the tongue. Now she lay on her stomach, her face in the fake fur bedspread. A tram bell so close, as if the tram were brushing the wall. She wanted to shout but gasped instead, like waking from a bad dream. She knew the tram was far, but the quiet of the room brought everything near: the cars, people, children going to class, a ruddy spaniel with a collar made of silver links. When the blond man struck her, she spun around and hid her face in her hands. He did it lightly, in an almost friendly way. Came into the room, smiled, and said, “How’s it going?” Then she felt the pain and realized it was from being hit. She looked at him through her hands as a child spies on adults through a crack in the door. She saw only his back, a denim shirt. He was putting a cassette in the tape deck. Music came on. He turned and said:

  “I just want to know where he lives.”

 
“Who?”

  He tipped his head to one side and smiled as if listening to some distant, pleasant sound. This time the blow was harder. She came to on the couch. The pain so deep, she felt only fear.

  “I’m going out now,” he said. “I’ll be back in five minutes, and then you’ll call him.”

  “He doesn’t have a phone,” she whispered.

  “Whatever.”

  He turned the music off. The girl in black opened the door for him, but she didn’t see the door, only heard the rattle of the pane. Counted the seconds, whispered, chose concrete things—the perfume, the spaniel, hoping they would carry her into the heart of the day. “No one ever hit me,” she thought. “Not really.” Her mother’s slaps had been impulsive, weak. Occasionally her face stung, that was all. The blond man hit her as one hits a man. Again the terrible fear, so she tried to remember an event, but the events were all dust and useless. A dull shooting in her stomach. Skaryszewski Park, the women archers in their white uniforms. When they drew their bows, their bodies became light, as if lifting off the ground. The arrows flew, and the feet in white sneakers touched the green grass again. Slowly she pulled her knees up, felt the air move over her.