Nine

by Andrzej Stasiuk

  “It’d be better if you told him,” she heard. “Don’t be foolish.”

  The girl was looking down at her, a cigarette in her hand.

  “Why did you call me here? Why did you tell me to come?”

  “He’d have done the same to me . . .”

  “Not to you, Luśka.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “I know you. He told you to talk to me now?”

  “What difference does it make? Tell him. Don’t be foolish.”

  The girl knelt, put the cigarette in Beata’s mouth. Beata took a drag, took the cigarette from Luśka’s fingers.

  “What will he do to me?” she asked.

  “He’s not a bad guy, just persistent.” Luśka took the butt, looked around for an ashtray. Far off, a train hoot.

  “I feel sick,” Beata said.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Luśka. “If you tell him, you won’t need to be afraid.”

  “It’s the cigarette, not the fear.” Beata curled up.

  Iron Man sniffed. The scent of Fahrenheit aftershave in the cab made him sad. To cheer himself, he touched the wallet in his pocket, fat with bills. On his feet he had a pair of Bolek’s new socks straight from the packet. He’d even taken sunglasses with him: they dangled casually from the breast pocket of the blue jacket. On his finger, a Mercedes Benz signet ring.

  “Take Poniatowskiego Bridge,” he told the driver.

  “It was supposed to be Łazienkowski Bridge,” the cabdriver said.

  “I took the Łazienkowski yesterday. I don’t like going the same way twice.”

  They turned on Grenadierów. The car’s upholstery, warmed in the sun, had an elegant smell. Iron Man stretched his legs and gazed at the world outside. A blue sky over boring Grochów. They sped across Stanów Zjednoczonych on the tail end of a green light. The apartment complexes on Wiatraczna rose, white like an immense pueblo. He read the names of streets and wondered who came up with them. For example, Cyraneczki. All he could think of was President Józef Cyrankiewicz and his bald head. He wanted to ask the driver, but the guy didn’t look more than thirty, so forget about history. Waszyngtona deserted. A golden light from Downtown. “In this kind of weather everything looks foreign,” he thought. They came to Skaryszewski Park on the right. Dogs scampering among bare trees. Before they reached Zieleniecka, he slapped his knee and said:

  “Maybe we could go through Praga. Over Dąbrowski Bridge?”

  “We could even take the Grota-Roweckiego,” the driver said with a shrug. “Or via Nowy Dwór. I tanked up this morning.”

  Syl leaned forward, asked:

  “Why Praga? It’s out of our way.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The stores aren’t open yet anyway. No harm in going for a ride once in a while, is there?”

  “I guess not.” She dropped back in her seat.

  The Wedel factory reflected in the silver surface of Kamionkowskie Lake. White plumes over stacked buildings. Through the window she could smell chocolate and marshmallow. A watering truck came toward them, making the black asphalt glisten. She thought again about the shoes waiting for her somewhere in the city in some store, on some shelf, or on display behind glass, surrounded by huge eggs and rabbits and chicks. She imagined herself going inside. A refined salesman places before her a box lined with tissue paper and takes out a gorgeous pair of black shoes, silver buckles tinkling, and she tries them on in front of a low, broad mirror. Excited, she leaves the store and looks for an entranceway or corner where she can quickly and discreetly take off her old shoes and step into the new ones. The high, clear tap of the heels on the sidewalk makes men turn to look at her, because she has become an entirely different woman. The shoes had to be there somewhere in the labyrinth of Downtown department stores, somewhere in those thousand mysteries of style that could change your life, let you be born over and over again after the tedium of early morning, the sorrow of midday, the hopelessness of night.

  A dull-green train on the viaduct above Targowa. People stuffing packages onto racks, into compartments, a few of them looking down Grochowska. A jungle of antennas sprouted from the roofs of the gray apartment buildings. In the distance, an impassable wall of black tendrils, naked scrub. Syl could see the faces of the passengers in the windows, but no longing stirred in her. “I won’t throw the old ones away,” she decided. “They’re not that old.”

  They stopped at a crosswalk. A platinum blonde with long hair carrying a red handbag. Syl took a close look at the woman’s red pumps. Gold heels. A 13 tram emerged from Kijowska, pulled up at the stop. Three teenagers tossed away their cigarettes and got in.

  Fear makes a body tender. They lay on the floor, motionless so as not to stir the air or block the light. On the floor below, someone was sweetening tea: they could hear the rustle of the sugar poured in, the soft sound of the crystals breaking the surface of the liquid, the ring of the spoon against the glass. The tea must not have been hot, because the swallowing continued for a long time. Dogs yapped at the shelter out on Paluch, throwing themselves against the chain-link fence. In the church of Saint Barbara on Emilii Plater, complete silence, which they could hear, like all the other sounds of the city. The sounds melted into one and filled the apartment, driving out the air, so it was hard to breathe. The tea drinker got up from his chair and took three steps to the window. A male voice: “Their enemies and prey have no chance, for they are too slow and their killer instinct is undeveloped. The struggle for territory or survival must end in death for them, at best in injury.” The voice stopped; singing began. The person on the floor below now went into the kitchen, and over the song he could be heard opening the refrigerator, taking something out, doing something with it. Then fat hissed in a frying pan, and eggshells were broken. He must have been heavy, because the walls and floor shook with every step. His slippers slapped. The singing turned into a monologue in German. The chair creaked again; a fork clicked against china. The ringing of a tram from the street. Two floors below, a toilet flushing and children shouting. The Cartoon Network came on, went off. The man beneath them must have finished, because the fork clicking stopped. A belch, then a long fart.

  “Who?” Paweł moved his lips, pointed to the floor. Jacek shook his head. Again they were still, staring at the door. Hundreds of sounds from behind the door, from behind the walls, from the ceiling, the city: the rumble of the steelworks, the hiss of steam from the power plant, the jets at Okęcie, the crash of buffers in the engine sheds, everything mixed up.

  Paweł tried to get up on all fours, but Jacek grabbed him and pulled him back down. Paweł submitted and lay flat. “How much longer?” he asked soundlessly. The man downstairs snoring. Outside the door, something moved, brushed against something else, fell silent. The peephole gleamed. Jacek loosened his grip. Paweł turned onto his back and lay with outflung arms. He could feel the whole building vibrate to the rhythm of the radio and television waves, the vacuum cleaners, mixers, refrigerators, and washing machines, the gas flames of burners. Heat rose up the walls and swept over his exhausted body, dissolving it, turning it into useless energy that dissipated forever into the sky. Jacek stirred. Very slowly he crawled toward the hallway, his face sliding along the floor, his breath stirring the dust. At the door, he froze and listened. The soles of his shoes worn and cracked. Forty-four TV channels brought comfort to the inhabitants of the city, but there was no news, only silence, the sounds of life and time coming to a stop like blood in the veins of a corpse. Paweł stared at the ceiling. Something was going on above too. A fleck of plaster fell on his face. Jacek turned to him and placed a finger on his lips. The beating of their hearts filled the apartment.

  Bolek waited for the door to close behind Iron Man and Syl, turned on his other side, dozed, woke, yawned, and let his feet drop to the carpet. He scratched under his arm and examined what he possessed. A pleasure for his eyes to move from one object to the next. He never did that when someone else was in the apartment. He liked people but didn’t like them
to touch what was his. As if touching diminished a thing. Now, in the quiet and solitude, there seemed more. He rose naked, went to the window, and opened the curtains—indifferent to the view, but it was from his window, so he devoted a moment to it. He found his leather slippers and walked slowly, so nothing would escape him: the artificial flowers in their plastic pots, the pictures in their spiral frames, the crimson footstools, the sword on the wall, the brass vent cover on the ceiling in the shape of a bouquet of lilies, the gold lion’s-paw door handles, the oval mirror with the tulip sconce, the smooth wallpaper, the rough wallpaper, the red night-lights, the couches covered with shaggy white throws, the black nightstands with copper knobs, in their drawers old sports papers, girlie magazines, and combs, the wardrobes with suits, the chests with the rest of his clothes, custom-ordered marble windowsills, plaster rosettes in the ceiling and stucco moldings over the fireplace where tin logs were lit by a flickering bulb beside a set of silver-plated fire irons, the sky-blue rococo clock that played seven different tunes, three cheerful, three melancholy, and happy birthday, the electronic calendar with a motion sensor that spoke in English in a woman’s voice whenever you walked by, the revolving armchair, on it a pile of freshly laundered white socks rolled into balls, a computer and monitor he’d lost interest in after losing five games of Exterminator in a row, the nickel-plated gadget to tie neckties, the shoe polisher, the stationary bike, the massager, a copy of a Fragonard, a standing ashtray in the shape of a Corinthian column—then he was in the living room. He sat in the wicker chair. As usual Syl had prepared his vitamins for him. He tore open the packets, poured them into a glass of water, stirred, drank, and pressed the remote. Two animals devouring a third. Disgusted, he changed the channel. A woman with her head shaved was walking down the street and singing. The people ignored her. He went to the kitchen. On the table, under a glass dome, sandwiches. “She didn’t make much of an effort today,” he thought: ham, salmon, salami, cheese. “Couldn’t be bothered to cut up pickles.” He put a frying pan on the stove, opened the refrigerator, took out the bacon, counted out six eggs. After a moment added two. “Why not,” he said out loud. He took the food into the living room. The woman was gone; two men in suits were talking. He settled down comfortably and started eating. A mouthful of scrambled egg, a mouthful of sandwich, and so on, alternating the sandwiches according to mayonnaise, ketchup, tartar sauce, mustard, still naked except for his slippers. He saved the fried bacon for dessert but added a few slices of it to a cheese sandwich with mustard. He wiped his plate with a piece of bread. He hiccuped and let a fart. Sheikh raised his head and cast him a wary glance. “Every day should start like this,” Bolek thought. He shifted to the sofa and stretched out full length. The black leather creaked under his massive white flesh. Languidly he reviewed all the things he had to do. The phone was near, he could reach it easily, but he put off the moment, because Irina entered his thoughts again. Or had he entered hers? He yielded, closed his eyes, and she stood in the doorway in a flimsy nightgown with gold sequins. Her smile enigmatic. In her hands, a samovar, shining, steaming.

  The platforms visible from the window: bulging checkered bags piled on baggage carts. The women from Zielonka and Ząbki never left their sewing machines—if they did, they were immediately replaced by others, and the rattle of needles and the clatter of spools went on day and night. Every train to Minsk, every freight car to Moscow was filled with cheap denim, nylon, cotton, imitation leather, cut and fashioned into garments decorated with fake gold buttons, silver snaps. The endless ribbon of fabric from the Far East flowed into basements along the Wołomin line and, turned into clothes, traveled east again, but a closer east, ever hungry for the fashions of the West, the cuts, colors, glittering knockoffs, as if the people there had been naked for centuries, in all those Shepetivkas and Homlas and Bobruyskas, and their eyes finally opened, and they sought to cover themselves, ashamed in front of the dressed world. Women in tracksuits stood guard, circled the checkered bags, watched like sentries protecting burial mounds filled not with the treasures of the past but with the future and insatiable human longing.

  The blond man gazed at the platforms of East Station, his hips swaying a little. Wearing jeans that cost three mill, he was contented. In his mind he added the shoes, another four, and the shirt, two, so it came to nine. In the hall hung a jacket for ten, and in the jacket was a phone that was three and a half and a wallet holding twelve in different denominations. Thirty-odd not counting the watch, the gold chain, the underwear, and other stuff he had in his pockets. “Not bad, though it could be better,” he thought. He was worth something with his two hundred pounds and not an ounce of fat. Everything in working order. Reflexes perfect. Skin smooth, chest big, neck thick, biceps and abs clearly defined. That was why he didn’t like crowds on the street, people coming into contact without his permission. Sometimes he would pick someone out, walk toward him, wait for the guy to bump into him, then he would flex his muscles and watch the guy bounce off, spin from the force of it, mouth open. And he kept on walking, because weakness disgusted him. One day he’d leave it all, Białostocka, Ząbkowska, Brzeska, leave Wileński Station and East Station, and the waiting for phone calls, because it would be him calling first, from some place far from the stink of people, his body safe from all chance meeting, physical decay, the commonness of tram stops and underground walkways, where he would send those weaker than himself but who tried to compete though they would never succeed.

  “Garbage,” he thought, seeing a man add more bags to the pile at the far end of the platform. “And they’re out of cash, all they have are those worthless rags. Mr. Max is stupid, doesn’t do anything about them.” The blond man smiled: a few days ago they tied a guy’s hands with wire, wrapped the end around the steering wheel. Shut the door and poured gasoline over the back of the car. Threw a match. Three seconds, and the guy started screaming. They could see his open mouth. When they opened the door and cut the wire, he told them everything. The blond man was going to lock him in the car again, but the others went on about Mr. Max this, Mr. Max that. Pissed him off. He liked fire and didn’t like cowards. He kicked the guy in the chest, and they drove away. The guy ran for the fire extinguisher, but when they were a ways off, a column of tarry smoke rose among the trees. He smiled at the thought that the yellow train was headed in that direction. He placed a hand on Luśka’s head.

  “Not this time, I don’t think,” he said.

  The girl stopped and lifted her face. She took a deep breath and sat back on her heels.

  “It’s not your fault.” He patted her on the cheek.

  “You take something?” she asked.

  “I don’t use that shit.”

  “I know. I was just asking. I’ll make some coffee.” She got up and went to the kitchen. Lit the gas, put the kettle on. The blond man leaned against the windowsill staring out.

  “Too much on my mind lately,” he explained.

  “Relax.”

  “Right now I can’t.”

  The kettle whistled, and Luśka took out glasses. The blond man zipped up his pants. His thoughts were quick, touching on things and people with an animal sureness. Luśka put the coffee on the windowsill.

  “Maybe you can with her,” she said, her eyes following his. “Women talk more afterward. You know, willing to confide.”

  A train pulled up at the platform and blocked everything.

  The brown bear stood on its hind legs and rocked from side to side. Its red tongue lolled between its yellow teeth. Crows flew to its feet. It paid no attention to them, staring at the brick spires of Saint Florian’s. At least it seemed to. Its fur was the same color as the church. Syl threw it a cookie. The crows flapped, but the bear was faster. It dropped to all fours in a second and took the cookie.

  “Its nose is like a dog’s,” she said.

  “Kind of,” said Iron Man.

  Stooping, the collar of his jacket up, his hands in his pockets, he looked a little like a bear himself. He
was rocking from side to side too, partly as a joke, partly from the cold, because the wind from the river was bitter. He was starting to regret his idea. “We should have kept driving,” he thought. “Gone and sat down somewhere warm and had a drink.” The April sun was cold as ice. He looked at Syl’s legs in their panty hose and shivered. He could never understand how women managed like that. He wore long johns until the first of May.

  “Do they sleep in the winter?” she asked.

  “I doubt it. Too much traffic. The noise of the trams.”

  A second bear emerged from the concrete cave.

  “That must be his wife,” said Syl.

  “Not necessarily. It could be his brother or just someone from the family.”

  She tossed cookie after cookie. The bears moved among the yellow disks, confused by the sudden bounty and making no effort to drive away the crows.

  “Do you have family, Iron Man?”

  “Not really, not anymore. I used to. Sometimes I go to the cemetery,” he added without thinking, because he was troubled: the Japanese, a watch he couldn’t identify, and Bolek’s words that morning—“Go downtown with her”—made him dread the coming day. “Shit, I haven’t been downtown for two years,” he thought. “That cab ride yesterday in the dark doesn’t count.” The Asians moved off to the other end of the zoo, and the two of them were alone again in the wind. Syl’s nose was blue.

  “We could go to the Biedronka,” he suggested, pointing to Świerczewski.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “We could have some pancakes. They used to be good there.”

  “And the shops?”

  “There’ll be time for that, kid. We saw the bears, now let’s get a bite to eat. You said yourself that you never go out.”

  “All right,” agreed Syl. “But just for a short while.”