The shopping took them two hours, until he was dropping with exhaustion. He felt that if it weren’t for the trolley he’d keel over. He was ashamed of looking like all the other zombies struggling to push along their cheeses, soaps, meats, loo sprays and books by Dan Brown. He so desperately wanted to be different from them, feel like someone exceptional, disappear, forget, change, fall in love.
For starters he decided to buy ice cream in flavours he never ate: mango and Snickers (how can a scoop of ice cream cost two and a half zlotys - that’s almost a dollar!). They were both disgusting, and he was sorry he hadn’t had his favourites, lemon and strawberry.
He swapped with Helka, who luckily had chosen strawberry, and thought how great it is to have kids.
II
He was looking at Teodor Szacki, who was standing to one side, carefully observing the mourners. A handsome man, but he had looked better at his age. Because he had money. Money gives you some leeway and self-confidence. A strength that will never arise from good looks or a fine character.
Like the prosecutor, he hadn’t come to the chapel - or rather “pre-funeral home” - at the cemetery in Wólka to say goodbye to Henryk Telak. He wanted to inspect the mourners, and above all Szacki. He took a few steps alongside a hideous concrete wall to get a better view of him. Was he an adversary who should be feared, or just another official, too weak to land himself a job as a solicitor or barrister?
He didn’t look weak. He was taut as a string, surprisingly well dressed for a man on a public-sector wage. His classic black suit must have been made to measure. Or its owner had a perfect eye for the ready-made range. Frankly he doubted that, as the prosecutor’s clothing was sure to carry labels saying Wólczanka and Intermoda, not Boss or Zegna. And the man had not been born who fitted the cut of the Polish firms - you only had to look at the second-rate politicians on TV. In addition, Szacki was quite tall, at least six foot, he guessed, and very lean. It was hard for men like that to find even jeans in the right size, let alone select a suit from a range meant mainly for small fat blokes. Personally he had his suits made to measure in Berlin; he had a tailor there whom he had known since the 1980s.
To go with the suit a white shirt with very subtle grey pinstripes and a plain graphite-grey tie. He thought cattily that his wife couldn’t have chosen it for him - he didn’t suspect the female lawyer from the City Council of having too much taste, especially as he’d seen how she dressed in photos. A pleasant woman, but someone should advise her against tapering skirts with a figure like that.
“He was a good husband, a loving father and an honest citizen,” declaimed the young priest unemotionally. The words almost made him snort with laughter and he had to cough to hide his faux pas. A few heads turned his way, including Szacki’s.
He looked him in the eye and held his gaze.
The prosecutor had a young face, though you couldn’t have called his charms boyish. Subtly manly, rather. The softness of his features was shattered by his slightly furrowed brow and unpleasantly cold grey eyes. It wasn’t the face of a man who often smiles. In July he’d reach the age of thirty-six, but many people would have given him less, if not for his thick, completely white hair. It contrasted with his black eyebrows, giving him a stern, slightly unsettling look. He was perfectly monochrome. Just black, grey and white, with no other colour to spoil the composition. Finally, without blinking, the prosecutor slowly averted his gaze, and it crossed his mind that this particular official didn’t like to compromise.
The funeral-parlour employees, who despite their suits and gloves looked like dangerous ex-cons, vigorously lifted the coffin and carried it out of the pre-funeral home. Few people liked this place. It was impersonal, ice-cold and ugly with the ugliness typical of modern architecture. He did like it, because there was no stench of religion in there. Just communal death, no empty promises. That suited him. Once he used to think that like others he’d convert in his old age. He’d been wrong. He was prepared to believe in anything - he found everyday life full of surprises. But in God - never.
The mourners, not more than forty people, turned to face the passage down the middle of the room as they waited for the family to leave. Jadwiga Telak and her son came after the coffin, solemn, but not looking crushed by despair. Then came some relatives whom he didn’t recognize. Not immediate family - Henryk Telak was an only child. Then a few friends, among them the Polgrafex employees and Igor, who glanced at him and nodded discreetly.
The procession ended with the people he found most interesting - the witnesses to Telak’s death, and not just witnesses, because he was sure one of them was the murderer. Cezary Rudzki the therapist was walking alongside Barbara Jarczyk, and behind them came Hanna Kwiatkowska and Euzebiusz Kaim. From the other side of the passage Teodor Szacki was closely observing all four of them. As they passed him, the prosecutor joined the procession. He stood next to him, and shoulder to shoulder they left the pre-funeral home. He smiled. Who’d have thought we’d all meet beside Henryk Telak’s coffin? Fate can be comical. Interesting to see if Prosecutor Teodor Szacki would find out what he already knew about the mourners. He didn’t think so. He hoped not.
III
What a waste of time. But what had he been expecting from the funeral? That one of them would come in a red shirt marked “IT’S ME!”? Szacki knew it wasn’t very polite, but after leaving the chapel he quickly said goodbye to the widow, cast a cold glance at the four suspects and ran off to the car park. As he walked down the concrete path, he could still feel the gaze of that older man, who hadn’t taken his eyes off him throughout the entire ceremony. Probably some relative wondering who I am, he thought.
He got in the car and put the key in the ignition but didn’t switch on the engine. Once again he had the feeling that something had escaped his notice. For a split second, there in the chapel, he had felt as if he were looking at something important. He could sense something very vague, gently tickling the back of his head. At what moment had that happened? Towards the end, just after the coffin was carried out. He was standing there, absorbed by the man watching him, who looked as if he were struggling not to smile. He must have been about seventy, but Szacki would be happy to look like that at his age - like Robert Redford’s more handsome brother - and to be able to afford suits like that one. He was looking furtively at the man, people were coming out of the pews and walking slowly down the middle of - let’s call it the nave. And that was when he saw something. Something important.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, trying to imagine that moment. The cold room, the solemn music that he didn’t recognize, people dragging their feet. Rudzki alongside Jarczyk, Kwiatkowska and Kaim behind them. And that strange feeling, like déjà vu, a sudden discharge in his neurons. Why?
No, he had no idea.
He drove out of the car park, similar in size to the one outside the supermarket, turned into Wójcicki Street, and immediately stopped near Młociński Wood. He changed out of his funeral suit into jeans and a linen shirt, sprinkled mineral water on his hand and ruffled his hair a bit. He tried smiling roguishly into the side mirror. What a tragedy. Like a German pretending to find Polish humour funny. After pausing to think he took Helka’s child seat out of the back and tossed it in the boot, then scooped up a heap of crumbs, the straw from a fruit-juice carton and a Milky Way wrapper. All with the thought that he might have to drive her home afterwards.
This time he arrived at Szpilka first. He sat down on the mezzanine, at a table by the wall. There were better places on small couches by the windows, through which you could watch life go by on Triple Cross Square, but he was afraid Monika would sit on the same couch next to him and he wouldn’t know how to behave. And he had remembered that Weronika was meant to be taking Helka to Ujazdowski Park. He’d rather they didn’t see him here. Monika came a little later, wearing tiny amber earrings, a tight black top with shoulder straps and a long flowery skirt. And sandals with heels and thongs that wound f
ancifully around her calves. She stopped in the café doorway, took off her sunglasses and blinked as she scanned the interior. When she noticed him on the mezzanine, she smiled and waved cheerfully. He thought she looked fresh and lovely. He automatically replied with a smile, far less forced than the one he’d practised in the side mirror, and thought how for years the only girl who’d been so pleased to see him was his daughter. No one else.
He stood up as she approached the table. She said hello and kissed him on the cheek.
“And now please explain to the high court,” she said, frowning.
“Why did the defendant choose the gloomiest table in the darkest corner of this otherwise brightly sunlit café, eh?”
He laughed.
“It was on impulse, I didn’t know what I was doing. When I came to, I was already sitting there. I swear it’s not my fault. The police framed me.”
They sat down on a sofa by the window with a fine view of Saint Alexander’s church. Along the pavement a dozen boys went past in black shirts marked “No camping”, with a graphic showing two crossed-out little men having sex from behind. It must have been about the homosexuals. Suddenly they started chanting:
“Husband and wife, normal family life!”
Szacki thought they looked like a bunch of poufs themselves - a group of men in tight shirts getting each other worked up with stupid slogans - but he kept this observation to himself.
He lied that he’d eaten a big breakfast, for fear of a large bill. Finally he ordered a smoked-cheese sandwich, and she had spinach pierogi. Then two coffees. They chatted a bit about work and why it was so hopeless, and he amused her with a few funny stories about his colleagues at the prosecutor’s office. Then he forced himself to pay her a compliment. He praised her shoes, and immediately rebuked himself mentally for looking like some sort of bloody fetishist. All because of that Russki, who’s always regaling me with his fantasies, he told himself.
“Do you like them?” she asked, raising her skirt and turning her foot this way and that so he could take a good look at the sandals. He said yes, thinking she had very shapely feet, and that the whole scene was extremely sexy.
“It’s just a pity you can’t kick them off in a single go,” she sighed. “The straps must have been invented by a man.”
“What a clever guy. He knew what looks good.”
“Thanks. I’m glad I’ve achieved the intended effect.”
Just then the TV presenter Krzysztof Ibisz came into the café. He ran up to the mezzanine and looked round nervously. Szacki thought it embarrassing to recognize Ibisz - the novelist Jerzy Pilch or the former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki would have been quite another matter - so he pretended not to notice him. He questioned Monika about her work. He wasn’t really all that interested in stories about the editor from Gorzów who used any excuse to stare at her cleavage, as a result of which she had to keep correcting her articles several times and listening to his tirades about the pivotal point of the text. He found that he liked listening to her. He watched her gesticulating, adjusting her hair, licking her lips and playing with her coffee spoon - her mouth was just a minor element in the way the girl communicated; she seemed to speak with every muscle. He remembered that when a man stares at a woman’s lips, it means he wants to kiss her, so he quickly looked up at her eyes. At once he remembered there were some rules about staring at the eyes too - you should only look long enough to show attention, but not too insistently. Where did he get all this nonsense from?
Suddenly she broke off.
“I’ll tell you something,” she said, pointing at him with her latte spoon and then digging the rest of the froth out of the tall glass. “But don’t laugh. Either say no, after all, I don’t know you at all, or yes - ultimately in a way it concerns you. I don’t know myself.”
“Do you want me to interrogate you?”
Once again he almost burned with embarrassment, and she laughed again.
“You see, I’d like to write a book. A novel.”
“It happens in the best families.”
“Ha, ha. It happens to every graduate and almost-graduate of Polish studies. But never mind. I’d like to write a novel about a prosecutor.”
“A crime story?”
“No, an ordinary novel. But the hero would be a prosecutor. I had the idea a while ago, but when we met recently, I thought it really isn’t such a bad one. What do you think?”
He had no idea what to say.
“And this prosecutor—”
“Ooh,” she cut him short. “It’s a long story.”
He glanced discreetly at his mobile phone. Christ! He’d been sitting here for an hour and a half already. If their friendship was going to develop he’d have to murder someone every three days to justify these absences to Weronika in some way. He promised Monika he’d be happy to hear the plot and equally happy to let himself be exploited. He’d tell her everything she wanted to know. But not today.
When the waitress brought the bill, he reached for his wallet, but she stopped him.
“Don’t worry. It’s very kind of you, but you paid last time and I’m a feminist, I work at an almost-private firm for almost-decent money, and I’ve got to corrupt you a bit so you’ll be willing to cooperate.”
He wanted to ask just what sort of cooperation she had in mind, but he decided against it.
He evidently wasn’t the master of bold flirting.
“It’s embarrassing,” he said.
She put the money on the table.
“It’s embarrassing that you’re an educated man who chases bandits at God knows what cost, while I messed up my studies, write bad articles and earn more than you. Don’t be so macho - it really doesn’t matter.”
“It matters enormously.”
“How come?”
“If I’d known you were going to pay I’d have ordered soup and dessert too.”
She admitted to living in the Żoliborz district, but she didn’t want him to take her there. She was planning to go to the Empik bookshop first, to look for something interesting. She talked a great deal, and that suited him very well. He had once read that everything we most like at the start of a friendship will irritate us the most later on. Absolutely true. He used to adore watching Weronika turning all the flowerpots a fraction each evening so they’d get equal sunlight, but now it really annoyed him when he heard the daily scrape of the pots being turned on the terracotta tiles in the kitchen.
She’d only just vanished round the corner of Nowy Świat Street when his mobile rang. Kitten.
“Where are you?”
“In the car,” he lied. “I’m driving from Wólka to Koszykowa Street, I’ve got to look something up at the library.”
“So how long did that funeral go on for? Three hours?”
“It started late, it went on for ages, I wanted to see it all properly, you know what it’s like.”
“Of course I do. It happens to me three times a week. Nothing but funeral after funeral. Will you pick us up from Ujazdowski Park in two hours’ time?”
“I don’t know if I’ll make it.”
“Try. Your daughter mentioned that she’d like to be reminded what her father looks like.”
“OK,” he said, wondering why he’d only just had the idea of going to the library.
IV
He liked this place. While he was at college he’d always preferred coming here than to look for a spot in the eternally crowded university library. The main reading room was fabulous, like the ballroom in a classical palace. Two storeys high, it was decorated with pilasters and stucco, with light pouring in from the Koszykowa Street side through two rows of windows. There was something of the atmosphere of a church in here. Except that instead of the chill of stone walls and the odour of incense, there was a fragrance of oak parquet flooring and a nutty smell of old paper. The little tables that filled the room reminded him of church pews, and the small chairs next to them were just as uncomfortable as pews. But the unique atmospher
e of this place came from the brass lamps with green glass shades that illuminated each table. On a November evening the reading room at the main city library was undoubtedly the most magical place in Warsaw.
He was looking forward to this mood as he parked down below, but the periodicals reading room turned out to be in an impersonal area on the fourth floor, a kingdom of laminated desks, fluorescent lamps and chairs upholstered in brown fabric.
In the computer he found catalogue numbers for the daily Życie Warszawy and the evening paper Express Wieczorny, filled out reserve slips for the binders dated September 1978 and September 1987, and waited. He spent a while watching the librarian filling in some forms. She had the archetypal look - long black hair with a centre parting, large, unfashionable glasses, a green, long-sleeved, polo-neck top and caricature-big breasts attached to a slender figure. She must have felt his gaze, because she interrupted her work and stared at him. He turned away.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting at Szpilka. He went back over every word, wondering what she’d been thinking and how she’d understood what he’d said. Hadn’t he said something she might take wrongly? Hadn’t he made too much fun of his colleagues at work? She might think he was a misanthrope and a braggart all at once. And was she actually pretty? She was sweet, it was true, very sweet even, but pretty? Her shoulders were a bit too broad, her breasts too small, her bum too low, and on top of that her legs were ever so slightly bowed.
Even if he was seeking out the imperfections in it, thinking about her body made him feel an immense urge for sex. He couldn’t stop picturing the moment when, twisting slightly, with her skirt hitched halfway up her legs, she’d shown off her new shoes. He imagined her hitching her skirt even higher. Until it made him squirm. He closed his eyes and imagined it even more precisely. Not in the café, but at her place on the sofa.
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