Nine (13 page)

 

A 26 passed Kijowska and went under the viaduct. A young soldier with a backpack, head shaved, was looking around nervously, mentally counting the stops. It was only at the Powszechny Theater that he got up the courage to ask an elderly lady in a mohair beret. “Oh, you missed it,” she said. “But if you get out at the next stop, you can walk. Left on Lubelska.” He got out at Rogatki, smelled the chocolate from the Wedel factory, and felt like crying.

An electric train set off from Powiśle Station. It took the iron spans like a sleepy rollercoaster. A blonde with a green pack on her lap tried to look into the windows of an apartment building on 3 Maja, but they were black mirrors. Then water underneath, so she closed her eyes, and, as every day, her gorge rose. In a whisper she counted the thuds of the wheels. At forty-three she knew she was over the hill.

 

“It's up to you,” said the guy, and closed the door behind him. Paweł listened, but the girl turned the music back on and began moving her hips, looking out the window. His eyes moved between her ass and the cupboard door. Musk from her armpits, perhaps, but stronger was the smell of stiff sheets starched at the laundry and lying in a tight stack. Something was going on outside the door: a vibration, a thumping, a kind of unease. Then some actual noise over the music, but he couldn't identify it before it dissolved back into the music. He refocused on the cupboard door and the ass. Then a sudden movement, the air in the apartment quivered, then silence.

The guy came in and sat in his former place, and the girl turned the music off.

“You'll have to clean up,” he said. “The crap got spilled. New tracksuit.” He stretched out the fabric on his thigh and looked at a small stain. “Just as well it's a loose fit, or I would have been scalded.”

Then he turned to Paweł as if only just noticing him. Narrowed his eyes, stared with his pale-blue gaze, and gave a broad smile.

“So how are things? You OK? What are you up to now?”

Paweł felt a hot tongue on his back licking upward from feet and across shoulders; on his neck and in his hair it burned.

“I keep busy,” he answered.

“You have to, pal. You have to keep moving.” A nod, still the same smile.

“Luśka, bring something to drink.” Issuing the order to the girl but not looking away. Paweł started to dig in his pockets. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl go and open the flap of a cabinet.

“Here, have one of mine.” The guy took out some Camels. He had to shake one loose because Paweł couldn't get it.

She put a bottle of Wyborowa and two glasses in front of them.

“Pour some for him. I have to go in a minute.”

She did as he said and put the other glass away.

“Come on, just the one. Don't be shy,” the guy urged. “Tastes good, does you good. I'd have one with you, but I can't.”

Paweł raised the glass, felt the vodka dripping over his fingers, poured it down his throat, and in his mind the words
I better leave
rattled.

“Just as well. You know how it is, right?”

Paweł waited for the vodka to drop and said:

“Yeah.”

“You see what I'm saying. Luśka, give our buddy here another.”

The girl refilled the glass. Paweł was trying to understand what the guy was saying, but he heard only the volume. The words were strangely detached, as if someone were speaking from inside a well or calling in the darkness. He concentrated on the man's mouth, watched it move. When it stopped, Paweł would nod. He saw uneven white teeth, one of them broken; a pink tongue appeared, disappeared. Sometimes the mouth opened to laugh, so he laughed too, careful to finish at the same moment, not wanting his own voice to remain alone in the silence afterward. He tried to count the drinks but soon lost track. He couldn't focus: the girl, her ass, the cupboard door, the guy's mouth, his own hand with a cigarette trying to hit the ashtray. All of them like separate machines. Space had slipped between them, so even if they wanted, they wouldn't have been able to touch one another. The guy's watch glittered on his wrist, but the hands were in constant motion and Paweł was unable to see the time. Finally when the watch hand slapped down to rest on a knee, he saw that it was after three.

The guy got up, went to the door, put his hand on the handle. Paweł sighed with relief. The girl had turned away, looking through the LPs. The guy opened the door. He nodded at Paweł in farewell. Paweł smiled, winked. But the guy stood where he was and finally said:

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

“Then let's go. Were you thinking I'd leave you here, wise guy?”

 

“I was never here before,” said Iron Man when Bolek pulled the Beamer off onto the edge of a cinder track. They'd driven halfway across the city. Now it lay far behind them, black against a red sky. The railroad embankment above them. A trash-strewn field, solitary bushes casting long shadows. The sun about to set. Near a clump of pines, the wind was making something flap in the grass: a piece of plastic, paper, hard to say.

“You stay here,” said Bolek.

“Where?” Iron Man looked around, at a loss. “There's nothing here.”

“Wait over there.” Bolek pointed to a small hut next to the pines. It looked like an old outhouse. “You can't go with me.”

Iron Man shook his head, pulled the zipper of his jacket up to his chin.

“At least leave me some smokes.”

Bolek reached into the glove compartment and took out a pack of Marlboros.

“I won't be more than an hour,” he said, and turned the key in the ignition.

Dusk already in the trees. He drove slowly across mud, deep puddles. At a corrugated iron fence, he got out and knocked on a gate. It cracked open; someone took a look at him, and the two sides opened.

Bolek parked by a dirty Polonez. Everything like a building site: planks over mud. Under a lean-to, stacks of bricks, wheelbarrows, barrels of cement. At the far end of the yard was a house, half-hidden by the pines. On the concrete steps he was greeted by a heavy man in a leather jacket.

“Go on in. He's waiting for you,” the man said.

Bolek scraped the soles of his shoes on the edge of a step
and pushed open the glass door. The man, following him in, flicked a switch in the hall and returned to his station. Bolek walked to the back of the house, his steps echoing on the cement floor. In places the walls were plastered, but halfheartedly. Another man in a doorway nodded to him. Behind him two others were playing cards on a small plastic table. A cartoon on TV The room stank of socks. Somewhere at the other end of the house, a slow, hollow thumping, like someone beating his head against the wall. An overweight dachshund appeared, old, too tired to bark. It simply lifted its nose and sniffed.

At the end of the hall, a broad oak staircase with a carved balustrade and glass chandelier over the landing. A tin bowl with dog food. Bolek headed up the stairs. Halfway the oak flooring turned to bare concrete, then a green rug covered with cigarette burns. Here the walls were white and had a few pictures: naked women with orange-brown skin against an ocean background. He reached a mahogany door and knocked.

 

“Unbefuckinglievable,” said the fat man, and dropped into a leather armchair. “Who was taking care of it?”

“Waldek and his men,” answered Bolek.

“I'll goddamn see to him,” said the man. “Tell him that. On my territory I don't tolerate dipshits, motherfucking amateurs.”

“He said he got away from them. They saw two. He said they chased them.”

“You tell them I'll goddamn see to them. And stop standing around like that.”

Bolek squatted on a low padded stool. The man in the silver pajamas reached into a drawer of the desk and took out a bottle of white Absolut. He filled two glasses and motioned with his head:

“Here, Bolek. You're a good kid.”

Three walls of the room paneled with oak, the fourth glass, letting in bright light.

“Fix it. Old Max is asking you.”

“I'll fix it, boss,” said Bolek, reaching for the glass.

“Tell him I'll see to him.”

“I'll tell him.”

Mr. Max gulped the vodka, felt the pockets of his pajamas, took out a cigarette. Bolek jumped up and gave him a light. Mr. Max took a drag, stood, beckoned, put an arm around Bolek, and led him to the glass wall. Below, the glistening blue of a swimming pool, two women in bathing suits waist-deep and talking.

“Any idea how much all this costs, Boluś? A goddamn fortune. The bitches alone are half your salary, without the extras.” He hit the glass. The girls looked up, startled; they broke off their conversation and started splashing.

“I pay them to look nice, not talk. But you turn away for a second, and yadda yadda. They're all like that. You're my eyes, Boluś.”

“Yes, boss.”

“If you were my son, I'd say to you: One day all this will be yours. But you're not, and you have to come to terms with that. You can't complain, right?”

“No, boss.”

“It'll never be yours, but when the time comes, you'll make your own. You know how I started.”

“I know, boss.”

“You don't know squat. When you started, you had me. I didn't have anyone. Ask the people who know me.”

Mr. Max leaned on Bolek's shoulder. He looked through the
glass, but his gaze reached farther, into days gone by. He sighed, pulled himself together, banged on the glass. The women smiled, waved.

“You want one of them? Or both? I won't watch.”

“Thanks, boss, but I still have a little business today.”

“You're a good kid, putting work first.” He clapped Bolek on the back and went to the desk, his slippers flopping. He poured another shot; they clinked, and he asked:

“You got it?”

Bolek took out the package wrapped in black plastic. Mr. Max weighed it in his hand, smiled, and put it away in the desk.

“You were alone?”

“Of course, boss. I know what I'm doing.”

“You're a good kid.”

 

Bored, scared, Iron Man flicked his lighter on and off in the hut not much bigger than an outhouse. One of its windows broken. Night had fallen. He wanted to read what was written on the walls, but there was hardly any fluid left in the lighter. He didn't like the dark and needed something to light a cigarette with. “The flint always lasts longer than the fluid,” he thought. He tried to guess what the hut had been used for. One room, a hole where the window had been, the door. In the short flashes he read:
Mariusz reservist 92 did Dorota. Horses condoms. Patrycja sucks
. “I wouldn't be able to get it up in here,” he thought. “I always have trouble in the cold.”

He took a few steps along the wall. In the next flash, an upside-down cross, in charcoal. He wanted to read what was written underneath, but remembered about the fluid. A train rumbled along the embankment, heading east. Black people in yellow windows staring into the night toward Iron Man, but not
knowing that he was there, that he existed. It was like that even in the daytime, in the middle of the city. He was invisible. If he had vanished one day, no one would go looking.

The red lights of the train disappeared. He took out a cigarette, tore off the filter, and lit up. The night on all sides. Visible in the little glow: the trash, the glass, graffiti, the cracks in the wall. He took a long drag and said into the darkness: “Don't think, Iron Man. Thinking is not for you.” His fear eased. “A drink would be nice,” he thought aloud. “Where did he go? So cautious lately. Before, when there was nothing to brag about, you couldn't shut him up. Now he's the man of mystery. The car, Marlboros, clothes that cost fifteen mill, a watch that's another fifteen. Shoes too. And five years ago he was bringing me a Zodiak radio and asking if I could fence it. Liked to fight but was always cautious in business. Never inside more than forty-eight hours. It takes all sorts. One guy likes flowers, another when his feet smell. One day he comes and says: Iron Man, there's a big job. I ask what kind, and he says it's a little risky, one or two guys may have to be blown away, but the take is big. And I say: Thanks but no. On TV it looks great, Boluś, but in real life I don't even like to see somebody getting an injection. So off he goes, and I stop seeing him, like he was iced or went abroad. But now he remembers his old buddy.” He realized that he had been talking to himself. He stopped, listened carefully, but the silence stretched all the way to the city. Far off, a monotonous hum and a cold light, as if machines lived there, not people. He flicked his lighter on again, took a step, and read: “Fuck everybody.” Angular, smeared letters. Must have written in shit.

 

Out of nowhere, a skinny guy stepped forward and stood next to the desk. Wearing tight orange jeans and a yellow T-shirt. His
mousy hair fell over his face, so Bolek was unable to tell how old he was.

“Dad, I need six hundred thousand,” in a screechy voice, as if inside him was a cheap Chinese tape recorder.

Mr. Max glanced at him, then looked up and far away. After a long pause:

“What else do you want?”

“Nothing. Just that.”

“What do you need six hundred thousand for?”

“A cab. There and back.”

“One of the guys can take you there. Three hundred will be enough.”

“Dad . . .”

“I said three hundred.”

Mr. Max reached into the desk and took out a telephone. He pushed two keys and said:

“Get Hairless up here. He'll take the kid to the city and bring him back.” To his son:

“You heard? Get dressed right now, or Hairless will chuck you in the car like you are.”

The kid tried to say something, but Mr. Max had lost interest. He filled his glass again, signaled to Bolek. The kid was gone, as suddenly as he had come.

“I thought he'd amount to something, but it doesn't look like it. He spends my money but won't touch the business. Disappears for two or three nights and comes home smashed. That's OK, but the guys have seen him with the kind of people . . .” Mr. Max lowered his voice and leaned over: