Nine (18 page)

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 ground 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 inward, 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.

“Right,” said Iron Man. “It's hard to find a Mirosław. It used to be easier. Like with other things.” He made a few foot motions, swung his elbows in a windmill, and to get out of that he sat down on the sofa. He rubbed his hands and poured himself a drink from a fresh bottle. Syl immediately sat next to him.

“And how about me, Mirosław?”

He tried to speak but hadn't finished swallowing. It went down the wrong way, and when he filled her glass, he had tears in his eyes and got some on the tablecloth.

“Looks like you've had enough,” laughed Syl. “When Porkie starts spilling it like that, he goes off to bed.”

Iron Man caught his breath and said:

“It always went to his head. We'd have to carry him.”

“That must have been hard.”

“No, he wasn't that big then. He could even borrow my pants. They were a bit short on him.”

Syl ran her fingers through her hair and sighed:

“I'd like to have known him then.”

“You weren't alive then, kid. It wouldn't have come to anything.”

She was still playing with her hair, her eyes fixed on something far. She kicked her slippers off and pulled her feet up onto the sofa.

“I actually prefer slim guys,” she said.

Iron Man sensed a problem, so he edged away, poured a drink, and looked at his watch.

“He said he'd be back in two hours,” he said.

“He always says that,” said Syl. “Then he comes home in the middle of the night and tells me to run him a bath, make him something hot, and get the bed ready. He snores too.”

“A man should snore. When my dad stopped, my mom would wake up to see if he was still alive. She couldn't sleep if he wasn't sawing away.”

“He snores even on his stomach,” said Syl.

“He was always that way.”

“With the snoring?”

“He only slept on his stomach. And he liked to have his head covered but not his feet. The opposite of me. My feet always get cold,” said Iron Man.

The music came to an end, and the CD player gave a click. On the floor above someone dropped something. Iron Man looked around. He took a cigarette, turned it a few times in his fingers, put it in his mouth.