Nine (2 page)

At the corner by the post office and Władysław IV Grammar School were three Gypsy women, brightly colored and motionless. The light of early morning could not deal with them. They waited for the crowd to thin, went underground. He looked for them, but they did not resurface. A number 21 tram scattered sparks, hurrying south. The air parted before it with a groan. A woman carrying a large red-and-blue striped bag barely managed to jump out of the way. He tried to remember whether there were trams in Moscow. He drew a curlicue on the window, a blurred, greasy smear on the dry pane. He went to the other end of the apartment. The hardwood floor creaked under the gray carpet. He went into the kitchen. Here the floor was broad varnished boards. On the table were the remains of breakfast—two egg cups, two stoneware bowls, and a basket with wheat bread. One of the eggs had barely been touched. The yolk showed through the white like an eye with cataracts. A cornflake, stuck to the rim of one of the bowls, was wet and cold. He took it and tasted it. No sugar. He tried a little milk from the other bowl. It was sweet as syrup. Back in the hallway, he pushed open a yellow door, but shut it again right away. He returned to the kitchen and opened a dark wooden cabinet. Plates and bowls were in two stacks; the rest of the space was taken up by a coffeepot and a soup tureen, both covered with
dust. Three teacups from different sets. The smell of damp wood and food. The smell of old bread lingering, as it always does in cupboards rarely used. He looked out of the window but saw nothing moving. Lifeless windowpanes glistened on the wall of the building next door.

In the main room he circled around the spot where once a table would have stood. He broke away at the fourth lap, drawn to a white bookcase. His hands in his pockets, he studied the objects on it. They reminded him of nothing and served no purpose. A china ballerina, glass receptacles filled with knickknacks, an Egyptian dreambook, a Chinese I-Ching, a phonebook, four volumes of an encyclopedia, a row of cassette tapes: Marillion, the Pet Shop Boys, English for Beginners, Smoleń and Laskowik, Kora with Maanam. A hair brush, a shoehorn. He looked in the drinks cabinet and found an opened bottle of cabernet, wineglasses, an ashtray, and a reflection of his stomach in the mirror. He closed the flap; the glassware rattled, a tram sounded its bell, and the floor shook.

The cupboard was locked. He couldn't get the key to turn. He pressed on one side, tried again.

 

The sheets and quilt cases lay close together, ironed flat. To slip his hand between them he had to wiggle his fingers as if separating the pages of a heavy book lying on its side. “From the cleaner's,” he realized. It wasn't so tight between the bedding and towels, so he put his hand in farther, almost to the elbow, and felt in a semicircle the cold, rough darkness, but there was nothing there. On the shelf below was an iron. He moved it aside so he could reach behind a stack of tablecloths and linen curtains. The iron was slightly warm. It was set to cotton. He
examined the clothes. The T-shirts had the softness of things worn and washed a hundred times. Green, black, red, two white, another black, at the very bottom turquoise. Four pairs of jeans: white and light-blue Levi's, dark green cords, and faded, frayed khakis lay next to thick tracksuit tops. Labels and logos could be seen on the edge of some. He could feel the embroidery or sticky rubber lettering against the back of his hand. Higher up were blouses and skirts. He ran his thumbs over them like two packs of large, flimsy playing cards, pushed them aside, and looked behind them. The little bundle was wrapped in newspaper. He took it out carefully, squatted, set it on the floor. He whistled a dirty song. “Fuck, oh fuck, he made a fucking mess,” as the yellowed page from
Życie Warszawy
crumbled like a wafer and Jaroszewicz's face cracked in two. In the candy box he found a lock of light hair, a dry rose dark with age, and a stack of notecards with writing on them. He stopped whistling, wrapped it roughly, and thrust it back where it belonged. The scraps of newspaper he kicked under the rug.

The shelf with underwear was at face level, brassiere cups stuck into one another: black, white, black, flesh, ridiculous and disembodied, pairs of hats side by side, cycling caps without peaks. He stopped and went to the window. The crowd had thinned; the clock on the tower was frozen at a quarter after three on some unknown day. His eyes swept the sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, Świerczewskiego and Wileńska, Targowa. The pane was cool against his forehead. A 101 bus dragged its belly across the tram tracks and pulled up by the Orthodox church. A man in marbled jeans left the line at the kiosk and jumped through the doors as they were closing. Three characters came around the corner, turned into Cyryla, and marched
toward the park, the wind from the river lifting their nylon jackets like wings—black, brown, navy blue. They'd been drinking already and did not feel the cold. He would have liked to be in their place. Another hundred meters, and they'd be among the tangled paths, hidden by the bare bushes, still visible but safe. The trees would close over them like a ceiling. They'd find a bench next to the old men playing checkers. They'd relax, and the smoky sky would provide light all the way till dusk and the moment when, freed of pain and fear, they would head back into a darkness filled with electric stars strewn by the pantographs of the trams moving down 11 Listopada and Stalowa toward the Bethlehem night of Szmulki and Targówek, and they would wait and wait an ocean of time, while time was exactly what he didn't have.

They crossed Jagiellońska by the gas station. A 509 hurried them with its horn, but he no longer saw this. He had returned to the open cupboard. He touched the panties. They were like a stack of colorful children's books. Fairy tales in pastel shades, read to me Mommy, a yellow Donald Duck, a green Funny Ducky, the Adventures of Fiki-Miki, the Tricky Monkey . . . He passed his fingers over them, from top to bottom, back again, then pushed gently between the white and the black ones. He felt himself getting hard.

 

A moment later he sensed that he was not alone. He froze, listened. The tapping repeated. It was barely audible but definitely came from the apartment. He took a breath and closed his lips tightly. He took a step; the floor creaked. He stopped, and there was an even clearer knock. He approached the sofa covered with a white furry throw. He lifted the edge.

The tortoise stared at him, motionless and cold as a camera. Matte brown, like something very old and leathery. It moved, and the empty cup in which its leg was stuck tapped the floor. “Fucking reptile,” he said softly, and started to breathe again.

 

Just as he closed the wardrobe door, he heard the click of the bolt in the hallway.

She was wearing a long gray woolen overcoat. He went to help her off with it, but she slipped it from her shoulders with a quick, deft movement and hung it on a hook. She removed her shoes, put on slippers, and went to the kitchen. She started clearing the table, putting the dishes in the sink, scraping the leftovers into the trash, the half-eaten egg on the draining board. She didn't look at him once; her hands shook.

In the gray light, in the silence, the clatter was hard to bear. Then she said finally, “Sorry I left you like that. I had to get there on time. The director is a dragon, and I owe them from last month.” She glanced at the green plastic clock on the wall. It read 8:22. “What do you want? Coffee or tea? I have to leave in a minute.”

“When does the kid start school?”

“Next year. I'll make you coffee.”

He sat on a chair and looked at her legs. Her feet, in their blue slippers with raised heels, pattered between sink and stove. She liked to look smart, even at home. She never wore her tattered slippers. Pat, pat, pat, and a cup and spoon, pat, pat, the coffee jar, the whistle of the kettle. “With cream?” “Whatever,” he answered, and stared at her ass under her beige dress. Not a crease, so she must have got up at some ungodly hour to see to herself and the child. And do the ironing—he remembered the warm iron. Her dark hair was tied at the back.

“What's going on with you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You come here after all these years, at the crack of dawn, and you say nothing's going on?”

“I was passing by. I thought I'd just check to see if you still live here.”

“Where did you think I'd be living? California?”

She put a brown cup with a green stripe in front of him. He caught the scent of her perfume and the warmth of her body and suddenly noticed that it was cold in the apartment. When she leaned forward, he glanced at her breasts. That was where the scent was coming from. Little bits of heat stole out from under her dress, rising from her pussy to her stomach and flowing out between her tits like water from a fountain. He thought of putting his hand there after all these years, to see what would happen, if something could be done with time, curious. But this lasted only a moment. She straightened and moved away. Again he found himself in the cold, empty air of a home that rarely has visitors.

“How's Jolka?” he asked. “And the rest?”

“She married a Greek guy and emigrated. Bolek . . .”

“Yes? I met him on the street one time. He was in a hurry.”

“He's making money. Actually, it seems to make itself for him. He sells, buys—I don't know what.” She set her cup down on the sill. Gray dust dropped from the window, the ceiling, the wall; a dog barked in the courtyard; beneath the radiator lay a wounded plush toy.

“I go see him sometimes.” She took the cup to the sink, came back for his. “I really have to go now.”

“He's still living in the same place?”

“Yes.”

 

An almost empty number 26 took her into the distance due west, by the putrid branch of the river—a minute in space when from the other bank the city looks like a model of something that hasn't been built yet. Little towers try to touch the sky, as always—they are always too short.

Without thinking he followed the tram. He cut across Jagiellońska, turned into the park to think. The brown tree trunks shone with a moist gleam that made things even darker. He passed a bum on a bench, who looked like an old mannequin. The man didn't look up. He was smoking a cigarette in a dark holder, his hands thrust into the pockets of an army coat. “This April's like fall,” Paweł thought. He reached a broad avenue that led to the zoo. But he had no time for monkeys or penguins. He turned left, went back to the street. Seeing a kiosk reminded him he was out of cigarettes. He rummaged through his pockets, adding bill to bill. A hundred and twenty thousand, not a penny more. A Zippo knock-off, keys, a used-up phone card, no ID, two tokens. He bought a pack of Mars; he lit up, and his head spun. The spires of St. Florian's aimed skyward like old-fashioned rockets. Old women were filing in, their outlines small and black. Rolling along like beads. A 162 left the stop. People looked straight ahead, or into the future. A red-headed girl glanced at him with vacant eyes. He waited for the green light and crossed. He decided to give himself a bit more time and have another cigarette, and as he was looking for a place to hunker down for a moment, to shield himself from the wind off the river, he realized he'd been born here. A few yards away was the hospital. Amid a tangle of bushes in the little square, in the mud, beneath a swollen sky, the white ambulances by the entrance looked as unreal and shameless as death. In the doorway
were the scrubs of the orderlies, because when shit happens, people get jumpy and try to put a bungled life to rights in fifteen minutes. “I ought to go in,” he thought, “and have myself sewn back up into some pussy. A C-section in reverse.”

The bum in the coat passed him. Everyone was passing him, though there weren't many. At nine thirty the city hides, halts, gives time to those who have nothing to do. He flicked the butt away. It landed on yellow grass. A thread of smoke rose vertically, then the wind caught it. He stopped thinking, turned, and went toward Floriańska, where since time immemorial men loitered at the curb in bouclé sweaters and flared pants whose creases had been ironed twenty years ago and had stayed that way ever since. Above their heads, over their whispered chatter, brick walls rose to the sky, but no one would bet there was anything behind them—apartments, a room with a kitchen, old furniture with peeling veneer. Teenagers copied their fathers, though their outfits were more garish, Ford, Bulls, or Nikes with tongues licking the sidewalk. They huddled in tight circles discussing how to handle the world that day, the angle to take. No women. A black-and-white mongrel ran from group to group, looking for its master. Someone threw a firecracker. “Oh, right,” he thought. “Easter's here.”

In front of the Pedet department store a memory came: he once went to a puppet theater with his mother. Cigarettes glowed in the dark. Men stood in entranceways talking in a language he didn't understand, though some words were familiar. It was November, December. The white light of the street lamps couldn't reach the sidewalk, remained trembling and hissing above. The bare branches were metallic. His mother quickened her pace; through her cold hand he could feel her fear.

On the stage, in a flood of gold, in the silver dust of the spotlights, a prince was rescuing a princess or something like that, a story he cared about only because it was the first time he'd been in a place like this. He wanted to walk once more down that street scooped out of the darkness, a few steps from the brightly lit Targowa, once more see the red sparks wandering up and down. When the show was over, his mother took him firmly by the hand and slipped into a large group of children and adults. He was disappointed. Pedet resembled a glass cabinet. Somewhere inside was the plaster woman with large breasts squatting over a basket of food, her ass like two cushions. He often thought about her.

As he crossed the deserted, glistening Okrzei, on which a single distant car was coming from the river, he remembered it was there, behind the department store, that he was with his father. Low, single-story buildings you entered through a gate in the wall. In a dingy room, men in rubber boots threw entrails into metal containers. A concrete cylinder filled with glistening pieces of liver—a mountain of slippery, shining red, with blood splashing underfoot. His father knew someone there.