Nine (7 page)

The passageway was filled with the stink of trash cans set on fire. A teenage girl on roller skates passed him. She was dressed in tight-fitting black and wore a helmet. He caught the smell of sweat and perfume. His legs hurt. The girl was way ahead. Warm air came from the far end of the station. He turned right and went up the escalator to the main hall.

 

The brown light of the cafeteria barely hulled the faces from the dark. People ate, sat, slept like rag dolls, as if they'd been there forever. He couldn't finish his second helping: the patty swam in overcooked cabbage, the cold potatoes were like salty custard. Below, a stream of cars flowed along the Aleje, their roofs like glimmering lights on the surface of dark water. He tried to focus on one particular person, for example the man in the red Honda, but couldn't stay with him beyond the intersection with Krucza, terrified by the chasm of the Poniatowskiego Bridge, which at night was always a huge mouth, and you never knew for sure you'd come out whole on the other side. So he chose a white baby Fiat, which a moment later turned into Nowy Świat, drove down the Aleje Uzajdowskie, and reached the developments near Jałtańska, Batumi, Soczi. A man of fifty with a briefcase on the backseat. The briefcase smelled of sandwiches—slightly sour because the bread had sat too long in foil in a hot place. Under the rearview mirror hung a small medallion of Our Lady of Częstochowa. Those people can never get their hands clean. His brown jacket was fastened to the neck, and he wore a brown hat. He parked outside an apartment building and took the elevator to the sixth floor. His wife opened the door.

 

He turned from the window and saw a scruffy man in a green coat. From the man's sleeves poked out another pair of sleeves, and from them a third pair. The man leaned forward a little and asked:

“Excuse me, sir, are you going to finish that?”

“I'm not,” he replied automatically.

“In that case I will,” said the man, sitting down. He ate calmly, not hurrying, a bite of patty, a little cabbage, a forkful of potatoes. Tattered dark-red wool at his wrists like rays.

“Pity it's cold,” he said, swallowing. “Sometimes it's hard to tell. You were sitting far from the door. I always look through the window first, and I only go in when I'm certain.”

“I bought two and couldn't finish the second.”

“One person has two, another has a half. Not so bad, is it?” A red face, blue eyes. He didn't stink. Maybe a little, like an unaired closet. When he finished, he said, “Thank you.” Some of his teeth discolored.

“You live here?”

“I've been here for some time. It'll get warmer soon. This isn't a good place.” The man looked around the room. “The witch is working here today. If you buy me tea, I can sit a while longer. She chucks people out if they don't order.”

He took out a bill and put it in front of the man.

“Should I bring you some? Food's awful greasy.” He nodded. The clock said 7:42. The man came back with two glasses of tea and change. They dropped the teabags in, watched the toffee streaks spread in the water.

“This place isn't good, but at this time of day there's little choice. East Station is worse—that's the worst place on earth.” The man said it softly, as if someone were listening. “I lived there once. It was hell.”

“Why was it hell?” he asked, dropping the slice of lemon into his tea.

“Do you believe in the devil?” The man leaned across the table; he smelled his foul breath. “You know,” he whispered.

“I don't.” He shrugged. “The devil?”

“See, if you don't believe, then why should I tell you? It's a story for believers.”

“And here?”

“It's awful here too but bearable.”

“Like purgatory?”

The man chuckled.

“Something like that. Penance. You keep doing penance, but shit comes of it. You could do it your whole life, and nothing.”

The tea had stopped steaming in the half-empty glasses; it was almost eight. Two guards in black uniforms entered.

“Where there's business, there must be a routine.”

“What business?”

“Give me a hundred, and I'll do whatever you want, sir. When you don't know anyone and you need something, a hundred for a middle man is nothing. A bottle, some powder, H, coke, ass, a boy, little girl, all of the above, eat in or carry out, at your place or in your car. Or maybe you need someone to take care of something? A straight hundred, boss.”

“Thanks. Maybe another time.”

“I'm here every two hours. Closer to the odd-numbered hours. Give me fifty at least.”

He set the money in front of the man and walked out onto the mezzanine. The man continued behind him: “But this isn't an advance. If you need something, it's a whole hundred.”

He leaned on the railing and looked down. The bum descended, crossed the hall, and joined the line at the kiosk. Before
he reached the window, the bum changed his mind and set off toward the concourse. Two burly guys in bomber jackets leaned at him. He said something to them and pointed at the clock over the stairway that led to the platforms. One of them clapped him on the shoulder, then both men went down the steps.

The station light lent a corpselike pallor to all the faces. Every figure cast many weak shadows.

 

When the sliding doors clicked shut behind him, Emilii Plater was dark as usual, because even at night the Palace cast a shadow. The large block of sky moving over the neighborhood was cut off by the Domy Centrum department store and gnawed at the right by the notched edge of the buildings on the Aleje. People hid in the lighted buses. The 501, 505, and 510 were small caves hollowed out of black rock. The driver of the 505 went to get something to eat at a Vietnamese stall while the passengers wiggled their frozen toes in their shoes. He watched a 510 with a drooping belly pull away from the stop. One cigarette, two, separated him from the next bus. He could get in, ride to the end, and tidy up his place, sweep, put things in order, as usual, but more carefully. Just half an hour sitting with indifferent people with a single bridge between two voids, the colossus of the power station to the left, the chimneys with their red lights like an electric crown of thorns. So he lit a cigarette to measure time. The wind blew from around the corner, making sparks. He cupped the cigarette in his hand. A man in an unfamiliar uniform tried to light up, gave up, asked for a light from his cigarette.

Then, through the dirty panes of the sliding door he saw Jacek. The same suit, the same long mousy hair. Running toward the closed door. Two steps and on the moving part. The
doors opened, and the gray figure flew past. Then a man in a bomber jacket came running. When he was half outside, Paweł kicked a metal trash can in front of him.

 

A red neon light at fifteen-second intervals. Also a night-light atop the radio in the apartment. They sat opposite each other at the table, their shadows on the bare wall blowing smoke. Faint old music from the radio.

“He had a gun,” said Paweł.

“Who?” Jacek turned to him like someone waking up.

“The guy chasing you. When he went down, it fell out. Maybe he had it under his jacket. It slid across the ground. Black . . .”

“Why didn't you take it?”

“I was running.”

“It would only have taken a moment. You could have.”

“Yes.”

“Then shown it to me now.”

“You don't believe me? That I stopped him?”

Jacek got up, went to the radio, changed the station. It was Wolność with Wiesiek Orłowski, but they didn't know that. He turned the red dial to the left, found something classical.

“She told me everything,” he said.

“You don't believe me,” said Paweł, following his own thought. He regarded the other man's face in the dim light.

“That's not the point. We could have had a gun.”

“What do we need a gun for?”

“Better to have something than not to have it,” he said with a smile.

It was violins, lots of them. The sound couldn't get out of the room. It buzzed high, then dropped suddenly to the dark
double basses stumbling in the poor-quality speaker. He upped the volume to a rasp, listened intently to the noise, and turned it down again.

“You say something?” he asked.

“No. What did she tell you?”

“Everything. They were at your place, smashed it up, said they'd do the same to you. Who was it?”

“I don't know, never saw them before. Hired. One did the talking, the others didn't say anything.”

“Who you borrow from?”

“This guy from Falenica. We were sort of friends.”

“And now he's after your blood.”

“I'm six months behind.”

“Even so, he's not asking for that much interest.”

“We knew each other. I met him at the pool.”

“You swim?”

“Then we went to a bar. That was how it began.”

“You could use a gun.”

“He was into all kinds of business. We talked about stuff. You know how it is. I visited his home; he had dogs and cats . . .”

“A 92 Beretta, fifteen rounds in the clip. Or you can get a bigger clip—holds twenty.”

“I was doing this and that, getting a loan, getting a ride; business was going to save the world. Then later, when things took off . . . I needed money from one day to the next, and I'd make it back right away. But with the bank things always drag on . . .”

“Why did you go to a pool if you don't know how to swim?”

“I was with someone.”

“The clip with twenty rounds sticks out of the grip.”

“He told me there was no problem, to him it was nothing. I thought it was nothing to me as well . . .”

“What is it you actually do? You told me, but I forgot.”

“I sell.”

“What?”

“It varies. Used to be wool, now it's cotton.”

“Panties?”

“Among other things.”

“Long johns?”

“Everything.”

“You spent five hundred million on underwear?”

“It's not that much. Do you know how much the shipping alone is?”

“Pity you didn't take the gun. Black?”

“Yes. I tried getting another loan to pay it, but they all knew there was something not right about me. Besides, I didn't really have anyone to borrow from.”

“Maybe it's still there on the ground?”

“No, it's bright as day there. Why was he after you?”

“I don't know. He started running, so I did.”

“How did you know he was chasing you?”

“One knows.”

 

The red neon calmed, stopped flashing, filled the room with an even light. Jacek said, “It's broken again,” and the two fell silent, listening to the street noise—the momentary quiet of Nowogrodzka, the murmur from Krucza, and the incessant bubble of the traffic circle, which never sleeps, except perhaps briefly before dawn, when it wheezes like a sick windpipe. The sounds are a reminder that space is infinite, it'll swallow everything, that no Russki long-haul truck, no convoy from the Reich can smuggle through a human sound, there are only echoes on the stones, the rumble of garbage trucks, shouts, the whistle of
the wind in the overhead tram cables, the underground groan of trains, cars wailing, screeching around bends as they try to catch one another on the fog-slick curve of the Solec ramp then disappear in the darkness of the Wisłostrada, while the Vistula reflects sound and light as if it were quivering metal, as if this was what caused insomnia, the infinite nature of the world, in which any piece of shit can grow beyond the boundary of the visible.

So they smoked and listened to it all, because it's always a consolation to be here and not elsewhere, in an endless number of other places, which makes you nuts to think about.

Jacek went to the window and closed the curtains. The red grew pale. He put his hands in his pants pockets and circled the table. The air moved. On the table, a plate with leftovers looked like a big ashtray. He went to the bathroom, came back right away. From the shelf he took a candle stuck to a saucer. “The bulb is out,” he said, and left again. A glow filtered through the glass door into the living room. Paweł thought someone was standing there. He went to check but didn't find anyone. For a moment the darkness had taken on human form. He went back to his chair and lit up again. The pack was almost empty. It was quiet in the next-door apartments. Garlic in the air. The smell of her sweat lingering in the apartment. Jacek returned, blew out the candle, and put it back in its place.

“That girl,” Paweł began.

“Beata.”

“Have you known her long?”

“Six months, a year. She comes here sometimes. You like her?”

“She talked nonsense, but I guess.”

“I taught her.”

“What?”

“What she says. All that crap about energy and everything.”

Paweł looked at him intently, though it was too dark.

“You're kidding. You believe all that?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

Jacek laughed, went to the window, parted the curtain, looked down into the street.

“What matters is that she believes it. Half a loaf is better. Am I right?”

“I don't get it.”

“It doesn't matter. You will. And you should get yourself a gun.”

Paweł jumped up from his chair and shouted:

“Fuck that gun! What do I need a goddamn gun for? I'm a normal guy.”

The neon went out, came on again, resumed its fifteen-second rhythm.

“You see? Sometimes a shout does it.” Jacek moved away from the window, continued: “Listen, I don't have any money to give you. All I can offer is advice. That's it. Theoretically I could sell something, but you see for yourself there can be problems with the buyer.”

“Then at least let me stay here tonight,” murmured Paweł.