Nine (8 page)

 

Meanwhile Beata was sleeping. In Praga. In the darkness, her body like the moon. Kijowska was quiet now. Cars entered Tysiąclecia, some never to return, a one-way trip. First to the viaduct at the Radzymińska intersection, then to Zabraniecka and on to Utrata, between the willow trees and the garbage cans, out under the starless sky, where the lads did what they had
to
quickly and dawn found only the gutted chassis. The sheet covered her to the waist. The great sarcophagus of East Station in a dirty glow. The light rubbed the window but could not get in, because her body was too young, no thought of death yet, not even in a dream. Her mother slept in the other room. There was also a kitchen. That was it. On the floor, plastic tile and rugs; in the shiny credenza, crystal. Her room was cramped, cluttered, unlike her mother's, where words thinned like cigarette smoke. Things all piled up, overlapping, squeezing together, embracing. Sometimes she would wake at night, sit on the bed with closed eyes, recognize them by touch: the gray teddy bear that ten years ago she medicated using a dropper with a light-blue rubber bulb; the small guitar, or ukulele, that no one could ever tune, so occasionally she'd play a song on a single string; a vase for keeping things that were not supposed to get lost, an accumulation of forgotten stories, errands to run, things to examine, finger—buttons, loose rosary beads, ticket mementos, old lighters, change, earrings without backs, green bills with the picture of a general, empty oil bottles, half a nail clipper with a gold fish embedded in green enamel, a postcard with faded lettering in Arabic. By the sofa bed, a bookcase with a bedside lamp and a few books on diet, philosophy, the philosophy unopened. It was enough that they were there, that she could touch the spines and covers showing gods or the faces of men with half-closed eyes and orange flowers around their necks. A clay ashtray she made herself, now empty, clean, because a month ago she gave up smoking. A china ballerina missing an arm. A glass heart with a hold for two ballpoint pens, red and green. Her possessions. And the tape player, and the cassettes in a neat row on a shelf of the wall unit that held her
wardrobe, and the woven basket filled with cheap cosmetics that she hadn't used for weeks, and the hand mirror, and the three cacti on the windowsill. All hers. Also the walls, or actually just the one above the bed, free of shelves, and the one by the window and door, where she had painted a huge yellow sun. Her mother came home from work and was furious, but nothing happened—it was too expensive to call a painter. Two years ago the sun, and a year later, across it, a jagged green cannabis leaf. This time her mother said nothing; she may not even have noticed. Then the Kurt Cobain picture. She cried all night when he died, took the tape player to bed with her, hugged it and played “Never Mind” all night. In the early morning she fell asleep bathed in tears. Her mother came into the room, saw the wire snaking from the socket into the sheets, and shouted, “You little idiot, you'll electrocute yourself!” Beata waited for her mother to go to work, took the Sacred Heart in its gilt frame down from the wall, pulled out the backing and the picture, and put in Cobain instead.

Some time later Jacek gave her a picture torn from a book: Krishna with a blue body, in garlands. From that time on she stopped dreaming of Cobain. At first she missed the dreams, because she would wake from them in tears, a little sad and a little happy. But then it occurred to her that screwing with a guy was one thing, screwing with a god another. Even in the daytime, in the city, or at school she imagined the blue body. “It would be like doing it with the sky,” she thought with a smile. When she told her girlfriend once, her girlfriend gave her a look and said, “I'd prefer Cobain, though he was so messed up, he probably couldn't do it.” They sat in the playground and watched the boys gather and talk about the man found hanging from the swings
that morning with twelve stab wounds. The discussion was whether he'd been stuck before or after. Those close to him knew that it was a warning, and they said little.

Now she lay on her stomach, and her body filled with blue like moonlight. It was hard to imagine anything bigger than the city night and anything smaller than her in it, because the night moved in all directions to join with the darkness of the universe. A cold fire burned inside East Station. A man in a light suit came out unscathed and tried to get into a cab, but the driver locked the door. The next driver did the same, and the next. Then several men ran up and dragged him off down into the dark concrete yard where during the day deliveries by train are dropped off. From the port the wind brought the stench of foul water mixed with the nervousness of Downtown. Among the lights on Zieleniecka a group of Russians drove in an overloaded Lada, towing a trailer, heading east. In the next room her mother stirred.

 

Paweł lay on the floor, Jacek on the bed. They spoke softly, trying to remember old times, but everything they recalled was flat, as if trapped behind glass. Paweł listened for the clanking of the first trams. They were supposed to come before four. He imagined them leaving the depot in Mokotów and the one near Huta; they would speed up, move slower, then finally, as in a dream, move yet stand in place, and the day would never begin.

 

Meanwhile Zosia was talking to her cat, but it had had enough. It jumped from her lap and, tail stiff, went into the kitchen to sit by the refrigerator. This was how it spent most of its time—staring at the white enamel and licking one paw, then another. Then staring again. Always the same. At such times Zosia was
left on her own. Like now. The desk lamp was on, and she sat in the armchair opposite. The small apartment was just the right size. She only wished it wasn't so high up. The trees didn't reach the fifth floor. Once she dreamed of waking up and seeing her carpet dappled by sun through leaves. Or in rain, branches whipped by the wind tapping the window and leaving wet marks. But the fifth floor wasn't bad, especially in spring and summer, when kids hung out till late on the benches with their boom boxes. The foul language and dirty jokes were muffled when they reached this high. You could open a window and look out at the apartment buildings on Pięciolinii. In the evening, a fascinating view. She imagined that the far apartments were toy houses and the people sitting down to supper living dolls in perfectly stitched little clothes. They would visit one another, invite one another in for coffee in tiny cups or tea in glasses the size of fingernails, while their books were printed in pinprick letters.

But now her curtains were drawn, the bedding crumpled. She had tried to sleep, but couldn't put the light out, things are too clear in the dark. She had taken the cat on her lap and talked to it, but cats have no interest in human stories. As if they just arrived and are on the point of leaving.

When she came out of the Stokłosy metro station, she called. No reply at Paweł's place. The sky over Stegny and Wilanów was the color of the public telephone and as cold as the receiver in her hand. Nearby, a red mailbox mounted on the wall, an empty Królewskie beer bottle on top. The wind blew; from the phone, from somewhere deep in the city, an electronic beeping. The number began with a twelve, probably Praga. She hung up, and the machine with polite boredom returned her card. She didn't shop on the way home. Now she was reading
but couldn't understand the simplest sentence, because they all left the book, went into the past, and said what happened a few hours ago. She also had a radio, but the sounds did the same. She had made herself some muesli and tea, but both remained untouched. She paced between the hallway and the kitchen. She ran a bath but was afraid to undress. She couldn't stand the mirror in the bathroom. She thought about her girlfriend on Wiolinowa, her sister in Gdańsk, her acquaintances in Rembertów who had the house with the yard where in summers she drank jasmine tea under a white parasol, but it was always the moment when the men entered the store, when the first one gave her a broad smile and placed his hands on the counter. He was so big, she could barely see the other, who stood with his back to them looking out at the street.

“You have something for us, kid?” asked the big one. “Something special.”

She asked what it was supposed to be.

“For me.” He laughed, pushed back, turned around, lifting the tails of his jacket.

“Like this!”

She set a few of the largest in front of him. He took each in turn, spreading it as he lifted it, looking inside.

“You understand, they have to be airy, that's important, otherwise—ha—you know yourself what can happen.”

He put each pair down on the counter and looked at the shelves. On his right hand, a gold signet ring; in his eyes, nothing.

“No, these are no good, honey. What about something a bit more”—he pointed to a pile of women's panties wrapped in plastic. “Those.”

She brought him a few items. He flipped through as if they were old magazines. He tore open one or two.

“Sir, please . . .” But she didn't finish, because his smile was lifeless. “All right, sweetie, let's see what you have.”

He swept away several pair to make room. She took the opened ones, spread them out slowly in a row: three, white lace. He chose the middle pair. Touched it with his finger. Looked from it to her, stroking the fabric. The other man stood by the door, his face to the street. She wanted to scream, but the scream would only bounce back off that huge body and die before it left her throat. She tried to look at him, his close-cropped blond hair and pink forehead, but lowered her eyes, because of his smile. His hand groping the material, his breathing. The hand crumpled the crotch of the panties. She backed up against the shelves.

Then the big man told the other to lock the door. Hearing the click of the bolt, she ran for the back room, but he blocked her with his hip, caught her, as if he had been waiting. The panties hooked on the long, manicured little finger held out to her.

“Shall we try them on?” he asked.

She pressed against the shelves; things fell. Wide-eyed, shaking her head no, because words wouldn't come.

“If that's how you want it,” he said. He spun like a dancer, put down the underwear, barked, “Turn around.”

She turned, pressed her face into green cotton blouses, for a moment happy not to know what was going on. As in childhood—you close your eyes, and the bad disappears.

But he shouted at her to turn back. She saw and screamed. The other man came and grabbed her by the blouse and pulled, his face white and featureless. In his free hand was a billy club. She felt it on her cheek, a delicate touch, like a caress almost. She fell silent. The black rubber went over her closed eyes, her nose, then her mouth.

As they were closing the door after them, a howl rose in her, so she crammed a red cotton T-shirt in her mouth, but she had to take it out again to throw up.

Now too she ran to the kitchen sink.

 

On the off ramp from Łazienkowska onto the Wisłostrada a blue Polonez hit the guard rail. The radiator was smashed; the car couldn't be driven. A woman had been driving. Sober. The man in the car with her stopped a taxi and asked the driver to call roadside assistance on his two-way. The woman wept. Several lights were on in the apartments on Górnośląska. One person saw the accident. In the bushes by the pier an old drunk slept, warm. He would wake at dawn covered with frost but alive. He used to live on Przybyszewskiego, where at this very moment the wind was blowing a crumpled newspaper across the asphalt and under the wheels of a green Ford Capri. The car's engine was still warm. A stray cat sat on the hood. It was dark gray, striped, tailless, a sly old thing, the king of the alley, but today someone had closed the cellar window it usually used. On the entire street there were lights in only two attic windows. The owner of the Ford was making himself a late supper. He had once lived in Grochów, then Downtown and a few other places. He moved about, like everyone. This was nothing new. Before morning, nothing was going to happen. Most people sleep till morning. Dawn reaches the city first in the neighborhood of Stara Miłosna. There had been a greasy spoon there called the Szafa Gra. Paweł hadn't been there in a long time, but he remembered its green door and windows. Many years ago. On the little square in front stood dying trucks, Stars and Jel-czes—drab, rusty, with broken springs, and inside their cabs were naked women cut from magazines and medallions
dangling from the rearview mirrors. The drivers would eat in the place then continue on. The Russians to Bialystok, or the other way, to Lublin. Paweł had borrowed his folks' baby Fiat. The dusk thickened along the tree-lined highway; in the fields it was still light. Jacek sat next to him drinking one Królewskie after another, because in those days they sold them in the small 0.33-liter bottles, inkpots people called them. Getting drunk, he asked again:

“What the fuck do you need down for?”

“I sell it,” he answered, sorry that he'd taken him along.

“What the fuck does anyone need down for,” Jacek mused. “They pluck it when the birds are still alive, I saw it once. Afterward the birds walk around all pink.”

They turned off toward Kołbiel. It got dark. Gardens, fences, wooden cottages, and the smell of manure. They found the farmer after sunset, his two sons standing behind him scratching their balls. The father wore rubber boots, but the other two were barefoot. Paweł gave a long explanation, while they stared, not understanding, so he started over again—who had told him, who he got the whole story from, all the details. In the end the farmer shook his head. “I don't have anything,” he said, and waited for him to leave the yard and the yellow circle of lamplight. Paweł began at the beginning again: who, why, that it was definitely here, no mistake, it wasn't possible, he'd pay good money, but the farmer stepped toward him and waved a hand, which meant fuck off, because the farmer didn't feel like standing guard so some moron from the city wouldn't help himself to a souvenir, though there really wasn't anything there, dirt, an empty kennel, diapers on a clothesline. Paweł backed away, furious at Jacek for sleeping peacefully in the car, but when he was at the gate, one of the sons said, “Maybe it's Stach
he's after.” The old man gestured again, but this time meaning, “Wait.” He asked, “Who is it you're looking for?” Paweł gave the name then, and it was the right one, a brother who lived somewhere else, dealt in the stuff, younger, Stanisław. The old man went to the fence and drew a complicated map that the dusk erased.