Nine (9 page)

They drove around for half an hour before they found the right farm. Beyond it, nothing but night, not a single light. Jacek woke up and complained they were out of beer.

The dog choked itself on its chain, as if it never saw a stranger before. A light went on, and they heard, “Who's there?” He had to shout to make himself heard over the dog, the same story, who, why, how, and the man somehow heard, waved them in, and threw something at the beast to make it quiet.

A yellow dresser with blue knobs, a plastic tablecloth, a radio that no one turned down. The table, chairs, a stove—nothing else. They sat and watched a woman in a gray apron kneel on a canvas sheet on the cement floor and transfer the down from one bag to another. Particles in the warm air like snowflakes that refuse to fall. She was helped by her daughter. When the daughter bent over, they could see her white thighs. A sour smell. The farmer smoked. They felt like smoking too, but there was no ashtray on the table, so they just sweated and watched the packing. Paweł said something was wrong, he could see feathers in the down. “You can pick 'em out,” muttered the farmer, the girl laughed, and a white cloud rose, as in a dream. The women were strangely slow, sweat trickled, flies buzzed. A pot on the range bubbled. Finally the two bags were full, and they began to weigh them on a rusty old porcelain scale. A bag slid off; commotion, white stuff flying about the room. No weights: the man used a sack of sugar from the
dresser. Paweł said the weight of the bag should be subtracted. The guy said a kilo was a kilo. Paweł said the hell with this sort of deal, but when they opened the door, they saw that the dog, big, pale brown, was free in the yard, so they asked the farmer to tie the bastard up. Stach said they hadn't finished their business, hard-assed about it. No fucking way was he going to put that crap in another bag, he didn't want it floating around the whole house, he was already running at a loss. Three bulging bags side by side, and no way out. They sat down.

They left after midnight, Jacek staggering. Paweł wasn't, because he'd passed on the bottle though he'd paid for it. That was the custom, Stach had said, and his wife nodded. As they were going, Stach invited them to buy from him again. The dog accompanied them to the gate. It wanted to play. The cops stopped them in Wawer beyond the viaduct. Paweł took out his wallet, but Jacek gave them an earful. They had second thoughts and refused the money. They took his driver's license.

 

In the dark, neither could put the story together.

“When was that?” asked Jacek.

“Eighty-three? In eighty-four I got my license back.”

“What did you need the down for?

“To sell it to this guy.”

“We didn't go anywhere together after that?”

“No.”

“I could have sworn I went back there a few times.”

“No. After that I went on my own.”

The first tram: a high-pitched whine from the north filled Marszałkowska, lowered, landed, then soared again and sped off toward Mokotów.

“The 36,” said Jacek.

“How do you know?”

“It's always the first, and usually empty.”

“How do you know?”

“Sometimes, instead of lying here I get up and sit by the window. I learned it all. In a moment there'll be an 18 from Å»eran.”

“Will it have passengers?”

“A few people in the first car.”

The building stirred. Someone entered or left, the thud of the iron door passing through the walls like rain. Huge trucks from Russia circled the roundabout. The trash cans at the stops had been emptied.

“You know,” said Paweł, “I sometimes think that if all these people didn't get up, if they stayed in their beds, the day would never begin. It would be dark the whole time.”

“Why don't you just get the fuck out of here.”

“Where to?”

They fell silent for the 18. It started at Konstytucji Square and skipped the stop at Wilcza. Its rumble opened up at Wspólna, tightened between the apartment buildings, eased off in the pass of Żurawia, but then the light must have turned green, because the noise rose again like a great wing over Defilad Square, till it reached the Palace and broke against its walls.

“What was the point rebuilding it if there's nowhere to hide,” said Jacek.

“What?”

“The city. The whole place stinks of dead bodies.”

“They removed the bodies.”

“Sure. Suppose today at noon is Judgment Day and the resurrection of the flesh . . .”

“What judgment?”

“OK, that won't happen. But the resurrection, everywhere. On Marszałkowska the asphalt cracks and they crawl out; on the Aleje the sidewalks open and it's the same. You're sitting in McDonald's on Świętokrzyska, with your Big Mac, and wham, the flooring, concrete, everything crumbles, and there's a dead body, and another, everywhere, at the traffic circle, in the Passageway, the lawn at Saski Garden peels and they pop up like mushrooms or those German garden gnomes, on Powstańców Square, Defilad Square, across the parade ground, on Widok the cops are giving some crackhead a hard time when up jumps an even better specimen from the ground, then Mirów and Muranów, hordes of them . . . It wont be all nice and genteel like before, like in the cemeteries out in Wólka and Bródno and Wola, where it's deserted, no one's around, plus they're all in tidy rows with their arms crossed the way they were left . . . Here it will be different.”

“You've flipped, Jacek.”

“I haven't. I sometimes think different things. Like this. Don't you?”

“I never had the time. And I'm not religious.”

“Did you see Michael Jackson's
Thriller
?”

“Yeah.”

“Something like that, except here. You're buying smokes at a kiosk, and you get sucked into a hole.”

“I can't get excited about that,” said Paweł, reaching for a cigarette.

“No one gets excited anymore about the end of days,” said Jacek, and laughed softly.

“Today some head case at Central Station asked me if I believe in the devil.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What was I supposed to tell him? Nothing.”

 

They fell asleep finally, on their backs with their mouths open, dreaming their own lives but not knowing it, so their bodies didn't struggle. Daybreak came in over the windowsill and went slowly across the floor like dishwater. It rose higher, submerging them, then reached the tabletop and finally the ceiling.

 

Sheikh rose from his mat, stretched out his front paws, arched his back, yawned. He went to the kitchen, but there was nothing in his bowl. His master and Syl were asleep, so he had a drink of water. He lapped three times for something to do. He felt uneasy. His black nails tapping the dark-red tiles, a dry but clear sound, he went into the hallway, sniffed his master's shoes, came back. He put his front paws on the windowsill and looked out. A strange thing: from somewhere in Rembertów or Wesoła, fire rising. Not visible yet, but over the Olszynka woods hovered a smoky red. Like a dark fire inside the earth, a fire that is blind. The higher the glow rose, the brighter it got, as if fed by the air—orange, then gold, more and more diluted, hotter, till at the highest point of the sky it became a silvery white. A black braid from the chimney of the Kawęczyn power station was a straight line, but near the fiery disk it tore, broke, as if from a gust of wind, but instead of dissolving, the smoke formed a huge figure, half human, half animal. The cloud moved, thickened, thinned, let light through, looked like a person or thing trying to jump from the earth, take a step, another, head toward the river, to cross it awkwardly. Sheikh lifted his snout and whined. He sniffed the air, barked, took his paws off the windowsill, and went to the other end of the apartment.

 

In the train depot in Olszynka women were cleaning the red-and-green cars of a EuroCity. One woman, older, gray, a scarf tied under her chin, went out onto the low platform and crossed herself hurriedly.

 

The two men woke too late to see it. They finished the cold soup, smoked a cigarette each. They did not speak. Jacek opened the curtains to a blue, clear sky. The red latticework of the crane on the other side of the street was like the leg of a giant insect. In the kitchen Paweł drank water from a white mug. He put on his shoes, turned on the radio.

“It's after ten,” said Jacek, so he turned it off again and they went out.

Jacek had to go to Praga. Paweł asked if he could join him. Jacek nodded unenthusiastically. They ran across the street and hopped over the barrier just as a 2 was coming. Jacek got in first. He found a seat and did not look around once. Paweł stamped his ticket and sat two rows behind him. The tram was uncrowded, transparent, cold. The air pale gold. Dust floated in diagonal streaks. He had slept a few hours, did not feel hungry, and his shoulder hurt less. In his mind he went over the events of the day before. They fitted. All events fit when they're over. He felt no fear but was bothered by his dirty socks, itchy feet. At Świętokrzyska the tram emptied even more. No one got in. He saw a piece of paper on the floor and picked it up: a page torn from a notebook, folded in four. Nothing written on it. He put it in his pocket, checked that no one was looking at him. Three women stared out the window. “But they could turn around,” he thought. The Saski Gardens on the right glowed brown, the trunks of the trees vivid. Baby carriages like large moving flowers. In the
distance, a lifeless fountain came briefly into view. “Fountains are turned on May first,” he thought. At what used to be Dzierżyńskiego Square the light was green, so they sped past the gold skyscraper, which in the empty square looked about to collapse. The iron structure dizzy from all the air. His stomach stirred. They came to that cheerless neighborhood where nothing had changed for decades, not counting the Mostowski Palace on the left. Then a double wall of drab apartments. Whenever he came out this way, he wondered who could live in this place of constant shadow, where it's dark when people leave in the morning, dark when they return in the evening. He closed his eyes, slept, opened them again, saw Jacek's gray back out the door. He leaped. The door closed, but he grabbed the handle, yanked the door open again, jumped out.

“You were going to leave me,” he said.

Jacek paused, turned, looked at him in surprise.

“No . . .” A vague smile. “I completely forgot about you. Thinking.”

“You were trying to get rid of me.”

“I forgot. It happens.” He headed toward Stalingradzka, taking a shortcut past a stall selling beer and chicken. At Leńskiego he stopped and said:

“Listen. You can't go with me. Hang out here, have a beer, I'll be back in an hour tops.” He turned at Skoczylasa, looked left, right, vanished into Brechta.

 

Paweł walked to the Filipinka like a robot and went in. These were places where time dies. He ordered a beer and asked the man behind the counter:

“So who was Haller?”

“What Haller?”

“You know, the general they renamed the Leński for.”

“How would I know? I didn't know who Leński was either.”

“Leński was Leński.”

“So Haller must have been Haller.”

“But out of the blue like that.”

He took his beer and sat at an old table with iron legs. He wondered if Jacek really had tried to lose him. “Maybe,” he said softly. “The prick.” He raised his head quickly to make sure the man hadn't heard. The digital clock over the bar said 12:07. He took a long drink to forget all that and get back to his memories, which were safe.

Twenty years ago he lived in an apartment two blocks from here. There'd been Cuba libres in their glasses—him, another guy, and two women. He'd never had rum and Coke before and was feeling shy. The women were good-looking; their jewelry jangled, and their jeans were tight. The older one had big breasts, but he was with the younger one.

The apartment was reached via a filthy stairwell; one flight, then a door lined with metal and soundproofed inside. The smell of things beyond his experience. Wood, leather, thick color catalogues of furniture and clothing, and the first time ever he saw a photo mural. It depicted an autumn park or forest. Behind him, but he kept turning to look at it. He was afraid to touch it, though he wanted to, almost as much as the other woman's breasts. They were watching television and listening to records brought from the West a week before. Then the women served food. He didn't know how to eat it. Never saw anything like it: toasted, fragrant, and covered with red sauce; in small, long glass dishes. The older woman was the owner of the place. The glasses had foreign words: White Horse, Johnnie Walker, Malibu, Stock. It was all exciting, stirred up a sweet
pain. On his feet, dull sneakers. Worried that they smelled, he kept his feet under the low table and pressed them together. When the food was finished and they started drinking again, he got up and went to the bathroom. The pink interior and the smell of lavender made him dizzy. He locked the door, checked the handle, examined the tiled shelves, the strange, chunky faucet, and before he figured out how it worked, he scalded his hand. Holding his breath, careful to put everything back in its place, he removed his sneakers and socks and put his feet in the tub. He watched with alarm as the water turned gray and dirtied the pink enamel. The towels were blue and white and fresh, so he wiped his feet with toilet paper. With a can of plain-looking deodorant he sprayed his socks and the insides of his sneakers. He threw the paper into the toilet and flushed it. When he went back into the room, the man guffawed and said, “Upset stomach? Not used to it? Would have been fine with black pudding?”

He laughed till he was red in the face and his girl said, “Maniek, knock it off.”

Paweł sat on the edge of the sofa and heard the leather creak beneath him. He downed his drink, felt his face burning; but the other two were busy whispering, giggling, pinching each other. The woman with the breasts guffawed, throwing her head back; her thick fair hair lay across the headrest of her armchair. The one he'd come with sat staring at her glass. Finally the other two got up and disappeared in the next room.