Absolute Sunset (16 page)

“I’ll help you!” Sabina screamed back to them and returned to her struggle, trying to get the first victim out. It seemed impossible! She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Wet. Blood!

There was a tapping sound. Everything disappeared in a second. Sabina was back in her cell. What a relief!

“What’s going to happen?” the raven asked. “What will it be?”

“Something will collapse,” Sabina replied. The bird nodded.

“What exactly?” he asked, requiring details.

“An office block?”

“No! Think!”

“Will people manage to escape?”

“No, focus.”

“A building will collapse. Pigeons. Is it about nests? Residential building?”

“No, think! Where? When?” the bird wanted to know.

“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know?”

“Look more carefully. Look! Think! You still have a few days, a few days. Find the answer.”

Sabina requested some newspapers. It wasn’t easy to get them. The guard refused at first.

“Shut up and don’t whine!” she said. “Why the hell do you need newspapers anyway? You can barely read after that smack in the head you earned.”

But Sabina wasn’t going to give up. She wrote to the management board. She threatened to make a human rights complaint. She got her newspapers. She searched them for the key to the riddle. What was the dream about? A hall. Pigeons. Wilderness.

“Have you figured it out yet?” the raven asked.

“I don’t know.”

“This is your last day. Tomorrow night I’m coming back. If you don’t know then, it’ll hurt.”

Sabina didn’t solve the riddle. The raven set her a punishment. He ordered her to cut her thighs. With a piece of the spoon sharpened against the wall. It was painful. Later her trousers stuck to the wounds, tearing the scabs off. Opening the cuts anew.

Only much, much later did Sabina read that an exhibition hall had collapsed in Katowice. During a show of racing pigeons. Sixty five corpses. More than one hundred injured. A hecatomb.

She told the raven about it. He looked disdainfully at her.

“Too late.”

The second riddle came a few months later.

“Disasters don’t happen for no particular reason, just like that!” the raven reprimanded Sabina, when she asked when the next quiz would be.

The wounds on her thighs healed. And Sabina was prepared. She copied potentially relevant information from the newspapers. She catalogued them. She tried to attach a few code marks to each one of them. She borrowed a book on the meaning of dreams from the prison library. And
Basics of the Tarot
and
Predictions and Horoscopes
as well.

Finally the time came. The raven took Sabina to a meadow. A well with an old-fashioned reel stood in the middle of the cornfield. Above it was a small wooden roof. Around it, marsh marigolds. A truly idyllic picture.

“Look,” he said.

Sabina leaned over above the wall surrounding the well. She expected the see black water. A hint of the cool dampness. What she saw made her catch the beam that supported the well’s little roof.

A white flame burned at the bottom. People were climbing up the rough walls. They wore yellow helmets and were smeared with soot. They scrabbled over one another, trying to get out. “Help us out, help us out!” they were screaming. The weakest fell back into the fire. They died in torment, charring and breaking down into ash. A scream. The stronger ones managed to climb farther, digging their nails in between the grey stones. Another scream. Sabina looked away.

“A tunnel? A rail crash?” she wheezed.

“Nope.”

“Mining accident?”

“Very good! Ask yourself
where
. Seven days.”

She failed again! Fuck, she failed again! It was in a mine, that much she got right. In Ruda Śląska. Methane exploded. It blasted out. It blackened. Twenty two corpses.

Foolishly, she’d focused only on mines in Katowice. Meanwhile, miners dig all over the place in the shitty Silesian soil. Like Bytom. She shouldn’t have looked away during the dream. She must have overlooked a clue, that’s for sure! How could she be so stupid?

“Have you seen the newspapers?” the raven asked her after a week.

“Yes, I have.”

“Do you know what you missed?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Methane is fatal, don’t you think?” the bird said lightly, as if they were talking about the best way to remove a stain.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, okay dear Sabina, now the punishment...”

He ordered her to cut her ears off.

“Both?”

“Are you a Van Gogh? No. So both!”

“I can’t!”

“Well, try one by one!” the raven looked satisfied.

He came every night. He checked on her progress. Sabina sharpened her spoon to a fine edge and started with the left auricle. The pain wasn’t too bad. Then she cut off the right one, this time with more flair. She wasn’t so afraid as she’d been at the first cut. The right ear bled a lot. She couldn’t stop it. She went to the clinic.

“What are you doing, for Christ sake?” The doctor was angry, but he closed her wounds.

“I’m sorry,” Sabina mumbled.

“I don’t want to see you doing anything like this ever again!” the doctor said, shaking the bandage at her.

But it wouldn’t be the last time. The raven didn’t give up.

“Cut it, cut it. Don’t break the rules!” he cawed and Sabina resumed cutting. Until all that was left of her ears were little stumps, like sprouting tulips. They began to fester. They ached. Sabina found her way back to the doctor. Antibiotics. More threats.

“We have to stop the game,” she told the bird, tormented with fever.

“Oh no, my darling. You agreed. We play until the end.” The raven burst out laughing.

Sabina decided to outwit him. She asked the doctor for sleeping pills.

“When I lie down, it hurts,” she lied.

The doctor didn’t ask any more questions. He gave her Imovane. Small and pink. Two at a time. When she took them, Sabina slept like the dead, without dreams. As black as the blank screen in a cinema. “Well now what, you rag?” she thought to the raven, who couldn’t break through the fog of sleep-inducing chemistry.

But the ugly bird was clever. Fucking winged rat. He came during the day. Right after dinner. She wasn’t even asleep! He clambered out from behind the toilet and ruffled its feathers.

“What are you doing here?” Sabina asked sharply.

“You’ve been sleeping like a corpse, so I came now,” the raven replied.

“But you’re from my dreams, you can’t come out in bright daylight!” Sabina whined woefully.

“I can come when I want,” the bird laughed. “And now, dear, we’re playing!”

A kite. It flew above Sabina. It was green. It had a striped tail. She could hear it fluttering in the wind. Sabina held it firmly. Suddenly the string broke. Pulled by wind, the toy disappeared from Sabina’s sight, far up in the air. Just when it seemed that it was lost for good, it fell like a stone. It crashed into the earth, shattering completely.

“That’s easy, a plane crash.”

“Who? Where? When?”

But Sabina didn’t know—again.

“You are as dumb as a rock!” the bird said later. It had dropped by for some chit-chat, to tease Sabina a little. She half listened to it.

“Well, I am, it’s true!” Sabina answered to make him go away and went back to scratching the wall with her thumb.

“You know what? Maybe we should stop this game. I have enough. Besides it doesn’t make any sense.” The raven shook his head with resignation.

Sabina became vigilant. Oh yes! The end of the game! Excellent! After the third dream the raven had given her an exceptionally sophisticated punishment. Cutting off her nose. She argued. As an exception, he changed the nose to the clitoris. She argued again. They settled their negotiations on her toes. Sabina cut them all off, one after another. They made a popping sound, like shelled peas. Then it was off to the hospital again. New threats.

“I’ll send you to the psychiatric unit, I swear to God,” the doctor said, angry.

Enough! It was high time to finish the game. Her sentence would end in four months. She would make it to the other side. Does the feathered rat want the end to the game? Great!

“I’ll drop by in a few days,” the bird said. “We’ll close the game.”

“I’ll be waiting!” Sabina promised and lay down on her pallet.

It was the day of her bath. Saturday. Sabina was entitled to having a shower only once a week. She couldn’t use the shower room with the other women—they would beat her to death. So she washed herself properly once in seven days.

A young guard took her to the bathroom. She was new and lacked experience. She waited until the other women left to the prison yard, closed the door carefully, and led Sabina out. They went quickly along grey corridors. The heels of her official shoes clattered on the floor. The guard stayed in the corridor, and Sabina entered the bathroom. She undressed. She folded her clothes and put them on the chair in the dressing room. With a towel in hand, she moved toward the shower. She turned the water on and immediately stepped under the stream. At first icy, it took her breath away. After a moment it became pleasantly warm. Sabina untangled her wet hair. She washed her armpits. She was delighted. When she reached for the shampoo, standing on the floor, she noticed the raven. He sat in a fold in the shower curtain. Over and over, he shook drops from its feathers.

“Hi!” he greeted her warmly. Sabina impulsively covered her crotch and breasts with hands.

“Hello,” she answered and turned away.

“Today we’ll finish the game,” the raven continued, not ashamed to look at her butt. “Just do what I want.”

“Yes?” Sabina tried not to show how very glad she was. She felt like singing. The end of the shitty quiz games! No more punishments! She turned the water off and took a look at the bird, ready to fulfil his last wish.

“Take the towel. Tear a strip from it. Two strips. Five centimetres wide,” the raven ordered.

“Done,” Sabina replied after a moment. She didn’t even get dressed. She didn’t ask why.
Let’s do what the ugly bird orders quickly and get rid of him!
Besides, having a discussion with him was pointless. He was stubborn. He always had to do everything his own way.

“Tie them into a long rope,” the raven issued the next order.

“Done.”

“Throw it over the nozzle of the shower.”

“What for?”

“Don’t ask, just do. Do you want to finish the riddles or not?”

“I do.”

“So throw it.”

Sabina threw the rope over the pipe, which was almost as high as the ceiling. She moved the tap without meaning to and the water started running again.

“Tie a loop.”

“Done.”

“Put your head into it.”

“Done.” Water ran down Sabina’s face.

“Kneel down! Quickly!” the raven cawed.

Sabina closed her eyes and bent her knees. Her spinal cord cracked. A sound like wood popping in a bonfire. Her heels moved in a last tango on the wet floor.

Janusz—Her And Not Her

A bell. Janusz opened his eyes abruptly, then stretched his back. Yet again he’d fallen asleep sitting up. Another bell. He wiped a thread of saliva from his chin—he’d drooled on himself like a baby! Yet another bell. Who the fuck is ringing? Guests? No, no, it’s the phone.

“Yes?” he said into the receiver, trying to sound awake and busy.

“Janusz Borowski?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Your wife is dead.”

“Sorry?” Janusz clung to the business-like tone, but his fingers clenched around the telephone line.

“She committed suicide.”

He went to the mortuary, located next to the prison—he wanted to see her. Oh, Sabina...

He entered the dreary pavilion. Outside the day was hot, inside the mortuary, it was cool and dim. The windows had accumulated a terrible layer of dirt and were flecked with the dried bodies of dead insects. A porter who resembled a living mummy greeted him, fingering the scarf wrapped around his neck.

“Throat inflammation,” he croaked and moved the visitor’s log toward Janusz.

Janusz entered his data carelessly. What an idiotic custom—he could write anything he wanted. It’s not like the old man would ever know.

“Thanks,” he murmured, giving back the man’s old ballpoint pen.

“Go straight and it’s the last door on the left,” the guard started coughing. Janusz hurried away from his company.

He walked quickly along the tiled corridor, then knocked at the door the porter had indicated and entered without waiting for a response. Inside he found a doctor sitting at the desk. Probably a doctor, anyway—he had a stained white apron. He could just as well have been a butcher.

“Janusz Borowski,” Janusz introduced himself.

“Uh-huh,” the man answered. He took a bite from a pickled cucumber, put the rest in the drawer of his desk, and slowly got up. “Follow me.”

In the cold storage area it was almost frosty, like in the frozen foods section of a grocery store. Janusz wrapped his arms around himself, but Doctor Butcher didn’t seem to feel the cold. He moved quickly between tall rows of drawers, looking for the right one. When he found it, he opened the door and slid the drawer out. A body covered with in foil emerged from the refrigeration unit.