Absolute Sunset (19 page)

She hadn’t even had a chance to consider opening one of the doors, when a doctor in dirty overalls burst from one of the rooms, hurling himself forward so that the stethoscope dangling from his neck swung like the trunk of an elephant. Hanka laughed.

“Hanna Borowska? Which one is Hanna?” the doctor asked in a reprimanding tone.

“That’s me...” Hanka replied reluctantly.

“Follow me!” the doctor ordered, moving along the hall.

The doctor was nearly running and Hanka had to hurry to keep up with him. His doctor’s clogs made a noise like a series of firecrackers.

“Hurry up!” he urged Hanka. “We need to hurry! It’s high time.”

They rushed into a room. A round, shiny lamp that seemed as bright as the sun hung from the ceiling. Hanka had seen lights like it on television, on the American series
ER
mostly. She could see the reflection of an operating table—which stood in the middle of the room—in the chromed surface of its cover. A patient lay on the table, her hands at her sides, attached to the cross-shaped table by tubes and needles. A green curtain, like a shroud, covered her face. An anguished voice came from underneath.

“Please, please!” the woman kept saying, trying to free herself, but the bonds held firmly. Doctors crowded around her, both men and women. When the patient renewed her efforts to escape, they lifted the curtain.

“Shut your mouth!” one hissed, putting a plastic mask on her face. It leaked a thick steam with a minty smell. When the woman finally became still, one of the men, dressed in overalls and a surgical mask, picked up a saw from the instrument tray. An ordinary metal saw. Hanka had had one like it once—she’d cut a brick in half with it. A saw like that is a serious thing.

“May I begin cutting?” the surgeon asked, and the rest of the team nodded. Everyone approached the table, bending over it closely, like curious children hovering over a captive frog. The patient disappeared behind them.

Hanka heard the sound of the skin tearing and a dribbling sound as they butchered the flesh, like lips smacking. God! She leaned against the wall, trying not to faint. The chomping! And the stink! Unbearable! She closed her eyes and tried to breathe through her mouth. “Don’t scream, don’t scream,” she repeated to herself.

“What a fucking job,” the doctor declared suddenly, taking off gloves covered with blood and tossing them down with a loud splat. The ones who’d been assisting during the operation looked up. “Next!” the surgeon called. He put the saw down on the tray and turned to Hanka. “Next time don’t be late!” he ordered. “You were supposed to pass the instruments!”

So Hanka did exactly that through the next dozen or so operations. She passed knives, scissors, and other instruments. Her hands trembled. She watched as the doctor rummaged through intestines of a woman with his bare hands. He reached in so deep that blood clung to the hair on his forearms. He dug around, pushing as though he were kneading a dough. Hanka sobbed, but didn’t abandon her post. The patients kept dying.

“Fuck!” the doctor swore.

Then, without warning, the raven appeared, descending from the lamp. Hanka had forgotten about it completely.

“We’re leaving now, doctor,” he declared. “She’s had enough.”

The dream’s end was as sudden as a balloon bursting, and Hanka hurriedly began writing everything down. She was sure it was about a plague of some kind. The beetles had to be a sign of plague, a natural disaster. These dying patients represented the casualties. Maybe the fact that they were women meant something? Hanka was guessing. Hurricane? Flood? Fire? She ignored the role of the doctor, thinking he was just an example of the raven’s terrible aesthetics. Or a smokescreen.

Eventually, she read about a doctor who had killed three patients—completely drunk, with a blood alcohol of 0.2%. He’d performed surgeries through an entire night, systematically drinking more and more alcohol in the duty office between operations. He lost his license to practice. So what? Hanka only found out too late. Again, she was too slow. Again!

“Where’s the preliminary balance sheet for March?” Hanka’s boss asked one day.

“Preliminary balance sheet?” Hanka looked at her with a blank expression. She’d just been checking her favorite esoteric forum, where she’d spent a lot of time lately. Fortune-tellers and wizards helped her to understand her dreams. She made friends with some of them.

“Preliminary balance sheet!” Bożena repeated, underlining it with her tone. “I told you to prepare it a week ago.”

“Uh-huh...” Hanka desperately tried to hide the screen with her body. No way.

“What do you have here?” the superior growled at her.

“Nothing really, I’ve just been checking the exchange rates,” Hanka’s tongue tangled.

“Hanka, don’t lie! I’m not blind! I told you not to visit these moronic sites!”

“Mhm...”

“Let me point out everything you’ve screwed up during the last month. Everything you’ve screwed up because you’re sitting here with your head full of fortune-telling.” Her boss put her left hand on her hip and with the right she counted off Hanka’s sins on her fingers, like you would with a naughty schoolgirl. “One,” she began. “The report on overdue receivables. Completely made up. Two,” the next finger, “the preliminary balance sheet that you were supposed to do with Sylwia. You did nothing at all, so Sylwia was late. Don’t think she covered for you. Three. Half the account entries were wrong because you weren’t focused on what you were doing.”

“I’m really sorry,” Hanka mumbled.

“‘I’m really sorry’ isn’t enough! I can fire you any time! I have loads of such clerks like you! Do you want to keep working? If you do, try harder. And if I see you on that bullshit forum one more time I’ll fire you for insubordination!”

Janusz—Guests, Guests

One day a letter arrived. Not an ordinary one, but something special, in an envelope edged in navy blue and red: airmail. It was from Canada. On the stamp was a Native American totem and the words “First Nations.”

Janusz opened the envelope in a single motion and pulled out the pages. There were a lot of them! He skimmed it just to see the signature. “Mietek and Ada,” it said. Mietek! They hadn’t seen each other in a hundred years!

“Hanka, Hanka!” he called to his daughter. “Come here, see who’s written to us!”

Mietek was Janusz’s cousin. He’d lived with his parents opposite to the oldish aunt who took care of Janusz after the death of his parents. The boys had made friends right away. Cheerful Mietek had helped Janusz pick up the pieces after the loss of his family. He’d brought him marbles, elastic bands for his slingshot, and pears stolen from the neighbour’s garden, sweet and juicy. A true friend. Together they drank their first cheap wine. They smoked “Sports” cigarettes, just to show off. Then Mietek went to Warsaw to study engineering, while Janusz stayed in Katowice. He used to write to Mietek and Mietek wrote back, and they’d met several times over Christmas holidays.

The last time they’d seen each other had been at Mietek’s graduation ceremony at the Warsaw University of Technology. He’d invited Janusz, proud to have earned his diploma. Janusz had already started working in the mine, but he’d taken time off to go and celebrate his cousin’s success.

“Janusz, I’m really glad you came. We can say goodbye,” Mietek had said.

“Say goodbye?” Janusz didn’t understand.

“Tomorrow I’m leaving for Canada. Only hush! You know how things are. My dear brother, I’ll write to you, I promise!”

It was the last time Janusz saw Mietek. In the rare letters he received he read that his cousin had gotten married. “Krystyna and Mietek” was how he’d signed a beautiful wedding photograph. Later he sent a photo of little Ada. Then came the terrible news that Krystyna was dying of cancer. Even the North American doctors weren’t able to help her. After that he still wrote from time to time, and Janusz had sent him a Christmas postcard—once in the last five years. And now, such a surprise! What had he written? He would be in Katowice in two weeks! Jesus, God, he was coming home!

“Hanka! Hanka!” Janusz called again. “Just see who’s coming!”

Hanka finally joined him. She’d been a bit sluggish recently. It irritated Janusz a little, and it worried him a bit, too. Plus she’d wallpapered her entire room with newspaper clippings. She’d bought cork boards and started pinning things up, humming. “It’s probably some new hobby with young people,” Janusz told himself. But why was she picking articles rather than photos of young, tanned movie stars?

“What is it, dad?” his daughter asked, stopping in the doorway.

“Guests! Mietek and Ada!”

Hanka didn’t seem happy.

“When are they arriving?”

“In two weeks!”

“Oh my...” Hanka rolled her eyes.

“Hanka, we have their e-mail. Don’t make a face like that! Write to them. Ask them when we’re supposed to pick them up from the airport. What day, what time? Invite them here, offer for them to stay here. Enough stupid faces! Guests are coming!”

They arrived. Janusz and Hanka were waiting at the airport, ready with a luggage trolley and with umbrellas since it was raining. They were tense, and jumped nervously at each airport announcement. Ding, dong.

“Here they are!” Janusz cried out finally, having spotted their guests, but he immediately became ashamed of himself, screaming and jumping like that—being Janusz.

Mietek looked so young. Nicely dressed, without a single crease after the long flight. In one hand—a leather case. In the other—a suitcase, also leather. He was holding the hand of his fair-haired daughter, as beautiful as her mother had been, who wore pearls around her neck. And Janusz? A peasant from Eastern Europe, in thick-soled shoes and an old coat. A bumpkin from Silesia! Naked ass.

He stepped aside and hid behind Hanka.

“Janusz!” he heard. “Janusz!”

Mietek rushed to him, leaving his suitcase and hand luggage. He ran toward Janusz like they do in American movies.

“Janusz, Janusz,” he called. He was crying freely.

He took Janusz in a strong, protective embrace.
How I’ve missed this
, Janusz thought.

“Welcome home,” he whispered, over and over again, patting his cousin on the back.

Mietek hadn’t changed at all. He smiled, as charming and effusive as ever. He was loaded down with gifts. For Hanka, for Janusz. Sweets, some clothes with the inscription
Toronto
, funny sunglasses. A bit of alcohol—good whisky. Maple syrup.

It was only at the airport that Janusz briefly thought that his poverty might be disappointing for his cousin, but at
Tysiąclecie
this anxiety completely disappeared.

“It’s so nice in here! Yeah, like home!” Mietek yelled, obviously content, when he got out of the taxi. “Katowice!”

Ada was great. Open and direct, she immediately invited herself into Hanka’s room. The girls shut the door, and only came out from time to time to get some food or something to drink. Janusz could hear a laughter from behind the door. “Jesus, thank you!” Janusz thought. He had missed this laughter, which had died out after Agata’s death.

He and Mietek sat together in the living room. Hanka had prepared
bigos
, cutlets, dumplings, and cold meat rolls. It took her almost two days, but it was worth waiting.

“Yummy!” Mietek kept saying.

Opened vodka was waiting. They drank. They ate. Janusz brought out the cake.

“Poppy-seed cake,” Mietek muttered with delight, and sliced a large piece off for himself.

They opened the whisky, and could taste the wood of the cask—delicious. Janusz had never drunk anything like it and felt blissful.

“So, what’s going on here, Januszek?” Mietek asked simply. “Where’s your wife?”

Janusz had known that sooner or later this uncomfortable question would come up. For a moment he thought about how he should answer. Should he lie? He glanced at Mietek. His cousin looked at him with open eyes—blue, naive.

Janusz told him everything. About Sabina, about Bartek. For the first time since her death, for the first time since the death of his son. He thought it would be hard for him, but the words came out of his mouth easily. Faster and faster. Mietek didn’t interrupt.

“You poor man,” he said in the end. And Janusz burst out crying. He needed that. He need this conversation. He needed this friend.