Entanglement (24 page)

“Yes, you bloody well have my permission,” agreed Szacki, ignoring his daughter’s presence.

He moved the car and went back into the shop, where his trolley had already gone. He suspected it was the revenge of the fat man from under whose nose he’d swiped it.

He tossed item after item into a new one, trying to avoid the importunate sales ladies with their bits of food cooked on an electric grill, thinking that the common denominator for the citizens of Warsaw was not their place of residence, employment or least of all birth - it was their better or worse concealed aggression. Not hatred, as even the most absurd form of hate was always in some way rational, thanks to the existence of the object of hatred. The All-Polish Youth nationalists hate gays, but if you’re lucky enough to be a heterosexual, you can feel relatively safe in their company. The gays hate the Mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, but as long as you’re not Lech Kaczyński the problem is purely academic. Whereas the aggression was aimed at everyone and anything.

Most of the cases Prosecutor Szacki dealt with were actually the result of senseless aggression; anger that had materialized at a certain moment in the form of assault, rape, murder or battery. Where did it come from? From disappointment because life was so tough, boring and unfulfilling? From fear that any moment it might get even tougher? From envy because others had it better? He had often wondered, but he’d never been able to give himself a convincing answer to the question of where all that Polish rage came from.

The shopping took them two hours, until he was dropping with exhaustion. He felt that if it weren’t for the trolley he’d keel over. He was ashamed of looking like all the other zombies struggling to push along their cheeses, soaps, meats, loo sprays and books by Dan Brown. He so desperately wanted to be different from them, feel like someone exceptional, disappear, forget, change, fall in love.

For starters he decided to buy ice cream in flavours he never ate: mango and Snickers (how can a scoop of ice cream cost
two and a half zlotys - that’s almost a dollar!). They were both disgusting, and he was sorry he hadn’t had his favourites, lemon and strawberry.

He swapped with Helka, who luckily had chosen strawberry, and thought how great it is to have kids.

He was looking at Teodor Szacki, who was standing to one side, carefully observing the mourners. A handsome man, but he had looked better at his age. Because he had money. Money gives you some leeway and self-confidence. A strength that will never arise from good looks or a fine character.

Like the prosecutor, he hadn’t come to the chapel - or rather “pre-funeral home” - at the cemetery in Wólka to say goodbye to Henryk Telak. He wanted to inspect the mourners, and above all Szacki. He took a few steps alongside a hideous concrete wall to get a better view of him. Was he an adversary who should be feared, or just another official, too weak to land himself a job as a solicitor or barrister?

He didn’t look weak. He was taut as a string, surprisingly well dressed for a man on a public-sector wage. His classic black suit must have been made to measure. Or its owner had a perfect eye for the ready-made range. Frankly he doubted that, as the prosecutor’s clothing was sure to carry labels saying Wólczanka and Intermoda, not Boss or Zegna. And the man had not been born who fitted the cut of the Polish firms - you only had to look at the second-rate politicians on TV. In addition, Szacki was quite tall, at least six foot, he guessed, and very lean. It was hard for men like that to find even jeans in the right size, let alone select a suit from a range meant mainly for small fat blokes. Personally he had his suits made to measure in Berlin; he had a tailor there whom he had known since the 1980s.

To go with the suit a white shirt with very subtle grey pinstripes and a plain graphite-grey tie. He thought cattily that his wife couldn’t have chosen it for him - he didn’t suspect the female lawyer from the City Council of having too much taste, especially as he’d seen how she dressed in photos. A pleasant woman, but someone should advise her against tapering skirts with a figure like that.

“He was a good husband, a loving father and an honest citizen,” declaimed the young priest unemotionally. The words almost made him snort with laughter and he had to cough to hide his faux pas. A few heads turned his way, including Szacki’s.

He looked him in the eye and held his gaze.

The prosecutor had a young face, though you couldn’t have called his charms boyish. Subtly manly, rather. The softness of his features was shattered by his slightly furrowed brow and unpleasantly cold grey eyes. It wasn’t the face of a man who often smiles. In July he’d reach the age of thirty-six, but many people would have given him less, if not for his thick, completely white hair. It contrasted with his black eyebrows, giving him a stern, slightly unsettling look. He was perfectly monochrome. Just black, grey and white, with no other colour to spoil the composition. Finally, without blinking, the prosecutor slowly averted his gaze, and it crossed his mind that this particular official didn’t like to compromise.

The funeral-parlour employees, who despite their suits and gloves looked like dangerous ex-cons, vigorously lifted the coffin and carried it out of the pre-funeral home. Few people liked this place. It was impersonal, ice-cold and ugly with the ugliness typical of modern architecture. He did like it, because there was no stench of religion in there. Just communal death, no empty promises. That suited him. Once he used to think that like others he’d convert in his old age. He’d been wrong. He was prepared to believe in anything - he found everyday life full of surprises. But in God - never.

The mourners, not more than forty people, turned to face the passage down the middle of the room as they waited for the family to leave. Jadwiga Telak and her son came after the coffin, solemn, but not looking crushed by despair. Then came some relatives whom he didn’t recognize. Not immediate family - Henryk Telak was an only child. Then a few friends, among them the Polgrafex employees and Igor, who glanced at him and nodded discreetly.

The procession ended with the people he found most interesting - the witnesses to Telak’s death, and not just witnesses, because he was sure one of them was the murderer. Cezary Rudzki the therapist was walking alongside Barbara Jarczyk, and behind them came Hanna Kwiatkowska and Euzebiusz Kaim. From the other side of the passage Teodor Szacki was closely observing all four of them. As they passed him, the prosecutor joined the procession. He stood next to him, and shoulder to shoulder they left the pre-funeral home. He smiled. Who’d have thought we’d all meet beside Henryk Telak’s coffin? Fate can be comical. Interesting to see if Prosecutor Teodor Szacki would find out what he already knew about the mourners. He didn’t think so. He hoped not.

What a waste of time. But what had he been expecting from the funeral? That one of them would come in a red shirt marked “IT’S ME!”? Szacki knew it wasn’t very polite, but after leaving the chapel he quickly said goodbye to the widow, cast a cold glance at the four suspects and ran off to the car park. As he walked down the concrete path, he could still feel the gaze of that older man, who hadn’t taken his eyes off him throughout the entire ceremony. Probably some relative wondering who I am, he thought.

He got in the car and put the key in the ignition but didn’t switch on the engine. Once again he had the feeling that something had escaped his notice. For a split second, there in the chapel, he had felt as if he were looking at something important. He could sense something very vague, gently tickling the back of his head. At what moment had that happened? Towards the end, just after the coffin was carried out. He was standing there, absorbed by the man watching him, who looked as if he were struggling not to smile. He must have been about seventy, but Szacki would be happy to look like that at his age - like Robert Redford’s more handsome brother - and to be able to afford suits like that one. He was looking furtively at the man, people were coming out of the pews and walking slowly down the middle of - let’s call it the nave. And that was when he saw something. Something important.

He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, trying to imagine that moment. The cold room, the solemn music that he didn’t recognize, people dragging their feet. Rudzki alongside Jarczyk, Kwiatkowska and Kaim behind them. And that strange feeling, like déjà vu, a sudden discharge in his neurons. Why?

No, he had no idea.

He drove out of the car park, similar in size to the one outside the supermarket, turned into Wójcicki Street, and immediately stopped near Młociński Wood. He changed out of his funeral suit into jeans and a linen shirt, sprinkled mineral water on his hand and ruffled his hair a bit. He tried smiling roguishly into the side mirror. What a tragedy. Like a German pretending to find Polish humour funny. After pausing to think he took Helka’s child seat out of the back and tossed it in the boot, then scooped up a heap of crumbs, the straw from a fruit-juice carton and a Milky Way wrapper. All with the thought that he might have to drive her home afterwards.

This time he arrived at Szpilka first. He sat down on the mezzanine, at a table by the wall. There were better places on small couches by the windows, through which you could watch life go by on Triple Cross Square, but he was afraid Monika would sit on the same couch next to him and he wouldn’t know how to behave. And he had remembered that Weronika was meant to be taking Helka to Ujazdowski Park. He’d rather they didn’t see him here. Monika came a little later, wearing tiny amber earrings, a tight black top with shoulder straps and a long flowery skirt. And sandals with heels and thongs that wound fancifully around her calves. She stopped in the café doorway, took off her sunglasses and blinked as she scanned the interior. When she noticed him on the mezzanine, she smiled and waved cheerfully. He thought she looked fresh and lovely. He automatically replied with a smile, far less forced than the one he’d practised in the side mirror, and thought how for years the only girl who’d been so pleased to see him was his daughter. No one else.

He stood up as she approached the table. She said hello and kissed him on the cheek.

“And now please explain to the high court,” she said, frowning.

“Why did the defendant choose the gloomiest table in the darkest corner of this otherwise brightly sunlit café, eh?”

He laughed.

“It was on impulse, I didn’t know what I was doing. When I came to, I was already sitting there. I swear it’s not my fault. The police framed me.”

They sat down on a sofa by the window with a fine view of Saint Alexander’s church. Along the pavement a dozen boys went past in black shirts marked “No camping”, with a graphic showing two crossed-out little men having sex from behind. It must have been about the homosexuals. Suddenly they started chanting:

“Husband and wife, normal family life!”

Szacki thought they looked like a bunch of poufs themselves - a group of men in tight shirts getting each other worked up with stupid slogans - but he kept this observation to himself.

He lied that he’d eaten a big breakfast, for fear of a large bill. Finally he ordered a smoked-cheese sandwich, and she had spinach pierogi. Then two coffees. They chatted a bit about work and why it was so hopeless, and he amused her with a few funny stories about his colleagues at the prosecutor’s office. Then he forced himself to pay her a compliment. He praised her shoes, and immediately rebuked himself mentally for looking like some sort of bloody fetishist. All because of that Russki, who’s always regaling me with his fantasies, he told himself.

“Do you like them?” she asked, raising her skirt and turning her foot this way and that so he could take a good look at the sandals. He said yes, thinking she had very shapely feet, and that the whole scene was extremely sexy.

“It’s just a pity you can’t kick them off in a single go,” she sighed. “The straps must have been invented by a man.”

“What a clever guy. He knew what looks good.”

“Thanks. I’m glad I’ve achieved the intended effect.”

Just then the TV presenter Krzysztof Ibisz came into the café. He ran up to the mezzanine and looked round nervously. Szacki thought it embarrassing to recognize Ibisz - the novelist Jerzy Pilch or the former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki would have been quite another matter - so he pretended not to notice him. He questioned Monika about her work. He wasn’t really all that interested in stories about the editor from Gorzów who used any excuse to stare at her cleavage, as a result of which she had to keep correcting her articles several times and listening to his tirades about the pivotal point of the text. He found that he liked listening to her. He watched her gesticulating, adjusting her hair, licking her lips and playing
with her coffee spoon - her mouth was just a minor element in the way the girl communicated; she seemed to speak with every muscle. He remembered that when a man stares at a woman’s lips, it means he wants to kiss her, so he quickly looked up at her eyes. At once he remembered there were some rules about staring at the eyes too - you should only look long enough to show attention, but not too insistently. Where did he get all this nonsense from?