Killing Auntie (3 page)

4

IN
THE MORNING
I
WOKE UP FRESH AND RESTED
. I
JUMPED
out of bed and did a few vaguely gymnastic exercises. The room was a bit chilly, I had an appetite, good humor and felt very young. Auntie's canary sent off a peel of brilliant trills from his cage:

“Tru – tiu – tu …”

I echoed him:

“Tiu – tiu … Good morning, little birdie. Good morning, Cracow, good morning, sun … Good morning, good morning!”

I ran to fetch a bag with seeds and served the birdie a copious spoonful in his bowl. The wall glittered with playful sun bunnies. It was cold outside but warmer than yesterday. The thermometer was showing twenty degrees. It was 8:20 am. Phew, at last I had had a good night's sleep. I had slept almost ten hours. Now I felt rested, strong, young and independent. Whistling, I ran to the bathroom. I would have loved a bath but unfortunately the bathtub was filled with the corpse.

I stood in front of the mirror.

“Good morning, Jurek,” I smiled. “Hello, Jerzy.”

I ran the tap and washed myself from the waist up.

“Good morning, Auntie,” I turned towards the bath.

“How did my love
sleep in the tub?”

I was singing, crying and shaking off the cold water. After drying myself with a thick hairy towel, I started to shave. I was a bit cold but didn't put my shirt on, showing off instead my arms and shoulders, perhaps still rather boyish for my age. As I dressed, I did gymnastics the whole time, and hummed to myself.

I put the kettle on the stove and started preparing breakfast. Once more I considered my situation. It was not bad. I was confident, but without the easy optimism which had momentarily swept over me immediately after killing Auntie. I was aware now that disposing of the corpse would require a long effort but I believed I was up to it. Auntie's sudden disappearance should not arouse any suspicions from the neighbors or friends. She often went away without any warning and could even be absent for several days at a time. I decided that after ten days – during which time I should certainly manage to get rid of the corpse – I would start a search. First I would write to Granny, then to friends and Auntie's business associates in other towns, and finally I would place an ad in the press and call the police.

The food in the larder would last me only two or three days. After breakfast I searched the flat for money. In Auntie's handbag, in the linen cupboard between the sheets and in the drawer of her night table I found bills totaling one thousand and seven hundred zlotys. That would tide me over for now. Later I might sell Auntie's clothes and her jewelry: her wedding ring, the ruby ring and the small necklace. Apart from that, inside the corpse's mouth I would find a gold bridge, though I should probably wait a bit before selling it. At any rate, I'd be financially secure for a few months. Then it would be summer, I could go off on a camping trip, and in my last year at university I'd find a job.

I already started thinking of finding suitable, not-too-absorbing employment. But first things first – I had to get cracking with disposing of the corpse. I knew I couldn't do it in one go, that the job had to be spread over several days and that I would have to be extremely careful. It crossed my mind that I could burn part of the body in the stove. Frequent trips with packages containing bits of the corpse struck me as too risky.

The lectures started in the afternoon. So I decided to get on with it now. What I could not decide on was whether to light the kitchen stove or the one in the bedroom. Eventually I settled on both. The flat was pretty cold. Although I sleep and spend most of my time in the room, recently I'd come to like sitting around the kitchen. Perhaps it was that silly power which brings the murderer to the scene of his crime, which one reads so much about in novels. Of course I did not feel like a murderer. Killing Auntie was in my case the result of so many interlocking mental states, of complexes and depression that I had analyzed and digested so many times before, and analyzing and digesting them all over again would have been only another pointless routine. In fact, my engagement with the corpse ruled out in advance any element of remorse, if I'd had any in the first place. The corpse was simply my partner in a hazardous game, in which admittedly I couldn't win anything, but on the other hand could lose my life. I even had a kind of respect for the corpse, the way one usually does for a strong opponent.

I had a bit of stage fright before lighting the stove. It was a much more difficult task than peeling potatoes. I tried not to admit it to myself though. With a poker and a coal spade I swept out the ash, revealing the bare grate. Quite a large proportion of the ash missed the bucket and ended up on the floor. But I didn't worry too much about it. The floor needed to be scrubbed anyway. It had small puddles of Auntie's dried-up blood on it, as well as a few drops of mine from the unfortunate finger. I thought I would have to wash the shirt too; its sleeves were stained with blood from when I was trying to bandage my wound. Taking bloodied linen to a laundry would be rather risky in my situation.

I placed a few sheets of old newspaper on the grate, and on top of them a few dry splinters of wood. Only then I decided to place among all this flammable material some pieces of coal. The first match went out the moment I brought it near the stove. The second and the third likewise. I remembered that there was a draft inside the stove that put out small flames. I hit on the idea of lighting a piece of paper outside the stove and putting it inside only when it was properly burning. Alas, I ran out of matches. I looked on top of the stove; I found several boxes, all empty. A search of the entire flat was equally fruitless. I was delighted when on Auntie's night table I found a box which was heavy and rattled when I picked it up. But all the matches inside were burned. There was no other way: I had to go downstairs and buy matches. I accepted it without grumbling.

I had to go out to buy cigarettes anyway, of which I had only two left; they wouldn't last me till midday. In the kiosk on the corner I purchased two boxes of matches – one for my pocket, the other for the household – a packet of cigarettes and today's paper.

I could not refuse myself the pleasure of leafing through the pages before lighting the stove. I sat on the stool and checked the headlines. I always started with news reports, although the names of diplomats or international events did not interest me at all. Inside there was an article with an enticing title but the text was so long and gray I knew I would never be able to read it. Below I found a column in italics signed by a local hack, from whom I couldn't expect anything good. Finally I reached the back page, my favorite. Among the gossip, small ads, weather forecasts and other short pieces I found the following headline: “Matricide on Death Row.”

I read on:

“The trial concluded yesterday of Edward Wąsacz, aged nineteen, from the village Å»ylin, in Dąbrowa district, accused of carrying out murder on the person of his mother, Weronika Wąsacz, aged forty-five. On the 27th of this month the accused returned home in a state of inebriation and when his mother remonstrated with him he punched her in the face. The woman began to scream and cry for help, in response to which her son struck her on the head with an axe, causing an open fracture of the skull. Following this, the murderer buried the victim's body under a pile of manure in the yard. Thanks to an energetic investigation the perpetrator was arrested just forty-eight hours later. After a guilty verdict in the county court, the pathological killer was sentenced to death.”

I found no parallel between this piece of news and my current situation. There was absolutely no psychological similarity between me and the country bumpkin from the Dąbrowa district. Nevertheless, I read the column carefully several times. I smiled to myself, imagining the sly drunk burying his corpse in a pile of manure. I also calculated how long forty-eight hours was, and whether it had passed since my killing of Auntie. It turned out it had not.

“Good,” I said aloud and kneeled before the stove, matches in hand.

I lit a sheet of newspaper and threw it inside. It curled up in flames and fell on the coal in a charred, scrunched up lump. The stove was black and cold again. I lit another sheet and placed it in such a way as to direct the flames onto the dry wood, then quickly put the burning match to the papers that were already there from earlier. The flame rose clear and high. The wood began to burn. Triumphantly I closed the stove hatch. A playful bright light flickered through the long slits in the iron hatch. Alas, it started to weaken and soon the stove gaped at me with empty eye sockets. It died. I was annoyed. I stuffed in as much paper as the stove would take and went to the larder, where Auntie kept a bottle of kerosene; there was still some left at the bottom. I lit the paper and poured the kerosene on the feeble flame. The inside of the stove burst into light and everything went up in flames in a jiffy. I watched as the wood caught fire and how the flame cuddled up to the coal with little sparks and made it glow.

I loved fire. As a child I could spend hours watching the charming yet fleeting shapes of burning objects, their last slow throes before annihilation. I liked watching old newspapers and trash transmogrify in their last moments into burning craters, assuming blindingly white forms. I liked watching the miraculous transformation of frail dry flakes now crackling in scarlet opulence. A few prods with the poker inside the stove stirred up a golden blizzard. I put some more pieces of coal in and closed the hatch.

It was much nicer in the kitchen now. Of course, the freshly kindled fire could not yet give much warmth but I knew it would soon be warm. I put a saucepan of water on the range and got busy with lunch. I fortified my tea with the Hungarian wine and checked the stove. Most of the coal was now glowing red. I took some of the glowing embers on the pan and carried them to the stove in the bedroom. Then I stoked both stoves with more coal. I felt like a prince in my modest castle. I looked into the pantry to compose a menu for the lunch. First of all the cutlets, which had been lying on the shelf for two days. I would fry them with potatoes. Fried eggs would make an excellent side dish too. Some sort of soup crossed my mind but I dismissed it as too complicated. I put on a big kettle of water. I checked for sugar in the sugar bowl and it turned out there was plenty. I spread the newspaper on the floor, brought in the basket, took out the knife and began peeling potatoes. It wasn't difficult at all. I worked slowly, unhurriedly, calmly. Just as I finished the third potato, I felt a pang of anxiety. I felt vaguely as if I had committed a kind of desertion. It was all too pretty, too pastoral. After all, with all this calm and confidence one must not forget that there was a corpse nearby. And it could cause trouble. One silly accident and the crime would be out. I checked the stove. The heat was wonderful. I pushed the potatoes aside and went over to the bathroom.

When I stood over the corpse, I had to reprimand myself again for being absentminded and impulsive. I had brought no tools with me. I returned to the kitchen to fetch the axe. But with the axe I stood over the corpse just as helpless as before. The corpse was lying on the bottom of the tub, which precluded any sensible chop. I could of course hack at its face, open up the stomach or cut the chest, but that would not advance the job in any real way. My eyes alighted on the feet, sticking up above the edge of the bath. Why not start with the legs? I took a good swing and struck, aiming more or less in the middle of the tibia between the foot and the knee, at the point where the leg was resting on the rim of the bath. I struck and the bathroom was filled with a deep metallic boom. The bath rang out like a bell. I'd missed. I'd only scratched the calf, tearing up the stocking and the skin, and making a dent in the bath. The boom seemed interminable. I heard it out patiently, feeling terribly guilty. When the boom died out I tapped myself on the forehead.

“Think, man. Think. Chopping off legs with an axe makes no sense whatsoever,” I explained to myself. “And it's equally pointless chopping them off here. Rather, you should try for smaller pieces, ready to be put in the stove. And finally, there's no point in chopping at legs that are still dressed in stockings and shoes.”

So I unlaced the shoes, pulled them off the dead feet and stood them at attention in front of Auntie's bed. Then I pulled up the skirt and unclasped the stockings. I rolled them up into a ball and threw them in the stove. From the larder I fetched a small and rather blunt saw. I positioned myself and had a first go. It wasn't too bad. I realized that resting my hand just above the corpse's knee I could saw the leg into pieces any size I liked, just like they do it in the country when they saw birch branches that go straight in the stove. So first, I had to disconnect the foot. I cleared my throat to emphasize the gravity of the work, and began:

Shrrt-Shrrt … shrrt-shrrt … shrrt-shrrrt …

On the whole, I was making good progress. Several times the saw jumped out of the groove and scratched the skin, but that is to be expected during sawing.

Shrrt-Shrrt … shrrt-shrrt … shrrt-shrrrt …

I got to the bone, which proved tougher, but then it started to give way, too. Then the saw blade got stuck in some sticky muck. I wiped it off with a finger and flicked the gunge into the loo, then got on with the sawing again. Muscles, tendons, bones – everything gave way. My confidence grew. It turns out I am not all thumbs, as Auntie used to tell me. I smiled at the joke, which came to my mind unbidden. When the foot was nearly cut through I put away the saw and reached for the axe. With a few brisk chops I finally severed it from the leg. Stupidly though, I wasn't holding it, and the foot plopped into the toilet bowl. I cursed and delicately fished it out with two fingers. For a moment I hesitated whether I should wipe it dry so as not put a wet item in the stove, and even made a movement toward the towel, but laughed aloud at myself. I put the foot on the hot range in the kitchen and returned to sawing off another piece of leg. This time I was careful to avoid the embarrassment with the toilet bowl. At long last the foot and the other piece lay in front of the stove.