Nine (15 page)

“I haven't been there in ages. We could take a 26 or a 34 to the end. There are cemeteries and factories. At night everything's deserted.” He told her how once he went on foot from Downtown all the way to Grochów, then back again, not over the Poniatowskiego Bridge but the Śląsko-Dąbrowski Bridge, taking Świerczewskiego, Wolska, and Połczyńska. At sunrise he was outside the city, fields all around stretching green and flat to the misty horizon. He thought he'd keep walking and never return, but as in a fairy tale he looked back and saw a crimson glow in the east and the black silhouette of the city as heavy as a mountain. The Palace, the Marriott, the Terminal, the Forum, the Intraco building emerged from the sea or from inside the earth, and his strength abandoned him. He would never get anywhere, because there was nowhere to go. He left the highway, took some lane, dragged himself to bushes, curled up, and fell asleep like a dog. At noon the sun woke him.

She asked if he ever tried that again.

“No, it's not for me. People should stay where they were born. In another place you'd have to start from scratch, and your
head gets screwed up. Here everything is shit. I envy people who spend their whole lives sitting on their ass.”

“People travel,” she said.

“Right. And they come back or they don't. You want another juice?”

“Orange, without ice.”

He went up to the bar and, elbows on the counter, said something to the barman. Without looking up from his glasses, the bartender shook his head and answered out of the corner of his mouth. Jacek said something else, then the man leaned over and whispered in his ear. Beata watched his red eyes going from one empty table to the next. The bartender straightened and shook his head again. Jacek paid and came back to their table.

“You know him?” she asked.

“Storkie? Yeah.”

“He doesn't look well.”

“It's the work. Not enough movement and too much worry.”

“He has worries?”

“Last month they smashed the place up.”

“Who did?”

“Bad people, kiddo, bad people.”

 

The passage had become less crowded. All those who had been hurrying home an hour ago were now home. Paweł stood by the public toilets watching people use the phones: inserting cards, punching numbers, speaking. Their faces blank before and after. Some took out a slip of paper or a notebook, but most knew the number. Hey, how's everything, I'll be back in an hour, I might not make it in time, see you, kiss my ass. He lip-read. A woman in a fur coat smiled at him, and for a moment
he panicked. A tall man, closing his zipper under his coat, went up to a blonde; she handed him a black case and they walked down the passage hand in hand. Paweł followed, having nothing else to do in this place, where everyone showed for a moment only, coming from all directions to intersect with the others and then vanish, their trails like a spider's web spreading, yet sooner or later they returned to the center here, sooner or later everyone had to pass through this tunnel, though it held nothing special. Indifference, fake stone, glass, a few ordinary things to buy, tickets, matches, underwear, sanitary napkins, razors, a few shop dummies, all the same as elsewhere, and soldiers buying only cigarettes.

He passed the steps to the roundhouse, afraid to go up to street level, though it was darker there. He heard the rumble of the trams arriving from Mokotów, Żoliborz, Praga, Ochota. People transferred, tangling themselves into a living knot like a great muscle beneath the black skin of the sky. Veined, supple, unvarying. Passing the steps up to the square, he wondered what was behind the wall to his left, concealed by that cement cylinder around which were clustered all the little stores, kiosks, booths selling odds and ends, trinkets, knickknacks, rubbish, pottery marvels from the fairy world of the old 1001 Sundries. Because there had to be something there. A giant piece of machinery, the source of all movement, the axis of the city, a magnetic point, because otherwise everything—distant Wola, Żerań, Radość, Falenica, Chomiczówka, Tarchomin, Okęcie, Młociny—would fly off into space like shit thrown at a propeller.

He passed the exit for the Metropol and felt a pull, people in a spiral, because for all their will and business they couldn't break it, returning like moths to a flame, like carnival balls on elastic strings. When he passed the toilets and the exit for the
Forum once again, he realized that his own life was no different, that from the beginning he'd wanted to be at the center, in the navel, pupil, asshole of the city, and that his imagination had raised a series of shining, supernatural images of Downtown in which both the glow and the chill created a perfect mirage.

“Screw it,” he thought, and again remembered the peeing girl and the bike he'd got for his first communion. Riding to the Vistula and seeing the skyscrapers. A long time ago, and the Palace had loomed over everything, but in his heart the handful of pathetic buildings were a glass mountain, castle, Everest, and consummation always had the taste of high floors, precipitous drops, and air trapped between geometric planes. Glitter, polish, sheen, and the ambiguity of a world that multiplied human phantoms and made them walk like angels. “Everyone wants to be there,” he thought, “but there's not enough room. Most will suffocate, and only the ones on the surface will be left.”

Fifteen minutes later, weak, he went out onto Marszałkowska, found a deli, and bought two rolls, a piece of sausage, and a bottle of mineral water. He went back up to the apartment but this time didn't even knock. He found his warm corner, sat down, and ate. Before he was done, he fell asleep and dreamed about his own life.

 

But it was early and most people were still up. Bolek and Iron Man couldn't tear themselves from the past. Syl kept them company, though she was too young to have memories. Bolek glanced now and then at the cell phone Mr. Max gave him, but it lay silent amid ham and smoked eel sandwiches. A little troubling. Then he would look across at Iron Man, who was pleased with himself, and at Syl smiling in a silver dress that came halfway up her thigh, and he stopped worrying, among
friends and in a world that generally met his expectations. Iron Man stroked the leather upholstery of the sofa. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his pink shirt and was trying not to cuss. The Smirnoff inside smoothed out the present so the seductive past could show through. The television off. Warm smells drifted from the kitchen. Syl checked in there from time to time and returned with a mysterious look. The curtains drawn. Iron Man stopped tearing the filters off the Marlboros. He didn't have to look longingly at an empty glass, because his glass was always full. The frost on the bottle looked just like the frost in the ads. He could feel the carpet sink. A golden light from an unknown source. Iron Man was reminded of a tranquil merry-go-round. Even his thoughts were elegant. Syl took out the ashtrays when they were full and brought them back clean. She passed him mayonnaise, mustard, and beet salad with horseradish sauce. He handled them as comfortably as if they were cigarettes.

“More herring salad?” Syl looked him in the eye, because after a shave Iron Man was handsome. “Try some mussels?” she urged, but he turned his disgust into a joke:

“And no frogs either.”

Then to Bolek:

“Remember when we went to Wileński Station for sausage?”

“Sure. It cost seven fifty and the place was open after midnight. Does the 612 still run?”

“It does.”

“Now that was a line.”

“Still is. Remember when the Hindu got on, and you tried to swipe his watch and ended up dislocating the poor guy's arm?”

“There were Indians back then?” asked Syl with interest.

“A guy we knew. He looked like a Gypsy,” explained Iron Man.

“I was clumsy, and he struggled,” said Bolek. “I don't like it when people struggle.”

“And the store?”

“Which one?”

“The one we did.”

“Yeah, but which?”

“At the very beginning.”

“The grocery store?”

“Three hundred zloty in change, six bottles of orangeade, and you pissed in the pickle barrel.”

“Porkie! You did that?” Syl clapped her hands.

“Wasn't all,” Iron Man said proudly. “But after that he couldn't eat cucumber soup, because his mother shopped there. He avoided salads, raw vegetables, everything. And any soup, because she made it in the same pot as the cucumber soup. In those days there were three kinds—cucumber, tomato, and vegetable. Except for broth. But broth isn't soup.”

“Why?” Syl wondered.

“All tainted—the barrel, the cucumbers, the liquid they were in. And the jar that his mother brought the cucumbers home in, and the knife she cut them with, and the pot. Once something's tainted, it can't be touched.”

“Those were the days,” said Syl.

“The whole neighborhood must have been tainted, because the whole barrel was eaten. All the pots and plates and knives and spoons and tables, all the kitchens. Bolek and I refused to shake hands with anybody If they'd known, they would've—best not to say.”

“I guess it's a little like AIDS,” said Syl.

“Not really, because the doctor won't find out, but your pals know.”

“I'd like to do something like that someday,” said Syl, looking at Bolek.

“It doesn't count if it's a girl,” said Iron Man. “You could go in there and piss for an hour, and the worst that would happen would be the taste would be different.”

“That's not fair,” said Syl with a pout.

“No one's saying it is,” said Bolek.

And so they went on, and the light of innocence shone over their heads as they kept returning instinctively to childhood and their bodies grew free of the sediment of time, which accumulates in muscles and thoughts, fills bellies, heads, and veins, and makes things harder and harder to do.

But it wasn't so easy for Bolek. He tugged at Iron Man, back to the present. Syl cleared the table, laid out clean place settings, and in a few minutes brought in the main course, steaming, shimmering, and fragrant. The phone lay among the dishes. Sheikh approached the table and put his head in Iron Man's lap. Iron Man scratched him behind the ears. Bolek and Syl exchanged a look. The dog prodded Iron Man with its snout, for more. Iron Man ruffled the skin on the back of its neck. Bolek couldn't believe his eyes. Iron Man emptied his drink, pushed the dog away, and picked up his fork.

“Wow,” he said, staring at the meat, the salads, the sauces, the piles of vegetables.

Bolek got up, opened the door to the hallway, and shouted: “Out! Onto the mat!”

“Leave him. He's not bothering me,” said Iron Man.

They ate, with silences. Chewing, lifting their glasses. Iron
Man sometimes sat back in his cushioned chair, looked furtively at the furniture, narrowed his eyes like a tomcat in the sun. He lit a cigarette and continued to eat and drink. “This is how things ought to be,” he thought. Bolek watched him out of the corner of his eye and thought that most people are good for something, you just have to find the right thing. It was almost ten, so he took the phone and went into the next room, closing the door behind him.

 

On the other side of the river Zosia was closing the bathroom door. Today she had been able to eat. She'd tried yogurt with sliced banana, then two thin pieces of toast, and kept it down. She'd started to feel like coffee.

Now she sat in the armchair, her cat in her lap. “There's nothing we can do, Pankracy. We've done all we can, haven't we?” The cat didn't reply but was warm and soft and acted like oxazepam. She felt sleepy but put off the waiting bed in case she remembered some domestic chore, though in her tiny apartment the chores were few. She picked up a copy of
Four Corners
magazine and put it down again. “It's the fresh air, Pankracy. I did a lot of walking today. But I don't know those neighborhoods at all. I was never there before. Isn't that funny?

“To live in the city for so many years and still not know it. If you were a dog, you'd have liked it there. Lots of space to run in. In the summer it must be very green. Not like here—wilder there. But a cat might like it too. Plenty of rooftops. To begin I took a 195 all the way to Gdańsk Station. You could walk all day and not get there on those short little legs of yours. I got out at the viaduct and went down the steps to catch the tram. I had to ask which one goes to Å»erań. Only one did, the 12. A nice old lady told me. We waited for a long time and talked. Finally one
came, and it was almost empty. Then it crossed the bridge and there was so much water below. You'd have died with fright, Pankracy, to see all that water. For you it would be like the sea. You know, you have no idea what the world is like. You never go out anywhere. You sit on the windowsill, and that's it. After the bridge there was nothing but factories and factories. I finally learned where they make cars. It's horrid there. For miles you only see workers. A few were waiting at the stops. I'd hate to work in a factory. It's so odd. They lock you up then let you out. And nothing but men. The tram kept going, I thought it would never stop. Not a single house or a single woman. The old lady had got out before. I was all on my own and afraid, Pankracy. Buildings and cars everywhere, and everything so bright and empty. The cars whizzing by. At the last stop I got on a bus. There were chimneys that reached to the sky, and it really was the edge of the city. We crossed a bridge, and there were cottages and shacks, then real woods. You poor thing, you don't even know what woods are. But after a minute there were houses again. Old ones, probably from before the war; and we had to wait because the barrier was down at a railroad crossing.”

The cat was asleep, but she continued her journey, and only now did it seem real to her. Ten hours before, fear had filled the air, and that was the brightness. It had entered her body and made her almost visible. All she wanted was a little sympathy. Deciding to track down Mr. Paweł because there was no one else. She found his address in her papers, located the street on the map, right by the edge at the top and a little to the left. Beyond that, the city ended. She got out too soon, wandered about. People looked different, in their faces, in their clothes. Women sat in some of the windows watching white and ginger chickens in the yard. Flocks of pigeons wheeling against the
blue like fast black rocks. She saw stray dogs. “You wouldn't have liked it, Pankracy.” Crows cawed in overgrown gardens, motionless so it was hard to spot them. She found Mr. Paweł's building; someone pointed it out to her, someone who knew his name. A two-story apartment building, unusually big for the neighborhood. On the dark stairs she had the urge to cry. Another person said, “Second floor, the door on the right.” She started counting steps, thinking she would throw herself into his arms and sob out everything that had happened to her the day before, even though when she left her apartment, she'd decided, coolly and seriously, to warn him.