Nine (26 page)

When it finally happened, when they were resting, when she heard their double breath above her and felt their heat, and the smell of cooking drifted into the room, she huddled into the tightest ball possible and began to mouth words that came into her head from somewhere: “Angel of God, guardian mine . . .”

 

“Maybe Rutkowskiego,” Iron Man said, hope in his voice.

“Where?”

“Rutkowskiego. I mean Chmielna . . .”

“No,” Syl said firmly. “Marszałkowska.”

“They always had shoes on Rutkowskiego.”

“They still do. But not that kind.”

“What kind then?”

“It's better here. There'll be more here.”

They came to a stop outside the Metropol, and Iron Man gazed into the abyss of Downtown.

“Sure,” he said, half to himself, half to Syl.

People passed, smelling of different perfumes. His Fahrenheit had evaporated long ago, and he felt uncomfortable. The electronic billboard outside the Forum went too quickly to read. The ads stylish and mysterious.

“It's changed,” he said.

“What's changed?” asked Syl.

“Everything. Now you can't tell where anything is.”

“Let's go to Konstytucji Square; there's bound to be something there.”

They went. Syl studied the window displays, while Iron Man reflected on time, which used to crawl but now rushed like mad. He thought about electronic watches, which you didn't mind losing and never missed when you threw them away. The time they kept was second-rate. Once, when you got a watch for your first communion, you'd wear it till your wedding and even longer. All you had to do was wind it up. Now what could a father leave his son? A shitty little plastic Casio with a supply of batteries? Iron Man had grown old. Marszałkowska was running on ahead, dragging Nowogrodzka and Żurawia and Wspólna with it, while he was going nowhere in his imitation leather shoes from the suburbs.

Syl stopped in front of tinted glass and silver letters that read
BOOTICELLI
.

“I'll look in here,” she said.

“I'll wait,” he said. “I'll have a smoke.”

Remembering, he gave a start, patted his pockets, and took out his wallet.

“Four should do,” he said uncertainly, counting out the bills.

“I'm not sure.” She took the money, and the glass slid open noiselessly in front of her. He stepped aside and put his nose to the window. He could see some movement but nothing specific. Syl's pale calves flashed for a moment. “You'd think they have miracles in there,” he muttered. He went to the curb to watch the cars. Fortunately you could still understand cars: they were shinier, more colorful, went faster, and braked better, but they were cars, not fakes of cars. He tried to guess the makes, but the logos meant nothing to him. He did manage to spot two Mercs and a Ford, but the rest was a puzzle, all silver hieroglyphs. He shrugged and thought about his neighborhood and the men poking along in their baby Fiats, Polonezes, and Zastavas. The
abandoned frames became overgrown with nettles, but the engine parts lived on in other vehicles.

“Iron Man, two hundred more,” he heard behind his back.

“Six hundred for a pair of boots?” He turned, his face sad and resigned. “Even women's?”

“They're knee-length, and this is the best store,” Syl said.

He reached for his wallet again and started to regret the cab ride that morning. Only one more hundred-zloty bill, and some small change left in the compartment. Syl skipped back inside the store, while Iron Man raised his eyes to the heavens as if seeking a sign. On the roof of one of the buildings he saw a figure. It appeared then withdrew, no doubt frightened by the drop. “They're probably repairing a leak from the winter,” he thought. The sun rose higher, and the ravine of Marszałkowska began to stink.

 

That was how it was. Events that took place at the same time confirm it. The driver of a 19 tram was approaching the terminus at Broniewskiego. For two months haunted by the thought of suicide. He would smoke one cigarette after another and draw up a careful plan: methods, places, times. He was forty-three. Smiling just then, because 4 and 3 made a lucky 7. At the terminus his replacement was waiting for him, a woman. He decided to do it after the holiday, discreetly and quietly, to spare his family.

A twelve-year-old boy was riding a bike on the sidewalk of the Grota-Roweckiego Bridge. He had run away from home, left in the morning without a word to anyone. By evening he would reach Zegrze and there go to the police, because he forgot his own phone number and his strength had completely abandoned him. His father would come and pick him up in his
baby Fiat, happy and angry, because he'd have to unbolt the wheels of the bike and remove the front seat from the car. The boy wore a cap saying
NIKE
. The river was blinding and smelled of sludge and warm willow thickets.

The boy is eighteen, the girl seventeen. They walk in a hug down Kamienne Schodki. She is blonde and beautiful, he brown-haired and handsome. They talk about movies, marijuana, and love. They reach the Gdańskie Wybrzeże, run across the road, and find themselves on the large concrete steps leading down to the river. The girl points at the zoo and says she'd like to set all the animals free. The boy, overcome with affection, holds her tight and kisses her. At the beginning of May they'll learn that she's pregnant. They'll meet a few more times, then never again. He's in Levi jeans and jacket, she's in no particular brand, in pastels, in low-heeled shoes.

“All the signs are, it won't get cold,” says a fifty-year-old man as he puts a wicker basket in the trunk of a red Passat. His wife passes him a traveling bag and another basket. The dog, a ruddy spaniel, is already in the car, watching its master restlessly. The man closes the trunk, opens the passenger door for the woman, shuts it gently, and takes his seat behind the wheel. Foksal is one-way, so they drive down Kopernika to Tamka, then take the Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie, and in four hours they're at their summer house on the lake. They'll come back Tuesday afternoon, rested and a little tanned. The dog with them. It will yelp in its sleep and move its paws as it chases visions of ducks and grebes.

All this happens and will happen, since the world has no gaps or cracks. When something disappears, a new thing takes its place. In the afternoon Mr. Max will start to worry about his
son. There'll be only one bodyguard in the house. Or rather, Mr. Max won't be worried so much as angry.

 

They were trying the third trapdoor, while their shadows grew shorter. The clock atop the Metropol said twelve fifteen. Jacek tugged at the flap. It opened a few centimeters, then was held in place.

“A padlock,” he said. “If only we had a jimmy.”

Paweł pointed to the forest of TV antennas.

“No, if you take one of those, someone will come running,” Jacek said.

“If the roof were lower, we could find something to open it with. Things get lobbed up by kids . . .”

“If, if. Just give me a hand.”

They both took hold of the flap and pulled. Jacek put his hand in. “I was right, a padlock. The bastards. Who are they trying to keep out? Unbelievable.”

They were sweaty, filthy; the sun was overhead now, and there was nowhere to take shelter. The roof stuck to their shoes and fingers.

“At least we won't slip,” said Paweł. He was gradually ceasing to be afraid. He thought that actually he might stay here: he wasn't going to find anyplace better, it was shit everywhere. Jacek gave up, sat, wrapped his arms around his knees, and stared into the distance between Wola and Ochota. Paweł sat beside him.

“Let's wait awhile. No one's coming up here,” he said.

“Fine. Maybe I'll remember that phone number.” Jacek started to laugh.

Paweł laughed too.

“And I don't have my cell phone with me.”

“You should, without a cell phone—”

“Someone stomped on it a couple of days ago. All I have left is my jacket, because they took my car too.” Paweł straightened the jacket. It was dirty. Thin at the elbows.

“And the car wasn't enough?”

“For the interest maybe. It was a five-year-old Polonez.”

“I was right all along,” said Jacek, shaking his head.

“About what?”

“About not going into business.”

They laughed again. The red blimp was now coming toward them over Mokotów. Its nose a little sun that gave no light.

“And what was that?” asked Paweł, pointing down at the street.

“Just a swipe. At most a couple hundred.”

“Oh.”

The shadow of the blimp passed behind them, but they didn't notice, recalling their lives. What else did they have to do? As the shadow drifted over Żurawia, they reminisced about the apartment on Syreny, Agawy, Patrice Lumumby. A five-story building, weeping willows in the courtyard. They would watch the branches swaying. The apartment was on the first floor. The whole building, walls, stairwell, half-dead light—permeated with the smell of old food. People had cooked there for ages, and no one ever went into town for a meal. The same on the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. They remembered the smell of boiling and frying and the rattling of the hand rails sheathed in hard green plastic. Permanently dark in the room that looked onto the courtyard. A palm in the corner, its crown pressed against the ceiling. Someone smoking Silesias. A blue pack of them lay on the table, and a black-and-white film was
on TV “A French serial,” said Paweł. “No, there weren't any French serials,” said Jacek. “There probably aren't any now either.” But they couldn't remember what they'd been doing there or whose place it was. The living room window to the kitchen was broken, its frame discolored, and the paint had begun to flake. Tea was passed through it in glasses with metal holders. The glasses stood on the tablecloth by the pack of Silesias. Outside, children shouted to one another, and a train rumbling. “It must have been Syreny,” said Jacek. “You couldn't have heard it on Lumumby. It's too far, and there's the noise of the traffic.” In any case they drank their tea and left. Rain, the tree branches shining, the smell of low-octane gasoline from old engines, the archaic clatter of the diesel buses. They got as far as the Pedet department store and couldn't remember any more. A visit ten years ago, and it may have been important. At any moment, life can lead in any direction. “So you think it's because of that half hour in some shit hole in Wola that we're sitting on this roof right now?” asked Paweł. “You have to think something,” said Jacek.

 

The oval shadow of the blimp cut across Nowy Świat toward Krakowskie Przedmieście. The street was too narrow for the shadow. On the long purple banner that streamed behind, nothing was written. No one paid attention to it. Only Syl clapped her hands, almost dropping her large box.

“Look, Iron Man! A balloon!”

“Not exactly,” said Iron Man. “It's got an engine and a propeller and can go in any direction.”

“How do you know all that?”

Iron Man was embarrassed by his knowledge.

“A person used to know a few things.”

They'd had a burger and Coke then doughnuts, and now Iron Man was steering them toward the Skarpa cinema, but Syl wasn't interested in a movie. She wanted to find a place where she could put her new boots on, but there was nowhere right. “I can't do it in a gateway!” she said, indignant, when Iron Man pointed to a courtyard by Gałczyńskiego. “What, changing my clothes in front of people?”

“Then let's go down to the river,” he said. “There's only the fish there.”

He dropped the idea of a movie: the place did look like a hangout for local punks. He had a thirst, but none of the bars they passed deserved consideration. He doubted that any of them served regular Królewskie beer. Most had tinted windows, like the stores where they sold shoes for six hundred a pop.

A soft breeze blowing from the river. Syl called to tell him not to turn around. He had no intention. He was sitting by the water's edge, smoking and watching the white foam mushroom from the brown mouth of his bottle. On the far bank, Praga, as always. He caught the marshy odor of the port, the smell of burned sugar from the Różyckiego bazaar, mingled with musk, manure, hay from the zoo, coal dust from the power plant, heated metal from the FSO plant, horse sweat, and the rain-soaked pavement of Ząbkowska years ago but just as clearly as the fug of cigarettes and beer wafting from entranceways and the smell of cheap kiosk-bought fragrances—white lilac, lily of the valley, Seven Blossoms soap—in the trams on Stalingradzka, the mulch of vegetable gardens and the candle smoke from the cemetery. He smelled it all as an animal does, and his reddish nose twitched happily, restlessly. “Jesus,” he thought, “how can people move away? Especially abroad?” He took a
swallow and sighed: “Another five years, Mirosław Iron Man, and even here it'll be like abroad.”

“Ready!” called Syl.

He looked and saw her against the sky. She stamped a foot. His eyes had to adjust, because the sun was dropping toward Wola. In the boots she looked even skinnier. The black leather to her knees, the heavy silver buckles like silverware on a Sunday table. She walked from side to side, theatrical. She looked like a child's spidery drawing.

“Well?” she asked.

He tossed his cigarette away, squinted, scratched his chin.

“Fancy. They're not too big?”

“I need to put some cotton wool in the toes, and they'll be perfect.”

“They should fit,” he said. “They shouldn't pinch, and they shouldn't wobble.”

Syl twirled on an imaginary runway.

“The size doesn't matter. The important thing is that they're the kind I wanted.”

“I guess too big is better than too small.”

“It's a pity there's no mirror here. I must look cool. I'll wait a bit, and then ask Porkie to buy me a leather overcoat. In black, like the boots. I've seen ones like that.”