Absolute Sunset (15 page)

“No, leave it! It’s mum’s!” she howled. She pulled at the duvet covers, which he’d turned into sacks. Tried to dig the contents out.

“No!” Janusz yelled at her. “Stop!” Hanka froze. “I’m throwing everything out. Leave it. Don’t touch it. Your mother won’t be coming back. Try to accept that. I’m here now. She isn’t. Stop howling! If you don’t want to help me, at least don’t make it worse!”

Hanka looked at him with wide eyes. He turned away and started digging some of Sabina’s bracelets and beads out of a bowl. Tarnished junk. He couldn’t look at his child. He wasn’t able to answer the silent question: “Why?” He dug in the bowl, jingling single buttons and keys whose purpose nobody remembered any longer. After a moment, Hanka joined him.

He dragged the sacks to the foul-smelling main trash. He dragged them—they were bulky and heavy. One was checked, a second had a flourish pattern, a third was striped. There was a fourth and a fifth. A whole lot of Sabina. He left them by the container, from which a stream of orange peel and other waste trickled. The dustmen would take them—they would come the next day and take the whole mess. Waste!

Janusz leaned against the side of the container. He touched it with his forehead. He didn’t notice the odor of rot. Slowly, he slid down to the cool asphalt. He sat in a puddle of stinking water. He sat like that until the street lights went on.

Later, Janusz felt stupid. Why had he screamed at Hanka? He’d overreacted. His daughter had avoided him ever since. She spent a lot of time at Agata’s, and then, when she got home, she locked herself in her room.

“Hanka, what do you want for supper?” he asked through the closed door. Silence. “Maybe we can go to the park and have some ice cream? The twisted ones. I heard they have wild strawberry flavor today!” Silence.

He decided to redecorate her room. Hanka just shrugged her shoulders when he told her, but he took some time off work anyway. Just after six in the morning, he started dragging out the furniture out and putting it in front of the building. All except for the bed. Within fifteen minutes it had all disappeared, taken away by wrinkled garbage-pickers.

He went to the hardware store, bought paint. Pink. Brushes, spatulas, foil, and so on. Some cool wallpaper with butterflies—a scrap that was on sale. He went to the commission store. They had a cheap set of girl’s furniture. Used, in some places scratched, but pink. It would do.

He shut himself away in Hanka’s room and painted almost for a week. He didn’t let her in. She really wanted to steal at least one look of what her father had in store. But she pretended she didn’t care. Janusz whistled under his breath while he worked. When he finished, he was proud of the effect. He finally invited Hanka inside. For a moment she just stood and stared. And then she hugged him tightly. In the end, he had done something good.

After Hanka’s room it was his bedroom’s turn. Janusz threw out the big old marital bed. He replaced it with the sofa that he’d taken from Hanka’s room. He removed the old curtains and hid them at the bottom of the wardrobe, hanging blinds that he got from a workmate.

“I don’t need them—I’m putting up roller-blinds—but they might be useful for you,” Tadek said simply.

Actually, they matched the new bedroom perfectly.

But Janusz didn’t have money for the rest of the flat. Kitchen, living room, entrance hall, bathroom. They stayed the same as it when Sabina had been there. Janusz didn’t like this at all. He would have preferred to move out. To get as far as possible from shitty
Tysiąclecie
, from the neighbours who looked at him with pity. From sympathy that concealed at least an equal dose of inquisitiveness. But who was going to pay for a move like that?

Fucking money. And it was the reason he had to remain married to Sabina. Bloodsucking lawyers. They would probably charge a few hundred just to write the petition. And it would cost much more to deal with the flat. Cost, cost, cost. Freedom costs. That’s life.

Hanka—Half Orphan

Sabina disappeared from Hanka’s life just like that—suddenly, without explanation, without a single word. Inconsistent, incomplete bits of information filtered through to her, a few random pieces from a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Did Sabina kill Bartek? Or didn’t she? Was it an accident or on purpose? Ultimately, it didn’t matter to Hanka. Sabina was gone. Sabina was gone!

Her father didn’t even tell her where she’d been taken! She would have gone by bus to visit her. She was almost nine years old! She could buy a ticket, find the right line, and get on. She could clip the ticket, reach her destination. “Use the tip of your tongue as a guide.” That was what her mom had taught her. Hanka would find her. She would ask. Somehow she would get Sabina out of prison.

Janusz was either silent or annoyed—but even annoyed he was quiet. He’d get into a huff for hours at a time. So Hanka stopped asking where mom was. She missed her in silence, not telling anybody, even Agata.

“Your mom’s pretty notorious,” her friend said once. Hanka understood. Everyone at the housing estate talked about Sabina this way. It was better not to mention how much she missed her. All of
Tysiąclecie
knew what had happened. They hid smug satisfaction behind a superficial sympathy. “It serves her right!” That was what people thought of Sabina, while pretending to be concerned about Hanka’s fate. She could see it plain as day—she wasn’t some silly baby!

There was an empty space in the flat after Sabina disappeared. Janusz threw all her clothes away. The fragrance of cheap perfume disappeared. The flip flops with their soles worn down along the inner edge. The electric curlers and creams. Janusz even threw Sabina’s favourite rug out. Why? Their footsteps sounded so hollow without it.

Sabina wasn’t so bad at all. She didn’t deserve this faux funeral. But her father insisted. He removed everything. Even the photos. All this left Hanka no time to think about Bartek.

“You’re not going to the funeral,” Janusz declared, and Hanka obeyed. She couldn’t believe that Bartek was dead, although his stuff disappeared too. She hadn’t even noticed it happen.

In the empty flat, Hanka would listen closely. For steps similar to mom’s. For steps on the stairs.
Knock, knock.
Could it be Sabina? Hanka would run to the door. She’d open it cautiously, so as not to ruin the surprise. Nope. Not her. It’s not mom coming back from a walk with Bartek. It’s just Mrs. Ram.

“Good morning, Hanka,” the neighbour would say, seeing the girl at the door. She would offer her chocolate or a caramel candy. Hanka choked them down.

One day the raven took Hanka on a trip. They landed in a park. There was a festival celebrating the Day of the Child. Bunches of balloons flew above crowds of people. Soda fountains hissed. The scent of caramelized sugar was in the air. Ponies whinnied. Acrobats played pipes.

“Go,” the raven ordered her, perching on a juniper bush.

Hanka spotted Sabina in the crowd.

“Mom!” she called, and Sabina turned.

“Sweetie!” she cried, and opened her arms for Hanka. Like two rays. Hanka dashed away and ran into her mom’s arms. They spun slowly for a moment. Hanka felt the tickling of motherly hair on her neck.

Then they went for a walk, holding hands. They ate sugary cotton candy. They drew a picture for the painting competition. They sang together on stage and won a prize—toy blocks! They bought themselves rings, plastic ones. Sabina put hers on her ring finger.

“It will always remind me of you,” she told Hanka.

Several hours passed in a flash, like lightning.

“It’s time,” the raven said, appearing by the bench on which the mother and the daughter sat, hugging, watching the moon rise. Hanka kissed her mother and flew away.

“But it wasn’t a dream! It really happened!” she told the raven, rising above the park.

“Sure, sure,” the bird said, teasing. “Not a dream.”

Sabina—My Raven, My Friend

After her return from the hospital, Sabina got into another row. Actually, she didn’t so much get into a row as find herself kidnapped by a mob of inmates and dragged to the only tree in the prison yard. Her fellow prisoners tried to hang her. Along the way they broke her nose.

“There’s no other way, we have to isolate her,” the warden decided.

Sabina found herself in a cell in a separate area of the building, in which the laundry and other utility rooms were located. It wasn’t connected with the courtyard, the visiting area, the bathrooms, or the dining room. It was quiet and calm, because the cell didn’t have any windows. The fact that she was taken outside only once in every three weeks or so was the only disadvantage. But she didn’t complain. She could sleep calmly, rather than with her eyes open like a wary hare.

After some time, Sabina got bored. She’d spent entire days in solitude, having contact with no one except the guards who brought her meals. She tried to talk to them.

“What do we have today?” she asked. “It smells nice. And what’s the weather like outside?”

The officers never answered. Probably because they’d have been after Sabina’s blood just like the prisoners, if only they’d been allowed. Fortunately, the raven came to visit her. He hadn’t appeared when she’d been in the main wing except to drop by once to calm her down.

“It was a bit stupid what you did to Bartek. But it’s over and done now,” he had said and flown away.

But he came to the isolation cell every night. To bring her news. To tell her what was going on with Hanka. He claimed that he had been to
Tysiąclecie
. They discussed her parole—or the impossibility of it. When they ran out of things to talk about, the raven suggested they play.

“Hey, listen, how about riddles?” he asked.

“Absolutely!” Sabina was enthusiastic about the idea. “How do we play?”

The raven looked around the cell. Paint peeled off the walls. The tap was dripping.

“We’ll go somewhere. Your toilet stinks terribly,” he remarked, disgusted.

“I’d love to go.”

“I’ll take you somewhere and I’ll show you something. It’ll be a riddle that’s kind of a pun concerning the future. It’ll be a foreshadowing of some event.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you get the riddle right seven times, I’ll release you from prison. I’ll give you, let’s say, seven days to think about the riddle before you guess what the next trip’s about.”

“Seven riddles? Too much!” Sabina didn’t like her odds.

“Okay, okay, it’ll be enough if you guess four out of seven. That’s my final offer. Four times you get it right and I’ll release you from prison,” the raven repeated.

“How will you do that?” Sabina asked sceptically.

“I have my ways,” the raven replied. “Seven riddles. Every now and then I’ll come and give you one. Then you have seven days to figure out the answer. You guess—you’re free. You miss—there’ll be a punishment.”

“What punishment?”

“A painful one,” the bird said simply and Sabina understood. “You want to play or not?”

“I do.”

A desert. Vast tracts of empty land. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but concrete and more concrete. Sabina stood somewhere in the middle of this space. Before her she could see a large building. People were filing inside. Hundreds of them, converging like ants attracted to scattered sugar. Streams of people swum toward it and disappeared inside.

Once the entire crowd was inside the building, the door closed with a hiss. Music leaked out from the inside—drums, pipes. Sabina wanted to go, to see what was happening. But the raven wouldn’t let her.

“Look,” he ordered.

Bump! The structure collapsed with a deafening roar. Without any warning. Just like that. Bang! Dust went up. Snap! Ceilings came down. Dong! White doves flew out from between the falling walls. They escaped, gurgling with fear. Sabina ran to the rescue.

“The people, the people!” she called, running in the direction of the rubble.

She saw a body that had been crushed by the piece of concrete. A bleeding foot. She caught at it, started pulling it. The owner of the foot moaned. Then she heard more and more groans. Buried people calling for help. They were crying and howling. The noise was unbearable! Doesn’t anybody hear them? Where are the emergency services?