Absolute Sunset (20 page)

Hanka—A New Friend

“This place is great!” Ada said enthusiastically, entering Hanka’s room. She jumped up and fell onto the bed.

Hanka sat down by the desk and started fiddling with the notebook, pinching the pages. She glowered at Ada, who got up after a moment and started taking her belongings out of her suitcase. She put them anywhere, a blouse here, a shampoo there, muttering all the while.

“Here it is!” she said in the end. “It’s for you!” she passed a gift to Hanka.

A gift! Hanka tore the paper off with a swift motion. Inside she found a set of underwear. But what underwear! A nightgown and thong, printed with a white-yellow grid and decorated with pink lace and ribbons. And stockings—fishnet stockings. Beautiful! How had she known the right size?

“I guessed,” Ada answered and laughed. “And I bought something stretchy.”

“Thanks,” Hanka said and hung her head. “I’m sorry, I have nothing for you. But you know, I’ll take you somewhere. We’ll look for something nice.”

“No way!” Ada got back on the sofa. “I’d rather talk with you than traipse around at the shopping mall.”

Hanka was relieved. She wasn’t very fond of a shopping either.

“Hey, what’s this?” Ada pointed at the wall that was covered with articles from the newspapers.

“Oh, this is...” Hanka had tried, but she hadn’t been able to force herself to take the clippings down before their guests arrived.

“From newspapers?”

“Yeah...”

“Are you looking for something?” Ada stood up on the sofa and took a good look at the board.

“Yeah...”

“You know, I saw the movie,
A Beautiful Mind
. About that brilliant mathematician? He also cut things out of the newspapers and analyzed them, too. He was looking for patterns or something. And then he got the Nobel Prize.”

“Nash.”

“Yes. Nash!”

“But he had schizophrenia.”

“So what? He got the Nobel anyway. Maybe you have a chance, too, since you have identical methods! But, enough of that. Where are we going today?”

They chose
Sinners
for that evening.

“What is it?” Ada asked on hearing the name.

“A disco, it’s called
Sinners in Heaven
,” Hanka said, turning red. The name was idiotic, but the club was supposed to be the best in the entire city. At least that’s what her friends had told her.

“Cool!” Ada was fine with it and happily headed to the bathroom. She came out an hour later, coiffed and with makeup on.

“And what about you?” she asked, looking at Hanka. “Eh, old aunt? We’ll do something with you right now!”

She took the shirt out of Hanka’s jeans and tied it into a neat knot above her belly button. She dug through one of the drawers and found a leopard-print belt.

“Great!” she said, holding out her find.

Among her own cosmetics she found fluorescent pink, wheel-shaped earrings.

“Take them! And now makeup time!”

At
Sinners
they couldn’t keep the guys away. Ada flirted with them, drank one drink after another, and never stopped dancing. They returned home at dawn, sloshed, and walking barefoot because their high heels were hurting their feet.

“Do you know what?” Hanka muttered indistinctly.

“Uh-huh?” Ada’s voice was hoarse from outshouting the loud music.

“I’d like to be like you.”

Janusz—Time To Go

The visit by the Canadians, which lasted two weeks, passed quickly. Suddenly they were at the airport again, Mietek and Ada a little bit Polonized, having picked up the contagious Silesian accent. The men hugged. The girls sobbed, as girls do.

“You should think about coming to Canada,” Mietek reminded his cousin, squeezing his shoulder.

Ever since the conversation about Sabina, he’d taken several opportunities to encourage Janusz to leave, to break away from this place suffused with tragedy.

“I know it’s your home, but man, you’re going mad here,” he said.

He promised that he would help Janusz to start over. He’d find him a job that didn’t require advanced English and Hanka, who was young and clever, wouldn’t have any problem finding a job for herself.

“They’re looking for people like her,” Mietek encouraged him.

Janusz had doubts. It was hard to teach an old dog new tricks. On the other hand, what was there for him in this crappy country? He’d already worked for more than a quarter of a century, and his entire fortune consisted of a small flat he’d bought from a cooperative. That, he could afford. A car? No way. New TV set? Only on installments. And then there was Hanka.

His daughter was clever, and she knew English a little. She’d have better life in Canada. Here? No future, boring work for the rest of her life. There? She might be an assistant or a secretary in an elegant office, with peace and quiet. Pleasant work, good money. Benefits and a pension. He could get a job as a caretaker or a guard—anything—and he’d have a better life, too.

“I’ll have a word with Hanka,” he promised Mietek, and meant it.

“Passengers on flight LO361 from Katowice to Warsaw, please report to the passport check,” they heard suddenly.

“We have to go!” Mietek said.

“Go.”

“We’ll stay in touch, right?”

“Yes!” Janusz was sure they would.

He and Hanka accompanied their guests to the gate. Mietek and Ada waved for a last time and disappeared behind the door. As soon as the plane took off, Janusz and Hanka went home. By bus. The departure of their guests meant they could forget about taking expensive taxis. They got on a bus on the 312 line and took seats in the very back in silence. Janusz didn’t even look at his daughter. She stared out the window, crying.

But her relationship with her cousin was one thing and a trip abroad was another. Janusz was afraid of how Hanka might react to his proposal. He stayed silent, thinking about how to start the conversation. Fortunately, his daughter spoke first.

“I talked to Ada about our trip to Canada,” she said through a stuffed up nose.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to go, if you come with me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. If you say yes, that’s enough. I’ll check what we have to settle, you know—organize invitations, visas, work permits, everything. Let’s go!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, dad. Let’s go. Let’s make a new start!”

Hanka—The Circus

Hanka found everything they needed on the Internet. She made a to-do list for her father. They would apply for residency and a work permit immediately. Would it be difficult? Mietek wrote them, saying that it wouldn’t be. He would send them confirmation of job offers and the other things they needed. In cases of family reunification, visas for permanent residence were issued without any difficulties. Except for one.

“We’ll have to go to Warsaw.”

Hanka was worried, but Janusz decided to take the trip to the capital himself.

“You write a power of attorney for me and I’ll go. I’ll listen to what they have to say, and I’ll file the applications. Don’t worry, I’ll manage. It’s a waste of time for you to go with me.”

Great! Hanka wrote to Ada the next day to tell her they were submitting the applications. What was she supposed to write in the last section of the document? She didn’t fully understand the complicated English instructions, so Ada quickly explained them to her. Apart from that everything went well. Canada was a friendly country! Hanka bought a dress to wear on the flight and looked for suitcases. As soon as formalities were done, she was going to pack the most important things and leave. No furniture, no pots, none of the heavy junk.

“We’ll give you everything you need to start you off and then you’ll settle in,” Ada assured her in her e-mails.

“I can’t wait!” Hanka squeaked over Skype, calling Ada secretly from work.

And then, out of blue, a dream came. A stupid dream. Hanka sat comfortably in a spacious box at the circus, right in the front row. On the chair beside hers the raven squatted, eating popcorn. It said nothing.

The circus was huge. The dome of the dark blue tent was so high that it disappeared into darkness, but the arena was brightly illuminated. In the very centre stood a clown in traditional makeup. Big, red and white mouth. Light blue eyelids, the colour reaching up to his brow ridges. Green nose. Striped jacket with a huge sunflower in one of the buttonholes. A hat held on by an elastic strap under his chin. A typical clown.

Suddenly, lively music erupted—trumpets and trombones—but clown, instead of jumping around the arena and clapping his hands above his head, simply stood there. His hands hung, limp. Hanka was disgusted. A show like this is no show at all!

The music fell silent as suddenly as it had begun, closing with a beat on a large bass drum. A curtain embroidered with sequins, which hung deep within the arena, pulled back with a rustle and a man in a tailcoat entered. He wore a high, gleaming top hat and in his hand he held a whip. He moved in graceful strides, the whip trailing behind him along the sand-covered arena floor, squirming as if it were alive. The ringmaster! Now the show would begin! Hanka settled more comfortably into her seat.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” the ringmaster began in stentorian tones, cracking the whip. “It’s time for our special show!”

The orchestra began to play and a dark horse appeared in the arena, its hooves thundering. It stopped, snorted, and reared up on its hind legs, it’s back hooves driving into the sand almost to its fetlocks. A stallion! Its windblown grey mane billowed like afternoon smog. The clown began to sob. Hanka stopped clapping.
What’s going on? What is going on?

“Get on the horse!” the director ordered the clown, cracking the whip.

The clown obeyed. The director took off his top hat and uncoiled a rope from inside it. He tied it tightly around the clown, securing him to the saddle. Having finished, he patted the horse on the rump. The stallion began to circle the arena, while the musicians started to play once more.

“For his first trick!” the director cried out and cracked the whip.

Shuffle, truffle, spinach cough

Both your hands are falling off!

The clown’s hands actually fell off—yet there was no blood. What remained were just black holes. The audience roared and clapped.

“And for his second trick!” the whip cracked one more.

Hokey-pokey, piff and poof

Bandy legs are falling off!

The rider’s legs fell off. The spectators jumped to their feet, cheering and whistling with approval. Hanka cringed in her chair.

“And finally, the best trick of all!” The director stood on his toes and the whip flashed.

Crack and smack and split and wham

Stupid head falls in the sand

False or true and true or false

On the horse, that’s just a corpse

The clown’s head fell off. The audience went mad, thumping, clapping, and howling.

“One more time, one more time,” they chanted, eager for more. Hanka covered her ears with her hands.

Nobody paid any attention to the head, which rolled to one side after falling, then stopped, propped up on its neck. It was still crying. The makeup dissolved as tears streamed down the face, soaking into the dust of the arena and exposing a familiar face. Dad!

“I need to wake up!” Hanka screamed. “I need to wake up!”

But the dream stubbornly persisted. The audience climbed over the barrier and into the arena, attacking the remains of the clown, tearing him apart, fighting over shreds of his clothes.

“No, no!” Hanka shouted, then fainted.