Entanglement (7 page)

“So what exactly was the psychodrama like, in which you played Mr Telak’s son?”

“I wouldn’t call it a psychodrama, it’s something far deeper, inexplicable. Magic. Cezary is sure to explain the theory to you, I’m not capable of that. It was the first time I’d taken part in a constellation and…” - he searched for the right term - “it’s an experience bordering on loss of consciousness. When Mr Telak arranged us all, I immediately felt bad. Very bad. And the longer I stood there, the worse it got and the less I felt like myself. OK, you’re already looking at me like I’m round the twist, but I’ll finish anyway. I didn’t so much pretend to be Bartek as really become him. Please don’t ask me how that can be.”

Szacki thought that if an expert had to examine them all, the State Treasury would spend a fortune.

“Earlier you were the main subject of the constellation,” he said.

“Right, but I didn’t take it quite so badly. OK, it was a very tough experience, when I saw why my marriage had fallen apart, but those were my own emotions. Do you see? Even if they were hidden somewhere deep down, even if they were forced out of me, they were mine, my own. But later, with Bartek and Henryk… dreadful, as if I’d had my identity bulldozed. I want to forget about it as quickly as possible.”

“Is it long since you divorced?”

“No, not long, a year ago. And not so much divorced, as separated. We didn’t go to court. But now perhaps we’ll manage to
botch
it all up again.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry what?”

“You said ‘botch it all up again’.”

“Oh, of course I meant
patch
it all up. Please ignore my slips of the tongue. I’ve got a connection missing in my brain, and all my life I’ve mixed up idioms and compound phrases. No one can explain why.”

What a nutter, thought Szacki - he makes a good impression, but he’s a nutter.

“Of course, I understand. During the therapy, when you were playing the role of Henryk’s son, did you feel hatred towards your - let’s call him - father?”

“I’m sorry, but what are you driving at?”

“Please answer the question.”

Kaim was silent, turning his mobile phone in his hands. It must have been very expensive - the display screen alone was bigger than Szacki’s entire phone.

“Yes, I did feel hatred towards him. In the first instant I wanted to deny it, but that would have been pointless. I’m sure you’ll watch the recording, and you’ll see that.”

Szacki made a note: “therapy - video?”

“What are you going to ask me now? Did I want to kill him? Did I kill him?”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Did you want to?”

“No. Really I didn’t.”

“So what do you think, who did kill him?”

“How should I know? In the papers they said it was a thief.”

“But if it was one of you?” Szacki dug a bit deeper.

“Hanna,” replied Kaim without hesitation.

“Why?”

“Simple. She was his daughter who committed suicide at the age of fifteen. I’m
dread
sure it’s because her father abused her
as a child. That wasn’t obvious at the therapy, but they’re always writing about it in the papers. Hanna sensed that, something shifted gear in her head, and she killed him.”

 

Once Kaim had left, Szacki opened the window wide and sat on the sill to smoke his second cigarette. It was coming up to four, and there was already a line of cars on Krucza Street, heading towards the Avenue. Still high in the sky, the sun had finally pushed its way through the clouds and was warming the damp pavements; there was a smell of wet dust in the air. Perfect weather to go for a walk with a girl, thought Szacki. Sit down by the fountain in the Saxon Garden, lay your head on her knees and tell her about the books you read as a child. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Weronika had simply gone for a walk like that. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever told anyone about the books he read as a child. Worse than that, he couldn’t remember when he’d last read anything that wasn’t entitled “Prosecution Reference File”. More and more often he felt empty and burned out. Was it just his age?

Perhaps I should call a therapist? he thought, and laughed out loud.

Of course he should. He sat down at his desk and dialled Rudzki’s number. For a long time no one answered. He was just about to give up when he heard a click.

“Yes,” said a voice that sounded as if it were coming all the way from Kamchatka.

Szacki introduced himself and told Rudzki he must come and see him as soon as possible. After today’s interviews it was clear the therapist and his entire bizarre therapy could provide the key to the whole case. Rudzki apologized and said he’d been lying in bed with a high temperature all day. He realized that sounded like an idiotic excuse, but he really couldn’t come. However, he’d be glad to see Szacki at his place.

Szacki thought about it. On the one hand, he’d prefer to meet on his own ground, but on the other he was eager to talk to the therapist. So he agreed. He wrote down an address in Ochota and promised to be there in an hour.

He hung up, and cursed. Hadn’t he promised Weronika he’d be home at five and would stay in with the little one so she could go to the match? Of course he could try explaining, and she might even understand, but… Well, quite - but. He called Rudzki again and postponed the meeting until next day at nine a.m. The therapist was pleased and said he’d do all he could to be back on his feet and of sound mind by then. Szacki thought it odd that he’d used that expression. After all, flu is not the same as schizophrenia.

Helka was triumphant. She’d beaten her father three times at ludo (once when she finished he still had all his pieces in base). Now it all looked as if she’d win at lotto too. She was two pairs ahead, and there were only ten more cards lying on the floor to be picked up. Five pairs. And it was her move. If she didn’t make a mistake, the evening would belong to her. She turned over a card - a pine tree covered in snow. With a confident gesture she turned over the next one - a pine tree covered in snow. She didn’t say anything, just glanced at him radiantly. She put the cards on her pile and scrupulously counted the difference.

“I’ve got three more than you,” she declared.

“It’s not over yet,” remarked Szacki. “Go on.”

The little girl quickly turned over a card - a robin. She frowned. She reached for the card lying nearest to her and hesitated. She glanced enquiringly at her father. Szacki knew the robin was there, but he just shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t going to help today. Helka changed her mind and turned over a different card - a badger.

“Oh no!” she groaned.

“Oh yes,” replied Szacki, gathering up both robins. Three more pairs to get, and only two behind. He knew what the remaining cards were. He stuck his tongue out at his daughter and turned over the same badger as she had just done.

Helka hid her face in her hands.

“I don’t want to look,” she announced.

Szacki pretended to be wondering.

“Now, where was that second badger? Did we ever find him?”

Helka nodded, looking at him through her fingers. Szacki suspended a hand over the badger card. His daughter squeezed her eyelids shut. He laughed to himself, reached out and turned over a card with - some raspberries.

“Oh no!” he groaned.

“Oh yes,” cried Helka, quickly picking up the remaining three pairs, and threw her arms around his neck.

“So who’s the Queen of the Lotto?”

“I’m the King of the Lotto,” he cheekily claimed.

“No you’re not!”

“Yes I am! Losing today was the exception.”

The door banged shut. Weronika was home.

“Mummy, do you know how many times I beat Daddy at ludo?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Three times. And once at lotto.”

“Wonderful, maybe you should play football for Legia Warsaw.”

Szacki put the lotto away in its box, got up from the floor and went into the hall. His wife tossed her tricolour scarf on a hook. She was dressed for the match - thin polo neck, anorak, jeans, ankle-high sneakers. Contact lenses instead of glasses. The stadium on Łazienkowska Street wasn’t a good place to show off your charms.

“Don’t say they were beaten.”

“They drew, but it was as good as being beaten. Włodarczyk missed three golden opportunities - even I’d have scored. They played the last twenty minutes with only ten men because that cretin Nowacki got two yellow cards. First for a foul, then for stupidly faking an injury. What an idiot. But even so we were in the lead the whole game…”

“Who scored?”

“Karwan headed it off a pass from Włodarczyk. Groclin equalized a few minutes before the end. What a disgrace! It’s not worth talking about.”

“When’s the rematch in Groclin?”

“The fifteenth.”

“Are you going?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to hear an entire stadium full of village idiots bellowing: ‘Legless Warsaw!’ ”

Szacki nodded sympathetically and went into the kitchen to make supper. Weronika came in for a smoke. As he made the sandwiches, he told her about the Telak case and today’s interviews.

“Interesting. Babinicz once told me about a therapy like that. I remember thinking it sounded like a sect.”

“Well, I never, Mr Babinicz has turned up in our house again,” cut in Szacki, without looking up from the board on which he was slicing tomatoes for a salad with feta and sunflower seeds.

“Teo, please don’t be a pain. Do I keep asking you which of the trainees makes you coffee?”

“I make it for myself.”

“Right, like we only met yesterday, eh?”

He just shrugged. He didn’t feel like bickering. Once it had just been a joke. Later on jealousy had crept into the jokes. Now all such conversations quickly turned into aggressive provocation on both sides.

He finished the salad, served himself some, chivvied his daughter into the bathroom and sat down at the computer. He needed to switch off from the rest of the world for a while; he needed to play a game. He was proud of the fact that he had gone through every evolutionary stage in this particular field, from ZX Spectrum and Atari with games recorded on cassette tapes, via C64 and Amiga with floppy discs, to the first PCs with greenish monochrome monitors, and finally today’s machines, which created alternative worlds in millions of colours and real time right before your very eyes. He was sure the ever-more-perfect games with better and better storylines would soon be cultural events on a par with the novels of Dan Brown and the films of Steven Spielberg. Admittedly, the world of computer games hadn’t achieved the equivalent of
The Name of the Rose
or
Amadeus
yet, but it was only a matter of time. He usually played adventure and strategy games, but today he felt like being the one just man on a tropical island, where a very evil doctor was conducting very evil genetic experiments, and benefiting from the protection of some very evil mercenaries. If only those people at the trials knew what the haughty, impeccably dressed prosecutor, whose hair was white at just thirty-six, did in the evenings… He felt like laughing every time he fired up the computer.

“You’re not going to play games, are you?” asked Weronika.

“Just half an hour,” he replied, angry at himself for explaining.

“I thought we were having a talk.”

Of course he felt guilty.

“In half an hour. You’re not going to bed yet, are you?”

“I don’t know, I’m tired. I might go to bed early.”

“I’ll be done in a moment, honest. I’ll just get to a save point,” he replied automatically, already focused on a sniper lurking on the bridge of a smashed-up Japanese aircraft carrier.

“I’ve got a bullet here with your name on it,” thundered out of the speakers, and seconds later one of the mercenaries ripped the air apart with a burst of machine-gun fire. He dodged behind the aircraft carrier’s metal span, but even so the mercenary got him. Dammit.

“Sorry, but could you put on headphones?” asked Weronika coldly.

He reached for them.

“I’ll make a new hole in you!” rasped the speakers hatefully, before he’d had time to plug in the jack.

 

Seventy per cent of Poles claim that the life and teachings of Pope John Paul II have changed their lives. The Pope is viewed negatively by zero per cent. Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski appeals to Marshal of the Sejm - chairman of the Polish parliament - Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz to change his mind and run in the forthcoming presidential election. A physicist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań publishes a theory that ever so often a super-predator will inevitably appear on Earth, a real killing machine that tidies up the planet. Punk rock band Green Day give a concert at the Spodek stadium in Katowice. In Warsaw three trams crash outside the National Museum and thirteen people are taken to hospital. The Museum of Technology within the Palace of Culture and Science is given a defibrillator by journalist and charity promoter Jerzy Owsiak to help save the lives of visitors who suffer heart attacks. More and more people are protesting against the ban on the Equality Parade. The organizers are announcing rallies for which they do not have to have permission. Maximum temperature in the capital - fifteen degrees, despite which it is quite sunny with no rainfall.

Being a therapist is undoubtedly a lucrative profession, thought Teodor Szacki as he parked outside a brand-new apartment block
on Pawiński Street. He sat in the car for a while longer to listen to the end of ‘Original of the Species’ from U2’s latest album. A brilliant track, a brilliant album - the boys from Dublin had finally returned to their rock-music roots. As he reported to the doorman at a porter’s lodge clad in marble and granite, and then walked across a beautifully maintained courtyard with a fountain and a children’s play area, he thought being a therapist must be a bloody lucrative profession. And as he entered Rudzki’s apartment on the eleventh floor he reckoned he’d give anything to be back at the start of his career again, as he’d be sure to choose psychology.