Nine (12 page)

The Beamer moved heavily, sensuously. At the tracks the silver razor of the rails lay on the high embankment, so bright that they couldn't see which signal light was on. The brown woods in the distance as if cut in two. They reminisced about when trolleys with old Warszawa chassis traveled the rails and the ties were made of wood and smelled of dynamite, urine, and grease. Waiters in the buffet cars of long-distance trains would toss out sacks of trash. The boys would find them torn open and scattered along the embankment. Sanitary napkins, glass, filthy stuff, nothing special, but occasionally Coca-Cola bottle caps and empty packs of foreign smokes. Once they found the queen of spades from a pornographic pack of cards, a woman spreading her legs. They followed her trail and found the ten of hearts with an ingenious threesome. They continued to the last houses but were unable to complete the pack to play any sort of game. They rooted in the ditch, scoured the bushes, walked in the middle of the tracks, then turned and searched the slopes. It was
autumn, the grass turning brown and yellow, taking on the color of human bodies. The jack of diamonds was such a tangle of flesh, they couldn't figure out which side was up. Scraps of paper, bottles, cans. An express train drove them off the tracks. The king of clubs lay on the path that ran alongside the ditch, distinct but incomprehensible. At dusk, an October chill rising from the earth. They hopped like sparrows from one piece of trash to the next. Bolek had three cards, Iron Man only one. Desire kept them hoping. An occasional glance at what they held, as if sneaking a look at a crib sheet. Zigzagging along the track, embankment, ditch, and path. Iron Man found half of the ace of clubs, the top half of a blonde with eyes closed and mouth open. Then smaller pieces, fourths, that showed nothing. Night was falling, and they didn't even show each other what they found, just stuffed the cards into their pockets and ran faster, farther, covered with sweat. Finally picking up anything that was visible, flat, and felt like stiff paper. They stopped only when they saw the lights of the next station. They returned breathless, silent, with their fingers trying to feel what they had in their pockets.

 

Now, adults, they slowed to a walking pace because the Beamer was lurching over potholes and scraping its belly on the cinders. To their right, a long building roofed with tar paper. Several of the chimneys smoking. Life was going on in ten one-room apartments. People sitting together and watching television. Women opened doors and let out kitchen smells. Men pottering about in small sheds behind chain-link fences, fixing mopeds or cars that would never drive again. Between chicken coops, old discolored refrigerators, things still kept in them. Objects rarely used or completely unnecessary, but even when thrown
out they remained in reach and were property. A crow perched on a satellite dish.

“They probably still eat rabbits.”

“Rabbit is good,” said Iron Man. “But I hated it when the old man killed them. You start to be fond of the thing, then it's the holidays so grab it by the ears and no more bunny.”

“Are we going to stop?” asked Bolek.

“Why? I don't know anyone around here now. They're all new.”

“You sound like the old folks.”

“Beirut, Bolek; this place is Beirut.”

“We could take a piss on it, then torch it.”

“Come on. You'd torch your family home?” Iron Man reached for his beer.

“I have one more job for you,” said Bolek.

“I just hope it's not a big one,” said Iron Man, and they moved off in the direction of the city.

 

“She'll be out in a minute,” said Jacek, and flicked his butt into space.

They were sitting on a bench and staring at the longest complex in the city. Like a wall with holes, or a precision-made cliff face. Jacek and Paweł were small, almost invisible; no one took notice of them. People hurrying to eat something or buy food. Only the children weren't hungry: on Rollerblades and skateboards they did stunts in amateur imitation of their black brothers across the ocean. Freckled, pink, chubby-cheeked, in wide pants and tracksuits, they whizzed through the labyrinth of the yard beneath spray-painted graffiti that read
Harlem, Bronx, Luśka gives head
.

“She said we couldn't because of her mother,” said Jacek,
and lit up another. Plastic clattering on concrete, an echo skyward, resembling gunfire—probably the point. A young kid sped past them backward. He crouched, ducked under the carpet-beating frame, circled the sandbox, and vanished.

“You see? In curves,” said Jacek. “And if they fall, they get up and start over.“

“So?”

“I'm just saying. They don't go in a straight line. Kids used to. These guys turn.”

“It's not like they have anywhere to go.”

“Right.”

Then they saw her. She was walking toward them in her green army jacket, carrying a plastic bag. She came up, stood in front of Jacek, lifted the sack:

“Lots of goodies. We're going to my girlfriend's.”

 

Again he was watching the rapid kitchen knife. The blade clicking on the cutting board. Pieces of leek scattered in thin rings, mixing with the slices of carrot, cubes of celery From time to time she would push the pile to one side; the rhythm would be broken, and her breasts would fall still under her black blouse.

“You didn't bring any meat?” he asked.

“No. My mother keeps it in the freezer, but she's got it all earmarked.”

Somewhere behind him, from the other side of the dark hallway, music. Jacek came out of the bathroom, went to the girl, stroked her hair.

“The usual?”

“Yes,” she answered, “but different proportions.”

“Proportions are important,” he said, and stared out the window. The music grew louder. A door slammed, and a girl in
a miniskirt and black tights poked her head into the kitchen. Large gold earrings glittered in her dark-blue hair. High heels with a leopardskin pattern. Paweł said hello, didn't hear a reply, maybe he had missed it. Jacek, back turned, tapped out a rhythm on the windowsill.

“You have everything?”

“Yes,” said Beata. “Except I couldn't find any oil.”

“There's butter.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I know. But there isn't any. Yesterday we made french fries, and the oil got so dirty, I had to throw it out.”

She almost brushed against Paweł and started rooting in the cupboard. Musk mingled with coffee, cinnamon, and pepper. Tiny freckles on her arms. He figured she was a redhead. She slammed the last door shut.

“There isn't any. Send one of them to the store. And by the way, why are they standing around like that?” She turned to Paweł. “Sit down, or you'll get tired. Or come into the living room and let them run the show here.”

Against the window she was a sharp shadow. Moving her hips slightly. The rhythm made her exquisite, mechanical. At first he thought it was for his benefit, but then he realized that she'd simply returned to her music, permanently linked to it, moving as long as it was on. When the song ended, she turned and rested her ass on the windowsill. He thought she would say something now, but the next song began and her knee took up the pulse. The Lycra like a reflected sunbeam. Now planting her feet wider, she was a guy perched on a fence waiting for a bus. His gaze strayed about the room but kept returning to the darkness between her thighs.

“What is it?” He nodded at the hi-fi.

“Don't know. Got it yesterday. Cool, huh?”

“Is there singing?”

“No, it's just music.”

Now tapping with the tip of her shoe. First straight, then to the sides, pivoting on the heel. Her right thigh shifted and let through a little light.

“That guy of hers is a little wacko, right?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“He looks like trash. Must have got that suit from his father. You known him long?”

“On and off.”

“Does he wash?”

“How should I know?”

The blue behind her was immaculate and distant, as in a movie. The sun over the apartment building, over the black thicket of antennas. He couldn't remember which floor they were on, but from the ceiling he felt heat laced with glue and tarpaper. The girl herself glistened like tar. The ball of the sun at its zenith, shadows reentering their objects. He thought about slipping off the leather sofa and kneeling before her. She indifferent to everything except herself. Her body one with her underwear, her clothing, the music-soaked air. If he slipped a hand under her dress, he would find no crevice, only a faint electric warmth, smooth sheath, no trace of sweat, no unevenness, as if she were all one piece.

She pushed off the sill, crossed the room, and stopped in front of him, her hips at the level of his face. He watched them sway, their black repeatedly blocking out the blue of the sky.

 

Jacek had his hand on the back of Beata's neck. The vegetables in the pot smelled stifling, sickly. Ikaruses drove down brightly lit Kijowska.

“That's where we met,” she said.

Even in the most glaring light East Station looked dingy with age.

“I remember.” He held her closer.

“You looked like a beggar.”

“I was older than you.”

“You still are, but I don't feel it so much now.”

He sought out her ear and gently took the warm lobe between his fingers. He remembered that she'd been buying something at the station kiosk and as she walked away she dropped a hundred thousand. He picked it up, crumpled it in his hand. She turned around, searched her pockets, and their eyes met. She stood confused, helpless, small. People passed by them and between them. She wore the same faded army jacket as today. She took him with her. Her mother was out.

“You don't wear earrings anymore.”

“No,” she said. “Not for a while.”

“The holes will close.”

“They won't.” She raised her head, laughed, pressed her whole body against his side.

A white 13 tram set off from the stop. A brown ad stretched across both cars read “Mane Tekel Ares” and showed a pack of smokes. Everyone got off at the station. It entered Szmulki empty, then from the terminal at Kawęczyńska it picked up a woman with a small baby. She was going to Koło, the last stop, where her mother lived. Running away from her husband. But her mother was growing less lucid; she moved about almost by touch among imitation crystal, pottery seals, dogs made of
colored glass, prints of Our Lady, hunters in little green hats, and as she made weak tea she kept repeating, “My, how you've grown, Dawidek. Going to school already? Granny will give you a cookie,” and she would take out an old tin decorated with arabesques and half-naked ladies, but inside there was nothing but buttons and scraps of cloth.

Condensation covered the pane, and the white tram disappeared. Beata drew on the glass. They looked at the fragments of world that appeared at the touch of her fingers like a puzzle ready to be assembled. A man stood in the doorway of the kitchen, but they didn't notice him.

“If you want, I can start wearing them again,” she said.

“No. They're nice like that,” said Jacek. He listened to her breathing, matched his own to it.

 

He was trying to catch up, but whenever he got close, she'd slip away, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. He thought to trap her in the corner between the battered gold lamp and the leopardskin sofa, or in the narrow space between the stand with the plastic flowers and the hi-fi cabinet, or in the gap between the table and the bookcase; but she got away without effort, indifferently, as if she were dancing alone in an empty room. He bumped into furniture and tripped on the rug like a blind man or a cripple. A few times he touched her hips, her ass. It was a clumsy conga. Perhaps the record would come to an end. He reached out and touched her shoulder. She stopped, turned, and he saw she was smiling, but the smile was blank. “That's how it should be, that's the best way,” he thought, and went to touch her breast.

Then the guy came into the room. He was wearing a purple tracksuit and a leather jacket. Paweł stepped back; the guy grinned; the girl didn't move a muscle.

“Party time again, Luśka?” He made himself comfortable on the sofa, his white Nikes shining as if polished, the skin on his head bright under his buzz cut. Keys on a silver carabiner attached to his belt next to a pouch. He tapped a foot though the music had stopped when he came in.

“Who's that with Beata in the kitchen?”

“A friend.”

“She won't come to anything. She might have once.” A questioning look at Paweł.

“Another friend. They came to make themselves dinner.”

“To make what?”

“Dinner. I just said. Her mother's home today.”

The guy slapped his knee and said:

“There you go, Luśka—you see how good it is to be an orphan. You don't have to go visit other people.” In the silence, he took out a cigarette, lit up, inhaled, blew out smoke, and watched it hang in the air. Either waiting for something or just sitting there in the knowledge that they had to sit there too. He was tall, broad, young. He liked it when things fell into place. He finished his cigarette, crushed out the butt, stood up, went to the window, and beckoned Luśka. He took something from the pouch and gave it to the girl, then said, not too loud and not too quietly:

“There's a hundred big ones in here. I'll be back this evening. I don't want to carry it around town.”

She took it, weighed it in her hand, then opened a cupboard and stuffed it between white bedsheets.

“All right,” he said. Hands in his pockets, tipping his head as if thinking something over.

“Good. Now tell them to get the fuck out of here.”

The girl shrugged, leaned against the cupboard.

“Tell them yourself. I have nothing against them.”

“I don't either, but they need to get the fuck out.”