Free Nine by Andrzej Stasiuk Page A

piled up, overlapping, squeezing together, embracing. Sometimes she would wake at night, sit on the bed with closed eyes, recognize them by touch: the gray teddy bear that ten years ago she medicated using a dropper with a light-blue rubber bulb; the small guitar, or ukulele, that no one could ever tune, so occasionally she’d play a song on a single string; a vase for keeping things that were not supposed to get lost, an accumulation of forgotten stories, errands to run, things to examine, finger—buttons, loose rosary beads, ticket mementos, old lighters, change, earrings without backs, green bills with the picture of a general, empty oil bottles, half a nail clipper with a gold fish embedded in green enamel, a postcard with faded lettering in Arabic. By the sofa bed, a bookcase with a bedside lamp and a few books on diet, philosophy, the philosophy unopened. It was enough that they were there, that she could touch the spines and covers showing gods or the faces of men with half-closed eyes and orange flowers around their necks. A clay ashtray she made herself, now empty, clean, because a month ago she gave up smoking. A china ballerina missing an arm. A glass heart with a hold for two ballpoint pens, red and green. Her possessions. And the tape player, and the cassettes in a neat row on a shelf of the wall unit that held her
wardrobe, and the woven basket filled with cheap cosmetics that she hadn’t used for weeks, and the hand mirror, and the three cacti on the windowsill. All hers. Also the walls, or actually just the one above the bed, free of shelves, and the one by the window and door, where she had painted a huge yellow sun. Her mother came home from work and was furious, but nothing happened—it was too expensive to call a painter. Two years ago the sun, and a year later, across it, a jagged green cannabis leaf. This time her mother said nothing; she may not even have noticed. Then the Kurt Cobain picture. She cried all night when he died, took the tape player to bed with her, hugged it and played “Never Mind” all night. In the early morning she fell asleep bathed in tears. Her mother came into the room, saw the wire snaking from the socket into the sheets, and shouted, “You little idiot, you’ll electrocute yourself!” Beata waited for her mother to go to work, took the Sacred Heart in its gilt frame down from the wall, pulled out the backing and the picture, and put in Cobain instead.
    Some time later Jacek gave her a picture torn from a book: Krishna with a blue body, in garlands. From that time on she stopped dreaming of Cobain. At first she missed the dreams, because she would wake from them in tears, a little sad and a little happy. But then it occurred to her that screwing with a guy was one thing, screwing with a god another. Even in the daytime, in the city, or at school she imagined the blue body. “It would be like doing it with the sky,” she thought with a smile. When she told her girlfriend once, her girlfriend gave her a look and said, “I’d prefer Cobain, though he was so messed up, he probably couldn’t do it.” They sat in the playground and watched the boys gather and talk about the man found hanging from the swings
that morning with twelve stab wounds. The discussion was whether he’d been stuck before or after. Those close to him knew that it was a warning, and they said little.
    Now she lay on her stomach, and her body filled with blue like moonlight. It was hard to imagine anything bigger than the city night and anything smaller than her in it, because the night moved in all directions to join with the darkness of the universe. A cold fire burned inside East Station. A man in a light suit came out unscathed and tried to get into a cab, but the driver locked the door. The next driver did the same, and the next. Then several men ran up and dragged him off down into the dark concrete yard where during the day deliveries by train