Free Nine by Andrzej Stasiuk Page B

are dropped off. From the port the wind brought the stench of foul water mixed with the nervousness of Downtown. Among the lights on Zieleniecka a group of Russians drove in an overloaded Lada, towing a trailer, heading east. In the next room her mother stirred.
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    Paweł lay on the floor, Jacek on the bed. They spoke softly, trying to remember old times, but everything they recalled was flat, as if trapped behind glass. Paweł listened for the clanking of the first trams. They were supposed to come before four. He imagined them leaving the depot in Mokotów and the one near Huta; they would speed up, move slower, then finally, as in a dream, move yet stand in place, and the day would never begin.
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    Meanwhile Zosia was talking to her cat, but it had had enough. It jumped from her lap and, tail stiff, went into the kitchen to sit by the refrigerator. This was how it spent most of its time—staring at the white enamel and licking one paw, then another. Then staring again. Always the same. At such times Zosia was
left on her own. Like now. The desk lamp was on, and she sat in the armchair opposite. The small apartment was just the right size. She only wished it wasn’t so high up. The trees didn’t reach the fifth floor. Once she dreamed of waking up and seeing her carpet dappled by sun through leaves. Or in rain, branches whipped by the wind tapping the window and leaving wet marks. But the fifth floor wasn’t bad, especially in spring and summer, when kids hung out till late on the benches with their boom boxes. The foul language and dirty jokes were muffled when they reached this high. You could open a window and look out at the apartment buildings on Pięciolinii. In the evening, a fascinating view. She imagined that the far apartments were toy houses and the people sitting down to supper living dolls in perfectly stitched little clothes. They would visit one another, invite one another in for coffee in tiny cups or tea in glasses the size of fingernails, while their books were printed in pinprick letters.
    But now her curtains were drawn, the bedding crumpled. She had tried to sleep, but couldn’t put the light out, things are too clear in the dark. She had taken the cat on her lap and talked to it, but cats have no interest in human stories. As if they just arrived and are on the point of leaving.
    When she came out of the Stokłosy metro station, she called. No reply at Paweł’s place. The sky over Stegny and Wilanów was the color of the public telephone and as cold as the receiver in her hand. Nearby, a red mailbox mounted on the wall, an empty Królewskie beer bottle on top. The wind blew; from the phone, from somewhere deep in the city, an electronic beeping. The number began with a twelve, probably Praga. She hung up, and the machine with polite boredom returned her card. She didn’t shop on the way home. Now she was reading
but couldn’t understand the simplest sentence, because they all left the book, went into the past, and said what happened a few hours ago. She also had a radio, but the sounds did the same. She had made herself some muesli and tea, but both remained untouched. She paced between the hallway and the kitchen. She ran a bath but was afraid to undress. She couldn’t stand the mirror in the bathroom. She thought about her girlfriend on Wiolinowa, her sister in Gdańsk, her acquaintances in Rembertów who had the house with the yard where in summers she drank jasmine tea under a white parasol, but it was always the moment when the men entered the store, when the first one gave her a broad smile and placed his hands on the counter. He was so big, she could barely see the other, who stood with his back to them looking out at the street.
    â€œYou have something for us, kid?” asked the big one. “Something special.”
    She asked what it was supposed to be.
    â€œFor me.” He laughed, pushed back, turned around, lifting