It starts with Russian-speaking Ukrainians on the bus, reminiscing about “Kievskoye Morye”: the Kiev Sea, a huge reservoir with islands that back in the seventies were wildly overgrown. The Ukrainians couldn’t know or even suspect that a bystander here might understand them, speaking in their rapid-fire Russian, every g turned into a guttural Ukrainian h. But he was a bystander who could understand. Except that back then, in ‘71, on an island overgrown with bushes and grass, back then he wasn’t a bystander. The heat, the bugs, the sweet Crimean wine—and skin too delicate for his rough fingers. He was squeezing it, maybe a little too hard, making it bulge: the skin on her brown arms, brown belly, white buttocks and breasts. How many years had he not thought about it? Thirty? It was only that one sweltering day, the two of them related, distantly, but still, the clammy heat, the sky sticking to the water at the horizon. The springy hair below Tanya’s belly finds the gaps between his fingers and tickles him, but laughter doesn’t come out right because he’s breathing too fast; desire doesn’t like competition.
He’s sweating now, yet it’s October, and beyond the window the wind is bending the trees and combing the river. This local river, small and thin compared to the Dnieper. It’s time to get off the bus because the next stop is the clinic and the Bystander Who Understands has to push his way to the exit and walk out of that other self, young, lying there so erectly behind Tanya. He smiles wistfully at his reflection in the glass doors: he’s broken out in a sweat, but the memory has not come with an erection; those days are gone.
*
I’m someone else now, different from back then, but I’m still him too, a bit. Memories won’t make my joints any younger, they won’t turn my hair dark again, but they somehow maintain that other me within the present me. And inside both of them there’s also a child, a teenager, a middle-aged guy. That’s what he’s thinking. Six, seven guys inside one guy who’s getting off the bus with a frown because his knees are creaking. Fucking hell, it’s only three steps.
*
If he had suspected back then, on that island, that he would get old, he would have remembered more, he would have retold things to himself later, so that they couldn’t slip away. But instead: the smell of weeds, those white, untanned places—so innocent, so wildly exciting, the large nipples, bigger than his thumbs, the taste of wine—too sweet. That’s all. And Kosmos cigarettes after, the package blue like the water of that sea, a white rocket on the front, like Tanya’s breast, and a red star—a nipple. And he’s returned from the cosmos, all warm and soft.
*
He walked briskly from the bus stop to the clinic; one must always walk briskly to the doctor’s. Those who drag their feet will get the diagnosis they deserve, fit only for shuffling or, worse, for a wheelchair or a hospital bed with those absurd little skateboard wheels. The check-in, the medical file, the waiting room. He looks around, the average age is high, closer to the end than the beginning, but luckily everyone has an appointment so there is no need for that ritual of asking, “Who’s the last person in the queue?” But there are looks, there are smirks, there is feigned understanding, because this lady has only popped in for a prescription, and this one still needs an X-ray, and that gentleman has died in the toilets but will be back in a minute in ethereal form. He takes the pages out of his briefcase and his glasses from his jacket pocket and starts reading. “It really happened, all of it, but it’s as if it were a story, told not to me but to someone nearby, in the noise of a bar or during a fight, a proper one, when the sound of the blows drowns out the wailing. But it was real, it ground thoughts down with fear, it entered the lungs with every gulp of air, sharp as pine needles. That’s it: pines and pines. A boring, dry, crunchy forest, a sweltering day, and the four of us. Or three, in fact. Plus the Squire, dragged rather than walking . . .
“If they want to come after us, we’re leaving quite a nice trail of gore to follow.”
“So just drop him and leave him here if you’re so clever. Anyway, if they’d started after us right away, we’d all be full of holes and just waiting for the crows and the maggots.”
The Squire said nothing but gurgled from time to time like a samovar, as if something were boiling inside him. You could hear that it wouldn’t be long before his soul would start to curdle. And then what: where to bury him? Just cover him with branches, so that scavengers would have to wear themselves out to earn the right to his body—the Squire, our friend with an idiotic pseudonym and the hands of a pianist.
“Why the hell did you have to start talking to him, Romek? Your Kraut is as good as my Latin!”
“Get off my back! He already had his paws in the hay, so it wouldn’t have mattered. And besides, who opened his trap first? Me? So leave off, Andrzej.”
“Pity about the horse . . .”
“Yes, it’s always a pity when it comes to horses, and too bad about the goods too. But now less talking, more walking. They didn’t start after us right away because they couldn’t—but they will, and with all the men they’ve got in Soliwola. Maybe they’ll even bring more from elsewhere . . . Let’s go!”
So we three kept walking, doing shift work two at a time to drag the fourth, and the sun blazed through the gaps in the trees of that dull forest, baking the last drops of water out of us and making it seem as if one hard scrape of a shoe sole could set it all on fire.
“And this Antek, he’s going to give us horses for sure?”
“Bartek, not Antek. Why wouldn’t he? It’ll be an order and he’s sworn an oath. The problem is what to do after that, but let’s not worry about it till we get there.’
“The Squire’s not going to make it, he’s almost finished.”
“He might not make it, but in Bienna he’s at least got a chance. I know a doctor there. Otherwise he’ll croak for sure. Unless you’re planning to get the bullets out yourself?”
“All right, boss, don’t get worked up. We’re all on edge. But we’ve got to stop for a moment because I need to change his dressing, it’s soaked through. Andrzej, take off your shirt and give me the water.”
“But there’s only a few sips left.”
“I’m not going to drink it, I just want to rinse this at least.”
We stopped. Romek laid the wounded man down gently on the yellowed forest floor, and Andrzej untied the dripping reddish-brown bandage. There was a foul smell. The Squire tried to say something, but Romek put a hand over his mouth, in a gesture that seemed motherly to me somehow. I looked away.
“Bloody hell, look! A cat!”
“A cat this far into the forest, Speedy? Maybe a lynx or a wildcat.”
“No, I’m telling you, it’s a grey cat, like the Squire’s mother has!”
“So what if there’s a cat? It’s doomed, same as we are—here to die in the summer, in the middle of a forest, with no glory.’”
He put the pages away and looked at his watch: still twenty minutes to go. It’s no good, he thought, it needs to be done differently—but how? More factually? From the sidelines? But how could he do that? This was how his father had told him the story, from within, with emotion, despite the passage of many years. Why not just drop the whole thing? He hadn’t promised anything to anybody. Or rather, he had promised himself—yes, but one could negotiate with oneself. And yet it weighed on him, the fact that it would all disappear, as if it had never happened, with his brother lying by their father’s side for so many years now and no written records of any kind; he had checked. But was it even important, for fuck’s sake? And who would believe in that cat that was there with them and then sat by the edge of the forest in Bienna and later sat on the Squire’s mother’s piano, and nobody knew if they had seen three identical cats or just one. And how to describe the Squire dying at his mother’s? A story one’s heard is not the same as something lived through. And he’d been born too late to really feel those war things, that fear, that helplessness. In any case, the Squire had a grave; he’d been there with his father many times. Potocki was his name—aristocratic-sounding like his nickname, though the family fortune amounted to no more than a piano and some promissory notes.
He had promised himself that he’d write it all down when he retired, because what else was there to do anyway? And he’d been at it for three years now. He had been in such a hurry to retire, he’d had enough of those articles about nothing, instantly forgotten after the final full stop. The Capital City section, for crying out loud, for so many years. But during retirement—it was time to leave a mark, but not to spew bullshit about oneself, about work here or there, about, for pity’s sake, Solidarity, all minor leagues and no good to nobody, but to save those boys and girls from oblivion. He smiled to himself: what a magus of salvation, a poor journo on a mission. Yet it wasn’t that, he knew, it was simpler, it meant that he could be his father for a moment; he could thrust his hand into time and pull something out, squeeze it past death and lay it onto the present, onto the future. And what happened with it later was none of his business.
*
He had less and less business of his own; it seemed that since he’d turned forty, he could only discard things. Friends, women, memories even. Day by day, step by step, going down, down to today. It wasn’t a matter of moral decline or downfall, no tale of addictions, no, he was simply going down the days, not stumbling but constantly lower and darker, and if he were to scream, nobody would turn their head because there was nobody there. Single elderly male—that’s how they would describe his marketing target group. But what could they market to him? Probably not Viagra anymore, and for a holiday in the tropics he’d have to rob a bank, so perhaps dietary supplements, variously labelled drugs for old age: for heartburn, for memory loss, for the prostate. A single elderly male with no savings—he could almost hear the dismissive hand of the marketing department waving him away, right by his ear, probably hoping to hit it. What good are you to us, to the world, to yourself? Now, now, don’t get carried away, he thought, you can feel sorry for yourself later, right now it’s time for firmness, pride, and a healthy optimism. But then there’s this absurd letter in his pocket, heavy as if written with lead ink. On his way out, he’d throw it in the bin by the door.
How much longer? He looked at his watch: ten minutes. He should have stopped for a coffee somewhere, but he’d already had one earlier, and even that was forbidden to him, as was the cigarette he smoked along with it. He stuck to three a day, his nicotine homeopathy. The result was that he hadn’t quit smoking and yet he kept craving cigarettes: genius. But he stuck to this trinity, as if he were some half-witted Warsaw version of Andrei Rublev.
*
He felt more like Daniil Chyorny, who was lesser known, though both Chyorny and Rublev had died of pestilential airs, just as both had painted icons, and both had somehow impossibly managed to squeeze light and air under the paint, except that Daniil was presumably older. Now I too am presumably older and there are few people who will remember me, only the pestilential air doesn’t fit, because the air here smells of pharmaceuticals and hygiene, he thought, you can’t say anything against it—everything is shiny, even the rubbish bins in the corners look like new. He remembered the waiting rooms of the sixties, filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of floor polish, and . . . so there were wooden floors? No doubt, because it was a small-town clinic, a hospital on the so-called periphery, and his father didn’t want anyone to go with him either, until the moment he understood he could no longer manage by himself. After that it went quickly, even today they probably wouldn’t be able to save him, medicine is moving forward but sometimes doctors still have to shake their heads, like children at the dinner table. So, dear son, do you take after daddy? We’ll find out, only a few more minutes to go, a few more conversations like this: “Oh, she’s great! You can really talk to her, she’s so understanding—but him? So rude, he just sits there staring at his files, a librarian, you’d think, not a doctor, they just don’t see a human being anymore, it’s dehumanising, just files and computers and nothing more.”
But he happened to like the “librarian”; he didn’t come here to chat or to be consoled. Somewhere in there, in the doctor’s office, no, probably not, probably in the laboratory, there were two pieces of his body, two decisive pieces, cleverly cut out, per rectum, before he had time to blink. Could they actually be described as pieces of his body, or were they more like additions that nobody had asked for? As if some crazy bricklayer, with the whole structure already built, had suddenly decided to bang in two chimneys—just like that, on the inside. How could you take this bricklayer seriously? But there they are, sitting in test tubes, warm and cosy, and why should they be malignant? Aren’t they comfortable? They’d been extracted from a hideous place, moved to a pleasant, sterile environment and treated with respect—looked after, in the bright light of the bulbs, not in the dark recesses of his body. In fact, they were like two newborns. Oh, someone has just come out, a young guy in an odd baseball cap. From the look in his eyes, he hasn’t exactly won the lottery. He could be my son, he thought, and then I could embrace him and take him out for some vodka or to the races in Służewiec, I could tell him a crude joke, one that would mean, “You’re my little boy, but we’re both grown men now.” But I can only look at you, as you walk away stiffly, a bit mechanically, as if they wound you up with a chipped, rusty key.
*
His turn. He got up briskly and knocked on the door.
“Good morning, please take a seat.”
“I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind, I’ve sat long enough in the hallway and this can’t take very long.”
“Please take a seat.”
