Entanglement (33 page)

Teodor Szacki suddenly felt the phone receiver get very heavy. Why? Why was this happening to him right now? Why could there not be one single ordinary element in this inquiry? A decent corpse, suspects from the underworld, normal witnesses who come to be interviewed by the prosecutor with fear in their hearts. Why this zoo? Why was each successive witness more eccentric than the one before? He had thought after the feline Dr Jeremiasz Wróbel nothing could surprise him, but here if you please: first a crazy denouncer of collaborators and now a nutcase seized with persecution mania.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes, sorry, I’ve had a tough day today. I’m very tired, I’m sorry,” he said, to say something.

“Has someone already been asking questions about you?”

“Sorry?”

“Has someone pestered your family or friends, asking about you, on some trivial pretext? From the police, perhaps, the Internal Security Agency or the Office for State Protection? So has anything like that happened?”

Szacki denied it.

“Then maybe it’s not that bad yet. But we’ll see tomorrow. Be sure to drop by without fail after ten. I’ll be waiting.”

Szacki agreed automatically. He didn’t want to argue. He wanted to read the message from Monika.

“A year ago at the seaside. It was fabulously sunny, like being in Greece. The other day I saw you liked that dress, so
voilà
: you
can have it for good. And if you’d like to see some of my other clothes for real (there aren’t many of them today, I admit), let’s meet this afternoon in town.”

They met for a while in Ujazdowski Park. It was the first place that entered his head, he didn’t know why. He grew up in this district, and if his childhood photos were to be believed, he first used to visit this park in a big pram, then in a pushchair, then holding his mother’s hand, and finally he came here on his own with girls. The older he was, the tinier the beautiful city park became. Once it had seemed to be full of paths leading to nowhere, mysterious back alleys and undiscovered places, but now, as he entered the gate, Szacki could plainly see every nook and cranny of it.

He arrived early to have a bit of a walk. The old playground and its battered steel ladders with peeling paint had been replaced with modern toys - a rope pyramid, and a complicated adventure playground with little bridges, slides and swings. All on a foundation made of strange soft slabs, so the falls were less painful. Only the sandpit was in the same place as ever.

He remembered how every time he’d been here with his mother he’d stood hesitantly with his toys in his hand, watching the children who were already playing together. He’d start to tremble, because he knew what was going to happen next. His mother would gently push him towards the other children, saying: “Go and play with your mates. Ask if they want to make friends with you.” So off he went, as if to his beheading, sure he was just about to be rejected and ridiculed. And although nothing like that ever happened, every time he passed the gate into the park with his mother he was choked by the same fear. Until later in life, when at a party, he’d go up to a group of people
he didn’t know, and the first sentence to appear in his mind was: “Hello, I’m Teodor - can I make friends with you?”

Someone covered his eyes.

“A penny for your thoughts, Prosecutor.”

“Nothing interesting, I was just dreaming about sex with those children in the sandpit.”

She laughed and removed her hands. He looked at her and felt completely defenceless. He stepped back a pace. She noticed his reaction.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Like any femme fatale. I wanted to see how you’re looking today,” he lied.

“And?” she asked, standing in contrapposto. She was wearing an orange shirt with the sleeves rolled up, white trousers and flip-flops. She looked like the allegory of summer. Her freshness and energy were quite unbearable, and Szacki thought he should run away, or else he wouldn’t be capable of resisting them and would turn the life he’d toiled away at building all these years into a heap of steaming rubble.

“Extraordinary,” he said, sincerely at last. “Perhaps even too extraordinary for me.”

They walked, chatting about unimportant things. Szacki got pleasure from listening to her voice, so he encouraged her to talk as much as possible. He teased her a little with his big-city superiority when he found out she was born in the town of Pabianice. She told him about her family, that her father had died recently, about her younger brother, her older childless sister stuck in a toxic relationship, and her mother, who in her old age had decided to go back to Pabianice. Her stories kept breaking off and lacked any conclusion, so Szacki couldn’t always keep up with them, but it didn’t bother him.

They walked around the pond, where some children were throwing balls of bread at some indifferent overfed ducks,
hopped across the stepping stones in the fake stream, the source of which was a rusty metal pipe - all too visible - and reached a small hillock crowned with an undefined something. It was a modern sculpture, a bit like a Vienna doughnut but without the wrinkles. It was covered in declarations of love, and Szacki remembered how once he had carved his own initials here, and those of his “sweetheart” in year eight at primary school.

He leaned against the statue and she sat in its hollow. Below, the Łazienkowska Highway roared by in its gully, on the other side they had Ujazdowski Castle, and on the left swaggered - what else could it do - the church crossed with a fortress, where a few days ago he had been kneeling beside the body of Henryk Telak.

They didn’t say anything, but he knew that if he didn’t kiss her now - despite all later explanations and attempts to rationalize - he would never cease to regret it. So for fear of being ridiculed, he leaned over and kissed her awkwardly. She had narrower, harder lips than Weronika, she didn’t open her mouth as far and generally wasn’t a champion kisser. Either she stood without moving, or she swivelled her head and stuck her tongue in his mouth abruptly. He almost snorted with laughter. She tasted great - a bit like cigarettes, a bit like mango, a bit like watermelon.

She quickly pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“I know you’ve got a family. I know you’re going to break my heart. I know I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’m sorry.”

He thought she was right. He wanted to say it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t. At least that was that.

“Come on,” she said more cheerfully, and grabbed his hand. “You can see me to the bus stop.”

They went down the hillock - once he had thought it so big - and walked along a path past Finnish cottages standing behind the fence, proof of the fact that stopgaps last longest. At first they didn’t talk, but suddenly she pinched his side hard. He was afraid it would leave a mark.

“Hey, Mr Prosecutor, we’ve just been kissing in a romantic setting, no need to be so glum, eh? I liked it - what about you?”

“It was fantastic,” he lied.

“I’ll tell you more: I really did like it. I could even get to love it, though till now I’ve always thought kissing was just the boring bit before sex,” she laughed loudly. It sounded fake. “I shouldn’t tell you, but as we’ve almost become lovers now, maybe I can.” More laughter. “Looks like you’re going to be promoted soon.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked, meaning the bit about becoming lovers.

“The Internal Security Agency was asking me about you today. Anyway, they must have been checking up on you for some time if they know we’re seeing each other. The cretins, they asked such stupid things I almost died laughing. I don’t know what significance it can have for state security, but…”

He wasn’t listening. Could it be possible that Wenzel was right? Had he touched on untouchable matters? But it was nonsense, just a coincidence. He pulled himself together and abruptly started questioning Monika about the details. She was surprised, but she answered. Soon he knew there were two of them, they were quite young - under thirty - dressed like the FBI agents in TV serials. They had showed her their identity cards. Matter-of-fact, they had asked short, precise questions. Some of them, for example whether he squandered money, whether he talked about the criminal underworld, seemed justified. Others, about his political views, habits and addictions, less so. In spite of himself he felt more and more unnerved. He couldn’t calm
down. If they’d found her, they could even more easily get to his family.

Romance had suddenly evaporated from his mind. They had already left the park - Monika increasingly surprised by his importunate questions - when he remembered this was a date. He suggested she should weigh herself on the antique scale at the entrance.

It was an entertainment - one of his favourites as a child. First the old man in charge of the scale measured his height, then sat him in the seat, fiddled with various weights for a while, until finally he gave a mighty pull on a worn-out lever and handed him a small card, on which was stamped - just stamped, with no ink - the date and his weight. Funny, he’d had so many of those little cards and they’d all got lost somewhere. Or maybe they’d been kept at his parents’ house?

“You’re joking,” she said indignantly. “So you can make sure how small I am, and how heavy too? There’s no way.”

He laughed, but he felt sorry.

At home, he had fabulous sex again. The more often he saw Monika, the more he fantasized about her, the better he got on with Weronika. He had no idea why that was happening.

He lay beside his sleeping wife and thought things through. Firstly, he shouldn’t accept that it had actually been the Internal Security Agency that had questioned Monika, but find out from Wenzel who was after him and why. Check it himself at the Internal Security Agency and ultimately submit a crime report. He wasn’t too keen on this last idea, because of Weronika. There were sure to be some leaks as usual, and his wife might find out about his affair - quasi-affair for now - from the papers.

Secondly, was Kamil Sosnowski, the mysterious corpse from the late 1980s, of whom all trace had vanished, his missing person? The person Jeremiasz Wróbel had told him to find? The phantom whom Henryk Telak had been staring at so fearfully throughout the therapy? He had no idea what it could mean. From the theory of Constellation Therapy it emerged that the missing person should be a woman, Telak’s first great love - he’d never come to terms with losing her. And he felt guilty about her death. Then his sense of guilt and loss were the reason why his daughter - identifying with the dead woman and at the same time wanting to relieve her father’s suffering - had committed suicide. And now? It was hard even to make any guesses, as all he knew about Sosnowski was that he had been murdered during a break-in. Nothing more. Could Telak have been the murderer, one of the burglars? Extremely doubtful. Highly improbable. Questions, questions, nothing but questions.

Thirdly, was he in love with that girl with the small breasts? Maybe not. But if not, why couldn’t he get her out of his head? Why was she his last thought before sleeping and his first on waking? He snorted with laughter. Christ Almighty, like something out of an old-fashioned romantic novel! Either every love affair was like bad emotional scribbling, or he was only capable of experiencing love in a juvenile way. Not surprising, considering the last time he’d fallen in love had in fact been as a juvenile, with his present wife. Maybe it was time to fall in love as a man? The idea occurred to him that perhaps he should test out this new sort of falling in love on his wife, but he quickly dropped it. The world was so big. And you only had one life.

So he went to have a pee before sleep, carefully picking up his mobile from the bedside table. Lately he’d always kept it on silent at home, fearing the question: “Who is it this time?” - and his own lies.

The message was short: “What have you done to me? I’m about to go crazy. M.” He sent a safe answer: “Me? Just you stop putting drugs in my coffee”, and went happily to bed.

He cuddled up to Weronika and instantly fell asleep.

 

The Japanese have built a machine that will drill through the earth’s crust. The Spanish have arrested sixteen people on suspicion of Islamic terrorism. The Dutch have set fire to a mosque. “I’m impressed by the development of events both within Poland and concerning Poland, and the highly varied arguments that are reaching me,” Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz tells the Polish Press Agency; he isn’t excluding the idea that he will in fact compete in the presidential elections. In her turn, Government Plenipotentiary for Male and Female Equality Magdalena Środa is not impressed by the Polish textbooks in which Mummy flies about with a duster and does the cooking, while Daddy is a businessman graciously coming home for dinner. She announces a feminist crusade. And Warsaw’s mayor, Lech Kaczyński, who recently argued that sexual orientation cannot be the subject of a public demonstration, agrees with the nationalist group All-Polish Youth’s homophobic crusade, the “Normality Parade”. After being the stronger team for 120 minutes at Grodzisk Wielkopolski, Legia only manage a draw with Groclin 1-1, and then in lamentable style lose on penalties the chance to get through to the Polish Cup final. In Warsaw it is either sunny and almost thirty degrees, or the sky is so dark that the street lamps come on, and there are violent storms. A thirty-five-year-old woman is killed by a bolt of lightning.

He scowled as he parked the Citroën by the pharmacy on the corner of Żeromski and Makuszyński Streets in the Bielany district. The curbs in this city were too high even for the hydraulic suspension of his big French cruiser. He soon found the low building where Wenzel lived and ran up to the second floor. Before pressing the bell next to the surprisingly armour-plated door, he crossed his fingers and glanced upwards. If he didn’t get anything this time that would let him solve the Telak case, that was the end of it.