House Haunted (9 page)

“What about God?” Jan asked him, gently warding off Tadeusz's finger, heading toward his nose to make another point. “Doesn't God ever piss?”

“Of course he does,” Tadeusz answered, offended. “But he is God, and his bladder is vast. It's as large as the Milky Way Galaxy. And if you're going to ask me if he'll ever use it, the answer is yes. He's saving it, though, for a very special occasion.” Tadeusz leaned close, pushing Jan's head around so that only his ear would hear his next words. Jan smelled the sourness of Tadeusz's breath, the odor of sausage and beer and stale tobacco before he felt the rough stubble of Tadeusz's mustache at his ear. “God is waiting until the biggest man of all, the Big Man himself, the one in Moscow, commits the biggest of all sins.” He turned Jan's face around, moving his own back. He smiled. “And then—BOOM! The big rain, right on you-know-where, and then you-know-where won't exist anymore.”

“And then?” Jan asked, smiling in a friendly way.

Tadeusz held his hands out in his confined spot, palms upward, indicating what surrounded them. “And then this is ours again.”

They looked out through the small window silently, before Tadeusz added, slyly, “There's only one catch. I have it on very good authority that you-know-who in Moscow has already fucked a chicken, and,” he sighed, “nothing happened.”

They turned to their own thoughts, watching the sliding wet sheets of rain on their tiny window, in their tiny space surrounded by heat and the smell of damp shorn sheep, until Tadeusz added, “And why do you ask about God, Jan? I thought you knew all about him. It's you who was going to be a priest.”

At the bridge, leaning lightly on the rope railing, smoking and waiting for Jozef, who now approached them sullenly, the words of disapproval of their smoking probably already forming on his never-smiling mouth, Jan thought of the priesthood and wanted to laugh.

“And what do you find so funny?” Karol said, nudging him to look at Jozef. “Now there's something worthy of laughter. Our friend Jozef was born with a frown on his face.” Karol, who almost never frowned, laughed heartily.

“He doesn't even smile when he gets off a good fart,” Tadeusz said, throwing the remains of the cigarette that had been passed to him into the river and turning to meet Jozef, who had now reached them.

“Save your breath,” Tadeusz said, slapping Jozef on the shoulder. “We've heard all your lectures on smoking. And we're late for work as it is.”

The look on Jozef's face made him stop his joking. “What's wrong?” Karol asked, a cloud of seriousness descending.

“They're looking for Jan,” Jozef said.

“What do you mean?” Tadeusz nearly shouted, and then he barked a laugh. He laid the back of his hand on Jozef's brow. “Are you ill? Have you been drinking? Who is looking for Jan?”

“The police.”

“A mistake,” Karol spat.

“No,” Jozef replied. His dour face was pinched tight. He turned to Jan. “I saw them come out of your mother's house as I passed. They must have just missed you. I waited until they were gone, and then I went in. Your mother was at the kitchen table, weeping. I asked her if they had hurt her. She said no—but there was a pot of oatmeal broken on the floor, by the stove.”

“Bastards,” Jan said.

“She might have dropped it herself, when they came in,” Jozef continued. “She was very upset, Jan. She said they wanted to speak with you, but she could tell by the way they came in, knocking once and then nearly throwing open the door, that they were there not to talk but to take you away.”

“Why?”
Karol shouted, indignantly. “What could they possibly want Jan for?”

Jozef shrugged. They saw now how frightened he was, his big-knuckled hands working one over the other, his thick coat pulled tight around him, the collar up as if protecting him from a chill wind.

Jan said quietly, as much to himself as to the others, who now faced him as if waiting for an explanation, “I've done nothing.”

“Of course you've done nothing,” Tadeusz said, scratching the black stubble on his chin. “But we have to hide you. We can't let them take you. When the storm passes over, it will be like nothing ever happened.”

“There is no place to hide,” Jozef said, his eyes on the ground.

Karol, in anger, grabbed Jozef by the front of his lapels. “Of course there is.”

“I've done nothing,” Jan repeated, as if in shock.

Tadeusz said, “We must get him to my house, off the street, then move him to a place that can't be connected to him.” He took Jan by the arm. “Quickly.”

Jan looked at him. Comprehension of what was happening to him on this fine day, with its cool, late-summer breeze and fine gray clouds—on this day when he had smoked a cigarette with his best friends, and leaned on a rope railing overlooking the roiling water of the Vistula—dawned on him. Something out of his control was closing in on him, a machine in the form of a hunting hound had been set in motion, with his name imprinted on it, and unwavering instructions to bring him to tree. The police would not go away. They had been told to talk him, and they would.

“I'll give myself up to them,” Jan said.

Karol's face came before his own, flushed and angry. “Come with us,” he said. “
They're not going to take you.”

Tadeusz's grip on Jan's arm tightened. Karol took his other arm. For a brief moment Jan felt as though he were going to faint. But then the world, the gray sky, the billowing gray clouds, the smell of the moving river, came back to him.

They moved briskly away from the bridge, Jozef darting glances behind them, and ascended stone steps to the street above. “Walk casually,” Tadeusz ordered. They began to converse, trying to keep the tension out of their voices.

The street was filled with late factory workers hurrying to their jobs. Some wore winter coats, since the last few days had been colder than today, but they were opened at the collar, enjoying the last hint of warmth before the damp winter settled in. Most carried black lunch boxes.

They walked along with the workers. The pace quickened as the clock in the church steeple near the end of the street began to toll the hour, promising reprimands for those not at work by the time it had ceased. Jan and his friends hurried along until Tadeusz said, “This way is quicker,” and brought them through a narrow alleyway lined with discarded boxes to the next street. “Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the far end. He went ahead, slipping out onto the street before motioning for them to follow. They crossed the road and mounted a flight of wooden steps to the second floor.

Tadeusz fumbled a huge iron key out of his pocket and turned it in the lock. Below them, on the street, someone rounded a corner, a man in a trench coat and brown hat. “Shit, he's right out of the movies,” Karol said as they pushed Jan into the flat. The man in the trench coat was followed by two uniformed policemen, who kept a discreet distance.

They watched through the window as the man in the trench coat stopped and waited for the two uniformed men to catch up with him; there followed a discussion over a piece of paper that the man in the trench coat produced, which escalated in volume, with the uniformed cops arguing and the man in the trench coat waiting for them to stop.

“Are they the ones you saw come out of Jan's house?” Tadeusz asked Jozef.

“I think so.” He squinted hard through the window, then pulled his head back. “Yes.”

“Jesus,” Tadeusz said, “they must have gone right to the factory and found we weren't there. They're looking for this place.”

The man in the trench coat suddenly threw his hand up and his companions ceased arguing immediately; the three of them then proceeded down the street away from them.

“They'll be wanting a telephone, and then they'll find the correct address,” Tadeusz said. “We can't wait here. There's no time to waste.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a clip of bills and handing it to Jan. The others did likewise, Karol cursing when he could produce nothing more than one small bill and a handful of coins.

“You must get to a bus,” Tadeusz said to Jan. He held him by the shoulders, looking hard into his eyes to make sure that Jan understood what he said. “You must get out of the city. Go to a hotel in a town called Kolno. It's about a hundred kilometers northeast of here. I had relatives there, once. There are only two hotels in the village. Pick the less conspicuous one. I can't remember the name. It had a pot of flowers by the sign out front. On Sunday, two days from now, I'll meet you there. We'll get money together. I'll go to the priest and he'll help. They all will.” He squeezed Jan's shoulders tight, bringing him close. Then the three of them, Jozef muttering good-bye, Karol punching Jan on his arm with his fist, looking angry and impotent, were gone, leaving Jan alone in the room.

They'll all help
, Tadeusz had said to him. But even as his friend was saying- it, even as their eyes met while he was uttering the words, they both knew that, in the end, the police would find and take him.

Jan stood in the middle of the empty, cold flat. He looked down at the money in his hand. Suddenly, for no real reason except that he refused to give up, a sort of life came into him.
Maybe they won't take me.
Maybe there was escape. Even if there wasn't, he would not let his friends down by not trying. He owed them something. He thought of his mother, in her tiny kitchen, cleaning the remains of his breakfast, which he had cavalierly refused because he was anxious to get out of the stuffy little house, to smoke cigarettes with his friends. (
No, mother, I can't eat it, I'm not hungry
), the almost arrogant way he had refused her cooking. He thought of all the little things she did for him, her mending his boots, the way she had replaced the lining of his coat after he had had it ripped during a brawl in the pub the previous March. She hadn't even scolded him about his fighting—though, later, he had seen her in her bedroom, the faded, colored quilt still tucked under her pillow, the mattress of the bed high and uneven from the old filling it possessed, kneeling with her elbows on the quilt, hands clasped around her rosary, head bowed. When he went to his own room, he would find a holy picture tucked under his pillow, just as he had every night since he was a boy, since his father was killed during a worker's strike. Jan thought of his mother, and his eyes filled with tears. She would never see him again. She had been in her kitchen, probably scraping the remains of his uneaten breakfast back into the pot, to save for later, perhaps to serve with the potatoes at dinner, and the policeman had come into her house, and had asked her rough questions, and then had left her, not laying a hand on her, perhaps, but just as well striking into her body, into her heart. He cried not because he would never see her again, but because she would never see him. He was the one thing in her life she truly cared for—Jan, her only son, the image of her husband preserved in youth, the boy who would, perhaps, be a priest.

He had told her that once, when he was young, with his tongue connected to a boy's confused heart, mostly because she had wanted to hear it so badly. Yes, he had said, he would become a priest. Later, when he had realized that he was now a man and not a boy, he had almost stopped speaking to her because he realized that he could never be what she wanted of him. He resented her for wanting him to be something he could not be. She had never said anything to him about it, had never mentioned the priesthood again, but still, every night, under his pillow the holy pictures, the image of Christ, the Sacred Heart burning in His open breast . . .

I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill your dreams, Mother,
he thought.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you mine.

More than anything, he must get away for his mother. If she knew he was safe, she would be all right.

Jan's eyes were dry by the time he opened the door. The street below was empty. But it would not stay so. At any moment, the man in the trench coat and his two thugs might reappear, heading with certainty toward the very spot where he stood. That would be the end of it. He would have betrayed his mother. He would have betrayed his friends—and their money, which they had thrust into his hands and which the police would quickly confiscate, would be gone.

He turned his collar up and descended the stairs. As calmly as possible, he crossed the street, heading for the alleyway Tadeusz had taken them through. From the next street he could reach the bus depot by mingling with the shoppers in the marketplace.

“You there, just a minute.”

He was turning into the alley when someone called to him. He thought of turning with his fists out. He could use the boxing move Karol had taught him, which they had used to such good purpose during the bar brawl last winter. But there were three of them. There was no way he could overpower them. The one in the trench coat would be a few steps behind him, his two companions to either side, guns drawn, already aiming at a point between his shoulder blades. There was nothing the cops loved better than a prisoner resisting arrest. It was sometimes a quick road to promotion to add the shooting of a wanted man attempting to escape to one's record.

“I—” he began, turning around. Confusion was replaced by elation. It was one of Tadeusz's friends, a man named Jerzy who had sometimes observed their chess matches. He was a pensioner who lived alone, and though he never spoke while he watched, Tadeusz claimed that he recorded every move in his head, learning the game voraciously. “One day,” Tadeusz said after one of their matches, when the old man had limped down the stairs to his own apartment, giving Tadeusz the chance to bring out his good tea, which he hoarded, “he will beat us all. His eyes are a hawk's eyes.”