Where the Devil Can't Go (8 page)

An image of her, sitting outside a harbourside cafe in Gdansk, flickered across his memory like an old home movie. One of her hands, wearing a red woollen glove, was curled around a steaming drink. She’d taken off her other glove and he was chafing the bare hand to warm it, laughing at how icy her fingers were.

He lit a cigar. To hell with the past, he thought.

“There is a Polanski movie on cable later, if you fancy it?”

His tone was careful – it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to rekindle her passion for movies. Despite her first class degree from a world-famous film school, the last time Kasia went to the cinema was to see
GoodFellas.

“Maybe,” she said lifting one shoulder, before bending to pick up a discarded envelope from under an armchair.

“It’s
Knife in the Water.
The one with the couple on a boating trip on the Lakes?”

“The one with the
psychol
?” She made a comic grimace that turned her beautiful long mouth down at the corners. “Too depressing!”

Oskar had once put forward a theory – which probably originated with Gosia – regarding Kasia’s lack of enthusiasm for films. Apparently, she regretted abandoning her directing ambitions to marry Steve, and couldn’t bear any reminder of her mistake. In this analysis, she didn’t stick with her marriage because of her Catholic faith, but because the alternative meant admitting she’d given up her youthful dreams for nothing.

Janusz was sceptical. To him, psychology was a slippery pseudoscience, without any empirical foundation. But now and again he found himself wondering if Oskar’s theory mightn’t contain a grain of truth.

“You like my new outfit?” she asked suddenly, doing a little catwalk sashay.

That put him on the spot: when she had arrived he’d noticed she was wearing a dress rather than her usual tight black jeans and t-shirt. But the longish black shift was the sort of thing a woman with a lousy figure might go for. Why would a looker like Kasia hide her body under a sack?

She sensed the hesitation. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s…stylish, darling…” he managed,” but I think you’d look good in something a bit more… figure-hugging.”

She cut her eyes away from him: “You mean an exotic dancer should dress like a whore?”

Kurwa!
This was dangerous ground – it wasn’t the first time Kasia had gone all touchy over her job. It mystified him – if she didn’t like stripping why did she do it? And if she did like it, why be so uptight?

“Of course not, darling. Anyway, you would look ladylike whatever you wore.”

She smiled at that, mollified, then came closer, wrinkling her nose at the cigar smoke – “Smells like a bonfire,” she complained – before putting a Marlboro Light between her lips and leaning down for a light.

He took the opportunity, instead, to pull her face down to his and kiss her, properly this time. When she offered no resistance, he tumbled her onto the sofa and continued the clinch, pushing the dress, rustling, up her stockinged legs, desire humming between them. They had loads of time to make love before the oven timer started pinging, he calculated, and her tightly closed eyes signalled a green light.

Then the phone rang.

He cursed inwardly and for a moment was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but Kasia extricated herself and he caught her watchful look. He didn’t want her to think he had anything to hide.

His abrupt “
Czesc?!
” was met with silence. Then a female voice, uncertain, said “
Pan Kiszka
?”

It was the dark-haired girl from Pani Tosik’s restaurant, the one he’d given his card to. She told him her name was Justyna, but didn’t volunteer a surname. He apologised for his boorish manners, keeping half an eye on Kasia who, leaving her cig burning in the ashtray, had returned to the kitchen. He could see her stirring the beef stew, ignoring the conversation, but something about the angle of her head suggested she was getting every word.

The trouble was, the girl was adamant that she had to meet him tonight, and when he suggested postponing, sounded like she might hang up. He was half-inclined to tell her no, but an undercurrent of urgency in her voice stopped him. Anyway, he needed to find the missing girl fast if he was to replenish his depleted cash reserves.

Thirty seconds later, he was jotting down the name of a Polish club in Stratford where the girl wanted to meet.

Janusz retrieved his cigar from the ashtray and joined Kasia in the kitchen. With a stab at a nonchalant air, he said “Listen, darling. Something’s come up – it’s a job I’m doing for someone.”

“A woman?” she asked.

“Well, yes, the client is a woman, but an old lady – a
babcia
.”

“And the woman on the phone – she is an old lady, too?” – her green eyes had narrowed, and she would no longer meet his gaze.

“Well yes, she
is
young, but she’s just a contact. The thing is she insists on seeing me tonight, for some reason.”

Without a word, Kasia started to collect her things, her movements uncharacteristically jerky.

All his hopes for the evening teetered on a cliff edge. “Listen, Kasia,” he said, aware of a cajoling note in his voice he didn’t like. “I can get there and still be back by ten, maybe half past, we can have a late supper.”

“So I sit here and watch Sky while you go out drinking with a woman?” She pulled a mirthless smile. “All the lies I have to tell Steve, making excuses so I can stay all night, and now this.”

Janusz felt the anger bolt out of him like an unleashed dog.

“I have a job to do, money to earn! You are not my wife to tell me whom I can and can’t see!” his voice boomed around the flat.

“You are right – it’s none of my business,” she said, her voice tight. “How can I complain if you have other girlfriends? I am just some
dziwka
you are sleeping with who other men pay to see naked.”

He clutched his head, mute before this irrational torrent.

“And no, I’m not your wife,” she went on. “I’m someone else’s – and I shouldn’t be here.”

Softening his voice with an effort of will, he said, “Listen, Kasia. You are still young, you could
leave
Steve, start life over again,” but he knew it was hopeless – this was old ground, the argument well worn.

She pulled on her coat. “You know I can’t, Janek,” – sounding weary now.

He caught her arm as she opened the flat door.

“Don’t go off this way,
kotku
,” he said.

She smiled a sad smile at this big man calling her little cat, touched her fingers to his lips, and left.

Thirty seconds later, the main door to the street boomed like a distant firing squad.

Janusz paced the flat, cursing; running the last hour’s
dramat
through his head on a continuous loop. Half an hour later he still couldn’t make any sense of it: what right did she have to be jealous when
she
was the one sleeping with another man? The fact that man was her husband didn’t make it any easier. No! Being able to picture that rat-faced Cockney screwing her made it a thousand times worse.

With an effort of will, he pushed Kasia to the back of his mind, threw himself onto the sofa and drank a glass of red wine in a single draught. He took the snap of Weronika, the one of her in the fur coat, out of his wallet. Something about this girl, her innocent beauty, and yes, okay, the way she reminded him of Iza, had got under his skin, made him preoccupied with finding her.
Naprawde,
it was even worse than that, he realised with an embarrassed grimace: he wanted to
rescue
her.

He went to turn off the oven, and after a moment’s hesitation, scraped the roast potatoes into the bin: once cooled you could never recapture their crust.

Leaving the block’s front door between the stone columns that flanked the entrance, Janusz noticed a new ‘For Sale’ sign had sprouted overhead. Oskar said that if he sold up and bought a place further out he could pocket a couple of hundred grand. But why would he want to live in some benighted suburb like Enfield?

When he left Highbury Mansions, it would be wearing an oak overcoat, as his father used to say –
God rest his Soul.

As usual, he took the shortest route to the tube, straight across the southern section of the darkened Fields, feeling the dew from the grass creeping into his shoes. Halfway across, without breaking his stride, he glanced backwards – there had been a spate of muggings here recently. All clear. But as his gaze swung forward again, he discovered that a big, heavyset man, almost as tall as him, had materialised on the pavement at the edge of the Fields, twenty-five, thirty metres ahead. He must have just stepped out of a parked car, thought Janusz, but if so, why hadn’t he heard the distinctive clunk of a car door? He kept his gaze locked on the bulky figure, clad in an expensive-looking parka jacket, strolling through the pools of orange thrown by the street lights, until finally, the guy disappeared out of sight behind the Leisure Centre.

Janusz couldn’t fathom what it was about the man that had caught his attention – he certainly didn’t look like a mugger. All he could say was there was something about him that looked indefinably out of place.

FlashKlub, the place that Justyna had named for their rendezvous, was located in a basement under a semi-derelict Fifties factory building in an area called Maryland on Stratford’s eastern fringe. The name might suggest rural romance, but the area was depressed and scruffy – no Olympic effect visible here. Lining up with a queue of youngsters chattering away in Polish he felt middle-aged, out of place, but the young bouncer showed no surprise, greeting him with a polite “
Dobri wieczor, panie
.” He did make an apologetic gesture at his cigar, though. Janusz ground it out on the pavement before heading down the rickety stairs toward the
klub
with all the enthusiasm of a man going to get his teeth drilled.

Justyna was sitting on a stool at the bar, fiddling with the straw in her drink. She was even more attractive than he remembered: glossy dark hair grazing her shoulders, eyes the colour of
conac.
She seemed relieved to see him – no doubt she’d been pestered non-stop by guys trying their luck. He ordered a Tyskie and another apple juice for her – she shook her head when he suggested a shot of bisongrass
wodka
to liven it up. Maybe she didn’t want to let her tongue run away with her, he thought.

A huge screen on one wall playing pop promos dominated the basement. The current one had been shot in some semi-derelict Soviet housing estate and starred two skinny crewcut boys. Dressed like gangsters from an American ghetto, they bobbed and grimaced through a Polski hip hop number, their faces deadpan. Maybe he was just a narrow-minded old fart, but it still set Janusz’s teeth on edge. The mindless beat and nihilistic lyrics struck him as an affront to the musical beauty of the language.

“You don’t like the music?” she asked with a half-smile at his tortured expression.

“No. Do you?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugged. “Sure. I like all kinds of music.”

“When I was your age, studying physics in Krakow,” he said. “There was a craze in the cellar bars, for traditional music, folk, I suppose you’d call it.”

Her expression was attentive, but detached. She had one of those faces that you felt compelled to keep scanning because her emotions were so hard to read.

He paused, remembering those nights, the frenetic violins, the thrilling sounds infused with the wildness of gypsy music, often a haunting woman’s voice in the mix, and felt the tug of nostalgia in his chest. He took a swallow of beer to cover his expression. “The thing was, the dumbass…excuse me…stupid
Kommies
thought traditional music was wholesome, harmless stuff – but of course, all those old partisan songs about carrying your heart around in a knapsack were dynamite.

“The music had us stomping and cheering, climbing onto tables to sing along. After closing, all hyped up and full of
wodka,
me and my mates would dodge the police patrols and paint
Solidarnosc
graffiti all over town.”

“Did you ever get caught?” she asked. From the mild curiosity in her tone, she might have been asking about something that happened in the nineteenth century rather than two and a half decades ago. He hesitated.

“Just once. There were three of us – my mates had hung me by my legs over the side of a railway bridge so I could paint some slogan or other.
‘THE TV LIES’,
I think it was. When the
milicja
arrived, the lads just about managed to drag me back up, but by the time I was on solid ground they’d legged it and I got nicked.”

“What happened to you?”

He looked away. “Nothing much, spent a night in the cell, got a few slaps, got sent home in the morning.”

Bullshit. The
milicja
had thrown him in the back of a van and taken him to Montepulich, Krakow’s notorious jail, where the Soviets had tortured and murdered hundreds of Polish nationalists after the war. It must have been a quiet night for them to commit so much time and effort to interrogating a seventeen-year-old boy over such a stupid thing – or maybe they just enjoyed their work. He’d been left with bruises and cuts that had taken weeks to fade, but they were nothing compared to the real legacy of that night, the thing that he carried inside him, like the shadow on an X-ray. He stamped the memories back down.
Forget the past.

The girl and he gazed at the flickering video screen. The two boys were now in a car, lurching back and forward, zombie-like, to the beat. It cut to a shot of one of them, on his own, walking, before the camera pulled out to a wide aerial shot, revealing him as a tiny, lonely figure alone in a vast desolate wasteland.

She gestured with her chin. “He is like you, when you were young.”

“Like
me
?”

“You and your friends, back then, under the
Kommunistuw
– life was bad, society didn’t work for you. This music – for young people it says the same as your folk songs, it says fuck your society, we do our own thing.”