Absolute Sunset (4 page)

Janusz—Beneath The Surface

Get the rod back! That’s what he wanted. It was valuable, after all. It was almost new—he was using it for only the third time—and Janusz had saved for almost a year to buy it. He sold his old equipment and that, plus his savings and a well-timed sale, had been enough for him to get it. A good rod, hooks, mills, nice leaders and weights. He simply loved it. Sometimes, when Sabina wasn’t home, he pulled it out of the wardrobe and cast bait from the balcony—carefully, so as not to hurt anyone or break the line. Just for a moment so he could feel like he was actually fishing.

Now the rod was stuck, upright, in the muddy bottom, jammed between the underwater roots of a nearby oak or caught up in the whirl of algae. And Hanka kept on whining.

“Don’t jump, Dad, don’t jump here!” she sputtered snotty-nosed.

Janusz looked into water, then tried again. It was cloudy, because the current raised fine sludge from the bottom.

“Hanka,” he repeated. “I’m getting the rod.”

“No!” Hanka yelled. “Don’t go in here! Please, just don’t!”

“How can I get it then? I can’t reach it from here.”

“Let’s go over the bridge!” the girl pointed to a footbridge over the water. Rickety, but fairly safe. “You can climb down the bridge beside the sand bar.”

Janusz rolled his eyes. He waited while his daughter carefully shook the grass from her skirt, then took her by the hand.

“Well. Let’s go,” he said and moved towards the small bridge.

The footbridge swayed wildly, but this didn’t seem to upset Hanka. Cautiously, she stepped from one board to another, jumping over the gaps and humming. She had calmed down immediately as soon as her father had agreed to use the small bridge. Janusz smiled. “Oh, let it be!” he thought and started humming, too.

“Here!” Hanka finally made up her mind and stopped. She sat down and dangled her legs.

Janusz peeked down. The river flowed about half a metre below. It was quite shallow here. Hanka had been right: the current had deposited quite a bit of sand and gravel at this spot, so that a sand bar stuck out above the surface. In two or three months it would undoubtedly become a small island. Water grass would hold it steady in the fast-moving river, until the autumn rains came, when the water would rise high and wash the sand away, leaving it somewhere else.

He took off his plimsolls and socks. He rolled up the socks carefully and put them inside the shoes.

“I’m going,” he said cheerfully to Hanka and slipped down onto the sand bar.

The water was freezing, as usual. Janusz had expected it, so he didn’t react. He simply waited, breathing calmly, until his body got used to the temperature. Then he slowly moved up the current towards the tree, where his fishing rod was stuck. He floundered along slowly, as pondweeds that grew on the riverbed rubbed against his calves. It seemed to Janusz that they were trying to grab his legs. “Hair of a drowned body,” his friends called it. At times his ankles were so firmly entangled in the plants that it was hard for him to take the next step.

When he was almost at the tree, he glanced back. Hanka was sitting where he had left her, watching swallows flitting above the riverbank. They zipped around in pursuit of insects, which they would carry to their tunnel-like, hidden nests, where their young were waiting. Janusz smiled and took another step. His foot sank into cool, sticky sludge rather than landing safely on solid ground. He lost his balance and wheeled his arms so as not to fall. His leg was stuck fast. With the other one he searched for stable footing on a wet stump, but couldn’t find it amidst the yellowish algae that covered the wood.

“Damn it!” Janusz cried, tumbling into the deep water where he’d been fishing just a little while ago.

He choked on muddy river water. It tasted a little like a Christmas Eve carp, a fish that loved the riverbed. He kicked powerfully to get to the surface. His feet struck something hard and Janusz opened his eyes to see what that was.

He recognised an old fragment of fence, finished with pointed spikes. Somebody had cut it away and thrown it into water—people often disposed of unused items this way. The fence stood almost vertically, stuck in the riverbed, lurking.

Janusz stroked hard with his arms and shot above the water. He surfaced gasping for air, as if he had run several hundred metres at full speed. He felt like his heart would jump out of his chest. He even forgot about the rod. Barbels and burbots, roused by his thrashing, rubbed against his legs, churning up the water.

“Yuck!” Janusz screamed in disgust, feeling their slippery bodies around him.

“Be quiet!” he said to himself, and stretched out to float on the surface of the river, calming his madly pumping heart. The fish swam away and hid between roots and in underwater hollows. The fence now seemed ordinary to him, no longer a threat. There was just enough space that he could get past it if he wanted. He could grab his fishing rod and make his way back to the footbridge.

Janusz stopped in the shallows for a moment and glanced at Hanka again. She waved to him. He hesitated.

“Grab the fishing rod and come back, Daddy!” she called to him, urging him on with a gesture.

Janusz listened to her, although the subtle murmur of the river suddenly seemed ominous to him, and the orange sun, instead of cheerfully lighting the ripples on the water, made the river to look as if it was on fire, like meadows in autumn.

Eventually, Janusz began swimming. He reached the rod in two strokes, grabbed it by the top, and pulled. It came away smoothly, but the fishing line had tangled up somewhere and the reel was empty. Most likely the fish unspooled the entire line while swimming away.

Janusz wanted to find at least a little of the line, which was expensive. He found a piece in the water and gently pulled on it, then retreated to the shallows where he slowly reeled the rest of it in, a motion that had always calmed him.

Suddenly he felt powerful resistance and then something pulled on the line and once again began unreeling it. Janusz reacted like a consummate fisherman. He jerked soundly with the rod and the fish shot out of the water. It was a pike. And it was still on the hook.

“Yeah!” Janusz cried joyfully, forgetting all about the pointed tips of the fence deep under the river and Hanka’s weeping. He fought with the pike, which might still easily get away, though it was tired. After a moment, Janusz managed to pull the fish in. He grabbed it by the gills and triumphantly lifted up.

“Hania! Look!” he called out.

“Congratulations, Daddy!” Hanka replied, applauding.

They dressed the fish right there on the riverbank. They packed it into the plastic bag, drank their water, and then caught the intercity bus home. On the way back, Janusz decided that Hanka’s hysteria, the sunken fence, the fish, and even Hanka’s dream a few days before, which he had remembered while scaling the fish, weren’t related. His daughter was napping in the next seat, sweaty and disarrayed. He had a pike. And a coincidence is just a coincidence, nothing more.

Sabina—A Dull, Late Morning

As soon as Hanka and Janusz left, Sabina went to the window. She watched them through the dusty curtain for a while. The sun was still low, so most areas remained dark and shadowed. It was quite cold, and the grass was wet with dew, almost as if it had rained.

Hanka bounced along, a crazy, snotty-nosed kid. Her behaviour irritated Sabina a lot. Hanka’s skirt tangled between her legs. Her pockets seemed to be stuffed with stones—she must have crammed some kind of rubbish in there. As if clothes were free, the reckless little snot. She kept bringing old crap home, and Sabina had to keep throwing the junk away. Hanka’s drawers were full of it.

Sabina waited until her husband and child disappeared around the corner of the block. Only then did she tie her dressing gown tighter, open the window wide, and let some fresh air into the flat. Along with the smell of the cabbage and boiled potatoes—the stink of somebody’s dinner rather than the pleasant scent of a summer morning. As eternal as grass. Sabina leaned her elbows on the windowsill and took a look at the courtyard. A tiny windstorm that blew between the blocks of flats from time to time messed her hair and then flew away towards the slag heaps.

The tireless gossips were already traipsing around the courtyard. They’d been lugging dusty carpets towards the carpet beating rack, dragging squat shopping bags full of potatoes from the marketplace, and walking their mongrels. From time to time they gathered into small groups to exchange information about the residents of the
Tysiąclecie
estate and about the scandals and rows caused by drunk brawlers. About new cars, and about children with dirty hair, and about everyone about whom they had something to report. Preferably something terrible. The women’s tongues worked relentlessly, until they were out of breath. Sabina snorted with disgust. Old farts! They probably took her name in vain, too. Sometimes they were so loud that Sabina could hear them from her apartment.

“Cheers!” she shouted to the manically chattering guardians of community morality, and slammed the window shut.

She couldn’t stand the housing estate.
Tysiąclecie
—a perfect name for the work of communist planners. She hated densely packed blocks built from huge concrete slabs in worship of who knew what. She detested the chutes, which always stank of Lysol, and the lawns covered in dog shit. And the battered playgrounds. But what she hated most fiercely were the intrusive eyes that followed her when she went to the shop or to the hairdresser. Sticky and nosey. She was afraid of them. She was disgusted with them. But at the same time she felt like proving to them what she was actually capable of.

She reached for another cigarette and brewed another coffee. An inscription on the edge of the mug read:
Katowice—a cheerful city.
There was nothing cheerful here. Sabina wiped the worktop with her sleeve. Then lit the new cigarette, just to kill time.

Around ten o’clock an annoying tune sounded as somebody rang the doorbell. Hanka adored the doorbell. Janusz, too. But it got on Sabina’s nerves. Especially when she opened the door to find one of her daughter’s friends.
Hania is in the courtyard behind the block. Yep, she’s playing on the carpet beating rack. Goodbye.

La-la-lee, lee-lee-la, the bell rang. Sabina was sitting in front of the TV, which was off—she hadn’t bothered to turn it on. She stared at the black screen, covered with several days’ dust, making smoke rings. From time to time she lay down on the sofa, only to get up again a moment later. The couch was almost entirely threadbare, so it was impossible to have a decent rest there.

The doorbell shattered the quiet. It forced his way into the empty flat, into the silence of a late morning for which she had no plan. At first Sabina decided to ignore it, then to smash it. Finally she began to panic and decided to open the door. She swiftly wiped the coffee table with her hand, smears of dust sticking to her sweaty fingers. She fixed back of her dressing gown and the draft raised ash from the overfilled ashtray.

“Damn it, messy again!” Sabina whispered as she approached the door. Whoever was waiting on the other side would just have to put up with ash and dirty curtains, and a carpet full of crumbs. And, above all, with a tired Sabina.
A stick in their eye!
They should be happy that she opened at all.

Sabina unlocked the door and opened it a little. The plumber was waiting outside. How could she have forgotten? Foul smelling water was draining from under the bathtub. Janusz wasn’t able to fix it—not that he could fix anything anyway. He always had to call a repairman. Only when she saw the guy at the door did Sabina remember that her husband had warned her.

“The plumber will come on Thursday, between ten and twelve,” he’d mumbled, still angry from the quarrel they’d just had. Honestly? She had her reasons. She’d fallen on the wet floor and hurt her tailbone. She’d barely managed to get up, crawling on her knees to the washbasin.

“Fuck, why didn’t you put a towel down in here, you idiot!” she yelled at her husband, while he hung his head, as usual. Bloody coward.

Now it was ten o’clock and a plumber in blue overalls and a baseball cap emblazoned with hornets stood there. Yellow and hornets with teeth. He was far too old for such a hat like that. Sabina greeted him eagerly and let him into the hall. The plumber lugged a box full of tools inside and headed to the bathroom.

“Here’s the bathtub, something’s leaking from the bottom,” Sabina said and he nodded in agreement. He slowly kneeled down and mumbled something. He nodded again to let her know that he knew what was wrong, then once more focused on inspecting the bathtub. Sabina hastily retreated to the bedroom.

She threw the dressing gown aside and then chucked her nightdress off. She saw her reflection in the mirror.
Hideous creature
, she thought. Her breasts, dangling like cow udders, were the worst. Sabina bundled them into a bra and covered them with her butterfly-patterned blouse. At once she felt better. She put on a denim mini as well. It was frayed on the edges. And far too short, as her neighbours, clad in homespun long skirts liked to say. But Sabina disagreed. She liked the way the long threads tickled her legs. Besides, she didn’t really look forty, did she? She applied some roll-on deodorant. Used her brush. Did her hair. Sprayed some shitty, cheap perfume behind her ears. Prepared, she came back to the bathroom, where the plumber was working hard on the leak.