Part 17 (1/2)
III.
What a waste of time. But what had he been expecting from the funeral? That one of them would come in a red s.h.i.+rt marked ”IT'S ME!”? Szacki knew it wasn't very polite, but after leaving the chapel he quickly said goodbye to the widow, cast a cold glance at the four suspects and ran off to the car park. As he walked down the concrete path, he could still feel the gaze of that older man, who hadn't taken his eyes off him throughout the entire ceremony. Probably some relative wondering who I am, he thought.
He got in the car and put the key in the ignition but didn't switch on the engine. Once again he had the feeling that something had escaped his notice. For a split second, there in the chapel, he had felt as if he were looking at something important. He could sense something very vague, gently tickling the back of his head. At what moment had that happened? Towards the end, just after the coffin was carried out. He was standing there, absorbed by the man watching him, who looked as if he were struggling not to smile. He must have been about seventy, but Szacki would be happy to look like that at his age - like Robert Redford's more handsome brother - and to be able to afford suits like that one. He was looking furtively at the man, people were coming out of the pews and walking slowly down the middle of - let's call it the nave. And that was when he saw something. Something important.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, trying to imagine that moment. The cold room, the solemn music that he didn't recognize, people dragging their feet. Rudzki alongside Jarczyk, Kwiatkowska and Kaim behind them. And that strange feeling, like deja vu, a sudden discharge in his neurons. Why?
No, he had no idea.
He drove out of the car park, similar in size to the one outside the supermarket, turned into Wojcicki Street, and immediately stopped near Mociski Wood. He changed out of his funeral suit into jeans and a linen s.h.i.+rt, sprinkled mineral water on his hand and ruffled his hair a bit. He tried smiling roguishly into the side mirror. What a tragedy. Like a German pretending to find Polish humour funny. After pausing to think he took Helka's child seat out of the back and tossed it in the boot, then scooped up a heap of crumbs, the straw from a fruit-juice carton and a Milky Way wrapper. All with the thought that he might have to drive her home afterwards.
This time he arrived at Szpilka first. He sat down on the mezzanine, at a table by the wall. There were better places on small couches by the windows, through which you could watch life go by on Triple Cross Square, but he was afraid Monika would sit on the same couch next to him and he wouldn't know how to behave. And he had remembered that Weronika was meant to be taking Helka to Ujazdowski Park. He'd rather they didn't see him here. Monika came a little later, wearing tiny amber earrings, a tight black top with shoulder straps and a long flowery skirt. And sandals with heels and thongs that wound fancifully around her calves. She stopped in the cafe doorway, took off her sungla.s.ses and blinked as she scanned the interior. When she noticed him on the mezzanine, she smiled and waved cheerfully. He thought she looked fresh and lovely. He automatically replied with a smile, far less forced than the one he'd practised in the side mirror, and thought how for years the only girl who'd been so pleased to see him was his daughter. No one else.
He stood up as she approached the table. She said h.e.l.lo and kissed him on the cheek.
”And now please explain to the high court,” she said, frowning.
”Why did the defendant choose the gloomiest table in the darkest corner of this otherwise brightly sunlit cafe, eh?”
He laughed.
”It was on impulse, I didn't know what I was doing. When I came to, I was already sitting there. I swear it's not my fault. The police framed me.”
They sat down on a sofa by the window with a fine view of Saint Alexander's church. Along the pavement a dozen boys went past in black s.h.i.+rts marked ”No camping”, with a graphic showing two crossed-out little men having s.e.x from behind. It must have been about the h.o.m.os.e.xuals. Suddenly they started chanting: ”Husband and wife, normal family life!”
Szacki thought they looked like a bunch of poufs themselves - a group of men in tight s.h.i.+rts getting each other worked up with stupid slogans - but he kept this observation to himself.
He lied that he'd eaten a big breakfast, for fear of a large bill. Finally he ordered a smoked-cheese sandwich, and she had spinach pierogi. Then two coffees. They chatted a bit about work and why it was so hopeless, and he amused her with a few funny stories about his colleagues at the prosecutor's office. Then he forced himself to pay her a compliment. He praised her shoes, and immediately rebuked himself mentally for looking like some sort of b.l.o.o.d.y fetis.h.i.+st. All because of that Russki, who's always regaling me with his fantasies, he told himself.
”Do you like them?” she asked, raising her skirt and turning her foot this way and that so he could take a good look at the sandals. He said yes, thinking she had very shapely feet, and that the whole scene was extremely s.e.xy.
”It's just a pity you can't kick them off in a single go,” she sighed. ”The straps must have been invented by a man.”
”What a clever guy. He knew what looks good.”
”Thanks. I'm glad I've achieved the intended effect.”
Just then the TV presenter Krzysztof Ibisz came into the cafe. He ran up to the mezzanine and looked round nervously. Szacki thought it embarra.s.sing to recognize Ibisz - the novelist Jerzy Pilch or the former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki would have been quite another matter - so he pretended not to notice him. He questioned Monika about her work. He wasn't really all that interested in stories about the editor from Gorzow who used any excuse to stare at her cleavage, as a result of which she had to keep correcting her articles several times and listening to his tirades about the pivotal point of the text. He found that he liked listening to her. He watched her gesticulating, adjusting her hair, licking her lips and playing with her coffee spoon - her mouth was just a minor element in the way the girl communicated; she seemed to speak with every muscle. He remembered that when a man stares at a woman's lips, it means he wants to kiss her, so he quickly looked up at her eyes. At once he remembered there were some rules about staring at the eyes too - you should only look long enough to show attention, but not too insistently. Where did he get all this nonsense from?
Suddenly she broke off.
”I'll tell you something,” she said, pointing at him with her latte spoon and then digging the rest of the froth out of the tall gla.s.s. ”But don't laugh. Either say no, after all, I don't know you at all, or yes - ultimately in a way it concerns you. I don't know myself.”
”Do you want me to interrogate you?”
Once again he almost burned with embarra.s.sment, and she laughed again.
”You see, I'd like to write a book. A novel.”
”It happens in the best families.”
”Ha, ha. It happens to every graduate and almost-graduate of Polish studies. But never mind. I'd like to write a novel about a prosecutor.”
”A crime story?”
”No, an ordinary novel. But the hero would be a prosecutor. I had the idea a while ago, but when we met recently, I thought it really isn't such a bad one. What do you think?”
He had no idea what to say.
”And this prosecutor-”
”Ooh,” she cut him short. ”It's a long story.”
He glanced discreetly at his mobile phone. Christ! He'd been sitting here for an hour and a half already. If their friends.h.i.+p was going to develop he'd have to murder someone every three days to justify these absences to Weronika in some way. He promised Monika he'd be happy to hear the plot and equally happy to let himself be exploited. He'd tell her everything she wanted to know. But not today.
When the waitress brought the bill, he reached for his wallet, but she stopped him.
”Don't worry. It's very kind of you, but you paid last time and I'm a feminist, I work at an almost-private firm for almost-decent money, and I've got to corrupt you a bit so you'll be willing to cooperate.”
He wanted to ask just what sort of cooperation she had in mind, but he decided against it.
He evidently wasn't the master of bold flirting.
”It's embarra.s.sing,” he said.
She put the money on the table.
”It's embarra.s.sing that you're an educated man who chases bandits at G.o.d knows what cost, while I messed up my studies, write bad articles and earn more than you. Don't be so macho - it really doesn't matter.”
”It matters enormously.”
”How come?”
”If I'd known you were going to pay I'd have ordered soup and dessert too.”
She admitted to living in the oliborz district, but she didn't want him to take her there. She was planning to go to the Empik bookshop first, to look for something interesting. She talked a great deal, and that suited him very well. He had once read that everything we most like at the start of a friends.h.i.+p will irritate us the most later on. Absolutely true. He used to adore watching Weronika turning all the flowerpots a fraction each evening so they'd get equal sunlight, but now it really annoyed him when he heard the daily sc.r.a.pe of the pots being turned on the terracotta tiles in the kitchen.