Somewhere in the depths of the apartment, I heard the sound of a closing door and then, at the mouth of the corridor Lena showed up. She had just come out of the bath, her body wrapped in a bath towel and her shortly cropped hair wet. She looked at me blankly and nodded her head as if she had never met me before. Then she approached her husband, kissed him on the top of his head and said:
“We’re going out in an hour, remember?”
Slowly, I started to get up from the chair where I was sitting, now completely thrown back, my mind completely numb.
“Sorry for my appearance” she smiled at me apologetically “I did not know that my husband had a visitor.”
She turned and ran out of the living room holding the bottom end of the bath towel with her hand.
“We have an appointment” said the Captain of the Medusa. “Sorry, but we have little time.” He pointed to the dresser against the wall on which sat a gilded frame with an old photograph and said “This is my Magda, or how she used to be in Warsaw.”
From the photo, a girl with red, wavy hair looked at me, smiling to me with a friendly smile. The smile was oddly familiar and after a few seconds, I froze as the realization hit me. I had seen that smile before.
I put the half empty glass on the table and unable to say anything got out of the apartment.
***
After leaving the building, I headed toward the Boulevard St. Germain. I was going to wander a little around the Latin Quarter. The carefree atmosphere prevailing there in the evenings always worked well on my nerves.
I had so much to gain, all of which I lost during that one visit. C'est la vie!
You have to move on. I felt in my pocket my thin, leather wallet made from an emaciated, Polish pig and went to the nearest cafe. A glass of ordinary, red wine would certainly do me some good. It always worked.
***
I never met Lena again. I continued building Parisian rooftops throughout the year, but walking the streets I always took care to steer clear of the house where she lived. It was better for her and for me as well.
After a year, I returned to Warsaw. How modest the Polish capital seemed compared to Paris. The low, gray buildings were covered with cracked stucco. The sidewalks were covered in holes on which those eternally pissed off people walked without a shadow of a smile, cursing and often drunk. The food stores already had empty shelves and the saleswoman, inflated as turkeys and unkind, trying to put on a show that they were the only important persons there.
I walked the streets in the evenings thinking about the Grand Boulevards and their cheerful, carefree atmosphere. One evening, I came to a cafe at the Nowy Swiat street and asked for a glass of wine at the bar. Of course, it improved my mood. I decided to repeat the experiment in the next bar. Amazingly, I felt better again. After a few glasses of wine, I felt pretty good.
I got into a taxi and asked to be taken to Zoliborz on Sulkowski street. I found the house where I lived when I was a kid and trampled over the old, cracked sidewalk until I stood before the house where she once lived. That red-haired girl. I lifted my head. All the windows were dark. There was no sign of life. A terrible sorrow suddenly flooded my heart.
“Lena!” I yelled into the black night.
Silence.
“Lena!” I repeated even louder. “Lena! Lena!”
“Shut up, clown!” Someone shouted from the opposite side of the street. “No one lives there now. They have all gone!”
I fell silent, still staring at the window on the first floor. Suddenly, it seemed to me that I saw something moving. A curtain pulled back slowly and I saw the figure of a girl with red hair. She looked down at the street and waved her hand. Then she smiled and disappeared into the darkness of her apartment.
Back to ToC
Bartek
“I went in front of the hut and began to shoot indiscriminately. I played a long series towards those under my command, because I was in charge of the squad. It was me who brought my boys to the village and now, I tried to shoot them on the spot as I was overwhelmed with grief and rage. These two feelings flooded my heart at the same time. Fortunately, my fire was off target as I ran amok and no one was hurt…”
Sometimes, what we must do is too much. Our brain revolts, doesn’t listen to us and nothing can be done, just our thinking runs out of control… This story is a continuation of “The raft of Medusa”, also romantic, soft thriller.
***
After we had stretched the blue tarpaulin over the existing roof, we began the demolition job. It was a lot of work, but not very difficult. The stone slates in the color of graphite were nailed to old boards, maybe a hundred years old, in spite of that they were still in good condition. In fact, they would likely still be able to last twice as long if left alone. Old technologies are often irreplaceable - just go ahead and show me the contemporary roof that can endure as long. Sure, today you can also produce the same kind of roof like original, but it would cost far more than the roof made of galvanized steel sheets.
I asked Pasqual if he had installed a stone slate roof ever before. He answered yes and I believed him, especially after he showed me the tools for trimming slates in his old toolbox. Pasqual, other than being a professional bluster, was also a good roofer, and I learned a lot from him. We tore down the roof from the top, the slates peeling easily off the boards as our special tool undermined them. Then we transported them down in plastic buckets to the courtyard of the building. It was practically easy. You just had to be very careful not to stand on a loose plate. If so, it was possible to slide on it to the edge of the roof, and with a little ambition and good momentum, further on the street, six floors below the level of the gutter. We had no helmets, nor did we have ropes attached to our bodies, security measures considered standard today. We had to rely solely on our instinct of self-preservation, which was probably the best protection for working on such a height.
The roof was large and sloping. It took us two days to remove the tiles. I felt sorry for the old roof; I imagined craftsmen painstakingly putting it together so long ago just so that I, a tourist from the Eastern Block, would tear their work apart today. And all because the new owner of the building, that man with the sidelocks, wanted to earn extra income from a hastily added floor.
After peeling off the stone slabs, we had to exchange all the boards of attic floor. It also was not very difficult. We just had to be careful not to step on the ceiling of the apartment below. It could not withstand the weight of a man so if any of us fell, it was likely to be an unpleasant surprise for the one residing there.
Fortunately, the apartment below was empty at the moment. We took away the ceiling from the bottom with the aid of crowbars. This work I disliked the most since clouds of age-old dust billowed and then collapsed on our heads, filling our eyes and ears. The dust was black and cruel like the French Revolution, not sparing anything. It forced itself under our clothes and after a day of such work, we looked similar to black Africans.
I had, of course, no bathroom in my hotel room and washing up in the small sink was not enough, but I was lucky. Very close to where I lived, in the complex "La Tour Montparnasse" was a public pool where I could go from time to time to soak under the shower and get rid of the cursed black dust from every nook and cranny of my body.
After adding the external walls of the next floor, we had to lay down a new mansard floor. We installed a new set of thick, horizontal beams, each one spaced equally from the other. We fixed them solidly then we started to nail the new floorboards.
The spacing between the beams was equal with one exception.
In one and only place, the distance was 20 cm wider, because it resulted this way from idiotic Italian calculations of Pasqual. As for me, it became my bad luck. I walked along the upper edges of the beams like a mindless cow, holding in my hand an electric circular saw. I was staring stupidly at something and then suddenly my foot hit a vacuum. I fell into the gap between the beams and hit my side badly on the edge o
f one of them. I heard a sickly crunch and something hurt like hell, but luckily, I did not drop down to the floor below so I had no right to complain too much. To this day, I do not know how many ribs I cracked that day, probably at least two.
The next day, I stayed at the hotel. It was hard to breathe. Even inhaling the cigarette smoke caused pain, and in addition, I started to cough. Afterwards came a mild fever, which lasted several days.
My health problems aroused the interest of Mui Tang, a Chinese girl from Hong Kong who recently moved into the adjoining room. She came to Paris to work, employed by her aunt in a Chinese gift shop. She was the only person I knew then who spoke French even worse than I did, so I could talk to her without a shame, mainly in sign language.
She was young, pretty and very compassionate. She noticed how hard I had to scramble up to the top of the stairs with a baguette in my hand, so she brought me some hot rice with pieces of cooked chicken in a small pot. This remedy I received from time to time and it really helped me, but the real improvement began when I was able to explain to her (using our sign language) that it would help me better if she wrapped her young, Chinese body around mine. She wondered a little, but that same night, we started new treatments, which clearly helped me a lot. I was just in a period of despair after parting with Lena, so the treatment was also beneficial for my soul.
In the morning, Mui Tang set up the fragrant incense in my room before going to work and at night, her body wraps made my fever subside quickly so that the next Monday, I was already able to return to my work as a roofer. My ribs, admittedly, still ached, especially with sudden movements, but I gained much in exchange - the few Chinese tricks Mui Tang had taught me, and the resulting inner peace that filled my mind along with the fragrance of incense.
At work, a surprise waited for me. Pasqual had a new helper; his name was Bartek. The co-owner of the company where I worked was a Pole so he sometimes employed Poles since they have worked diligently and in addition, illegally, so he did not have to pay the taxes and insurance for those guys, such as in my case. With Bartek, it was a different story. He had a permanent residence in France and worked legally. Besides, he knew the French language very well. He talked back to Pasqual at every step, and it totally pissed off the Italian, leading him into a fury. My return to work probably occurred at the right time, at the last minute before a larger disturbance could happen. Bartek made at first glance an unfavorable impression - a big, strong chap with a gloomy look, smelling of sleepless nights and cheap, red wine. He worked well and conscientiously, but only on his own. He ignored the commands of Pasqual with shrugs of his shoulders, each shrug adding to the storm hovering in the air.
Upon seeing me, Pasqual yelled joyfully ‘Kurwa Macio’ which was his own interpretation of the popular Polish curse. Bartek was moved to another job and everything was back to the old order. From time to time, I exchanged a few words with Bartek during lunch, but he was not too talkative.
However, something happened between us unexpectedly. Once, when I was returning home from work, two Arabs crossed my way - one large, one small. They wanted something from me, probably money. They gave a shout and made scary faces, and since I was right next to the Arab neighborhood, I knew that it was better to be on my guard. Then Bartek showed up by some miracle. No questions asked, he punched the larger Arab in the stomach with his big fist and the poor devil bowed down like the poker. The small one bent himself obligingly and both retreated bent down equally. They ran down the side street without looking back. I wonder if they both ever straightened again.
“I don’t know what they wanted from me, ” I said.
“Why ask?” snapped Bartek “Chase them away and that's it.”
In gratitude, I invited Bartek for a glass of red wine. After the first glass, he still remained silent, but after the second, he started talking, telling me roughly his story.
When I asked him about his name, he was silent for a moment, then finally uttered the name of one of the very famous Polish painters.
“Yes, he was my great-grandfather” he said, smiling sadly as he saw my surprise.
Bartek’s great-grandfather gave him his family name and a bad fate. When Bartek was still a boy and a student of primary school, he won a drawing competition wherein the pupils were supposed to draw from memory the face of Comrade Lenin with his worker’s cap on his bald skull. The portrait of leader of Great Revolution came out so successfully from the pencil of the little boy that Comrade Lenin himself was clearly pleased. He looked almost alive, mockingly smiling from under the lid of his cap and his half-closed eyes seemed to tell the audience: "Did you find my trick with communism funny? I never would have guessed what a bunch of suckers you are.”
Little Bartek, as a reward, received from the school management a book entitled "Lenin in Poronin" and the family decided unanimously that the talent of his great-grandfather finally manifested in him. From then on, he was offered pencils and crayons at any occasion and everyday, was urged "Please, draw something". Unfortunately, it spoiled his mood so much that soon, he could no longer stand to look at a paper and pencil. His loving family, however, was not easily discouraged. As we know, the worst crap when repeated a thousand times, eventually becomes the truth and in the end, Bartek grew up believing that indeed, he carried some hidden genius inside him. He passed his exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw because of the talent he had, however modest - after all, Lenin did not draw himself. He succeeds in graduating from the Academy because of the posters he created for the First of May at a time when the communist art of painting was budding. Then, as a grown-up artist, Bartek, already a qualified painter, decided to show the world and his family how much he was really worth.
He decided to go to Paris, where, his great-grandfather took his first steps in his artistic career. He managed to get a scholarship in France, owing it to the position of his father in the city administration and his famous name as well and so he set sail with a set of oil paints and a wooden palette in his valise. He had also a kilogram of smoked Polish sausages for himself and two bottles of Vodka Wyborowa as gifts for his future teachers. At that time, he himself was not yet in love with alcohol.
“Well, how did you do in Paris?” I asked as I poured the third glass of wine. Already, Bartek had captured my interest. “What happened next?”
“Shit” Bartek shortly replied. “I received some small orders from time to time and so I was able to survive to the end of my scholarship.”
“And then? What happened then?” I inquired curiously.
“Shit too. Nobody was interested in either my paintings or me. I walked from gallery to gallery, showing my creations, but no one wanted my daubs. I realized that with the brush, I wouldn’t be able to acquire much. I needed something else.”
“What then? What did you do?”
“Even more shit than before. I started working painting apartments with one Pole. The job was of course in black, not very hard, and I was still using a brush.” He smiled sarcastically. “I guess you could earn a living from it after all. But there was another problem - my residence visa in France was about to end. I had to decide on something, but what? Do I go back to Poland as a loser? Destroyed and defeated? Disillusioned and without any hope? How I could show myself to my family when I always wrote that everything was going great. No, I did not dare go back. I painted the walls during the day and in the evenings, I drank wine to kill the pain. I had no girlfriend, no friends except a few losers like myself. When my French visa expired, something inside me ended also - my wish to return to the country. I was here illegally. I still had the right to breathe and drink wine and walk around the streets at will as you are doing now, but only until the French police for whatever reason checked me. What then? Deportation, the sad end for any illegal".
We drank the next glass of wine and went out into the street. We walked slowly toward the subway as the streets began to wake up to their evening life.
“How did you
manage?” I asked.
Now, the subject was really beginning to fascinate me. I myself was in a similar situation. My visa was about "to finish", and I had not even made enough money for a used car. How was I going to show my face in Warsaw?
“How did I manage? The same way many idiots like me did. I joined the African Squadrons. Someone told me that they would provide me with the papers for a permanent residence in France.”
“Have you been in the Foreign Legion?” I was seriously amazed.
“No, it was not the Legion. It was a mercenary army. There, they made a man of me. After a year of training - quarries are child’s play compared with it - I became strong as a bull and was not afraid of anything. And they washed my brain of all the desires, illusions, ambitions and, in a way, conscience. I felt really great, a typical, mindless killing machine. I was one of them. I would give my life for them and I knew that each of them thought the same way. It was really a great feeling to be even just a wheel of this killing machine, to know that you are finally someone needed, truly needed for life and death.”
When we came to the metro, we shook hands. Of course, my curiosity was burning. What happened to those African Squadrons? But I did not dare insist since Bartek was going in a different direction than me and it was getting late. Moreover, I already sorely missed my Chinese evening wraps. (My ribs were still hurting, although a little less after the wine I drank).
***
The next day I tried to get out of the construction site at the same time as Bartek so I could walk along with him.
“Where do you live?” I asked him.
“Why do you need to know?” He grunted disapprovingly.