The Institute

by Jakub Żulczyk

  “You don’t have to give her back to him,” said Iga, swaying back and forth on a chair. “They can’t do anything to you. It’s blackmail; what they’ve got into your head isn’t true.”

  “If I take her, they’ll take her away from me and I’ll never see her again,” I explained with half-closed eyes, smoking my last slim cigarette. “I told you.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “I’ve got to keep my word in all this, Iga. After all, he did let her visit me here. So I’ve got to give her back for the time being.”

  “The time being? Until when?” Iga drummed her fingers on the table. “You don’t know that. You’ve no idea when you’ll be able to see her.”

  “I’m frivolous,” I retorted.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you think it.” I smiled.

  “I think you’re scared, sis.” Iga sighed, stood up and started to carry dirty tumblers, glasses and ashtrays to the sink. “You’re too scared. You’ve allowed yourself to be bullied. I don’t know, maybe I’d be scared in your place, too.”

  “The strategy of small steps,” I said, not believing what I was saying myself. “I’ll show them that I’m a decent mother. They’ll start to trust me and then Ela will be able to come here more and more often and for longer…”

  “Fucking hell, who’s supposed to prove to who that they’re decent?” seethed Iga.

  I was too exhausted to answer. Sebastian took Ela in his arms and carried her to my room. She and I fell asleep on my bed. When we got up at about one in the afternoon, it was grey outside, heavy and suicidal. We ate breakfast, picking at scrambled eggs and drinking glass after glass of juice, trying to smile at each other. Ela took a bath, put on some fresh clothes; I threw the rubbish out, washed the floor, washed the dishes, aired the whole place to give the Institute at least the semblance of a respectable apartment.

  Ela’s father appeared at five on the dot.

  He stood in the hallway, stroked his daughter on the head and looked at me with absent, empty eyes. He was unshaven, pale, crumpled. Smelt of alcohol.

  “Here are the keys.” He handed them to Ela. “Go to the car but under no circumstance look in the boot because there aren’t any presents in there for you.”

  I hugged Ela hard, even harder than when she’d arrived, so hard our bones sounded like a packet of crisps being crushed in a pair of hands.

  “Now go.” I was trying not to cry again. “Well, go on. I love you very much. We’ll see each other soon.”

  My daughter’s wise, too wise, which is probably why she left quickly, taking her rucksack. She didn’t want this to hurt more than it had to. She knew there was a right moment when you could still protect yourself from a pain that would later become unbearable.

  “Thank you,” I said to Ela’s father. “Thank you for bringing her.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Thank you,” I repeated. “Aren’t you going to thank me for keeping my side of the bargain?”

  Still he said nothing. He stared at me, or rather through me. He looked like a botched wax figure of himself. I wanted to shake him. Hit him. But I couldn’t.

  “Since you don’t want to say anything,” I said, what remained of my composure wearing thin, “just take her and go. Please. Don’t draw it out.”

  “She drank alcohol here yesterday,” he finally said with a voice so full of a drunkard’s heaviness and cloying hoarseness that it held nothing but faint traces of the voice I remembered. “She was drunk when I called her, Agnieszka.”

  “I kept an eye on her,” I stammered out through a tight throat. “All she drank was a tiny amount of champagne and…”

  “She was drunk, you moron,” he repeated. “She was drunk and she’s twelve. You know what that means.”

  Now I fell silent.

  “You know what that means,” he repeated. “That means that you’re not going to see her for a very, very long time.”

  “Casper…” I muttered. “I kept an eye on her. I didn’t give her any alcohol. I promise.”

  “I’ll get her to blow into a breathalyser,” he said. “I’m going to note down the result and put it in the file marked ‘Divorce/Rights of Custody’.”

  “Casper…” I murmured again.

  He turned to walk away, then stopped. Turned his head a fraction in my direction.

  “I don’t know,” he added, not even looking at me. “I haven’t the faintest idea how I could have screwed up my life with somebody as stupid, irresponsible and flippant as you. I’d like to wish you all the best. But nothing good’s going to happen to you. And it’s your own fucking fault.”

  “Casper…” I said one last time. Almost silently.

  He slammed the door. The glass in the front door vibrated. I sat on the floor in the hallway and cried.

  * * *

  “Agnieszka. His name really was Jacek,” says the woman in the jacket. “And my name’s Marta. We never use false names.” She’s staring at me. She still has the same smile on her face. It’s permanently stuck there, like a mask – two settings: smile, no smile. “There’s no need,” she added, standing over Gypsy’s body. He’s lying in a black puddle, unnaturally twisted as though frozen halfway through an abortive acrobatic act. His blood is too black; it looks like oil. If it was up to me, if I was the make-up artist on the film set, I’d tell them to make it lighter, redder, more human. His face is peaceful, held in a half smile despite the broken nose, despite masses of congealed blood.

  This is, after all, a film; it’s not really happening.

  Sebastian’s lying next to him. On his stomach. Also in a pool of blood. The other bodies, the ones behind me, are the same. I can’t bring myself to look in that direction for now.

  It’s a film, it’s not really happening.

  I can’t imagine where I’m going to be when I open my eyes and wake up. But certainly not here. I’m definitely going to be somewhere else.

  “Why lie about such an ordinary thing as a name?” Marta shrugs. She’s wearing the same jacket with the same badge as she did in the Bracka Street café. The badge with a scout holding a telescope, just like the painting on Mrs Finkiel’s wall. Yes, the woman was called Marta. Maybe that really is her name.

  “Why should we lie about anything? We can do anything we want. People who can do anything they want don’t have to lie. We told you the truth. This apartment is ours.”

  Her face morph’s into something like a child’s simple drawing. Lines and dots. Thick and black. Where’s my daughter? I think. Iga, I’m so sorry, so sorry, Veronica. Where’s my daughter? Ela?? Dear Ela. I’m so very sorry. I’m coming, darling. It’s only a film.

  “Where’s my daughter?” I ask.

  I can still hear a creaking sound, quiet and plaintive, coming from Mrs Finkiel’s apartment; it’s so silent here that the creaking fills my whole apartment.

  “Come, Agnieszka,” she says. “Just follow me.”

  A sound comes from someone’s lungs. Someone sighs. Tired. A sigh, from someone old and angry. The sound is far away but also near, at the other end of the building but at the same time right next to my ear. The door to the landing is still open. The darkness on the landing behind Marta makes me imagine that she is one solitary tooth in an enormous black mouth that is about to swallow the entire Institute like a small piece of fruit, like a pip.

  “Where’s my daughter?” I repeat.

  “Follow me and you’ll see your daughter, and I’ll let you both out. All we want is the apartment.”

  I nod, walk slowly, but there’s something wrong with my balance. It feels like somebody else is moving me, and every move hurts, goes against my muscles. Maybe this is how old people feel. Maybe I’ve become an old woman. I hold on to the screwdriver.

  “You’ll see her,” she assures me. “You have to know that I always tell the truth. Now you know I always tell the truth.”

  I’m coming, Ela. Mum’s coming. I glance behind me, see them for a split second: V
eronica and Iga. I see their hair, their open mouths, I see masses of blood.

  I’m sorry, Veronica. Sorry, Iga. I don’t know what to say ever again.

  I just want to wake up, I want to wake up anywhere but here.

  I’m coming. Mum’s coming.

  I step onto the landing – cold, reeking, evil. Follow the woman slowly, straight to Mrs Finkiel’s open door. It’s no longer Mrs Finkiel’s apartment. It has stopped being anybody’s apartment, anybody’s home.

  “You’ve got to understand, Agnieszka,” she says, “that all this is for your own good. We’re good people. We want to help you, look after you. Observe and look after, that’s our motto.”

  “Look after…” I repeat, mechanically.

  “Look after you until the right moment comes. That was our instruction,” she replies.

  Once in Mrs Finkiel’s apartment, I follow her into the room with the displaced wall unit and television set, then climb the stairs to the greyish yellow room, where we’d found Anna and Robert’s bodies. Marta is wearing high heels and therefore moves slowly, but she still has to keep stopping, waiting for me, turning around to make sure I’m following.

  “Come on, Agnieszka,” she says. “Come on. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Come on.”

  I nod. Indifferently. I look at my hands; they’re covered in blood. From different people, all shades of red.

  I see that the chairs are no longer there, and neither are Anna or Robert. Someone else is there. The enormous metal door is slightly ajar. What lies behind is, in turn, black and silvery blue.

  In the middle of the room stands a man in a black suit. In front of him is a wheelchair, and in the wheelchair sits a figure who, from a distance, looks like a fatally sick child. The figure is also wearing a black suit, except that it’s been tailored for a little boy. I walk towards them, carefully, slowly. Marta gets to them first and stands by their sides. For a moment, her hand rests gently on the shoulder of the man standing. The three of them together look like a hideous parody of a family.

  The screwdriver. I’m still holding the screwdriver.

  The man standing is my neighbour from downstairs: Doctor Banicki. At least that’s how he’d introduced himself when we first met. The figure in the wheelchair is a shrivelled old man, barely alive, who looks like one of those oldest people in the world that they show on TV. On his withered, smooth skull appear wisps of grey hair as though some spiteful person has stuck cotton wool balls on it.

  “You look very much like your grandmother,” states the man whom I knew as Banicki. “Just as beautiful.”

  “I’d like to be so beautiful,” says Marta, in an entirely different voice. It’s as though somebody had ejected a tape from her head and inserted another, with a different person, a different voice – squeaky and stupid, as if belonging to a silly teenager. “We’ve forgiven her,” she adds after a moment.

  I squat and start to vomit. I choke; my throat hurts. Chunks of Sebastian’s pasta mush. Dirty water, tea. Apart from that, bile.

  “My daughter,” I try to say between bouts of retching. “My daughter.”

  “This could all have been different,” says the woman.

  “But some people don’t agree,” says the man.

  I stand up, wipe my mouth.

  The old man in the wheelchair lets out a sigh. When he’s finished, the man – formerly Doctor Banicki – pulls a small metal hip-flask out of his pocket and brings it to the old man’s lips. The old man tries to swallow, but the contents of the flask trickle down his wrinkled, liver-spotted face. On the finger of one limp hand, which is dangling off the armrest, is a gold ring. I look at the hip-flask and see the same image again – the man on a horse with a telescope. I look at the old man – he, Banicki’s hand, the hip-flask, the suits, the ring all seem miles away. I recognise this old man, too. Recognise his hand. It’s the same hand that had been dangling off the armrest, attached to a body watching Clan on the TV in the depths of Mrs Finkiel’s apartment when I’d gone there to ask for the key to the cellar.

  “Unfortunately, Mrs Finkiel didn’t fulfil her assignment,” says Marta.

  “I don’t understand.” Voice, questions, language, all come from me, but distanced, far away, unclear.

  “She was supposed to remain silent. But for some reason decided to help you. She’d been so obedient for so many years. Pity.” She shakes her head gently.

  “Mummy!” The word suddenly bursts from behind the metal door, completely filling my ears. I race towards the door but, at that moment, Marta aims the gun at me again, the same gun she’d used to kill Veronica, Iga and Sebastian. She smacks her lips, shaking her head like a pawnbroker handling a twenty-carat ring.

  “Allow me to explain, Agnieszka,” says the woman. “It’s very simple. We own a great deal. Much more than most people think. And we want to get it back.”

  “Things are being handed out to plebs. Beautiful houses, beautiful land is being given over to animals who ought to live in sties,” states the man whom I met as Banicki.

  “My daughter,” I say, or somebody beside me says.

  “It’s unnecessary, terrible. A waste. The place for plebs is the sty. Shelters. Mud huts,” adds Marta.

  “My daughter,” I repeat.

  “Decay. Pestilence,” comes the voice of the old man in the wheelchair. Hoarse like a worn tape, as if coming from something other than his body. Sick. Angry.

  “Besides, they owe us, for so many years of hard work. So many centuries of hard work. Our work in the name of order, something that’s never existed here,” says Marta.

  “Pestilence,” repeats the old man, and slowly, with difficulty, he continues: “There used to be a world, once. Concrete. Timber. Meat. Bones. Now there’s only decay. Rubbish.”

  “Antoni Waraszyl.” Marta’s voice momentarily changes tone again. Something is breaking it, a trembling, fear. “We owe him everything. It’s because of him that we’re not animals, that we’re human.”

  I take a step forward, slow and painful.

  “Don’t move, Agnieszka,” says Marta.

  “Mum, please, do what these people tell you.” My daughter’s voice rings out from beyond the metal door.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I growl, from fear and fury.

  “Your husband’s parents,” the woman continues, “were probably right to try to get him away from you and save their granddaughter. They probably suspected what was going to happen. Maybe they’d even heard of us. More people had heard of us in the past. We were like a terrifying, terrible fairy tale. But we’re not terrible.”

  “Chaos is terrible. Filth is terrible. Unsuitable marriages are terrible,” says Mr Banicki, smacking his lips quietly.

  The old man in the wheelchair tries to add something else, but he hasn’t got the strength. He just moves his lips like a fish.

  “Equality is the most terrible thing of all. The worst,” the man standing by the wheelchair continues.

  “Who are you?” I strain my eyes as hard as I can to see into the darkness beyond the half-open metal door. But all I can see is a black stretch of darkness. A blue flash every few seconds.

  “We’re taking back what belongs to us,” he explains, “what used to be ours before the war. What was handed out after it. Divided up. Burned. Smeared in shit. What is still being handed out. For a monthly payment they call credit. Handed out to shit-eaters. Slaves. Trash. Handed out to trash like you.”

  “She’s her granddaughter,” says the woman.

  He shakes his head with repulsion, as though he’s sniffed something stale, while the old man wheezes again, traces of dense saliva trickling down his face.

  “But what’s all this got to do with my grandmother?” I ask quietly. When I touch my face, I notice it’s wet.

  “Agnieszka.” Marta’s still pointing the gun in my direction. “If it weren’t for your grandmother, you’d be dead by now. It wouldn’t have taken nearly as long.”

  “We’d have bricked up the windows
, cut off the power, walled up the doors,” says the man. “We’d have done everything straight away. But Mr Waraszyl wanted you to live.”

  “I don’t believe you,” my voice tells her.

  “Not a trace of you would be left. Nobody would ever have found you.”

  “Who are you?” I repeat the question.

  “We call ourselves the Observers,” she explains, pointing to her badge. “There was a time when we used to help kings.”

  “We see to order. Separating rulers from subjects,” adds the man.

  “You’re talking nonsense,” I whisper through a trapped throat.

  “We’re still hoping that everything is going to be set to rights. That the pigs are going to go back to where they belong. Dogs go back to where they belong,” Marta continues.

  “And human beings. Human beings go back to their rightful place,” adds the man in the suit.

  “Equality will come to an end. The time of these monstrosities will come to an end,” says Marta.

  “Vera?” the old man in the wheelchair breaks in, and briefly there’s silence. He’d uttered his previous words quietly, with great difficulty, as though every syllable could cost him his life. But this word, my grandmother’s name, is loud and clear.

  “Vera,” repeats the old man.

  “Not long now,” Marta, the woman in the jacket, tells him.

  “A lot of people mistake us for something else entirely. Jacek, for example, thought that we belonged to the last regime. That we’re what one of your presidents liked to call an ‘arrangement’. Others call us Judeo-Masons. Others, the conspiracy of Illuminati or the secret service. Some people don’t really know what they’re talking about, rolling words like ‘côterie’, ‘people you know’ around in their mouths like evil spells, like vague signposts to places where they wouldn’t really like to go. We never set anyone straight, but, believe me, there are a lot of smokescreens. We’re older than all these distasteful and idiotic concepts,” explains Marta.

  “Than anything,” the old man adds.

  “Gypsy. Why was Jacek one of you?” I ask.

  “He searched for us for a long time. He was one of those harmless clever maniacs who believe that the answer to everything can be found on the internet. He’d read some stupid, old article and then searched for us. He was stubborn. And he found me.” After a pause, she adds, “We treated him as a bit of a joke, to be honest.”