“You don’t understand,” he whispers with effort. “You don’t understand that there are many of us. So many. We don’t even know ourselves how many. You’re as good as dead.”
I can see Ela standing outside. Her eyes are still closed, her hands over her ears. She’s still shaking.
“You think you’re going to leave now, call the police, file a report, describe everything that’s happened.” He smiles. “You think the nightmare will be over, you’ll get your apartment back, get your life back. But you don’t understand how many of us there are. We’re everywhere. We’re the police who’ll come to the scene of the crime. We’re the taxi drivers who’ll take you to the station, and the conductors who’ll check your ticket, the shopkeepers, the owners of your next apartment. You’ve got to die. All of us know you’ve got to die.”
I bring the gun to his face. He’s staring upwards, towards the ceiling, and I realise that he can’t see, that his spine is digging into his neck and has deprived him of sight. He continues:
“Besides, they’re going to be here in fifteen minutes. Maybe a few of them, maybe more. They’ll finish off what we started. They’ll kill you and your daughter. Get rid of your bodies. Carry them out during the night. Nobody’s going to look for you. The investigation will be closed within a week.”
I release the safety catch.
“That’s what’s probably going to happen if you die,” I wave the gun at the old man. “But if he goes?”
“It won’t change a thing,” he replies. “Absolutely nothing. Having control over their lives is an illusion for most people,” he adds after a while. “But it’s the privilege of just a few. It’s our privilege.”
Before I have time to say anything, Sebastian kneels over him and, with one flash of movement, wrings his neck. All I hear is a pop, like somebody pressing a piece of bubble wrap.
The old man starts shaking and silently moving his lips.
“Go,” Sebastian says to me. “Run.”
I take my daughter by the hand and we go back to the Institute. Sebastian follows, slowly. I let him lean on me.
“I didn’t black out or anything when she fired,” he explains. “I just couldn’t move for a while.”
“I didn’t hear you coming. Nor did they,” I say, guiding the three of us forward. Everything around us fades, grows flat like a photograph.
“I crawled,” he replies.
I look down at the pale, bloody marks. I look up at Sebastian again.
“I couldn’t let it happen, Hat. Couldn’t let those motherfuckers kill you,” he mutters.
Something in him goes out. I sense it.
When we reach the Institute, Sebastian slowly drops to the floor. He lets out a deep, loud moan, grimaces and touches the bloody hole in his stomach.
“Ela,” I say quietly to my daughter, “close your eyes now, go to my room and don’t come out until I tell you to. Don’t look.” I crouch in front of her, hug her and kiss her hard on the forehead, neck, hands.
Even though she’s already closed her eyes, I stand in front of the bodies on the blood-drenched floor – Gypsy’s, Iga’s and Veronica’s – to stop her from seeing them.
“Is everything alright now, Mummy?” she asks.
“Yes, it will be. But stay in my room for a bit with your eyes closed. Don’t look until I come in and tell you it’s okay,” I plead.
Ela goes to my room. I close the door.
“What are you doing, Hat?” asks Sebastian.
“They’ve got to think I’m dead,” I reply. “At least for a while – ten, twenty minutes, half an hour. We need a bit of time, Ela and me. We’ve got to lead them astray.”
“I’ll stay here,” he says, looking at me, and there’s something gentle in his eyes, the eyes of an old animal.
“No fucking deal,” I reply.
“I’ll stay here, Hat. Look.” He shows me the black stain on the T-shirt binding his stomach. “There’s nothing doing.”
“Wait,” I beg him. “We’ll go to the hospital.” I speak calmly, clearly. “We’ll go to the hospital and everything’ll be alright.”
“Fucking do it, Hat. Get as far away from here as you can,” he replies slowly. “I’ll stay. I won’t make it. If ‘They’ even try to follow you, I’ll throw them down the stairs one by one.”
I smile at him.
“Keep an eye on her for a moment.” I point to my room.
“Nothing’s going to happen to her. I promise.” He smiles gently.
That smile changes his face completely, I think.
I go to the kitchen, fetch a bin bag. I go to my room, stuff clothing, make-up silicone, scissors into the bag. My daughter’s sitting on the bed. I kiss her on the head again. Then I leave the Institute, run back to Mrs Finkiel’s apartment and into the yellow room.
I remove my old clothes, reeking and bloody, and, in my underwear, lean over Marta. She’s more or less the same size as me. Her body’s not yet stiff or cold. I tear her skirt off, her blouse and, of course, her jacket. The woman’s lost all her features without that jacket, I think. Then I cram her into my clothes – tracksuit pants and a jacket – manoeuvring her body, lifting limp arms and legs. A dead body is heavy, as if death itself was matter, a weight, black lead. I pack her clothes into the bin bag.
In my previous life, a long, long time ago, I changed people’s faces, damaged them almost beyond recognition. I was a make-up artist in films. I know something about faces, how to deform them, how to break them. Make them unrecognisable. I pick up some tools. Spread them out around me, creating a workshop. I take the scissors and swiftly snip the woman’s hair, throw the locks into the bin bag.
The old man’s still alive, hissing and wheezing, loud, near my ear.
“Pestilence. Vera. Pestilence. Decay,” he mutters, spitting phlegm.
I take the woman’s tights and shove them down his throat. He starts to suffocate. I ignore him.
Only Ela is left. They’ll wonder where Ela is when they arrive. Or maybe they won’t. Maybe I’ll gain ten, fifteen minutes. Ten minutes is a lot.
I put my hat on Marta’s head, wrap my scarf around her neck. I pick the gun up and whack her in the jaw with the butt as hard as I can. Her teeth crack into pieces. I do it again, and again, and again; the gun shatters her face, crumbles it, turns it to mush. I pick up a knife and the make-up silicone and make incisions, puff them up where her characteristic traits used to be, where the small stretches of muscles responsible for her facial expressions used to be – around the nose, under the eyes, around the brows. I improvise. Imagine it’s a mannequin.
When I’m finished, the woman could be me. Could be anybody. My hands are covered in blood. I turn around so as not to register what I’ve just done. I gather all the tools and throw them into the plastic bag.
I turn towards Antoni Waraszyl. I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead now. He’s lying slack in the wheelchair, resembling a bundle of clothes with a wax head and cotton wool hair.
I go back to the Institute, to the kitchen, wash my hands. I try not to look at Veronica and Iga. I’m sorry, girls, so very sorry. I go to my room, pick up a bag, throw the gun into it, my passport, bank card.
“Come on,” I tell Ela. “Come on.”
“Can I look now?” she asks.
“No, not yet. Just a bit longer,” I urge. “Come on.”
“Sorry,” I address Sebastian as Ela and I stand in the hall.
“Sorry for what?” He’s trying as hard as he can to express irritation on his face. “Fuck it, Hat. It’s not your fault.”
“If I’d known—” I try to say, but he raises his hand to stop me talking.
“No time for that now,” he replies. “Go, leave.”
I pull the mobile phone out of Gypsy’s pocket, a new smartphone. I’d never seen him with it before. I put it in my bag.
I scan the hallway. It’s as dark and silent as when I’d stepped into it for the first time. The ceiling hasn’t entirely lost its cadaverou
s grey hue, and from beneath all the blood, from beneath the bodies, from beneath the pain, fragments of old, warped parquet are visible.
“See you, Sebastian,” I say. He smiles, and I lean over and kiss him on the forehead.
“You’re okay, Hat,” whispers the huge bald thug who’d saved my life.
“It’s you who’s okay,” I reply and cry as I squeeze his hand.
As I look out to the landing, I notice for the first time that the grating is open. Resting against the wall, it looks just as it had every day that I’d lived here, every day until we’d been locked in.
“We’ve got to run,” I tell Ela. “We’ve got to run, and fast.”
“Can I look now?” asks my daughter, still pressing her hands against her eyes.
“Yes,” I reply. “Yes, darling, you even need to.”
We leap down the stairs, run through the building, silent and deserted, run past the door to Banicki’s apartment and run down to the ground floor, thrust ourselves at the swing door, open it and fall into the street. We continue running. The city is dark, empty and cold. It’s night, the middle of the night; there are no cars driving down the street. My daughter is with me, will always be with me, nobody’s ever going to try to take her away from me again. She’s running along the pavement, one thin, stick-like leg in front of the other, and she’s here. She is my life and happiness, she is me.
The city’s huge. This city, full of tenement buildings, in the middle of Europe, has never been so enormous. Mighty, with broad streets, with the illuminated edifices of the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy somewhere on the horizon, broad, black, endless. We’re running through it, pressing against each other, without looking back; we’re running as though it was the first time we’d ever been out, smelled the air. We stretch our arms out, amazed not to be hitting a wall.
“Taxis,” says Ela. “Taxis, look!”
I shake my head, but my daughter tugs me towards several cars parked at the taxi rank. Radio Taxi Barbakan. In one of the taxis sits a fat, grey-haired man with a moustache. We’re just about to get in, but I pull her away and carry on walking.
Ela points behind us and, further down the empty street, on the pedestrian crossing, I see a few blurred silhouettes, walking briskly in a tight group towards the Institute on Mickiewicz Avenue. I can’t make out who they are from here, what they look like. But they’re walking briskly.
We go back to the taxi. I open the door. We sit in the back.
“Where to?” asks the driver.
I can’t say anything, but my daughter, nestling her face into my belly, says:
“The United States, please. Grand Canyon.”
“Please don’t take the piss,” responds the taxi driver.
“Just drive, please,” I say.
The car drives off slowly towards Ruczaj. At the Mickiewicz Avenue and Piłsudski Street crossing, I tell him to turn left. Tell him to go to the train station. I look at the clock on his dashboard: it’s three in the morning. I pull the phone out of my bag and call the police. The dispatcher, not imaginary this time, picks up after five rings.
“I’d like to report a crime at 20 Mickiewicz Avenue, apartment 12,” I say. “Murder.”
“Please give me the details,” she replies.
“Please get the police over there as quickly as possible.”
“What’s your name?” asks the dispatcher.
I grip the phone harder. The driver’s going where I told him to go. I hide my hand in the bag, touching the gun. It’s cold and hard but feels like a warm, strong hand.
“What’s your name?” she repeats.
“I know you’re there,” I whisper, gazing at the empty, black city flitting past, “but you’re never going to find us.”
“What’s your name?” repeats the dispatcher, with the persistence of a stuck record.
I hang up, pull the battery and SIM card out and fling them out of the window as the driver accelerates.
I hug my daughter and kiss her hair. It’s warm, soft, smells of bed linen. I take her hand, and I’ll never let it go.
“I love you, Mum. I love you so much,” says my daughter.
My daughter’s name is Ela.
My apartment used to be called the Institute. I used to be called Agnieszka. Whoever you are.
THE END
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The Institute Page 21
