Well, yeah—her own eyes were just the same. She found them hard to conceal. Her hair could at least be dyed and styled, her narrow lips could be enhanced, her pointed ears covered up. But her tiny eyes? There was no kind of makeup that could change those peepers, sunk deep in their sockets, into lovely almond-shaped eyes. The kind of eyes that would have saved her, so that people could have said, She’s nothing special, but those eyes—she must have been at the front of the line when God was handing them out. Well, she hadn’t been.
Her eyes couldn’t be concealed, and nor could her figure—you can’t put dark glasses on your figure. Her figure gave her the most grief of all. There was nothing distinctive about her. If only she were very thin—girls like that have their admirers. Or very well endowed—that works, too. With huge breasts—hordes of men would have looked at her. And her man would be able to say, Those tits are mine, those are my lovely tits. But no, she was square, or rather rectangular. No hips or waist, the legs of a peasant woman, the kind you can stand on all day long. She wasn’t entirely flat-chested, but there was nothing to grab hold of either—obese guys sometimes have tits like hers. And as for her shoulders—they looked as if she were always wearing a padded blouse, the kind that was fashionable in the ’80s.
She was trying to choose a long skirt and sweater to make it look as if she had a waist and hips. She was really determined to look nicer than usual today. To give him something special, so he’d know he hadn’t made a mistake.
She heard a plaintive wail from the living room. What else did she expect? She’d been ignoring him for a whole fifteen minutes—if he’d known how, he would surely have called ChildLine by now. She tossed the sweater on a shelf under the mirror and ran to the child. He was kneeling by the couch, crying with his head buried in the cushions.
“What’s up?”
“Don’t want it.”
“What don’t you want?”
“No.” He pointed at the TV.
“You don’t want that cartoon?”
“No.”
“Do you want another one?”
“No.”
“Bob?”
“No.”
“Franklin?”
“No, no, no!”
By now he was laughing—he found it an excellent game. And the tears weren’t yet dry on his cheeks. Apparently kids are like that—they can forget negative emotions in a split second. She didn’t know what hormone was responsible for that, but thought they really should isolate it and sell it in tablet form. She’d buy a bucketload.
“Zebra?”
“No.”
“Blue teddy?”
“No.”
“Fucking dick with mint jelly?” The tone of her voice hadn’t changed a bit.
“No. Ubbies.”
He burst into giggles as sweetly as if he understood what she was talking about. She wiped his face with her hands. What a great mother she was. Finally she switched on whatever, because she couldn’t remember where the Teletubbies DVD had gone; luckily the ads were running, which have the same effect on a small child as a shot of heroin. The kid froze with his mouth half-open, while she glanced at her watch and went to throw some cottage cheese–filled pancakes into the microwave.
She felt as if something had gone wrong with time—the kid should have had his dinner an hour ago. And she ought to be doing something. She’d been home all day, but when her husband got home she’d have nothing but microwaved two-day-old pancakes to offer him. Even if she whipped up some cream to go with them and defrosted some raspberries, they’d still be two-day-old pancakes.
What could she say? “I’m sorry, honey, I spent all day trying to choose the right clothes so you wouldn’t realize your wife has no waist.”
She could feel the panic rising in her throat like a third tonsil. She swallowed hard. Why wasn’t she doing anything? Why was she totally worthless, so—he was really good at putting it into words—apathetic? That was spot-on, apathetic—every syllable in that word sounded like a slap: ap-a-thet-ic. The first was stinging, a surprise, the last was just a halfhearted click.
Why didn’t she do something? She had a great little boy, a great husband, a house near the woods, she didn’t have to work—the only thing missing was a maid. Pull yourself together, woman. Go fetch the child, drive to Lidl’s, and make a proper dinner. Right on!
She took the pancake out of the microwave and put her son in his plastic high chair. He instantly began to cry because he didn’t like abrupt movements. She kissed him on the forehead and positioned the chair to face the TV. There was no time for proper child-rearing if she was going to get everything done. She sliced up the pancake and raced to the mirror—he’d spend five minutes eating, and she’d get dressed and put on some makeup.
“Don’t want it!” she heard him shout.
“Yes, you do, yummy pancake. Eat it by yourself like a big boy, and then we’ll go for a walk.”
She made a shopping list in her head. Simple, efficient, and quick. Grilled beef with a blue cheese sauce. And potato puree to go with it. Actually, boiled potatoes put through the blender, but it could be served nicely, the way it looked at a restaurant. She’d make each person’s initials out of puree on their plate. The kid was sure to be happy to eat it too—it’s simple, every guy likes potatoes. Some greens—not salad out of a bag, he couldn’t stand that. Peas, peas and mayo. She’d reserve some of the peas to make a pattern on the puree.
Once she’d put on her shoes she raced into the dining room, taking the kid’s overalls with her to save time.
What she found in there was hard to put into words.
Her son had managed to squeeze the cottage cheese out of the entire pancake, and then smear it all over himself, his chair, the table, and worse yet, the remote. The super-awesome remote, the Christmas gift that could be programmed to work the TV, the digital decoder, the DVD, and the hi-fi. The black designer object with a touch screen now looked as if it were molded from cottage cheese. The kid was aiming it at the TV.
“Ubbies.”
Her head began to spin. As she knelt down by his chair, her knee landed on a piece of pancake.
“Listen up, kid, I’ve got something important to tell you,” she began calmly. “You’re a fucking spiteful, evil little brat. And I hate you. I hate you so bad I feel like ripping off your hairless head and sticking it on the shelf with your toys, next to your asshole Stinky-Winky. Get it?”
“Ubbies?”
She gave him a long stare, then snorted with laughter. He got the message, no doubt about it. She picked him up and cuddled him, thinking how her special “waist-giving” sweater was now only fit for the laundry. Tough.
3
He didn’t want to be here; he hated this sort of event. The prosecutor’s place was in his office, in the courtroom, or at the scene of a crime. Any other activity was a waste of the taxpayers’ money, which the prosecutors were paid for being guardians of the law. Not for cutting ribbons or showing off in front of students. But somebody must have thought the image of the prosecutor needed improving, so the local high school’s request for someone to hand out a prize for the best project on the prevention of violence had been enthusiastically accepted, and he had been singled out to represent the office. He hadn’t had a chance to protest before his female boss had preempted his question by saying, “Because you’re the only one who looks like a prosecutor.”
She hadn’t mentioned any speech.
“Thank you for all the work you’ve done,” said the teacher, addressing the students in the usual schoolmarm tone, “and for the effort you’ve put into it. I admire your commitment and altruism, because of course I don’t believe the malicious rumors that a good many of you only did it to get a better conduct grade.”
A burst of laughter.
“I hope my class has informed the rest of you that what counts toward this grade is the whole three-year period, not just one-off spurts of activity.”
A theatrical groan of disappointment.
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Szacki looked around the hall and felt a pang of nostalgia. Not necessarily for the days of his youth, more for the days when he didn’t feel embittered. He had started posing as an abrasive cynic in middle school, but everyone who knew him then was totally aware it was an act. The girls stood in line for the sensitive intellectual who hid from the world behind his armor of detachment and cynicism. So it was in high school, so it had been in college. Even when he was a junior prosecutor and in the first few years of his professional life, there was a general conviction that hiding beneath his gown, his immaculate suit, and the legal code there was a good and sensitive man. It was ancient history. He had changed jobs once, twice, a third time, grown older, and finally parted ways with everyone who had known him as a young man and a young prosecutor. The only people left were those who had no reason to suspect that his coolness and distance were masking something. And lately, even he had had to admit that he’d missed the moment for his last chance, when the armor ceased to be protective clothing and became an integral part of Teodor Szacki. Before then he could take it off and hang it on a peg. But now, like a cyborg from a sci-fi novel, he’d have died if his artificial parts were removed.
Here in this hall he felt for the first time just how much his own outer shell was chafing him; if he could choose over again, he’d make the same choices, but without adopting a facade.
“The job market is tough, and I think this piece of work will have gained some brownie points for many of you if you ever seek employment at the ministry of justice or home affairs.”
“At the police academy!” someone shouted from the audience.
A burst of laughter.
“More like the detention center for you, Muniek!”
Wild hilarity.
“Now I have the honor of welcoming a man for whom justice is not just a profession but, hopefully, also a vocation. Prosecutor Teodor Szacki.”
He stood up.
A sluggish round of applause. Sure, who’d clap for the prosecutor? The representative of a profession that’s mainly occupied with crawling up politicians’ asses, releasing bad guys who’ve been caught by the good old cops, or botching legal proceedings and indictments. If he only knew his sector from the media, he’d go to court in his spare time to spit on the prosecutors’ gowns.
He did up the top button of his jacket and crossed the hall to the three steps leading onto the stage, moving at a confident pace. The stage didn’t even come up to his knee, and he could have mounted it in a single step. But he had no desire to jump about like an ape, and he wanted to stride across the room to let the audience see how a guardian of the law presents himself.
He was wearing what he called his “Bond getup”: a British classic that never let him down when he wanted to make an impression. A gray suit the color of the sky before a storm, with almost invisible pale pinstripes, a sky-blue shirt, and a skinny graphite tie with a subtle pattern. A handkerchief made of raw linen, protruding half an inch from his jacket pocket. Cuff links, and a watch of matte surgical steel—in the same shade as his thick, all-white hair. He was the perfect image of the strength and stability of the Polish Republic.
He could feel the gaze of the girls on him—girls who were just transforming into women; most of them had only recently discovered that male style did not end in their school friends’ T-shirts, their fathers’ crumpled jackets, and their grandfathers’ pullovers. That there was such a thing as classic elegance, which meant a male declaration of calm and self-confidence. A way of saying, Fashion doesn’t interest me. I always have been, am now, and always will be fashionable.
Now he was being followed by hundreds of pairs of eyes, incredulous that this guy, on whom the clothes sat better than on Daniel Craig, was a state employee. Conscious of the impression he made, Szacki walked past a dull painting of a scene from antiquity, and stood at the microphone.
He felt he should say something upbeat—he sensed that was what everyone was expecting: the students, the teachers, and the boy with dreads filming the ceremony for the school. His boss would want to see him on YouTube as well, lightly and zestfully representing the prosecution, finally a real man instead of a stuffed shirt reciting articles of law to the cameras. And he, too, wanted to feel like one of the audience for a while, to remember that once upon a time he had been . . . not so much young—he didn’t miss that at all—but fresh. Or, to put it another way, not yet past his prime.
He scoured his mind for a school joke as an opening gambit but realized he couldn’t replace one style with another.
As the silence dragged on, a murmur ran through the hall, a number of people whispering to their neighbors: “What’s going on?” The teacher shuffled her feet, as if wanting to stand up and save the situation.
“The statistics are against you,” said Szacki coldly. A strong voice, well rehearsed at hundreds of trials and closing statements, boomed over the heads of the assembled company too loud, before somebody turned down the volume. “Each year more than a million crimes are committed in Poland. Half a million people are charged with offenses. Which means that in the course of your life some of you are sure to commit an illegal act. Most probably you’ll steal something, or get in a car accident. Maybe you’ll cheat someone, or beat them up. One of you might murder someone. Of course, right now you can’t possibly accept such a dreadful idea, but most murderers never imagine they’re going to kill. Just like normal people, they wake up, brush their teeth, and make breakfast. And then something happens, an unfortunate tangle of events, circumstances, and emotions. And that night they go to bed as murderers. It could happen to one of you, too.”
He spoke calmly, convincingly, as he did in the courtroom.
“But the statistics are lying.” He smiled subtly, as if he had good news to tell them. “They only cover the crimes that come to light. In fact, there are far more crimes and felonies. Sometimes they’re never exposed, because perfect crimes are committed every day. Sometimes they’re too minor to be reported. But most often they remain hidden behind a double curtain of fear and shame. That includes domestic violence. Bullying at school. Bullying in the workplace. Rape. Sexual harassment. A vast number of unreported injuries that can’t possibly be counted. It’ll happen to you too. One in five of the girls sitting here will be the victim of rape, or attempted rape. You’ll emotionally abuse your partners, steal money from your decrepit parents. Your children will curl up in their beds when they hear your footsteps in the hall. You’ll beat your wives, calling it your right. Or you’ll pretend the screams of someone being hit or raped on the other side of the wall are none of your concern, and that you shouldn’t get mixed up in other people’s business.”
He paused.
“I’m not familiar with your projects, and I don’t know how you imagine violence can be prevented. As a prosecutor I’m only aware of one way to do that.”
The teacher gave Szacki an imploring look.
“If you want to prevent violence, don’t do wrong.”
He took a step back from the lectern, to indicate that he had finished. The teacher seized the opportunity, swiftly stepped onto the stage, and summoned the student who had won the competition. Wiktoria Sendrowska, class 2E. For an essay titled “How to Survive in the Family.”
Applause.
A girl hopped up onto the stage. She looked no different from all the other clones Szacki passed every day in the street—he even had a clone of the same kind living at home with him. Neither tall nor small, neither fat nor thin, neither beautiful nor ugly. Pretty, inasmuch as all eighteen-year-old girls are pretty, whose facial flaws can, at best, be described as cute. Hair gathered back in a ponytail, glasses. A thin white turtleneck. The only thing to distinguish her was a flowing floor-length skirt, black as lava.
First the teacher made a move, as if she were about to hand Szacki the diploma to present, but she changed her mind, gave him a glare, and handed the framed certificate to the girl herself. Wiktoria nodded politely to her and to Szacki, then went
back to her seat.
Seeing that it was a good moment to disappear, Szacki nodded too, then slipped into the hallway. He had just run past the scene from antiquity hanging above the main door—it showed a pensive, unhappy woman, surely the heroine of a tragedy—when his phone vibrated in his pocket.
From the office. The boss.
O Zeus, he thought, give me a decent case.
“Lessons over?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sorry to bother you, but would you go over to Mariańska Street? It won’t take long. You just have to check off a German.”
“Check off a German?”
“They’ve found an old cadaver while doing roadwork.”
Szacki glanced at the ceiling and mentally cursed.
“Can’t you send Falk?”
“Pinocchio? He’s taking depositions at the penitentiary in Barczewo. Everyone else is in court or at the district office for training.”
What sort of a boss explains herself?
“Is Mariańska the street where the morgue is located?”
“Yes. You’ll see a patrol car there, at the bottom, near the hospital. You can always shift the bones across the river, then it’ll be a case for South District.”
Management through geniality, chumminess, and wisecracks always got on his nerves. He preferred to just get the case sorted. In Olsztyn it was especially bad—immediately on a first-name basis, funny little jokes, and the door to the boss’s office was always so wide-open that her secretary must have been suffering from a chronic cold.
“I’m on my way,” he said, and hung up.
He put on his coat and buttoned it. He hadn’t parked far away, but the ice falling from the sky was like a biblical plague.
“Mr. Szacki?”
He turned around. Behind him stood Wiktoria Sendrowska, the student from class 2E, holding her diploma like a shield. He wasn’t sure if she was expecting him to congratulate her or start a conversation. He had nothing to say. He took a closer look at her, but she still had no distinguishing features, just large pale-blue eyes, the color of a glacier. And they were very solemn. Perhaps she might have seemed interesting to him if he didn’t have a sixteen-year-old daughter of his own. Long ago, life had flicked a switch in his head, and he had stopped taking notice of young women.
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