He lifted his foot out of the pool of blood and lifted it onto the very first rung. He didn’t want to shake, he didn’t want to tremble, but he couldn’t help it. Please God let me not make a noise, Please blessed Virgin Mary may the ventilator grille not be locked. He suddenly thought of the ending of The Third Man, with Harry Lime’s fingers protruding through a sewer grille that he couldn’t open. He didn’t want to die like that. He didn’t want to die down here.
He climbed silently up to the second rung, and then the third. He was sweating so much that he could hardly keep a grip on the ironwork. Every now and then, a car or a bus would drive over the grille, momentarily blocking out of the light and filling the ventilation shaft with fumes. Marek was desperate to cough. His throat felt as if it were crammed with burrs, and his eyes were watering, but he didn’t dare to make a sound. He thought he heard the sound of a knife-blade scraping across concrete; and a shifting, dragging noise. But then another bus blared over the ventilation shaft, and he couldn’t hear anything at all.
He climbed up two more rungs. He was more than halfway up the shaft now, but his arms were juddering with fatigue, and his legs seemed to have lost all of their strength. Please God help me get out of here, he prayed. Please God don’t let me die.
He managed to drag himself up the last four rungs, and at last he reached the ventilator grille. He pushed upward with his right hand, but he couldn’t move it. He could actually see a streetlight and part of a building, and traffic flashing past. A truck drove right over the grille, with a deafening rumble and a sizzling of tyres, and Marek almost lost his grip.
He pushed again. He was sure that he could feel the grille shift a little, but he wasn’t able to get enough leverage to lift it right up. He cautiously took his left hand off the top rung, too, and balanced on the ladder with his feet and his knees, so that he could try pushing upward with both hands. Again, he could feel the grille shifting slightly in the roadbed, but it was far too firmly lodged.
He glanced down the ventilation shaft. There was nothing down there but darkness, and blood; but he didn’t dare risk going back the way he had come. The thought of crawling along that pipe again was like a dark, jangling nightmare – especially after what had happened to Clayton.
One lesson he had learned from breaking into derelict buildings was that if you wanted a door open, you didn’t try to beat it with your fist or rush at it with your shoulder, the way they did in police movies. That way, all you got was badly bruised. You kicked it, as hard as you could, and even the strongest doors could only withstand two or three determined kicks.
He leaned back on the ladder until his shoulders were resting on the opposite side of the ventilation shaft. Then he took his feet off the rungs, and began to ‘walk’ up the brickwork, his arms splayed behind him to give him support, and to prevent himself from falling. He was grunting with effort, and he couldn’t stop himself from coughing, but he kept on ‘walking’ until he was doubled-up, and his left foot was nearly touching the grille. He took a deep breath, and then he swung his left leg and tried to kick upward. But his position was too awkward, and he slid down the shaft for two or three horrifying metres, his jacket slithering against the bricks. He snatched for one of the rungs and managed to stop himself from sliding any further, but after that he clung to the ladder, shivering and panting.
Maybe he should wait here until he was sure that the Executioner had gone, and then try to attract attention by shouting and poking his fingers through the grille. But how did he know that the Executioner wasn’t going to stay here all night, and all the next day, listening and waiting for him?
Painfully, he started to climb up the rungs again, until he reached the top. He took out his flashlight, switched it on, and waved it backward and forward underneath the grille. The batteries were dying, but maybe somebody would see it, and call for help.
Another truck ran over the grille, blasting Marek with thick black diesel smoke. He lifted his hand to cover his face. And dropped his torch.
He heard it rattle all the way down the ventilation shaft, and echo as it hit the bottom. He waited, clinging tightly to the rungs. At first, there was nothing but silence, no response at all. Marek hoped and prayed that the Executioner had been satisfied with slaughtering Clayton, and had gone back the way it had come. But then he heard a thick, shuffling sound, and the springy tap-tap-tapping of a knife-point.
He gave the ventilator grille another effortful push. It shifted almost half a centimetre, and he heard the crunching of grit against metal as it settled back again. He pushed it again, using the heel of his hand, clenching his teeth and straining his back. The grille lifted – it actually lifted – and then it violently slammed back down again as a car ran over it, almost breaking Marek’s wrist.
Gasping, he pushed yet again. And it was then that he heard the knife-point scratching against the sides of the bricks, and a soft draught of air rising all around him, faster and faster, as if something huge were climbing up the ventilation shaft after him. He looked down, and what he saw frightened him so much that his mouth stretched open but he couldn’t find the breath to articulate a scream.
It was a bulky shape, in a voluminous black cloak. But for all its bulk it had a tiny, delicate face, as white as porcelain, with dead black eyes – a face that would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so horrifying.
It was scaling the rungs of the ventilation shaft hand over hand, and its hands were white and spindly, almost transparent, like long spider’s legs scuttling up towards him.
Marek stared at this creature for one frozen instant, and then he bent his head down and rammed the metal grille with his shoulders. The grille burst out of its setting and clanged into the roadway. Marek scrambled after it, just as one spidery hand caught at the heel of his boot.
He was right out in the middle of the street, with traffic roaring on either side of him. A taxi swerved to avoid him and almost collided with a bus. A truck bellowed its horn at him. He knew how dangerous it was to leave the ventilation shaft uncovered, but he didn’t look back. He ran right down the middle of the street, his arms and his legs going like scissors. His throat hurt, from dragging in warm, polluted air. He had a pain in his stomach and a pain in his chest. But he kept on running and running, regardless of the traffic. He ran right across a major road intersection, followed by hooting and shouting and drivers waving their fists at him.
He didn’t know where he was, or where he was going. All he knew was that he had to put as much distance between himself and that creature as he possibly could. He kept turning around, fearful that it was following, but all he could see was traffic signals and automobile lights and fluorescent signs.
At last, exhausted, he crossed to the sidewalk, and sat down with his feet in the gutter, his head between his knees. He was gasping for breath and caked in rapidly-drying sewage. An old man came up and asked him if he was all right, but all he could do was shake his head. In spite of the traffic, he couldn’t get the noise of Clayton’s butchery out of his ears.
Eventually, however, he looked up, and realized where he was – on Ujazdowskie Avenue, by the Ujazdowski Park, right across the street from Koszykowa, where he and Clayton had first entered the sewers. They had crawled round in a circle, and arrived back only two or three blocks from where they had started; and it had taken them hours.
Marek climbed to his feet and walked unsteadily into the park. It was quieter here, and he could breathe. He made his way along the path, with shrubs and herbaceous borders on either side, their flowers closed and secretive now that it was dark. He felt as if his whole life had been turned inside out, in nothing but a few hours. He had climbed down into the sewer in innocence and optimism, in a spirit of adventure; and come out of it shocked and distressed, and ten years older. He had known that Jan Kaminski had been horribly killed, but that had been easy to accept compared with Clayton’s death. He had liked Clayton: he was almost an uncle. But he had heard the Executioner chopping him up like
butcher’s meat, and that was more than he could take.
He passed a colourless lawn where ducks were sleeping, their heads furled under their wings. His feet dragged, and he felt like falling onto the grass himself, and closing his eyes. But at last he arrived at the park’s main gate, facing onto Roz Avenue. Right inside it stood the statue of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the pianist and politician, who had fought so hard for the reconstruction of Poland. Marek leaned against its plinth and bowed his head. He felt like crying, but he couldn’t cry. He didn’t even know if he would ever be able to speak.
15
Warsaw was humid and hazy the next day, when they returned. It looked like a city seen in a foggy mirror: the Viceroy’s Palace, St Anne’s Church, and the Palace of Culture and Science. Even though they had driven with the car windows wide open, Sarah’s green crepe dress was sticking to the seat. Rej looked unusually jaunty in a white short-sleeved shirt and sunglasses, and he had been singing for most of the way back, and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
Sarah knew why he was so happy. He felt that he made a catch, a wonderful catch. She knew that he was going to ask to see her again; as soon as tonight; but she also knew that she couldn’t. He had given her everything: warmth, protection, humour and such old-fashioned courtesy – opening doors, pulling out chairs, and walking on the outside of the sidewalk. He had made her feel as if he had wanted her because she was a woman, and nobody had done that to her, not for a very long time. But they came from different planets, and their lovemaking had been like the lovemaking of two species that were only similar to look at, not to know.
She knew why he was so happy, and she knew that she was going to hurt him; but she had no choice. She couldn’t afford another traumatic affair, not now. She would be better off with another rock singer.
They reached her apartment, and Rej lifted her bag out of the trunk and opened the car door for her. It creaked like a door in Castle Dracula.
‘I hope it’s been good,’ he told her. He took off his sunglasses and his eyes were filled with the need for reassurance.
She kissed him, once on each cheek, and then on the lips. ‘The best weekend I ever had, I promise. Thank you, Stefan. And I love Katarzyna.’
‘Do you want me to carry your bag for you?’
‘No, no. You don’t have to do that. You have to get Katarzyna back to her mother, don’t you?’
Rej looked at his watch. ‘I was wondering... maybe I could see you later.’
‘For sure. I’d love to. But not today. I’m going to have so much work to catch up on. I haven’t even written my weekly report for last week!’
‘You don’t want dinner tonight?’
She shook her head. ‘Let me get my nose back to the grindstone first. I have so much to do.’
Rej said, ‘That dream you had... that didn’t upset you too much?’
‘It was a dream, that’s all. Too much honey vodka, too much country air.’
‘Ah, yes. The honey vodka.’
She reached out and touched his face. She thought that it was terrible that human beings found it so difficult to love each other: she could have cried. She turned around and saw Katarzyna in the back seat of the car, smiling because she liked her, and because she made her father happy, and she felt so sad that she almost relented, and said that she could have dinner. But she knew where that would lead; and she didn’t want to go that way; not yet; and probably not ever.
‘I always want you to tell me the truth,’ said Rej, in English, pronouncing it ‘troot’.
‘I will,’ said Sarah, in Polish, and picked up her bag.
Rej was still standing beside his car when she entered the building. She went upstairs to her apartment, opened the door, and flung her bag on the sofa. First she needed a shower: the washing facilities in Czerwinsk had been primitive, to say the least – a china jug in a big china basin. She crossed the living-room and opened up the french windows to get rid of some of the weekend’s staleness, and when she went out onto the balcony she was surprised to see that Rej was still there, standing in the same position, as if he expected her to come back out again, and say that she would have dinner with him after all, and that she loved him.
She went into the kitchen, opened up her breadbox, and found half a stale loaf and a hard bialy roll. She took out the bialy, went back to the balcony, took aim, and dropped it neatly right in front of his feet. It bounced right into the street, and was flattened by a passing taxi. She saw Rej jump back, startled; and then look up at the sky, turning around and around, as if he thought that a passing bird had dropped it on him.
Sarah fell back on her sofa, convulsed, her hand clamped over her mouth to stop herself from laughing too loudly. She was still laughing when the phone rang. She climbed off the sofa and picked it up, carrying it over to the balcony so that she could see whether Rej was still there. She was just in time to see his Volkswagen pull out into the traffic and head south. She saw Katarzyna turn her head and look towards her balcony; but she doubted if Katarzyna could see her.
The voice on the phone said, ‘It’s Marek. I’ve been trying to call Rej, but he wasn’t there.’
‘Marek? You sound dreadful! What’s happened?’
‘It’s Clayton, he’s dead. We went down into the sewers and the Executioner got him.’
Sarah felt as if her whole body had been immersed in freezing water. ‘Clayton? I can’t believe it! Are you sure?’
‘He’s dead! The Executioner chopped him up, just like those Germans! I don’t know what to do!’
‘Come on, Marek, try to stay calm. Have you told anyone else?’
‘I tried to call Rej at the police station but they told me he hadn’t arrived.’
‘You didn’t tell any other police officers?’
‘I didn’t know how to explain it. I mean, there was thing – and it killed Clayton, and it came right after me.’
‘Marek – try not to get too excited. Try to tell me what happened.’
‘I saw this man go into the sewers; that was yesterday. I just wondered what he was doing so I followed him home. I called Clayton and Clayton told me to watch him, so I did. Then yesterday evening I saw him again; and we followed him. We went right into the sewers – down this really narrow pipe. But the Executioner came after us, and he chopped Clayton into little bits, I mean he chopped him up! And I don’t know how I got out of there, I really don’t.’
‘It’s okay,’ Sarah soothed him, although she was already beginning to make terrible sense out of what he was babbling at her. ‘Marek – it’s okay. Rej should be back at his apartment by eleven o’clock, I’ll call him up then, and we can meet.’
‘But Clayton... I liked him so much. I still can’t believe it. We were crawling along this pipe and it just came after him.’
‘How about you?’ asked Sarah. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I j – j –,’ Marek began, and had to stop.
‘Where are you now? Do you want to come around here?’
‘I think I’m all right. I’m at home. My mother made me some tea.’
‘Marek, listen to me, where did you go down the sewer?’
‘Koszykowa, half way down. But we crawled around for hours. It was daylight when we went down there, and when I managed to get out, it was dark.’
‘Where do you think Clayton was killed?’
‘It’s down this really narrow pipe... somewhere under Ujadowskie Avenue.’
‘All right,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll talk to Rej as soon as I can.’ She was just as upset as Marek, but she tried to sound calm. ‘Don’t call the police just yet. The police think they’re holding the Executioner already, and they won’t want anybody telling them different. If I know anything about police politics, they’ll probably lock you up, too, and accuse you of killing Clayton.’
‘But the Executioner killed him! He chopped him up, I could hear him, chopping him up!’
‘Did you see him?’ asked Sarah.
‘What?’ s
aid Marek. His voice was as pale and crazed as pottery glaze.
‘Did you see the Executioner? That’s what I want to know.’
Marek was silent for almost half a minute. Then he said, ‘Not very clearly.’
‘Did he have a cape, Marek, a large black cape?’
‘A cape, yes. Kind of a cloak.’
‘What about his face? Did you see his face?’
‘I don’t think so. I was just trying to get out of there.’
‘Did he have a small face, Marek? A really tiny face, like a child’s face, totally white? Did he have jet-black eyes?’
The moon could have changed quarter in the time that it took Marek to reply. But at last he said, ‘Yes. A really small face... really pale.’
‘Then she was right,’ said Sarah; in sorrow, but also in relief. ‘The old woman was right, and Rej was right. It’s the same face that I saw in my nightmare, except that it’s not a nightmare.’
‘What?’ said Marek. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll tell you all about it when we meet. But this thing is real, Marek; and it’s looking for us. Looking for us – anybody who fought against the Germans in the Uprising, and their children, and their grandchildren, and their cousins, and maybe their friends, too. It doesn’t want anybody left, Marek. It wants to kill all of us.’
*
Rej left Katarzyna with her mother, after an awkward tango in the hallway involving Rej and Katarzyna and Katarzyna’s suitcase. Her mother proffered her cheek, with its soft blonde hairs like a peach. Rej had managed to miss kissing it, in case he was being unfaithful. ‘Next weekend,’ he promised Katarzyna, raising his hand. ‘We’ll go to Pomiechowek. We can ride there, too.’
Katarzyna clung to his sleeve for a moment. Perhaps she, too, had seen that Sarah didn’t love him as much as he thought she did; but she loved him, because he was her father.
The door closed in his face and Rej went back downstairs to his empty Volkswagen. He searched in the glove box for a cigarette but there weren’t any.
The Chosen Child Page 30
