Nine by Andrzej Stasiuk

Author:Andrzej Stasiuk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Hoochie-Coochie was empty and warm. A stream of smoke, rising vertically over the bar, dissipated in the dimness beneath the ceiling. The owner was nowhere to be seen. Beata and Jacek sat in a corner, she touching his cheek, brushing his hair aside. He looked twice her age.

“It’s dry,” he said.

The bartender came from behind the counter, tall, skinny, unshaven, and didn’t even look at them. Putting out his cigarette, as if it was by some miracle that he was still on his feet. He looked like Jacek, Jacek’s brother.

“I’m sorry,” said Beata.

“It was a nice day. The forecast was good.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“He was the hungry one.”

“I have money.”

“Where from?”

“I took it from my mother when I went up there.”

“A lot?”

“Everything.”

“That’s not a lot.” He smiled and touched her hand.

“She’ll kill me when I get home.” Smiling back.

They were calm. The evening wasn’t over yet, they could touch each other, and no one would care. Not many came here. Those who did, did their business and left. Long hair, short hair, ordinary in jackets. They spoke briefly with the bartender, sat for a minute on the tall stools. If they ordered a beer, they didn’t finish it. In their wake, the smell of cosmetics, dirt, insomnia. The place looked like it was open all night, though at some point they did close up.

“If we get bored, we can go to Wola,” he said.

“Why Wola?” she asked.

“I haven’t been there in ages. We could take a 26 or a 34 to the end. There are cemeteries and factories. At night everything’s deserted.” He told her how once he went on foot from Downtown all the way to Grochów, then back again, not over the Poniatowskiego Bridge but the Śląsko-Dąbrowski Bridge, taking Świerczewskiego, Wolska, and Połczyńska. At sunrise he was outside the city, fields all around stretching green and flat to the misty horizon. He thought he’d keep walking and never return, but as in a fairy tale he looked back and saw a crimson glow in the east and the black silhouette of the city as heavy as a mountain. The Palace, the Marriott, the Terminal, the Forum, the Intraco building emerged from the sea or from inside the earth, and his strength abandoned him. He would never get anywhere, because there was nowhere to go. He left the highway, took some lane, dragged himself to bushes, curled up, and fell asleep like a dog. At noon the sun woke him.

She asked if he ever tried that again.

“No, it’s not for me. People should stay where they were born. In another place you’d have to start from scratch, and your head gets screwed up. Here everything is shit. I envy people who spend their whole lives sitting on their ass.”

“People travel,” she said.

“Right. And they come back or they don’t. You want another juice?”

“Orange, without ice.”

He went up to the bar and, elbows on the counter, said something to the barman. Without looking up from his glasses, the bartender shook his head and answered out of the corner of his mouth.

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