Where the Devil Can’t Go. Anya Lipska

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СКАЧАТЬ nationalists after the war. It must have been a quiet night for them to commit so much time and effort to interrogating a seventeen-year-old boy over such a stupid thing – or maybe they just enjoyed their work. He’d been left with bruises and cuts that had taken weeks to fade, but they were nothing compared to the real legacy of that night, the thing that he carried inside him, like the shadow on an X-ray. He stamped the memories back down. Forget the past.

      The girl and he gazed at the flickering video screen. The two boys were now in a car, lurching back and forward, zombie-like, to the beat. The camera cut to a shot of one of them, on his own, walking, before the camera pulled out to a wide aerial shot, revealing him as a tiny, lonely figure alone in a vast desolate wasteland.

      She gestured with her chin. ‘He is like you, when you were young.’

      ‘Like me?’

      ‘You and your friends, back then, under the Komunistow – life was bad, society didn’t work for you. This music – for young people it says the same as your folk songs, it says fuck your society, we do our own thing.’

      He knew that it was common for young women to swear these days, especially the ones who’d been in England a while, but it still shocked him in an almost physical way to hear it. When he had been her age it would have been unthinkable to use such language in front of one’s elders.

      ‘Is that what you feel about Poland today?’ he asked.

      She sipped her apple juice, eyes cast down. ‘I want to go back one day, I guess,’ she said, choosing her words. ‘But not yet. What is there for me, in Katowice? I would earn maybe half of what I get here – I’d have to save for years just to buy a five-year-old Polski Fiat.’

      There was no anger, only a resigned pragmatism in her voice.

      ‘Here, once I learn English, I can get a job in Marks and Spencer and earn good money, go to college part-time.’

      ‘What will you study?’

      Her eyes lit up, animating her whole face for the first time. ‘Physiotherapy, or maybe chiropractic, I haven’t decided yet.’

      Janusz knew Katowice: a powerhouse of heavy industry under the Soviets, many of its residential districts were now half-empty, depressing places, peopled by the old, the sick, and by those who lacked either the resources or the courage to leave. The thought of living there made him shudder. Maybe his generation had been lucky, after all – at least fighting the Kommies gave them a sense of common purpose.

      ‘Zamorski is a good guy,’ he assured her. ‘If anyone can put the country back on its feet, he will.’

      His words hung there, shiny and shallow sounding, as she gazed at him with dark brown eyes.

      ‘Politicians are all the same.’ Her tone was polite but decisive. ‘You and your friends thought that Walesa was superman, right?’

      Janusz had to admit she was right about that. He had idolised Lech Walesa once, only to watch in horrified disbelief, after the Solidarnosc leader became Poland’s first elected president, as he fell out with some of the revolution’s brightest thinkers and surrounded himself with yes-men.

      Zamorski shared Walesa’s Solidarnosc credentials, but displayed none of his demagogic tendencies and had already pulled off an impressive political balancing act, drawing on Poles’ instinctive conservatism while resisting the temptations of full-blooded nationalism. But spending the night arguing politics with the self-possessed Justyna wasn’t going to help him find the lost girl, thought Janusz. He sensed he’d have to go gently – if he came out and asked where Weronika was, she might just clam up.

      ‘Did you ever come here with Weronika?’ he asked, taking a slug of beer.

      ‘Yes, sometimes.’

      ‘Was it here she met Pawel?’ he asked.

      The faintest frown creased her forehead, but she didn’t ask how he knew about Weronika’s secret boyfriend.

      ‘No, he came into the restaurant one day and chatted her up as she served him pierogi.’

      ‘Do you remember when he first came in?’

      ‘Yes! It was February thirteenth – I remember because my Mama’s called Katarzyna and it’s her saint’s day,’ she said, with a shy smile. ‘After that, he came back every single day, flattering her, slipping her little presents – czekolatki, perfume – till she finally agreed to go out with him.’ Her voice became scornful as she talked about Adamski.

      ‘You didn’t like him.’

      ‘He was bad news,’ said Justyna, nodding her head for emphasis. ‘Nika was only nineteen’ – she used the affectionate diminutive of Weronika – ‘and he was thirty – much too old for her.’

      Janusz left a silence, letting her talk. ‘He was always getting drunk,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘and then he’d get crazy. One time the three of us, we were in a pub and he threw a glass at the TV screen – just because they were talking about the election!’ She widened her eyes at the memory. ‘We used to come here, mostly – until he got barred.’

      ‘What happened?’ asked Janusz.

      ‘He said it was for arguing with a bouncer,’ she shrugged, sceptical. ‘But he was such a liar, who knows.’

      Since the girl’s animosity toward Adamski appeared to outweigh her caginess, Janusz decided to play devil’s advocate.

      ‘Lots of Polish men like to drink,’ he said with a grin. ‘Maybe you were a bit jealous of your friend? Perhaps you would have liked Pawel for yourself?’

      ‘No way!’ she shot back, her face flushed, warming her olive complexion and making her even prettier, he noticed. ‘I didn’t say one word against him at the start – I’m not her mother. But then, one night, while Nika was in the toaleta, he put his hand up my skirt! Can you believe the guy?’

      ‘Did you tell her?’

      ‘I tried to, but she just shrugged it off, said he must have been joking. She was crazy about him, and anyway, you have to understand something about Nika: she’s bogu ducha winna.’ He smiled at the expression – innocent as a lamb – it was one his mother had often used.

      ‘Where did he work?’ If Justyna didn’t know – or wouldn’t tell him – where the pair were living, it would be his best hope of tracing the pair.

      She fiddled with the straw in her drink, shrugged. ‘It’s a big mystery. At the beginning, Nika told me he’s a builder, one of those who stands on the side of the road and waits for an Irish boss to hire him?’ Janusz nodded – in the old days he’d sometimes had to tout himself out in that humiliating way. ‘But then he started throwing big money around – taking her out for fancy meals, buying expensive hi-fi, flashy clothes, acting like a gangster.’

      ‘Maybe he won some money – internet poker, betting on the football.’

      ‘Enough to buy a new BMW?’ she asked, her eyes wide. ‘He said he was dealing in antique furniture.’ Her words dripped with derision.

      ‘So СКАЧАТЬ