Fragments of VOSTOK, my genre-bending literary sci-fi published by Vræyda Literary
On days like this, Poznań was the cruellest of cities. It wasn’t easy to tell whether this was because of the twelve degrees of frost, the sharp sunlight, the motionless ice-bound white river, the snow lying on the roofs or a peculiar combination of these elements, but one could clearly sense that the city was streaked with a strange kind of anxiety, that its foundations were filled with elusive energy. You could swear it was about to suddenly break in half, and its northern and southern parts intended (like jaws) to break away from the ground, rise towards each other with a violent movement and forcefully collide until Piątkowo’s blocks of flats (like teeth) fitted between the tenements of Wilda.
If you made, right along one of its walls, a longitudinal section through the pub Kisielice, on the left side of the colourful rectangle you would see a bar, the back of a bartender working behind the bar, in the background a wall painted in vividly coloured stripes, black-and-white artwork on the wall, and further towards the right end of the section: empty tables, chairs, sofas. The only clients in the pub visible from this perspective were a man and a woman, in their late twenties by the looks of it, who sat on a soft couch by the right edge of the rectangular section and talked, smoking tremendous amounts of cigarettes.
A cloud of grey smoke hung in the air, the woman talked about the seemingly never-ending winter, there hasn’t been a winter like this in years, about chronic lack of sleep, she looked at a window covered with a soaked poster depicting a deer and ran her fingers through her short, bright hair. When she spoke, she gesticulated wildly; while sitting, she constantly shifted; and when she was telling her companion about a preview in that gallery in Jeżyce district, about the stunning works she saw there, she almost rose from the sofa.
The man, on the other hand, mostly sat in silence, inhaling smoke, listening to his friend, smiling faintly, but when he spoke, he covered his mouth with his hand closed into a fist or massaged his thick, dark eyebrow with his thumb and stared into the distance, which made him look unsure of what he was saying.
The pub was slowly filling up. Each time the door to the street opened, a piercing chill came in, covering in a flash the length of the stairs leading to the basement and permeating through a thick curtain which separated the pub’s vestibule from the long, colourful room. The man called the woman Weronika, she addressed him as Wu. With the back of her hand, she stroked his few-day-old dark stubble and said it would be nice if Wu moved his shapely arse again and went to the bar for a beer. Or not, maybe she’ll drink some wine, but only white, or better: white wine with sparkling water. And ice.
Wu smiled, put out his cigarette, kissed Weronika on the forehead and rose from the table. She followed him with her eyes as he stepped deeper into the pub, and then looked with yearning at his almost two-metre-high body leaning against the counter while he chatted with the bartender he apparently knew.
When he came back, she was sitting on the couch, snuggled into its corner, shrouded in a greenish glow beaming from her phone texting someone obstinately. Once she noticed Wu, she took her legs off the seat, leaning over the phone and pressing the buttons for a while longer. Wu asked whether it was Jerzy, and Weronika replied yes, she was sorry and — after some hesitation — it seemed Jerzy and she got together again.
In response to her friend’s judgemental look, she whined it’s not that she was planning it, it just happened, and took the first sip. Wu sat down, wetted his lips with beer, pushed the glass away and tossed into the dusky room a rhetorical question,
‘How many times can you get into the same shit?’
‘Look who’s talking,’ she replied sulkily, moved closer to the armrest, as far as she could get away from Wu, whose face in turn twitched in a grimace, as if he had a retort on the tip of his tongue.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke. Weronika texted for a while until she sighed, put her phone down and suggested maybe at least the two of them would stop arguing about it. Anyway, she’s giving it two weeks until, in this series of break-ups and make-ups, Jerzy and she will end up where they started. He gave a conciliatory smile, kissed her on the temple and wrapped his arm around her shoulder only to withdraw it a moment later.
They sat for a while, saying nothing against the background of the wall painted in stripes of different shades of green, with black-and-white artwork above their heads. Weronika smoked as well, pulled up her legs, and they stayed almost motionless for a good few minutes, staring into the void and releasing from their lungs occasional clouds of grey smoke. Finally, the thick curtain over the doorway opened, letting inside — in the company of a cold waft from the street — a woman of around forty.
‘Olka!’ On seeing her, Weronika shrieked, jumped to her feet and ran towards the door to throw herself into the woman’s arms.
The forty-year-old found the time to say hello to some friend at one of the tables before she headed deeper into this colourful, half-greenish, half-reddish tunnel, which was indeed formed by the interior of Kisielice, and went to the bar.
She came back to the table holding three beers, put them in front of her friends, then laughed, ran her hand through dyed blond curls, tucked a tuft behind her ear, smoked and sat down. Having taken off her warm white jacket, she hung it on the back of the chair and — visibly amused for all this time — said this thing with the attack was some deep shit, there might be more at any moment.
‘Stop it. I’m fed up with discussing this topic over and over.’
‘But the problem won’t go away because we pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s hard not to speak about it when such a, well, bomb hasn’t happened in years. We thought we were living in boring times of peace, and there you have it.’
Weronika replied she had two days off in a row for the first time since who knows when and was sick of hearing about it. Olka’d better bollock her for getting back with Jerzy.
‘You got back with Jerzy?’ Olka let out an honest, booming laugh, which infected the others a moment later. Then she changed the topic and asked Wu about the progress of his work on those washing machine instructions.
Thankfully he’s done with it. Now he’s getting down to writing a truly fascinating spreadsheet user manual. Maybe he’ll finally learn how to use a spreadsheet. He rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb again, sighed freelancing has surprisingly little to do with freedom. At the moment, his life is reduced to typing the shit out of the keyboard. This is not what he imagined a few years ago.
‘Oh, stop grumbling. You’d rather work in a shop?’
Weronika laughed. ‘It’s easy to say if you’re a director of a thriving company. Have you even been to the office this month?’
‘Don’t exaggerate. I sometimes drop by. Anyway, I’ve worked hard for that. If you don’t like it, you should find a busier friend, but I’m curious who’s going to pay for all those drinks. Better tell me about that novel of yours.’
Wu told her to forget it, he didn’t have time lately and, frankly, no longer liked what he’d written so far. It seems he’ll have to begin from scratch if he only finds some free time.
Weronika remarked with a sneer he would’ve had more free time if he hadn’t wandered from pub to pub every night, which Wu answered with a humorous ‘spierdalaj’ only to put out the cigarette and announce he needed to take a leak.
Once he disappeared behind the curtain, Weronika started talking about how insanely wasted she got the night before, totally blotto; she didn’t remember much: the voices of drunken people, the smell of kebabs, the bright car lights, the piercing frost. She met some guy — in Dragon, or earlier, in Kisielice — and the two of them walked somewhere across the market square towards Garbary Street, maybe to Mięsna cos where else could they’ve gone. When she woke up, she couldn’t remember anything else, except for the image of small glowing pink rectangles she still has before her eyes. She’s got no idea what to connect it with.
‘Brilliant!’ Olka laughed and added Weronika must take better care of herself, after which she took out a rustling fifty-zloty note and handed it to Wu, who came back from the toilet, asking him to buy another round.
They left the pub well after midnight. Freezing, still air lay heavy over Poznań, high banks of snow stretched along its streets, people occasionally sneaked in the light of lampposts, cars went by.
The three of them walked along the white Freedom Square, next to many-branched platanus trees which looked in the street light like taken from a horror. Olka took Paderewski Street, saying she’d drop by Dragon, while Weronika and Wu kept walking along Marcinkowski Avenue, at the feet of the bulky silhouette of a museum, laughing this barfly wouldn’t be home by six, that’s for sure. Weronika shivered with cold. Wu wrapped his arm around her, so she sunk into his dark blue jacket, barely reaching his shoulder, and they walked unhurriedly towards Wielkopolski Square.
‘She’s relentless, I’ll give her that.’ Weronika rubbed her cheek against the cool fabric. ‘I wonder what kid she’s going to pick up tonight.’
‘Probably a fifteen-year-old,’ said Wu, and Weronika, laughing, tightened her grip around his waist. Olka once told her she hadn’t the slightest intention of ever being in a relationship again, when she recovered from depression after her husband’s death, she decided that from now on she’d count only on herself and it was like being born anew. Weronika envies her. She herself can’t last a month without a guy before all her neuroses start to strike down.
They reached St Adalbert Street and stopped by one of the buildings. Weronika thanked Wu for walking her home, kissed him on the cheek and disappeared into a dark doorway. He, on the other hand, began to slowly walk towards a petrol station and farther — along Little Garbary Street.
A tram number 9 derailed in the district of Wilda, hitting cars.
Meanwhile, in a completely different part of the city, along the PST (Poznań Fast Tram) line, on tracks laid down in a long deep trench, which — full of snow — formed a completely white tunnel, a two-cabin tram number 16 hurtled along like a bullet. People were crowding inside, the cabins fishtailed at sharper turns, and each time it happened, a sudden wave came through the passengers clinging to yellow tubes and the backs of seats, from the front to the end of each cabin, making them for a moment like one organism.
At the end of the second cabin, leaning against railings and staring outside a dirty pane, stood Weronika (in a red jacket) and some other woman, probably a bit younger: wearing a black coat, black boots, thick vivid orange tights, wrapped in a black scarf onto which her straight dark brown hair was falling. She tucked a tuft of it behind her ear. Weronika and the girl didn’t talk, the deafening clatter of the wheels on the rails being a possible reason, and glanced at each other only now and then, for the most part staring absent-mindedly at tracks flashing outside the window. The view behind the panes made up the following sequence: the whiteness of snow, the greyness of concrete (Słowiańska Street Station), the whiteness of snow, the greyness of concrete (Solidarity Avenue Station), and then the whiteness of snow again.
The oblong barrack of a shopping centre loomed over the tunnel, its elevation illuminated with glaring lights, a luminous yellow cord undulating along the building, and from the perspective of the rushing tram, this edifice could resemble a dignified, slowly swimming whale. When the vehicle reached the next, this time stunningly colourful, station (Lechicka/Poznań Plaza), Weronika told Zuza (that is how she addressed the girl gazing outside the window) to wake up, they needed to get off, and then they both headed for the exit.
No more than two hours later, another tram number 16 arrived at a stop in Little Garbary Street, the automatic doors opened, and people started to step out of the green cabins. Among them were Weronika and Zuza, carrying heavy linen bags clanking with bottles of wine.
‘Oh, give me a break.’ Weronika looked away. Zuza touched her shoulder in a conciliatory gesture and said she was worried about her, that’s all.
‘Yeah, yeah, everyone’s worried about me, but at the same time they treat me like I’m twelve.’
‘Because you behave like you’re fucking twelve.’ Zuza laughed, and Weronika quickly joined her in laughter.
Zuza added, all right, she’ll stop wittering about Jerzy cos it didn’t make much sense anyway, and Weronika was going to do what she always, kurwa, did, after which she cursed the never-ending frost and suggested they go here, to the green, leave their bags on the bench and smoke cos another few minutes without a cig and she’ll go nuts.
Weronika uttered a long sigh. She gets it, she knows what she’s doing is totally dumb and nothing good’s going to come of it, but there’s something about Jerzy that she can’t free herself of. Anyhow, maybe they should change the topic, and a smoke is a great idea.
They left their bags on a dilapidated bench, Zuza took out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to her friend, they started to smoke. There was a row of cars standing in the street, a tram crossing the junction, while the snow around them covered a layer of dead grass, animal faeces, litter, shards. The cigarette smoke was milky from the frost.
‘Did you see the coverage? I mean of the attack,’ said Zuza. ‘You have to admit it was a spectacular job. The damage was, kurwa, massive, and it’ll take fucking years to patch up the rifts in the infrastructure.’
She paused when she saw someone: along the untended path crossing the green walked a fairly tall blond man in an olive jacket with a white cap pulled over his ears. On seeing the girls, he gave a wide grin and approached them.
They talked for a while, the man decided to have a smoke as well, Weronika and Zuza called him Kuba, Kuba asked whether they were going to Mięsna that night, to which they replied they were throwing a small party at Wu’s, but Kuba should drop by if he was in the neighbourhood anyway. There’ll be the usual bunch, there’ll be squid, and the ratio of bottles of wine to participants looks quite promising.
Kuba replied he’d think about it cos he was working on some ‘friend’, as he called her, but he can just as well work on her at Wu’s, after which he said he must be going cos it was his tram, but he’ll let them know.
The girls finished off their cigarettes, put them out against the edge of the bench, lifted their bags heavy with wine, bread, vegetables, cephalopods, headed towards a zebra crossing and — after several minutes at a red light — kept going along Estkowski Street for a bit. They carefully walked down an ice-covered escarpment to where the Warta River once flowed but now it was a sports field and a row of parking spaces, crossed this field, carried on among cars parked in the snow, went past a row of tin garages (black-and-white graffiti on the walls) and walked further, towards Chwaliszewo Street.
The kitchen walls were covered with ragged dark pink wallpaper; on the shabby kitchen cabinets, on the kitchen worktop, on the fridge stood flowerpots spewing out tangled ivy shoots. Once you entered the kitchen, you had the impression it was a freeze-frame from a film, and one careless move would suffice for the whole room to be consumed, in a split second, by the vividly green vegetation.
Weronika and Zuza sat at the table covered with plastic cloth and crammed with bottles of wine, a bowl full of (deep-fried) squid in beer batter, a plate of lemons, an ashtray. Wu stood opposite them, leaning against the kitchen worktop and tapping his leg along to music coming from a laptop placed on top of the fridge.
The three of them drank red wine, cigarette ends lit up above the table. Weronika said she dreamt about small glowing pink rectangles, the same she saw that drunken night. She laughed, said she must have taken some shit while under the influence, or that chap, whoever he was, slipped a date rape drug into her cocktail, as Kuba generously suggested. Speaking of Kuba, where is he? They should call him to come by.
Wu sighed and started chastening Weronika, saying she needed to take care of herself cos she was really going over the top this time and it couldn’t fucking end well, when loud ringing of the door phone interrupted him.
Wu disappeared into the entrance hall, a cold draught from the staircase entered the kitchen, one could hear — in spite of the blaring music — increasingly loud steps on the stairs, and a moment later Olka came in, uttering a cheerful ‘cześć’ and followed by Wu carrying an armful of wine bottles.
She forced her way through the grey smoke to kiss Weronika and Zuza, declared she came only for a minute cos she needed to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, but she’d love to taste the legendary squid. Then she took a cigarette in her hand and began to look for a lighter. Weronika lifted a burning match in front of Olka’s face. Kuba was supposed to be here, but he’s working on some chick, so it’s anyone’s guess if he’s going to come.
Yeah, Olka knows, she saw them yesterday in Dragon. She reached into the bowl for a piece of squid flesh coated in breadcrumbs, devoured it in one go and went on to say this girl was a tough one. For the whole evening Kuba pretended to be interested in pharmacy, as she was some pharmacy student, whispered in her ear he’d love to see her in a lab coat and protective eyewear, he almost started naming his favourite over-the-counter drugs when the girl interrupted him mid-sentence, saying it’s been lovely, but she must be home by midnight. She even tricked him into paying for the cab.
Wu, flipping through songs on the computer, said Kuba never liked the easy way. To Zuza’s remark expressing her irritation with the constant change of music, he replied with unvarying composure he was looking for a piece he listened to while wasted the night before. He totally can’t remember which one it was. Or maybe he’s imagining things.
Finally, he gave up, played a random track, leant against the wall and said those terrorists were fucked up big time. Watching their speech sent shivers down his spine. Though maybe we shouldn’t be surprised: the authorities treated them like cattle for centuries, and when you look at this now, it’s hard to believe we were so naïve. This was bound to happen eventually. But there must’ve been a lot of bluff in all this; it’s impossible they have the technology they were talking about.
Could Weronika, please, relax with a glass of wine on her day off without being forced to hearing about those fuckers all the time? (For a while, she squatted on a leatherette chair with her glass, giving an occasional eye roll.)
‘You’re fucking lucky you’ve got a day off,’ retorted Zuza, who — as she quickly added — didn’t have a day off in three weeks because her greed made her take on another translation, though her schedule was already full, and to top this all off, Weronika was dragging her round the shops and talked her into cooking some, kurwa, squid, as if she knew how to cook.
‘Oh, have a drink.’ Weronika laughed, filling up Zuza’s glass.
The events of the rest of this evening could be captured in stills: Wu leaning against the fridge, Zuza, Weronika and Olka at the table, bright dots of burning tobacco. Next, a similar scene, but with Kuba and a dainty bright-haired girl standing in the doorway, the girl was pale and had big blue eyes, she barely spoke a word. Then the dark pink kitchen, Weronika and Zuza above an empty bowl, the former whining about her complicated relationship with Jerzy, a cloud of grey smoke above their heads. Half an hour later at the table sat Weronika, Zuza and Kuba, the latter walked his blonde friend to a cab and told the girls someone must’ve got pretty stoned cos they broke into the military museum and stole a war scythe. Even later, a similar scene: Wu standing in the doorway with a bottle of wine, saying Olka went to Dragon after all but promised she’d be back, which meant she wouldn’t. Then a bulb blowing out, darkness instantly filling the kitchen. Later again, the rest of them sitting by candlelight, against the background of the wallpaper which seemed almost black in this light, Weronika immersed in a greenish glow beaming from the phone and texting. After one more hour, there was only Wu, Kuba and Zuza, the latter saying it always ends like this, sooner or later Jerzy calls and after ten minutes Weronika’s gone. And the last scene: a candle burning out, Wu and Kuba sitting in silence above the last of the wine, with lustreless eyes, smoking; the room was tightly filled with smoke, the smoke was as dense as fog.
A heavy dark sky hung above the city, it was night, Poznań’s blocks of flats and tenement houses remained dormant, car parks choked on freezing air, lampposts cast a lurid light, snow lay heavy on the roofs, and a strong, piercing wind ran along the network of streets; it carried frost.
In light from the street you could see unfocused outlines of the furniture and cardboard boxes, crumpled bedding, Wu tossing and turning. You could smell the pungent scent of tobacco smoke. Hear the muffled voices of brawling chavs. Finally, Wu sighed, got up from the bed, walked through the darkness of the entrance hall to the darkness of the kitchen, groped for the switch, pushed it, and when in spite of this it remained dark, he silently cursed the blown-out bulb. He felt around the worktop to find a bottle of mineral water and started to drink — with fast, greedy gulps.
Twenty minutes later he already walked along Garbary Street, there was no one within the range of his sight, some dead-drunk girl lay in one of the doorways, but he couldn’t possibly see it, so he walked, trembling with cold, towards Bernardine Square, passed a shop selling telescopes (a bloated Jupiter on a poster next to the entrance), a row of black shop windows, a chemist’s ‘Wenus’, a dot-matrix display scrolling the message, ‘Stay healthy. Stay productive. Collect points.’
Then he followed the tramline towards the river, Mostowa Street at this time of night was dark and motionless, no cars were approaching, so Wu walked diagonally to the other side and kept striding along the street, only to take a turn before Roch Bridge and go down a steep embankment to the river itself. The Warta was ice-bound and covered with a thick layer of snow, the sky whitish from the city glow. Wu smoked, slowly carrying along the invisible bank, and as he walked, he sometimes squinted and massaged his eyelids, like one does to soothe an unbearable headache.
One time after he opened his eyes, and it was when he nearly reached Chrobry Bridge, he stopped to stare, straining his eyes, into the dark space under the bridge’s deck. Right next to the bank, under a pillar, loomed a shape. Wu hesitated, then took a few steps forward, approaching the shape to a distance at which one could already see it was a girl kneeling in an unnatural pose, strangely bent forwards.
He asked if everything was all right. Silence.
After a moment he came closer, an arm’s length away, and — with hesitation — gently touched her shoulder, but the girl didn’t budge. Finally, he took his phone out from his pocket and shone it on her face.
The reddish light revealed a mouth gagged with a decent-sized lemon, blue, ghastly open eyes, hands tied behind the back and a belly slit open to pour onto the snow a ripe cluster of guts.
Small glowing pink rectangles, I can see them whenever I close my eyes. The navy-blue sky over Międzymoście Square, the white clouds below the sky, the grey gulls, guarded car parks. Frost like small daggers plunged into my body. Once again we walk towards the river, neck in front of the off-licence. Once again the scratching of his stubble, pink rectangles, something about Venus, about Ceres. Chwaliszewo Street, the lamppost like a strobe light. Czartoria Street, we walk down the ice-covered embankment.
Now I’m sitting in my kitchen. Everything’s still grey: the snow-covered St Adalbert Street outside the window, the blurred outlines of the kitchen furniture and fridge getting sharper by the minute. The light from my laptop must make me look like a ghost. I’m strangely sober drinking the last of the last beer. My hands still tremble.
I look at the curtain edges, then close my eyes. I can see the small pink bloody rectangles, hear the words of our quarrel in my head like a broken record. Insults shouted by Jerzy. The sound of a shattered glass. The rustle of clothes packed in a hurry. My own weirdly alien voice, screaming that if I feel like it, I’ll let half of the city shag me, and it’s none of his business because it’s over. A door slam.
In my mind I walk out again, heated into the cold night. Stand in front of the block of flats. Cosmonauts Estate is silent and unreal. My hand struggles to hold a cigarette when I try to light it. The smoke irritates my throat, sore from all the screaming. The light of lampposts, the block of flats’ blue door, its façade painted in blue rectangles. The blue gutters, blue bench, blue railings enclosing a white lawn, the pink rectangles (I need to keep it together), the naked branches casting tangled shadows on the snow.
I start to sob and, a few minutes later, walk across the roundabout, empty at this hour, under the night sky heavy with white clouds, wondering what Zuza and Wu are going to say. I can almost see their concerned but smug faces. They always know better, and I always get myself into the same mess.
Stop thinking about it. St Adalbert Street outside the window, almost no beer left. There’s still a little wine in the fridge. Lurid light, drinking straight from the bottle, the pink of the rectangles under my eyelids, thinking about Wu.
Suddenly, it’s the first weeks of our friendship. It’s early summer, and we go together to the Warta River, to the sun-burnt grasses, to be devoured by mosquitoes. We sit down on the concrete riverbank, still warm from the scorching day, look at the river’s waters, listen to the hum of cars on Chrobry Bridge, drink krupnik straight from the bottle, talk.
It turns out Wu and I read exactly the same books, go to the same films, have uncannily similar reflections on the emptiness and pointlessness of life. Something about Venus, about Ceres, it’s getting colder. Wu wraps his arm around me, goose pimples all over my body. My breathing gets faster, and I feel an urge to take him home, for eternal exclusivity, and make love to him all night until dawn. It’s because I don’t know yet that in a week’s time he’ll introduce me to his boyfriend.
The small pink rectangles, pink blood gushing from arteries, I dive again into the chill of the deserted Winogrady Street, agitated after my quarrel with Jerzy. Walk along the row of villas and the park lurking behind them, on top of the sparkling, well-trodden snow.
I can’t stop thinking about the terrorists’ new announcement, Antarctic landscapes and threats spoken by a speech synthesizer. My heart is pounding. Dark windows line the street on both sides. People sleep behind them, likely dreaming about their relationships, children and problems at work. Pink rectangles under my eyelids. And this ever more palpable presentiment that all this might suddenly vanish: those villas, that dark park, tramlines, all the bus stops, streets and blocks of flats, all the shops. And I who walk crying in the middle of the freezing night.
Thinking what it is that makes me come back to Jerzy over and over, repeatedly push my way into his no longer young arms. I’m starting to regret I told him about that guy, the one who took me to the river, who must have slipped something into my drink. About that kiss under the lamppost. About the ice-covered embankment. About the small pink rectangle. Okay, perhaps I was trying to get together with Jerzy at the time, but we weren’t a couple yet. I didn’t think he could be jealous of such a thing. Though Jerzy can be jealous of anything.
Almost no wine left, the kitchen almost completely bright, the walls light up pink again, and I’m standing once more in front of Dawid, the first of the series of arseholes Wu fell for. At first, I don’t feel a thing but have the impression I am being lifted high above Poznań. They stay down below, Wu touting the questionable attributes of the slightly chubby blond in a way too tight T-shirt, and I look at all this without emotion from the height of hundreds of metres, my sight able to embrace all the districts: Winogrady, Grunwald, Wilda, Rataje.
I come back down to the ground at last, talk to them for a few minutes and, on my way home, buy a half-litre bottle of żołądkowa and two cartons of grapefruit juice. Then drink disgustingly warm cocktails and cry long into the night.