Marie (Part III)

As a forward thinking person I did a little bit of shopping. I bought: two packs of cigarettes WCZASOWE and at the all night milk bar that was in the basement across from the central station, just in case, two double portions of pancakes with cheese, abundantly sprinkled with crystals of sugar, plus four small bottles of kefir.

I spent all my money, and because for each kefir bottle I had to pay an additional high deposit, it ruined me completely. I sat down in the bar in a dark corner pretending that I was eating everything while I hid the kefir bottles in my pockets, and the two big, faience plates together with the sweet content in a definitive move I folded cheek to cheek and stealthily, covering the whole of it with the workers’ newspaper, took out of the bar.

This was even in a certain sense theft, but because everything including this bar had been State owned, and the State was notoriously and shamelessly robbing the citizenry, no one taking anything out of a State owned establishment would have any scruples about it. Neither did I.

When I quietly returned home, the lamp and the radio were off, and Marika slept, or pretended to sleep. Despite my young age I already knew these tricks well. Quickly in the darkness I undressed and lay on my bed. Despite the afternoon nap I fell asleep immediately.

It was well after nine, when half awake I looked at the sofa, where Marika was supposed to be sleeping, and the sofa was in fact empty, the sheets even as if made.

I was upset that maybe not wanting to overuse my hospitality she took advantage of the fact that I was sleeping too healthily, and woke up early and took off in a direction known only to her.

After a while I realized however that this was rather impossible, because in plain sight stood her known to me already travel bag, and on the back of the chair hung the not yet known to me bra.

I wanted to get up, when I realized that Marika was laying next to me on my right side, turned towards the wall, her back to me—and that she had nothing on her.

The first thing I did, I got up and turned on the radio on the table. I didn’t have to turn any knob, because the whole time it was tuned to only one station—American Forces Network in Europe from Stuttgart, from which almost all the time played super music.

This whole radio politics of mine, in its foundations, could rebuke the communist idea of the so called radiophonic device, called in short, kolkhoz radio. It was based on this, that the kolkhoz bore one radio transmitter, from which with appropriately amplifying wires it emitted to hundreds or even thousands of speakers finding themselves in homes, stables, barns, pig sties, fields and potato fields, a radio program, set by the hand of the kolkhoz party secretary or even the hand of the president of the kolkhoz himself. Everything had to be under control.

When I asked Marika how she slept, turned the whole time towards the wall, not too clearly she answered, not bad at all.

To not smoke idly, with the help of the electric portable stove I got to heating tea, “because you didn’t tell me that you would be with me for breakfast, our sustenance will unfortunately be very modest, because at night I was only able to buy kefir and pancakes with cheese. But for sure everything will be super. And anyway before four I must go to training.”

In contrast to yesterday, Marika was not too talkative, the whole time turned to the wall, uttering maybe three times some monosyllables.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said at last and got up.

The whole time she had her back to me, and with her left hand coquettishly, not really covering, not really holding, her breasts, she disappeared behind the bathroom door. As I cut two large, hard as hell pancakes into thin strips, I heard the ventilator turn on in the bathroom and when breakfast was already on the table, dressed in my best bathrobe, Marika finally appeared.

She had wet, freshly washed hair, combed kind of oddly, even unnaturally, because it covered the entire right side of her face, including her eyes.

“I’m sorry that I’m getting on like this around your house,” pointing at her sheets, she strung together her first complete sentence of the day.

“I was completely unprepared for such a turn of events.”

She sat down, the entire time exposing her beautiful left profile.

“Because I’m going to be forced to spend the next few days here, of course if you have no objection to it, I’d like to let you in on a secret, in a certain case.”

She turned to look me in the face and with a quick move she brushed away the thick light blonde hair covering half her face.

“Look what this son of a bitch did to me.”

Her entire eye, actually the round of her eye, was one blue-violet bruised spot, even the whites of both of her eyes were red, and her lashes partially crushed. I knew a bit about Marika, and now I learned something about her husband—that he was a brute, that he was a lady boxer and that he was most likely left handed, but what was most important I lost towards him any kind of scruples.

Ignoring completely what she said, I began to apologize to her profusely, saying that I felt partially responsible in this because when in the darkness she was going about in my small apartment she could’ve hit some hard hanging thing.

“I mean yesterday, when you came in the evening, everything was OK, because I would definitely notice something,” I added.

“You’re an idiot,” she laughed.

“I could take you to a doctor,” I offered, “I know this one even, just finishing medicine actually, named Lucer, Cezary Lucer, his father is a pastor, we can go see him anytime, he can definitely help you.”

It was another very hot day. Till three non-stop we listened to the music from the radio and dallied on the davenport.

When we got hungry, we ate more of the pancakes, washing them down with tea, but really we drank tea the whole time. The pancakes from hour to hour were getting harder.

When at half till four I left my home, she asked me, if I could, while I’m passing some post office, send her father a telegram. She sat at the table, wrote off something quickly and handed it to me, telling me to copy it onto the official form and send it.

At training I was able to borrow thirty złoty from a friend.

On my way back, I sent the telegram to her father’s address in Bielsko: EVERYTHING IS OK WITH ME I’LL CALL SOON – M, and because I had my ways, I could not resist adding SEND HORSES TO THE TRAIN STATION – JANKOWSKI.

I also bought on the way back a loaf of black bread, two large, fresh, beautiful cucumbers, half a stick of butter, a piece of cheese, liverwurst, and a lemon, because for the first time this year they threw them to the store and sold them one per person. Again I spent all my money, but even if I had more, because of the heat it would not make sense to buy anything else.