I’ve been wandering all evening, bouncing from one basement bar and corner pub to the next, each emptier than the last. I don’t know how far afield I’ve drifted from my suite in Śródmieście: that borough’s vibrancy and color seem to inhabit some chic outer planet now. The sun’s pushed off, and I’ve been walking a corridor of moonlight for at least an hour – every puddle I disturb, I watch the moon shimmer, shatter, settle again. There are too few colors in this neighborhood: only the rumbling black and blue of a springtime rain and a dark checkerboard of paving stones.
Twenty, thirty minutes ago, I passed a couple guys standing streetside. One elbowed the other when he spotted me, and I pretended not to notice. A moment later they separated. One was shadowing me, perhaps too drunk or weary to be truly stealthy, and the other vanished into the rain. They’ve been keeping pace ever since.
At this hour, so far from the city center, no other pedestrians ply the rain-soaked concrete and few lights glow inside the brick buildings gaping over the pavement like eyeless skulls. Each edifice is black and sagging and probably younger than it looks. Hand-painted signs in shopfront windows speak a language of discounts and secondhand wares: ODZIEŻ UŻYWANA, TUTAJ NAJTANIEJ!, KAŻDY ARTYKUŁ 2zł!, NISKA CENA!, and, of course, the ubiquitous TANIA! TANIA! TANIA! I can’t tell how many of these places are still going concerns.
Apart from my stalkers, I’m alone out here.
The footsteps are louder now.
I’ve got some paper currency in my coat and some coins in my front pocket. A secondhand book I bought in Kraków. Hotel keys. Nothing of any real value.
I do my best to feign calm and confidence, and here, finally, the vodka is good for something, but I can still hear the footsteps matching mine in the gloom. One of the men emerges beside me, the one who vanished into the shadows a few minutes ago.
I see his smile first, but that’s not quite right. He isn’t smiling at all. Someone’s carved a jack-o’-lantern grin onto his face, and the pale, upcurving scars make a mockery of his frown. His head is shaved and swollen purple bags hang under his eyes, which look like they haven’t been shut in years.
He strides up next to me and shoves my shoulder.
Shit.
He asks for a few złotych for vodka (Polish vodka, he specifies), and I give him my usual sorry, I don’t speak Polish routine and keep walking. A mistake: I’ve just identified myself as a foreigner, and I might as well hand over my wallet now and save us both the trouble. And anyway those footsteps behind me are picking up speed.
He repeats his question in flawless English and I mumble an apology and tell him I haven’t got any money. It’s useless to pretend I’m not afraid now, and I think, fuck, I’m about to be mugged for twenty-seven złotych and a copy of goddamned Suttree, and as I break into a drunken jog I think of a dozen ways I could’ve handled this situation better.
He repeats his question once more, this time in Russian. I don’t say anything, and we walk together now like awkward strangers headed the same direction. Soon he slows and fades quietly into the rain, the scars of his smile disappearing last – a Cheshire cat fallen on hard times. Before long there remains no sign of either man, and I’m a little routed by the anticlimax, like I’ve pulled a muscle from too much flinching.
The street ends in a warren of apartment blocks, each garlanded by power lines and an occasional clothesline – sometimes a neglected garment left out in the rain. Someone has spray-painted CELINKA + MATEUSZ on a nearby wall. Another wall reads ZIEMIA OBIECANA, promised land. I feel like a trespasser here so I turn back.
I imagine a connection between the ragpicking man and the graffiti – somehow, the promise broken, Mateusz minus Celinka, his drink-blasted body tumbling blind from one trouble to another ever more deeply – visible as a thumbprint, his form discernible only by his shaved head’s jarring whiteness, the purple under his eyes, all of it buried under the color and noise of Warsaw like a rock hidden deep in a lonesome riverbed. Into which great shadow has he retreated?
Later, a pretty woman in a red dress flings open a restaurant door. She’s trying to light a cigarette in the rain. But when she sees me she scrambles back inside and lets the door slam shut behind her, and I make my way back to the hotel at a steady clip.
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