Killing Auntie. Andrzej Bursa

it was too late. I picked up the receiver and under the cloakroom lady’s unfriendly gaze I dialed a fictitious number, which nevertheless began with a five, like all other telephone numbers in our town. I heard a woman’s voice.

      “Hello,” I said calmly. “May I speak to Andrzej, please?”

      When told “Wrong number,” I apologized and thanked the woman sincerely.

      Back on the street I was hit by sharp wind. I thought of my flat and happily turned toward home. Home sweet home. When at last I reached home, still dressed, in my coat and hat, I looked into the kitchen.

      Auntie had not changed, except for the blood around her and on her face, which had dried into a blackish, brown scab. I took my coat off and, smoking a cigarette, I began to devise a plan of action. Without question, I had to remove the corpse from the kitchen and make some lunch. The gas was weak so I decided to light a fire under the kitchen stove and cook myself a proper meal. In the sideboard I found a couple of red cutlets, bread, frankfurters, butter, eggs and potatoes in a basket. There was also tea and even a bottle of Hungarian wine, which Auntie must have hidden there for some special occasion.

      I started peeling the potatoes. I was no good at it. Until now I hardly ever peeled potatoes. Auntie always prepared our meals and I helped only when my manly strength or my manly height was called for. By the second potato I cut my finger. The wound was not big but deep and bled profusely. Clumsily pulling up the shirtsleeve with my other, healthy but dirty hand, I ran to the sink. The tiny wound hit by a stream of cold water began to smart. I put my finger into my mouth and sucked it. The pain abated but every time I took the finger out of my mouth, the pale, barely visible slit began to fill with scarlet blood. I went to the cupboard with the first aid kit and rummaged through it, finding some gauze, bandages and iodine. There was no other disinfectant. It took me a long time before I managed to dress my wound and tie a nice tight knot on the finger.

      I sat at the kitchen table miserable and worn out, nursing my wounded finger in my fist. Hunger and cigarettes pressed on my brain like a heavy gray substance. I had no strength left to finish peeling the potatoes. I’d have frankfurters with scrambled eggs and bread. Absentmindedly I dragged myself to the sideboard to fetch a saucepan. Suddenly something tripped me up. I struggled to keep my balance and, desperately clutching at anything, I banged my head right against the edge of the sideboard.

      “Fuck!” I cursed, loudly and angrily.

      The object that tripped me up was Auntie’s corpse. Overwhelming pain paralyzed me briefly. Yet hungry and exhausted, I found in me new layers of strength. I was able to refrain from ignobly taking it out on the inanimate object that had caused me pain. The cause of my frustration had to be pacified so that in the future similar accidents could be avoided. I went about it with blunt angry assiduousness. I wrapped my hands under Auntie’s shoulders and lifted her. She was very heavy. As I pulled her along I smelled an unpleasant odor coming out of her open mouth. I turned my face away. Suddenly I felt the body putting up an insurmountable resistance. I pulled with all my strength but it would not budge. It turned out Auntie’s foot was hooked around one of the sideboard’s legs. I had to lay her down and unhook the damn foot. I tried a different hold. I grabbed her by the wrists and began pulling her across the floor. This was not easy either. The hands were stiff, unwieldy and difficult to steer with. Still, I managed to gain some ground. After a while her head hit the threshold. The first part of the job was behind us. Now I raised the head, then the shoulders, and pulled them over the threshold.

      The hallway was narrow and cluttered. The bathroom door was hung in such a way that the body had to be turned around 180 degrees. This required a well thought-out plan and precise execution. First thing to do was remove all possible objects that stood in the way of the body. So I took down the bowl from the small chest standing by the wall, then the box full of wool, and put them away. Then, with some effort, I lifted the chest and put that away too. Slowly, I was forgetting my hunger and fatigue. I felt good, like with any noble manual labor, not the perfunctory kind but labor requiring a creative element. Bit by bit, carefully, I was pushing the corpse over the threshold, trying to position it so that in a minute I could easily pull it inside the bathroom. Now and again I spoke to myself, giving myself warnings, praises, reprimands and words of encouragement:

      “Well done. Yes … No, no, no, we won’t get anywhere this way. Wait … Wait, my friend. Now. Yes, that’s it. See?”

      Suddenly the doorbell rang. The sharp, short sound cut through the soft shuffle of my work and my effortful panting. Crouching by the corpse, I froze. I held my breath. The floorboards at the opposite end of the hallway creaked gently. I remembered that Mazan, a fellow student from my year, was to visit me today. Always with his nose in the books. At the same time it crossed my mind that the room was dark and the kitchen windows faced the courtyard, so the light should not betray me. I realized all this very quickly and the intruder soon began to bore and irritate me. I was not scared at all; he was simply disturbing me. Mazan rang the doorbell again, waited a bit … then tried knocking. Then the door rattled and I heard something like muffled rapping and scraping. Mazan was writing me a note. Finally he finished writing and walked away with a loud clank of his skiing boots, which I somehow missed when he first arrived. I was very tempted to read his note. After waiting a good while, I quietly opened the door and picked the note up off the floor. “Jurek, I came to see you at 6. Come to the lectures tomorrow, we’ll need you. Ciao. Tadek.”

      “Ah, there we are,” I said aloud. “There we are …”

      This was just what I expected. And I was not disappointed. I knew too what they would need me for. My friends were organizing tea with dancing, and wanted me to help. I couldn’t care less, but I couldn’t afford not to get involved.

      I returned to my work. Pulling the corpse into the bathroom turned out to be easier than expected. Loading it into the bath was not so easy. The body was falling through my hands, resisting me. Now the head, now the feet knocked against the floor tiles. At long last I managed to fit it in. The legs stuck up in the air and the skirt slipped halfway down the thighs. Automatically I pulled it over the knees, only to realize the pointlessness of the gesture, as sooner or later I would have to strip the corpse naked anyway. I found the prospect rather embarrassing. I had never seen Auntie naked. Only once, in passing, I’d seen her bare buttocks, and for the rest of the day felt weird in her company.

      I returned to the kitchen and on the gas stove made scrambled eggs, which I covered with cold frankfurters and bread. Luckily, by now the gas was working better.

      4

      IN THE MORNING I WOKE UP FRESH AND RESTED. I JUMPED out of bed and did a few vaguely gymnastic exercises. The room was a bit chilly, I had an appetite, good humor and felt very young. Auntie’s canary sent off a peel of brilliant trills from his cage:

      “Tru – tiu – tu …”

      I echoed him:

      “Tiu – tiu … Good morning, little birdie. Good morning, Cracow, good morning, sun … Good morning, good morning!”

      I ran to fetch a bag with seeds and served the birdie a copious spoonful in his bowl. The wall glittered with playful sun bunnies. It was cold outside but warmer than yesterday. The thermometer was showing twenty degrees. It was 8:20 am. Phew, at last I had had a good night’s sleep. I had slept almost ten hours. Now I felt rested, strong, young and independent. Whistling, I ran to the bathroom. I would have loved a bath but unfortunately the bathtub was filled with the corpse.

      I stood in front of the mirror.

      “Good morning, Jurek,” I smiled. “Hello, Jerzy.”

      I ran the tap and washed myself from the waist up.

      “Good morning, Auntie,” I turned towards the bath.

      “How did my love

      sleep in the tub?”

      I was singing, crying and shaking off the cold water. After drying myself with a thick hairy towel, I started to shave. I was a bit cold but didn’t put my shirt on, showing off instead my arms and shoulders, perhaps still rather boyish