"What did you tell them?
" "That we ran away from home and wanted to start a new life," she said. "And that we had nowhere to live for the time being. They started out similarly; they told me about it. They came here right after their wedding; Karolina's parents didn't accept Adam, and he didn't even know their own. So they escaped from those problems and moved here, to their friend's summer house. When the season started, they bought it for a small sum, and that's how they stayed. They're happy, living in sweet poverty, but they're happy.
"Yes, maybe they are," he said. "But why are we dragging ourselves into their happy lives, and why are we pretending to be someone we're not?
" "We're not pretending to be anyone. That's just who we are, the way we are, the way we constantly have to change and be someone else, because only then will we be ourselves," she said. "Maybe we can't do it any other way? Maybe life is one big story, and we want it to be an interesting story."
He was silent; she looked at him. In his pensive face, staring into the distance, with a barely noticeable grimace at the corner of his mouth, she read an internal struggle. A struggle to be a pawn again, or another figure in her game, for which he nevertheless felt sentimental; he felt that this world of hers was somehow close to him, and that of all that it was composed, he fit into it most closely. On the other hand, there was a desire to return to normality, to his home, his city, to all the things he had grown accustomed to throughout his life and which were so difficult to leave behind. To being gray and anonymous; because it was easier that way.
"Okay, fine," he said. "We'll stay until tomorrow, then we'll figure out what to do next. Just promise me you won't lie to them again.
" "I promise," she said, taking a drag on her cigarette. "You know, sometimes I think I've made mistakes, but then I stop looking back and think there weren't that many.
" "Nonsense." You just don't know what a mistake really is.
"Maybe you're right, maybe I really don't. I don't want to talk about it.
" "You started it yourself.
" "Let's talk about Martha.
" "I don't want to talk about that.
" "Did you break up?
" "I told you yesterday, right?
" "No. But I've known you too long not to know that. Or at least not to guess.
" "We weren't right for each other," he said again, his gaze sinking into that distant spot visible only to him. "She was too… she didn't like my stupid ideas, or the fact that I drank like a dragon at every opportunity. It's no wonder, anyway. It's just that she didn't talk about it. I think she loved me and didn't want to talk about what divided us. She was very nice; the perfect partner for a wife, pretty, and with rich parents." He smiled. "I don't understand myself, but I broke up with her. Just yesterday, but I guess I don't have to tell you that.
" "You're just not looking for a wife yet.
" "So what am I looking for?"
She shrugged, still smoking a cigarette, and leaning against the cracked wooden railing that bordered the porch, stared out to sea.
"You're looking for your story," she said after a moment.
He laughed, or rather, snorted only once, and leaned against the railing next to her, also staring out to sea. They were silent for a long moment, staring straight ahead, but they were so absorbed in their own thoughts that they didn't even know what they were looking at. Adam interrupted them; he stepped out the door and lit a cigarette too. Marek and Iweta had practically thrown away the filters that remained from what had once been cigarettes and turned to him.
"Thanks again for the wallet," he said. "It's hard to find any documents here. I just hope you didn't hit him too hard.
" "Why?"
"I've seen him here a few times; he's a newcomer, but he's here quite often. He always comes with his friends and they always get up to something. Then they go back home and probably keep messing around. That's the kind of people.
" "And if I hit him harder, would I be in trouble?
" "Maybe you would, or maybe I would. To be honest, I have a feeling I'll run into them again anyway. It's always a problem to get them to back off once they've started.
" "True. But if he's hit hard enough, he won't bother us. Even they don't like getting hit, and this one might be afraid of getting hit again.
" "Let's hope so." He stubbed out his cigarette on the railing and flicked the butt into the bushes. "Karolina's just getting changed; we're planning to go out for dinner with friends."
He gave them a meaningful look, but said nothing more, hoping they'd understand.
"We were thinking about going for a walk too," she said, and looked at Marek. "Right?
" "Yes, we'd love to go for a walk. Maybe to the seaside?"
"Great, so we'll be at the beach just in case. What time do you plan to be back?
" "We'll be there around 10 p.m. It'll be one of those dinners that doesn't end with food.
" "Just don't go to that restaurant on the corner," Marek said.
"Which one?" Adam asked, smiling. "We have two restaurants here, and they're both on the corner.
" "The one without a menu, with a strange waiter, and bad fish.
" "I know which one you mean... Why shouldn't we go there?
" "Because they have bad fish, a strange waiter, and they don't give you menus."
They smiled at each other. Karolina emerged from behind the door, dressed in a light summer dress with faded flowers. She locked the door behind her and turned to her husband.
"Shall we go?"
Adam and Karolina joined hands and started down the narrow street, lined with only two houses. Marek and Iweta stood for a moment, watching them walk away in the now slightly orange sunlight reflecting brightly off the cobblestones. They thought about how soon they would be walking like this too, and found something in it that made them feel special. But as they walked down the street, they stopped feeling that specialness, holding only a semblance of hope that someone was watching them, and seeing their uniqueness, which they hadn't felt.
"She shouldn't have locked that door," he said. "If someone wanted to get in, they would have done it anyway; all they had to do was break the window on the side of the living room. It's located so that it's invisible from the town side. Plus, it's not very high, so getting in wouldn't be a problem.
" "Why are you talking about that?
" "I don't know. I'd had enough of the silence, and I couldn't think of anything else."
"I just remembered something," she said. "Remember when we were in our third year of high school, we had to run away from home? How we said goodbye to everyone and talked about where we were going..." Emilka was probably the one who experienced the biggest shock; after all, she was the one who called our parents that night.
"I remember. I also remember how we talked on the phone that night; it was probably a Monday evening, one of those winter evenings where you never want to sleep. I remember my mother's shadow on the crack under the door, and how we deliberately talked loudly so my parents could hear snippets of our conversation. We kept talking about what to pack, or where we were going, and what we were going to take. When we finished, my mother came in, looked around the room, and asked why I was packing. There wasn't a bag, not even a backpack, except for my school bag, so I told her it was for school. She said, 'Why do I need such things for school?' She looked in my backpack, and there were only books in it. I said something I thought was very funny, and went to eat dinner." In the morning, I got up at the same time as usual, ate a normal breakfast, and left for school; the only thing that changed was that I did everything under my mother's supervision.
"I didn't have any problems; they didn't even notice I'd been on the phone for almost two hours. I also remember the champagne we drank in the park, rejoicing that we'd escaped, even if only in the imaginations of people who knew us.
" "Yes, Jacek later told me what had happened at school; everyone guessed why we were gone—after all, we'd been planning it for a long time—but no one talked about it. It was only Emilka, after the second period, who brought it up. First, when they were on a binge; she just said how worried she was. During the next break, she burst into tears, and that's when it all began: a huge resentment towards us, about our escape, attempts to call our switched-off phones, attempts to convince us to come back, left on voicemail... and then Emilka's call to our parents. At first, she just wanted to ask if we were home because we weren't at school, but then it just sort of happened. For me, it was all a bit like watching my own funeral.
They walked with serious faces, didn't laugh, just stared straight ahead, listening intently to each other's words.
"It's funny that after all these years, this is the first time we're talking about this," she said. "I guess we didn't like looking back. I guess we were afraid of what we might see."
Where the small street Marek and Iweta were walking merged with the town's largest street, a path began, leading through a sparse grove straight to the beach. It was the same path they'd taken that morning, but now, in the dim light of the setting sun and the cold, thick shadow, it looked very unfamiliar. Only when they reached the other end did they recognize the beach where they'd fallen asleep the day before. They sat side by side; Marek embraced her, and she rested her petite head, colored by coal-black eyebrows, on his shoulder.
The last rays of sunlight filtered through the waves of the cold Baltic Sea, giving the sky its last moments of blue and navy blue, greedily devoured by the star-studded blackness. They gazed at a sun that hadn't even realized could be so beautiful when almost entirely obscured by the Earth.
"I love sunsets," she said.
"I know," he said. "You always loved them. When we met, and when everything ended." And now, when it can start again, you still love it.
"It seems nothing has changed, and yet it's not the same sunset as before... Something is missing from it, the most beautiful I've ever experienced.
" "I think I know what
," he said. She smiled and, with her eyes closed, turned her face to his and kissed him on the lips, knowing exactly where they would be, down to the millimeter.
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