Daisy

Stokrotka and I had known each other almost from birth. We grew up in the same neighborhood, attending preschool, elementary school, and high school together. Later, our paths diverged. We applied to university the same year. I applied to psychology, Stokrotka to medicine. We lived across the street from each other, in dingy communist-era apartment buildings with garbage disposals on the mezzanine and a thousand apartments nearby, amid the din of constant renovations, drunken arguments, and barking dogs. During our school days, we had little to say to each other. Our contacts were limited to lending each other books, cassettes of our favorite music, or exchanging glossy magazines, which we avidly bought. By the end of elementary school, we were both lighting cigarettes on benches behind the building, or in the schoolyard among the wild rose bushes with a group of friends from the neighborhood. For us, these were times of peace, ignorance, dreams, and small joys, brought to us by wandering around the city, meeting friends, or walking by the lakes near our homes. I vaguely remember the distant days of elementary school. I don't remember if it started in sixth grade or even earlier. Stokrotka often began coming to school visibly depressed. She slowly began to lose contact with her peers, avoiding conversations and laughter. Throughout elementary school, she remained friends with one of her classmates, Karolina, who moved to Canada with her parents after graduating. The only person Stokrotka was close to, besides Karolina, was me. After a while, I learned a secret she'd kept hidden deep inside for years. During physical education classes, boys and girls often practiced side by side in the same gym. The boys usually played basketball or soccer, while the girls mostly played volleyball. It was impossible to miss Stokrotka's bruises, which often covered her legs and arms. In sixth grade, I didn't think much about it. Each of us boys had many bruises from playing hardball or regularly getting drunk after school, a pleasure we indulged in without restraint. Toward the end of elementary school, Stokrotka noticeably fell behind in her studies. She stopped getting the good grades she always did. She often skipped classes. She slowly withdrew from everyone, becoming secretive, a stranger to her friends and acquaintances. She started bringing sick notes to physical education classes. At first, I didn't pay much attention to it. However, after a while—it was already in seventh grade—on the way home, I asked her about the reasons for her behavior and the increasingly rare meetings in the yard. We sat in the shade of the blooming chestnut trees behind the house. I offered Stokrotka a cigarette and heard a story that kept me awake for a long time that evening.

Stokrotka's mother worked as a nurse at a local clinic. She was a quiet, calm woman, managing the household and focusing her efforts on raising her daughter and son, Stokrotka's younger brother. My mother was utterly subservient to her husband and my friend's father, who, as it turned out, was a man plagued by the perennial disease of unfulfillment. In the 1960s and 1970s, he worked at a municipal construction company as a construction manager. He had a team of people under him, whose work he planned, held accountable, punished, and rewarded. Back then, Stokrotka's parents were relatively well off. The four of them often took vacations to the seaside or the mountains. They were a typical urban family, no different from thousands of other families living in the communist era. In the early 1980s, when Stokrotka and I were finishing elementary school, her father lost his job. Apparently due to some abuse or poor work organization he was burdened with. He transferred to another, smaller company, taking a lower position. Since then, he had changed beyond recognition. He began drinking more frequently and starting arguments at home for no apparent reason. He avoided his friends, and worst of all, his relationship with his children changed. He shouted at them for no reason, checked their notebooks randomly, and constantly told them they weren't doing well. He often lectured them in the evenings about the need to constantly study, to be better, about ambitions and goals they should achieve. He cited examples from the families of other friends whose children supposedly studied diligently, excelled in school competitions and sports. He held them up as role models and, at the same time, the opposite of themselves. Worst of all, Stokrotka's father completely lost contact with his children. He took them to the forest, for ice cream, for movies, or other pleasures children their age typically expect. Arguments, insults, and beatings became more frequent. Stokrotka took the brunt of the punishment. Her father would slap her in the face at mealtimes for no apparent reason if he didn't get a quick answer to a question or if the answer didn't meet his expectations. He often mocked her for her interests in music, books, or movies. After a while, he completely banned his children from the room where the television was. That's when Stokrotka started coming to school with bruises on her legs, arms, and sometimes her face.

After our conversation, we went home in silence and didn't discuss the matter again for a long time.

We finished elementary school and both passed the entrance exams to the same high school. We began to mature. Our conversations became more intense, colorful, and rich in words and topics. We talked constantly, about everything. Whatever we saw at the cinema, read, or heard, we constantly analyzed and evaluated, discussing it passionately. We also began to talk about the problems and situations in our families. Mine happened to be very good. I had a loving father who took me fishing, bought me expensive gifts, and took me to soccer matches, which I adored. They were both very fond of my mother, who cared for me like the apple of her eye. I often told Stokrotka about my father, what we were like, what we talked about in the evenings, what his interests were, what he liked, and what he avoided in life. She always listened attentively, lips pressed tightly together. I know that for her, my father was the ideal of a true, loving father, caring for his home and family. It's true that my father sometimes scolded me for certain offenses, for coming home late or failing to fulfill my duties. However, he always did so in a civilized manner, without shouting, fighting, unnecessary, boring speeches, or pushing my delusional ambitions. My father believed that life would teach me decision-making, a proper perspective on the world and problems. However, he taught me the basics: trust, equal treatment of people, freedom to speak freely on any topic, and attentive listening. Stokrotka's father was the complete opposite. Things always had to be as he ordered, as he indicated, as he said. His expectations had to be met. His words were paramount. What his children thought and felt was unimportant. Stokrotka's mother loved her father and remained silent on matters of upbringing. However, she often cried at night in her bedroom, unable to understand the actions of the man to whom she had devoted her life.

The first year of high school passed without any major incident. We matured peacefully, met new people, and took trips out of town with friends, dreaming of the future. I thought Stokrotka's life had settled into relative harmony, but it was only the calm before the storm. Over the next year, Stokrotka's home turned into a living hell. Her father increasingly threw tantrums. He tore up her books, threw the music cassettes she listened to in the trash. He forced her to do constant housework, laughed at her school stories or didn't listen to them at all, interrupting her whenever she tried to tell him about her problems. But that wasn't the worst of it. In fits of helpless anger and frustration, he would pummel her senselessly with his fists or an iron cord. One day, in a rage, he threw her to the ground and kicked her mercilessly. Her mother came to Stokrotka's defense, but he only pushed her away and hurled insults at her. After this, Stokrotka completely withdrew into herself. She seemed absent, unresponsive to questions, and sat at school most of the time with her eyes fixed on a single spot on her desk or the wall. We didn't talk much, but I tried to help her with her studies. I wrote tests and essays for her, which wasn't particularly difficult, since I absorbed knowledge like a sponge. The only thanks for my help was sometimes a barely noticeable smile from Stokrotka, or perhaps just the illusion of one.

One Saturday, already in her final year of high school, as we were sitting in a café going over Polish material, she asked me,

"Zigi, tell me what I'm doing so wrong, why is my father like this...

" "Stokrotka," I said, "I don't know why. You know I've tried to answer this question many times, but I always find no answer.

" "You know, Zigi... He used to be good to me. When I was little, he took me for a bike ride. He put a pillow on his shoulder and sat me on it. We rode to the meadows, to the ponds." There, I remember, he made a wreath of daisies for me and placed it on my head, laughing that I looked like a princess... Then he hugged me so tightly... Just once, only once.

I saw tears in Daisy's eyes. They streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto the tabletop. I pressed her head tightly against my chest, not knowing what to say.

After a long moment, I gently pushed her away, looked into her chestnut eyes, and said,

"Dasy, you'll soon be an adult. You'll apply to college, find a job, and finally leave this hell. It won't last forever.

" "Zigi," Daisy said through her tears, "I love him so much... I wish he were the way he used to be. He wasn't always like this. Tell me why you have a normal father, why I can't be his most important, best friend, why he hates me so much... what for..."

I searched for the right words, but they still clung to me, my throat tight. After a while, I spoke:

"I'm sure your father truly loves you deep down. He hates himself, hates that he can't be a role model for you, living a gray life without a future. It's frustration that's destroying him, and he can't cope.

" "But I love him just the way he is. It doesn't matter to me who he is or what he does. After all, I'm here thanks to him. Zigi... so much..."

Stokrotka burst into tears again. We left the materials alone and ordered two large black coffees. We didn't speak again that afternoon, but I think we were both thinking the same thing. About the words, the sound of which remained an eternal wound in my heart, about Stokrotka's wasted years in the hell of lack of love and rejection.

After graduating from high school and successfully passing her university exams, we went on vacation together. We weren't a couple, we simply had known each other for so long and felt good together. It was a true seaside vacation. The weather was perfect. The sky was blazing hot, and the beer and fish tasted like never before. In the mornings, we ran barefoot across the damp sand, and in the evenings, lying side by side on the dunes, we silently admired the blood-red sunsets. It was my first and last camping holiday. Since then, I've never slept on a camping mattress. Today, whenever I see the tent, I always picture that time.

The holidays that year were long. After returning from the seaside, I went to the mountains with my father and mother, and Stokrotka went to visit her family in Masuria. We didn't see each other again until the end of August. I remember she was beautifully tanned, and her blond hair was as light as the seaside sand bathed in the sun. We hugged each other for a long time, shouting over each other, eager to recount our impressions of our vacation adventures. In October, university began. New faces, new acquaintances, new friendships, new responsibilities. We saw each other less and less in the yard. Old friends seemed to have disappeared or simply moved out of our neighborhood. Stokrotka and I mostly saw each other after exams, or occasionally at parties we invited each other to. Near the end of my studies, I landed my first job at a center for children with cerebral palsy. That's where I met Aśka, my future wife. After defending my master's thesis, our contact with Stokrotka almost ceased. We saw each other infrequently, mostly by chance when I visited my parents or when I called her to wish her Christmas. I always asked her how things were at home. She'd say things were a bit better. When she started working, my father seemed to change. Apparently, he stopped making arguments and was easy to talk to.

Five years after graduating, I got married and moved out of my parents' house for good. My wife and I bought a nice apartment in a leafy part of our city. A year later, we had a son, whom we named after my father – Piotr.

In the eighth year of our marriage, one autumn evening, while returning from work in a taxi, I saw Stokrotka at the bus stop. I told her to stop the car and approached her. She greeted me with a sad smile, a reflection of her youth, our school years, our conversations together, and memorable vacations. I invited her to a small, charming nearby restaurant for dinner. She agreed without hesitation. We sat down at a table tucked under the stairs of a place where music was playing softly. Apart from a few phone calls, we hadn't spoken and hadn't seen each other for quite a few years. Over a candle burning on the table and a glass of red wine, conversation flowed. I told her about my life, my work, my family. She listened intently, gazing into my eyes the entire time. Time took on an indefinite form. The contours of reality blurred. Memories of shared childhood moments, school days, old dreams, joys, and sorrows came flooding back. She told me about her father, who was already bedridden and ill. She still lived in the same neighborhood where we grew up. She and her mother cared for her sick father. It would probably be a great disservice to ask her about her relationship with him. I guessed that time had blurred the contours of the past, events we hadn't revisited for a long time. However, I saw in Stokrotka's eyes that that time remained deep within her and left a mark on her later life. I knew she had had several failed relationships with men. She had even once told me the reasons, her fear of starting a family with someone she couldn't fully trust. The past had destroyed her delicacy, her trust in her feelings. Her father had killed Stokrotka's feminine sensitivity, but he hadn't killed her love for him. She remained faithful to him, always, until the very end. Looking at her, I realized the words she'd spoken to me right after graduation, when we were drinking in my defense. When I jokingly asked her why she wasn't married yet, she smiled gently and, with the same tenderness with which she'd answered my questions honestly for many years, said, "If I ever met someone even like you, I wouldn't hesitate for a second." At the time, I took it as a compliment and didn't bother to elaborate, especially since I was already planning a permanent relationship with Aśka.

That evening, I realized that that sentence, spoken on that warm June night, wasn't an illusion cast in the joyful rapture of our reunion. I thought about the irreversibility of events. I felt something I didn't want to feel, I felt it with my whole being, with every pore of my skin. My soul howled with pain, falling to my knees as I looked deep into Stokrotka's dark eyes. It was still there. It had always been there, and I knew it would remain forever. Words were unnecessary.

It was already late when we left the premises. I drove her home and hailed a taxi. Before entering the apartment building where Stokrotka lived, we paused for a moment. I didn't know how to choose the right words for that moment. I didn't know how to organize my thoughts to make them believable. Time passed me in a wide arc, disappearing into the abyss of eternity, losing its tail. I remember only managing to whisper, "Always...", before turning and walking away. Tears flowed from my eyes, the taste of which I had long since forgotten.

I lead a normal family life. My son is developing normally and will soon start school. I have a good job and interesting summer plans. I also visit my parents more often. I also know that I can't fix the world. All I could do was write this story. Maybe somewhere in another world, it has a continuation. Maybe it also has two parallel endings. One in that ordinary, simple apartment, across from my parents' building, where my daughter leans over her dying father, longing to hear one, single word from him. And the other, which I will keep to myself.