I Never Gave My Consent to Live

 (q 1)

***

The radio turns on five minutes and seventeen seconds before he opens his eyes. He can be erroneous about the accuracy of seventeen seconds, though he always has been, and still is, overly precise. A personality trait, like the shape of his fingernails. When he opens his eyes, he's sure it's five minutes to seven.

The kettle whistles, the radio plays (he forgot to turn it off, he got out of bed too soon), the shower hums. Through the open window, he can see the factory chimneys and the dark gray clouds of smoke they spew, but in the trees (so close to the window it seems you could reach out and pluck a leaf from the branch) birds are chattering. Pigeons and sparrows. There's also a nest. Certainly not a pigeon's, and certainly not a sparrow's. The

white-walled apartment is completely empty.

He's happy to leave the apartment and join the life outside, as one of its components, even though he doesn't drink coffee.

A mistake.

He knows it's a mistake even before he picks up the phone. No one calls. No one important, because he's only been living in this building for a few days and hardly anyone knows yet. It could only be a mistake.

No one calls.

No one important.

I'm leaving, he says as he tries the doorknob, dressed in a gray jacket and dark gray tie. I'm leaving, he says, as if he were speaking to the apartment as if it were a living organism, sensing its owner with every step on its floor. I'm leaving, he says. I'll be back for dinner. The apartment responds with the click of a key in the lock. Turning the doorknob is like shaking someone's hand goodbye.

The day is very bright, the sun stings his eyes. Sometimes he dreams of something that seems beautiful, something he desperately wants to see—only because the glare it gives off prevents him from taking a closer look.

The day is beautiful.

Has he had enough coffee? For a brief moment, he wants to live. The thought slips from his mind, but he goes on. He passes people on the sidewalk, hears the rumble of trams and the shouts of arguing taxi drivers. He sees a girl with a green pinwheel in her hand.

Is he still awake? The glare is too intense. He confuses the colors of the pedestrian crossing lights.

The force of the impact breaks his legs at the knees, throws him against the windshield, lifts him in the air, and slams him to the asphalt just behind the car. The taste of blood is familiar to him. He guesses what happened—not just because more and more people gather around him, making more and more noise. Someone clumsily tries to administer artificial respiration.

A woman dressed in blue covers the eyes of a girl with a green pinwheel in her hand.

PART 1

VERONICA

I

Three minutes and sixteen seconds after her father slapped her, sixteen-year-old Weronika made the most important decision of her life, and the first person to be privy to the details was her honest mother, a housewife who loved above all else a clean floor, freshly laundered sheets, and the carrots she was chopping for dinner.

"I'll never get married!"

The thunderous words rolled across the kitchen walls, papered with baskets of apples, but they didn't have time to shake them, being nipped in the bud a moment later.

"You will," her mother replied, still waving her knife anemically, seeming as absorbed in the newly uttered demand as if it were uttered every morning, right after lunch, and a moment before dinner. "We all went out, are going out, and will go out. We've had thousands of years to learn this."

"But I'll be the exception," she snapped, absentmindedly rubbing her cheek and wondering if she'd even understood what her mother had said. And if, by chance, she'd been transported to a completely different world when she woke up this morning.

Today was her thirty-fifth birthday; dressed in an aging coat the color of a rotten pear, wrapped in a kitschy pink shawl, and equally kitschy dark glasses straight from the 1960s (the average resident of the lot would probably say this was a rebellion against a reality filled to the brim with the nostalgia of an ugly spinster), laden with rustling, overflowing shopping bags with the local supermarket's logo printed on them, inhaling the disgusting stench in the stairwell, she returned up the creaking stairs to an empty apartment where neither husband nor friend, nor even an ugly lover nor a dog vomiting after expired food, was waiting for her. Today – and for some time now – she knew that the world she'd been transported to was called "adulthood."

"A shitty place," she cursed in a particularly stoic manner (she did it halfheartedly, out of habit), stepping on a headless rubber dinosaur lying just outside her apartment door. "Indeed, shitty," she added pathetically, as if making some epochal discovery. She wasn't referring in the least to the apartment building where she lived.

The colorless curtains billowed in a welcoming atmosphere; she dispassionately surveyed the room, checking if anything was missing, but in the end it turned out – as usual – that the window had only been opened by a stronger gust of wind. "What's the point, heh heh, stealing?" she muttered ironically, closing the creaking window, slightly muffled the sounds from outside. But only when she turned on the music could she forget that she lived in the middle of a large, noisy dump proudly called home by its inhabitants.

She dumped her bags on the table in the small kitchen, managing to pull out only a dish in five minutes. She quickly changed into worn jeans and a worn-out green sweater with household stains dating back to Easter. She sat down in front of the TV and calmed down.

It was 5 p.m. She returned home from work, where there were no traffic lights, no newsstands with waist-length beards, no taxi drivers humming obnoxious songs from before the age of civilization, no awkward, handsome men with spiked hair holding their capricious beauties by the arm, no gray pigeons pushing against each other, no dirty public transport buses with overpriced tickets, no bizarrely dressed leaflet deliverers, and no headless rubber dinosaurs.

She was safe again.

Until the bell rang.

Martyna hesitantly pressed the doorbell button again, wondering if it even worked and whether she should follow the advice of the spray-painted message on the staircase ("get out while you can"), because the entire building looked as if it were about to fall apart; the stairs creaked terribly and were cracked, plaster was crumbling from the walls and ceiling, a window on the landing had broken off one hinge and was rattling alarmingly against the musty wall – looking at all this, it was hard to expect something as (it seemed here) luxurious as a doorbell to work. She waited a moment longer and (with a final glance at the ceiling to see if it was falling on her head) clenched her fist to knock, but at that very moment she heard a quiet, unenthusiastic voice from behind the door.

"Who's there?

" "An old friend," Martyna piped up kindly, sounding as if she'd been rehearsing that short line all the way here. She sincerely doubted she'd be recognized by her voice. They hadn't seen each other for too long.

There was a moment of silence, during which Martyna began to doubt that she'd come to the right address, and the person on the other side—probably the same. After a moment, however, the thick, heavy door swung open, scraping against the floor, and a short, feminine silhouette appeared.

"Martyna?" the woman asked, straining her eyes to see in the dim corridor.

"Martyna," Martyna replied, smiling broadly and sincerely. "I thought I'd never find you again."

Weronika seemed slightly embarrassed—or at least embarrassed enough to stand in the doorway for a few seconds, her expression conveying, "Strange. You're still alive." After a moment, however, she regained her composure, made way, and gestured for her to enter.

"It's good to see you," she practically whispered in her ear.

"You too," Martyna replied, now feeling embarrassed.

"Come in, come in," Weronika moved to the wall, clearing the small hallway. "I wasn't expecting a visitor at all, it's a terrible mess. What kind of occasion is that?

" "Well, you know, I should be offended if I can't visit you without a reason," Martyna laughed, and although she'd come here expecting a birthday party—even the most modest one—she didn't say a word about it. Even best friends don't remind each other of the years that have consumed them if they don't remember it themselves, or don't want to. Or perhaps to put it another way—you don't remind a friend of her birthday if she doesn't want to remember it herself.

She walked in. It was her first time here, so her eyes wandered around involuntarily. The apartment wasn't very large. A two-step-short hallway with a door—probably to the bathroom—on the right led to a small room, which in turn branched off into a kitchen and a bedroom. In the very center, across the room, stood a brown sofa for two, facing the television, the voice of a telemarketer nagging. The faded red carpet seemed untouched in years. The room contained only a small table with a vase of miniature artificial sunflowers, a few low bookcases filled with books and decorative trinkets, a closed, three-door wardrobe, likely dating back to the Warsaw Ghetto, two chairs with clothes piled on their backs, and an easel with an unfinished painting depicting—at least to Martyna—the most ordinary of who-knows-whats. The smell of burnt tires mingled with the artificial, forest-like scent of air freshener.

"Straight ahead, there's nowhere to get lost," Weronika encouraged, noticing the slight hesitation of the guest standing in the doorway. As if to show that entering this room didn't threaten a long death in terrible agony, she passed Martyna and stood by the sofa, spreading her arms wide. "It looks awful, I know, but it's not neglected. I dust and wash the windows; at least once it turns a hundred years old – the word of a mummy."

Martyna wasn't embarrassed by the sight of her friend's apartment. What's more, on her way here, she knew that this was exactly what she would find. She was embarrassed by the fact that she had hoped that all this would be at least a little less pathetic than before.

Weronika had aged over the past few months – Martyna could tell for sure. Her auburn hair had faded a bit and thinned slightly, not to the point of being anything to complain about, but Martyna could see it clearly. Weronika's movements were slower and more sluggish than before, her face paled, her nose lengthened, her cheeks dry and hollow. Her mouth had lost its former definition, and a few wrinkles had appeared on her neck. The worn-out sweater was the final nail in the coffin – anyone who happened to come to Weronika's birthday party would have given her at least 40 years, and most interestingly, they would probably have gotten away with it.

But none of this depressing Martyna seemed to have the same effect as her friend's eyes. The blue pupils had faded and were transmitting a message from the very command center of Veronica's soul: "All I have in life is this apartment, a boring job, and teleshopping. I don't wait for anything. I don't care."

This "I don't care" was evident in every movement, every gesture, and every word Veronica uttered. Veronica gave the impression that her friend's presence was more or less equivalent to a spider visiting the couch. The manner of a decadent, lonely, and somewhat neglected—physically and emotionally—woman of the turn of the century did not leave Weronika's appearance when she went to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two cups of coffee, when she sat down on the sofa next to Martyna, observing this activity, Martyna had the impression that Weronika might as well have been sitting on a bicycle without a seat, when she sipped coffee, and when every now and then she gestured violently with her hand—a habit that could not and would not leave her—when talking about her apartment, work, neighbors, the city, parents, old acquaintances and friendships, friends who had long since married, died under the wheels of a truck, or were hibernating, the subject of a painting on an easel, and things so insignificant and fleeting that one forgot to mention them five seconds after they had been mentioned. They hadn't seen each other for over six months, but Martyna couldn't shake the feeling that, although Weronika seemed a completely different person at first glance than she had been six months ago (though Martyna, whenever she saw Weronika, always had the impression that she had changed dramatically and suddenly), everything was perfectly normal, just like when, in the university cafe (it seemed so distant in time that it felt like they belonged to another world and another life, as if they'd seen it all on television), they'd been gossiping about awkward professors who were still single and handsome students from their class in whom they'd ostentatiously never shown any interest. She could talk to Weronika about anything, however, and on any occasion. The feeling of trust and a similar train of thought always returned to her within ten minutes of the shock she experienced after each long break in visits.

"You just have to learn it," Weronika commented on most unpleasant situations.

Each time, she added a new detail to Weronika's monotonous personality to the mental portrait of her once closest—now far behind—friend. Today, she noticed that Weronika had begun—probably out of boredom—to take a slight interest in politics, whereas until recently, she had neither a developed political orientation nor even so-called opinions, leaving matters, over which she had no influence anyway, to their own devices. Although this interest in politics manifested itself in only a few hastily and casually spoken sentences, Martyna filed these matters away as new changes, which were occurring in Weronika at the speed of the evolution from ape to homo sapiens, were occurring at once. Just like a sudden sympathy (although showing sympathy in Weronika's case meant an apathetic smile when the topic was brought up) for the shrimp pizza and chicken on rice with sweet and sour sauce at the new Vietnamese restaurant, for the cuckoo clock she saw somewhere at the market but couldn't buy because she'd already emptied her wallet at the grocery store (she described the clock with almost excessive precision, reminding Martyna of her penchant for breaking down everything that had occupied her attention for a long time), for the flowers that were slowly starting to bloom in someone's garden right under her window (this would mean that things weren't so bad for her yet and that in twenty-five years she would find herself retired among all sorts of weeds, wearing a straw hat and pruning shears). Although Martyna felt a certain attachment to Weronika, she couldn't help but feel as if she were witnessing some kind of experimental subject, whose observation raised more questions about human nature than it answered—but it was precisely these mysteries, beyond the remnants of their former friendship, that drew Martyna to Weronika.

Although it wasn't always this way. It was not without reason that Martyna, between trips to the city with numerous friends and a lover, dinners with VIPs, and sewing yet another rag (this is what she called all her projects), began, while "observing" Weronika, to ponder everything around her in an almost philosophical way, which, for a designer with a rather well-known name, was quite unusual. She remembered Weronika from her university days and after. At some point in her life, something happened that radically transformed the rather brave, eloquent, and even well-liked Weronika into a Weronika with an anemic expression, without a specific purpose in life, and a feeling that no one—and certainly not herself—needed her.

"How's Adrian?" Weronika asked, after a brief silence between them as Martyna tried to guess the subject of the painting on the easel. "Is everything the same with him?"

"Yes, yes," Martyna woke up, not embellishing her statement with any more serious tone, for she knew full well that Martyna was about as interested in men as a childless pediatrician was in education reform ("unless something's changed?" the thought flashed through her mind for a split second, making her perk up a bit). "He's been in the bathroom longer than me. Everyone, whether spotty or wrinkled, keeps looking at him. Sometimes it's nice to feel a bit of baseless jealousy, you know?

" "Probably.

" "And what about you?" Martyna interjected. "Someone... maybe there is?"

Weronika looked at Martyna with grotesque irony.

"Sure," she grumbled, her tone suggesting that she had raised a long-resolved issue. "Don't you see those crowds of muscular, intelligent, and witty handsome men camped out outside my door?"

Martyna made a face as if she were looking at her daughter, who had been dumped by her first boyfriend and had just declared that all men were pigs. She waited a moment appropriate for disapproval, then stood up and began casually pacing the room, examining the contents of the shelves.

"You know that loneliness in old age is not advisable," she said, picking up and putting away each item on the shelves, from miniature porcelain figurines to CDs and cassette tapes. "You don't think about it that way now, and later it will be completely incomprehensible to you, but old, eccentric, lonely grandmothers, toddling in faded dresses from church to home and home to church, sooner or later become the laughingstock of the local community before and during the initial stages of procreation.

" "I was thinking about getting a cat," Weronika replied quickly, sipping the remains of her coffee. "Or a dog, or a hamster."

"It's not the same." A wire miniature of the Eiffel Tower caught Martyna's attention, and for a moment, images flashed back to the days when they'd traveled together across Europe, back when they still had the time and money for it. "You need someone who reminds you every day—even if it were a fabrication—how much they love you, someone who would walk you along the promenade in the summer and arouse the interest of other women, and you'd feel their jealousy and appreciation like rheumatism in your bones, and you'd feel happy because of it. Someone who would finally grow old and clumsy enough that you'd have to remind them whether they'd filled their ducky today or not, but who would fill the empty four walls with, at least, complaints. That's what's needed."

She felt a look of irony on her face, knowing perfectly well that the pathetic tirades didn't sound very credible coming from her lips.

"I detest marriage," Weronika muttered after a moment. "Everything connected to it. Maybe except for children. But only at the very beginning."

"Oh my God, you don't have to get married right away," Martyna snorted, still completely absorbed in examining the shelves. "You just need to move in with someone, or at least meet regularly. This isn't the Middle Ages; customs loosened up before we started fancying boys from our upper years in high school. Adrian and I have been dating for about two years, and if all goes well, we'll start living together in six months. We might be planning a child in the distant future, but neither he nor I have ever mentioned marriage. Such are the times, honey. Now you can take the best from life, and most importantly—it's even possible. You don't have to live in a politically correct, church-like relationship.

" "You don't have to explain that to me," Weronika replied, her tone still ironic.

"Well, I found it," Martyna cut in suddenly. She turned to face Weronika, holding a framed, black and white, slightly faded photo of the young man in her hands.

Weronika looked at the photo with a mixture of irritation, embarrassment, and guilt, then lowered her head slightly, but only enough to keep her friend in sight. Martyna looked at it with a mixture of comical, caring reproach. She tilted her head in a gesture of concern.

"Jesus, Martyna, it's just a photo," Weronika groaned.

"I've heard of flagellants in some Islamic town who whip their backs every year, but that massacre makes more sense to me than what you're doing here. You know, every time I come to any of your apartments, I always see that photo, and I've been seeing it for about ten years now.

" "It's become part of my surroundings," Weronika replied apologetically. "I don't pay attention to it during the day, except to dust it off once every hundred years. But when it's not looking at me, I feel uneasy."

"You're thirty-five, even teenagers forget things like that.

" Weronika scowled at her.

"Are you even considering that?

" "I'm thirty-five too...

" "Apparently, I'm developmentally delayed. Or maybe I'm just a habit."

Martyna put the photo aside and sat on the couch, as close to Weronika as possible. She decided to pull herself together and remember the times a few years ago, when they cared about each other more than anyone else. And it felt good. Like she'd come home.

"We're getting old, Weronika," she finally said. "The days of carefree dates and experimenting with boys are gone forever. Now we have to think about who will hold our hand when we cry and who will bury us when we die." And this is coming from an emancipated, well-heeled, and disgustingly eccentric wannabe model-designer whose daily concern is every square inch of her own skin, which is covered in wrinkles, something she would give anything for, including a job and a divine lover, so for God's sake, take what I'm saying seriously."

Weronika didn't answer, though Martyna was sure what her friend was thinking. If even an ounce of the stubbornness she'd carried in the past remained in Weronika, if she weren't so reserved in expressing her emotions and reluctant to burden even her closest friends with her problems, if there was a shadow of someone within her who hadn't yet given up and was subconsciously crying out for help, she would have said precisely what she'd been waiting for like a desert waiting for rain. She would have said that she expected nothing from life. That she had an apartment, a job, something to put in the fridge, something to watch on TV. She had books she could still read and pictures she could paint. That she wanted nothing more. That all the motivation, all the will to live, which she'd relearned after the existential anxieties of her eighteenth birthday, had vanished from her, fallen from her grasp, irretrievably, like a seashell held underwater, when all her loved ones vanished from her life, including the black-haired boy in the faded photo. Martyna, no matter how hard she tried, couldn't help her. She understood Weronika, but in the same way a mother understands her child's whims, except that such a mother could ask a trusted educator for advice, or perhaps read a parenting book, and no matter what heresies were written there, she would be certain she had done everything she could to help her offspring. Martyna could have done a lot for Weronika, but she didn't know how. Trying to help herself with a psychologist some time ago had only made another crack in the friendship.

"It's not depression," Weronika said, as if guessing her friend's thoughts. "It's just stagnation. A nice, quiet, peaceful stagnation. It's like those Eastern philosophies. You're rid of both joy and anger. You live a completely colorless life that doesn't harm you or the environment. One day you'll die and vacate the space for some young couple struggling to find a place to live. Like it or not, you'll be useful for something."

Martyna frowned in a gesture of mawkish helplessness. Oh yes, she wanted to help Weronika, she wanted Weronika to be happy, if only to see her and Adrian in this state every now and then, to be a selfless witness to their great happiness. The truth was, she cared more about Adrian, and Weronika was simply ashamed of him. She didn't want anyone to contrast so starkly with her self-confidence, her perpetual good humor, and her tendency to use sarcasm, though witty rather than harmful, in his presence.

"Tell me honestly, why did you come here?" Weronika broke the short silence with a sad smile. "You visit me, on average, once every few months. You've broken the record lately. I was sure you'd forgotten about me, and I'll admit, I've managed to forget about you a bit too." I expected you'd already been married, moved abroad, and lived a quiet life far from your troublesome friends, with whom you only shared sentimental bonds and casual conversations during Leap Year. I know, Martyna, that today is my birthday. I'm glad you remembered. But I don't think that was the purpose of your visit.

Martyna grimaced as if she'd just passed a stinking restroom. Weronika lived alone. Six months in this isolation, despite working full-time, was sufficient justification for her sarcastic comments. Martyna knew her visit was only slightly more colorful than her host's gray indifference, so she didn't take these remarks personally. Although they were, in part, true.

"I'd like to get out of here," she began. "I'd like to get out of here, pulling you by the hand, stroll down the street, gossip to passersby, imbibe some alcohol in the small bar, go to the cinema, and then stroll by the streetlights until dawn." I'd love to, but it's impossible, we both know that. We're adults, even old ones, I have a boyfriend, and you have an aversion to anything that shows any signs of life. That's why I'm trying to adapt, you know? To somehow find my way to you, to enter your territory. I don't know it at all, because every time I enter it, it changes, with a slight but questionable force. In truth, I don't really know why I came here. Maybe to see your new apartment. Maybe to remember the days when I was twenty and comfortably empty. Maybe because I've somehow missed you. I don't know. I also don't know why I haven't visited you in the last six months. Probably because I'm currently shaping what I just told you, and what is, I won't deny, more important to me than you and the entire world around me. But for God's sake, don't talk to me like you're some ugly old aunt who's convinced the whole world hates her and there's nothing she can do about it.

"And besides," she added after a moment, in a slightly happier tone, "you're constantly moving, so don't give me crap about how rarely I find time to read the phone book again."

She was relieved to see Weronika become a little embarrassed and lower her head slightly, as contrite as her pride and acquired introversion would allow.

"I'm sorry, Martyna," she muttered, a little halfheartedly. "I know I sound awful. But this apartment has never had another guest besides me. Besides," she added after a moment, "I think I'm losing the ability to communicate with, as you put it, anything that shows any signs of life."

Martyna played placated and patted Weronika's cheek playfully. They chatted for a while over another cup of coffee, about things more or less important, but in any case, none of the issues they raised were particularly significant to either of them.

As soon as the door, sad as its owner, closed behind her, after a tender farewell, akin to a greeting, Martyna felt the incredible weight she'd lifted upon entering the apartment vanish. The weight had grown with each passing fifteen minutes, and she hadn't realized until she felt relief after its disappearance. Angry at herself for experiencing a sense of satisfaction, as if she'd fulfilled an unpleasant duty, she hurried down the stairs, her heels clicking loudly. The first thought that came to her when she finally emerged into the sunlight (acting like a miner lost in a mineshaft and finding his way out after a week of wandering) was more or less that she would never return to that apartment, that she would never speak to that sad woman again. That she would focus solely on her own problems, Adrian, and everything else she cared about. Perhaps she was afraid that by spending time with Weronika, he would take on her characteristics, and she didn't want that for the world. But when she got into the taxi (she didn't have a car, she didn't like driving, and besides, Adrian always drove her wherever she wanted), she missed Weronika. After fifteen minutes of separation, she missed her sad, faded eyes, her green sweater, and the excessive gesticulations she made when speaking. She already knew she would call Aunt Weronika that evening, that she would go to her again tomorrow, and that her visits would become much more frequent than they had been since they earned their master's degrees. He would pull her out of this stagnation. She set that goal as the taxi passed intersection after intersection, while Adrian, somewhere on the other side of town, was already preparing for tonight's dinner.

Eight minutes and eleven seconds after the woman who looked, dressed, and acted like a model had rushed out of the building, Mrs. Karpnicka rearranged a pot of hydrangeas on the windowsill to better see the entrance to the lot, wondering what had happened that someone—and clearly not just anyone, since he was probably wearing the equivalent of her kitchen equipment—had come to visit Weronika. Mrs. Karpnicka even felt a little jealous of Weronika. While she'd never been to her house, Weronika visited Mrs. Karpnicka regularly, and it seemed that, having no other friends, or even female colleagues, they were made for each other. Mrs. Karpnicka had her own little world in her small room, shielded from the sunlight streaming in through the window by thick, old-fashioned curtains. The room smelled of old clothes, and a large painting of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus hung over the bed. At least once a week, she and Weronika performed the ritual of drinking tea. Even though she was mentally fit at eighty-three, she liked to escape into that small world, the real world, beyond the confines of the apartment walls and the view from the window onto the courtyard, forgetting it, ignoring it, perhaps even denying it. It had been so long since she left this place that sometimes her youth and life before she'd been in a wheelchair seemed like a story she'd heard from someone, a long time ago.

Each new face stirred in Mrs. Karpnicka some element of excitement; it was something new, a crack in the black curtains that separated her world from the outside, allowing pale light to filter in and allowing her to glimpse, if only for a moment, outside. So Mrs. Karpnicka began to speculate, planning her next conversation over tea with Weronika, diligently jotting down lines she would use during the conversation, her memory excellent despite her age. She liked to plan everything, from her daily schedule (admittedly not very varied) to Weronika's visits. Who was this beautiful young lady? Were they friends? Perhaps sisters? Did Weronika have a sister? Perhaps her parents were wealthy, and she had decided to live on her own, and her caring sister had found her after years of separation, now wanting to improve her standard of living? Mrs. Karpnicka liked to exaggerate (for example when she was talking about the times of the occupation, when she kicked a German in the groin and then they became lovers, or when she mentioned her husband, the late Mr. Bartłomiej, who supposedly killed that German and dragged her to the altar by force), she used her privilege of being an inquisitive grandmother, although she knew perfectly well that such questions would only evoke that sad smile of hers from Weronika.

At a certain age, that's how it is, Mrs. Karpnicka thought to herself. Life is a fairy tale, which can be summarized at the end, a moral can be found, dressed up in appropriate clothing for the situation, and then, because the user will no longer need it, passed on to young people who won't take it to heart anyway, either because they're too arrogant or because times have changed so much that the moral can truly be relegated to fairy tales.

Mrs. Karpnicka could see that Weronika enjoyed embellishing the stories and pretending to be a slightly haunted old woman. Mrs. Karpnicka didn't know her personal life beyond what Weronika had told her, but it was certain that Weronika wasn't one to have many reasons to smile, or to run away from them. Mrs. Karpnicka knew, and she liked Weronika's sad smile so much that, more than once, when sharing her memories with her, she tried to bring it out. And as her world shrank in her old age, Weronika's figure filled it by far the largest part, Weronika became something like a daughter, someone to whom she could devote herself entirely.

"Oh, Mrs. Karpnicka," Weronika said, leaning against the sideboard and shaking her head comically, "you're so good at making things up, it makes you want to skip forward those few decades and tell them to your granddaughters."

And then she'd hang her head in sad contemplation, because, Mrs. Karpnicka knew, Weronika had no one to make up stories to, and for now, there was no sign of anything changing in the near future. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Mrs. Karpnicka even inquisitively and rather tactlessly asked where her husband worked so that he was never seen (for Mrs. Karpnicka it was unthinkable that a woman of Weronika's age lived alone and had no children), but later, as she noticed that Weronika lowered her head more and more when asked such questions, she stopped bringing up the subject, even though she was very curious why such a pretty woman had not found a loving man.

For Mrs. Karpnicka, the only reason for Weronika's premature wrinkles and lack of enthusiasm for life was her lonely apartment. At first, she also considered her job, as caring for the dying in a hospice wasn't exactly a cheerful occupation, but whenever Weronika spoke of her work, she spoke as if she weren't the one working there, as if she were merely repeating what a friend had confided in her. She treated her charges almost as objects, polite and dignified, but still. The death of the old man, who for several months had smiled at her, showing all his yellow and gold teeth, as well as his lack thereof, didn't stir much emotion in her. Perhaps Weronika had become so saturated with death that it would now be difficult to separate them? No, Mrs. Karpnicka knew. Weronika hadn't always worked in the hospice, hadn't always been steeped in death, and her pale, alexithymic face seemed to reach much deeper into history. Either Weronika was born with a congenital defect in feeling emotions, or something had happened in her life that had cleansed her of them.

"Weronika, honey, I'm an old fart now and I can live alone," Mrs. Karpnicka would say, before she realized she was broaching a very painful subject. "But you, girl, you're young, why do you live alone? Do you know how many boys live alone too? And they would give anything to live with a woman like you!"

Mrs. Karpnicka soon realized that Weronika wasn't alone by accident. Weronika wanted to be alone. That was her choice.

Mrs. Karpnicka didn't understand it (what could have happened to make this girl make such an irrational decision?), but she accepted it, just as she would have if Weronika had been her own daughter and never brought up the subject of men in Weronika's life again.

Krishna jumped onto the windowsill with a bang. Krishna was a completely black cat, named after a kid who lived with a widow downstairs. Bartuś named him that because he'd once seen bald, skinny guys wrapped in ridiculous robes on television, and his mother told him they were followers of some Krishna. Krishna had so much in common with his name that he had a small bald spot between his ears, which, strangely, never grew fur. He was a nobody's cat, prowling the windows of the tenement building (somehow getting into those furthest from trees and lower buildings), and being fed by several tenants, including Weronika. Weronika liked Krishna.

"Hello, pagan, have you been to Mrs. Weronika's?" Mrs. Karpnicka asked, opening the window and putting out a prepared bowl of leftovers from dinner. "What did you see there? The usual? No, there was some lady dressed in black. You're afraid of strangers, aren't you? Good cat. What will I do if you both leave me?"

She had a strange conviction, she believed she would outlive everyone in the building, even little Bartuś. And then, then she would be alone, completely alone, and unable to even die. That was Mrs. Karpnicka's only fear. She didn't believe she could die. Because all her loved ones had passed away, and she remained, she believed she was immortal.

Krishna delighted in stuffing himself with potatoes softened in milk, and the concept of death hovered somewhere, beyond his comprehension.

She saw him fifteen minutes and eight seconds after leaving the campus. He was running along the sidewalk, bumping into people in his path. She didn't know why he had caught her attention, why him, why at that particular moment, when the sun was blazing, casting beams of light on men playing volleyball without a net on the lawn by the pond, an elegant man in a charcoal suit with a cane and hat, three children running with joyful cries in front of three strollers pushed by three women, a boy and a girl lying by the trunk of a spreading willow, reading the day's newspaper to each other. He wasn't tall enough, stocky enough, or handsome enough for her taste. Frankly, he looked like a sixteen-year-old who had stolen his older brother's jacket to look more mature and serious. And yet, walking with a group of constantly chattering friends, she lost all contact with them for a moment, watching him drift further and further away, then at the last moment jump onto a tram, leaving only the irritating sound of the departing machine behind him.

She stood by the closed door, staring at it for a moment longer before realizing she was standing by the closed door, staring at it. She heard Martyna's heels running down the stairs. Maybe she had offended her? Even if she had, it wouldn't matter. He'd probably see her, as usual, in at least a month. Who knew, maybe the postman would arrive instead with an invitation to a wedding, a christening, or perhaps a funeral notice. It didn't matter whether Martyna felt offended or if everything had completely washed over her. She had her own life, in which Weronika was just a sentimental memory, one that sometimes deserved to be dusted off to feel better, to honor a cherished but misunderstood tradition, the same as keeping unsightly and impractical mementos from her grandfather.

The apartment, though physically unchanged by Martyna's visit, seemed to Weronika like the wreckage of a raging tornado, an empty place where a loud disco had ended only an hour ago, leaving behind broken chairs, shattered glasses, and the unpleasant stench of tobacco and alcohol. She had already forgotten the last time she'd hosted anyone (not even in this apartment, but also in her previous one). Untouched by even a breath of fresh air, the peace had vanished, and it seemed it would take some time to return. She was frightened; someone had invaded her solitude, not just in the sense of its four walls, the place where she'd isolated herself from the world. Someone had interrupted her urban nirvana. He had stepped onto the smooth road of an emotionless life, and even though she'd passed him by, an unfounded anxiety remained.

Martyna hadn't changed. Or rather, she had changed, but in a rather ordinary way, in keeping with the rhythm of passing years and the experience she'd gained. Her traits didn't change, didn't disappear, and didn't yield to others, but evolved, never straying from the plan laid out for them (when, even Martyna herself didn't know, perhaps as early as the moment her father's sperm bit into her mother's egg). Harmoniously and without major surprises, they led her, like a map, to the inexorable end of everything she had achieved so far, and like everyone else, with death marked at the end of the map with a cross, she slowly but steadily headed there. "Life, people, this is life," Martyna used to say when they were still in their second year, and both of them had a crush on a certain Wojtek from their third-year tourism class (they weren't jealous of him at all; on the contrary, they shared him in a non-serious way, even though he had no idea they existed), and both of them got drunk at a friend's housewarming party. "Finish my studies, find a job and a rich man, father him a child, and grow old listening to his problems—that's how I planned it all. And damn it, being original in this fucking life is damn hard." So far, Martyna's plan had gone smoothly—she'd finished her studies, found a good job, though completely unrelated to her studies, Adrian was an only child, and had wealthy parents. Like a fairy tale.

"Like a fairy tale," she repeated aloud, pouring herself some lukewarm coffee from the glass jug.

She sat down in the armchair, feeling strangely tired, as if the conversation with Martyna had burdened her, as if her words had shown her an image she didn't want to look at anymore, didn't want to because it brought anxiety and sleepless nights, but she felt the need to glance at it, even for a moment, to deliberately feed her guilt with her lack of self-discipline. She sipped her coffee phlegmatically and stared at the blank TV screen, which displayed memories seemingly captured on film, which Martyna had brought with her – certainly being aware of it.

She'd noticed from the start that he was different. She couldn't define this difference, but she was certain of it. He stood out clearly from all the boys who drank copiously after every exam they passed, regardless of the result, and who ran to the local soccer team's pitch, wrapped in wide scarves, passing the time by judging the legs of passing Lolitas. Dorota, whose nickname, Berta, perfectly suited her (the nickname "Fat" was only added when she was away), only confirmed this fact when she saw him for the third or fourth time – "Hey Werka, don't pay any attention to him. Not an interesting individual." "Not interesting?" Weronika asked unconsciously, unable to take her eyes off him. "Uninteresting means – strange. If you don't know what I mean, ask a few people who they saw him with and under what circumstances."

Weronika began discreetly, seemingly casually, asking people about him. She joined in on the jokes he made, even though she didn't understand them at all. Sometimes she sat on a park bench he occasionally passed by. Once, he even glanced at her, but then immediately lowered his head, as if feeling guilty for daring to look at her. She learned his name was Mateusz, that he was in his second year of pharmacy school, and that he lived with a woman ten years his senior near the university. Why he interested her so much, she couldn't say. She immediately dismissed the possibility that she was attracted to him as a man – first, that he wasn't her type at all, second, that he was younger than her (she couldn't imagine a relationship with a younger man; it was beyond her imagination), third, that she was prone to gossip. It all seemed mysterious and strange to her, almost magical, as if, along with Mateusz's face, the way he walked and held his briefcase (sometimes he had a bag slung over his shoulder), his perpetually perplexed eyes and his constant rush (where? to whom? for what purpose?), some mystical element had entered Weronika's life, as if by his very existence, completely unaware of it, he had led her out of his world, separated her from her friends with a thin and transparent, yet durable and strong, wall, showing her things that her eyes couldn't see, but which she felt every time she went to sleep and sometimes replaced thoughts of her life with thoughts of him, a world where only he was there, and everyone else loomed only as vague images, as if from behind the glass in the doorway to the guest room in her parents' house covered with embossed floral patterns.

They first shook hands and introduced themselves at a classmate's birthday party. She had no idea that Mateusz would also be there. When she knocked on the door, a bottle of champagne in hand, dressed in her traditional yet strange attire (tennis shoes on feet covered in multicolored striped socks, a chocolate-colored gypsy skirt with tiny daisies, and a thin sweater with an embroidered cat and mouse between the words "we don't want war," and with sleeves about twenty centimeters longer than the shoulders), Maciek (the birthday boy) opened the door. She entered in her characteristic manner, with a jovial smile and comments as sarcastic as they were witty. But when, embracing Maciek in greeting, she glanced into the room and, besides a few slightly tipsy people playing spin the bottle, saw Mateusz sitting on the windowsill, she froze. One moment she was teasing her host, the next she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. When Maciek closed the door behind her, she felt like a caged animal, with no escape, frozen in place, terrified, unable to even utter a word. Perhaps she had always wanted to meet Mateusz in person, but she also wanted to be prepared. Now she felt immature enough to shake his hand and introduce herself, just as she would have felt if someone completely serious had suddenly offered her the job of prime minister. However, after surviving the introduction process (with the terror of a trapped wolf, registering with every fiber of her being how he smiled at her, how he shook her hand, how he said his name and added that they had probably met somewhere before), she melted into the partying crowd and didn't speak to him or look at him once until the very end of the party.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Weronika one day read in her horoscope that a series of unexpected changes awaited her thanks to one person. And since she was a bit obsessed with astrology, and of course, believed in it wholeheartedly, fate must have led her down the path Mateusz had trodden.

Today, too, when she occasionally glanced (by accident, in passing) at his photo in its old-fashioned frame, even though it was black and white and very faded, against the colorful backdrop of the books it stood next to, it seemed the only real object in the room, giving the rest of the furniture, the carpet, and the unfinished painting on the easel the hallmarks of a dream, from which it was difficult to shake even after a full day of waking.

Weronika sighed softly and lay down on the couch, covering herself with the throw. She decided to sleep all day; she didn't feel like reading, painting, or watching TV (three activities that, besides work, occasional visits to an elderly woman downstairs, and meal preparation, completely dominated her existence). She also decided that tomorrow, right after work, she would go to a shelter or a store and adopt a cat, a dog, or something else, as long as it was somewhat sociable and had at least a shred of awareness of being alive. The bald black tomcat who sometimes banged on her window waiting for leftovers was definitely not her roommate, and suddenly (probably because the conversation with Martyna had unsettled her so much) she longed for something nearby that breathed, ate, made noise, and made a mess, that she could take care of, and that would return the favor in its own way. She covered her face and fell asleep immediately, ending another, essentially identical to the previous one hundred and eighty days (apart from the destruction Martyna had wrought with her short, yet fateful—and already noticeable—visit) in this apartment.

II

"I'm pregnant, Mom."

"Excuse me? Can you repeat that?"

Weronika sighed inwardly. She had been preparing for this conversation for the past three months, sixteen days, and six minutes, but she knew that even if she explained to her mother as matter-of-factly and calmly as possible what this was all about, there would be arguments and an exchange of differing opinions. Although Veronica's mother was liberal for her age (very liberal, even), and after retirement, she mellowed even more, resembling (quite dangerously) all those wrinkled grandmothers who, despite their age and the inexorable shifts in moral values ​​they had witnessed since their youth, tried to be loving and understanding (though in most cases, they didn't understand anything their children were doing), it was certain that the element of surprise was on Veronica's side, especially since she had never mentioned either a planned father for the planned child or planned motherhood. Veronica already felt the exhaustion that would come over her immediately after she laid it all out in detail, though she couldn't demand anything of her mother until everything was clear, she knew that.

Even on the way to her parents', with sun-drenched wheat fields stretching beyond the car windows, and a perfectly blue sky shrouded in perfectly white clouds. Together with the emptiness of the road and the scent of summer, it made the long hours behind the wheel surprisingly pleasant. She reflected on the sheer surprise in her mother's voice when she called, and how colossal when she announced her visit. Life passed her by at a leisurely pace, the days in her room with her easel passing like hours, and she didn't realize how far she had drifted from the places she once called home.

With the relish of a concentration camp prisoner who had spent half her life seeing only the concrete walls of barracks, she watched the surface of the lake sparkle with thousands of blinding sparks, passing which she slowed to twenty kilometers per hour. She breathed in the fresh air as if she'd spent the last few months in a hospital room, hooked up to life-support equipment. She giggled when she saw a toddler chasing a large German Shepherd, constantly falling face first into the tall grass, the dog leaping up to him and gently tugging at his clothes. All the bits of life that had begun to penetrate her under camouflage, in direct proportion to the distance separating her from her home, vanished forever, however, when, reaching her destination, she remembered where she was going and who she was. Paradoxically,

her parents had moved to the countryside shortly after their retirement. They bought a small manor house, renovated it with their savings, and lived the life every sixty-year-old dreamed of. At the sight of the beautiful (that was the only adjective she could think of), whitewashed house with a black tile roof, rows of multicolored flowers around it, a young mutt barking at her, and the shade provided by several thick linden trees, Weronika was overcome by a strange nostalgia, for no apparent reason—she couldn't find one. Perhaps she wished for such a waiting room for death, or perhaps she tried not to think about such places at all.

"I'm going to have a child," she said, a little spitefully, realizing she'd never held her mother in such low esteem. "A child, a baby, a little kinder. A little thing that will grow up, scream at me that I'm the worst mother in the world, and after twenty years of living with me, move out of my house, only to call every now and then and complain about her wife or husband."

"Weronika, but what month is it?" her mother stammered, still in shock so intense that she couldn't articulate her syllables clearly enough.

"Second.

" "And you haven't mentioned a wedding, and you know it will be too obvious later to avoid malicious gossip.

" "There will be no wedding."

"What do you mean, it won't be? You don't want to marry him, or does he? Does he even know it's his child and he'll have to pay child support?"

The flat matter-of-factness stung Veronica so much that she couldn't resist shooting her mother a look filled with both regret and contempt. Her mother had always approached everything rationally and materialistically, leaving little time for feelings during those long evenings when she showed them, giving the impression she'd learned them from a textbook, and from her pockets would stick out cheat sheets with appropriate descriptions for feeling sympathy, regret, or reassurance (though it was highly probable that, like every mother, she tried in her own way to make everything alright), but Veronica already felt independent enough and minimally connected to her parents that she didn't have to allow herself to play roles in their theater that she neither remembered nor wanted to remember.

They sat in the garden, on low wicker chairs, at a table under a wide umbrella, sipping apple juice. The sun beat down mercilessly, and all around them could be heard the buzzing of bees and the chirping of birds. A few dozen steps toward the endless cornfield, the father was playing fetch with a mutt.

"I don't know the father," Weronika said. "I was in... Hmmm. You know what artificial insemination is, right?

" The surprised look on the mother's face gave way to a grimace of "you're being ridiculous." Weronika saw in that grimace all the comments she'd expected from her mother. Did she know how difficult it is for a single mother to raise a child? Did she know that there would be no one to care for the child while she was at work? Did she know the responsibility she was taking on? Did she know what her child would experience when she learned that all the children in the yard had something like their father? To Weronika's surprise, her mother limited herself to one sentence:

- Have you thought this through carefully?

Had she thought this through? For God's sake! Ever since Martyna visited her one spring afternoon, an afternoon after which nothing seemed the same, and looking at Mateusz's faded photo didn't help banish the terrible feeling of loneliness, like hunger and thirst, gnawing at every part of her body, she'd thought of nothing else. Until she made her decision, she hadn't read a single book, painted a single picture, watched a single television program, and never once went for tea with the old woman downstairs. When she finally weighed all the arguments for and against, and the former, though fewer in number, tipped the scales with a weight and a force beyond any doubt, she experienced the feeling as if whatever had entered her the first time she'd crossed the threshold of her apartment, whatever had fed on everything she hadn't done, even the thoughts of those things, had leaped out of her, fallen out the window, and died on the sidewalk three floors below. She changed the curtains and let more light into the house. She bought new records, music she hadn't heard before. She started reading genres she'd never tried before. She changed the color of her bedroom walls from a faded blue to a soothing green. She painted a picture of sunflowers in a jug. She drank only the best coffee and didn't skimp on sugar in her tea. Although Weronika, who had been Martyna's guest in the apartment for the first time, hadn't disappeared, the feeling that something was coming, bringing about great, mysterious, and almost intangible changes, made Weronika wake up each morning realizing what she was doing here, here, in this world, something she had been missing for what seemed like forever.

"I've thought it through too well. I want to have this child. Alone."

At dinner, when her father learned the news (Veronika's revelations didn't interest him any more than tomorrow's weather, as he was going fishing), and an owl hooted outside the window, her mother said,

"Actually, I'm glad you're going to have a child, even if it's alone. I wouldn't want you to grow old feeling like you've accomplished nothing in your life."

Falling asleep, the moon was full and the shadow of a linden tree fell through the window onto the wall in the living room, Veronica realized that her mother despised her even more than she despised her, and that she had every right to do so.

Because she hated her mother. She hated her thin, long nose (which she saw every time she looked in the mirror), her small eyes sunk between high cheekbones, her faded blond hair, her thin lips, her thin neck. She hated her glances, her advice, her eternal calm, her coolness in most situations. But it wasn't directed at her personally. If she weren't a mother, she would simply be fine. Veronica hated the way her mother approached life, as if everything from her birth to the moment she died were scripted, the same as millions of other women around the world. As if she couldn't afford even a shred of individuality, an element of eccentricity, a shred of originality. Home, husband, children, grandchildren. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, fresh linens, a clean tablecloth, a vacuumed carpet. A plot in the cemetery with a monument already built, without an inscription, flat as her imagination.

"I'd also like my child to grow up in the country," she said that same evening. "Not in the near future, of course, but definitely before he's covered in pimples.

" "Am I to understand that you expect an answer as to when my father and I will die? Daughter, I don't know."

It's surprising that, living the life of a completely cold woman, she sometimes allowed herself to prove to the world that she had a sense of humor, although she used it in some involuntary way, neither laughing at her own jokes nor demanding it from anyone else. Weronika called this "joking seriously."

"Meanwhile, it's quite difficult to buy even a small cottage in the country. This cottage isn't small, I admit, but I can say that my father and I worked for our whole lives. Together. I don't know if you'll ever figure it out on your own.

" "Mom," Weronika interrupted, ignoring her mother's usual efforts to bolster her spirits, "I wanted to say that you're going to be a grandmother."

She saw it. That fleeting, almost invisible, unique moment when the older woman's face changed so dramatically that for that fraction of time she looked thirty years younger. Young enough to be aware that she still had a mission to fulfill before she took on the final one—choosing the type of coffin.

In that moment, as it sank in, Weronika's mother was happy. Even though she didn't know it, and even though she still looked emotionless, she was as happy as she had been thirty years ago, knowing someone needed her.

"Children raised in the countryside are better than those raised in the city," she said in her matter-of-fact tone after a brief silence. "Less self-righteous, more tolerant, and more ambitious. They wouldn't have anything to do in the city during the summer anyway. They'd always be welcome."

Weronika wondered if, when she became a grandmother herself, she would experience the same feeling her mother had that evening. And since it was obvious in the emotionless woman, what would her mother's appearance be like? How would she feel?

The world seemed beautiful that evening.

As she left the village, her mother performed—yes, that's the only way to call it—a ritual. Weronika's farewell, though they were both certain they would see each other again, seemed like a grand ceremony, and images of the crowds tearfully bidding farewell to the Pope after his pilgrimage flashed through Weronika's mind. She felt a profound change in her mother's personality—she couldn't say what external signs led her to this conclusion, but she saw it—her mother had changed, for that brief moment of farewell. The ritual consisted of giving Weronika a ring (she remembered her mother had always worn it—she wasn't sure, but it probably belonged to her great-grandmother) and a brief kiss on the forehead. Her mother rarely kissed her, and since Weronika was fourteen, she had never done so. The ring sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the car's windshield. It was beautiful.

That much was obvious. The ring's features, like letters, engraved what she wanted to say, something that no words—or even concrete thoughts—could express. It was a feeling Weronika understood for the first time: her mother was proud of her. Her mother loved her. Now, when she was expecting a child. Right now. Maybe—only now.

Martyna admired the ring, twisting Weronika's hand until it turned blue.

"Truly, beautiful," she said with an expert voice. "Silver, for sure. It must be two hundred years old.

" "Let's not exaggerate," Weronika replied, pulling away from Martyna. "I don't know where my great-something-grandmother had the money for something like that in these times, but the fact is, I could probably pawn some of the junk from the apartment with it."

Adrian sat quietly, as usual, speaking only when asked. He didn't look like the quiet, henpecked type. He was tall, well-built, had incredibly thick stubble (it was visible even without touching him) and sharp features, a typical American comic book hero. At the same time, besides being Hollywood-handsome, polite, and well-mannered (it was clear he came from some influential family), there was something about him that repelled Weronika. She knew he would never hurt Martyna and that Martyna was his whole life. She knew Martyna loved him—in her own way—and cared about him—but she didn't feel obligated to like him. This was perhaps the fourth or fifth time they'd met. Weronika never struck up a lively conversation with him, though she tried to be pleasant. After that, she learned to ignore him completely.

"I wonder why my mother gave it to me now," she said, finishing her coffee.

"She did it right after you told her she was going to be a grandmother?" Martyna asked (how could she hold his hand, in an expensive restaurant, like some teenager?).

Weronika nodded.

"Apparently, she's finally accepted you as part of the family.

" "I don't think I understand."

My mother was harsh about her upbringing—yes, but Weronika never doubted that she cared about her daughter in some way.

"You see, it all depends on where you're born," Martyna continued. "In what part of the world, in what culture, at what time. You have to live up to the expectations of the customs in which you're raised. If you're born a woman in a country where they get excited about the Koran, it's perfectly normal for you to have to completely cover every part of your body except your eyes. If you're born here, it's perfectly normal for your parents to expect grandchildren from you.

" "You're generalizing terribly." Where in the world is there a culture where they don't wait for children?

"Don't nag, you know what I mean.

" "Speaking of children," Martyna lightly patted Weronika's still flat stomach.

"So far, everything's fine. I'm throwing up and binge-eating according to the rules.

" "Remember what I told you? You can count on us if you ever become a mother, you know that, right?"

"I've heard that so many times I'm starting to get scared.

" "Relax. I'll be the greatest aunt in the world."

Adrian must have been jealous, of course, but he didn't show it. Meanwhile, Weronika wondered how much everything had changed since she'd gotten pregnant. How people's attitudes towards her had changed. She felt—yes, that's exactly what she felt—as if she'd been recognized as a member of a large family called humanity. She was a little afraid of all this—not only had people's attitudes towards her changed, but her own attitudes towards them had changed as well. She felt herself slowly, slowly, losing her individuality over time, in a vast ocean of thoughts. But if that was the price of happiness, she was willing to pay it.

"Sorry, honey, but I have to go," Adrian muttered after a short conversation on his cell phone. "You understand, business."

Martyna didn't show disapproval for a split second, and they said goodbye as if Adrian having to leave their dinner because of a work call was nothing out of the ordinary. Adrian kissed her forehead, and she narrowed her eyes in satisfaction, and in that position, they expressed with their bodies that they knew this one dinner meant nothing and that they had eternity ahead of them.

"A workaholic rack of men's underwear," Martyna mused, watching with Weronika as the Hollywood hunk climbed into a fancy Ford and politely drove off into the blue distance.

An ordinary twenty-first-century guy living in a culture where it is normal to get married, have children, and absolutely send them to a foreign university, Weronika thought.