"Remember? You bought me a dress that time, it must have been Christmas. It was the same color as that little girl's hair!" "A girl." I am, was, and will be that little girl," she thought to herself. A couple walked past her. A woman, 33, with a terribly shrill voice, dressed mostly in pink. She was wearing high heels. Strappy heels—not something she, this particular "girl," would have liked. She didn't like them at all.
She didn't use her psychic abilities to hear what the blonde was squealing next.
"Aah, that gorgeous color, maybe even better than pink? It was beautiful, simply beautiful. Remember me, how I looked in it? I looked wonderful!"
Agata smoothed her stray red hair, looking at herself in the window of Big Star, at Geant. She walked through the mall with an ice cream cone in her hand, walking, walking. She fell into a Friday evening trance. It was like this every week.
She wore a skimpy black dress. She proudly showed off her long legs to everyone. She wore makeup, light and subtle, just to make her look beautiful. She knew how to look like that. She was very capable of it. Incredible, dazzling, and incredibly sexy.
What was wrong? If she was alone on Friday evenings, with her makeup on. She made herself look like a goddess and headed to one of Krakow's shopping malls. She usually bought herself some ice cream, sat on a leather couch in an expensive café, and the sight of only happy couples passed before her eyes. She loved the sight. She also loved feeling the surprised glances of people passing by. With the soul of almost a little girl, a pretty, intelligent, lonely, and foolish teenager.
She only remembered the day she found a cat on the tram. It was extraordinary. That memory, stronger than anything they had done to her body, her brain, endured. The cat was huge, black, and fluffy. Its hair, dirty and smelly, slightly irritated her face as she rode with it nestled in her lap. She decided she'd never part with him.
She sat alone in the nearly empty cinema. Alone, everyone who suddenly appeared like mushrooms after the rain had someone with them. It was a romantic comedy; she'd chosen this film specifically. It wasn't long, and it wasn't tedious. It was very pleasant to be the only one alone in this large cinema hall.
"Mejbi ju gana bi de łan end safes mi," Oasis sang an hour later. She chose her for the market. A beautiful zombie, that's what you could call her. A beautiful, lonely zombie, sat down, perched "out of Africa" on a coffee. The cup was steaming, the astonished eyes of the men turned to her when she entered, and the astonishment continued as she sat alone, alone for fifteen minutes at a table for two, a smile on her face. So beautiful. Her green eyes, seemingly hypnotizing, were wide, incredible. "Why didn't that boy come to the meeting? Why does that girl keep smiling?"
She remembers the doctor's white coat; everything was like something out of a dream, a TV series, dreamed up, imagined, just right. She also remembers her mother's eyes a little, so blue, like tears, they really were the color of the sea, as if they had infected her irises with that color, as if the sky had flowed into her eyeballs and now wanted to escape.
And she just smiled gently. She smiled the same way she did now, feeling absolutely nothing. She didn't understand the words of the song, she didn't understand why people bought chewing gum with a woman and a man kissing on it, she didn't want to know why Era could be Love.
The hospital beds smelled sterile, the anesthesia was very gentle, delicate, it was very nice, especially after it was over.
It was October, the leaves were falling from the trees, rainy, Polish autumn. No one felt like doing anything. That was the first time she suggested it to herself. That was the first time she thought about how beautiful, meaningful, useful, useful, modern it would be. She looked in the mirror. As always, she looked brilliant. She placed her hand on her left breast and felt the familiar thumping of her heart muscle.
"Aha... So this is what it feels like... this is how it plays, this is how it beats," she said, thinking, "this is how it looks..."
She smoothed her hair and knew. She had an idea; no one ever tried to dissuade her from her ideas. After all, during those few hours she sat in front of the mirror, something must have been happening in the house. The household members had sneaked in, darted into the room, only to flee, fall silent, hide away with what they saw. Did they know? Did anyone know? Why didn't anyone then...
"You have to do something about yourself, honey," her mother woke her up one morning. She knew, she already knew then what she dreamed of. That's why all this.
"No need. Just this one thing," Agata said, utterly senseless. How much it must have meant to her, she only knows now, as the bitter taste of coffee steams through her perfect nostrils, carries the aroma across her face, and the blood carries the caffeine to her brain. But not through her heart, not through her heart. Again, she fell into a trance, remembering it, she didn't know why—maybe some complications from pneumonia, maybe the dampness tonight, maybe the stares, too insistent than ever. She'd always liked them.
It only became serious around Christmas. Anyone who knew her knew it was already decided. The turning point, the straw that overflowed the pregnant cup, etc., was a visit to the store. She screamed at the clerk:
"Why do I need a heart?! I don't need it! I don't need to feel, it beats, no one else needs it but me, I don't want it. Why do I need my heart?! Why do I need my heart! Why do I need a heart? I don't want it to just be there, to beat and do nothing else. It didn't beep, it didn't tremble, it didn't cry. Why do I need a heart?! Why, why, why!!!!"
Then they often asked at school if everything was okay.
January 3rd
- Mom, I'd like to...
- Yes. ?
- Mom, I'd like to... I'd like to cut out my heart.
- ......
- Certainly, I really have, I've thought about it, I know, I thought, I felt, I'd never felt or sensed anything before, a strong, uninhibited desire, the first in my life. Rip this out of me. Take my heart away, I beg you.
- OK.
- Why are you crying?
After the anesthetic, everything was fine. The nurses treated her well; she even suspected her parents paid them extra for it. She had trouble sitting up, but she mastered it quite quickly. Family members often visited her. The question, "How are you feeling?"
kept repeating itself, almost to the point of boredom, and then a faint, awkward silence would fall. She wanted to scream, "NOTHING!" She usually made things up for the good of her family. That she was fine, but still a little weak. That she was nervous, but encouraged. Of course, they looked at her in disbelief. Absolutely right. "Was the surgery successful?" she asked doubtfully, fear in her voice when the doctor first visited her. She knew, despite everything, that it was over. She didn't feel it, she knew. He smiled his hospital smile and hissed in his characteristic voice, "Well, my lady, everything's under control, but the surgery went very smoothly." He dug into the pocket of his death-white lab coat and pulled out a bag. Something red, sloppy, shaped like her fist was inside. His slightly green eyes bulged, though she knew what a surprise he had for her. "And this is for you," he smiled, "you want to keep it, right? Because it's like baby teeth; you usually grow out of them. If you don't want it, I can throw it away." He tilted his head slightly. She thought for a moment. She was disgusted by the thing in the bag, disgusted that it had once pounded so hard in her chest. "I'll take it," she grimaced slightly, trying to force a smile. She imagined herself placing them with disgust into the metal box her aunt had given her in America. It didn't take long to get used to it. It didn't matter to her that her breast was deformed, that it wasn't functioning properly, because the day wasn't divided into any boom booms anymore, in her eyes, her brain, her stomach, and most of all, in her chest. The day was just that, an ordinary day, with a shrug and a neutral expression. Sometimes, and for the first time, secretly from the doctors, in the hospital bathroom, she gently stroked her left breast, reveling in the absence of anything. Yes, it was an absence of nothing. Slowly, as the doctor had said and assured her, all the emotional thoughts and memories vanished. Very good. Very proper. The coffee was damn expensive. She paid and left, slamming the door softly behind her. Eyes, eyes, she saw eyes everywhere.
Strange. She didn't have to feel anything. Maybe she just knew that someday, some evening, it would happen? She didn't have to feel anything, she just saw him.
It was late.
"Where were you?" her father asked, sitting in front of the television, slightly irritated. She smiled mysteriously.
"Almost on a date." Her mother, beside him, suddenly turned her eyes, already tearful and blue, her eyelids twitching.
"...The doctor said he accepts complaints," she said quickly, spat out the words, and placed a white, tired hand on the portable telephone receiver. Agata began to nod slowly—right, left, right, left.
"The operation wasn't successful," her father stated despairingly. He pushed her anxiously onto the couch, pressing his hand to her forehead.
"But it was a success. It's been so long—"
"You said," her mother interrupted her sharply, "you said you knew what you were doing, you knew what you wanted, you never wanted anything so badly. I wanted to believe you." What are you getting yourself into now?
"I don't know..." she whispered, flushed with emotion, as if in a trance. "I don't know, he said he had big ones, if there were two, they would split.
" And in the black box, standing alone, pushed haphazardly onto the highest shelf, it began to beat, completely dried out, torn from her chest, childish, small, fragile, and intensely red, it began to beat despite everything, senselessly, without any medical laws—her heart.
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