A bit of warmth

"Isn't she here?

" "No.

When I was little, I used to love throwing pebbles into the pond for hours, hoping one of them wouldn't sink. Now I felt like a huge, useless sinking stone. "

I'm not going in here."

"You're right, I'm getting out of here too, to hell with these leftovers," said Rudy. "

I'll spend the evening at home, staying here couldn't do me any good. This party had no chance, no appeals, no overtime, no playoffs."

"Maybe it's a good thing, at least I'll watch the game," I heard. "Right,

let's at least have a good beer."

I looked at my friend's face, which had brightened, but:

"I don't want to go anywhere, this damn place is too far."

I understood his doubts; the 10-degree frost, fresh snow crunching underfoot, and the wind whipping up its clouds were a slight discouragement. We were walking, talking, and suddenly we noticed something strange. The man was gripping the fence with his hands tightly clenched, leaning in all directions.

"Damn, I didn't know it was blowing like that."

"Well, it's a force ten on the Beaufort scale, it's going to be a real storm, zip up your oilskin and don't piss into the wind."

He tried a few times to walk a few steps without touching the fence, but each time it ended in a fall. We passed him calmly, sipping beer. They say television dulls the mind, making people less sensitive, but that's all a lie. At that moment, all the statistics on frostbite flashed before our eyes. I knew that in the freezing cold and the gusty wind, an old man in poorly buttoned, unbuttoned clothing, unable to walk two meters, would be history in a few hours.

I was sure no one would show up before then.

In situations like this, no one showed up, and the owners of the house where the chochoł dance was taking place

wouldn't feel sorry until morning. Even my mother has strong opinions on the matter: you help a drunkard up, and he'll go back to beating his wife and children. We walked quite a distance before turning back.

"If you let me finish my beer, I'll even give him artificial respiration," I told Red. I'd overdone it. The man was in worse shape than we'd expected; his unbuttoned fly and haphazardly unbuttoned shirt, beneath his disheveled jacket, were clear evidence of that. Lacking any other ideas, we decided to follow him in the direction he was heading, so similar in his path to a sunken ship during a storm. We had to take his arm, barely managing to overcome our revulsion. The man simply stank unbearably. Suddenly, he made a sudden movement, and the contents of his bag spilled out. My mother was right when she told me to always bring gloves; picking up lumps of coal with my bare hands wasn't fun. "It'll only last a few days of sparing fuel," I thought.

Fortunately, in a town like this, "getting it" was never difficult. I remember being very surprised when I was a kid why men were running around in the woods with gas canisters. My town, if London's descriptions were to be believed, was like San Francisco before the earthquake, surgically divided by the railroad tracks.

We tried to strike up a conversation with our charge. Rudy, asking the same question with eerie consistency:

"Where the hell do you live?", finally managed to achieve an effect I couldn't believe.

I remembered my first friend, the one I grew up with, a sensitive, cheerful girl who fed all the stray

dogs. I wanted to remember his father as a short but muscular man, who talked too loudly, with unnaturally black hair. Unfortunately, today everyone thinks of him as a small, shrunken, red-faced alcoholic who wandered the neighborhood before dying the typical death for his kind, drinking tainted alcohol. I remember that when, after a few years, the girl was able to return to their own apartment with her mother, she had changed beyond recognition. She hid her face in her long, loose hair, didn't talk much, and rarely smiled. I hated her, my father, for what his family had endured, for taking my friend away from me when I needed her most.

I felt hatred again. Pure and unadulterated, suggesting the possibility of leaving him for dead, telling me that this might be the best solution.

"What if he has a wife and children?" I asked. "

Do you want to leave him like that? He's human, after all; you should know we can't."

"Yes."

Red's gaze was icy. "If you want it, go ahead," he simply said, knowing full well I couldn't leave my friend. He made the decision for both of us. Experience had told me that other people sometimes know better what's best for us; you just have to trust them. I did. We passed another disco, and luckily none of our friends noticed us, and those who did were so drunk they would have believed Britney Spears could sing.

We traced the house numbers until we finally reached the right one. At that moment, the stairs began, very winding, steep, and shrouded in darkness, leading to a destination we didn't know. Further attempts to ask questions were fruitless, and we lacked the time and patience.

The building we were in dated back to the days of the Warsaw-Vienna railway, and I was furious that people still lived there.

"You have a house the size of this tenement building, and you can't find a place for yourself in it," I thought to myself, feeling sorry for myself.

It was well after 10 p.m. when Rudy desperately knocked on the door. We were lucky, our friend answered. She caught on instantly.

"Mr. Henio, is it nice, isn't it?" "

Does this happen to him often?" I asked.

"No, not really. He lives right at the top, on the right.

" Fortunately, the weather had cleared up a bit. A faint gleam of light filtered through the small, dirty windows, allowing us to reach the very top, the attic. Around us were several doors, and a sink stood, probably the only bathroom. The one on the right was locked.

"Do you have a key?" Piotrek asked

. "We might as well ask that wall. Even if he did, he might have lost it along the way."

"Damn, it's dangerous to leave him here. He doesn't know what's going on. If I try to climb down that ladder, I'll kill myself."

"I know," I replied, feeling irritation and anger rising.

When you don't know what to do, it's good to trust your intuition. I did just that recently when two tracksuit guys approached us at Retkinia and asked if we were from here. Before we could answer, Dawid received a powerful punch that sent his head bouncing off the door he was opening. Then he came at me, twice as wide and had the advantage, as he was the one attacking. He struck terribly slowly, casually, with his hand open. "She hits like a woman," I thought, before the force of the punch, which I blocked, sent me flying back two meters. When I got up, the two of them were kicking Krzysiek, Dawid still hadn't recovered. I was a bit drunk, coming back from a party, but my intuition told me it wasn't good for two tracksuit guys to beat up my friend. I walked over and told them to piss off. The result exceeded my expectations. Instead of kicking him further, they considered me a threat and moved towards me. Krzysiek was so stunned he didn't even see me. When he saw they'd stopped kicking him, he immediately started running. I tried to convince them it was pointless, that I didn't really have anything against them, that they were fine

. They didn't believe me. They were two fucking cowards, insecure, trying to feel better the only way they'd learned on the street. When I saw them still walking towards me and my friends were safe, I started running. I had to check if the guys were okay.

"What are we going to do with him?"

"Wait a minute."

I started opening the doors one by one, until finally one of them gave way. I entered the hallway, which turned out to be the entire apartment, a modest bachelor's kitchen and bedroom. I felt like a burglar. No one was on the bed. I breathed a sigh of relief. "

Are you sure this is his apartment?"

"I don't care, it's not our problem anymore."

We left him there with a clear conscience. For a moment, I considered barricading the door so he couldn't get out, but I decided against it. I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. I hoped he'd fall asleep quickly, because so far, he'd been bumping into things and screaming. We left the house, only to disappear into silence a moment later.

I couldn't fall asleep for a long time, thinking that at that very moment, in that old, crumbling ruin, a man was sleeping, and tomorrow, consciousness would strike him with all its cruelty. A man who, with hands numb from the cold and with quick, nervous movements, would try to warm his cold world with the little warmth contained in the bag, as old as himself.