Mr. Marcin was my neighbor. We lived across the street from each other. Ever since I bought the car, we spent every free weekend in the garage, restoring my "little one."
From the moment it arrived, almost everything on it broke down. The clutch went out, the generator wouldn't start. The bodywork wasn't perfect either. Not to mention I couldn't afford gas because my parents told me I'd have to maintain it myself.
At one point, I was about to sell the junk car, but Mr. Marcin said we'd spruce it up so that every woman would fall for it.
And so we did. For three months, we worked on it, working on it. We got it as good as I could. Of course, Mr. Marcin didn't charge me a penny, doing all this for a beer. That's how I became close friends with Mr. Marcin, despite our almost thirty-year age difference.
We ate lunch together, and sometimes even dinners, cooked for us by his wife, Mrs. Teresa. Living next door to each other, our families were on friendly terms, but my parents were always too busy to stop and get to know their neighbors. Like most people in town, they didn't know them, even though we'd lived here for fifteen years. They always just said, "Those C.s are a decent family." They said that because we saw them every Sunday in church, and if they argued at all, it was without us hearing. My parents were as interested in them as they were in me. Ultimately, at some point, I started living my own life. Although things weren't bad at home, the distances between me and my parents in the hallway were greater than if a river ran through the house. I lived on my side, and they on theirs.
Since we moved out of town, my life changed. My parents were only looking for money, and I started working out of boredom. For a while, I delivered pizzas in my car, but when I didn't get to work for several days in a row, they fired me. I didn't really have to work, but I wanted to. I wanted something of my own and not have to ask my parents for anything. I bought the car with their money, or rather, mine. They gave it to me as a gift, after putting up with me for eighteen years. I thought this car would give me the freedom I didn't find at home, even though no one was watching me because they didn't have the time. The saddest thing was that my father never even took me for a ride in my car. He just said, "He's not going to run over me if I get lost on the road." I wasn't even going to ask him, and I didn't, even when I had to push the little bee two kilometers home.
I didn't ask Mr. Marcin either at first. He approached me while I was tinkering with the engine of a car parked in the driveway. He came over and started helping me. He explained how to set the ignition and clean the spark plugs. That's how it all began.
The forty-year-old became my friend. He told me how he used to work in Żerań, assembling cars, but then he was laid off, and from then on, he bounced from mechanic to mechanic, taking on jobs. Our collaboration was purely a back-and-forth affair. He helped me build the car into a supercar, and I brought him half a liter of pure wine, which he drank secretly in my car. He'd say, raising his glass, "I can't make a little one without a strong inhale," or something like that. We always listened to the radio while we talked, so my wife couldn't hear the clinking glasses. Out of politeness, I'd have a "penalty" with him and then we'd start tinkering. And that's how we'd always hang out until the evening.
Spring passed, and the time came to paint the car, and everything was ready. Mr. Marcin borrowed a paint sprayer from a friend, and I bought a red metallic paint. We used two bottles because my wife wouldn't smell anything but paint and thinner anyway. We sat there that afternoon, waiting for the first coat of paint to dry. I pulled out the grill and, drinking beer, fried chicken legs. Mr. Marcin looked pleased with himself. Actually, I did too, because even though I'd spent twice as much on the car as it was worth when I bought it, it looked good.
The day was slowly drawing to a close, like the vodka in the bottle. At some point, Mr. Marcin decided it would be a good idea to go for a drive tomorrow. Just like the good old days he'd told me about when we sat by the car on those Saturdays. It was supposed to be a trip out of town, like the days of Gierek, when people still built "Polish" cars in Żerań and drank vodka at work like tea.
I agreed and asked if his wife would also come with us. Mr. Marcin looked strangely at his house and shook his head no. I thought he was going to say something else, but he stood up and reached for a beer from the cooler. He took a sip and told me that his wife probably wouldn't want to get in the car, even if it were the most expensive car in the world. I asked him why and immediately regretted it, because for the first time, Mr. Marcin looked sad and told me the story of the misfortune that had befallen his marriage.
Mr. Marcin married Terenia, as he called her, twenty years ago. A year after their wedding, their daughter, Ania, was born. As fate would have it, they had an accident returning from vacation. They hit a car in front of them that had a flat tire. The impact was so violent that the little girl, who was riding on his lap, was thrown through the windshield. She died instantly, and Mrs. Teresa suffered such severe abdominal injuries, crushed by the seat belts, that she was unable to conceive again. Thus, with my question, I ruined the rest of the evening for both me and Mr. Marcin. He didn't even want grilled chicken legs or another beer; he got up and went to his room.
Sunday morning, I was awakened by my neighbor's call. Mr. Marcin was in a better mood and was wearing something that looked like a suit. It was blue, but from a different era. Trying to contain my laughter, I went downstairs to Mr. Marcin's, and we set off on the promised trip. I filled up the car and the cooler, and off we went. At first, we just kept going, but eventually we decided that the best fish and girls were biting at the lake. So, with rhythms that weren't particularly impressive for Mr. Marcin, but appropriate for our destination, we set off for Zegrze Reservoir.
There were plenty of girls on the beach, but sitting with Mr. Marcin, even the best songs sipping from the soobwufer couldn't entice any of them to take a ride in the malion. We sat there on the hood of the newly painted car and admired the people digging in the lake. The first bottle at Mr. Marcin's slowly went down, then the second. He dozed off a bit on the way back, but as soon as we jumped on a sleeping policeman right by the school, he immediately recovered and walked confidently home two minutes later. Barking
woke me up in the night. When I looked out the window, I saw someone standing at the gate. I went downstairs and used the intercom to ask the figure what he wanted. It was Mr. Marcin's wife. She'd been looking for him at my place. I told her I'd walked him home and even seen him enter his yard through the gate. I was surprised he didn't make it home. After all, he was only a few meters from the door.
I dressed quickly and went outside. My father called to me at the door, asking pointedly who was knocking at our door at this hour. When I explained that it was a neighbor looking for Mr. Marcin, he closed the bedroom door and turned off the light.
It was dark outside, so when I turned on the lights above the entrance and by the gate, I had to squint my eyes, accustomed to the darkness. Mrs. Teresa stood at the gate, holding a flashlight. I explained again that I'd dropped her husband off before eight, and that was the last time I saw him. Mrs. Teresa had been at a friend's house since seven, whom she always visits after Mass, so she didn't return until nine, and she hadn't seen Mr. Marcin since we left after dinner together. She searched everywhere for him, but no one found him. She'd been walking around for three hours, worried about him. At first, she thought we were together, but the car was parked outside the gate, meaning we'd returned. When she couldn't find him at her friends' house, she thought of me.
I asked her why she hadn't come to me first. She said Mr. Marcin certainly wouldn't have come to my house because my house wasn't the kind of place you'd visit like you'd visit friends. Especially since tomorrow was Monday, and everyone went to work, and her husband knew it wasn't appropriate to stay at a stranger's house for so long.
I promised Mrs. Teresa I'd drive around the neighborhood and look for him, and I asked her to go home and check if he hadn't returned while she was gone. When I suggested this, she almost immediately rushed home. I only managed to give her my phone number in case she wanted to contact me.
Once she was home, I unlocked the car and got in to go look for Mr. Marcin. God, I was so scared when someone moved in the backseat. I thought I was going to die when something poked me in the back and I heard a gasp. I jumped out of the car and pushed the seat back. I swung my hand, aiming for the spot where the face of someone sitting in my car should have been, and struck. A terrible pain shot through my arm; I only felt myself hitting something hard, then heard a hollow metal sound and my own broken "fuck." I tripped over the curb and fell flat on my back.
As I lay there, I saw someone emerge from my car. Only when I saw Mr. Marcin's blue jacket did I feel a throbbing pain in my hand, suggesting it might be broken. He got out of the car, carrying a large package that must have been very heavy, as he needed both hands to lift it. He asked me if I was okay and gently placed it on the front seat. Then he offered me his hand and helped me up, swaying slightly as he did so, having to find another bottle of vodka in the car, which I had stashed for him for another occasion. He was a little sleepy and all rumpled. I was surprised he fit in the back, but he explained that in the old days, people in these cars made love and fathered children together, so you could sleep there alone, too.
We sat on the hood. I asked him why he hadn't come home when I dropped him off. He replied that he'd been home and hadn't found his wife. Then he went to the shed and wanted to tinker with something else when the light went out. Rummaging around in the darkness, he found an old candle. It reminded him of how, as a child, he'd always wandered through the attic, rummaging through his grandparents' old belongings. He'd find strange things there: record players, old music boxes. He remembered repairing them with his grandfather and turning them on to listen to the pre-war songs wailing like ghosts. At that moment, he got the idea to search his shed, curious to see what he'd find.
Most of them were car parts, the kind no one even repairs anymore because they're in museums. Finally, he pulled out his old bicycle, which he'd once tried to install a motorcycle engine into.
At the very bottom of the large crate, something that brought back memories, more than the parts or the bicycle. It was an old red vacuum cleaner, one manufactured by Predom before the fall of communism. Mr. Marcin reached behind his back and pulled out the vacuum cleaner. It was almost colorless; the red had turned to something resembling orange. It was obvious it had been in the shed for a very long time. It had a rotten cord and smelled like old clothes in a closet that hadn't been opened for years. It reeked of humanity, of millions of dust particles it had absorbed from the floor, walls, and carpets. The entire past and the atmosphere of those years. It was like my little one. It belonged to someone and demanded someone's attention. And if not that, then the opposite: complete destruction.
When Mr. Marcin said this about the vacuum cleaner, petting it tenderly like a child, I understood then what a sad and lonely man he was. Every day spent at home was the same, without a future or any attempt to change anything for the better. Having anything, sometimes you wanted nothing more. What you had was enough for you. And what did Mr. Marcin have, besides his home, his wife, who became a stranger to him when he stopped caring?
He woke up every morning and waited for the moment when someone would tell him what to do, where to go. A world where everyone has a place didn't exist for him. As we sat in my car, I felt sad that I had parents who, despite not caring about me, were there for me. That I had friends who didn't care about who I was anymore. I couldn't look into the eyes of a man who no longer had the chance to meet someone else, to love many more women. I couldn't express how much more there was ahead of me, as Mr. Marcin sat, truly alone, with no one to talk to except an eighteen-year-old brat. Who, besides the fear of becoming a father someday, had never known true fear of life.
I'll probably always remember the way Mr. Marcin looked at me. He told me how he bought that vacuum cleaner for his wife when she was still pregnant. It was actually the first such gift for their home after their wedding. Mr. Marcin worked so hard that he would never even wait in line at the store for it, so he traded it in for an alternator they'd taken from the factory. Terenia was very happy because the gift would help her with cleaning.
Everything worked beautifully then, just like their marriage. The little one was born in April, and more gifts from the family arrived. Mr. Marcin threw a real christening party. He invited his family over, and they drank for two days. The factory promised him a car, since he already had an apartment. It couldn't have been better.
One day he wanted to clean, but the vacuum cleaner wouldn't work. He figured something must have burned out, but he didn't even have time to sit down and fix it. After all, little Ania always cried a lot when he turned it on, so they didn't need it so badly. That's how it ended up in the shed.
We were sitting outside my house. I asked Mr. Marcin if he wanted me to call home and tell his wife I'd found it. He stopped me from pulling out his phone and continued telling the story.
When they had the accident and the baby was dead, he was more devastated than his wife. The knowledge that they would never have a child after losing Ania haunted him. He decided to kill himself, hanging himself in the same shed where the light had gone out that day.
While standing on a chair, he saw the vacuum cleaner in the corner. He went downstairs and decided he'd just fix it so Terenia could use it, and he wanted to return to his aborted suicide attempt. Then he heard his wife calling, and then he saw her beckoning him to help her prepare dinner.
He thought he'd do it someday. That he'd fix it some other time and kill himself. But he completely forgot about it, and the vacuum cleaner sat there for so many years, probably because they'd gotten a used one from their in-laws.
And today he fixed it. The vacuum cleaner was running, and now he was afraid to get on the chair, because when he turned it on and heard that old wail, somewhere deep in his heart he heard the cry of a small child. Mr. Marcin told me that a person is born wanting to love forever. At some point in life, a feeling emerges that can't be contained by someone's death, and as long as he heard Ania's cries, she lived on in his memories.
Just as Mr. Marcin did in mine, because I had just returned from his funeral.
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