‘…Listen,’ he
uttered, pulling his chair closer to the other man. ‘But this is so
interesting!’
The other one only
sighed, content.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he
said with a grin, ‘very interesting…’
But the other didn’t
wish to remain entrenched along the lines of these rather abstract words, so he
again opened his mouth, two or three times kind of hesitated as if the sounds
surrounding them, that were henceforth seemingly unnoticeable to him, began to threaten
the empty space, surrounding the two of them, the space he believed to be
reserved for his voice; anyway he finally started:
‘Listen…’ he began,
dragging his chair closer, even closer than before. ‘But here’s the thing – I wanted
to tell you about an altogether different matter.’
The other one
sighed, yet this time – not content at all; however, he sighed quieter, without
as much pomp, without noticing, as if off-guard.
‘Listen…’ (this
word started to get into even his nerves already) the other said. ‘Maybe we
could go out for a while, because I don‘t hear anything here…’
‘Right, hmm…’ his interlocutor
muttered, stood up, stroke his crumpled trousers with his hands, as if feeling in
need of being dusted after such a prolonged period of monotonous sitting. The
other one stood up too, somewhat clumsily, as if it was an irritating wish of
his interlocutor that forced him up to his feet and not his own suggestion. All
around a crowd was making a lot of noise. Well, to call that group of persons,
less than twenty of them, ‘a crowd’ would be perhaps an overstatement, yet they
managed to cause some noise: music on, a TV set sadly kept broadcasting –
sadly, because it was forgotten, like some old and unwanted acquaintance.
Someone switched it on and forgot what he or she wanted to watch… It was
pitch-dark outside and inside there was a twilight of sorts in places, yet in
other places, on the contrary, a kind of exaggerated
lighting that seemed to indicate that ‘something is about to happen’, because
usually no one feels a need for such intense lighting when they are simply
biding their time. The crowd amassed here consisted of less than twenty
persons: lads and girls, part of them already soundly boozed; the voices of
some were constantly echoed in all of the rooms, and another part seemed to be
innately mute and born to listen.
The two men went
out to the staircase, the one who was asked to go out didn’t close the door completely;
the steel door, it’s cross-section now exposed, looked like a hatch in a spacecraft,
hermetic and commanding respect. The man, as it were, seemed not to expect a
long exchange and to show his determination he held the doors with his hand,
even slightly swinging it, just like he had been playing with his glass, when he
was sitting in the armchair, almost right in front of the TV set…
‘What did you
want?’ He said now, and when uttering ‘want’, his eyes touched the face of his
interlocutor, touched even somewhat indecently, too rudely even. Sensing that, his
interlocutor cringed, but, was he to be questioned on the spot, he would have
certainly testified, without any confusion whatsoever, that it was the cold,
nothing else but the cold that made him cringe.
‘Eh, I don’t even
know…’ he began; it was evident that this signified a beginning of a long speech;
he seemed by now to have retained his humours, though, when he just got out of
that strange flat, he seemed somewhat confused, perhaps due to a sudden change
of temperature and lighting. ‘Paulius,’ he continued, ‘don’t you know that I
feel uncomfortable here – there’s plenty of people who are so alien to me, I
don’t know anyone here, do you know them – this I don’t know as well, and, then
again, they are so noisy and get drunk way too soon, before I manage to find a
way to get acquainted with them, they’re already unable to get acquainted with’
he paused and then went on. ‘But you’ve got to understand: I came here only to talk
to you, even if I regret it now…’
The last phrase
came across almost arrogant and the man now stood on tiptoe, drew himself up, reclined
his head a bit, his hand brushing off a lock of hair off his forehead, and then
began to rub his nose somewhat hysterically. He behaved as if the words – here,
on the staircase, under a dim lamp, just now – fell out of his mouth unwittingly,
involuntarily; thus, he wasn’t to be judged…
‘And so?’ Paulius said.
His interlocutor, it seemed, was now confused. At that very moment, beyond the
slightly opened door a new wave of screams could be heard, accompanied by an increase
in the volume of the music; both unwittingly turned towards the door, but
Paulius didn’t open it any more than previously.
‘Could we go
outside?’ His interlocutor proposed, even somewhat bravely, this time braver
than before. Paulius sighed, as if the man had profoundly bothered him by now.
But quickly said: ‘Alright, alright, let’s go.’
He almost grabbed
his interlocutor, who again seemed stupefied, by the hand; the man, having asked
and having received a positive answer, now stood frozen to the spot, like it all
had nothing to do with him. He instinctively escaped Paulius’s hand and they
both went down the staircase; it had gotten colder noticeably, and so it was a
good idea to first stay for a while upstairs, otherwise the cold would overwhelm
them even. Simply as a matter of surprise. Since the two of them sat here
throughout the evening whilst the public amassed here gradually got drunk;
first there was much talking, then talking gravitated towards certain spots
throughout the flat, so that one common discourse disappeared without a trace…
‘So, after all,
what did you want?’ Paulius inquired. Then added, after a moment: ‘So cold here.’
His interlocutor
indeed had just felt the bitter cold. Queuing at the staircase, as it seems,
did not at all amortize the sudden blow of cold that awaited them. Paulius
lighted up a cigarette. The other one stood frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed
on the already heavily trodden snow; he suddenly felt nausea rising in him,
some kind of unpleasant sense of nonsense, as if he had forgotten something –
something very important – and spent the whole evening in a dubious company
doing dubious stuff; indeed, he was rarely a guest at such parties and the mere
fact that he knew next to no one here confused him greatly; one thought didn’t
leave him alone: if he was to end his existence in one of the rooms of this
noisy flat, drenched in twilight and sounds of music, no one – it seemed to him
– would miss him, save for the true owners of the place or their parents… And
even that after some time.
‘What is it that
interests you here?’ he asked Paulius. Having exhaled the smoke, radiating
total self-assuredness, total peace of mind and calm, Paulius answered: ‘Here’s
lots of action, lots of activity.’
‘There isn’t any
activity here whatsoever, Paulius!’ his interlocutor almost yelled. The other
one laughed, combing his hair with his fingers, that were stiffened by the
bitter cold, then inhaled some cold air.
‘Everything’s
here, just not for you, Tomas,’ he uttered. Tomas felt like just having received
a blow to the nose – just a moment and he felt like breaking down in tears. As
if it would be a rather efficient tactic, he raised his eyes to Paulius, like
he could suddenly make him change his mind about the whole world.
‘And for whom
then?’ he asked quietly.
‘For all of us,
the ones who can accept life as it is, for goodness’ sake,’ Paulius swallowed the
excess of saliva in his mouth and resumed. ‘You, you don’t understand a thing,
you’re rigid, dull – fuck, how does anybody even put up with here, I wonder…
You’ve got to understand,’ he continued, whilst Tomas was futilely trying to
interfere, his mouth open in an awkward way, ‘that it’s not for you that
everything here takes place and there’s no reason to be so pompous. Sitting in
the corner, like some sulking child, for goodness’ sake…’ Paulius said, while Tomas again desperately
yet awkwardly tried to interfere. ‘Like some sort of personified reproach, you
piss everyone off here…’
‘But it’s not this
that I wanted to talk about!’ Tomas shouted out, instantly looking around, was
there anyone around – there was no one.
‘And about what?’
Paulius laughed and his eyes sparkled.
‘About life –
about what I feel, what I think, what I see around – there is so much!’ Tomas
cried almost hopelessly in a squeaky voice…
‘Listen, man,’
Paulius patted him on the shoulder with his fat rough hand, slowly and
patronizingly. ‘I’m going and you – do as you please, if anything, we’ll meet
at the exams.’
He turned around
and went away, slowly and graciously, like some sort of huge majestic animal, that
isn’t bothered by those lesser than it. Tomas stood frozen to the spot and only
when the code door was slammed and closed, did he wake up.
