The Institute Read online

  “Are you sure?” asks Iga, but I’m sure. I gently push the door. It falls wide open.

  A divan lies at the other end of the hallway, overturned, as does the table and the sofa, an ashtray; strewn everywhere are clothes, torn newspapers, receipts and the recipes that had decorated our kitchen.

  Something’s written on the wall in red oil paint. So fresh that oily streams trickle down the wall to the floor. I put my hand to my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Iga and Sebastian come closer.

  WE’VE GOT OUR OWN KEYS.

  Veronica emits a brief, broken scream as though her voice were a device that someone had momentarily turned on, then off, then on again.

  A second, smaller note, as though an afterthought, says:

  TO OUR APARTMENT.

  “Anna! Robert! Anna!” I shout, but nobody replies; there’s no sound, no murmur, nothing.

  Suddenly, I step onto something soft and squelchy. I shudder at the thought of what it might be and I look down at a carrier bag similar to the one in which Sebastian had brought Finkiels’ food. I open it and press my hand to my mouth even harder. A scream wants to escape, violently, but if it did, it would destroy my vocal cords.

  Iga leans over my shoulder, then turns her face away instantly. Inside the bag are Black and White. Tongues lolling. Chopped to pieces. Paws, heads and tails methodically and sharply severed from their bodies. Bellies slashed open so that individual entrails and strings of intestines swim in a slush of blood, fur and shit.

  Somebody has done this slowly and scrupulously. Without batting an eyelid. Then thrown them back into the carrier bag and mixed them up like soup.

  And then, silently and suddenly, the light goes out.

  * * *

  The estate agent was called Marta. Marta, a woman who was the opposite of me in so many ways that we could have appeared together in a silly comedy. She’d been invited – without my knowledge or permission – by the solicitor who was dealing with all the legal matters concerned with the apartment. I went straight from the train to the meeting. In enormous baggy trousers, a jacket, three fleeces, a hat and five hastily tied shawls despite it being late August and quite pleasant October weather, I shuffled down Planty after a sleepless night and four Irish coffees drunk alone in the kitchen over an entire American series about a murdered girl and an alcoholic detective.

  The solicitor was waiting for me by the Bagatela Theatre. We made our way to an apartment that I knew absolutely nothing about. I’d never been there, but I planned to move in as soon as I could. I nodded, pretending to listen, as she described the various formalities, claims, payments and taxes involved. Her monologue continued once we were in the Institute, walking through the empty, unfurnished spaces, touching dirty, dull walls, and looking at the cold bathroom with its square bath covered in yellow stains and chipped pink tiles. I peered into every bare room. I rubbed the mouldy curtains, tapped the windowpanes, pressed the door handles. As if making sure that it was all real.

  When I first walked into the Institute, it smelled of old age, rust, rotten wood, reeking pipes – as though the windows hadn’t been opened for years. The apartment, like my life, needed an overhaul.

  “You’re convinced that you want to move in in a week’s time?” asked the solicitor, and I nodded, squatting on the floor, feeling the parquet beneath me, digging dirt with my fingernail from between the boards of a floor that needed sanding. I didn’t really have a choice. I needed to leave. “The apartment’s in need of repair. And the repairs are going to take longer than three days, you understand.” The solicitor hovered over me as I examined the texture of the brownish stains on the bathroom wall. Finally, she noticed that her pertinent comments and rhetorical questions washed over me. “We’ve got a lot of documents that need signing. Maybe we can do that somewhere else. Let me buy you a coffee,” she said, looking around the apartment with unease.

  Despite the excitement, I was faint with exhaustion, so a coffee sounded good. It was then, as we were leaving the apartment, that I noticed the sign on the entryphone: “The Institute”. I asked the solicitor about it on our way to the tram stop. She had no idea what it meant and why Gran Vera’s name wasn’t there. We got on the tram and went to a café on Bracka Street, one that belonged to a well-known Polish singer who also lived on the street and whose songs about rain on Bracka Street always turned my stomach.

  The atmosphere in the café was just as stale as the one in the songs. A surprise arranged by the solicitor awaited me there: Marta. Marta had tightly pinned back, chestnut-dyed hair, glossed, shiny skin, which in the artificial light resembled rubber, a pair of optical lenses set in a brown frame, and a beige, seemingly asymmetrical suit. We were the same age, but Marta was somewhere else entirely. I wasn’t even very sure which planet she came from. Marta ordered green tea. I asked for an enormous black americano.

  “This is the ideal time, you know. Market prices are up, but a lot of people are still interested. Mainly English, not particularly well-informed, who came here for a friend’s stag night, for example, and… you understand. Prices are going up and then it’ll take a year for me to sell your apartment. Or two. And meanwhile, prices will fall, you understand.”

  It was as though they hadn’t noticed the way I looked at them.

  “And once the apartment’s refurbished, it can be let and you’ll get a steady income. It’ll be let immediately, of course, for a good sum, too,” said Marta, pleased with herself, slurping little teaspoonfuls of green tea.

  A seriously anaemic waiter brought the solicitor a tart and Marta a salad.

  “I take it Marta’s your friend,” I said to the solicitor, who I think was called Ola. She nodded. Ola and Marta must have studied together. Both must have got top marks in everything. Must have had crushes on their lecturers.

  “Yes, Marta and I know each other…”

  “And because you’re friends, I understand that you sometimes throw Marta a tasty morsel,” I said. The caffeine had started to have an effect, and these women had already raised my blood pressure to such an extent that I didn’t need any more.

  “You know, inheriting real estate is lucky, but it brings with it a lot of problems. We find solutions. You could make a lot of money, not have to worry about anything. Surely that’s more than you could ask for, don’t you agree?” Ola, the solicitor, asked rhetorically and drank her sparkling water with lemon.

  “As far as I know, you live in Warsaw with your husband and daughter.” Marta drank another tiny amount of green tea.

  I finished my coffee in two gulps.

  “I live where I live.” I smiled and turned to the solicitor. “You know, I’ve only just seen the apartment and we’re already talking about selling it. I don’t intend to sell anything.”

  The solicitor evaded my eyes and seemed to follow a fly, visible only to her, buzzing around the café.

  Marta adjusted her glasses and took another sip of tea.

  “An apartment like that, in such a spot… You’ll pay for the refurbishment, that’s true, but after it’s done, you can sell it. For about one and a half million at the moment,” she said.

  “Thank you very much for your help. I’ll manage,” I replied. I was trying so hard to be polite that I started to sweat. Talking to them brought up bile.

  “I understand you’ve got the keys.” I smiled at the solicitor. “And all the documents to sign.”

  “The full set will be ready tomorrow,” she said quietly.

  Suddenly, I realised that I was speaking loudly and that half of the customers were looking at us with unabashed curiosity.

  “I was going to go back to Warsaw today, after the funeral. I don’t even have anywhere to stay,” I replied.

  “Alright, I’ll try to get them ready for today.” The solicitor nodded.

  I noticed that her hands had started to shake a little. She pulled out a pile of papers from a crammed plastic folder, then a pen and bunch of keys from her bag. Marta watched her abrupt, nervous movem
ents, stony-faced, eyes half-closed.

  “Would you like to come out for a smoke?” she asked.

  I couldn’t stand her from first glance, but I wanted a smoke even more. I agreed.

  We stood outside the Cracovian singer’s café. The rain on Bracka Street really had started to fall; it was like a bad joke. Marta offered me a thin Davidoff.

  “I have a client willing to give you even more for the apartment,” she announced.

  “Please,” I said. “It’s out of the question. Firstly, it’s an investment for my child. And secondly, I’m at a point in my life—”

  “Two and a half million.” Her expression didn’t even change. “That’s how much he’s prepared to pay. That’s way above the market price.”

  I didn’t react.

  “The client can pay in cash. Opportunities like this hardly ever come around,” she said, unyielding and with such force that it seemed she wanted to press every word into my skull. “You’d be mad not to take it.”

  “Why? Why would he pay that much?” I asked out of curiosity.

  “When people are rich and sentimental, well… I’m sure you can understand,” she replied.

  “Please thank him for the very nice offer,” I said.

  “Please consider it,” she added and extinguished her cigarette. She smoked even faster and more greedily than me.

  I looked at the solicitor through the café window. She was studying the documents spread out on the table. She looked troubled and nervous. Marta opened the door and let me in first.

  “My business card,” said Marta, putting down the card on my side of the table. She started to pack her phone and purse into her bag. Her salad remained untouched. Meantime, the solicitor, forgetting about the documents, gobbled up her tart as though she’d not eaten for two weeks.

  “I’ll have the full set in three hours. Could you come to my office in Salvator?” Ola pleaded, pointing to the papers.

  I looked through the certificate of ownership, the inheritance documents, tenement administration forms. Marta was already on her feet, clutching her handbag. But then, as though remembering something, she sat down again.

  “You know what, Mrs Celińska, there’s an interesting story about your apartment,” she said, glancing at the phone she’d taken out of her bag.

  “That someone wants to give three million for it?” I asked.

  “Your grandmother has owned this apartment since the fifties,” Marta stated, ignoring my weak joke and not even looking in my direction. “But she never really moved in.”

  “That’s no big deal; when Gran met my grandfather, she lived with him in Warsaw until she died.”

  “But do you know why?” Marta smiled as though she was about to announce that my gran had been spying for the CIA in President Bierut’s time.

  “Because she was his wife and he came from Warsaw?” I asked. This woman was seriously starting to get on my nerves.

  “You know, this apartment, as well as the entire tenement, used to belong to a man called Antoni Waraszyl. This Antoni Waraszyl transferred the apartment to your grandmother in the fifties.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me,” I replied, my patience now wearing thin. Maybe if I said nothing, she would just drivel on for five minutes and finally leave.

  She didn’t say anything, merely smiled and looked at her friend the solicitor, who had finished eating her tart and was nervously wiping her mouth. Seeing this smile, the solicitor turned her eyes away with what looked to me like fear.

  “I take it that some son or grandson of Mr Waraszyl wants to retrieve what supposedly belongs to them? That by selling the apartment, I’m really ridding myself of an even greater problem?”

  “You know, if the client was a member of Mr Waraszyl’s family, he’d probably take any other possible means to retrieve the apartment. Buying would be the last resort. But anyway, please listen to me,” she said as she put the phone aside and looked me in the eyes. Her gaze was below freezing point.

  “I am listening. How do you know all this?” I craved another cigarette.

  “You don’t even want to know how many real estate registers I’ve read in my life,” she replied.

  “Please carry on, but bear in mind that I won’t sell, even for ten million.”

  “We’ll see what you say to ten million…” She smiled. Her smile was as fake as if two invisible fingers were pulling up her cheeks.

  “Great, you’re lightening up with the jokes. Relax,” I said.

  “Anyway, that’s just the beginning of the story. In the forties, after the war, your grandmother was Mr Waraszyl’s wife. In fact, she remained his wife until she died. The marriage was never annulled. You know, finding all the documents was a pain, but it turned out that your grandmother’s marriage to your grandfather was, shall we say, invalid.”

  “What did you say?” I hissed, taking another gulp of yet another coffee. It crossed my mind that the young harpy had made all this up just to keep me talking.

  “That is, it’s valid in God’s eyes, but not legally. Your grandmother and Mr Waraszyl had a civil wedding, you understand, which was never invalidated. We were searching for documents to check if the apartment had been transferred to your grandmother by Mr Waraszyl after the alleged divorce as part of dividing the possessions and so on. Your grandmother, according to the documents, asked Mr Waraszyl for a divorce in 1953, you understand, but he officially refused, by letter. This letter was among the property documents. Your grandmother left for Warsaw and was later married to your grandfather in church. Mr Waraszyl, despite the fact that she’d left him, gave her the apartment. Did he want to ensure her future? I don’t know. What’s interesting is that he must have known a great number of important people. He somehow managed to see to it that nobody was allocated the apartment, which was practically impossible at the time. It was so important to him that your grandmother should live there, you understand, that he must have bribed the entire city along with the Wawel Dragon to see to it that the apartment remained empty and waited for her until she changed her mind.”

  I was becoming so annoyed, so furious, that the contents of my stomach were boiling over. In her need to persuade me to sell the apartment and get a hefty commission, she’d started to solve one of the greatest mysteries of our family – Gran Vera’s past – with the stoic, blasé calm of a corporate tin god.

  She noticed but didn’t react.

  The solicitor, Ola, looked in the other direction; all that was needed was for her to start whistling.

  “The most interesting part’s still to come,” Marta announced. “You see, your grandmother didn’t want the apartment, and for the next thirty years, she tried as hard as she could to get rid of it. She tried to sell it, but, you know, it was communism, things like the market and ownership officially didn’t exist, so you couldn’t just sell. Masses of formalities. She could, of course, have tried to donate it to the housing co-operative and even tried, at one point—”

  “And why didn’t that work?”

  “You know…” Marta smiled. “I got drawn into the case. It was like a crime mystery. I came across this going through the documents at the client’s request.”

  “The one with the two and a half million?” I asked.

  She ignored the question.

  “Perhaps your grandmother didn’t, at first, donate the apartment to the co-operative because her new husband, your grandfather, or someone else from the family vetoed it. Here one can only guess,” she continued quite calmly. “But later, at least this is what the documents suggest, by finding a loophole – inadequate standards, some fictitious damage – Mr Waraszyl made it impossible.”

  “Who was this Mr Waraszyl?” I asked. The worst thing was that I was beginning to believe the story myself. That the mystery of Gran Vera’s secret life was being solved in front of my eyes by this walking advert for Swiss loans. I was beginning to get drawn in, and this made me hate her even more. She’s turning me into a little kid who’s being
accosted at the school gate, I thought.

  “You know, that, in fact, is the biggest mystery. He was a man with no clear responsibilities, no formal position. He was a member of the Party, but he didn’t play a role in the committee. Made some profits, ran Hotel Cracovia for a while, but really, he was a nobody, you understand. Yet he must have been some sort of grey eminence, pulling the strings behind the scenes, because what he did was practically impossible.”

  “Did anyone ever live in the apartment?” I asked.

  “This is where it gets interesting again. The apartment was finally allocated, but the family moved out after a month. Of their own free will. Nobody knows why. Things like that didn’t happen in those days. Getting accommodation was, on the whole, like catching God by the ankles. Then a distant relative of your grandmother lived there, some niece. That didn’t last long either, maybe six months. The niece had an accident. I visited the archives to find out what had happened to her, you know, and found a mention in the Polish Daily. It turns out she fell out of the window of this very apartment. Straight onto the pavement, on Mickiewicz Avenue. In broad daylight.”

  I blinked. I felt like I’d just woken up from a nap. What she had just said got through to me, and I began to laugh, genuinely, wholeheartedly.

  “It’s incredible how stubborn you are.” Laughing, I asked for yet another coffee. I tried to compose myself – my laughter was so loud that the customers in the café were starting to look at me again.

  “I don’t understand,” said Marta, though there was not the slightest sign of confusion or any feelings at all on her face. I believed she really didn’t understand.

  “What’s your commission? Twenty percent? For half a million, I’d be able to invent a whole lot of stories too.” I laughed again.

  The waiter brought me another coffee.

  Marta didn’t react. Ola continued to pretend that she was looking at something else. Marta opened her bag and started to extract some photocopies, then spread them out on the table. She arranged them evenly in front of her, in ordered rows, as though playing patience. Copies of articles from the local press over the last few decades. The headlines screamed: