The Institute Page 7

  We’re waiting for Gypsy. He’ll be back soon. He has to be. It’s not as if the apartment has suddenly been severed from reality with a pair of enormous scissors and suspended in a vacuum like a bauble. It’s still on earth, in Poland, in Cracow, on Mickiewicz Avenue, among people, streets, lights, cables, cars and trees.

  We’re sitting in front of the television in my room. White specks run across the screen, the sound is varied, crackles, but The Towering Inferno with Richard Chamberlain is on, which we’d most probably last seen as children on a television whose tubes were threatening to explode – the quality was identical.

  We’re trying to focus on the people leaping through the windows of the blazing building, but we keep interrupting each other with the same questions.

  Why isn’t he here yet?

  Is he going to bring the police or admin?

  Maybe he’ll come during the night?

  Maybe he’s making a statement and they don’t want to let him go yet?

  Maybe no one believes him?

  The minutes spill over like semi-congealed syrup. The crackling voices of the snowed-under actors seem to come from a broken, slowed-down tape. We don’t even know whether it’s us who’s asking the questions or whether they come from the TV speakers. We feel as though time no longer exists; we look at our watches to make sure the second hands are working, unconvinced.

  It’s dark outside. Still silent on the landing. “Everything’s going to be okay,” we repeat in a whisper like a rosary. And then, “We’re waiting for Gypsy. He’ll be back soon.”

  About ten hours earlier, we’d searched for cameras. I’d torn everyone from their beds and told them to go through the whole apartment thoroughly. My expression had probably stopped anyone from trying to argue. So, we moved the beds, peered into wardrobes, threw all the contents of our drawers on the floor. We unscrewed the sockets, we studied the fridge carefully from all sides, the oven, washing machine, looked in the gas heaters. When we were done, the apartment resembled the scene of a police search.

  In a situation like this, you look for a logical explanation otherwise you’d go mad. We looked for any rational lead whatsoever. Maybe this really is an experiment. Maybe we’re on TV, maybe the whole of Poland is watching us right now.

  We didn’t find anything. A couple of long-lost trinkets, some money – nothing useful. Nobody was filming us. This wasn’t a joke. Although maybe we’d just failed to find the cameras.

  After the search, we sat on the floor, cross-legged.

  Less than an hour later, Iga stood over me, lips pursed, dark circles blossoming under her eyes, shadows that hadn’t been there in the morning when we’d all gone to our rooms to try to get some sleep. Her face didn’t say “it’s okay”, didn’t say “the grating’s open”. Instead there was something in her that I’d never noticed before. Iga was scared. Her lips were drawn, her eyes flitted, trying hard not to meet mine. I swallowed. Iga handed me a mug of tea as if she wanted to say, “That’s the most I can do for you.” I sat up and took a sip. Iga bit her lip.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Get up.” She gestured listlessly with her arm.

  This second time, I got up far more slowly. Took a long, long time opening the bedroom door, wanting to hold back what was inevitably waiting behind it. Gypsy and Sebastian were standing in the hall, also with circles under their eyes. Sebastian pointed to the grating. When I saw the door, I abruptly sat down as though someone had grabbed me by the arms and forced me down.

  “Sons of bitches,” I whispered and started to cry.

  Iga came up to me, squatted and put her arm around me.

  “I told you so,” said Gypsy.

  “Great, you won, so what?” Iga starts to shout and in her shouting are tears that have been waiting to get out. “Who the fuck cares that you said so?”

  Gypsy shrugs. I put my arm around Iga, too. The crying passes, or rather I feel myself gulping it down, choking, forcing it to the lower regions of my body.

  “How’s the girl? Anna?” I ask.

  “I gave her some Xanax.” Iga shows me a flat, half-empty blister pack of small pills, which she’d pulled out of her trouser pocket.

  ‘They’ know they can’t let us out. For two reasons. Firstly, once on the outside, we could do anything to them; locked in here, we can’t do anything. Secondly, letting us out would mean the end of the game.

  ‘They’ are going to keep us here until we’ve gone mad. Now I know. ‘They’ don’t want this apartment. ‘They’ want nothing but a game, ‘They’ want that indescribable something that a cat wants as it tosses a live mouse with a broken spine from one paw to the other.

  By the door lay our pieces of paper, torn down and crumpled. On the door is a sign, brushed downwards with white oil paint, the same writing as the sentences on the notes.

  WE

  DON’T

  BELIE-

  VE YOU

  I sit on the floor and start staring at the letters as hard as if I was trying to erase them through sheer willpower. Gypsy hands me a cigarette. I light it. Take a sip of tea, which, in the unheated hallway, has instantly turned from very hot to the temperature of lukewarm beer. WE DON’T BELIE- VE YOU. I wonder whether the person who painted this sign purposely divided it into four parts: WE DON’T BELIE- VE YOU.

  ‘They’ have done it with a pun and play on a perverted heteronym. But I don’t need the sign to know that ‘They’, whoever they are, wherever they are, are laughing. Chuckling like idiots watching YouTube videos of masturbating monkeys. Wherever ‘They’ are, whoever ‘They’ are, ‘They’ are having a really good time.

  “Look at the lift,” says Iga.

  I look at the door but don’t see anything.

  “Walk up and take a good look,” she urges.

  I approach the old door and strain my eyes. Behind the dull glass, I see the dangling ends of cut cables.

  “Those guys repairing the lift that the boy saw did a hell of a job,” whispers Iga. “Hacked the cables.”

  I enter the apartment. Slam the door. Go to the bathroom. Look in the mirror. I look a hundred and ninety-eight, my face resembles an old leather sack into which someone has randomly packed muscles, nerves and bones.

  I turn on the cold water. It flows in such a trickle, no pressure behind it, that it takes near to a minute to fill my palms. As though, hour by hour, the water valve was being tightened. I wash my face. It looks even worse. I take some cotton wool pads and make-up remover and cleanse it of its crust of old foundation, blotches of mascara, until a monster’s physiognomy transforms into the face of a spent thirty-fiveyear-old woman, terrorised in her own home, with furrows like canyons in the place of expressive wrinkles. It’s a sad sight, but familiar. I smile at it. It smiles back.

  I leave the bathroom. The rest of them are standing in the hallway waiting for me to tell them what to do, now, later. I stand in front of them, clench as hard as I can everything that can be clenched within, so as not to wail again. I’m trying to think of something as fast as I can, beg myself to think of something, anything, but this plea for an idea merely fills my brain with pure air.

  I turn away, pass them by, enter my room, sit on the bed again.

  “Give me a minute,” I ask, stroking Black, but they continue to stand in the hallway, continue to look at me as though saying: “It’s your apartment, Agnieszka, it’s your battlefield, you’re the general, think of something.”

  “Please give me a minute,” I repeat.

  “But nobody’s saying anything,” says Sebastian.

  I shake my head, try to indicate with my hand that I misheard; I know they didn’t say anything. They don’t have to. It’s my apartment, I’m the leader. If I fall apart, then we can all slash our wrists or jump out of the window.

  We can hear the hum of cars outside, the tinkling of trams, an ambulance siren. I don’t believe what I hear. Have the impression that what’s beyond the window is an illusion, a setting, a screen. That all t
hese sounds are coming from an enormous speaker somewhere. I glance at the bed, the enormous bundle of crumpled sheets, clothes and our two cats tangled in all this chaos, and suddenly have an idea. Stupid and very dangerous, but still an idea. I leave the room, point to the window and say:

  “Sheets.”

  They stare at me as though I’d spoken Latin, so I repeat, this time explaining:

  “Sheets… Duvet covers… We can tie them together. Make them into a rope. Let it down through the window. One or two of us can climb down it and fetch the police.”

  Nobody contradicts me, nobody says it’s an idiotic idea and could kill the ones going down, so I start tearing the covers off the duvets, pull old covers and tarps from thrift shops with pictures of Barbie and the New Kids On The Block on them out of the wardrobes. Everybody’s momentarily surprised then instantly runs to their room, brings their bed linen and throws it on the communal pile in the middle of the floor. We work in a distracted euphoria like children who are preparing the biggest practical joke of their lives, snatch the materials from each other as we randomly try to tie two sheets until, finally, Iga says:

  “Hold on, hold on. The terrycloth and old starched ones are no good. They’ll tear. Give me those synthetic ones. Gypsy, yours are best, we’ll tie them at this end, secure them to the radiator.”

  “Why mine?”

  “Because you hardly ever wash them,” answers Iga, stretching the material in her hands.

  She’s right, it’s the fifth floor. If one of the sheets tears at something like the third floor, the consequences are obvious. Below, there’s no lawn, no bushes, nothing other than the bare, sharp, hard pavement.

  “Wait a minute,” says Gypsy, “we’ve got to decide who’s going. The fifth floor is pretty high. It might work once, but twice… twice is crazy. And then there’s the question of what to do: do we enter the building and go to the neighbours, or—”

  “Surely it’s obvious what to do.” Iga looks at him as if he is an idiot. “Bugger off to the police station on Krόlewska Street.”

  “I’m not going down.” Sebastian shrugs, leans against the wall, pulls a squashed packet of chewing gum out of his pocket, takes one out and starts chewing. He’s staring at Iga as though he were about to take the gum out and stick it onto her forehead.

  “I’m too heavy,” he says with an expression as blank as the floor. “Weigh too much.”

  “Yeah, you weigh too much,” snorts Iga, tying more knots. “Okay then, I’ll go.”

  “So do you.” Sebastian ties a knot as hard as he can. “Weigh too much.”

  Iga doesn’t say anything but looks at Sebastian with disgust as though he’d just shat himself. He simply smiles and sticks the gum to the doorframe. He approaches Iga, takes the twisted sheets out of her hands, unties them and ties them again, tightly pulls a triple knot with a few strong tugs.

  “Give me the rest,” he says.

  Iga and I rip the rest of the sufficiently resistant sheets. Sebastian knots them together. After an hour, we have fifteen metres of rope.

  “So, who’s going?” Iga repeats the question.

  “I’m scared of heights,” Veronica announces, adjusting her glasses.

  “I’ll do it,” I say.

  “No, Agnieszka, I’ll do it.” Gypsy leans against the sill, and for the first time in two months, looks me in the eyes of his own free will.

  Nobody objects. Me included. I want to go down but know I should stay. Have to stay. It’s my apartment and these people are my friends. In a sense, they’re my family; I brought them here and am responsible for them. The captain’s always last to leave the ship.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  Gypsy nods.

  “I’m light and used to do mountaineering,” he replies. He stares at me as though he’d wanted to say something else but had suddenly changed his mind. Yet, after a while, he adds, scratching his head: “Surely you know I’m not going to desert you. That I’ll be back. Surely you trust me, Agnieszka.”

  “I trust you,” I say, automatically stretching my hand towards his shoulder again but immediately pulling it back and hiding it in my pocket. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He looks at me a while as though I’d made a bad joke. Turns the corners of his lips up a little in a smile. Turns away from me and approaches the window.

  “I’ll be back in two hours max,” he says.

  We lower the rope through the window, tie the other end to the radiator pipe below the sill. Study the passers-by, but nobody reacts. Even if somebody notices the tied sheets and looks up, they immediately turn away, no doubt taking what we’re doing as sloshed students playing stupid jokes. It’s the norm, that’s how it is with phoning the police. People in Poland don’t phone the police when they hear somebody shouting for help, when they drive past a crashed car standing in a huge puddle of blood, petrol and shards of glass, or if they pass by somebody being continuously, steadily kicked in the head. People in Poland call the police when the neighbour below is holding a party.

  The rope reaches the first-floor window.

  “I’ll manage,” says Gypsy. “I’ll just lower myself to the first-floor sill. From there I’ll either go down to the ground-floor sill or simply jump. Everything should be fine.”

  “What do you mean ‘lower’ yourself?” asks Veronica. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s easy.” Gypsy looks out of the window. “Haven’t you ever climbed out of a window on a sheet?”

  “We should strengthen it more,” I say, but Gypsy shakes his head.

  “Strengthen it with what?” He shrugs. “Wait a minute.”

  He disappears into his room and returns with his ID and jacket. He puts the jacket on and slips the ID into a zipped inner pocket. He’s already jumping onto the sill when Iga puts her hand on his shoulder, asks him to wait a minute. She leaves my room and returns with a cycling helmet. Gypsy bursts out laughing, but Iga doesn’t smile, and this lack of a smile is sufficiently determined enough for him to get down and put the helmet on. He climbs onto the sill again, turns to us and squats, while we hold our breaths.

  “I’ll be back shortly. With the police,” he says, then, perfectly still, takes a long look at us.

  “Is there anything else you want to say? Last words of goodbye?” asks Iga.

  “I hate you all and can’t stand your presence any longer.” He smiles bitterly.

  We want to add something, but his legs are already in the air. He first holds on to the inner side of the window frame, then the sill, grabs the sheets and wraps his knees around them. I watch as the material next to my hands grows taut on the other side of the sill, against the window frame. We all take a deep breath. I adore him, but he and I – never, never would it have worked between us.

  Gypsy says something, but we can’t hear a word through the helmet and the noise in the street.

  He begins to slide down, little by little, and we stop breathing. He’s going slowly, steadily, first loosening his grip and slipping a little, then gripping again. When he reaches the first knot, his legs are halfway down the fourth-floor window. He pauses a moment. Doesn’t look down. We watch. Gypsy grows smaller with each move but isn’t yet small enough for us to release the air from our lungs, not small enough to land safely if the rope snaps.

  This goes on, and on, and on, and on. When Gyspy grabs the third-floor sill, I turn away. Turn away and watch the fabric out of the corner of my eye. It’s getting tauter against the metal ridge of the sill. I look down. Gypsy’s between the third and second floor.

  Sebastian yells something like “You’re making it, you bastard!” I automatically put my hand over his mouth as though any sound we make might tear the sheets and kill him.

  Nobody in the street pays Gypsy the slightest attention, perhaps apart from a couple of people at the bus stop on the other side of the street who point at him.

  “Hey!” Iga shouts.

  Again, I block her mouth with my hand.

  And at
that moment, Gypsy loosens his grip and, scraping his hands and knees against the sheet, falls a whole floor. A fraction of a second.

  And then the fabric grows taut again, and we hear a snap, it’s the sheet snapping, tearing right next to my hand, on the ridge of the sill; only a quarter of its thickness is now holding.

  I look at Iga, but it’s like looking into a mirror, she’s gawping like me, then Sebastian screams his head off:

  “Get on the fucking sill! On the sill!”

  And then the sheet snaps completely, the fabric rope falls, and I press my hands into my eyes as hard as I can. I’d never have torn them away again if Sebastian hadn’t called:

  “It’s okay! Are you going to get down?”

  Gypsy stands glued to the window on the first floor, holding the internet cable running from the roof with one hand and, as if nothing has happened, waves to us with the other – the hand red as if plunged into snow for half a day.

  “You’re hardcore, mate!” Sebastian chuckles. “Fucking hardcore.”

  Gypsy waves again, removes the helmet and chucks it on the pavement. He squats on the sill and, resting his legs against the wall, continues to descend, then leans his elbows on the sill and, finally grabbing it with his hands, dangles off like a film hero on the edge of an abyss. A few seconds later, his feet carefully find the ground-floor sill. When he jumps down, it feels as if all this – his descent, standing at the window – has lasted all day. We hear the slap of his shoes against the pavement as he lands. Several people turn towards him. He loses his balance momentarily, squats, and then a moment later, he’s up. He takes the helmet under his arm and yells something to us; we can barely hear what.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” breaks through the hum of passing cars.

  Finally, we let the air out of our lungs and breathe in air from the outside, mostly fresh with a delicate hint of smog. It tells us everything’s going to be fine. This bad horror film will break off as quickly as it started. We’re shortly going to step onto the landing, then the street, walk to town to eat a good dinner, then take ourselves off to Kazimierz for a coffee. Then after the coffee, we’ll stay in Kazimierz and knock it back in a bar until we’re out cold; it doesn’t matter what bar as long as we get a three-day hangover. Meanwhile, completely smashed, I’ll call my daughter several times. Then I’ll pack and go to her in Warsaw.