Absolute Sunset Read Free

He put a bowl of cereal in front of her. Without milk. She hated milk—she would sometimes vomit at just the smell of it. He slurped his coffee. It was as sour as pickle juice. The shops only sold rubbish these days—shit and rubbish. Maybe if they could afford Jacobs instead of Fuego it wouldn’t be so acidic—the acidosis of poverty. Janusz shrugged and scolded himself for his pessimism. Sometimes he was fed up with his own behaviour.
    “Did you sleep well?” he asked his daughter, pretending that he didn’t remember her night terrors. He forced himself to smile, then realized that he actually did feel like smiling. And why not? Against all odds!
    “Yes, dad,” Hanka replied, crunching her food mercilessly and spilling cereal everywhere. Janusz reached for the broom to sweep it up—if Sabina stepped on crumbs, there’d be a row. And Sabina would use Hanka as her punching bag.
    “Did you dream about anything?” he mumbled, crawling under his daughter’s chair.
    “No, nothing at all. Why?” Hanka was swinging her legs.
    “No reason. Did you look out the window this morning? The weather looks fine, doesn’t it?”
    “Yeah. I looked. The magpie was sitting on the rowan. The branch almost broke!” She laughed.
    “Well. Great,” Janusz said, pouring the breadcrumbs into the trashcan. He put the dustpan back carefully. Even though Sabina didn’t clean, she hated chaos. And she had an exceptional memory—every single thing had its place. He finished off his coffee and took a bite from a slice of stale bread. Then he decided there was nothing more to say and threw a kaiser roll with cheese into his briefcase.
    “Well, I’ve got to go!” He smiled at his daughter and stood.
    Hanka dug gloomily in the crack of the table with her nail. She moved slowly, and dirty fat rolled up from between the tiles, black and sticky. She hunched as though she were ducking a blow. Sabina often pummelled her, hitting her and calling her a moron. Janusz felt suffocated by a single thought: that in the morning his wife would undoubtedly wake up mad and target Hanka. But he had to go.
    He slowly put on his jacket and bent down for his briefcase. When he straightened up, he saw that Hanka was half standing, half hanging loosely from the kitchen doorframe, watching him.
    “Bye!” he whispered, and she waved to him and went to her room. In all likelihood she’d sit there for a while, until nine or so, when Sabina would get up and send her to school. But for him it really was time to go!
    He went out into the corridor and for a moment fought with the temptation to slam the door as hard as he could. Hard enough to make the plaster fall from the walls and to wake up the sleeping harpy. She’d jump out of the bedding as though she’d been scalded, and then her headache would begin to torture her. Good! Still, he managed to resist the urge and closed the door carefully. As long as Sabina was sleeping, Hanka would have peace and quiet. Maybe his wife would wake up in decent shape for once.
    Janusz ran down the stairs, his feet gliding over the edges of the steps. He was neither sliding nor quite walking, like when he’d been fifteen and rushing toward friends waiting downstairs. That was all that was left to him of his youth, this silly rush down the stairs.
    He hurried through the metal door, which closed with a squeak. He didn’t look back, just headed toward the bus stop, fighting with the wind all the way. By the time he reached the passage between the blocks of flats, the fine weather of the early morning hours was over. The once-blue sky clouded over and it started raining. Not hard, but even a downpour would have been better than this, if only because it would be less persistent. Sometimes it seemed to Janusz that it rained exclusively for him. As soon as he went outside, rain would appear out of nowhere.
    The drops left grey streaks on his jacket. Rain in Katowice looked as if something foul had been dissolved in it—not