Absolute Sunset Read Free Page B

but without much force.
    “I’m coming, sir, I’m coming!” a bumbling voice answered on the other side.
    After a moment, the gate opened. Not proudly, not wide open, but timidly, as if it were the gate of a beleaguered fortress. Janusz slipped inside. Behind him the metal wing thumped loudly shut.



3
    Hanka—A Torrent
    A few days later, Hanka woke very early. She felt well-rested and alert. The raven hadn’t come to her that night. She’d told him she wouldn’t be able to meet him because of the fishing trip with Dad. The raven had promised not to appear so that Hanka could get enough sleep, and he’d kept his word. He wasn’t that bad.
    The leaves of the rowan tree rustled outside the window. It was really something, the rowan. In an urban estate like
Tysiąclecie
, which had once been fancy but which hadn’t aged well, nobody really cared about trees. But Hanka had her own rowan, right outside her window. In autumn the tree’s branches were covered in orange fruit, and Hanka was the first one to see them. They actually kind of belonged to her. She was the one to decide who might pick them and how many—there were always more children who wanted to pick the fruit than there was fruit to go around.
    She sat down on the bed and stuck her head out the window—just a little bit, but enough to take a look outside. The rowan’s fruit had already begun to appear, but they were still pale. It was only July—there was time. She lay down again and waited for the sun to climb above the roofs and heat up the asphalt paths. Only then, feeling the oppressive summer atmosphere, did she get up.
    She headed to the kitchen. The tabletop, covered with greenish tiles, was pleasantly cool. The kitchen, facing west, hadn’t yet been heated up to the point where it felt like an oven. Hanka took a knife out of the drawer, sat down on a chair, and started digging dirt out from between the tiles—as usual. She waited for her parents to get up.
    Janusz was the first to appear. He drank a glass of water in a hurry and disappeared into the bathroom. Soon after, she learned why. Her mother, looking battered, leaned out of the bedroom.
    Hanka remembered when Sabina had been pretty. Even fairly recently her mother had been beautiful. Her red, shiny hair would be tied in a braided bun, or she’d curl it, or just let it fall loose to her waist. Two pairs of high heels had stood in the wardrobe, one black and one silver, ready to go for a walk at any moment. Where were they now? What had happened to those shoes? All that remained was a pair of worn, ugly carpet slippers. Hanka was pretty sure that Sabina had worn green and blue eye shadow once upon a time. Even purple. It wasn’t that long ago, maybe two years back. Or three. Back when Sabina had still made an effort, when she still cared, if only about her own appearance.
    Today’s Sabina had nothing in common with that earlier incarnation. Sometimes it was hard to believe that this woman, with a cigarette always dangling between her lips, was the same person as the one in the old photographs with the serrated edges. Hanka sometimes looked through them, taking care not to be caught. Sabina didn’t like the photos. Once, when she’d caught her daughter going through the albums, she’d torn several of the photos into pieces, then cried, howling into her pillow. So secrecy was essential, or else soon there wouldn’t be a single souvenir of Sabina’s beauty! Her mother’s fury would turn them into dust.
    Impossible
, the girl thought, comparing today’s Sabina with the younger one. Where did the bits of clumped lipstick at the corners of her lips come from? And the fierce expression? Hanka couldn’t accept that the mother in the photos was gone, the one with the cream-coloured retro dress and shining, polished nails. Hanka missed her. And sometimes she was simply ashamed of what she had become.
    While Hanka sat wondering whether a
bebok
hadn’t perhaps kidnapped that long-ago