The last year of studies for Lena Zaya proved to be disastrous. After Gacek’s love affairs were exposed, Lena closed herself in her room and slept for over a week. She was living in the dorms, the condition which she had chosen out of financial sensibility, as it was cheaper than renting a room and it provided the necessary entertainment in the form of people of similar age and life circumstances.
But it was difficult to heal a broken heart while constantly being exposed to the looks of girls living beside. She couldn’t cry in front of people and seeking privacy in the building slowly growing in the number of students, flooding the area in the aura of the upcoming year, was almost impossible.
Every year she had a different roommate and she couldn’t form a steady friendship. Every year something changed and this year she was without a boyfriend, without any plans for the future and without any idea what she should do in her life.
Her current roommate was pedantic. Everything on her side was ordered, tidy and spotless. She cleaned the floors with Domestos, so everything smelled of chlorine or some other form of disinfectant. Her clothes were neatly folded and ironed. She did her make-up for an hour every day, applying it with a set of different-sized brushes and colorful pallets. She worked in the evenings in some big company and still was a student of German philology. She was everything Lena was not, as Lena was disorganized and messy. She cleaned her side of the room once a month, never ironed her clothes (she didn’t even own an iron), while her makeup routine consisted of applying a facial cream, mascara and, occasionally, eyeliner.
Lena Zaya didn’t know German. At school, she started learning the basics of many languages, including Russian and French, but it was her trip to London that inspired her to explore the English-speaking world. German world was for her unexplored, so when her roommate spoke on the phone, Lena couldn’t understand a thing. Lena’s roommate - Barbara - was a short, petite brunette. She looked strikingly European, so Lena’s Mongolian features raised some questions at their first night together. Her roommate was intrigued by her life situation, the fact that she had actually never met her father, and had never been to Mongolia.
Barbara was active; she was up in the morning like a bee, went to lectures, run to her work and, exhausted, came back before midnight to their room and almost instantly fell asleep. Her small size didn’t stop her from owning a big black suitcase - almost twice her size - which she packed regularly every second weekend when she went to see her family in Gdańsk. It was funny to see her pulling this monstrosity behind her slim body, but Lena was relieved that the girl left her the room for the weekend, as then she had some time to cry.
Lena came from a small village in the eastern part of Poland. Her mother was twenty-five years before involved in a relationship with a Mongolian man, who came to Poland for a short student exchange, which fact brought Lena to this world, equipping her with slanted eyes, black hair and eastern features. The above in a small village full of exclusively Polish people of Slavic appearance made her more of less distinguished.
Her mother didn’t stay a single mother for ever. Later on, she married a blond Polish shop owner, and from the time Lena was thirteen, her mother started producing children. Lena had now six younger blond siblings, and since the situation at home was loud and unbearable, at the age of sixteen she decided to move to Warsaw, live on her own (which meant renting a room in some elderly lady’s apartment) and start her high-school there.
So more or less since the time she was sixteen, she was on her own. Yes, this speedy license to adulthood did make her resourceful, yes it did make her earn money earlier than her peers. But it didn’t prevent her from making mistakes. One mistake was getting involved in a relationship with Gabriel Gacek.
Now, at the age of twenty-four, she was sure that there were many more mistakes to come. Just a month before was convinced that it was her last year in Warsaw, but now she was supposed to stay here for longer. Her mother was living with her husband and the kids, which made it impossible to visit the place often. Kids’ screams, shouts, cries and those racist comments about her slanted eyes made it just worse. Her job seemed just the same, but she was dealing with other people’s kids, which didn’t make things even a bit easier. And in her depressed state of life frustration, low income, and bad housing situation she answered the phone.
Almost sleep-walking, she arrived at the train station and bought a ticket to Berlin. She had never been to Berlin before, but her roommate told her about her various student exchanges and suddenly she felt that the city was familiar.
After a few hours of the journey she walked out into the Berlin center, asked some people for directions and after a few communication failures, she found the hospital where Robert Rej was placed.
‘So you fainted’
Robert Rej smiled hopelessly.
‘It wasn’t the first time that I fainted. I usually faint when I see blood or guts. Or when the situation is overwhelming. I’m quite sensitive.’
Robert Rej didn’t mention of course the number of times he fainted during his training in the Academy, during physical exercises, the countless times during investigations and even during a simple interview with the suspect. He tried to do this discreetly, as fainting wasn’t the best quality in a policeman, but sometimes the stresses and exhaustion were just too much and his body was giving up.
‘Don’t you faint?’
‘To be honest, I have never lost consciousness in my life,’ Lena said, ‘I cannot really imagine what it is like.’
Robert Rej shrugged.
‘Unless you hit something heavy with your head, it’s really not such a big deal. Never mind, I want to thank you for making an effort. I really didn’t have anyone to call. I didn’t want to call my ex-wife. They made it clear that I shouldn’t break their home nest happiness. Would you like to stay here for longer? We can sleep in a hostel. Then we will drive back to Warsaw. Have you got anything important at home?’
Lena Zaya decided that she could make use of a couple of days outside Warsaw and bitter-sweet Cracov. She phoned her boss about an unexpected thing that suddenly popped up and kept her from work. She also decided to skip a few days at the University, as she felt she had nothing to lose.
It was quite a calming experience to walk along the streets of Berlin, not caring the burden of Warsaw’s life. Robert Rej behaved like a host and paid for everything. They rented a room in one of the hostels and, as their stay happened at weekdays, the place wasn’t fully booked, recovering from the holiday season.
Lena Zaya didn’t want to listen to the excuses of his sexuality (‘I’m not going to hit on you, I swear.’), but the fact that they once went to Cracov together didn’t mean that they could sleep with each other with no awkward feelings.
‘You have two daughters.They had to happen somehow.’
Robert Rej was to stay on the floor and cover his body with a blanket.
Berlin was calm and uneventful. Robert told her about the time he spent there before getting married. He told her stories about the cases of drugs smuggling and his small Berlin apartment. Lena shared her experiences with renting a room in London and her work at a cafe. It was the least romantic time of their lives, as they focused mostly on sightseeing and food. There was something in Berlin which reminded Lena of Warsaw. Old architecture and municipal buildings of the eastern part of Berlin had some traits of the old buildings in Warsaw’s Praga. The new ones, especially in the western part, shined with their modern vibe and reminded her of slightly different times. They visited the Brandenburg Gate, they strolled around Museum Island, sat by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which looked nothing like the concentration camps Lena had visited in Poland a few years before. It was strange to look at the concrete blocks when she still remembered all the barracks, the remaining hair, clothes, and ovens in which the said Jews were burnt. Poland was the ugly truth. Berlin was the sad acknowledgment of the past sins. The same reminder was the Berlin Wall, which still divided the city in half, this time metaphorically.
But there was nothing sad in Berlin itself. It was colorful, crowded and livable. The food was splendid. They went to a nice spacious cafe for big bowls of breakfast cereal, freshly squeezed organic juice and chai latte. They ate delicious pizza and consumed way too many of those Bratwurst sausages, which played excellently in with the taste of beer. They devoured German nut chocolate and treated themselves with Haribo jellies. They walked the city streets blissfully and lightly, even though both were deep in their thoughts, both uncertain about their future and depressed by their recent life events. And it was nice for them to have each others’ company since they more or less knew their mutual situation and didn’t have to explain a lot. Drinking and eating were better than explaining, so they decided to focus on the above.
Nights at the hostel were tiresome and hangover made them prolong their stay for one last day, before, totally exhausted, they returned to Warsaw.
Lena came back to her dorm, Robert Rej returned to his flat and for that time their meetings were temporarily curtailed.
