Chapter 18 Hide and Seek

02:05

This time they exactly knew who to follow. They located Izabella Kieliszek and the traveling lot before entering the train and they were set to observe them from the beginning of the journey to the end. All of them wore stylish clothes, expensive shoes, and nice leather bags as if something had changed and academics were particularly prone to fashion and style. Lena noticed that Kieliszek was wearing a vibrant red lipstick and a red scarf, her hands were covered with leather gloves, her legs were nicely displayed in leather shoes, and she looked like a businessman’s wife rather than an academic employee. But now Lena was afraid that she would be recognized by her lecturer, so she sank deep in the train’s seat and covered her face with a newspaper she bought in the Central Station’s kiosk. Robert was sipping coffee and eating a croissant. He skipped breakfast at home and he was getting hungry. They had more than three hours of the journey and they had to kill the time somehow. This time their compartment was taken by two women: one old, one young. This was the only compartment, however, close to the one taken by Kieliszek and her friends, so they had no other choice.

‘How are things with Anton? Have you slept together?’

Robert choked on his coffee, turned red and looked around at the remaining passengers. Lena apparently enjoyed the controversy surrounding the topic of his sexuality and, in her as-a-matter-of-fact way, she didn’t care what others thought about her. She didn’t care what people thought about Robert, apparently.

‘Why do you act so shy? I’m just asking’

‘We haven’t. I have... a temporary dysfunction,’ Robert was looking for the right words to describe his wounded penis situation.

‘So you haven’t. Have you ever slept with a man?’

Now the woman sitting next to Lena looked at the window in a telling way, highlighting the fact that she felt awkward at the mention of Robert’s sex life.

Robert wanted to change the subject.

‘So you haven’t. God, you are still a virgin!’

‘I have two children, Lena. They happened somehow. And what about your dildo. Is it working?’

Now the elderly woman, sitting next to Robert, put down her reading glasses and closed her book.

‘Actually, it is,’ Lena wasn’t at all discouraged ‘I need to buy something to make it go more smoothly...’

‘Don’t waste your money. Use saliva!’ the elderly woman joined the conversation ‘Once you are at a certain age, you might lose the moist. When my Zenon was still alive we used the saliva, it’s all natural. But if you eat a lot of onions, the smell might be discouraging. Sometimes ordinary cooking oil is enough. And if you lose your dildo, I always say that you can use what nature provided you with in the first place: carrots, cucumbers, aubergine... For how long have you been together?’

‘Who? Us?’ Lena was astonished.

‘Yes, you two.’

‘We’re not together. We’re friends. He’s gay.’

Robert nodded in affirmation.

‘So you let him sleep with other men. This sometimes happens. I let my Zenon have a blowjob by his secretary. I set the rules. No sex. I wouldn’t stand it. Jealousy, you see. But I let him have fun with her. He ate a lot of onions, you can imagine. I just couldn’t stand the taste. Sometimes compromises are necessary. Fifty years of marriage don’t go so easily if you don’t allow for some solutions, some exceptions to the contract. I used a lot of toys in my life. Zenon wasn’t equipped enough. That encouraged me to start my own garden. Everything was at hand.’

Now the young woman sitting next to Lena decided to leave the compartment. Apparently, she had enough.

‘Prude,’ the elderly woman assessed ‘She peeks at other people in secret but she can’t digest open conversation. I was always experimental. In my age, eighty-five that is, you cannot stop being curious. Before Zenon passed away he had told me to look for fulfillment, to have lovers, to enjoy myself. So I did. I had no inhibitions. I was always into broadening horizons, always into learning new ways and new things.’

Robert looked at Lena with an apparent accusation. It looked as though they were stuck in the compartment and couldn’t go anywhere, leaving Zenon’s widow behind. They were forced to learn everything about the experimental life of an elderly woman and Robert was sure that, after three hours of conversation with her, he would never have sex in his life. He wasn’t prepared to hear as much.

Once they got out of the train, Lena burst into uncontrollable laughter and couldn’t come to her senses for at least five minutes.

But Kieliszek and her friends headed towards the tram stop and Robert and Lena tried to follow them, avoiding being noticed. The group entered the first wagon of the tram, so Robert and Lena jumped onto the second. They were checking at each stop, whether the group of academics left the means of transportation and, finally, they did, which made Robert and Lena abandon the tram, follow them and keep a safe distance. Suddenly, the group disappeared behind the doors of one of the buildings.

The entrance was closed. Robert and Lena stood at the wooden, arched door to the building and looked at the information printed or engraved on little address plates stuck to the wall just next to the intercom.

‘There’s a private ophthalmologist, a Spanish language school, a Xerox, a lawyer’s office, a publishing house ‘Kafka’, it’s probably after this writer, Franz Kafka, there’s a dietitian...

‘Publishing house. Maybe this is their second job.’

Lena googled the name.

‘They publish classic literature. From eighteen century novels to post-war classics. Boring.’

‘I read these things,’ Robert said.

‘You read a lot of boring stuff. I saw your bookshelf.’

‘And you don’t read anything. You stay online and make a sponge out of your brain.’

‘Then I’m a SpongeBob.’

‘Who?’

Lena rolled her eyes at the back of her head.

‘Never mind. No wonder you have nothing to talk about with your daughters. Fine, what if they really work in a publishing house? This is actually quite close to their area of study. Translations, popular science and so on. They may know something about publications.’

‘If they really work in a publishing house, I wonder why do they look so good when they come here. Classic literature? Stylish clothes? They would earn more publishing cooking books than correcting the font of Joyce or Hardy.’

‘Then you think that they work at the lawyer’s office?’

Robert looked at the door.

‘We won’t know if we don’t check.’

He pressed a random number on the intercom and waited for a moment.

They heard an electrically sounding voice behind the device.

‘Yes?’

Robert brought his face to the intercom.

‘Sorry. I forgot my key. Can you let me in?’

They heard some complaining murmur along the lines of ‘These people...’ and they were welcomed by the tune of the opening door.

Effortlessly, they entered the building.

The Spanish school was on the second floor, Kafka publishing house was situated on the third along with the Xerox place, doctors’ offices were on the fourth floor. Inside they decided to separate. Lena went to the Spanish school, Robert went up to visit Kafka.

‘Have you ever learned Spanish?’, the woman at the reception desk was helping Lena fill in the questionnaire.

‘No. I have never even been to Spain,’ Lena said honestly ‘I look for something that will help me forget about my personal situation. You see, I broke up with a boyfriend. He cheated on me. I look for a change of focus...’

Playing the role of a cheated girlfriend was actually quite easy, as she didn’t have to play.

‘What a dick!’ the woman at the reception desk summed up the whole situation ‘Spanish will do you good. It’s a different climate, a completely different culture, it will help you forget or find your inner Spanish soul.’

‘Can you show me the school?’

Lena wanted to see whether Kieliszek and her friends were inside one of the rooms.

‘No problem. You can even take part in one of the classes to find out whether you like it or not.’

The school consisted of one big corridor, which led to another corridor, turning right. On each side of the corridor, there were doors leading to the classrooms. Classes were the size of Lena’s room in Robert’s apartment. As everything in this area of Cracov, the rooms were old, they had remaining old-fashioned fireplaces inside, some sculptures below the ceiling, old doors and double-glass windows which remembered the times of war. The only modern things inside were the posters of Spanish places to visit, Spanish nouns, verbs and adjectives, and the equipment to play films and music. Apart from the classrooms, there were: a teacher’s room with a lot of books and teachers’ materials and a xerox machine.

‘This is the toilet,’ the woman pointed at the door leading to a small toilet room with a water closet and a sink.

‘And there?’ Lena glimpsed at the far right end of the second corridor.

‘Oh, this doesn’t belong to us. This is a Portuguese Embassy. We share the floor. Sometimes the woman is so kind to open the school for us if we get late. She also lets in the students if they have early classes and the lecturer doesn’t have the key. The building is specific. I think there were these communal apartments in the past. One corridor, many small flats, one bathroom. People had to share. We’re here for the last fifteen years. I don’t know how it was before.’

Then the receptionist let Lena into the class and let her meet the lecturer and get to know the students. It was a class for intermediate students, so Lena had no idea what they were talking about, but she liked the atmosphere and had a few laughs with the group.

‘It’s a real publishing house.’ Robert met her an hour later at the corridor ‘I had to pretend that I’m a librarian and wanted to buy a supply.’

Robert showed her a plastic bag of volumes written by Thackeray, Mann, Hardy, Swift, Prus, and Kafka.

‘I have things to read for the rest of the year. It’s an ordinary office. A lot of books, boxes on the floor. But I haven’t seen Kieliszek and the rest. And what about the school?’

Lena shrugged.

‘A real school. I actually enrolled on these classes. I start from the beginner’s level. If we are supposed to be here every second weekend, I can make use of some entertainment.’

Robert looked impressed.

‘This is actually a very good idea. You will be close to the building. To think about it, I can leave you Tamka’s case. I can then focus on Woźniak.’

‘And Anton?’

‘And Anton.’, Robert smiled.

‘Will you manage with your studies and work?’

‘It’s my last semester. I have only the thesis to finish. And I know Cracov. Besides, this is only for the weekend. I can keep an eye on Kieliszek, I know where she works, don’t I?’

Robert nodded. The move could really buy them some time, as Woźniak’s case had barely even started off.

Suddenly, they heard some murmur behind the door of the publishing house’s office and they quickly run up the stairs to the fourth floor, hiding behind the door of the doctors’ offices. Lena ended up at the ophthalmologist’s office, Robert at the dietitian’s.

An hour later they came out with an apparent defeat on their faces, as Lena held a prescription of glasses for mild astigmatism, Robert a lactose and gluten free diet of 2000 calories to improve his metabolism.

‘I had my fat measured,’ he complained.

‘I had an eye check-up. And I had to pay.’

‘Do you think that dietitian is for free? We will add this to the cost of the case.’

‘You want to charge Krakowski for our mistakes? This is mean. He doesn’t look like a millionaire. He doesn’t have to cover our medical expenses.’

‘Fine. I will pay for the visits. And who will pay for your nights here? I hope you will cover the cost of your Spanish classes.’

‘I can pay for the classes. I think I have a friend here at the Jagiellonian University’s dorms. I have to renew the acquaintanceship. Maybe she will let me stay for a couple of nights. We would make use of a millionaire, to be honest.’

‘Yes. We would make use of a lot of things. Have you seen anyone at the ophthalmologist? Anyone from Kieliszek’s team?’

‘No. There were me and one woman with a child. No one else.What about the dietitian?’

‘The same. Only an obese guy and some women shedding their pregnancy weights.’

‘There’s one more place, though. Next to the Spanish school there is a Portuguese Embassy. It adjoins the corridor. I couldn’t go there on my own. I was with the receptionist.’

‘This might be a clue.’

They decided to go downstairs and calculate the expenses for Lena’s regular visits to Cracov.

‘We will eat rice,’ Robert summed up the costs ‘Never mind, I have to be gluten free and lactose-free. I can eat paper.’

‘I’ll think of something.’ Lena promised.

Meanwhile, they heard the sound of steps coming from the floor above them. Robert pulled Lena to himself, covered her face with his hands and kissed her.

The group with Kieliszek passed them on the staircase, glimpsed at the kissing couple and left the building.

‘What was that?’ Lena set herself free from Robert’s embrace.

‘They couldn’t see you. I had to do something.’

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t tell Anton,’ Lena wiped her face with a sleeve.

‘I’m not planning to. One thing is sure. They were coming from Kafka’s floor. They must really be doing something there.’