The Philologist: November 2017

Chapter 26 Back to Germany

02:31

Anton, Edward, and Kit-Kat were supposed to stay in Robert’s flat. Lena called to her school and told her boss that she was sick. Edward gave Robert a pile of banknotes for ‘journey expenses’, Anton was handed a bunch of keys to the flat. Robert and Lena packed only bare essentials and soon they were on their way to Frankfurt.

Lena grabbed her portable DVD player, which she had bought on sale when she was in London, and still kept in one of her drawers with socks and bras. While Robert was driving, she was happily showing him the details of her recent discovery.

‘I knew that they were doing something there. Publishing house is just a cover. They must be making some significant profit out of these films. Porn for people with peculiar taste. Kieliszek is having sex with almost all of the lecturers we saw on the train. But she’s not the only woman there. There are at least four.’

Robert glimpsed at the film while waiting at the red light.

‘Show me again the one with Tamka,’ he asked, taking a turn.

Lena found the film recorded in the green room.

‘Can you see a difference?’

Lena didn’t know what Robert was talking about.

‘A difference? She has sex with everybody just the same. She’s kind of good at it, if you ask me. It makes me feel bad about myself. And she looks awesome naked. Who would have thought...’

‘Look carefully. When she’s with Tamka, she smiles. Her eyes sparkle. With other guys, she’s just being seductive. More job than pleasure.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I just think they must have liked each other. They are actually making love, not only having sex, not to mention the pure porn concept.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Lena wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘Recent experience. They have fun.’

Lena slowly came to realize why Anton was in the flat when she rushed into it a few hours before.

‘Fine. You slept with Anton! I knew it. I just disappear for the weekend and you find opportunities to play.’

‘You’re not my chaperon. Let’s talk about you. How on earth did you get that millionaire?’

‘He’s a millionaire? I wouldn’t tell. I just placed an ad in the newspaper. I used to do this when I was younger.’

‘You were looking for sponsors?!’

‘Listen, I was sixteen when I came here on my own. I needed money. Work in McDonald’s wasn’t the job of my dreams. So I started offering my services.’

‘What services?’

‘Not sex services for sure. You know, there are a lot of lonely men in Warsaw. Sometimes they earn a lot, but they have no one to spend time with them. They invite you to trips, restaurants. Sometimes they need a date for their families’ weddings, like gay people in the closet afraid of coming out to their family for instance. You’re not the first gay person I encountered. Sometimes they just want to spend the weekend with someone. I’m quite social. I was paid for that. I got bonuses, money for clothes and holidays. You’d be surprised how many students go through their studies thanks to some sugar daddy’s money. Life is brutal.’

‘I’m not really surprised that you have relationship problems,’ Robert summed up ‘Everything is a business deal for you.’

‘And that comes from a gay man who was married with children! I didn’t have sex with them. Let’s be honest, they wouldn’t afford it.’

‘So why did you stop?’

Lena pouted her lips.

‘Well, there was this one guy who tried to rape me and I decided that it’s too dangerous. McDonald’s was a safer option.’

Robert laughed.

‘But this Edward is not such a bad idea, I mean, it’s ridiculous to take a complete stranger from the street, but we would make use of his money. I don’t want Krakowski to pay for it all. The guy might look strange, but I checked his bank account. He’s really a millionaire! My fortune teller told me that you will bring me money.’

‘What else did she tell you?’

Robert told her about traveling.

‘Well, that’s what we’re doing at the moment. Let’s wait for other sensational prophesies. Coming back to Kieliszek and Tamka, if they were really so in love, why has he disappeared from the porn industry and she’s still literally working her but off?’

Robert shrugged. He didn’t have all the answers.

It was late when they arrived in Frankfurt. It was a business city with a lot of skyscrapers, holding both an office space for work and parks for office workers to take a breather. Its population was rather multinational. Its citizens were storming the streets in hijabs; Turkish, Serbian, Russian, Italian and Polish languages were heard almost just as often as the native German. The city was clean and Lena enjoyed its night atmosphere. They stopped at Hotel Arena Messe with its classic brown and beige interior and abundant breakfast possibilities.

Lena slept like a child while Robert was calling Johan Yzerman for the details of Gerald Meler’s case with an intention to visit Goethe University first thing in the morning. This time they booked a two-person room and didn’t have to share the bed.

They woke up and ate a hearty breakfast consisting of ham sandwiches, cereal, orange juice, coffee and some fruit. Lena was visibly exhausted after traveling to and from Cracov and now such a long way to Frankfurt. Still, there was no other choice but to drag her to an impressive yellowish building and make her stop complaining about swollen ankles.

The only person who remembered Gerald Meler was the employee of the university library.

‘He used to spend hours in the library. He was besotted with his books. I advised him to have a life, to meet friends, to go for a party, but you know these passionate men. They barely see any life apart from their studies.’

‘Did he have enemies? Was he liked?’

‘I don’t know if anyone even paid attention to him. He had a few classes. He spent a long time at the library. It was me who informed the police. He stopped coming to the library and I thought it was disturbing. You know, very few students read books he was reading. They weren’t really so popular. Apart from the obligatory volumes, we have a big collection of additional sources. We always ordered the latest editions and cooperated with American publishing houses. He knew them all. He borrowed a few volumes for the weekend. That was his only way of spending time. I saw him every Friday, he returned books, borrowed new ones. He did that for a couple of years. A very systematic man. Devoted. I was a student then, I was earning some extra money at the weekend in the library. I remember almost everyone from that period. Definitely better than I do it now. Now all faces just blend into one.’

‘That’s the proper way some people earn money to finish studies. They make a useful contribution to the education system.’ Robert commented to Lena, who rolled her eyes at his old-fashioned attitude.

Robert looked through the employment contract of Gerald Meler. He was quite young when he worked in the Institute. He must have been barely over thirty when his missing was noticed.

‘Did he have a family? Friends?’

‘He hung out mostly with his students. I’m sure his parents are dead by now. I don’t know how to help you.’

Robert wrote down the librarian number in case they wanted to find some more information.

As Lena didn’t understand what Robert was talking about with the library woman, she was left to her own devices. She found shelves with books on history and sociology. She looked through the volumes of history books, which were read by Meler. She flicked through a few of them. To each volume, on the inside cover was stuck a note with only a few university index numbers, as if no one wanted to dig deep in the social and historical factors of wars, revolutions and political turnovers. Lena knew she wasn’t the one to borrow such books and spend the weekend reading them from cover to cover. She wasn’t a Meler’s type of a person.

‘Ask her if we can have the names of the people who borrowed these books!’, she shouted over to Robert.

Robert translated what Lena was saying. The woman nodded and after a few minutes, she brought a list of students who happened to borrow the same history books over the years.

With this piece of information, they left Frankfurt and started their journey to Berlin.

Chapter 25 Unexpected Guest

23:07

Lena had gone to Cracov, so Robert had the whole flat to himself. Anton came over before noon. He bought a box of early strawberries (rather on the expensive side, as the seasonal were yet to arrive in a couple of months) and Nutella. Robert made some pancakes and brewed coffee for both of them. After they finished having late breakfast, they were sitting for some time on Robert’s sofa, Robert looking nervously at his hands, realizing that they were all by themselves.

‘I guess, I should do the honors,’ Anton whispered and got closer to Robert.

He looked perfect in his black T-shirt and tight jeans. His blond hair lighted his blue eyes and vibrant smile. Robert felt that his blood left his brain and entered other areas of his body. Anton laughed, because Robert liked to be in charge, but apparently not in his romantic life. He looked like a helpless puppy craving touch, playtime and caressing. He was soon overwhelmed with Anton’s kisses. He felt his hands getting under his shirt, precisely unbuttoning his buttons, unbuckling the buckle of his trousers, and in a moment Robert stood there naked as God created him thirty-five years ago. It took Anton seconds to take off his own clothes and this time Robert took Anton to bed and pushed him on the mattress.

All was magic. To feel Anton’s smell, to touch the skin on his body, to have access to its every part usually hidden behind the textile of his clothes. It was amazing to feel his pressure and touch, to feel the pumping sensation of his erected member. Equally, every inch of Robert’s body was sensitive to touch, every end of his nervous cell was craving the gentle stimulation offered by his blond youth. It was playful and extremely rich, Robert confident while kissing Anton’s rough skin, and vulnerable at being cosseted. They were exhausted and laughed like children after they finished. Robert felt it entirely natural and fulfilling to have sex with a man, and instantly knew what was wrong during these rare occasional moments of intimacy he shared with his wife. He knew that he wasn’t attracted to her and there was no joy in their mutual moments in bed. This joy he now felt with Anton. He genuinely hoped that his ex-wife was happy with her Berlin businessman, as she truly deserved a better treatment than he was about to offer to her.

With Anton, they were laughing hysterically at the mess they made on the bed. Their bodies were covered with strawberries and Nutella. While they were trying to clean each other, they were again carried away, which led to another act of love-making. Tired beyond measure, however, they weren’t to leave the bed just yet. They would probably stay there way into Sunday but it seemed that Robert’s professional life wasn’t something that would allow him to have a lot of time on his hands. Johan Yzerman called early on Sunday morning from Berlin and Anton did everything not to make any sound, he had to push his fist into his hand not to laugh and disturb the conversation.

‘Remember when I told you that there’s no connection between disappearances?’

‘Yeah.’, Robert tried to make Anton quiet.

‘Forget it. I asked some friends of mine to check the history of missing people, and the results were kind of disturbing. In 1979 in Hamburg Selig Roth went missing, in 1985 in Berlin Conrad Koch stopped coming to classes, in 1992 in Cologne Markel Lang suddenly disappeared from his flat, in 1999 in Frankfurt the same happened to Gerald Meler, in 2007 in Munich Adel Neuman left the flat and never came back. In all cases, no traces were found. And guess what? There is a link. All were history Ph.D. students, lecturers or professors.’

‘So you think that we are dealing with a serial killer?’

‘You said it. You should check on them, you should go to these cities and check their stories. I really think it’s the same man who does all of this.’

‘Fine. Give me a day. I’ll pack my things and I’ll head to Germany tomorrow morning.’

Anton was looking with mixed interest at Robert’s agitation and excitement. There was no way they were going to make love again, as Robert’s mind was occupied with something else than sex with his boyfriend. Anton resorted to cuddling.

But then there was a knock on the door, so Robert stood up from the bed and opened it.

Behind it, stood the most bizarre man he had ever seen. He was a thin, haggard, old man, wearing flashy fashionable clothes and extremely worn-up shoes. On his shoulder, was sitting a black cat, which at the sight of Robert gave a very unpleasant meow.

‘Yes?’, Robert was visibly surprised.

‘I’m from the advertisement. I thought you would make use of my help.’

‘What advertisement?’

The man handed him a newspaper. Robert looked at the add and the address written below. He didn’t know what to make of it all. He had no idea that somebody could even do such a thing.

‘A sponsor? You want to be our sponsor?’, there was a big dose of irony in Robert’s voice.

The man smiled.

‘Don’t be deceived by appearances. Can I come in?’

As Anton was still lying in Robert’s bed, he decided to invite the man into the kitchen.

‘Edward Walenty Mazur,’ he introduced himself and looked at the cat ‘This is Kit-Kat.’

Robert ignored the cat.

‘You don’t seem to have money. We are trying to solve a couple of unsolved cases. Our earnings don’t allow us to travel as much as we would like to. You know, hotels, tickets, food. We have usual state jobs. Nothing prestigious. I’m a police officer.’

‘I don’t have a job. But I have something else.’ Edward explained and showed Robert recent bank statement which showed twelve million six hundred sixty-five thousand and seventy-two zlotych ‘I won in Lotto. See, I don’t like charity. But I wouldn’t mind helping you. I had a company once. I believe in hard work. I also believe in justice.’

Robert knew once a man who won a significant sum of money in the lottery, but he spent it all in less than three years. To make matters worse, he even ended up in the red.

‘How come you haven’t used it all?’

‘I have been homeless for over twenty years. I have my habits. But I just don’t want to give you the money. I want to take part in the process. I want to be here from time to time. I don’t have much else to do. I read, occasionally go to lectures, but I miss actual work. I miss people.’

Robert didn’t know what to say.

‘Can we trust you?’

‘Can I trust you?' Edward asked honestly.

Robert nodded quietly.

In a minute Anton’s head picked through the kitchen’s door.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘This is my boyfriend,’ Robert explained, feeling that he owed the old man full honesty.

Edward raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh. I knew a homeless guy who liked men. I don’t care what you guys do, but don’t flirt with me. I stopped dating long before.’

Anton looked at Edward in a suspicious manner.

‘I wouldn’t worry about that!’ he laughed.

Robert made Edward a cup of tea and discussed with him the details of the case. Edward in return told him his life story and it was afternoon when the door to the apartment opened with a bang and Lena ran inside with something in her hand, stopped to see Anton, Robert and some very oddly looking man sitting by the table, with the addition of a cat playing on the floor, to shout triumphantly ‘They are making porn!’, which made everybody put their conversation to a halt.

Chapter 24 Another Type of Business

00:33

This time Lena didn’t even intend to attend the classes of the Spanish language. She kept a bunch of keys in her pocket and with a certain aim, she entered the train later than usual. For some time she hung around Galeria Krakowska, Cracov’s shopping mall. She bought a mascara, a new pair of underwear and the new Florence and the Machine album, which she listened to twice to kill the time. She ate at Subway one of those meatball sandwiches with tomato sauce, drank some Pepsi and waited until it got darker. After nine in the evening, she took her things and headed towards the building so well-known to her.

She took the key and tried to open the entrance door. After a few attempts, she was able to enter the staircase. She decided to head straight to Kafka’s office. It took her some time to find the right key, but once she got inside, she was sure that there was no one except for her. All Kafka’s employees were happily at home, enjoying the weekend.

It was an ordinary publishing house. There were three rooms, one small segment with kitchen utensils and a toilet. Two rooms were cramped with office desks, another room was a storage for newer and older editions of books (which were filling floors, bookshelves, and tables: the numerous scraps from the printer’s orders or bookstore’s returns). Some of the books she had already seen in the plastic bag Robert held in front of her some months before. The place was messy in an ordered and catalogued way, as if it was important for the employees of Kafka to keep track of books, but everything else (half-empty tea mugs, pieces of paper, chopsticks, candies’ leftovers) was lying here and there without anybody’s slightest effort to make the place clean. Lena opened some boxes and desks’ drawers to find traces of mischievous activity, but there was nothing of significance. Kafka ran for years, and as it was a small publishing house and it printed mostly classic literature, not Swedish crime novels or fitness tutorials, the number of books it was selling was getting lower and lower each year.

Surprisingly enough, every year on Kafka’s documents the same names appeared, including Izabella Kieliszek, who seemed to stay there purely out of sentiment and love for the language, translation, and grammatical correctness. Until October the previous year written in bold on the majority of papers was also the name of Henryk Tamka.

After a couple of hours, Lena decided that the office contained nothing of significance. She put all things in place, left rubbish in the way she found it and locked the door. Then she found the key to a Xerox place, hoping that it wasn’t monitored in any way. She opened the door and found herself in a single room. On the left, there were desks with five computers (probably connected to the internet). On the right there stood two Xerox machines. In front of the entrance, there was a reception desk. Lena tried to copy something, but the quality was poor. She remembered how the woman downstairs complained about the service. Behind the reception desk, there was a small utility room for the employees and a toilet with a washbasin. That was it. Nothing of significance.

Lena felt discouraged. She believed that there was nothing at the doctors’ offices, nothing in the Spanish school. Possibly Izabella Kieliszek with her colleagues spent time earning extra money correcting classical texts and improving translations. There was nothing wrong in what they were doing, nothing suspicious.

As she still had keys to every single door in the building, Lena decided to make use of the opportunity and the fact that she was in Cracov, and give it the last go. She entered the school and took a stroll around the place so familiar to her. It was too late to hold any classes and all rooms were empty.

There was a big level of trust in the place and the last teacher finishing classes was to close all windows and doors, which many failed to do out of a busy schedule or by trying to avoid the responsibility at all cost. Lena poured some water into the plastic cup and headed towards the Portuguese Embassy. The woman that had opened the door for her must have finished work long time before. Lena was looking at the place with an intention of opening some drawers and doing research (maybe the Portuguese Embassy was not really an embassy) when something hit her. The Spanish school and Embassy were just under Kafka and the Xerox place. They should have been exactly the same size and (as buildings were built in a similar fashion) rooms on the upper floor should correspond to the rooms on the lower. Why was it so that on the floor of Spanish school and Embassy there seemed to be far more space? Kafka consisted of three rooms. The Xerox place of one big and one small. The school and Embassy combined must have had at least a dozen.

Midnight was approaching when Lena opened the door to Kafka publishing house for the second time. But this time she carefully counted the doors. If all rooms corresponded to the rooms downstairs, there should have been more space. Lena counted her steps.

The walls of the final room (the one in which all books were stored) were covered with shelves and closets from top to bottom. There was nothing suspicious about the shelves in which the boxes were kept. Lena opened a few of them and all of them were full of books. Lena approached the wardrobe. It was closed. She had to open the drawers of the desk to search for a key. She found a couple of keys and tried to open the wardrobe. The second one worked and the lock gave way.

To Lena’s surprise, the wardrobe wasn’t an actual wardrobe but it contained another door. This time Lena used the first key and it worked just fine. She opened the hidden door like Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and disappeared to an entirely different space.

You know the feeling when the whole life you spent your holiday days in a budget hostel and everything was just enough, considering its price, all facilities were available, mattresses were comfortable, there was enough privacy for each backpacker and, all in all, you could spend there days without any pain? And then you happened to enter an actual hotel room with all conveniences, little chocolate bars to make you feel welcome, soft towels to make you comfortable and you became aware why so many fell for the charm of luxury.

The door behind Kafka’s wardrobe led to a hotel-like apartment. In each room, there were vintage sofas and four-poster beds. On each floor lied soft carpets, in front of each window were hanging ornamented curtains and each room had access to an equally glamorous bathroom with a separate bathtub standing on four curved vintage legs. Golden chandeliers, doorknobs, and lamps added to the sophisticated design of the place. Each room had a different theme. The first one was burgundy, the second - white and gold, the third was purple while the fourth one was painted in the noble dark green shade. Lena was walking from room to room, utterly awe-struck and she didn’t know what to make of them. There was no one in the room and equally, there were no remains of activities which were held there to make Lena aware what kind of place it was.

Lena opened the drawers to see expensive sets of underwear, she uncovered the bed covers to look at silk duvets and embroidered pillows. In the toilet’s closets she found silk gowns hanging on sparkling hangers, on the mirror shelves she noticed bottles of perfumes and cosmetics.

She opened another wardrobe and this time she saw a dozen items of electronic equipment: digital cameras, tripods, and sound systems.

‘Why do they need cameras?’, she whispered to herself trying to add pieces to the puzzle.

Then something hit her again. She ran back to Kafka’s office and unboxed one of the boxes of books which was standing innocently on the floor. The first layer might have comprised Dostoyevski’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ edition, but the second layer was full of nicely wrapped-up boxes of DVD films. Lena took one of them, closed the box and run back to the Xerox place. She turned on one of the computers and inserted the disk.

The DVD disk ran smoothly. Suddenly the screen turned dark and she heard the sound of music. The room of noble green appeared on the screen. There was a man lying on the bed, sipping champagne from the glass and massaging his chest with his empty hand. Then a red-headed woman approached him. She was wearing the same gown which Lena had seen in the bathroom, and in a moment she let it fall on the floor in the manner of the blissful sensuality of Kate Winslet in Titanic. She stood there completely naked, her breasts hanging lightly, her pubic hair matching the color of her hair. She approached the man and in a couple of minutes, Lena witnessed intense love making, colored by moans, shouts, and whispers of passion. There wasn’t a body part that she didn’t see, there wasn’t any doubt that the couple was having an actual sexual intercourse.

And there wouldn’t be anything strange in watching a sophisticated porn film, nothing extraordinary, nothing which Lena hadn’t already seen before if she hadn’t been looking at so well known to her Izabella Kieliszek and Henryk Tamka caught in flagranti by the digital camera hidden in the wardrobe.

Chapter 23 The Change of Fate

00:01

Edward Walenty Mazur, on the other hand, drank Starbucks coffee every day. Not only did he drink coffee from chain cafes, but also he didn’t mind tasting a well-brewed drink from a small local Italian-like bistro. He was a stylish individual, wore fashionable clothes (in the majority worn out), flashing the labels of his high-fashion shoes and leather jackets. He even owned a fur, which was a little too small for him, but he didn’t care about animal rights activists and the suffering of skinned rodents. He strolled the streets of the most expensive districts of Warsaw popping to shopping galleries, cafes, shops with Belgian beer and chocolate, French macaroons and Italian wine. He’s been doing this for almost ten years, making even some friends on the way: mainly shopping assistants and barmen. He occasionally popped in the Warsaw University lectures to learn something about the impact of mass media, the consequences of World Trade Center attacks, the interpretation of Koran or the protection of endangered species. He liked to be updated on recent news about the world. He was a blissful and happy man in his late sixties. This bliss and happiness were achieved by a certain state of nirvana he accomplished over the years.

Once, some forty years ago, Edward Walenty Mazur had a company. He had more than just a company, he had a normal life with a family, friends, and prospects. But for a company, you need luck and economic stability, which at that time was not the most generous for Edward Mazur. First, he lost his company. Then he lost his flat. The family was lost too (a fatal car accident that killed his pregnant wife and his five-year-old daughter). At that time he thought that he is the most unlucky person on the planet. One day you have everything, the next day you are left with nothing.

In a serious wave of depression and desperation, he found himself homeless. Apart from clothes that he wore on the last day before being thrown away from the flat and a backpack of his life’s memories, he had nothing. He was sure that he was going to die. He gave himself a year. He could envision himself dead on the pavement at dark cold night, frozen to death or drunk and drowned in the drain.

But people can adjust to many things, they can get used to hunger if it doesn’t touch the border of starvation, they can stand the cold, as they inhabit even the polar circles, building igloos and creating their potential houses out of their greatest enemy. They can even adjust to dirt and smell, where there is no water to wash and no soap to alleviate the stench of sweat and excrement. The dignity is also a questionable thing. Eating food from dustbins would never cross your mind unless you were really hungry. Using public toilets for washing would seem to be the last resort if you didn’t have running water at home. Sleeping on the staircase of a block of flats might have happened to you after a party with a lot of alcohol, but would you like to spend your nights on the cold concrete floor on an everyday basis? You can even relieve yourself outside when there’s a desperate need, but you don’t do this regularly, appreciating the comfort of taking a shit in the cozy space of your toilet.

The society was always built in the way that some had everything or even too much, their problems being sales during Black Friday bargains, or whether it should be a Michael Kors, Chanel, Hermes or Louis Vuitton bag. There were always people numbing themselves from the irritating naturalism of the world by designer facilities from Duka, cutlery, and crockery from Zara shop or some smoked salmon from fancy restaurants. Others had less than nothing, praying for the bowl of rice not to feel the hunger at night.

Edward Walenty Mazur for over twenty years had nothing. He wore clothes that someone left in sacks in front of the residential building, he ate what he found, what he waited for in the long queues formed by homeless people, and what was thrown in the rubbish by restaurants. Winters he spent in homeless shelters, summers on park benches. He never resorted to begging for money and never fell into the trap of alcoholism. He aged among the homeless, saw many die, many killed and many perish, with very few rebuilding their lives after this personal catastrophe of losing a home.

But fate is a tricky thing. It plays with you, trying your perseverance, challenging you to the unknown. There’s nothing that you have for granted and nothing that you have forever. Fate can also be generous. To Edward’s surprise, two good things happened at that time.

One good thing was as unfair as unfair was his first half of life. For a couple of zloty he found on the street he bought a Lotto ticket and the next day he won thirteen million.

People at the Lotto center were surprised when they saw a homeless man, toothlessly smiling, holding as a proof a ticket like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, but they helped him with formalities, opened for him a bank account, gave him a credit card and wished him all the best.

But after twenty years of a particular lifestyle, he had problems with living once again a normal life. He bought a flat, but he found himself in the street for days, forgetting that there was any flat in the first place. He tried to buy himself food and clothes, but he couldn’t resist, seeing so much food wasted in rubbish bins all over the city. He still was a homeless man, but this time he was a homeless millionaire. Money didn’t bring him anything but a sense of security. Habits of over twenty years were so deeply rooted in him, the freedom of not working against the clock, the lack of responsibilities of an occupation, no stress and the lack of outside control were so tempting that, even with all his money, he didn’t change a bit. His life went back to normal. He still used second-hand clothes, still occasionally slept in the street and made use of the flat when it was really cold and there was no place at the shelter.

He arranged for himself a modest salary which went to his separate account each month. He made use of this money, he bought himself a decent meal in the Milky Bar, new shoes when his old ones were completely torn up. He even started appreciating brands, looking somewhat ridiculous in Tommy Hilfiger trainers and bushy hair and long beard, switching to Crocs in summer and stylish coat from Vistula in autumn. Other homeless kept a distance from him, as they perceived him strange: possibly a person who from years spent on the streets started to be a little bit off his rocker. The homeless were afraid of him and you couldn’t blame them. He was an outcast both in the world of rich and poor. With his experiences and millions in the bank account, there wasn’t a place he could fit in.

So fate gave him another blessing. It was true what they said about money. It couldn’t buy you happiness, friendship, and love. But it could buy you tuna. He learned it that day he met Kit-Kat. Kit-Kat was just a black cat that was playing near the dustbins with the wrapping paper from Kit-Kat chocolate bar and thus he was named accordingly. If he had played with Milka or Snickers, his name might have been different, but luckily for Kit-Kat, the wrapping paper from this particular bar, curled into a ball by some hungry teenager, was great for playing. Kit-Kat looked exactly like Edward Walenty Mazur during his first years of homelessness. He was dirty, thin and neglected. Edward entered a corner store and bought Kit-Kat a can of tuna and some milk.

Kit-Kat ate like crazy and happily jumped on Edward’s knees for petting. He purred fondly and fell asleep in a loving embrace. From then on there was him and Kit-Kat. Kit-Kat wasn’t of any breed but he was the most spoiled cat in the area. He had the best cat food, the best cat snacks and the best cat toys, which Edward kept in his rucksack with his change of clothes and credit cars. They were lucky to find each other. Edward was cured of depression, Kit-Kat was treated out of flees and ear infection.

Their fairly monotonous life could have gone on its standard course of isolation, rest, and cat food, but one day when Edward Walenty Mazur was drinking the biggest Starbucks coffee with a gingerbread spread, Kit-Kat was devouring his turkey pate, a newspaper appeared out of nowhere on the bench. Edward took the newspaper and started updating himself on the recent political news and plans of the metro renovation, and that was exactly when he found a small advertisement.