Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski Page 0,45

up on to the third and last floor. It was all quiet. I saw the abandoned empty tram, the crowds on the pavements, the policemen pushing them along like cattle. The rest of the street was a wide and empty expanse, all the way to the headquarters. Policemen in helmets lined the barriers. I crouched, like a child in a tree house, hands on the cold windowsill, my fingers pulsing. The sun was beginning to set.

And then something approached. A murmur could be heard from far away, like the sound of a beehive, and a horde appeared on the horizon. I could not see them well at first, but as they came closer I saw they were workers. They wore heavy boots and dark overalls and marched with banners held above their heads. They were chanting too. As soon as they appeared in the middle of the square, a rush went through the street, and everything changed, like rain falling after hours of pregnant, hovering clouds. The crowds on the pavements seemed to stop, to watch the marchers, and the police officers shouted louder, telling the people to move on. At the same time, a formation of policemen in helmets and masks marched in the direction of the strikers. A scream went through the bystanders – a policeman had hit someone with his stick. Without knowing why, I knew this was the moment. I got up. My heart was racing like a steam engine. I opened my bag, opened the window, felt the cool air against my face, the amplified buzz of the street in my ears. Then I turned my bag upside down above the street. The leaflets fluttered in the wind and glided up and away, like a scattered flock of doves. It was like the cloud I had seen earlier that day, the cloud that had given birth to this cloud, and this one too managed to stop time. I saw the faces in the street looking up, men and women and children, the police as well, confusion and amazement drawn on them as the paper rained down like giant confetti. I thought I heard banging against the front door three storeys down. My heart pounded like a fist. I looked around. There were two doors. I tried both of them. They were locked. I knocked, urgently. Nothing happened. The banging on the front door became real, and grew harder and louder. I ran down a flight. I tried one of the doors, without success. A crash shook the building, the sound of breaking wood. They’d broken through. Gushes of adrenaline flooded me. I weighed nothing. My insides were made of fire. I rattled on the door handles, desperate, gutted.

‘Police!’ angry voices shouted from downstairs, though I saw no one yet.

‘Pssssst!’

I turned around. Behind me a door had opened and a man was looking at me intently, sizing me up. Then he gestured me in.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs. ‘Police!’

I jumped inside towards the man, and the door closed behind me.

There was heavy trampling of police boots just outside the door, shouting, running up to the top of the building, banging on the doors upstairs. I guessed they hadn’t seen me. The man who had opened the door had an intelligent, tired face and greying hair that made him look older than he probably was. We exchanged quick looks. There was also a woman, younger than him, not so far from my age, I guessed, tall and broad, with a kind face. We heard the policemen coming back down the stairs, banging on the doors of this floor. Our door. The man and woman looked at each other and he nodded in the direction of a corridor.

‘Quick, Pani Waleszka, the kitchen.’

The woman took me by the arm and we hurried along the narrow corridor to a tiny kitchen with a view of the street. Before I could see anything going on outside, we heard more banging on the door. Then the sound of it being opened.

‘Citizen,’ we heard a voice boom in the other room, ‘a suspect is hiding in this building. Have you seen him? A young man with light hair and a brown rucksack?’

‘There is no one here apart from myself and my secretary,’ said the man calmly.

‘Then you will let us search the space.’

Their boots crossed the threshold.

The woman and I looked at each other in the tiny kitchen. Right behind the door was another, very narrow, door, painted the same colour as the