Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski Page 0,56

clothes looked new and foreign. I stared at them in awe as if they were a pair of actors from a Fellini film. We kissed on the cheek and shook hands. They seemed genuinely glad to see me, and already the tingling warmth of flattery began to soothe my nerves. We walked into Mozaika, where it was warm and soft. A low-ceilinged room decked out in red carpet and uniformed black-tie staff, and – again – those giant potted palm trees, each leaf big enough to wrap a baby inside, reaching into the room languidly and lazily and utterly aware of their own magnificence. The people there were the sort one never saw walking in the street, and so one would have been excused for thinking they didn’t exist: women with large wavy hair, heavy bright necklaces and fox collars, and men in well-cut suits and serious clean faces, smoke dancing up from their American cigarettes more slowly and more preciously than in the outside world.

We sat in a booth by the tinted windows, on two padded leather benches facing each other, drinking vodka and smoking until we were shrouded in a gentle fog. The waitress brought herring in sour cream and Ukrainian borscht with beef, and later a large red snapper for each of us. I felt like I was another person, in another city, leading a careless elevated life. I was surprised by how easily I’d pushed everything else aside, including the meeting with the professor. The vodka helped. The waitress came round and round and filled our glasses without anyone having to remind her. You next to me and Hania opposite, throwing us smiling looks. Maksio recounted one anecdote after another, mostly about girls he had tried to seduce, and you egged him on, teasing him until he told us more, as if you were just like him. I had never seen you like this, and was surprised to find that I liked it. In a way, I told myself, it wasn’t really you. When I saw Hania staring at you, her eyes wide, mouth open in laughter, I couldn’t feel jealousy.

‘So you’re the reason we haven’t seen our Januszek all these weeks,’ she said at one point, winking at me. ‘I was beginning to worry some girl had stolen him from us, when really he was just in your sweet company.’

You groaned. ‘Hania, do you have to flirt with all of my friends?’

Maksio and Rafa? laughed out loud. I blushed despite myself. Hania rolled her eyes at you and looked at me with complicity.

‘How come I never saw you on the field during camp?’ I asked, trying to change the mood.

‘Excellent question!’ Maksio cried. ‘Sister dear? Why did your Royal Highness not lift a finger – nor a single beetroot – all summer long?’

Now it was Hania’s turn to blush. ‘Stop teasing me, everyone,’ she said, affecting irritation, emptying her little glass of vodka and setting it back on the table with a bang that made the neighbouring diners look up. ‘I have delicate hands,’ she purred, and we laughed.

Dessert arrived, ice cream with chocolate sauce, topped with an absurdly big mountain of whipped cream, served in a tall glass that resembled the trumpet of a flower. It was delicious. I felt like a child again, a happy one this time, whose wishes had always been granted. On the other side of the window night had fallen, and dark figures moved past in the street with downcast faces and empty bags, and empty stomachs, I guessed. But we didn’t see them. It was so much better on this side of the glass. So much warmer, so much softer.

We stayed late, until there were almost no other guests. The bill arrived on a small silver platter and everyone reached for their wallets – or pretended to, in my case – but Maksio waved us off.

‘It’s on us,’ he said with a flick of his hand, walking over to the bar, where the waitress stood in front of a wall of foreign alcohols. She smiled at him with deference as he signed the bill and left her a tip.

Outside, in the cool air, we stood and smoked Maksio’s Marlboros, smoother than any cigarette I’d ever had. Hania looked around at us, in her catlike observing way, and asked whether we wanted to go to their country house that weekend.

‘We’ll escape the city, make a little party out of it,’ she said, her eyes narrowing with satisfaction, her fine