Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski Page 0,64

behind me – across the gravel path, through the open gate at the end of the poplared avenue. The trees and the dirt road already made me feel I was breathing more lightly. The sun was still coming up, sending butter-coloured light across the park. And I was so glad to be on this path by myself. So endlessly glad. But just when I was about to reach the road, a black limousine with tinted windows came towards me. I kept my head down, accelerated my steps, hoping it wouldn’t stop, hoping Hania’s parents – is that who was in there? – wouldn’t interrogate me. The car passed without stopping or slowing down, gravel crunching beneath its massive wheels. I reached the main road. Breathing in and out, I revelled in the emptiness. Then a church bell rang in the distance, and I decided to find it. I walked along the forest road. Horse-drawn carts with families passed by, and the ringing of the bell became more distinct. Not long after, a village appeared, along with the church. It was wooden and old, its spire almost black. People streamed in, families, old people, children in hordes. I followed them into the darkness inside. The organ was playing and a soothing cloud of heavy incense hung in the air.

I stood among boys and young men in suits, some with unruly hair, many with heavy, broad faces, burnt and weathered, blue eyes, caps in their hands held in front of their crotches. Whenever a woman came in, another boy would get up from the benches, shooed by his mother, and stand with us men, letting the woman pass. No one seemed to notice me. I was invisible in the crowd. The priest stepped up to the pulpit in white and purple robes, greeting the congregation. Then the organ started up again and everyone began to sing. The notes moved slowly through space and through the crowd, elevated, unified us, passed through the single body of us and up to the murky windows and the dark ceiling. Tears gathered in my eyes, releasing themselves. I joined in the singing.

Chapter 7

Winter came early that year. Every week pulled us deeper into its gloom, every day shorter than the last, as if time was running out. What surprised me most was how calm I was. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe I was still in another drug-infused dimension, preternaturally wise. Or maybe it was shock. Or denial. Maybe the whole thing was just too big to comprehend. Or it didn’t mean anything yet. There were moments when I wanted to lie on the ground and feel the street’s concrete against my face. Just lie down, stop. To feel a heavy weight on me, feel my bones crack, feel myself drift off to sleep, for ever. But all this I pushed back.

Amidst the chaos in my mind, I knew that I could not continue my life as it had been. I knew I had to leave. I tried to think of only that. And so, on a terribly grey and cold morning, I went to the Passport Bureau. It was a tall brown building in a side street in the centre of the city, not too far from the National Museum, where the strikes had been. I went with trembling hands, pushing away the memory of the night I’d released the flyers, my story assembled in my head. I sat in the cold hall, filling out the forms, strangely aware of my handwriting and, like whenever I had to supply the official data of my life, feeling as if I was lying. The form asked where I was going, for how long and why, and I stuck to my story.

For what felt like days, I sat in the dark and drab halls of the Bureau, on a hard wooden bench, holding a piece of paper with a number, waiting for it to be my turn.

I sat in the hallway and tried not to cry. I wanted to cease existing. I wanted to un-be. I sat in the hallway and tried not to think of you and me. I tried not to think of us, under the covers of your bed. I tried not to think of your arms or your hands or your eyes. I tried not to think of all the things I had imagined we’d do together – return to our lake next summer, move in together someday. I tried not to think of