Homesick for Another World(67)

“Maybe I’ll just die after all,” I say. I get so tired of it here, thinking of how much better it is back there, in the place we came from. I cry about it often. Waldemar always has to soothe me.

“I could kill you,” he offers. “But I’m not sure you’re the right person. But wouldn’t that be great? If you were?”

“That would be ideal!” I say.

I don’t know what I’d do without my brother. I’d probably cry even more than I do now, and take poisons that make my brain weak and my body tired so I wouldn’t even have the strength to think about the other place. I’d try to poison the place out of my mind. But I doubt that’s even possible. Some nights I hate it here so much I shake and sweat and my brother holds me down so I won’t start kicking the walls or breaking things. When I kick the walls, the woman gets angry. “What’s going on up there, children?” She thinks we’re fighting and threatens to separate us. She doesn’t know about the other place. She’s just a human woman, after all. She gives us food and clothes and everything, as human mothers like to do. My brother says he’s sure the woman is not the person he could kill to get back to the place. I’m not so sure she’s not my person. Sometimes I think she is. But if I killed her and I was wrong, I’d be sorry. Mostly I’d be sorry for Waldemar.

? ? ?

One morning as we lie in our beds, I say to my brother, “Waldemar, I think I know who my person is.” I don’t really know. I am still sort of dreaming. But then I think up a name to say. “His name is Jarek Jaskolka and I’m going to find him and kill him, mark my words.”

“But are you sure?” my brother asks.

“I think so,” I say. And then, suddenly, I am sure. Jarek Jaskolka is the person I have to kill. I know it in my bones. I am as sure about Jarek Jaskolka as I am about the place, and about me and Waldemar being from there.

“You must be completely sure,” my brother warns me. He rises from his bed and lifts the blanket over his head like an old lady going to the market. His face becomes dark and his voice suddenly low and frightening. “If you aren’t sure, you could get in trouble, you know.”

“You look like a witch, Waldemar. Don’t make me laugh at you,” I say. Waldemar doesn’t like to be ridiculed.

“If you kill the wrong person . . .” he begins.

But I am sure now. I can’t go back and pretend I’m not. I have to return to the place somehow. I miss it too much. My brain hurts and I cry all the time. I don’t want to be here on Earth for one moment longer.

“It’s that damned Jarek Jaskolka!” I cry. It is just a name I’ve made up, but it is the right name, that I am sure of. I jump from my bed. I pull the string to lift the curtains. The room where Waldemar and I sleep looks out into the forest. Outside, soft gray clouds hang between the trees. Some silly birds sing a few nice notes. I miss the other place so much, I want to cry. But I feel brave. “I will find you, Jarek,” I say to the window. “Wherever you are hiding!”

When I look at Waldemar, he has gone back under his covers. I can see his chest rising and falling. My brain hurts too much to try to comfort him. And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense.

For breakfast the woman gives us bowls of warm fresh yogurt and warm fresh bread and tea with sugar and lemon, and for Waldemar a slice of onion cooked in honey because he has been coughing.

“Jarek Jaskolka,” I whisper to remind myself that I will soon be far away from this place and all its horrors. Every time I say the name out loud, my head feels a little better. “Jarek Jaskolka,” I say to Waldemar. He smiles sadly.

The woman, hearing me say Jarek Jaskolka’s name, drops her long wooden spoon. It skitters across the kitchen floor, dripping with the tasty yogurt. She comes at me.

“Urszula,” she says. “How do you know this name? Where did you hear it? What have you done?” She isn’t angry, as she so often is. Her face looks white and her eyes are wide. She holds her lips tight and frowns, holding me by the shoulders. She is scared.

“Oh, he is just some person,” I say, batting my eyes so she cannot see the murder in them.

“Jarek Jaskolka is a bad, bad man,” the woman says, shaking me. I stop blinking. “If you see him on the street, you run away. You hide from him. Jarek Jaskolka likes to do bad things. I know because he lived on Grjicheva, next door to my house before they tore it down for the tramway when I was little. Many girls came away from his house black and blue and bloodied. You have seen my marks?”

“Oh no, Mother!” cries Waldemar. “Don’t show her those!”

But it is too late. The woman pulls her skirt up past one knee and points. There they are, marks like swollen earthworms, enough of them to make a lump from the side, the poor woman.

“Jarek Jaskolka will do the same to you,” she says. “Now go to school and don’t be stupid. And if you meet that bad man on the street, run away like a good girl. And you, too, Waldemar. Who knows what Jarek Jaskolka is up to now?”

It is usual for the woman to get in the way of good things I want to do.

? ? ?

“Jarek Jaskolka made those marks on the woman, but so what?” I ask Waldemar on the walk to school. “What’s so bad about some measly marks?”