Homesick for Another World(69)

“I don’t like fun,” I say.

Waldemar snorts and goes outside to play. I want to play with Waldemar, but I have to stay in my room to guard my pot of poison berries in the closet. If the woman finds it, she’ll start asking questions. She’ll get in the way of my killing Jarek Jaskolka, and then I’ll be stuck here on Earth with her forever. I can imagine what she’ll say if she discovers my plan. “There is something wrong with you, Urszula.”

“No,” I will tell her. “There is something wrong with this place. There is something wrong with you and everybody here. There is nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with me.”

And anyway, I still have to find Jarek Jaskolka. I can’t kill him if I don’t know where he is, after all. While Waldemar is still outside playing, I go to the kitchen. It smells like cooking rice and parsley.

“Hello,” I say to the woman. “Jarek Jaskolka, does he still live on Grjicheva?”

“Of course not. Unless he lives in a hole in the ground. All the houses got torn down there. I hope he moved very far away. His sister is the lady in the library.”

“That big fatso?”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I think I need a book to read,” I say.

“Then go, go,” the woman says angrily. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but remember what I said about Jarek Jaskolka. Remember the marks. But go, do what you want, as if I care.”

“You’re angry at me now because I want to read a book?”

“Urszula is Urszula,” is all she says. She leaves the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and goes outside to watch Waldemar build a tower of pinecones. The woman is mean and stupid, I think. The entire world is stupid. I find a sharp butcher knife in the drawer and take it to my room and hide it in my satchel. I kick at the walls for a while. Then I start off for the library to find the fat sister of the man I am going to kill.

? ? ?

“Jaskolka?” the fat woman asks. “I don’t use that name anymore. What do you want? Why are you asking?”

“I’m just curious. What happened when they tore your house down for the tramway? My mother lived on Grjicheva once, too.”

“Whose daughter are you?” the fat lady asks.

“My name is Urszula” is all I say.

“Those houses on Grjicheva were all poor and ugly and it’s a good thing they’re gone now or else they’d just crumble down over our heads and kill us.”

“Kill you?” I ask.

“We moved to a small apartment near the river, if you must know.”

“You and your family? And your brother?”

She puts down the rubber stamp in her hand and closes the book on the counter. The sunlight through the windows falls on her face as she leans toward me.

“What do you know about my brother? What is it? Why are you asking me these questions?”

“I’m looking for Jarek Jaskolka,” I say. The lady is so fat and lazy looking, it seems not to matter what I tell her. “I have to kill him.”

The lady laughs and picks up her rubber stamp again. “Go right ahead,” she says. “He lives up the street in the house across from the cemetery. He’ll be pleased to have a visitor. You can’t imagine how pleased he’ll be.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I tell the lady. She just laughs.

“Good luck. And don’t come running back here full of tears,” she says. “Curious girls get what they deserve.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t listen to me.”

“I will kill him dead, you know,” I say. “That’s why I’m curious.”

“Do what you can,” she says. “Now be quiet. People are trying to read.”

? ? ?

On my way home, I walk through the cemetery, past my father’s grave, and I look through the windows of what I guess is Jarek Jaskolka’s house. The sun is setting, and the sky is beautiful colors and I wish Waldemar were there with me, holding my hand. “Why is it, Waldemar,” I would ask him, “that when something here is so beautiful, I just want to die?”

“Because it reminds you of the other place,” Waldemar would say to me. “The most beautiful place of all.”

Jarek Jaskolka’s house is clapboard painted cloudy green like pond water, and the windows facing the road are covered by a dark curtain. The front steps are missing, and in place of the steps there are big broken pieces of cement piled on top of one another. There are dry bushes around the house full of orange meadowlarks. I pick up a little rock and throw it at Jarek Jaskolka’s window, but the glass doesn’t break. The rock just makes a little ding sound against the glass. The meadowlarks start to chirp at me, whining like babies crying. I don’t care. I could throw rocks at them if I wanted. I could crush them with the heel of my shoe. I wait, hiding in the bushes, waiting to see if anything will happen. Then I throw another rock. This time, Jarek Jaskolka comes to the window. I watch him pull the curtain back. His big wrinkled hand grips the dark cloth, and just for a moment, I see his face. He looks like any normal grandfather, eyes drooping, white beard, wrinkled cheeks, and a nose like a melted candle. When he moves away from the window, his fingernails tap against the glass. They are long and yellow like an ogre’s. But it’s clear he’s just a feeble old man. It will be easy to feed him the jam, then hack him up with a knife, I figure. Old men are easy to hack. Their flesh is like an old limp carrot. But if Waldemar is right about the black hole opening up, and if Jarek Jaskolka is really my right person, then I don’t have to worry about hacking him up all the way. Maybe one hack will be enough to kill him and I can just jump down into the hole and go back to the other place.