FOOTBALL

After the closing night of my London show at Człowiek Obcy (we rescheduled the vernissage fire), I came home on the tramwaj and looked forward to a relaxing night of vegging. Is that the expression? “Vegging”? I’ve always wondered what you thought of my English.

My rest was postponed, however, when I got distracted by a pile of junk in front of my building. Garbage piles never last long in Nowa Huta.

There’s a belief that runs through the neighbourhood, learned under Communism, that everything can be salvaged. To the seasoned scavenger, a busted baby carriage isn’t trash. It’s a set of wheels that can be refitted on a shopping buggy, a mash of metal to turn into curtain rods along with fabric to hang on them. It’s a display case of merchandise with a sign that says, “Steal me.”

I saw too much good stuff to pass up: T-shirts that were mouldy but in fun styles, a beheaded oscillating fan that looked a lot like mine, and a television tube, intact but separated from its smashed casing. I was visualizing how I could paint the tube orange and use it in my next maquette to give San Francisco a ghoulish glow from a hole cut in the Mission District. But I lost that train of thought completely when I saw The Final Cut.

This Pink Floyd album was arguably a Roger Waters solo project with the odd contribution by other band members. How could it not be their greatest album?

Then a few of my books hit the pile.

I looked up to see Pan Laskiewicz, that twitchy mongrel, chucking my shit over the balcony. I raced into the building, taking the stairs two at a time, and trying desperately to remember what I knew about criminal law and bodily assault.

When I reached my apartment, a set of keys were in the lock, and the door was open.

I saw his back first, and got a tiger-like instinct to jump him from behind and core his brain like an apple. In his hand, I saw a white-rimmed black triangle that refracted into the colour spectrum: my mint LP copy of Dark Side of the Moon. But I was crunching loudly toward him over my ransacked stuff, and he heard me, ruining my surprise attack.

“Aha!” he said, his face alive with glee. “You have come a little too late to assist with your own eviction. I have been given this most wonderful task.”

Pan Laskiewicz showed me the official eksmisji prawna, apparently signed by my enemy, the . It had to be a forgery; in Nowa Huta, bureaucracy was as slow as melasa.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” I told him, “before I throw you over the railing.”

“Oh, the homosexual is getting angry! I considered taking the stairs to move your stuff out, but this is much more fun. No nail polish today, my pedał?”

With that, he dropped the album over the balcony and sealed the deal.

Nobody messes with my Dutch pressings.

I dragged him back into the apartment by his arm hair and kneed him in the chest. He was winded for a few seconds, but sprang right back. He was pretty ripped for a guy in his fifties and tried to choke. Me. Against. The. Ironing. Board. Built. Into. The. Wall. Until I broke free and successfully jammed one of his fingers into the mechanism, then closed the ironing board.

A clean slice, and he lost it. Not the finger, but almost.

His index finger ripening blue and nasty, Pan Laskiewicz opened his maw and sank his yellowed tusks into my face, snorting through his whiskers. A wild djik—I had always known his true identity.

The apartment was coffee breath and pain for a spell. I lost a few seconds to dimness, almost blacking out. Then I staggered over to the mirror so I could see my wound, but there was no mirror, just a nail in the wall.

“You’re going down, piece of shit,” I told him.

“Is this making you excited? Do you want to suck my cock?” He mimed unzipping his pants and stroking himself.

Then I kicked his nose.

Heard the bone snap, the crunch of cartilage.

“No,” he said.

He dropped to the ground to cradle the new sinkhole in his face. I crouched beside him. Half of his nose, it seemed, had disappeared into him. He fondled bits of broken bone like a rosary, rocking back and forth. It was too much for me to take, especially with a bite gash in my face. I could hardly breathe.

“Pan Laskiewicz, I’m so sorry.”

“All I wanted,” he cried and blew bubbles in blood, “was to see you fuck my wife.” He looked up at me pleadingly with eyes quickly swelling black. “Was that such a ridiculous [he had a hard time saying it] demand?”

My last experience in that apartment—and in sweet, miserable Nowa Huta—was tousling his black locks of hair. I noticed streaks of grey for the first time, and how his hair smelled of vanilla and nutmeg. I vowed never to forget the soft side of this man, or of any enemy, for that matter.

Then I grabbed a few empty laundry bags and packed what I thought was important from the apartment and from the heap near the street. It was surprisingly easy to figure out; books were the only things I wanted, and I packed more than I could comfortably carry.

I left my records behind because I was done with music for awhile. I know—it’s hard to believe. But something had changed in me, I could tell, the instant I broke Pan Laskiewicz’s nose. Something let go. My choice in psychedelic rock bands simply didn’t articulate my rage anymore, and they became quite useless to me.

Sheer fucking heresy. That’s what this country will do to you.

I headed down Solidarnoci Boulevard hunting for a cab to Dorota’s house but couldn’t find one, so I walked the few kilometres there. The city was still under a funereal lock-down. Candles in colourful plastic shells lit my way. Shades were drawn in nearly every window, children cycled by me wearing commemorative black armbands, and stop signs were plastered with photos of the pontiff. Trams weren’t running. The billboard at the Rondo Mogilskie, the one that had been advertising tampons for months, had been scraped clean. I guess feminine hygiene was deemed too vile a subject to acknowledge at such a “holy” time.

Maybe the eviction notice wasn’t a forgery. Maybe the Pope’s death, only a few days prior, had sped up the eviction process, especially where a fag like me was concerned.