#shortstory #noir #warsaw: Red Esperanto by Paul D. Brazill
RED ESPERANTO
The winter night had draped itself over Warsaw like a shroud, and a sharp sliver of moon sliced the death black sky. I was in the depths of a crawling hangover and feeling more than a little claustrophobic in Olena’s cramped, deodorant-soaked apartment. I poked my trembling fingers through a crack in the dusty slat blinds and gazed out at the constellation of neon signs that lined the bustling avenue.
Sex shops, peep shows, twenty-four-hour bars, booze shops, and kebab shops were pretty much the only buildings that I could see, apart from The Westin Hotel, with its vertigo-inducing glass elevator. Looking at it made my stomach lurch a little. I fought back the acrid bile that burned my throat as I watched a black taxi jump a red light and cut across the road, narrowly missing a rattling tram. A police car’s siren wailed and pierced my pounding head like a stiletto. Another cop car joined the chase, quickly overtook the cab, swerved, and screeched to a halt in front of it. The taxi driver tried to stop but the taxi skidded back across the icy road, just missing another tram before stopping on the pavement outside a garishly painted peepshow. A tall blonde dressed only in red high heels and suspenders looked out of its front door, saw the police cars, and went back inside, slamming the door behind her.
A massive, bull-necked man with a bald head wearing a black leather jacket raced from the taxi towards the front of Olena’s apartment block but, before he could get close to the front door, a swarm of policemen swiftly surrounded him and dragged him down onto the snowy ground, attacking him with truncheons before handcuffing him and hurling him into the back of a police van, giving him the occasional kick. I turned back towards Olena. She handed me a glass of bourbon. The smell made my stomach roll. I took a furtive sip and balked.
‘So, you are not a Maker’s Mark fan?’ she said.
‘I prefer Jack Daniels,’ I said. ‘And usually with cola. Though, to be honest, I usually only drink whisky when I’m so drunk I shouldn’t be drinking anything at all. When I’ve drunk the pint of no return.’
I winked and Olena grinned as I persevered. After a while, the burning sensation was cleansing. I turned back towards the window. A mob of English football fans wearing West Ham UnitedT-shirts were staggering down the street singing loudly,
Olena came up behind me.
‘When the Pope—the Polish one—died, the whole of the street was lined with multi-coloured candles, in tribute,’ she said, looking almost tearful.
Her English was perfect, but her Ukrainian accent was as dark and as bitter as the Galois cigarette that she deeply inhaled. ‘It was a thing of rare beauty,’ she continued, a halo of smoke floating above her, though she was no angel. She’d previously worked for my sister in London, doing a bit of pickpocketing, shoplifting, and lord knows what else.
She switched off the flickering light and switched on a small lamp with a dusty red bulb. My mouth was dry, and I felt as if my heart was caged tightly within my chest and ready to burst free. Olena finished her drink and carefully placed the glass on the rickety bedside table. She handed me a bunch of keys and I gave her a wad of notes of mixed denominations.
‘Are you ready?’ she said.
‘Yes, let’s skedaddle,’ I said.
I could hear the thump of a bass line coming from one of the pubs across the road and for a moment I wished I was there. There was loud banging on the door.
‘Who the bloody hell is …?’
Olena put a finger to her lips.
‘Quiet. It’s only Bronek. Wait,’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘Oh, he’s just a customer who has problems separating business from pleasure.’
The banging continued. And then the shouting began. Well, it was more like the cry of a wounded animal. Repeating Olena’s name over and over again. She shook her head and leaned close to me.
‘Wait until he has gone, eh?’ she said.
She kissed my cheek and poured the last of the bourbon into my glass. She held up a finger and stepped into the bathroom.
Olena showered and dressed in a black polo-necked sweater and leather skirt. She cracked open another bottle of bourbon, sat next to me and we slowly drank in silence until, just before midnight, the noise stopped.
‘I think you can go now,’ said Olena, standing, stretching, and yawning.
‘Are you sure? Is it safe?’ I said.
‘Yes. He will be at mass now and then he’ll return home to his wife and children, full of guilt.’
I stood up, a little unsteady. Olena produced a handful of business cards from her bag and sifted through them.
‘Maybe we can get a taxi together?’’ she said.
‘Safety in numbers, eh?’ I said, and I forced a smile which Olena didn’t return.
‘Oh, I think we’re outnumbered where Bronek is concerned,’ she said, with the hint of a smile.
*
I took the last of my notes from my wallet and stuffed them into the taxi driver’s sweaty paw while Olena wiped the white powder from her nose and pulled a Zippo from the pocket of her black PVC raincoat. She lit another French cigarette, dissolving into the darkness as the flame flickered out.
‘We made it in one piece, then,’ she said.
‘Just about,’ I said. My nerves were shot.
Before I’d come to Warsaw, I’d heard stories about ‘The Night Drivers.’ Legend had it that they were a group of amphetamine pumped young men who, each midnight, tied fishing wire around their necks, and the cars’ brakes, and then raced each other from one end of the city to the next.
So, when I saw the cut-marks on the taxi driver’s neck and his red, red eyes, I didn’t exactly have the Colgate ring of confidence.
I was relieved minutes later when we pulled up outside The Palace of Culture and Science, Josef Stalin’s unwanted Neo-classical gift to the people of Warsaw, which loomed over the city like a gigantic gargoyle keeping evil at bay. A large red banner stretched across its entrance advertising an avant-garde jazz concert.
‘So, see you next month, then?’ she said.
‘Yes, why not,’ I replied, to the fading sound of her high heels click-clicking on the palace’s wet concrete steps.
I waited a moment until she was inside and then rushed across the road into Rory’s Irish Pub. I headed straight into the putrid smelling toilets to puke.
‘Out with the old, in with the new,’ said a familiar, well-spoken, sandblasted voice from the next cubicle.
I wiped my mouth with toilet paper, flushed, and walked up to the basin. As I splashed my face with water, Sean Bradley stumbled out of the cubicle.
‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at it through the bottom of a rather nice glass of gin and tonic, eh?’ he said.
He swayed as he zipped up his fly, waved to me and walked out the door.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once described London as being a ‘great cesspool into which the flotsam and jetsam of life are inevitably drawn’ and the same thing might reasonably be said of the world of TEFL teaching. A Teacher Of English as a Foreign Language can usually be described as either flotsam—perhaps a fresh-faced young thing taking a break from university -or jetsam—the middle-aged man with the inevitable drinking problem and enough skeletons in his closet to keep a palaeontologist happy for months. And, I’ll make no bones about it, Sean fit rather snugly into the latter category. I literally stumbled into him the first week I arrived in Warsaw. After that, we seemed to orbit each other more than somewhat. Sean was a permanently drunk, dapper, nicotine-stained example of jetsam, who supplemented his teaching income by chess hustling.
I walked into the half-empty bar, ordered a beer and a shot of vodka to cleanse my palate.
‘Oh, bollocks,’ I said, as I realised I had no more folding money left.
‘Can I pay by credit card?’ I said.
‘Yes, of course’ said Blanka, the tiny barmaid with the statuesque, purple Mohican haircut. ‘But there’s a minimum amount you have to spend.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’ll run up a tab.’
And then I headed towards oblivion like rainwater down a storm-drain. I sat at a chequerboard table with Sean and watched Andy -a big, dumb-looking American I’d seen shuffling around the ex-pat pub circuit -play pool with Rory, the owner. Rory was a pallid, ghostly, prune-faced old man with all the charm of a pit bull.
‘Evening gents,’ I shouted.
Rory glanced up, irritated.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he grunted by way of a greeting.
Like I said, he wasn’t well known for his charm. But, in his favour, he was equally ignorant of the smoking ban that had been introduced in Poland’s bars and restaurants. The air in the bar was as thick as pea soup. Little blue clouds of cigarette smoke hung below the green lamps that dangled from the low ceiling.
A Stone Roses song crept out of crackly speakers as a smoke-smudged TV screen showed an episode of ‘Friends’. Andy sat opposite Sean, sipping a Diet Coke, and keeping an eye on the door.
‘The thing is, some people absolutely loathe the place,’ said Sean, jabbing a yellow finger at a postcard of The Palace of Culture and Science that Andy had been using as a beermat. ‘The locals call it the Russian Wedding Cake, you know? And, indeed, that’s what it looks like: a wedding cake plonked in the middle of the road.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Andy, who quite clearly didn’t.
The night staggered on. Andy bailed out pretty quickly and then the cloak-room attendant left. Sean and I were soon in our pots, sat at the end of the bar smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky, watching the ice cubes glimmering and shimmering in the wan light. Blanka had gone home, too, and Rory clearly wasn’t enjoying Sean and I exploiting the Polish tradition that a bar can only close when the last customer has gone. I was about to order another round of drinks when I heard a loud bang that seemed to send seismic tremors through the pub.
I turned and saw a stunningly beautiful blonde woman burst through the frosted glass door and rush into the bar bringing a trail of snow behind her. Her wet hair hung down like party streamers. Even in my drunken stupor, just looking at her was like lightning hitting a plane. She was tall, with long blonde hair and a slash of red lipstick across her full lips. She was wearing a long black raincoat which flapped in the breeze behind her.
‘Ding dong,’ I said ‘Who’s that?’
‘Oh. That’s C.J. Crazy Jola. Better watch out for her,’ said Sean. ‘She’s eaten more men than Hannibal Lecter.’
‘Looks like a pretty tasty morsel, herself,’ I said.
‘No, really, she’s trouble. She’s a married woman, for a start,’ said Sean.
I shrugged.
‘That’s not the greatest of sins.’
‘Yes, but she’s married to Robert Novak. You do know who he is?’
I shook my head.
‘He’s a twat, that’s who he is,’ said Rory, as he went over to Jola’s table.
‘He’s a mid-level gangster who owns a lot of property in the area. He’s also a second-hand clothes Baron,’ said Sean.
‘Who and a what?’ I said.
Sean finished the last of his drink and shuffled off the bar stool. He staggered close to me. Even as drunk as I was, he still stank of booze. I recoiled.
‘He’s a mid-level gangster, basically,’ said Sean.
‘Yes, you’ve already said that.’
Sean tried to gather his thoughts.
‘He owns a couple of bars. Peep shows. And another one of his business enterprises is to get Poles that live abroad to collect donated clothes that’s been left outside charity shops overnight in, say, London or Dublin, and ship them back to Poland to sell in second-hand shops. You can get some damn good stuff, actually,’ said Sean, pointing to the Hugo Boss label on his shirt.
‘The only crime is getting caught,’ I said, shrugging.
‘Yes, but if a butterfly beats its wings in the forest, a one-handed man claps, and a tree falls down,’ said Sean, and he stumbled off in the direction of the toilets.
I ignored him and tried to catch Jola’s eye. Rory was placing a drink in front of her. She said something to him and, for the first time since I’d known him, I actually saw him laugh. Though when he turned back to me, he had the same grimace he always wore.
Jola took out her mobile phone and began sending a text message. Fuelled by Scotch courage, I walked over.
‘Would you like another drink?’ I said, swaying a little.
Jola looked up and tried to focus on me, as if she were attempting to take in a magic eye painting.
She sipped her drink and shook her head.
‘Well, I would, but I really shouldn’t,’ she said, with a fake-sounding transatlantic accent. ‘I should go home and hit the sack. I’ve hit the bottle enough for one night.’
‘Maybe one for the Ulica?’ I said.
She laughed.
‘Oh, what a fantastic use of Polish. You’re a regular polyglot. I’m guessing you’re an English teacher?’
‘Surprisingly not,’ I said.’ Do I look like one?’
‘Well,’ she took in my worn leather jacket, scuffed Dr Marten boots and frayed jeans, ‘you certainly don’t look like a businessman.’
‘Which means?’
‘Hack?’
‘Bingo!’
‘So, do you work for one of those shitty rags that dig out all the sleazy tales about Poland and sell them to the English tabloids for shock horror stories?’
‘No,’ I said. Although, I did do that sometimes. ‘I’m freelance but mostly I work for EuroBuilder Magazine.’
I gave her a sweaty business card. Tiffany has sorted the job out for me via a friend of a friend.
‘Have you heard of it?’ I said.
‘Yes, of course. My asshole husband has a lot of property in this city, so he buys it and reads all of those fascinating articles about warehouses and shopping malls.
‘It’s all my own work,’ I said. ‘Well, some of it. Well … a bit.’
Jola stared blankly at me.
‘Never mind. So?’ I said, gesturing towards the bar.
‘Oh, why the hell not?’
I ordered another whisky for me and a gin and tonic for Jola.
‘Gin makes you sin,’ I said as I put the drinks on the table.
‘Oh, I don’t need a drink for sinning,’ she said.
Sean had disappeared and we were the only customers in the bar.
I put some money in the ancient jukebox. Thin Lizzy sang about someone with a ‘Bad Reputation.’ Something that always attracted me to a woman, of course.
Jola sipped her drink and seemed to hold on to the table to steady herself.
‘Where is your hometown?’ I said.
‘Well,’ she said. She knocked back her drink in one and her words staggered out like drunks at closing time. Disorderly and unruly.
‘I’m from the industrial wastelands of the east,’ she said, playing with a cigarette lighter with a picture of a matador on it. ‘Bialystok. Have you heard of it?’
‘Amazingly, I have.’
She looked as if she didn’t believe me.
‘It’s true. I had a friend from there. He showed me a photograph of a big Soviet tank in the town centre that was painted a very camp pink.’
‘That’s the place,’ she said. ‘It’s not the most exciting place. A real ‘one-whore-town,’ as they say. So, as soon as I could, I got out of there fast.’
‘And, so you came here to Warsaw?’
She shook her head.
‘No. First, I headed off to Chicago for a couple of years. And then to London. Which is where I met my wonderful husband.’
‘Where in London?’
‘West Ealing? Do you know it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I even worked there for six months back in the eighties, looking for the streets that were paved with gold. I’m still looking, mind you.’
‘Well, there’s a golden shopping mall here in Warsaw, as I’m sure you know, but the streets are as grey and cold as anywhere else.’
Jola took out a Marlborough from a battered pack and lit it.
‘What line of work are you in?’ I said.
‘I manage a bar. Robert, my husband, is the owner. The Emerald Isle. It’s over on Esperanto Street. Do you know it?’ said Jola.
I nodded.
‘Yes, it’s another one of Poland’s authentically Irish pubs,’ I said.
Jola laughed. ‘Well, there are pubs in Ireland selling Polish beer and food, so, why not?’
‘Why not, indeed.’
I shifted in my chair.
’Is it fun?’ I asked.
‘The pub or the marriage?’
‘Both. Either …’
‘They serve their purpose.’
‘Which is?’
She rubbed her fingers and thumb together.
‘I suppose marriage to Robert was what you would call a marriage of convenience,’ said Jola. ‘Though it’s not so convenient, these days.’
‘It’s better to regret something you’ve done than something you haven’t,’ I said.
‘Indeed.’
Leaning close to me, Jola put a hand on my shoulder and looked me up and down, like she was deciding on whether or not to buy a second-hand car.
‘You’ll do,’ she said, and stood up, dragging me out of the bar by my tie and through a metal door marked ‘Private’.
I looked over at Rory, who was lighting a cigar. He took a glance and ignored us. I got the impression that he’d seen this sort of thing many times before.
Jola locked the door behind her and switched on a strip light that flickered and buzzed before it blanched the tiny room, which was stacked with crates of Peter Walker and metal beer barrels. On the wall was a dartboard with a poster of David Beckham hanging over it. Three darts perfectly placed between his eyes. I sat down on one of the crates.
‘Won’t Rory mind?’ I said, as Jola took off her black leather skirt.
‘Not a chance,’ she said. ‘Robert ripped him off in a big business deal a while back. He despises my husband so much he lets me get away with murder.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, everything but that,’ she gasped. ‘So far.’
*
At some point during the night, I woke up in my own bed, soaked in a cold sweat, with no recollection of getting there. Jola, naked, was smoking and gazing out of the bedroom window. The tip of her cigarette glowed bright red and then quickly faded to black. I closed my eyes and let the sea of sleep enfold me.
In the morning, slivers of sun sliced through the blinds and slashed across my eyes, stinging like a knife blade. After a moment, I focused and looked around the room. Jola was gone.
*
The days bled into weeks and then months. I visited the usual watering hole with the same regularity but increasingly less enthusiasm. I guess the novelty had worn off. Sometimes I met up with Olena, and we just talked until the early hours. She told me of her lesbian lover with the violent husband, and how they were saving enough money to get out of Warsaw.
A warm spring dusk was struggling to break free of winter as I left my apartment block in a daze which, for once, wasn’t due to the booze. I’d been drifting through the weeks like a phantom, with thoughts of Jola haunting me. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I knew I had to see her again. I really should have known better but I rarely did.
As I walked along the deserted street, a massive figure suddenly stepped out of the shadows and in front of me. He was a real behemoth, with a shaved head and a black leather jacket. His gigantic fist grasped a knuckle-duster that slammed into me and sent me sprawling backwards until I smashed into a kebab shop window, setting off the burglar alarm.
I sunk to the ground, blood oozing from my burst lip, as the giant shouted and screamed at me. My head was spinning, and my limited Polish was never too good, but I recognised one word that he said before storming off down the street. Olena.
A small group of old women wearing mohair berets surrounded me, speaking too quickly for me to understand. I struggled to my feet and did the best thing I could think of to do. I went to The Emerald Isle.
Nursing a beer and a shot of vodka, I phoned Olena and explained my predicament.
‘Yes, you’re right. It’s Bronek,’ she said. ‘My former client. He’s getting crazier. He started following me. Watching me and my friends. He’s got it into his head that you are going to marry me and take me away to England.’
I drifted out of her conversation and thought that maybe it was better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb. Hanging up, I ordered another shot of vodka. The Emerald Isle was far from emerald. For a start, the walls were painted garishly red. The furniture was pitch black. The atmosphere was grim and grey.
Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’ whispered through the sound system as Robert Nowak, well-dressed and overweight, with what seemed like a constantly constipated expression, drank whisky and played chess with a statuesque Indian girl.
A small group of fashion students sat sharing two beers, occasionally topping the glasses up with the contents of a bottle of supermarket vodka, while keeping a furtive eye on Robert.
I sat by the window, drinking my second glass of beer. I briefly turned my gaze outside, to where the morning rain poured down in sheets and the wet pavement reflected a nearby kebab shop’s flickering neon sign. Police sirens screeched through the roaring wind.
Jola came down a staircase at the side of the bar and briefly paused when she saw me. She helped herself to a drink and headed outside with a pack of cigarettes in her hand. She stood under a grubby umbrella smoking as if it was the last cigarette on earth. I waited a few moments and joined her. Turning my collar up against the rain, I sat in a grubby white plastic chair and sipped my drink.
‘You shouldn’t have come here, you know? Robert is a very jealous man,’ she said, lighting a second cigarette, not looking at me.
‘Does he know about us? About that night?’
‘Of course not. But he has his suspicions. All sorts of suspicions. Especially when he’s snorting cocaine from morning to night.’
‘I…just wanted to see you again. I thought you might want to go out somewhere, sometime.’
She turned slightly and looked at me. Closed her eyes. Smiled.
‘Oh, why the hell not?’ she said.
I grinned like a schoolboy. ‘When?’
‘We can meet tomorrow night if you want. Somewhere out of the way, though?’
I thought for a moment.
‘What about my place?’
‘Cut to the chase, eh?’
I smiled.
‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ I said.
*
The night was like a thunderstorm of drinking, smoking, sex, and conversation. In the early hours, we lay on my bed in the wan light listening to an old mix tape that Jola had brought with her. Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer,’ eased into a Fleetwood Mac song, and Jola turned and looked me in the eye.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘Life with Robert is like a living death these days. I really do want to get away. Escape. I’ve managed to save some money but it’s not enough. Anyway…’
And in the space of that short pause, the thought of running away with Jola was like the lone, beautiful whore in a rundown brothel, teasing and tempting.
I said, ‘Can’t you divorce him?’
‘Ha! He’s a Catholic. He’d never let me divorce him. He’d never let me leave,’ she said, stroking the bruises on her neck. As a mild spring trudged on into a scalding hot summer, our meetings became more frequent and dangerous thoughts hovered over us like a hawk ready to strike its prey.
And before long, thought congealed into action.
*
The plan was simple enough. We were to wait until New Year’s Eve and when Robert was drunk, Jola would drug his drink with some cheap cocaine and take him to bed when he passed out. Then, after clearing the safe at The Emerald Isle, and Robert’s bank account. Jola and I would head off out of Poland, towards Spain or who knows where.
The hope was that during New Year’s Day, people would think that Robert would be sleeping off the previous night’s indulgence, giving us plenty of time to head out of the country. Simple? As simple as Chinese algebra.
*
It started to snow, and fireworks filled the sky as I headed through an alleyway and into The Emerald Isle. The place was stuffed with drunken, overdressed people celebrating the New Year. Robert was drunk already, holding court to a group of no-necked skinheads. Jola was already on her way upstairs to the safe.
The fire exit was propped open with a fire extinguisher, and I eased my way through. Feeling all too confident.
Then a familiar looking behemoth stood in front of me. And this time, he seemed to growl. And the growl turned into a roar.
*
Robert indifferently smoked a large cigar, his bleary eyes glaring at me.
‘So, you are the one Bronek was telling me about, eh? The Englishman that is stealing little Olena from him. Eh?’
Robert and Bronek stood either side of me. Grinning. Putting on knuckle dusters.
‘My brother Bronek can be very protective about our property,’ said Bronek, ‘and he has taken far too much interest in little Olena. But that is his right as my brother. So, it really wouldn’t do for us to let you take her away, would it?’ I couldn't agree or disagree. I couldn’t say a thing and I couldn’t move. I’d taken a beating and I was slumped in the oak and leather armchair like an insect trapped in amber. It was all I could do to try and wipe the glass from my eyes and ignore the burning before the brothers raised their fists and the world turned red.
*
The hospital was migraine bright and stank of antiseptic. Not that it bothered me that much. The morphine was working, and the last few days I’d been feeling stronger. Able to move around. And to check my emails on my iPhone. The usual crap, of course. Gifs. Memes. Jokes.
There was an email from Tiffany putting me in touch with one of her contacts in Madrid, which seemed fruitful. And one from Olena. A photo of her on a beach. With Jola. And a message thanking me for creating a diversion and allowing them to get away. And hoping that I get well soon.
I lay back on the small bed, closed my eyes and let the sea of self-loathing enfold me. And then I slept the sleep of the just. Or just about, anyway.