Alexander Abramov, Sergey Abramov

The Time Scale

Translated by D. Mafias

I was coming back from an evening session of the Security Council with Ordinsky, my colleague from Moscow, whom everyone at the UNO Press centre took to be a Pole like myself – probably because of the surname. Ordinsky, Glinsky – to the American ear they sound much the same. I suggested we go somewhere to kill what remained of the evening, but he was busy and I had to be content with the prospect of a solitary supper. I stopped the taxi at a third-class bar called the Olympia. My hotel was only a few blocks away and, if the worst came to the worst, I could always get home on foot.

They knew me in the bar and Antony, the normally languid waiter, didn’t even ask for my order, just appeared in a flash, with beer and hot sausage. The bar was deserted except for a corner behind the door curtain where two girls I hadn’t seen before were having supper, and at the bar itself a lean old man in a short raincoat was sipping whisky. He gave me a quick glance, questioned Antony about something and then, without so much as a by-your-leave, sat down at my table. I frowned.

‘A spontaneous and frank reaction,’ he laughed. ‘Don’t you like chance acquaintances?’

‘To be honest, not very much.’

‘That’s rather strange for a journalist. Why, any chance acquaintance can prove to be a source of information.’

‘I prefer to get my information from other sources,’ I said.

‘So I gather from Antony. You gossip in the corridors of the UNO and imagine that that’s journalism.’

I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn’t going to pick a quarrel with the first person I met.

‘You’re a Pole of course,’ he said, addressing me in Polish. ‘Unfortunately, I am not in a position to pass any judgement on your writing, I am not familiar with contemporary Polish newspapers. I can remember Golos Poranny, and Kurier Tsodzienny. But I’ve read nothing at all in Polish since forty-four.’

‘In forty-four I was four years old,’ I said.

‘And I was forty. To avoid any misunderstandings, I’ll define my political position.’ He gave a crisp, military bow. ‘Leszczycki, Kazimierz-Andrzej, ex-Major of the Armia Krajowa. They like hyphenated names here, but in Poland then a nickname was enough. What the nickname was didn’t matter, all that mattered was to go on repeating liberty, equality, fraternity, and repeat it we did, before we sent the lot to hell. I did likewise when the English took me to London and there… sold me to the States.’

I didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean, sold?’

‘Well, I’ll put it more gently – let’s say they gave me up, slipped me something in a drink – both me and my boss Dr Holling – loaded us into a submarine and took us across the ocean. And now, I can introduce myself: former colleague of Einstein, former professor at Princeton University and originator of a theory of discrete time, now officially rejected by science. The sad sum total of many, many things.’

‘And what do you do now?’ I asked cautiously.

‘I drink.’

He smoothed his grey hair which stood up like a hedgehog’s prickles over a high forehead and hooked nose: he had something of a Sherlock Holmes twenty years older and something of a Don Quixote relieved of whiskers and beard.

‘Don’t think I’m an inveterate drunkard. It’s just a reaction to ten years’ isolation when I didn’t go anywhere, didn’t read anything, didn’t see anyone, just worked till I dropped on a scientific problem that was one big gamble. That’s all.’

‘Failure?’I said sympathetically.

‘There are some successes more dangerous than failures. And it’s that danger that has dragged me down to the depths of this big city, down to my countrymen.’

‘There aren’t that many of them here,’ I said.

He pulled such a face that even his cheeks twitched.

‘What do you see from the corridors of the UNO or from the windows of your hotel? Get on a bus and go where your eyes lead you, turn down some smelly side street, look, not for a drug store, but for a cafй that sells home-made cakes. Who won’t you meet there – from former Anders men to yesterday’s bandits.’

He grimaced again. The conversation had taken a turn that was of no great interest to me, but Leszczycki didn’t notice – he was affected either by alcohol or simply by the need to talk to someone.

‘They’re capable of many things,’ he went on, ‘of crying over the past, and cursing the present, of gambling all night, and they shoot no worse than the Italians of Cosa Nostra. There’s just one thing they don’t know how to do and that’s how to accumulate capital or return to their homes on the Wisla. They don’t get worked up about Gomulka’s meeting with Kadar, but they’ll spend all night talking about my namesake Leszczycki, or kill you if you know where those letters are hidden.’

‘What letters?’ I asked growing interested.

‘I don’t know. Leszczycki was an agent for some kind of underworld bosses. They say his letters could send some home to Poland and others to the electric chair. It seems there isn’t a single Pole in the city who doesn’t dream of finding those letters.’

‘There is one,’ I laughed,

‘What’s your name?’ he asked me suddenly.

‘Walaw.’

‘Waek then – as one old enough to be your father I may use the diminutive. The fact is, Waek, you’re just a pup, a kitten. You haven’t even lived, you’ve just grown up. You weren’t lost in the Warsaw catacombs, nor did you serve out your time in the forests and swamps after the war. You were suckling milk then, and tramping to school. Then you went to university, and then someone taught you to write notes for a paper and someone else arranged you a trip to America.’

‘That’s not so little,’ I remarked.

‘Trivially little. Even in this awful city you expect to live in a cocoon. You think nothing will happen to you if you always get home by midnight. And then “bye bye”. Give me your arm.’

He bent my arm and felt my muscles. ‘There’s something there,’ he said. ‘You’ve played some sport?’

‘A little boxing. Then I threw it in.’

‘Why?’

‘No future in it,’ I said indifferently. ‘You can’t be a champion and you won’t need it for living.’

‘How do you know? And if suddenly you did need it?’

‘Don’t you worry about my future,’ I broke in, and immediately regretted my sharpness. But he didn’t seem at all offended.

‘And why shouldn’t I bother about it?’ he asked.

‘If for no other reason than because not just any future will suit me.’

‘You can choose it yourself. I’ll just do the prompting.’

It was very rude of me but I couldn’t restrain myself, I burst out laughing. Again, he didn’t seem offended.

‘You wonder how I’ll do the prompting? Like this…’ He threw out on to his palm something that looked like a cigarette case and gave off a strange, lilac, metallic gleam. There were some sort of flat buttons on the back.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I’ve just put one out.’

‘It’s not a cigarette case,’ he corrected me pedantically, at the same time concealing the object in his pocket again as if he feared I might want a closer look. ‘If it’s to be compared with anything, then it’s with a watch.’

‘But I don’t think I saw a clock-face on it,’ I said caustically.

‘It doesn’t measure time, it creates it.’

His strange air of triumph didn’t convince me, it was all too clear – the lonely genius, inventor of perpetuum mobile, the mad scientist from the novels of Taine. I had met his kind back in the Warsaw newspaper office. But Leszczycki didn’t even notice my involuntary, sceptical smile. Looking somewhere through me, he seemed to be thinking aloud: ‘What do we know about time? Some regard it as a fourth dimension, others as a material substance. It’s strange. Einstein’s paradox and the ringing of an alarm clock in the morning are incompatible. And they will continue to be incompatible for a long time yet, until time lets us into its secrets. Is it arbitrary or determined, continuous or irregular, finite or infinite? Does it have a beginning, or is our past as limitless as our future? And is there a time quantum as there is a light quantum? It’s on this point that I diverged from the great Einstein. It was at this point that even Gordon, the boldest of the bold, baulked: “It’s too insane, Leszczycki, too insane to be true”.’

‘And don’t you think, Mr Leszczycki…’I tried to stem this, to me, largely incomprehensible monologue, but Leszczycki interrupted me at once, starting like someone unexpectedly and rudely awakened. ‘Forgive me, Waek, I had forgotten you. Did you ever study mathematics?’

I mumbled something about logarithms.

‘That’s what I thought. Never mind. I’ll try to explain within those limits. We represent the physical essence of space time in an oversimplified form. It is more complex than it seems. If the chain of events in time, not just in the world but in the life of each individual, were represented by some kind of conventional line in four-dimensional space, then at each point along this line events and time would branch off, changing and varying along an infinite variety of paths, and at each point along these branches they would branch off again in different ways, and so on without end. It’s like a tree. Who can tell in which leaf the drop of sap that rises from the ground will emerge?’

‘You mean the victim can escape the murderer, the general can avoid the battle, if they turn along a different branch of time soon enough? You must be joking, Mr Leszczycki.’

But Leszczycki wasn’t joking. ‘Indisputably,’ he insisted. ‘You only have to find the turning point.’

‘And who can do that?’

‘I can, a little. Are you interested in why me?’

‘No. Why a little?’

‘The reconstruction of time even on the scale of a year is a complex process. A great deal of power is needed – thousands of millions of kilowatts – while I had to work like an alchemist, like the lonely scientist-psychopath who has probably crossed your mind. So for the time being I have only made a selector. The term is, of course, approximate, but the device has a selective bias: it selects the sector or turning point where the different system of reading begins. It has a capacity of not more than an hour, sometimes even less, depending on the intensity of your time, and it is according to this intensity that the selector is adjusted: it can choose from all the variations of your nearest future the most intense half-hour, or even hour.’

‘And then?’

‘You return to the starting point. The device isn’t adequate to deal with greater power. Of course, with the means and power which, let’s say, nuclear physics has at its disposal, I could reconstruct time on the scale of one century. And who’s to give me such means, you may ask? Presumably the Pentagon would. Hitler would have given half Europe for this possibility in forty-three. And when the Rockefellers understood its implications, I would be God. But at this point I say frankly, no, and shut up shop. Humanity is not yet adult enough for such a present.’

‘There are still the socialist states,’ I said.

‘Why would they want to reconstruct the future? They’re building it themselves on the rational premises of reality.’

‘Well, there’s the interests of science,’ I said, trying to placate him somehow.

‘They are in no way compatible with the interests of commerce. Imagine the advertisements: “Parallel time! All varieties of future. Return guaranteed”. No! Fashion it yourselves. It wasn’t for that that I spent ten years in the scientific underground.’

A drunk looked in from the street and started up on his harmonica – not a song, not even a tune, just a scale. He played it over and over till Antony shouted at him that this was a bar, not Carnegie Hall, and with that the scale was silenced.

‘The great Stokowsky once compared a scale to a staircase climbed by a chameleon-sound. If you like, it can modulate your next half-hour up the scale. All right?’

‘Is it worth it?’ I said, pulling a face. ‘What could possibly happen in the next half-hour?’

He didn’t answer. We went on in silence, I with the secret intention of shaking him off, he with inexplicable surliness, compressing his almost bloodless lips. Mystificator or madman? The latter, most likely.

Some ten minutes later we were caught in a downpour of such biblical ferocity that we barely managed to get to the shelter of an awning over a stone staircase which led to a semibasement greengrocery.

I glanced at my watch – it was five to ten. And from habit I immediately put it to my ear. It was still going. ‘It’s still raining,’ muttered Leszczycki, ‘and there’re no taxis.’

‘Something’s come,’ I said, peering into the fog of rain.

Two bundles of light appeared from around the corner, cutting through the fog r the headlights of a bright yellow car.

‘Hey!’ I shouted, stepping out from under the awning. ‘Over here!’

‘That’s not a taxi,’ said Leszczycki. But the car braked and slowly crawled down along the footpath. It didn’t stop, the side window just dropped slightly and in the crack the black crowlike muzzle of a gun flashed in the light.

‘Lie down,’ Leszczycki shouted and pulled me down. But it was too late – the two bursts of the automatic were quicker. Something hit me forcefully in the chest and the shoulder, throwing me on to the pavement. Leszczycki had doubled up in an odd way and was slowly folding into a sitting position as if his inflexible joints were offering resistance.

The last thing I saw was the red patch on his face where his mouth had been.

Alongside, someone’s metal-shod heels clanged on the paving stones. ‘One’s still alive,’ someone said.

‘He’ll croak all the same, but it’s not them.’

‘I can see that.’

The metal-shod boot hit me in the head. I didn’t feel the pain. Something in my brain had snapped.

Then I heard someone’s voice: ‘Elzbeta’s tricks again…’

‘I’d like to start with her.’

‘Go and tell that to Copecki.’

I didn’t hear any more. Everything switched off – the voices and the light.

I opened my eyes and looked at my watch. Five to ten. We stood as before on the staircase under the awning.

‘Let’s cross to the corner,’ I suggested, ‘there’s an awning over there too.’

‘Why?’

‘We’ll get a taxi quicker. There’s a turning over there.’

‘You go. I’ll stay here,’ Leszczycki said.

I ran to the opposite corner of the street. My hair and raincoat were immediately drenched. Added to that, the awning on this side was shorter and the dry strip of asphalt under it narrower: the slanting streams of rain beat at my legs. I pressed my back against the dry doorway and suddenly felt it give. I pressed harder and found myself behind the door in complete darkness. My outstretched hand collided with something warm and soft and I cried out.

‘Quietly, and be more careful, you nearly went through my cheek,’ someone whispered and an invisible hand propelled me forward. ‘The door’s in front of you. You’ll see a corridor and a room at the end of it. As you go in…’

‘Why should I?’I interrupted.

‘Don’t be afraid. He’s blind, though he shoots straight. Be polite. Chat to him a bit and wait for me. I’ll be back soon.’ A coquettish smile, and the door to the street reopened and slammed shut again, immediately. I pulled it. It didn’t give and I couldn’t find the lock. I had a pocket torch with me that I used in the dark corridors of the hotel. The torch lit up a dark platform and two doors, one on to the street, and the other to the inside of the building. The one to the street had evidently been locked, the other opened gently and I saw the corridor and a light at the end of it falling from an open room.

Trying not to make a sound I approached the room and stopped in the doorway. A man in a black velvet jacket with long hair was carefully cutting a rectangular depression into the pages of an open book. But for the touch of grey in his hair and the wrinkles around his eyes, he could have been taken for a youth. He was sitting in front of a powerful electric light – it must have been some 500 or 1,000 watts in strength. No man with normal vision could have borne to sit so close to it, but this man was blind.

‘I’ve found an ideal hiding place,’ he said in Polish. ‘All the letters fit, you’ll see.’

He took a bundle of letters in Iongish envelopes and laid them in the artificial depression in the book. Then he brushed glue on the uncut pages alongside the depression and pressed them down to conceal the letters.

‘Now we shake it,’ he shook the book, holding it by its bound covers. ‘You see, nothing falls out. Even Poirot wouldn’t find them.’

I was silent and motionless, not knowing what to do.

‘Why are you silent, Elzbeta?’ he said, growing cautious, and then cried out, in English this time: ‘Who’s there? Stay where you are!’

He threw down the book and grabbed a pistol from the table. The barrel had been lengthened by a silencer. Since he held it so accurately aimed in my direction, it was obvious that his blindness in no way impeded his handling of the weapon.

‘The least movement and I’ll shoot. Who are you?’ he asked. He was standing half turned towards me, not looking, but listening, like all blind people. Without replying I quietly took a step backwards. At once there was a click – it was a click, not a shot. The bullet cut into the plaster near my ear.

‘You’re mad,’ I said in Polish. ‘What’s that for?’

‘You’re a Pole. I thought so.’ He wasn’t in the least surprised, and did not lower the pistol. ‘Come to the table and sit opposite me. And don’t try to get the gun, I’ll hear. Come on.’

Cursing myself for this idiotic adventure, I went to the table and sat down, stretching out my legs easily in front of me. The barrel of the pistol followed in my orbit. Now it stared me in the chest. I could have grabbed it were I not convinced that it would fire first.

‘You’re from Copecki?’ the blind man asked.

‘I don’t know anyone of that name,’ I said.

‘Where are you from then?’

‘From Poland.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Since December last year.’

‘Don’t lie.’

‘I could show you my passport, but you…’ I stopped in confusion.

‘You mean you’re a communist?’ he broke in.

‘That’s right,’ I said angrily. That question was beginning to get on my nerves by now.

‘Why are you here?’

I told him.

‘For some reason, I believe you,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but… you saw the hiding place.’

I glanced at the book with its bas-relief of Mickiewicz.

‘And the letters,’ he added threateningly.

‘To hell with your letters.’

‘Then we’ll wait for them to come for them. They’ll come without fail. They must.’

‘Who are “they”?’ I asked.

‘Sh!’ he whispered and listened, stretching out his head in an odd way, not like a man at all, but like the Ear in Grimm’s fairy tale. I couldn’t hear anything. Silence mingled with the sound of rain outside the window surrounded me.

‘Has someone come in?’ I asked.

‘Not a sound,’ he whispered. They haven’t come in yet. Now they’re opening the door with a skeleton key. They’ve crossed the platform, they’re coming.’ He said this almost soundlessly, just moving his lips. I only heard the faint tap of metal-shod heels in the corridor.

‘You stay here. I’ll go behind the curtain. Don’t under any circumstances tell them where I am. And don’t be afraid. They won’t start shooting, they need the letters. Say that they’re in the drawer next to the divan. All right?’

I nodded. Moving as lightly and freely as a ghost, he disappeared behind the curtain which partitioned the room in its farther corner. I remained seated in the same position expecting the worst.

Two men in wet raincoats came into the room carrying automatics. One of them wore a crushed fedora pulled down low over his eyes. The other was dark and unshaven, his wet forelock twisted into ringlets. He shook himself like a dog as it leaves the water.

‘Where’s Ziga?’ they asked together and in Polish. I understood now why the blind man had not been surprised that I was Polish.

‘I’m waiting for him’ – I said the first thing that came into my head.

The unshaven one looked around the room and suddenly fired a burst from his automatic into the folds of the curtain. I expected to hear cries, groans, but nothing happened. Then they both turned to me.

‘This is the end,’ I thought and scarcely managed to get out: ‘You’ve come for the letters? They’re in the drawer.’

‘Where?’

I pointed to the chest-of-drawers near the pillow of the divan. ‘Go and open it,’ ordered the unshaven one.

I went, and with trembling hands that I could no longer control I opened the drawer. Gleaming white at the bottom of the drawer was a bundle of Iongish envelopes. The unshaven one pushed me away with his automatic and looked inside.

‘They’re here,’ he said and grinned. He didn’t have the chance to say any more. That familiar click sounded several times from behind the curtain and both the man in the fedora and his unshaven friend crashed to the floor almost simultaneously. I don’t remember any more which hit the floor first, the backs of their heads or the automatics that slipped from their hands.

‘That’s that,’ the blind man laughed, emerging from behind the curtain.

He touched first one and then the other with his foot and then drew back, like a bather testing the temperature of the water.

‘You’ve done well and earned a reward, Mr Stranger,’ he said, holding out to me what looked like a large coin. ‘Take this. This medal may come in useful to you. “He lived for the fatherland and died for honour”,’ he laughed and then suddenly reverted to a whisper, again listening for something. ‘They’re coming for me already. Don’t come with me, I move about here in the dark like a cat. Go out a minute or two after me. I’ll leave the door open. And don’t delay. An encounter with the police in such circumstances is far from pleasant.’

He took the book which had the letters glued into it from the table and, without putting on a coat, went out of the room. His step never hesitated. Nothing creaked in the corridor, neither the floorboards nor the door. He moved completely soundlessly.

I waited for two minutes, examining the medal I had received: a dull circle of bronze; on one side a bas-relief of a head in a laurel wreath, like the head of a Roman emperor. On the other, a girl in a tunic embraced an urn on an ornate pedestal. Around the imperial head wound an inscription in Latin lettering: Josef Xiaze Poniatowski. Around the girl in the tunic in lettering of the same style wound the words I had already heard that evening: Zyl Dla Oyczyzny. Umarl Dla Slawy. Poniatowski? What did I know of him? Napoleonic marshal and relative of the last king of Poland, outstanding military commander, and a political failure whom Napoleon denied the cherished Polish crown. Bonaparte tricked him, Poland was not restored and even in the hurriedly-created Duchy of Warsaw, Poniatowski was only given the Ministry of War. He died splendidly in one of the Napoleonic campaigns, forgotten by the Emperor whose throne was already beginning to totter. It was not Bonaparte, but his own Polish countrymen who had then this medal struck, inscribing it with the words: ‘He lived for his fatherland, he died for honour’. This medal must have had a great appeal for certain contemporary Polish emigrants, but not for me. It was inaccurate, misdirected. For what honour? Whose? The unworthy, too, have died for honour, even Herostratus. I smiled inwardly at the sentiment with which the medal had been given to me. When and how could it possibly prove useful to me?

I thrust it into my pocket and, without a backward glance at the corpses, left the room. The door to the street was ajar, creaking on its hinges. I was met by an empty street, the spatter of rain on the asphalt, the yellow light of the streetlamps glowing in a diamond network of raindrops. Once again I raced across the street to the awning where Leszczycki was standing. He was there now, staring into the streams of rain dancing in a patch of light. And once again I seemed to see the streams of rain double up like a man seeing double when overcome by vertigo.

****

I looked at my watch; five to ten. How extraordinary! Why, I had spent a good half-hour at Ziga’s. I put the watch to my ear. It was still going.

‘It’s still raining,’ said Leszczycki, not looking at me, ‘and there’re no taxis.’

‘Here’s one. Let’s go,’ I said, and stepped out to meet the taxi as it emerged out of the darkness.

‘Not me,’ said Leszczycki, refusing. ‘I don’t like yellow cars.’

I didn’t try to persuade him. I got in next to the driver and gave him the address. It’s a free World, let him stay if he wants to get drenched. Then I regretted that I hadn’t taken his address – he was an entertaining man after all. But I soon forgot about him. It was bright and hot in the car, the speed we drove at lulled me and my thoughts began to get confused. I tried to remember what had happened to me before my meeting with Ziga and couldn’t. Someone had fired shots, there had been some shooting somewhere. Perhaps Leszczycki had been telling me about it and I’d forgotten. It seemed to me that he really had been telling me about something. What had it been? Something had happened to my memory, there was some sort of gap, a fog in my mind. I could only remember the last quarter of an hour. Two men had been killed by Ziga from behind the curtain. It happened before my eyes. And I had, with complete unconcern, stepped over their bodies and gone out. The one strange thing was that time was subtracting its flight from the moment we had stopped under the awning, from five to ten. I glanced at my watch. It was now ten o’clock. Was it possible that only five minutes had passed?

I turned to the driver: ‘What’s the time by yours?’

In my absent-mindedness, I asked him in Polish, but instead of the natural ‘What? What did you say?’ I heard the familiar Polish expression: ‘Dog’s blood! A countryman!’ The tired, sweaty face broke into a good-natured smile which disclosed pink gums and broken teeth. For all this he wasn’t at all old, this lantern-jawed tough in the windcheater – thirty-seven to forty, no more.

We were already nearing my hotel when he suddenly braked and rolled gently towards the footpath. ‘Let’s have a bit of a chat, I haven’t met a countryman for a long time. You must have been a kid when you skipped Poland?’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I came legally. This winter.’

He froze at once, the smile died on his face and his reply was fairly vague. ‘It does happen of course.’

‘And you, why aren’t you back home?’ I asked in my turn.

‘Who needs me over there?’

‘Drivers are always heeded everywhere.’

He waved his great hands, as wide as shovels and beamed again.

‘I was a driver in the army, too,’ he said.

‘In what army?’

‘What army? What army?’ he repeated it like a challenge.

‘In ours. From Russia to Teheran, from here to there, pushed about from pillar to post, at Monte Cassino I crawled twenty-four hours on the seat of my pants…’ He started singing tunelessly: ‘Red poppies on Monte Cassino’. ‘And now I’m back behind a steering wheel again, slogging myself to death.’

‘So take out an application, go back,’ I said.

He spat out of the window without answering. I noticed that he hadn’t asked me anything about Poland today.

‘Who needs me over there?’ he repeated. ‘Here I’ll pick up something or other and I’ll be worth a different price. A bit here and a bit there. All you have to do is find it, there’s some of our lot hiding something.’

‘Something like letters?’ I asked unthinkingly.

He went completely tense, like a cat before it springs.

‘What do you know about the letters?’

‘One lot’s hiding them and the other lot’s looking for them. It’s funny,’ I said, and added, ‘We’ve had our chat, that’s enough. Let’s get to the corner.’

‘Got a cigarette?’ he asked hoarsely.

We lit up. ‘You can’t just say goodbye to a countryman like that,’ he said reproachfully. ‘I know a place not far away. Let’s go.’

I remembered Leszczycki smiling at my cautiousness and nodded rashly. Massive dark buildings unlit by advertisements rushed to meet us; the outskirts of even a city like this one are quite dark. I shut my eyes, not even attempting to recognize streets. What did it matter where this place was? The car finally stopped outside a bar with an unlit sign. Why was it unlit?

‘I don’t know – a blown fuse or something of the sort,’ my guide waved off my question indifferently. ‘There’s enough light inside,’ he added. And sure enough there was enough light inside.

Through the misty, unwashed window a high bar with its bottles and enamel and nickel-plated top was clearly visible. On the glass in the corner was a hand-painted black sign. Marian Zuber, coffee, tea, home-made cakes.

The bar was closed. My driver knocked for a long time at the glass door and for a long time someone looked at him from inside. Then the lock turned and the door opened.

In the tiny area in front of the bar there were a few empty tables where probably no one had sat since the week before. Their black plastic tops had turned grey with dust. The only occupant of the bar was standing with almost his whole body leaning across the bar, drinking a glass of some kind of misty liquid and chatting to the waitress. At first I didn’t pay any attention to her – she was a typical cafeteria waitress, with a stylish hairdo and painted eyes. Here they must mass produce them in some factory. But a moment later her eyes drew my attention; they were unusual eyes, intelligent and humorous, now glittering, now cloudy, and even their colour seemed to change at their owner’s will. Her companion occasionally twisted his mouth in a way that made the scar on his left cheek twitch. I was already beginning to regret that I had come.

‘It’s late, Janek,’ the girl behind the bar said reprovingly. ‘We’ve closed already.’

But my guide authoritatively motioned with his head towards a dusty table, whispered something to the beautiful waitress, brought me a whisky and soda, and taking the man with the scar by the arm went with him behind the bar where the entry to a lighted cellar was visible.

‘You’re a Pole too?’ the girl asked me indifferently.

I laughed. ‘Now ask me if I’m long out of Poland.’

‘It’s all the same to me,’ she said and turned away. Janek and his scarfaced companion had by then sat down at my table.

‘Janek says you know something about the letters,’ said crooked mouth, ‘so spill it.’

‘I’ll spill it,’ I said mockingly, ‘only to Trybuna ludu.’

‘That’s some threat! In ‘45 we made mincemeat of your sort.’

‘Do you want me to call the police?’

‘Dry up. This isn’t Times Square. You can squeal like a pig if you like, no one will hear.’

I turned to Janek. ‘You’re scum, not a countryman.’

Scarface winked and Janek’s ham-like fists closed over my hands and pressed them to the table. I struggled ineffectually – the fists didn’t move.

‘We weren’t in the Gestapo, but we know a thing or two,’ said Scarface, puffing on a cigarette; ‘So you’re not going to spill it, eh?’ And he pressed the burning cigarette into my hand just above the wrist. I cried out with the pain.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ the waitress intervened. ‘He doesn’t know anything.’

Scarface grinned and his mouth twisted even more. It crossed my mind that if you were to slap a hat down over his forehead, he’d be in every detail the double of the man with the automatic who’d been killed by Ziga.

‘Button your lip, Elzbeta, before I smash it for you,’ he snapped. ‘Hold him there, Janek, while I bring something up from downstairs. It’ll loosen his tongue in a second.’

He went downstairs into the cellar and his metal-shod boots gave a familiar clang on the steps. But, the name! It made me jump in my seat. Could that be a coincidence, too?

‘Elzbeta!’ I cried. ‘You must know that I don’t have any letters, it was me at Ziga’s. And he gave me a medal: “He lived for the fatherland and died for honour”!’

Janek’s hold slackened immediately. Elzbeta – could I be mistaken after all – came slowly round from behind the bar. ‘Let him go, Janek.’

Janek let go of my hands without protest. ‘The gentleman knows how to drive?’ I nodded affirmatively, not understanding why she was asking me.

‘Give me the keys of the car, Janek.’ Just as obediently he held out the keys to her. ‘Delay Woyekh in the cellar and don’t come out till I call.’ Elzbeta spoke with inexplicable authority, accepting as her due the military obedience of Janek. She didn’t look at me, just went out into the street, opened the door of the car with one key, thrust the other into the ignition and motioned me silently into the driving seat. ‘Keep your foot to the floorboards till you get to the bridge,’ she warned. ‘They’ll try to catch you up but you’ve got ten minutes’ start. Get across the bridge before them, turn off somewhere and abandon the car. Get back on foot or by bus. Woyekh has a yellow Plymouth like this one, but the motor’s trashy and I don’t know if he’s got enough petrol. And don’t thank me – you haven’t time.’

I nodded silently, turned on the ignition, moved into first gear and moved off as gently as possible. I was very much afraid that I would have forgotten how to drive, I hadn’t had any practice for a long time, but the Plymouth moved easily and obediently. I regained my courage completely and, putting my foot right down on the accelerator, I caught up with an ambulance roaring ahead of me, and tailed it. When I saw the yellow Plymouth behind me I decided to overtake the ambulance. Then at least they wouldn’t dare shoot.

Why had Janek led me to that bar? What had they wanted? How was it that Woyekh bore such a resemblance to the dead gunman? Why had Elzbeta, at first so totally indifferent to me, come to my aid so determinedly? What had roused her, the mention of Ziga, the medal, the motto? I couldn’t find any rational answer to these questions.

There wasn’t time in any case. The yellow Plymouth flashed behind me after all, or perhaps I had only imagined it. We were already approaching the bridge and, overtaking the ambulance, I flew on to this almost luminous structure, flickering with lights. Police on point duty in hooded raincoats flashed past. The rain saved me. Without it I could hardly have crossed here at such a speed. I turned down the first side street I saw. At the next less brightly lit corner I turned again, and repeated this manoeuvre again and again, avoiding the wide busy street, and then braked. The crossroads seemed familiar. I opened the door of the car and ran to the awning under the lamp where an hour before I had stood with Leszczycki. I pressed up against the wall where it was drier and jumped – Leszczycki was standing next to me as before, watching the raindrops separating in the light. It was as if he had just risen up out of the night, the rain and the fading light of the streetlamp. And some confused, involuntary movement of thought made me glance at my watch. Just as I thought: five to ten. Something absurd was happening to me, events and people were coming and going and time itself seemed to be doubling up like the rain in the light. In one orbit I was whirled in a turmoil of riddles and surprises, drawn into events, strokes of luck and frightening experiences, and in the other I stood prosaically under the awning waiting for a taxi.

The flight of time always began with Leszczycki’s doleful phrase: ‘It’s still raining and there’re no taxis’.

Now he was beginning it again and I couldn’t stop him: I was no longer in control of myself, time controlled me as it did my watch, persistently returning it and me to one and the same moment. Only this time I didn’t see the taxi. What if I were to go on foot? ‘You’re not made of sugar, you won’t melt,’ they used to tell me when I was a child. And I set off determinedly in the pouring rain, without even saying goodbye to Leszczycki. Time was in control of me and it would have been unnecessary.

I walked for half a block and stopped: two figures in raincoats with bulging pockets were coming towards me. ‘It’s beginning,’ I sighed, and was reminded of comic strips with their changeless repetition of stock characters. One of them wore a fedora pulled down over his eyes, and I recognized at once the twisted mouth and the scar on his cheek; the other stood farther off in the darkness which was full of the sound of rain.

‘Got a light?’ Woyekh asked, either not recognizing me, or pretending not to do so. I could play that game, too. I took a lighter from my pocket and a crumpled packet of cigarettes.

While he lit his cigarette, he flicked the lighter, each time lighting up my face, and a voice out of the darkness asked:

‘You don’t happen to be a Pole?’

‘I do as it happens, so what?’ I said in reply.

‘You don’t by any chance know a place near here where compatriots can get together?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said delaying things – I still didn’t Understand their game. ‘There’s Marian Zuber’s – coffee, tea and home-made cakes.’

I heard a restrained laugh, and Woyekh slapped me on the back.

‘You’re late, Mister Contact Man. We’ve been waiting for you a long time,’ and he drew me towards something that had up till then been hidden by the rainy darkness and now turned out to be the yellow Plymouth.

Getting behind the wheel, Woyekh’s companion smiled at me, showing a row of broken teeth – Janek! He, too, didn’t recognize me. I decided to pursue the battering-ram technique. ‘Haven’t we met before, fellows? Your dials are familiar.’

‘A marked man is a bloodhound’s joy.’

Woyekh agreed. ‘Maybe we have met, who remembers?’ and he added, ‘What does Copecki want?’

‘As if you didn’t know,’ I grinned as carelessly as I could. ‘The letters, of course.’

‘We want them, too,’ laughed Woyekh. Turning round, he even winked at me. Could he really not have recognized me? ‘You mean Dziewocki has the letters?’ he continued. ‘I thought so. So we grab Dziewocki and present him to Copecki. Right?’

‘Right,’ I agreed, not very confidently.

‘You ready to go shares?’ Woyekh asked suddenly. I hesitated.

‘He has to think it over! You know how much the letters will fetch? A million? So why drag Dziewocki anywhere? We’ll get those letters out of him somehow by ourselves. And the million’s ours. Say the word and it’s a deal.’

‘It’s a lot of money,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Crap!’ he drawled scornfully. ‘You’ve got all the fathers of emigration there in one dust heap. The late Leszczycki knew things about them that puts angel’s wings on us by comparison. And it’s curtains for Copecki and the Krihlaks and the rest.’

Janek finally stopped the car. On the cafй window was the familiar sign: ‘coffee, tea, home-made cakes’. But instead of Marian Zuber was written Adam Dziewocki. The bar wasn’t locked, but it had closed down. The chairs and tables were piled up on one another. A young Italian with black sideburns was sweeping up the wet sawdust from the floor.

‘Where’s Adam?’ growled Woyekh, and he spat his chewing gum into the barman’s face. ‘You’re crazy!’ shouted the other, wiping his face. ‘Don’t beat about the bush, where’s Dziewocki?’

‘You mean the last owner?’ the Italian said, guessing.

‘Why the “last”?’

‘The bar’s been sold.’

‘Who to?’

‘To me.’

We exchanged glances. It was clear our birds had flown. From the door came the words: ‘Hands up!’

Policemen with automatics stood in the open doorway. Janek and I raised our hands, but Woyekh suddenly sprang forward and shoved me forward towards the door and the police. An even stronger impact sent me into darkness.

****

I came to standing in the doorway under the awning. The rain was whispering as before and the outline of everything around me was lost in a dense watery net. My head hurt and it was with difficulty that I heard the last of Leszczycki’s words as he stood beside me: ‘… and there’re no taxis’.

And, in fact, there were no taxis. I couldn’t remember how long we’d been waiting for one. In fact, I remembered nothing at all. An enormous lump like a tumour had appeared on my temple under my hair, as if something had fallen on my head. When? Where? I strained to remember, and couldn’t. Familiar things would suddenly swim into my brain, appearing and then misting and bursting like bubbles of marsh gas: faces, names, cars, an ambulance, a yellow Plymouth… I looked around and saw it on the opposite corner under a lamp like the one under which we stood.

‘Do you see that?’ I asked Leszczycki. ‘Maybe they’ll drive us.’

‘Can you see the driver of that car?’

The latter had just got out of the car carrying some sort of stick or a pipe and passed under the awning over the basement.

‘What’s he want a stick for?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Is he lame or something?’

‘That’s an automatic, not a stick. Speak quietly,’ Leszczycki warned.

Suddenly I remembered that basement and the blind Ziga and the dead gunmen. But a live one was standing near the basement waiting for the door to open. And it did open; three men in wet raincoats carried out something that looked like a rolled-up carpet. The driver with the automatic opened the car door, I was going to rush towards him.

‘Where are you going?’ hissed Leszczycki, grabbing me by the sleeve.

‘I’ve got to help…’

‘Who? Are you sure it’s not a body? And what are you going to fight automatics with, Mr Man from La Mancha – bare hands and a biro?’

At that moment the wind brought their voices to us. ‘It’s a book – it was in his hands.’

‘Shake it. Maybe something will drop out.’

‘I have. There’s nothing in it.’

‘Then throw it away. He won’t be doing any more reading.’

Someone tossed away the book and it flashed in the light as it fell behind the car. When they had gone I picked it up. It was only wet on the outside, the thick bound covers with the bas-relief of Mickiewicz had protected it from the rain. A section of its pages was stuck together in a thick wedge and I knew what was hidden there. I swear I was most concerned for Mickiewicz. It would have been interesting to know how many verses were sacrificed to the wastepaper basket with the pages that had been cut out of it.

In the downpour, I couldn’t examine the book. I put Mickiewicz into the pocket of my jacket since my raincoat was already soaked through.

‘I’m drenched,’ I said as I returned to Leszczycki. ‘What do you think happened there?’

He didn’t reply. Suddenly something shifted its position – the light perhaps, or the rain, or the clouds, filled to overflowing with warm water. Or perhaps it was time?

****

My raincoat was dry as if the rain had only just started and we had managed to get under the awning in time. Five to ten – my watch was only too ready to tell me. The heaviness that was stifling my brain suddenly cleared away. I remembered everything.

What kind of scale had Leszczycki promised me? An hour or half an hour, lived in a different way on each step of the staircase. I counted the changes: six, this was the seventh. That meant that there was one to go. To discuss with Leszczycki the odyssey he had created was meaningless now. This wasn’t Leszczycki standing here. This was a character in the film he was producing, a man from another time. Now he would begin his take…

‘… and there’re no taxis.’

‘But you just saw it.’

‘Where?’

‘On the corner opposite. A yellow Plymouth.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘And you saw its driver, with the automatic, and everything that happened afterwards.’

‘Warsaw jokes – play those tricks on your typist.’

‘You mean you didn’t see anything?’

‘I’m not drunk.’

And it was true. How could this Leszczycki know what the other Leszczycki had seen in another time? Now I was going to leave him to go round another bewitched orbit. A prophecy in a children’s fairy story came to my mind: ‘Take the road to the right and you will find ill-luck; take the road to the left, misfortune will dog you’. In other words, there was nothing to choose between – so onward, worthy hero, go where your eyes lead you.

And I went. My raincoat was soaked again, the water dripped down my hair, down the back of my neck and gave me goosepimples, although it wasn’t really cold – it had warmed up in the heated atmosphere that rose from the city during the day. My eyes didn’t take in the people that came towards me or that I overtook on my way – they were just rain-washed shadows squelching past me. Strange though it was, the abundance of rainwater around me made me want to drink, but the unlit windows visible through the network of raindrops offered no promise of anything to quench the thirst. I don’t remember how many minutes or yards I had walked in the rain when the lighted window of the first cafй or bar rose up in front of me. But I didn’t go in at once, I was halted by the words written on a corner of the window. I read them like Balthazaar at the feast reading the prophecy warning of his death: mene, tekel, fares.

Coffee, tea, home-made cakes.

I could, of course, have gone on, no one was forcing me to enter. But something seemed to shift, not something outside me any more, not the rain, not the clouds in the sky, not the smoky silhouette of the town with its patches of light, no, but inside myself, in some nerve cell of the brain. Somewhere in those invisible cells, the chemical substances they contained had at some time registered in an extremely complex code, such character traits as cautiousness, dislike of risk, desire to evade danger and the unknown – and now suddenly, the code changed its form, the chemistry rearranged itself, the register took on a new pattern.

Nevertheless I looked around before going in and on the corner I saw the Plymouth which by now I knew down to the smallest detail. There was no driver and the key swung carelessly in the ignition. Who was here? Janek or Woyekh? I simply laughed at the thought of the coming encounter and pushed open the door.

The bar was either closing or had already closed and I was met with silence and the clicking of an abacus – the barman had pulled out the till drawer and was totting up the takings in the manner of his grandfathers. It was remarkable that all the Polish cafйs I came across on my odyssey greeted me bristling with tables and chairs piled up on one another.

But the barman greeted me like a barman. ‘Highball?’ he asked.

I explained that in place of the man-size drink he offered me I would be only too pleased to take coffee or tea and some home-made cakes.

‘There’s nothing like that,’ he said. ‘I can only give you a highball with whatever measure of whisky you like.’

In reply I said that I would pay for a quarter of a glass of whisky which he could drink himself and I would have just a lemonade. When I had drunk the full glass I collected up the change in my pocket and threw it down on the plastic bar top. The bronze medal with the tsar-like profile rang out with the change. The medal’s appearance in my pocket was less of a surprise than the way the barman looked at it. I recognized him instantly – the curling ringlets, the grey shadow on his cheeks. He was one of the nocturnal visitors shot by Ziga. And, again, I was surprised less at his having resurrected himself than at the mixture of bewilderment and fear that was expressed on his pale face. I hastily gathered up the medal and put it away.

‘He lived for the fatherland,’ I said slyly.

‘He died for honour,’ returned the other like an echo, and he added with military readiness; ‘What are your orders, sir?’

‘Is that Janek’s car?’ I asked, glancing round at the door.

‘It’s Woyekh’s,’ he replied.

‘Who did they bring?’

‘The girl.’

‘Elzbeta?’ I said unsteadily.

‘That’s right. He went to tell Copecki. Our telephone’s out of order.’

‘He’ll be back soon?’

‘Yes – the telephone box is only half a block away.’

‘Where’s the girl?’

He pointed a finger at a door in the corner – ‘Perhaps I can be of some assistance.’

‘No need.’

I went into the room which evidently served as an office and store. In among boxes of tins and beer, the massive refrigerator and shelves of bottles and siphons lay Elzbeta, wrapped in a strip of carpet. Another coincidence – at the time I thought it was Ziga they were carrying out to the car and now it was Elzbeta who lay before me wrapped in the same sort of bundle. There was not a drop of blood in her almost wax-like face, and no trace of colour on her lips or eyes. She bore more resemblance to a girl from some convent school than to the imperious beauty who – I no longer knew how many minutes or hours ago – had saved my life.

I bent over her and her lowered lids didn’t even stir – she was in a deep faint. There was no doubt or hesitation in my mind, only one thing worried me – would I have time before Woyekh returned? The carpet cocoon jumped slightly as I gathered it into my arms. My muscles have come in handy, Mr Leszczycki – you were right, they did come in handy after all.

Pushing the door open with my foot I almost knocked the barman off his feet – he had evidently been looking through the keyhole or the crack of the door.

‘Be more careful next time, barman. You run the risk of losing your eyes that way,’ I laughed, as I passed by him with the girl in my arms.

He wasn’t put out, just became thoughtful for a moment. It was obvious that the situation itself and my tone had shaken some decisions of his. ‘Can I help, sir?’ he asked.

‘Stay where you are,’ I said sharply. ‘I’ll take the girl to the car and wait for Woyekh there. No questions.’

He nodded understandingly, opened the door to the street and I had the impression that he took up a position behind the Balthazaar-like inscription on the window, assuming that I would not notice this manoeuvre from the street, but I didn’t even bother to turn around. I lay the still unconscious Elzbeta on the front seat of the car. That latest model Plymouth, even if obtrusive, battered and repainted, was comfortable inside and very roomy. The girl proved so tiny and thin that she could lie across it with her knees only slightly bent. I then calmly walked round the car, and was opening the door on the driver’s side when suddenly someone’s hand grabbed me hard by the shoulder. I looked round – Woyekh – in the same drenched fedora and with the same down-twisted mouth.

‘The gentleman’s taken a liking to the new sedan?’ he grimaced. ‘Just hang on a minute till you write out the cheque.’

‘Look inside you ass,’ I said.

He bent down to look and then straightened. In that second I remembered my last three rounds at the Warsaw competition some years ago. My opponent had been Prohar, a fourth-year student who trained under Walaek and like him was agile and accurate but with a weak punch. I didn’t have any special speed or accuracy, the one thing I depended on was my punch from low on the left, a classy knock-out punch. Prohar had a clear win on points, and I was still stalking him with that punch, waiting for him to drop his guard. He never did. I lost and gave up boxing, like the Russian champion Shatkov after his defeat in Rome. At home they talked almost triumphantly of how he had become some kind of head of a university, had even had his doctorate accepted, while the boxing gloves still hung up in his study. I hung mine up in my. room too, as a souvenir, although I soon forgot everything connected with them except for one thing, my star punch, undelivered when I most depended on it. I remembered it like a conditioned reflex and when Woyekh straightened up leaving himself wide open like any beginner at his first training bout would do, I hit him with my left from low down, aiming at his totally unprotected jaw, I put the entire strength of my muscles and all the weight of my body behind the punch, everything I had. Already helplessly unconscious, Woyekh’s whole body turned over and slumped on to the street. ‘Glass chin,’ our trainer would have said of him.

I didn’t so much get into the car as dive in. I sat on the very edge of the seat and leapt away, bending as low as possible over the steering wheel and only just in time! Something splintered above my head leaving two round holes in the dull glass of the side window and the windshield. The second bullet scraped the top without even penetrating the body. I escaped from the third with my foot to the floorboards, overtaking a truck loaded with barrels. The gunman must have been the barman, not Woyekh, who would certainly not yet have recovered consciousness.

Driving in such circumstances was difficult and awkward. I kept slipping off the seat and the dark street also confused me: I didn’t know where it led, and so I stopped. Putting Elzbeta’s head on my knee, I turned into a more well-Iit, busier street trying to work out in my head how to get back to the hotel or at least to that crossing where I had stood with Leszczycki, since Elzbeta’s flat was opposite. The girl hadn’t stirred or opened her eyes; when I had lifted her only her eyelids had fluttered slightly. I had the feeling that she was conscious, had been for a long time and was only not opening her eyes because she wanted to find out what had happened and why she was being driven away again.

Then I began talking. Staring into the dim confusion of rain, rain-blackened asphalt and streetlamps cut by rain, I talked and talked, becoming breathless and confused, as if I were delirious.

‘I’m a friend, Elzbeta, your closest friend now, although you don’t even know who I am or where I come from. But you saved my life today, in quite another time, it’s true, you won’t even remember it. But you must remember Mickiewicz’s verses and love them. It was your book Ziga mutilated so sacrilegiously. I’ll recall just two lines to you, the beginning of a sonnet, do you remember? “Travelling life’s road, each with our own destiny. We met, you and I, like two boats at sea.” Reread them if they’ve survived. I have the book and the letters are still in it, where Ziga hid them today – was it really today? He gave me a medal, I’ve already told you about that. I want to give him back the volume of Mickiewicz.’

She opened her eyes and showed no surprise at seeing an unfamiliar face before her. She said quietly and sadly: ‘They’ve killed Ziga. But they didn’t find the letters. He wanted to take them to our embassy. Only is it really ours?’ she added doubtfully.

‘It’s ours, Elzbeta! Ours! Our country’s. You’ll take them there yourself now and I’ll come with you. Then you’ll go home to Warsaw,’ I went on, still in my feverish delirium. ‘Can there be anywhere more beautiful than Warsaw?’

‘I don’t remember. I was a little girl, very, very small,’ she said sadly. ‘But what’s left of Warsaw? Stones.’

‘It’s been built again Elzbeta. You’ve just been deceived, as all of you йmigrйs are deceived. The old town is just as it was…’

I was just going to tell her how this wonderful corner of old Warsaw had been resurrected, but in that second we drove at full speed into blackness where Elzbeta, the town and I, were no longer.

****

I came out of the darkness in another frame – not in the car but at that same crossing with Leszczycki. The rain which had attacked the town with its short massed invasion, was moving away to the east leaving behind a dark star-spotted sky and an equally dark street spattered with the reflections of street-lamps. It was five to ten. Leszczycki looked at me and smiled. ‘As you see,’ he said. ‘just as much time has passed as we would have needed to get from the bar to this crossing. But the scale has been played already.’

I didn’t ask him what scale. He looked at me with understanding and sympathy, as if he knew everything that I had been through. But I was mistaken.

‘I don’t know anything, Waek,’ he added. ‘I wasn’t with you. You were surrounded by people from another time.’

‘But the same people?’

‘Of course.’

‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘Induced hallucination?’

‘What do you yourself think?’

‘I don’t know. I’d very much like to know how my last take ended.’

‘What did you call it? A take? Why?’

‘A take – that’s a cinematic term,’ I explained. ‘They usually shoot several variations of one and the same scene. They’re called takes.’

He was pleased with the comparison.

‘A take,’ he repeated. ‘Take…perhaps your take is still going on in its own time. Who knows? Even I don’t know altogether what it’s all about. Time is a bottle of gin – I poured out a little and now I’m glad to have caught it all back.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘Don’t be offended, Waek. I only wanted to help you try your strength, it always helps. Perhaps you have grown up a little and become a little wiser. Don’t be angry with an old man.’

‘I’m not angry,’ I said. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘You don’t have to. Just assume that I played a joke. Such stupid jokes do happen,’ he sighed, and without saying goodbye, moved off, overtaking passers-by who had appeared from somewhere – they must like us have been waiting out the sudden downpour and were now hurrying about their business.

Only I didn’t hurry anywhere, as I tried to clarify to myself what it had all been. A dream? But I hadn’t been asleep and I hadn’t been daydreaming, although I had lost consciousness. Hypnosis? But I had never heard of this form of hypnosis – and was it even at all possible? Six different hallucinations in one flash in a thousandth, perhaps even in a millionth part of a second. And could a hallucination bring on a burn? I pulled up my sleeve and saw clearly the bluish-purple mark left by Woyekh’s cigarette. And the grazed skin on the knuckles of my left hand – yet another mark of my encounter with Woyekh. And the medal? Of course, here it was! I took it out of my pocket and looked at it in the light. It wasn’t a phantom medal, an illusion medal, but a real medal out of old bronze. The bas-relief of Poniatowski with the laurel wreath on his brow, and the inscription around it: ‘He lived for the fatherland and died for honour’ – all this was not at all ghostly, not illusory, I could feel every letter.

And the volume of Mickiewicz was in its place. I didn’t take it out, just felt the raised portrait on the cover. So everything had really happened. It was not a hallucination, not a dream and not a vision under hypnosis. Leszczycki’s cigarette case had played its scale for me, caused me to live through a half-hour or an hour, each time in a different way. I really had lain here shot through the chest, had raced for my life in a mad motor chase, had fought for Elzbeta’s honour and become the owner of the letters, whose publication so terrified the White йmigrй riff-raff.

The medal, Mickiewicz and the letters were visitors from another time. Perhaps in ours, they had their counterparts, but did that really change anything? Ziga wanted to take the letters to the embassy, and I promised to help Elzbeta in this. Wasn’t it all one in what time this took place and if it took place at all? Now I was the master of my own time..

Without hesitating or pausing to think, I determinedly strode off across the street to the very familiar entrance opposite.

Content

Alexander Abramov, Sergey Abramov
The Time Scale