Entanglement Read Online Free Page A

Ciemniak, meaning “ignoramus”. If he died there, they’d go on telling jokes about him long after. So he dragged himself over to Małołączniak, drank a little coffee from his thermos while trying not to think about his muscle number one, and by sheer impetus reached the top of Kopa Kondracka. It was quite amazing, but it looked as if his weak heart combined with his old man’s stupidity weren’t going to kill him this time either. He poured himself another mug of coffee, took out a sandwich wrapped in tin foil and gazed at the pot-bellied thirty-year-olds coming up the poor old Kopa with as much effort as if it were twenty thousand feet high. He felt like advising them to bring oxygen with them.
    How can they let themselves go like that? he thought, as he disdainfully watched them barely trudging along. At their age he could run the route from the shelter in Kondratowa Valley up the Kopa and back again first thing in the morning, via the dip called Piekło, meaning “hell”, just to get warm and work up an appetite for breakfast. Yes, those were the days. Everything was clear, everything made sense, everything was easy.
    He stretched out his tanned calves in the sunshine - covered in grey hairs, they were still muscular - and switched on his mobile
to send a text message to his wife, who was waiting for him at the guesthouse near Strążyska Valley. The phone had only just found a signal when it rang. The man cursed and answered it.
    “Yes?”
    “Good morning, this is Igor. I’ve got some bad news for you.”
    “Yes?”
    “Henryk’s dead.”
    “How did it happen?”
    “I’m afraid it was a nasty accident.”
    He didn’t waste a moment considering what to say in reply.
    “That really is sad news. I’ll do my best to come back tomorrow, but you must place a condolences announcement in the newspaper as soon as possible. Got that?”
    “Of course.”
    He switched off the phone. He no longer felt like texting his wife. He drank the rest of the coffee, put on his backpack and set off towards the pass below the Kopa. He’d have a beer at Kalatówki Clearing and think how to tell her they’d have to go back to Warsaw. Almost forty years together, and he still found that sort of conversation stressful.

VI
    Prosecutor Teodor Szacki had some trouble firing up the powerful three-litre engine of his Citroën V6 - the autogas installation was playing up again - waited for the hydraulic system to lift his dragon off the ground, and set off towards the highway along the River Vistula, intending to cross over Łazienkowski Bridge. At the last moment he changed his mind, turned towards Wilanów and stopped the car at the bus stop near Gagarin Street. He switched on the hazard lights.
    Long ago, ten years ago, which meant ages ago, he and Weronika had lived here, before Helka was born. It was a
studio flat on the second floor, and both windows looked onto the highway. A nightmare. In the daytime one huge lorry after another came, after dark it was the night buses and little Fiat 126s going at seventy miles per hour. He had learned to distinguish makes of car by the sound of their engines. A layer of thick black dust would collect on the furniture, and the window would be dirty half an hour after cleaning it. It was worst of all in summer. They’d had to open the windows or else suffocate, but then it was impossible to talk or watch television. It was quite another matter that in those days they made love more often than they watched the news. And now? He wasn’t sure they made it to the national average, which had once amused them so much. What? There really are people who only do it once a week? Ha ha ha!
    Szacki snorted with laughter and rolled down the window. It was raining steadily now, and raindrops fell inside the car, leaving dark spots on the upholstery. In the windows of their old flat, a petite blonde was wandering about in a top with shoulder straps; her hair came down to her shoulders.
    I wonder what it