Zbigniew Oporski

She stood on the sidewalk, near the bus stop. She was dressed very modestly and timidly looked ahead. She liked to look at people as if in anticipation and with hope for any nice, reciprocal gaze. With the passage of hours, the flash of hope dimmed, slowly turning into sadness. It was the most common way. Three zlotys 50 cents … The place that she chose almost daily surrounded the hubbub of people chaotically walking at a fast pace in the directions known only to each other. Alone standing, with a warm, calm look, a woman. She spoke little, hardly ever. Often, lying, she told herself that she was not hungry, but she claimed that this is not the most important thing. In this whirling human mass it was something completely different and unmatched, it was its denial as the only countable element against the background of the whole. No one knew, or rather did not want to know how important it was for each of them. Torn out of the crowd, casual, dressed in a fashionable coat, a man passing by her looked with disdain at her worn-out clothes, squinted his eyes, snorted laughter under his breath and went on ahead. Later, at home, he found a wife sitting at a beautifully laid table with a late dinner. She waited for him impatiently from hours after noon. He threw dry “hello”, ate, spoke only about his work, then he got up again and went out again, and she did not even hear again whether it was tasty and prepared with considerable skill. I never heard the words thank you. Later, in solitude, washing the dishes cried. She also cried all night. The next day she only disappeared from his home, because life, his life was never really. It disappeared forever. 3 zlotys 50 cents … Another man who, in principle, passed a standing woman every day, never looked at her otherwise than as an obstacle on his marching line. He was angry that this is here while everyone is coming. Once, even with a raised tone, he threw at her: “You seem to be bored in your life!” So much for him was worth her six hours of standing on the November cold … This man had a mother of a similar age living nearby. It was enough to go up the stairs, running along the wall, or take the escalator in the next tunnel, then walk straight down the street, then turn first right and continue to the end to see the old door of the entrance gate. Mother lived alone on the second floor. In her unrecognized, dark and quiet apartment, she usually sat on the stool in the kitchen, looking out the window. Even in the kitchen she had independently, amateurly printed photos of her son from various foreign trips, escapades with friends and those that she did to him herself, from hiding, and which he hated, he considered as shameless and pointless. She was still waiting for him. She often turned the TV down in the hope of hearing a knock on the door that heralded a surprise visit. Surprises have never been. Mostly, he was not there when she tried to call him. Sometimes he would answer, he would explain that he was busy, he would promise imminent arrival, but he would never come. After a while, she rang less and less often, snuggling photos on which he was smiling alone or with other people. A month later she died. An anxious neighbor found her. When the door was breached and finally entered her apartment, she saw a dead body, and a photo lying on her side next to her hand, where she was with her son in his favorite jacket when he was 8 years old. 3 zlotys 50 cents … In the crowd of people near the bus stop, a woman with an ordinary posture, too much make-up, caricatally new-fashioned clothes, which is the opposite of good taste and elegance, passed through. She had an unhappy, downright mean face with ever-narrowing eyes suggesting suspicion and reluctance.That day, this woman traveled this route twice. First time after quarreling with her teenage daughter, which she once again left at home, enjoying her mock love, which she met just after her husband’s death. His daughter hated him, after he had been prostrate towards her and her mother, but it was her mother who saw her as a problem, an unnecessary ballast for her pleasures and a carefree lifestyle. In spite of many previous, painfully experienced experiences, the daughter made another attempt to talk. She was afraid, but she wanted to talk to her about it, to try again somehow to take up the topic, to throw away this terrible burden of despair that filled her center and with the last of her strength, crying and stammering, she began to speak her first words. She did not make it. She heard a rough “shut up!”, After which her mother hurriedly stepped through the apartment door slamming the door … 3 zlotys 50 groszy … Because her lover was still not there, she came home by the road next to the woman’s stop. Looking at her with superiority she went on. At home, my daughter was crying. Unable to bear her crying, she yelled at her and left again. When she came back after some time, she saw on the kitchen table a piece of paper saying: “You failed me one last time, forget that I was.” Nervous, cursing under her nose, she ran out of the house. Moving on a crooked pace, clumsy people passed by, she almost fell into the woman standing near the bus stop, but did not even try to stop. Turning over, she turned the small tablet standing under her legs. The woman bent down for her, looked tiredly at the inscription: “3 zlotys 50 cents”, and then leaned her against a small bowl with tiny, hand-woven bouquets of flowers …

This is a place of shadows. I was there recently. For a while. The place is old age. It is she who writes his rules and everyone serves her there. She herself is looking straight into the eyes – shamelessly, in a horrible way. She looks even though she does not look straight. He looks through the observer, with pride, self-confidence – ruthlessly. Old age penetrates deep into a human being making it physically and mentally wreck waiting for its turn – the turn to meet another friend of old age – death. Old age is part of only a few, chosen according to unwritten rules and widely understood happiness. It binds tightly, painfully, like a constantly clamping barbed wire. Pazernie, because as part of it is furious that only so much can. He never lets go. However, for the most part, old age is a whole, it is a state. Then, it pushes without any frames or barriers. Here, in old age, there is no word “dignity”. For example, you can not choose a moment of meeting her second friend – death, but only – as in Russian roulette – passively wait for your end. This waiting can be seen on the faces of the shadows, who, not so long ago, were volcanoes hated by the old age of youth. Now the shadows feel worse, debased. Devastated the more, the more they collide with someone younger. For example, contact with family on the one hand brings light, but on the other it intensifies the awareness that here they are, shadows are just shadows. A dot at the end, sometimes a very short sentence. These feelings manifest even in physical inefficiency. It is she who brutally and, worse, publicly collide with the obviousness of everyday normality, now appearing as the heights of human existence. How bad it can feel the shadow, attracted by the scent of food, which even crawls out of hunger in its wheelchair centimeter by a centimeter, a pace that departs any memories or pictures that appear over a bed from years ago. The commonality of everyday life sets new standards, in which the awkwardness of the soma does not even allow you to raise your head, showing the remnants of human pride that belongs to a punishment called life. Doused, spat upon, hungry by shadow, he moves his hands awkwardly and bound to the canteen with his crooks, to eat in his bent shape, leaning like a pig over the trough, unable to look at the companion on the other side of the table at the same time. Even this is too much for old age which curves, hunchback, coffins making us look with envy on the colorful world from the TV screens, not allowing to reach through the window often because it suddenly turns out to be too high, or the world behind it appears to be fuzzy stain. Now I understand why some put a sign of equality between life and death. Old age is the most perfect example and expression. I’m afraid. I feel helpless in the face of the awareness that once I will open the door of the place of shadows not only as a guest …