Andrzej Bursa - Killing Auntie

I sat the old ladies down and began to set the table. They both protested that they would not eat, even though they were hungry and watched my every move heralding the imminent appearance of food with growing excitement. It amused me. I put the kettle on and made a pile of sandwiches. I used up all the cheese, which was supposed to last me three days. I worked quickly and with confidence. A week of self-reliance had taught me a lot. I told the women that Auntie had left for a long business trip and tried to assuage their worries about the lack of letters and a money order. When supper was finally on the table, the women rose to say a prayer. I got up too. Until now on these occasions I always stood with my hands casually clasped behind my back and a blasé expression on my face. But the experience of the last few days cured me of my adolescent arrogance. I bowed my head lightly and clasped my hands in front of me. Toward the end I even made a vague gesture with my right hand. We sat down. The old girls ate with appetite. I excused myself and peeked into the bathroom. The corpse was well covered. When the ladies began to yawn I made a bed for them in the room, and for myself laid a mattress on the kitchen floor. It was hard and uncomfortable.

“Oyey! … Yey, yey!..” I heard Aunt Emilia screaming in the bathroom.

I jumped up and switched the light on. Groping my way through the hallway, I ran to see what happened. Aunt Emilia in her long nightdress was sitting in the bath with her feet high above her head. She was holding a lit candle in one hand while the other hand was making desperate waving movements.

“Who’s here?” she stammered when I appeared in the doorway.

“It’s me, Auntie,” I said as calmly as I could. “What happened?”

Aunt Emilia started gibbering again.

“There is someone lying here …”

I got scared. Aunt Emilia had discovered the corpse. She had to be killed. If I did it now, while she was still in the bath, I would spare myself the trouble of transporting her corpse. But then I’d have to kill Granny too. Three corpses on one head. No, that would be too much. I took Aunt Emilia’s hand and pulled her out of the bath.

“Someone’s lying there,” she was shaking with horror. “Jurek, dear, who’s there?”

Trying to calm her, I carefully examined the bath. The depression indicated the place where the stomach and the lower part of the body lay. I knew the arrangement of my corpse very well and could determine precisely the position of each body part under the sheet. Aunt Emilia had landed on the best-preserved part when she fell in. She had mistaken the bath for the loo. She was still very upset.

“Someone is lying there … I think … I felt it …” she kept repeating.

I took the candle out of her hand and bent over the bath.

“But Auntie,” I explained calmly, “it’s only linen. Look, there …” I carefully unfolded the sheet. I manipulated the candle in such a way so she could not see anything. Emilia was straining her sick eyes. She was calming down. Suddenly, when it seemed the danger was over, the light came on.

“Damn,” I cried out and raised my hand to my eyes as if blinded by the light. At the same time I pushed my elbow into her face, knocking off her glasses. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

The bathroom was flooded with light now. Aunt Emilia stood by numbly, rubbing her face. She couldn’t see a thing. I took her gently by the arm and led her away to her bed. On our way we met Granny, who was awakened by the noise in the bathroom. She was wearing a white turban.

I fell into a heavy uncomfortable sleep, from which I soon awoke. Only now it struck me how much I’d grown used to sharing my loneliness with the corpse. The nocturnal presence of two old women in the house irritated and distracted me. I couldn’t go back to sleep. In the surrounding silence I picked out the slightest noise, barely audible squeaks of the furniture, the hollow, intermittent song of the kitchen tap. As my ears tuned in to those susurrations I could clearly distinguish the breathing of two sleeping women despite being separated from them by two closed doors and a hallway. Then the breathing stopped and changed into whispers. I couldn’t hear the words but the conversation grew louder, the beds squeaked and the room filled with a gentle bustle.

After a few moments I heard the clanking of plates and cutlery. At first weak and timid, the clanking soon intensified until it sounded as if a noisy feast was under way in my room. Only the dinner conversation was missing. There were still some leftovers from supper on the table in the dining room and the old girls were apparently clearing them off. When the bustle died out I heard the women tiptoeing toward the kitchen. As carefully as I could I rearranged myself on the mattress. I wanted to be able to observe them without arousing their suspicion. The women slipped into the kitchen and slowly approached my bed. Granny stretched out her hand and scratched me lightly on my nose, I didn’t move. Then she whispered:

“He’s sleeping, good boy …”

“God bless him …” said Aunt Emily.

Assured, they turned away. The older led the younger, who in the dark probably couldn’t see anything. They were heading for the sideboard but bumped into the low, broad kitchen table on which I had left a bit of bread and sausage. They bent over the table and searched it thoroughly the way one looks for a lost ring in a meadow. They didn’t reach for a bigger piece farther away until they’d cleaned up all the crumbs before them. When the table was clean they moved on to the sideboard. The kitchen resounded with the music of feasting again. I knew that in the sideboard there was only a jar of marmalade, some sugar and a small bag of flour. The ladies consumed it all eagerly. Granny made little cakes of flour and marmalade, sprinkled them generously with sugar and fed them to her daughter. Herself, she ate them without sugar, protesting she didn’t like them too sweet. When they got to the larder they were met with disappointment. The door was locked, the key hidden in an unknown place. I would have gladly gotten up and treated the old girls to all the food I had but was worried that catching them out on their greedy raid would embarrass them. So they stood hopelessly before the door examining the empty keyhole. Aunt Emilia threw in the towel first:

“Let’s go, Mummy. I’m not hungry now, really … Those cakes were very filling … Mummy …”

With reluctance, Granny gave in, and both slipped out of the kitchen. I shuddered with disgust. The whole scene looked funny, even moving, when I was watching it, but now that the women were gone, I felt nothing but deep revulsion. I promised myself to send them away as soon as possible, on the earliest train, without sparing money or food for the road. I could not bear any more crawling around. I shut my eyes tight, pushed my head under the pillow and ordered myself to sleep.

I woke up early filled with determination to get rid of the old girls no matter what the cost. I heard a melody and the words of a church hymn. Granny and Aunt Emilia pottered around the kitchen singing:

“From the dawn

Our souls

Praise with song

Maaariiia …”

I lay quietly with my eyes shut. I felt snug and peaceful. I gently floated into the kingdom of childhood. Granny and Aunt Emilia pottering and singing. Daddy is not at home. Ah, how seldom I saw Daddy, and now Jurek, Juruś, Jureczek — he is in bed, napping. He is a child. His whole life before him. The whole world of unknown experiences, sensations and images, which were never to come to pass. The women stopped singing and began to confer in whispers. I opened my eyes and raised my head.

“Good morning!” I said almost cheerfully.

Still in my underwear, I entered the hallway. The bathroom door was open. The sheet covering the corpse was pulled half way off. If the women discovered my crime … I was unable to finish my the thought. I bent over the corpse. On the right side I noticed a shallow but wide wound, as if a bite had been taken out of it. There were other smaller wounds next to it, as well as scars and long scratches. It didn’t look like the work of mice. I couldn’t remember ever having had any in our house, anyway. The window was shut properly so entry from outside, by a cat or a bird, was out of the question. The pest must have already been inside the flat. For a while I stood still with my hand raised in a half gesture, totally lost as to what gesture it should be. I bent over the corpse again and put my hand under the sheet. When I took it out it was holding Granny’s false teeth. So, it was the girls — having been turned away from the larder door, they had nibbled through the night at the cold rotting corpse. Poor things, they couldn’t have had much of a meal. The flesh had been toughened by the ice. And getting it up from the bottom of the bath must have been hard work for them.