Out in the Polish provinces, that’s
the color of the Warmian landscape tonight.
The fading December light is too
weak to pick out distinct shades. The sky, a wall of trees, a house at the edge
of the woods, and a muddy meadow only differ by their depth of blackness. With
each passing minute they progressively merge together, until finally the
separate elements can no longer be seen.
It’s a monochromatic nocturne,
bitterly cold and desolate.
It’s hard to believe that in this
lifeless landscape, inside the black house, two people are alive—one of them
only just, but the other so sharply and intensely that it’s agonizing.
Sweating, panting, deafened by the thudding of his own blood pulsating in his
ears, he is trying to overcome the pain in his muscles to finish the job as
fast as possible.
He cannot ward off the thought that
in the movies it always looks different, and that after the opening credits
they should give a warning: “Ladies and gentlemen, be advised that in reality,
committing murder demands bestial strength, physical coordination, and above
all, perfect fitness. Don’t try this at home.”
Just holding on to the victim is a
major feat. The body defends itself against death in all sorts of ways. It’s
hard to call it a fight; it’s more like something in between convulsions and an
epileptic fit—every muscle tenses, and it’s not at all the way they describe it
in novels, where the victim gradually weakens. The nearer the end, the more
forcefully the muscle cells try to use the last remnants of oxygen to liberate
the body.
Which means you can’t let them have
that oxygen, or it’ll start all over again. Which means it’s not enough to just
hold on to the victim so they won’t break free; you’ve also got to choke them
effectively. And hope the next jolting kick will be the last, and there’ll be
no strength left for more.
But the victim seems to have an
endless supply of strength. For the killer it’s the opposite—the sharp pain of
his overstretched muscles is rising in his arms, his fingers are stiffening,
starting to rebel. He can see them slowly slipping, second by second, from the
sweat-soaked neck.
He’s sure he can’t do it. But just
when he’s about to give up, the body suddenly stops moving in his hands. The
victim’s eyes become the eyes of a corpse. He has seen too many of them in his
life not to recognize that.
And yet he can’t remove his hands—he
goes on strangling the dead body with all his might for a while longer. He
knows he’s in the grip of hysteria, but he goes on squeezing, harder and
harder, ignoring the pain in his hands and arms. Suddenly the larynx caves in
disturbingly under his thumbs. Terrified, he loosens his grip.
He stands back and stares at the
corpse lying at his feet. Seconds pass, then minutes. The longer he stands
there, the more incapable he is of moving. Finally, he forces himself to pick
up his coat from the back of a chair and pulls it over his shoulders. He keeps
telling himself that if he doesn’t act quickly, his own corpse will soon be
lying beside his victim’s on the floor. He’s surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
But on the other hand, isn’t that
Prosecutor Teodor Szacki’s greatest wish right now?
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