I cried as we walked down the secret staircase and through the dark, quiet hallways of the music school. Takashi found his violin and I found my composition notebook in the place we’d left them, under a table in the concert hall where the orchestra had rehearsed.
Outside it was a warm and pleasant evening, like nothing was wrong. Takashi waved good-bye at the bus stop and I walked to the tram. At home, I sat in the kitchen and my mother gave me a cold boiled potato, black instant coffee, and a small container of diet yogurt.
“You should try harder to please me,” she said. “For your own good.”
“I’ll try harder,” I told her. “I promise.”
But I never did try very hard to please my mother. In fact, I never tried hard to please anybody at all after that day in the locked room. Now I only try hard to please myself. That is all that matters here. That is the secret thing I found.
A BETTER PLACE
I come from some other place. It’s not like a real place on Earth or something I could point to on a map, if I even had a map of this other place, which I don’t. There’s no map because the place isn’t a place like something to be near or in or at. It’s not somewhere or anywhere, but it’s not nowhere either. There is no where about it. I don’t know what it is. But it certainly isn’t this place, here on Earth, with all you silly people. I wish I knew what it was, not because I think it would be great to tell you about it; I just miss it so much. If I knew what it was, maybe I could make something like it here on Earth. Waldemar says it’s impossible. The only way to get there is to go.
“Waldemar,” I say to my brother. “How do we get back to the place, to the thing, whatever?”
“Oh, you have to die. Or you have to kill the right person.”
That’s his answer now. For a long time he thought only the first part was true, but over time he’s thought long and hard and figured out that there is a second way. The second way is much harder. I don’t know how he figured it out, but thank God for Waldemar, who is so much wiser than me, though only a day older. I took some extra time to come out of the woman. I had doubts, even so early on, about this place here on Earth with all the dumb things everywhere. It was Waldemar who persuaded me to come out finally. I could hear his cries and feel his little fists poking through the woman’s skin. He is my best friend. Everything he does, it seems, he does because he loves me. He is the best brother ever, of all brothers here on Earth. I love him so much.
“Well, I don’t want to die,” I tell him. “Not yet. Not here.”
We talk about this from time to time. It’s nothing new.
“Then you’ve got to find the right person to kill. Once you’ve killed the right person, a hole will open up in the Earth and you can just walk straight into the hole. It will lead you through a tunnel back to where we came from. But be careful. If you kill the wrong person, you’ll get into trouble here. It wouldn’t be good. I’d visit you in prison, but chances are slim that the right person will be sitting beside you in your prison cell. And the prisons they have for little girls are the worst. There, the only way to the place would be to die. So you’ve got to be really sure about the person to kill. It’s the hardest thing to do, to be so sure about something like that. I’ve never been sure enough, and that’s why I’m still here. That, and because I’d miss you and I’d worry if I left you all alone.”
“Maybe I’ll just die after all,” I say. I get so tired of it here, thinking of how much better it is back there, in the place we came from. I cry about it often. Waldemar always has to soothe me.
“I could kill you,” he offers. “But I’m not sure you’re the right person. But wouldn’t that be great? If you were?”
“That would be ideal!” I say.
I don’t know what I’d do without my brother. I’d probably cry even more than I do now, and take poisons that make my brain weak and my body tired so I wouldn’t even have the strength to think about the other place. I’d try to poison the place out of my mind. But I doubt that’s even possible. Some nights I hate it here so much I shake and sweat and my brother holds me down so I won’t start kicking the walls or breaking things. When I kick the walls, the woman gets angry. “What’s going on up there, children?” She thinks we’re fighting and threatens to separate us. She doesn’t know about the other place. She’s just a human woman, after all. She gives us food and clothes and everything, as human mothers like to do. My brother says he’s sure the woman is not the person he could kill to get back to the place. I’m not so sure she’s not my person. Sometimes I think she is. But if I killed her and I was wrong, I’d be sorry. Mostly I’d be sorry for Waldemar.
? ? ?
One morning as we lie in our beds, I say to my brother, “Waldemar, I think I know who my person is.” I don’t really know. I am still sort of dreaming. But then I think up a name to say. “His name is Jarek Jaskolka and I’m going to find him and kill him, mark my words.”
“But are you sure?” my brother asks.
“I think so,” I say. And then, suddenly, I am sure. Jarek Jaskolka is the person I have to kill. I know it in my bones. I am as sure about Jarek Jaskolka as I am about the place, and about me and Waldemar being from there.
“You must be completely sure,” my brother warns me. He rises from his bed and lifts the blanket over his head like an old lady going to the market. His face becomes dark and his voice suddenly low and frightening. “If you aren’t sure, you could get in trouble, you know.”
“You look like a witch, Waldemar. Don’t make me laugh at you,” I say. Waldemar doesn’t like to be ridiculed.
“If you kill the wrong person . . .” he begins.
But I am sure now. I can’t go back and pretend I’m not. I have to return to the place somehow. I miss it too much. My brain hurts and I cry all the time. I don’t want to be here on Earth for one moment longer.
“It’s that damned Jarek Jaskolka!” I cry. It is just a name I’ve made up, but it is the right name, that I am sure of. I jump from my bed. I pull the string to lift the curtains. The room where Waldemar and I sleep looks out into the forest. Outside, soft gray clouds hang between the trees. Some silly birds sing a few nice notes. I miss the other place so much, I want to cry. But I feel brave. “I will find you, Jarek,” I say to the window. “Wherever you are hiding!”
When I look at Waldemar, he has gone back under his covers. I can see his chest rising and falling. My brain hurts too much to try to comfort him. And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense.