Hands -- short story

Warning: violence against humans and animals (not gratuitous). Bleakest story I've ever written.

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Grzegorz Koslowski felt the tension in the streets as a tightness in his lanky frame even as he walked home, guitar slung over his shoulder. At sixteen, the guerilla battles of the streets of Krakow seemed an inconvenience, a discussion around the family’s dinner table as they took in one artist or another until things cooled off, an admonition to be careful when he went out with his friends or busked in the Stare Miasto, another long-haired kid with a guitar among the historical buildings of the Stare.

When the fire trucks sped past him, he wondered idly if one of the factions – and there were so many – had bombed a bus or a newsstand. Unconsciously, he walked faster down the side street and the townhouse his family occupied, close to the theatre district. His family, generations of actors, thrived in their world of art and artifice.

Turning the corner, he saw the fire engines at the end of his street and started to run. The jagged, flaming maw in the line of houses barely registered as his legs pumped, as his heart pounded, as he ran to meet with his family, to seek assurance. The fire burned brighter than the streetside trees that had just started turning with the cooler weather.

Someone caught him as he tried to break through the crowd that ringed the scene of what was surely an explosion. “No, Grzesiek, you must not go in! It isn’t safe!”  He struggled out of the grasp and turned to see his neighbor, Piotr Nowak, tears running down his face.

“My family!” he stammered, fighting the man as the arms came around him again to restrain him. Greasy black smoke roiled; the stench permeated his lungs.

“Składam wyrazy szczerego współczucia,” Piotr said, the old Polish formula for grief. I offer you my deepest condolences on this dark day. We will search for them when it is safe,” Piotr, his lined face grey, assured Grzegorz. “They likely never knew what hit them.”

Grzegorz clung to a lamppost, crying. A hand reached out to soothe him. It wasn’t his mother’s hand, which had brushed back his red hair as a child and even as the gangly adolescent he’d become.

She would never brush back his hair again.

He clung to the lamppost as the others in the crowd left him to his grief. After forever, or no time at all, a voice, a woman’s voice whispered in his ear: “We can help you find them.”

“Find who?” Grzegorz sobbed. “My family is dead.”

“The ones who did this to your family.” Grzegorz turned around and saw a stranger, a woman almost his height, as slender as he was, with porcelain skin and black hair and dark eyes. Older than he, if he read her assured carriage right.

“Come with me. You have no place to go. I’m Dominika Wojcik, and I can help you.” She took his hand and led him away from the flames he would have thrown himself into.

Grzegorz couldn’t remember the route they had taken, the trams and buses. He could remember the last time he spoke to his mother in crystal clear detail, the triviality of telling her he’d be back for dinner. His father had teased him about being a hippie with his long hair and his guitar, and his younger sister Liliana had laughed along. On his walk to the corner he preferred for busking, he had considered where he would fit in the family business after going to college for the arts:  performance – acting or music? Technical work backstage? His future, at that moment, had been totally open.

His future now? He saw none. His family lay at the crater that had been his home before the bomb hit it. Mother and father, sister and the two brothers, Jakub and Antoni, one older and one younger, who had been arguing over the design of a dragon prop.

“This is our stop,” Dominika said, taking his hand like a baby, walking him out the front of the bus as if he had lost all volition. As he had.

They walked up to a shabby two-story house in a neighborhood pocked with burned out and boarded up buildings. This house had only a few windows not boarded up, and a large black X had been spray-painted on its front.

Dominika led him inside and into the living room, lit only by a battery-operated lantern, the remaining window shrouded with blackout curtain, where a decrepit couch shared space with a couple bedrolls – and a rack with two semi-automatic weapons by the door.

“What is this place?” Grzegorz asked, looking around at scuffed walls. A portion of the ceiling had fallen, exposing lathe. A person in one of the bedrolls stirred and stared at him.

“This is your home now,” Dominika assured him. A place to live – he hadn’t considered that. He had no clothes, no bed, no food to his name, but here he would be taken care of. “Let me introduce you to someone, Grzes.”

Through the haze that had settled into his mind, he felt his shoulders tense up as if responding to a blow. He ignored it, as it didn’t seem pressing in the state of grey that cocooned him.

Dominika walked him to the kitchen, a room with greasy walls, to a man who cooked a large pot of zurek, bread soup, over a camping stove. Grzegorz sat down in a chair at Dominika’s bidding, although the sour smell of the soup turned his stomach.

“You’re Grzegorz Koslowski,” the man said, turning to him. “I’m Aleksey.” He stepped over to where Grzegorz sat. The man looked to be in his late thirties, with blond hair cut short in a military style cut. He wore black and close-fitting clothes. 

The tenseness of Grzegorz’s shoulders returned. “How do you know my name?”

“We know – knew – of your family. I’m sorry to hear about them. Their involvement in the Resistance was admirable.”

“What’s this Resistance?” Grzegorz muttered. “My family were theatre people. They didn’t do politics.”

“Did you ever notice your family’s guests around the dinner table?” Aleksey gestured with the spoon. “Educated people, well-spoken people.”

“Theatre people,” Grzegorz reiterated, feeling tears threaten as he thought of conversations at the dinner table. “Intellectuals. Poets. Nothing more than that.”

“Members of the intelligentsia,” Aleksey responded. “People against the current order of things. Against government oppression.”

“Was my family killed for this?” Grzegorz demanded.

“No,” Dominika said, taking Grzegorz’s hand. “Your family were killed because of you.”

Grzegorz stood up, flinging Dominika’s hand away. “How can you say that? There’s no reason why my family should be killed for me,” he shouted. He felt the threatened tears break, and he dropped back into his chair, hiding his face in his hands, pulling himself together.

“Grzes,” Dominika said softly, her hand on his shoulder, bending down to his ear, “I know it’s hard to hear. But you have a secret, a gift, a very important and dangerous talent that they wanted to stop. You were supposed to have been in that building when it was bombed.”

“A gift?” Grzegorz muttered. “I have no gift. I’m the least talented in my family, maybe good for running the lights; that’s it. Any one of my family – my father is gifted with words …” Was, he remembered. No longer. He felt himself turn inside out, his grief as his skin – no, not now, not here – he pulled himself back into the present, where he would not feel.

“Grzegorz,” Aleksey commanded, “come with me. The soup will wait.” Alexsey fished out a soup bone from the pot, ran cold water over it, and threw it into a bowl from the dish drainer. Grzegorz, knowing nothing else to do, obediently followed Alexsey out the back door of the grimy kitchen, Dominika trailing behind them.

Outside, a dog rummaged in the garbage. “He’s nobody’s dog. Always here begging from us,” Alexsey established as he whistled for the cur. The nondescript black dog loped over, ribs showing, tongue lolling. As he arrived, Alexsey placed the bone on the ground. As the dog started gnawing on the bone, Alexsey took a blade from his belt and slit its throat. Blood flowed as the dog collapsed and twitched in its death throes.

“Heal it,” Alexsey commanded.

“What the hell do you mean?” Grzegorz yelled back, his stomach roiling.

“Lay your damned hands on it and wish it alive!” Aleskey snapped.

Grzegorz stared at the dog as he lay hands on it, willing it alive, like his parents weren’t. Nothing happened for a moment, two. Then the dog began to breathe in gasps, then wriggle upward, the gash on its throat healed.

“I did not do that,” Grzegorz stammered.

“You did that,” Aleksey countered, grabbing Grzegorz’ shirt and leaving a bloody handprint on it. “That is your talent.”

Dominika looked at him wide-eyed, like he had performed a miracle. Which he had.

The dog pushed at Grzegorz’s hand with his muzzle, and Grzegorz petted him absentmindedly, slumping into himself.

Grzegorz and Dominika sat on the bedroll that Blazej, a taciturn young man barely older than Grzegorz, had spread out for Grzegorz in a room with two other bedrolls, currently unoccupied. Grzegorz had shed the clothes that the dog had bled on, and someone had tossed him a faded t-shirt and sweats, both black, that smelled slightly of smoke. Grzegorz shuddered.

“Did my parents know I had this talent?” Grzegorz demanded of Dominika after Alexsey wandered off to some unknown night mission with a couple men Grzegorz hadn’t met.

“How demanding you are!” Dominika chuckled, a disturbing sound to Grzegorz’ ears. “Of course, they knew. It’s a family thing. Apparently, it hadn’t shown up in a few generations. They knew you might have it, anyhow.”

Grzegorz thought. He thought of his aunts and uncles, scattered across the world; his remaining grandmother in England. Had she fled to escape rumors? He had no way of knowing. “How did you find out?”

“We know these things,” Dominika said, putting her arm around Grzegorz’s shoulder. It felt strange, but good. Comforting. “We research families for these talents. There’s more than just you, you know.” She kicked her shoes off. “I have my own talent.”

“What is your talent?” Grzegorz queried.

“I start fires.” Dominika looked at her hands.

Grzegorz closed his eyes and saw the burning home that entombed his parents. “You didn’t kill my parents, did you?”

“The people who killed your parents wanted you dead, I told you. We need you alive.” Dominika squeezed his shoulder.

“Need me? For what?”

“Go to sleep, Grzes. You have had a rough day. We can talk in the morning.”

Dominika left Grzegorz alone, but the other occupants of the room soon came back, smelling of sweat and burnt gunpowder.

He would not cry with others in the room. He was a man; they were men.

Before dawn, Aleksey and Blazej and a brown-haired man named Jan dragged Grzegorz out of his bedroll where he had lay staring at the ceiling, recalling the fiery chasm that was his family’s resting place. They took him to the front porch and offered him a hunk of bread. “Sorry about the food, but it is what it is. We live a hard life,” Jan snorted.

“Pardon me for asking,” Grzegorz inquired, “but who are you? You seem to know an awful lot about who I am.”

“We’re patriots,” Aleksey said, gesturing with a hunk of bread. “We want to restore Poland to its old glory. None of this fighting in the streets; we want the country to be the pride of all Europe, safe for families and the mother of all.”

Grzegorz winced; he had no mother. “And how do you propose to restore this country to whatever heights you believe it has lost?”

“We defend it against its enemies. All the street fighting you see here? It’s because our government is weak and cannot protect the country.” Aleksey shrugged. “We thirst for a stronger government, one which will not permit this turmoil to happen.”

“Which government?” Grzegorz inquired. “Which faction?”

“Czerwona Przyszłość,” Blasej broke in. “Red Future.”

“The Communists?” There were Communists in government already, Grzegorz mused; they didn’t need to fight in the streets.

“Yes and no,” Aleksey noted. “Those Communists are weak and will never see their ideas brought forth in the government. No, Red Future has money and power on its side, and vision.  They want to create peace and get rid of all these street riots.”

That sounded like a good idea. Then maybe people wouldn’t have to die. He thought about his family again, who had died for – what? Were they randomly targeted? Were they the important people Aleksey said they were? Were they killed because of him?

He closed his eyes and took another bite of bread.

By that afternoon, Grzegorz’s mind was full of Red Future’s aims: To stop the street fighting. To unite the country under Red Future’s cause – legally, of course; they would never overthrow the government. To make the country great again – “

“Isn’t the country great now?” he had asked; Poland had come out of its Communist years with one of the fastest growing economies in Europe.

“Economically, yes. But look at these attacks we’ve been facing from various factions. Look at your family. Street battles started by anarchists and foreigners. Is that our way of life? We have our church, and our families we need to protect.” Aleksey passed the bottle of clear liquid to Grzegorz; Grzegorz took a swig and the potent bimber, moonshine, seared his throat. The pain of his family’s deaths retreated in the haze of camaraderie built with the passing of the bottle.

Later, as the afternoon paled at the edges of the blackout curtains, Grzegorz lay in his bedroll, alone in the room; the men had gone on another mission. Alone, he thought, he could mourn, but try as he would, he felt too numb to react. We are men, he thought, remembering the boasts and toasts he had shared with Aleksey and Jan.

He heard someone slip through the open door." It's just me," Dominika whispered as she sat down beside his head. " Are you doing okay?"

“I guess," he grunted, feeling impolite. "No, really," he reiterated.” I'm okay.”

"I just don't think you should be alone," Dominika soothed. "But I'm here for you." She lay down beside him and put her arm around him. "Is that better?"

It was, a little. "Yes," he said.

Then she leaned in and kissed him, pulling back the blanket, exposing his borrowed black sweats. Her mouth, her hands bruised him, but he did not fight, because he felt powerless, because the act kept the dull ache from him for those few moments.

Soon after Dominika left, or a hundred years later, the sun, through a crack in the shades, diminished and then faded. Dinnertime passed, and he remembered that he hadn’t eaten since the bread that morning.

Finally steps ascended the stairs and clambered into his room.

“You," Jan called out. "Grzesiek ,wakeup. We have need of you."

"What for ?" Grzegorz sat up. Aleksey stood in the doorway; Jan stood just outside.

"We have found the man who killed your family. We know where he goes to drink. You can take your revenge on him, right in that tavern, and no one will know the better."

“You know it’s him?” Grzegorz asked.

“Of course, we do. We have been following him these two nights.” Aleksey sounded certain, more certain than Grzegorz felt.

“Don’t you want to get yours back?” Dominika chided. “Be a man.”

Grzegorz felt a rage rise in him, a rage without words. “Take me to him ," Grzegorz decided, feeling power replace the lassitude that had overwhelmed him.

The three, Aleksey, Jan, and Grzegorz stood in the doorway of a noisy, working class tavern while Dominika stood as lookout. One man sat at the bar next to an empty seat, too well-dressed for the place, occasionally looking toward the door as if he waited for someone. “That’s him,” Aleksey whispered. "Go in there. All it would take is for you to lay hands on him and -- "

Grzegorz hesitated." I will not kill him in plain sight in a room full of people,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling his knees weaken.

“Go to the alley. We will bring him to you " Jan instructed.

Grzegorz fled for the alley, walking past Dominika, and waited. He stared at the wall as if he could memorize every brick, every crudely scrawled piece of graffiti. He was a man. Aleksey and Jan had said so, hadn’t they? And men did what they had to to protect, to serve a higher ideal.

He heard a scuffle at the entry to the alley and looked up from his hands. Jan held the man with arms pinned behind him while Aleksey punched him again and again in the face and stomach.  The man soon slumped in defeat.

Grzegorz tensed as they brought the man toward him. He thought to flee for just a moment, but --

"Grzegorz,” Aleksey demanded, "Do it now. "

“Do what?" Gzegorz stammered, knowing well what Aleksey asked.

" Kill the man," Dominika shrieked. “He killed your family."

The man mumbled, pale: “I didn’t kill your family. I don’t even know who your family is.”

“Grzesiek !" Aleksey commanded.

The rage returned, cutting through the confusion. Grzegorz touched the man’s arm, feeling the stickiness of blood. He thought of his parents, lying in the rubble of his house, of his sister Liliana, only ten, who had been a light in his life, dead with his parents. He felt their deaths and transferred that ice into the body of the man in front of him. He felt the man slump between the two who restrained him, dead weight. Dead.

His heart did not surge from revolutionary zeal nor did the ache in his heart lessen. Grzegorz’s family were still dead. The pain in his chest, the constant feeling of the tears about to break now mingled with the breath-stopping horror of being damned.

“Look how powerful you are!" Dominika cooed, patting his shoulder. "We need you ."

They needed him. To be their killer. Because guns were obvious and could be guarded against. He could have killed the man in the tavern, and everyone would have seen it as a heart attack. In his mind, he saw himself lay hands on the mayor, the police, even the Prime Minister, Over and over people slumped at his touch. ceased to breathe.

“No,” he cried out. He reached toward the man, the stranger, to touch him, to raise him back to life --

Aleksey and Jan dropped the body and grabbed for him . He twisted from their grasp and fled.

Grzegorz knew not how far he had run, nor where he ended up, until he looked at the sodden ruin of his family home, surrounded by red tape. “Mama i Tata,” he murmured. “Mother, father.” He whispered the names of his siblings: “Liliana, Antoni, Jakub.” Then he prayed: O mój Jezu, przebacz nam nasze grzechy. O my Jesus, forgive us our sins …

“There is never a sin so big that it can’t be forgiven,” a man’s voice said. Grzegorz turned to see a stout, greying man standing behind him. A grandfather, no doubt.

“How about murder?” Grzegorz stammered, feeling himself torn inside out, with his grief as his skin.

“Under duress? After your family dies and someone takes advantage of your grief?”

“How do you know who I am?” Grzegorz slumped back against the light pole.

“I knew your parents. I don’t know if you remember me, but I have eaten with your family once in a great while.”

Grzegorz squinted and saw a slightly familiar face, a man who would come in the evenings and talk with his parents while he himself strummed in the basement. “Mr. Przybyszewski, right?”

“Call me Przymyslaw, ok?” Przymeslaw nodded, looking benignant, like a Santa Claus in training. “Would you have brought him back if you could?"

Grzegorz considered, the trembling starting in his shoulders and overtaking his body. He had killed. “How do you know about this?”

“The truth? I pay attention to things around me. For example, Red Future, who present themselves as the hand of a Communist renaissance instead of the tool of a Russian oligarch.” Przemyslaw made a dismissive gesture.

“Who are you with?” Grzegorz demanded. “How do you know this?”

“I’m just a storyteller, but I have friends in the elected government. I believe that we should keep or change our government by straightforward means – elections and, of course, the time-honored peaceful protest. But,” Przemyslaw sobered, “the question is ‘Who are you with?’”

“I’m with nobody. Dominika said that my family was killed because of me.”

“They were,” Przemyslaw said, shaking his head, “but do you think it’s strange they never spoke of who killed them?”

The knowledge hit Grzegorz with a sickening jolt. Dominika with her fire talent, looking at her hands. The black sweats he wore, smelling of smoke. Dominika’s convenient placement at the burning house. The fact that Aleksey and Dominika knew who he was …

The trembling became too much and he collapsed to the ground, weeping, naked except for his grief.

"What now?" Grzegorz asked as he sat in Przemyslaw’s cozy and cluttered living room, after a bath and clean clothes and as much stew as he could manage to eat."

"You could go back to Red Future,” Przemyslaw ventured. “You could go out on your own, where your open nature will make you a victim of some other faction. You no doubt go with whichever uncle had your guardianship. Or you could come live with me until you come of age. I think that whoever has been assigned as your guardian would relinquish that to me if I put forth that I’ll apprentice you.”

"What would you have me do for you?" Grzegorz growled, sensing that his open nature was a relic of his earlier life, the one where he was a child and his family still lived.

"I would have you finish your schooling. And mourn your family. And develop some way to deal with your gift."

"Gift? More like a curse! Grzegorz muttered.

"It is a gift," Pyemyslaw corrected. "You’re not the only one thus gifted, if the stories are correct. The gifts are usually carried from generation to generation, but some arise spontaneously."

"Do you have a gift?"

"I don't believe so, unless the ability to memorize people's lives is a talent beyond ordinary ability. I am a storyteller, is all."

“I highly doubt that, given your penchant for, um, storytelling. Just don’t do me dirty. I’ll – God, no,” Grzegorz stammered as he saw Przemyslaw’s face turn pale. “Never that, not for as long as I live.”

Przemyslaw exhaled loudly, and the tension bled from the room. 

“Now for you to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we will call your relatives and put your family to rest.”

Grzegorz took a deep breath. There would be time, plenty of time to mourn, he thought. But for the moment, he was tired, so tired.