Rats can be heard in Nowa Huta - Tygodnik w INTERIA.PL

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28 years old, 188 centimeters tall, blond, high forehead, very similar to her mother. He eats at the Społem bar. He came to Nowa Huta two years ago. Trying to forget. His mother abused him and his father mentally and physically for as long as he could remember...

Nowaojczyzna

He rented his first room in the Górali estate, in an old, dilapidated block of flats, near the Central Square. The stairwell stank of urine. Dirt, moisture, two liquor stores nearby, cheap clothes, a solarium. Krystyna opened it - about sixty years old, direct, face swollen. "Do you have a girlfriend?" she said good morning. She said to call herself "you". Quarreled with her son - he only came for money. When she refused to give, he pushed her down the stairs. She didn't call the police. He's a son, after all, "manda, but a son".

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He found a job via the Internet: assistance in organizing EU training. The money at the beginning wasn't much, the main thing was that he got out of the house.

- Before leaving, I was unemployed for half a year: registration at the office, monthly visits, summons, I felt humiliated. "I've never been told so many times before that I'm good for anything." Father took over the song. When I tried to help him, it always ended in a fight. You can't do anything, he repeated. They never took me seriously.

When she was angry with me, she would leave the house. She said she had had enough of me. He's leaving and won't be back. I apologized, grabbed her hand and held it. She broke free and left. She was going to a neighbor. She put on formal clothes, took her handbag, put on high heels. I thought she was really leaving me. I stood at the window and cried.

God punished

He went for long walks in the evenings - that's how he got to know Nowa Huta. - Tracksuits will always be here, it's their enclave, just like young mothers with prams, pensioners, drunks lying on the lawns not moored in their families. Nowa Huta has a different blood type than Kraków, he believes.

The last months before moving out were the worst. Łukasz admits that he had high hopes for the trip. "I thought if I moved out of my old folks and finally left, I'd be free, happier."

The memory of the last quarrel with my mother appeared after a month, in front of the TV, like hunger. It was dull and compulsive.

Two months before moving out, she made a fuss. - She told me to leave the house - Łukasz admitted that he had found a job and was going to Warsaw for three weeks for training. He wanted to borrow some money from his father, quietly. He went with it to his mother. She said to Łukasz that she lived only for him, she devoted her whole life to him, and he treats her like that. She lunged at him with her fists. She was hitting her head. He tried to protect himself with his hands, finally pushed her away - she landed on the wall, she cried. "Why did God punish me so ch..." she knelt and started to cry. Luke stood there and didn't know what to do. Father came running. He started punching him in the face. He didn't give back. After all, you must not raise a hand against a parent, because it will wither. After all, he gave him the money. Quietly.

I remember my mother always arguing with my father when they were in the car. Soon there would be screams, she opened the door and wanted to get out while driving. "Calm down, don't make circuses" - her father stopped her and stopped the car on the side of the road. She got out and walked. He followed her, stopped. "Get in, don't be silly." She finally got in. We drove in silence. Then she didn't speak to him for several days. He was kneeling in front of her, apologizing, kissing her hands. She didn't talk to me either. I thought it was me.

Son like from the series

Krystyna - platinum hair, damaged perm, fingers yellowed from nicotine. It gives the impression of conflict. He blinks nervously. "I saw right away that he was a sensitive boy, not some nerd," she admits. He has a very good opinion about Łukasz. - Totally different than my Raphael. The other one just comes for pints - frowns, puffs on a cigarette. - He lives on Steel Street, but to come and see if his mother is dead yet? Not in the way of a bum." He shakes his head, fumbles for an ashtray.

He's been leaving the house less and less lately. He sits and watches series, game shows. She says that her Rafał is similar to the young doctor from "For Good and for Bad". "What the child did to this young nurse," he explains. He likes colored newspapers. It's on time. He knows who's sleeping with whom, which actress has someone on the side. 'They're all after one penny, one after the other, like dogs, dwarf nerds. But if you're young, let them have fun. Every age has its rights, not the young - he winks at Łukasz, extinguishes the cigarette and throws it into the toilet.

- I would like to have such a son, not this scoundrel. Exemplary, does not drink, does not smoke, money is always on time. A bachelor with his mouth full - laughs Krystyna. "Even if he hadn't, it would have worked out somehow," he winked familiarly.

Krystyna reads "Życie na hot" aloud and comments on an ongoing basis. "Look how young she is," he points to photos of a famous actress kissing a man her father's age. - How not to be disgusted. What people. Dwarf minnows. For piñaches with every polesie.

She's dried up, uncomfortably thin. His face is deeply lined, gothic, spiky teeth worn away by nicotine. He gets up, lights a cigarette, and leans his elbows on the windowsill. She thinks, nods to her neighbor. He always knows everything, has an opinion on every subject. Sound like an exhaust pipe.

Rafał calls Łukasz a fagot. Ever since his mother rented him a room, he's always resented her. - You cook dinners for this fagot of yours, and you don't care about your own son. What kind of mother are you - she stands astride and wraps the leash around her finger. He is tall, overgrown, lush eyebrows, a dragon on his calf, snakes on his shoulder draw attention.

It usually comes at the beginning of the month when the mother gets her pension. She worked in Cepelia on Central Square. He resents his son for not getting married yet. - If he hasn't found a normal one yet, he won't find it. I mean he looks like a human. But where is there... He appears when he wants something, a dummy.

Never admit when you're wrong

Luke's mother worked in a hospital for thirty years. He has been retired for a year and a half. He can't find his place. She loved her job. She was likeable, cordial and full of initiative. Privately - despotic, brusque, very religious. "If you don't go to church, you won't eat dinner," Lukasz quotes his mother.

She was friends with many doctors. She said they couldn't have done it without her. Łukasz remembers how she criticized them for dirty, smoke-yellow aprons. She did not respect uneducated people. She herself had a secondary education. Luke remembers one piece of advice in particular: "Never admit error or ignorance."

When he was applying for a job in Krakow, he kept hearing his mother's voice in his head: "You're not good for anything." He went through the next stages, he was proud of himself, it was good. But everything was coming back.

He doesn't have many friends, he's kind of a loner. In Krakow, he only knows a friend from high school who has already had his own life...

"I'm afraid to trust," he says when I ask him if he likes being around people. “I feel like if I open up and show who I really am, they won't accept me.

Lukasz asks us to make an appointment in a week. I need some time. He needs to think things over.

I remember a review at a music bonfire. In turn, each child presented the prepared song. Tremendous stress. I went to the center, bowed, and sat down at the piano. My mind was completely blank. I looked at my mother. She had her head down, not looking. I apologized and went to the place. I put her head in my lap and cried. When we left, all she said was, "You've embarrassed me. I thought I was going to sink into the ground." She's been heating it up for a good few months.

Krystyna can hear the rats

When it's warm, she goes to Zalew Nowohucki. He lies down on the grass and watches the anglers. It returns via Sports and Sunny. He likes to look into people's apartments through open windows, watch them talk, sit on balconies, grill in front of the block of flats. Later they have dinner - Kryśka talks about the whole day, complains about Nowa Huta's crap, headache, reads the tabloids. He does not go to Krakow. There's no point. You have to have pins there.

Recently, she told about her mother, who survived the war, and whose teeth were knocked out by a German. - She worked in a factory, sorting onions. He came and knocked her whole mouth out. For nothing. She had to get up and sort further, sort like a hen - she gets up, looks for cigarettes. There is a pulsating purple vein at her temples.

Krystyna complains about rats. He says that they prowl in Nowa Huta at night, they come out of the sewage system, they wander around, spreading plagues. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to smoke. He stands at the window and listens. - There are millions of them. It's a noise, a kind of... - he freezes, searches for the right word - ... like the sound of dripping water, something with water anyway.

He's not in the best mood. Raphael was there this morning. - I must have been fooled. It's through this thread.

Lukasz feels remorse. He knows that his mother always meant well for him. She emphasized that thanks to her sacrifices, he graduated from political science. It wasn't her fault she was so nervous and explosive. He hears these promptings, these remarks all the time. They are like rats coming out of the sewer.

He always felt inferior: at school, in college, now at work. He despises those weaker than himself. He's ashamed of it.

Moving

Things started to go wrong with Łukasz at the beginning of the year. He spoke less and less. He wasn't seeing anyone, he wasn't going anywhere. The company was tedious, reading unnecessary. At work he felt insecure, afraid to contact people. He felt he was losing control.

- I was pretending. I tried to mask my lack of confidence. I felt I had to be like them. So I was someone else. People picked it up.

Last night in Kryśka's apartment he had a dream. He dreamed that he was in an empty butcher's shop, the one from the times of the People's Republic of Poland. “I stabbed my mother in the back with a knife. The next day I pretended in front of everyone that nothing had happened, that everything was normal. The neighbor knew everything. I asked him not to tell anyone. When I opened my eyes, I was glad it was a dream. If it turned out that I did something like that, in some kind of amok or something... I don't know what I would do.

At the end of January, Łukasz moved out of the Górali estate. - Rafał had nowhere to live - the girl threw him out of the apartment. Kryśka was afraid that he would embarrass her, but what was she supposed to do? He came begging. She asked me to understand.

He rented a room with two students in the Krakowiaków estate, near the Ludowy Theatre. He's already used to Nowa Huta. Hence, he was close to work.

Krakowiaków housing estate - a gray, sad cluster of family houses from the 1950s, mostly inhabited by elderly people. Claustrophobic, stuffy, dense buildings. The madness here smells like burnt fat.

When I asked about roommates, he said they were busy with their studies and barely saw each other. They spoke little to each other. Sometimes just a quick "hello" in the morning or evening, passing each other in the hall.

Marta, Łukasz's roommate, student of pedagogy at the Jagiellonian University: "He locked himself in his room, isolated himself. Sometimes we talked in the morning in the kitchen. Everything was fine. He seemed a bit of a savage. He said he was tired of work and needed to look for something new "No one called him, no one came. At least I never saw anyone."

Luke didn't want to see each other anymore. The last time we saw each other, he spoke little. He explained that he had a bad time with his time, that he had business trips, trainings, a lot of work.

Tomek, the second roommate: "He stayed in his room all day. He hardly went out. We thought he had a lot of work. I didn't want to be nosy. We were often away from home. It was a busy time at the university, we were in a hurry to catch up Besides, we got used to the fact that Łukasz lived next door. We only shared an apartment. He didn't go out to parties with us. We decided that it was his business ".

In May, Marta and Tomek went to Sweden for two weeks. Luke was left alone.

Mother showed my certificates with a red stripe whenever someone came to us. She made me play the piano every name day and Christmas. What hurts me the most is that my father gave up on her so quickly. She took control of him. I think he'd be happier if he left her. She would find someone, someone stronger. I don't hate her. Just like me, she's a victim...

Secret Passage

The skyscraper in the housing estate near the Ark looks like an earthworm from the outside. It is long, yellowish in color, with millions of blinking eyes, visible divisions into segments. It is adjacent to a kindergarten and a playground. During the day you can hear the screams of children playing and the creaking of swings. At night, the colors stop working, the lawns fade, the trees turn black. This is God's precinct - a few blocks away is the Lord's Ark. It is invisible after dark. Disappears.

The red elevator takes you to the tenth floor. Anyone can enter. The front door is open. In winter, it is a night shelter for the homeless - they lie down on the mezzanines and sleep. It's like in the mother's belly, the radiators are full blast. Then a few more stairs up. Of the three small eyes - a man can easily slip through them - the middle one is open. Looking down, shivers run through my body. You can see the car park, cars arranged in a herringbone pattern, another skyscraper in front - this is the Kazimierzowskie housing estate. Peace and quiet. This is where you go to the other side.

- The body was in pieces. It tore his arm off, crushed his skull, a police spokesman said. - He died on the spot.

According to the protocol, Lukasz jumped out at 1.15 am. He was wearing a green jacket, a black sweatshirt, navy blue pants and black trainers. The body was placed on the stomach. Limbs twisted, broken, spine shattered. He fell to the concrete in front of the cage, having previously bumped against the roof over the entrance. The occupants of the skyscraper saw nothing. They will sleep. They claim that they did not even hear the moment of fall.

Krystyna learned about the accident from a neighbor. He goes to light a candle under the cage of a skyscraper, then hang up obituaries. But to do something so stupid. To this day, I can't believe it. I spit in my beard. I never would have guessed. He was like his own. Why can't this one hit the other one?

He was buried on May 14 in his hometown of Myszków. He was 29 years old. Nowa Huta was his last place of residence.

What a suffocation, a nightmare... It's impossible to sleep. In addition, the cat meows constantly, he would eat anything. A little boy took an earthworm out of the ground and cut it in half. "Now you won't be alone anymore," he said.