Absolute Sunset Read Online Free PDF Page A

which they would carry to their tunnel-like, hidden nests, where their young were waiting. Janusz smiled and took another step. His foot sank into cool, sticky sludge rather than landing safely on solid ground. He lost his balance and wheeled his arms so as not to fall. His leg was stuck fast. With the other one he searched for stable footing on a wet stump, but couldn’t find it amidst the yellowish algae that covered the wood.
    “Damn it!” Janusz cried, tumbling into the deep water where he’d been fishing just a little while ago.
    He choked on muddy river water. It tasted a little like a Christmas Eve carp, a fish that loved the riverbed. He kicked powerfully to get to the surface. His feet struck something hard and Janusz opened his eyes to see what that was.
    He recognised an old fragment of fence, finished with pointed spikes. Somebody had cut it away and thrown it into water—people often disposed of unused items this way. The fence stood almost vertically, stuck in the riverbed, lurking.
    Janusz stroked hard with his arms and shot above the water. He surfaced gasping for air, as if he had run several hundred metres at full speed. He felt like his heart would jump out of his chest. He even forgot about the rod. Barbels and burbots, roused by his thrashing, rubbed against his legs, churning up the water.
    “Yuck!” Janusz screamed in disgust, feeling their slippery bodies around him.
    “Be quiet!” he said to himself, and stretched out to float on the surface of the river, calming his madly pumping heart. The fish swam away and hid between roots and in underwater hollows. The fence now seemed ordinary to him, no longer a threat. There was just enough space that he could get past it if he wanted. He could grab his fishing rod and make his way back to the footbridge.
    Janusz stopped in the shallows for a moment and glanced at Hanka again. She waved to him. He hesitated.
    “Grab the fishing rod and come back, Daddy!” she called to him, urging him on with a gesture.
    Janusz listened to her, although the subtle murmur of the river suddenly seemed ominous to him, and the orange sun, instead of cheerfully lighting the ripples on the water, made the river to look as if it was on fire, like meadows in autumn.
    Eventually, Janusz began swimming. He reached the rod in two strokes, grabbed it by the top, and pulled. It came away smoothly, but the fishing line had tangled up somewhere and the reel was empty. Most likely the fish unspooled the entire line while swimming away.
    Janusz wanted to find at least a little of the line, which was expensive. He found a piece in the water and gently pulled on it, then retreated to the shallows where he slowly reeled the rest of it in, a motion that had always calmed him.
    Suddenly he felt powerful resistance and then something pulled on the line and once again began unreeling it. Janusz reacted like a consummate fisherman. He jerked soundly with the rod and the fish shot out of the water. It was a pike. And it was still on the hook.
    “Yeah!” Janusz cried joyfully, forgetting all about the pointed tips of the fence deep under the river and Hanka’s weeping. He fought with the pike, which might still easily get away, though it was tired. After a moment, Janusz managed to pull the fish in. He grabbed it by the gills and triumphantly lifted up.
    “Hania! Look!” he called out.
    “Congratulations, Daddy!” Hanka replied, applauding.
    They dressed the fish right there on the riverbank. They packed it into the plastic bag, drank their water, and then caught the intercity bus home. On the way back, Janusz decided that Hanka’s hysteria, the sunken fence, the fish, and even Hanka’s dream a few days before, which he had remembered while scaling the fish, weren’t related. His daughter was napping in the next seat, sweaty and disarrayed. He had a pike. And a coincidence is just a coincidence, nothing more.



5
    Sabina—A Dull, Late Morning
    As soon as Hanka and Janusz left,