Wire Tap

not letters, so often pre-opened

we could put nothing in the open

not even literature, also closed

in on itself, in officials’ drawers or

in little cardboard coffins of redacted versions 

Stanislaw Baranczak, What will be the testimony, translated from Polish by me*

‘Glad I’ve reached you home. You alright?’

She never calls here. Rigid and reserved and she’s never liked him one bit. And that perfunctory gladness, though she knows full well he can’t leave the flat. Suppose it’s only fair to pretend on the phone. Someone could be listening.

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Thanks. How have you been?’ 

Line crackles. Air is hot. Wires are melting down to the ground, and if they tap it, when they finally do, they will earth. It’s very simple physics, and then the line will die. Nothing but silence and the tall, unmoving figures that watch his windows. Coming and going as they please while he eats through every last can of beans stashed in the pantry. Every slice of bread from the frantic freezer doing overtime in the heat, about to have its power cut off and melt down its contents.

She breathes finally. A louder crackle. ‘I have been picking mushrooms. I could bring you some? You like mushrooms so.’ She has news. There’s news. He keeps a sheet under the phone for code, but this is easy. His hairs stand on end and stop sweat trickling down his forearms. 

‘Oh, right? Mushrooms in July?’

‘Freak crop. Did rain a little a few weeks back, didn’t it.’ It is impossible to tell extended metaphors from gibberish cover-up. But she is smart. There is no time to think on his response.

‘You’re welcome here any time.’ In some godforsaken, arid field, the wires inch towards the ground, hanging loose between poles.

‘How have you been?’ Her question is laboured. She waits a long time, then spits it out quickly, like a semi-automated weapon.

‘I have been relaxing at home,’ he says. He tells her though they both know. Rule number one: never implicate. ‘Have been eating very healthy, too.’ All the beans, beans in vinegar, bean salad, baked beans, black beans. He’s discovered even flatulence gives up eventually.

He can’t think what else to say. He needs to know what mushrooms she’s picked up, but they need the pretence of old acquaintances catching up. And they are, in a way, old acquaintances. She is his sister, the only him that’s ever mattered. The only him that understands, that will lend a cool hand all over body on a day like this, resolving the heat, bringing back calm. How they sneak around, because it isn’t normal to be like them. It’s not very popular with the sausage-in-a-bap crowd. How they fight against the regime, rage against the systems: political, social, hormonal. 

His sister must know. But she’s never said, because they are disgusting, always hiding in bushes just to kiss, just to exchange hugs. It doesn’t bother him, no, this deception. It extends how they live already. Talking in code, changing nicknames every two months. Leaving lights on, pretending to obey the curfew. Plotting in basements. Protesting in the streets, last will sealed in an envelope on the coffee table.

It is very quiet on the line. She’s always disliked him probably like so: he’d led her brother astray. But if she cared to know the truth, it was her brother who dealt the first kiss, first frantic ripping of clothes. The wires are hanging from pole to pole in a smile, ever widening. 

‘So, that’s me,’ he tries again. He can feel something swelling inside. A desire beyond words, to see him again. To know. ‘Healthy food and a lot of rest. Sure is hot out there, isn’t it?’

Perhaps she nods. He swears he can hear her swallow. If she’s not going to say anything else, then it’s time. He swallows too.

‘Yes… very hot,’ she stumbles. He can barely understand the words. The wires are now watching the field from up close, a mass of ploughed, dry bullets in the shadowless air. ‘They say it’s the hottest July on record.’

His sweat turns very cold. The hairs are up again like dams. ‘I’ve been meaning to say actually… whatever happened to your cat? You said you’d lost him? Is he back?’

He raises himself off the sofa and looks through the lacy curtain his mother insisted on. It’s useful to him now: he can see out, they can’t see in. But nobody is watching on the street, not at noon. Even authority has no immunity to heat stroke. 

‘Our cat,’ she repeats. Something hollow in the sound like dropping a penny down a dried-up well. 

‘Your cat.’ He can feel in his bones the mushrooms she is about to bring him are dried up, poisonous. 

‘Yes. Found him,’ she pauses for a couple of steadying breaths. ‘He’s gone.’

The hands that would touch him cooler. The mouth that would drink him dry. The eyes that would watch him hot, and the cycle would start again. Hot, cold, intimate, distant, open, closed. 

They can’t scream and cry. Not down the phone. Not to each other. Their vocal wires run on finest circuits, never shorting, never earthing, operated by a switch that doesn’t fail. Their lives depend on it. 

He looks outside. How they talk about progress, how one day would come they would marry, how people would change like they had in the West. How they talked, he realises. How they could even have children. Could never now. A hole where a life once was, even if in the narrowest pipe dream. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. Close to breaking. The wires, the wires. 

‘How… how did it happen?’ He didn’t know whether he could understand the extended code. He couldn’t even go to the funeral. So he had to try.

‘He,’ pause again. A jagged breath. ‘Someone… he went into someone’s…’

The wires come to rest on the earth they so long for. Not a crackle, or a pop, or a bang. No dramatic performance. The line clicks and dies. He can always tell the clicks and what they mean.

The air is so thick if there’s any sound left, it is eaten like matter in a black hole. His fridge is off, the familiar hum gone. And the fan he uses sparingly because electricity costs so much. Nothing but silence in concrete. He closes all windows. Brings a pillow from the bedroom. Sits on the sofa again, head down in the softness. It smells like his shampoo faintly, sweaty nights, and something else, someone else. The last of him. Salt and sugar.

The switch flips. His own wires now conduct, alive with the rest of him. Alive and full of beans and alone. He screams.