Killing Auntie. Andrzej Bursa
me immediately after killing Auntie. I was aware now that disposing of the corpse would require a long effort but I believed I was up to it. Auntie’s sudden disappearance should not arouse any suspicions from the neighbors or friends. She often went away without any warning and could even be absent for several days at a time. I decided that after ten days – during which time I should certainly manage to get rid of the corpse – I would start a search. First I would write to Granny, then to friends and Auntie’s business associates in other towns, and finally I would place an ad in the press and call the police.
The food in the larder would last me only two or three days. After breakfast I searched the flat for money. In Auntie’s handbag, in the linen cupboard between the sheets and in the drawer of her night table I found bills totaling one thousand and seven hundred zlotys. That would tide me over for now. Later I might sell Auntie’s clothes and her jewelry: her wedding ring, the ruby ring and the small necklace. Apart from that, inside the corpse’s mouth I would find a gold bridge, though I should probably wait a bit before selling it. At any rate, I’d be financially secure for a few months. Then it would be summer, I could go off on a camping trip, and in my last year at university I’d find a job.
I already started thinking of finding suitable, not-too-absorbing employment. But first things first – I had to get cracking with disposing of the corpse. I knew I couldn’t do it in one go, that the job had to be spread over several days and that I would have to be extremely careful. It crossed my mind that I could burn part of the body in the stove. Frequent trips with packages containing bits of the corpse struck me as too risky.
The lectures started in the afternoon. So I decided to get on with it now. What I could not decide on was whether to light the kitchen stove or the one in the bedroom. Eventually I settled on both. The flat was pretty cold. Although I sleep and spend most of my time in the room, recently I’d come to like sitting around the kitchen. Perhaps it was that silly power which brings the murderer to the scene of his crime, which one reads so much about in novels. Of course I did not feel like a murderer. Killing Auntie was in my case the result of so many interlocking mental states, of complexes and depression that I had analyzed and digested so many times before, and analyzing and digesting them all over again would have been only another pointless routine. In fact, my engagement with the corpse ruled out in advance any element of remorse, if I’d had any in the first place. The corpse was simply my partner in a hazardous game, in which admittedly I couldn’t win anything, but on the other hand could lose my life. I even had a kind of respect for the corpse, the way one usually does for a strong opponent.
I had a bit of stage fright before lighting the stove. It was a much more difficult task than peeling potatoes. I tried not to admit it to myself though. With a poker and a coal spade I swept out the ash, revealing the bare grate. Quite a large proportion of the ash missed the bucket and ended up on the floor. But I didn’t worry too much about it. The floor needed to be scrubbed anyway. It had small puddles of Auntie’s dried-up blood on it, as well as a few drops of mine from the unfortunate finger. I thought I would have to wash the shirt too; its sleeves were stained with blood from when I was trying to bandage my wound. Taking bloodied linen to a laundry would be rather risky in my situation.
I placed a few sheets of old newspaper on the grate, and on top of them a few dry splinters of wood. Only then I decided to place among all this flammable material some pieces of coal. The first match went out the moment I brought it near the stove. The second and the third likewise. I remembered that there was a draft inside the stove that put out small flames. I hit on the idea of lighting a piece of paper outside the stove and putting it inside only when it was properly burning. Alas, I ran out of matches. I looked on top of the stove; I found several boxes, all empty. A search of the entire flat was equally fruitless. I was delighted when on Auntie’s night table I found a box which was heavy and rattled when I picked it up. But all the matches inside were burned. There was no other way: I had to go downstairs and buy matches. I accepted it without grumbling.
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