Talk twenty five.
Canberra, 07th January
- See, we got to the capital of Australia Canberra by bus in only three hours, not in six as you’d thought.
- Everything’s fine, but it was a total surprise to find out that in a three-hundred-thousand citizens city all the shops would close at 5 pm. We couldn’t buy anything for our evening meal. The restaurants are too expensive for us.
- Another ugly surprise was a fee of USD 17 they wanted to charge us for a day of the Internet connection. In the Asian countries the Internet was free in the hotels.
- There’s nothing like McDonald’s, isn’t there? They always offer the Internet for free!
- I’m proud that we managed to complete our ambitious plan of visiting the New and Old Parliament Buildings, the Museum and World War I and II Memorial. Dozens of thousands Australian soldiers fell in the wars.
- The sightseeing meant walking some distances.
- Did you know, Canberra was chosen the capital of Australia as a result of a competition between Melbou-rne and Sydney already in 1908? Only in 1927 the Parliament started its functioning. Today the building is called the Old Parliament.
- What I like is the beautiful way they integrated the New Parliament into the hill above the former Parliament.
- Not everybody here likes it. They criticize it for lack of architectural modesty and excessive grandeur.
- In our country a sign of architectural modesty are church constructions with The Temple of Providence taking the lead!
- Let’s leave Polish architecture alone!
- As any other artificially created city, Canberra lacks a soul. Besides, it’s dead in the evening.
- This is a government and finance city. People relax at home after work, and they go to their home towns at weekends.
- So do new citizens of Warsaw. Canberra night life is bland.
- It’s January now, many people are on holiday, there are no students. Let’s sit down here in an open-air restaurant and talk.
- Again about that dense atmosphere around you?
- Don’t exaggerate with the density. Somehow my life got caught up in that gay environment.
- I’d like to finish off the topic of Tomek, because I’m a bit scared where this conversation might lead us to.
- Is there anything about Tomek I don’t know, but you do?
- If we start talking about it know, we might lose the chronology.
- Let’s take a small leap in time. It’s 2001, you and I’ve lived together in Szczecin for over six months. You meet your friend from Gorzów who is tormented by his loneliness and you decide to help him and arrange his meet-up with a guy who you both found in the Internet.
- I went there with Łukasz, we met the guy whose hands I left Łukasz in.
- In his hands?
- I told you everything when I came back home.
- The following day you got an invitation from that man to meet him. This time without Łukasz.
- I told you his name.
- I didn’t pay much attention to this then. And now I don’t remember what suddenly struck me. It could’ve been a word you used telling me about the first meeting him or some other detail. Intuitively, I sensed it must be Tomek. The same Tomek. Indeed, I’d never told you about him before because I considered the story outdated, from the end of the twentieth century.
- Tomek came up with some excuse and asked me to see him.
- Then I burst. I did want you to go and see him because that was the only way we could find out his real intentions. But first, I had to tell you all I knew about him, so that you were aware who you’d deal with. My premonition of evil came true.
- Tomek must’ve extracted more information about me from Łukasz.
- First of all, about us being together.
- Tomek’s goal was simple. He wanted to mess up between us. He straightforwardly told me that I shouldn’t be with a guy like you and he was ready to help me find a more convenient man.
- The revenge on me was supposed to be cruel.
- As you see, he didn’t reach his goal. I don’t know what happened to Tomek later on. Łukasz soon took the road to the world and never called for his suit which he’d left in the store with us for some days only.
- From that moment I managed not to know anything about Tomek for over five years. One evening I saw a news programme with presented some Polish people who’d buy relatively cheap houses in the area of ex- communist Germany, close to Szczecin. One of them was Tomek standing in front of a nice little house which he’d just bought for unusually little money.
- We didn’t have any acquaintances in common, so no details could reach us.
- About six months later I got a phone call at PROGRESS. A young voice introduced himself as Tomek’s boy-friend but he wouldn’t give his name. He called me because he’d heard about me and PROGRESS quite often from Tomek. He wanted to inform me that a week before Tomek died in the hospital in Berlin.
- Did you ask what happened?
- Yes, I did. But without asking I’d guessed the cause of his death. I was told it was the disease which killed reckless gays. Tomek was buried in the cemetery in his home town Dziwnów.
- You weren’t at the funeral, were you? Why did you want to find his grave in the local cemetery?
- To irrevocably close down this chapter of my life.
