CHAPTER XVIII

The Empty Stroller

Two weeks apart were enough to make Piotr stop believing that he could calmly wait for his wife and Paweł to return. Everything they had brought from the apartment on Mazowiecka Street was still in Szczypiorno: furniture placed wherever there was room, unopened boxes and bags that left only narrow passages through the cramped cottage. They had not even had time to decide where anything belonged. Małgorzata had gone to Janów for two weeks, leaving him among possessions that were meant to herald a new life but looked instead like the belongings of a family stranded halfway to its destination.

They spoke by telephone whenever they could afford the cost of the call. Małgorzata's voice, Paweł's words, and ordinary questions about the day did nothing to ease his longing. After he put down the receiver, the cottage seemed emptier still. Piotr walked among the bags and looked inside the boxes, but he had no reason to unpack them. He did not know whether his wife would truly return, and without her, any attempt to make a home of the place seemed pointless.

At last he packed a few shirts, a pair of shoes, and the book on bioenergy that he had been reading in the evenings. He locked the cottage and set out for Janów Podlaski. No one was waiting at the bus stop. They did not meet until he reached the house on Moniuszki Street. When he embraced Małgorzata and the boy, for several moments he asked nothing about their return or their future plans. It was enough that they were together again. He still believed, however, that their stay was only temporary and that before the end of summer the family would return to Mazovia.

June 29, the name day of Piotr and Paweł, brought a welcome change. Tables were set up in front of the house; Małgorzata's parents and sisters arrived with their families, and friends came as well. There was no shortage of food or drink, and the conversations continued late into the evening. To everyone's surprise, Dr. Danuta Kulesza, Piotr's supervisor at the clinic, arrived with her husband. After weeks of uncertainty and disagreement, it was one of those summer days when even difficult matters ceased, for a few hours, to demand a resolution. When the music began, Dr. Kulesza asked Piotr to dance. Surprised, he agreed. In those days he rarely allowed himself such moments of ease.

In July, Jacek Rogala came to visit him, an old acquaintance from the Riflemen's Association and the clinic. They understood one another well. They could talk for hours about politics, faith, work, and plans that still seemed possible, although life repeatedly postponed their realization. Piotr was thinking more and more seriously about opening a practice of his own. If the family was going to remain in Janów, he at least wanted to try to build a professional future there.

Around the same time, Aleksander Wierzbiński arrived, a former instructor from Piotr's bioenergy therapy course. They were to discuss opening a practice together. The meeting began on practical terms: a room for the office, how patients would be received, and how responsibilities would be divided. Later, alcohol appeared on the table, and the conversation began to change.

Wierzbiński spoke more loudly and with fewer restraints. In time, he directed nearly all his attention toward Małgorzata. He moved closer to her, leaned in too far, and addressed her with an intimacy that suggested her husband's presence did not trouble him in the least. He did nothing that could be named outright, but the way he courted her attention was clear enough. Piotr watched with mounting distaste. Jacek, too, noticed that their guest had forgotten why he had come.

His remarks troubled them even more. The exact words later faded from memory, but their meaning and atmosphere remained. Wierzbiński spoke of nature as a force existing beyond the ordinary distinction between good and evil. He mixed religious concepts with his own ideas about energy, and when he described what he did to people during his treatments, he raised questions not only about his methods but also about the source and purpose of the power he claimed to use. At one moment he invoked God; at the next, he spoke as though faith were merely one tool among others, useful for producing a desired result.

Piotr and Jacek went outside. For a moment they stood in silence. From inside came the lecturer's voice, now raised, now lowered, along with Małgorzata's replies. The warmth of the evening did nothing to dispel their unease.

— Do you hear what he's saying? — Jacek finally asked.

— I do.

They did not need to explain their feelings at length. Both were men of faith, and they also took bioenergy practices seriously because they accepted the existence of a spiritual reality. What someone else might have dismissed as the confused ramblings of a drunken man, they perceived as contact with something dangerous. They did not begin with an ordinary prayer. They turned to the text of the Exorcism of Leo XIII, which they knew as a prayer against the activity of evil spirits.

The Exorcism of Leo XIII — Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Most glorious Prince of the heavenly hosts, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world and against the evil spirits roaming through the heavens. Come to the aid of mankind, whom God created in His image and likeness and redeemed at a great price from the bondage of Satan. The holy Church venerates you as her Guardian and Patron; to you the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed, that you may lead them into the happiness of heaven. Beseech the God of peace to crush Satan beneath our feet and not allow him to hold mankind captive or harm the Church. Carry our prayers before the throne of the Most High, that the mercy of the Lord may swiftly come before us, and seize the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bind him and cast him into the abyss, that he may no longer deceive the nations.

Standing in front of the house, they recited the words under their breath. Wierzbiński remained inside, behind two walls, and could not hear them. They had not gone far into the prayer, however, when he suddenly came outside and demanded to know what they were doing.

They did not try to deny it.

— We are reciting an exorcism — Piotr replied.

— Did you ask me whether I wanted that? — Wierzbiński snapped, although he could not have heard the words spoken outside the house.

He may simply have been outraged that two men had undertaken a religious practice directed at him without his knowledge. Yet after everything they had heard that evening, it was his choice of words that sounded most ominous to them. He did not ask why they had found his behavior disturbing. He did not reject their interpretation. Instead, he asked whether they had first asked if he wished to be freed from it. The next morning he left. The joint practice was never established.

His departure left disappointment behind, but also relief. Piotr returned in his thoughts to that evening for a long time. He had no doubt that abandoning the partnership had been the right decision. He could not decide whether they had truly encountered a spiritual danger or whether alcohol had merely exposed traits in the visitor that they had not noticed before. For Jacek and Piotr, the distinction did not seem important at the time. They knew only that they did not want to entrust people seeking help to this man.

The weeks passed, and a return to Mazovia became increasingly unlikely. Małgorzata now said openly that she did not want to go back either to Szczypiorno or to Nowy Dwór. She reminded him that they could not afford to rent another apartment and that the cottage on the plot—only five by three meters, with two small rooms and a tiny bathroom—could not comfortably accommodate a pregnant woman, a child, and all their belongings. Piotr could not honestly dispute that. He had seen the furniture placed wherever it would fit and the unopened boxes and bags that left barely enough room to move.

He did not believe, however, that the conditions were the only reason. With each passing week, he became more convinced that his wife had chosen Janów partly because she felt more secure among her parents and sisters than in a life built from the beginning with him alone. She never said so directly. Yet he saw how quickly she settled back into the old rhythm of her family home, and how easily their earlier plans to live together in Mazovia seemed no longer to belong to her.

He therefore went to Szczypiorno to collect some of their things. On the way, he stopped in Legionowo and took Czarek with him. The boy was delighted by the outing, unaware that it would prove to be the last journey shared by godfather and godson. Nothing had changed on the plot. The boxes and bags stood where they had been left, some of the furniture blocked the way, and the makeshift cottage looked more like a storage room than a place to which a family intended to return.

Piotr selected a few clothes, some books, and personal keepsakes. He left the rest packed. He did not know whether he should protect the belongings from the damp or prepare them for yet another move. The cottage, once meant to be the first stage in the construction of their own house, now held the unopened remnants of their life on Mazowiecka Street. When he carried away the small bag, he left behind far more than possessions.

In Janów, the family lived close together—so close that doors, stairways, and yards did not form clear boundaries. For Paweł, this meant security: he could always run to his grandmother or one of his aunts. For Piotr, the same closeness soon became a source of conflict. Whenever he tried to require even a minor duty of the boy, he was never dealing only with the child. At any moment, another adult might step into the dispute.

Paweł was expected to read a short passage from a book every day. The task was not beyond him, but the boy often tried to avoid it. He put the book aside, claimed that he had already read, became angry, and sometimes raised his voice until someone upstairs could hear him. Piotr knew that his son was testing whether his father's instruction truly carried any weight. For that reason, he did not want to give in.

During one such contest of wills, the door leading to Maryla's apartment opened. Piotr's sister-in-law stood on the stairs and, without asking how the argument had begun, shouted in front of the boy:

— How can you torment a child like that? You're some kind of fascist!

This was not a comment on the way he was making the boy read, nor a request that Piotr calm down. It was a public denial of his right to set expectations for his son. The word was spoken in Paweł's presence and could not be without consequence. The boy received a clear message: whenever his father demanded something of him, he need only protest loudly enough and someone from the family would come to his aid. Similar situations later repeated themselves in different forms. Piotr felt that he was no longer arguing over a few pages of reading. He was fighting for the right to be a father in that house.

Before long, however, his concern over Paweł's upbringing receded into the background. In the middle of the night, Małgorzata woke her husband. Her voice did not sound like an ordinary call.

— Piotr, something is happening. Look.

There was blood on the sheet. For several seconds they both stared at it in silence. Then everything began to move quickly: getting dressed, seeking help, going to the doctor, the hospital. Piotr was not thinking of the pregnancy in medical terms—as something that might be sustained or lost. He thought of his daughter. Even before an examination had confirmed the baby's sex, he had been certain that Rozalka was growing beneath Małgorzata's heart. Now he wondered only whether she was still alive.

His wife remained in the hospital. He returned home with Paweł and with an uncertainty he could not put aside even during the simplest tasks. He cooked, cleaned, and watched over the boy, but every knock at the door and every telephone call might bring the news he feared. He did not know whether the next day he would still be able to speak of his daughter in the future tense.

It was while Małgorzata was in the hospital that he came home one day and found Paweł missing. At first he was not alarmed. The boy often went to his grandparents or played nearby. But an hour passed, and then another. He was neither at Marianna and Ryszard's home nor in any of the neighboring houses. Piotr walked from yard to yard, questioned everyone he met, returned home, and went out again. With each passing moment, the feeling grew that he had been left alone with a responsibility that no one else acknowledged.

Only after many hours did Irena's little Fiat pull up in front of the house. Paweł got out of the car.

— He was just with me — his aunt replied when her brother-in-law challenged her.

The problem was not that the boy had spent time at her house. It was that she had taken a seven-year-old away for many hours without considering it necessary to inform the man who was then solely responsible for him. With his wife in the hospital and their daughter's life still in danger, the disregard hurt Piotr especially deeply. He did not see it as absentmindedness, but as further proof that his wife's family did not take his fatherhood seriously.

After many days, Małgorzata returned home. The doctors had managed to stop the bleeding. One thing mattered above all: the child was alive. Piotr needed no other reassurance then. Only later did he allow himself to think again about the name, the birth, and what the little girl he had long called Rozalka might look like.

Piotr had entered Paweł's life late. He had not shared the boy's first years and did not know all his habits or the rules by which his life had previously been ordered. Yet he wanted, as quickly as possible, to become his father not only in name but in the everyday meaning of the word—to influence his upbringing, set expectations, and bear responsibility for him. Perhaps he tried within a few months to occupy a place that is usually built over years.

On the other side stood a family accustomed to an entirely different order. For six years, Paweł's mother, grandparents, and aunts had decided what was good for him, what could be required of him, and when he needed to be defended. They had no intention of suddenly surrendering that role to a man who had only just entered the family. Every attempt to establish new rules therefore met resistance, and in such disputes Małgorzata most often sided with her mother and sisters.

For a time, Piotr continued to fight for his place. He lacked the experience and patience to gain it slowly. He acted firmly, sometimes too abruptly, and every conflict with the boy almost immediately became a conflict with the entire household. In the end, he began to understand that even the simplest instruction could be overturned by someone coming down the stairs or calling Paweł away.

The closer his daughter's birth came, the less strength he had for further struggles. He did not cease to regard Paweł as his son or to care for him, but he slowly withdrew from the fight for influence over the boy's upbringing. Somewhere beneath his disappointment, a thought appeared that he never voiced aloud: Do as you please—I will have Rozalka. It brought relief, but it was also the beginning of a division that would deepen with time.

Even before the ultrasound, he spoke of the baby as a daughter. He could not explain why. Perhaps it was hope so strong that it had turned into certainty, or perhaps a need to give form to someone for whom he had waited many years.

— It will be Rozalka — he kept saying.

When the examination confirmed that Małgorzata would give birth to a girl, he did not receive the news as a surprise. It felt instead like confirmation of something that, in his own world, had already happened. From then on, the waiting became still more specific. He was no longer waiting for "a baby." He was waiting for Rozalka.

He wanted to be present at her birth. In the late 1990s, a father's presence at childbirth was not yet taken for granted. A private delivery room cost money, but Małgorzata worked at the hospital, and through her employment they could expect to have a room where the father would also be allowed. The baby's position became the obstacle. Rozalka was breech, and a cesarean section would mean that Piotr had to wait outside the operating room.

He did not want to accept this without trying to act. For several evenings, he used electroacupuncture, stimulating the appropriate point near the little toe of his wife's foot. The treatment was unpleasant for her and at times painful. She agreed to it because they both wanted to avoid surgery, provided the doctors considered a natural delivery safe. After one of the treatments, Małgorzata felt the baby move violently. A subsequent ultrasound showed that their daughter had turned. Piotr associated the change with the electroacupuncture. He could not prove it, but for both of them the explanation mattered less than the fact that a delivery with the father present had once again become possible.

In the fall, Paweł began attending elementary school in Janów. This finally showed that their stay in Podlasie was not a brief visit. Piotr had once imagined that the boy would go to school in Pomiechówek and that they would establish their life in Mazovia. Now those plans had been replaced by a decision he had not made but had to accept.

In the first days of September, Małgorzata began to experience symptoms that, as a midwife, she interpreted as signs that labor was approaching. An ambulance called to the house would have taken her to Biała Podlaska, where Piotr would not have been able to attend the birth. With Irena's help, they therefore traveled to Warsaw. After examinations and several hours of waiting, they were told that there was no room on the ward and that the baby would not be born that night.

Returning to Janów meant traveling more than one hundred sixty kilometers. The next time, they might not make it. They tried to stay for a few days with Piotr's parents, but after speaking with Urszula, Adam and Jadwiga refused. Once again, access to the family apartment depended on his sister's approval. Eventually, after several hours of searching and negotiation, they found a room where the expectant mother could remain until the birth.

Rozalka was born on September 10, 1997, a few minutes before nine in the morning. Piotr was beside Małgorzata. He saw the tension in her face, heard the midwives' instructions, and waited for the first cry. The moment he had rehearsed in his imagination for years came suddenly and without solemn words.

First he saw a small, wet body in the midwife's hands. Then he heard his daughter's voice. Later he could not remember every procedure performed around her or the order of the words spoken in the room. What he remembered was the certainty that she was alive. At that moment, the single word contained everything.

After the baby had been washed, weighed, and examined, the midwife placed her in her father's arms. Rozalka was smaller than he had imagined throughout all the months of waiting. She had a delicate face, closed eyes, and hands that instinctively tightened around his finger. He was afraid to move, as though any careless gesture might disturb that first moment.

He held her for only a few minutes. Then she was placed beside her mother for her first feeding. He did not feel that the moment had been too brief. For the first time, he could welcome a long-dreamed-of child from her very first breath. He did not have to win the right to be a father or explain his place to anyone. His daughter was in his arms, and he was her father. In that moment, nothing else existed.

They returned to Janów on September 15. Jacek Rogala helped them on the journey. At home, ordinary life with a newborn began: feedings, baths, broken sleep, carefully laying the baby in her crib, and constantly checking that she was breathing peacefully. For Piotr, these small tasks were fulfillment, not a burden. Each one confirmed that Rozalka was truly there with them.

The joy did not last long. A few days after their return, the little girl's breathing became labored and restless. At the hospital in Biała Podlaska, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. Małgorzata was allowed to remain on the ward with the baby. There was no place for the father.

That evening, he left the hospital pushing an empty stroller. Earlier that same day, they had brought their daughter in it, wrapped warmly and safe beneath their watchful eyes. Now the stroller was light. Its emptiness, however, made it harder to push than when the child had lain inside it.

Janów was more than twenty kilometers away. He had no way to get back, so he set out on foot. The night road stretched through fields and along dark shoulders. The stroller's wheels struck every rut, and at times he had to step to the very edge of the road as a car approached. Piotr walked without knowing whether the illness would be brought under control. Each step carried him farther from the hospital, although everything within him urged him to turn back and remain beside his daughter's crib.

He was not afraid of the exhaustion or the night. He was afraid of the telephone call that might come after he returned. He feared that the empty stroller was not merely an object he was pushing from Biała Podlaska to Janów, but an image of what might remain of a dream fulfilled for only a few days. And so he pushed it onward, as though the very movement could keep his daughter alive.

He reached home at daybreak. He did not remember the hour or how many times he had stopped along the way. He remembered the silence of the house and the stroller he set down without the child. Only recently, the unopened boxes in Szczypiorno had seemed to him a sign of their plans falling apart. Now every dispute over housing seemed unimportant. Only Rozalka's breathing mattered.

The little girl remained in the hospital for about two weeks. Małgorzata watched over her day and night, fed her, and observed every change. Piotr traveled back and forth, looked for ways to enter the ward, and tried to learn as much as he could from the staff. He could not remain there constantly.

His fear for his daughter's life was joined by a religious anxiety. Rozalka had not been baptized. Her father knew that in danger of death anyone could administer baptism, provided water was used and the proper formula spoken. He had no intention of waiting until someone else judged the situation serious enough. He brought a small bottle of holy water to the hospital and, despite the prohibition, made his way onto the ward.

He did not know how long he would be able to remain beside the crib. The little girl lay weak, surrounded by hospital equipment. Piotr moistened her head with the water.

— Rozalia, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

There was no priest, no candle, no white garment, and no assembled family. There was a father, a sick infant, and a few words spoken quietly enough not to attract the staff's attention. He did not know whether someone would order him to leave at any moment. He did know that he had done what his faith required when a child's life was in danger.

He left the ward quickly. Outside its doors, he was once again powerless against the illness. He could pray, return to the hospital, and wait for news. The rest did not depend on him.

After two weeks, Rozalka came home. She breathed calmly, gained weight, and fear slowly yielded to everyday life. Her parents decided to arrange a solemn baptism in church. Piotr knew perfectly well that he should tell the priest about the emergency baptism he had administered. He also knew that the sacrament should not simply be repeated as though the earlier rite had no significance.

Even so, when arranging the ceremony, he said nothing about what had happened in the hospital. He was never able to explain to himself why he had done so. Was he afraid of questions? Did he fear that the priest would refuse to conduct the ceremony in the form they wanted? Was he uncertain that he had performed everything correctly? None of these answers fully explained him. Only one thing was certain: he knew what he should have said, and he did not say it. In later years, that omission returned to him more often than the hospital baptism itself.

The ceremony was scheduled for the day after Christmas. Adam and Jadwiga arrived on Christmas Eve. Urszula, who had earlier refused to become the child's godmother, did not attend the church ceremony either. Ewa Kotlińska, the daughter of Stasia Wierzbicka, agreed to serve as godmother; her husband, Jarosław, accompanied her. Jarosław Bujan, a friend of Małgorzata's from Janów, became the godfather.

In the church in Janów, the parents and godparents took their places in the old choir stalls of the sanctuary. Rozalka remained in her father's arms throughout the Mass. He felt her weight, the warmth of her body, and her small movements beneath her clothes. Not long before, he had watched her on the hospital ward without knowing whether she would ever come home. Now the organ, the incense, and the priest's voice surrounded the child he held without haste and without fear that someone would soon order him to leave.

Małgorzata stood beside him. She had spent the entire two weeks with Rozalka in the hospital, watching over her and experiencing every change in her breathing from only inches away. Piotr had walked the night road with the empty stroller and made his way onto the ward carrying holy water. Each of them bore a different part of that fear. For a moment in the church, they did not have to divide it into his and hers. Their daughter was alive. That was enough.

The baptism did not resolve their housing problems or the disputes growing between Piotr and his wife's family. Nor did it restore the plans left behind in the unopened boxes in Szczypiorno. For one Christmas day, however, all of that receded into the background. Rozalka was healthy, surrounded by those close to her, and being received into the community to which her father had wanted to bring her from the first days of her life.

Later, he carried her calmly through the church, without the haste of the hospital. He could still believe then that their hardest trial was already behind them.