40 / 194
34
In any case, after the wedding bad things started happening
between them. Him, he didn’t even look up when she
served him his soup or his main course in the cafeteria. And
as for her, it no longer made a difference whether she was
putting the food in front of him or someone else. Her eyes
seemed to be losing their shine from one day to the next.
You couldn’t say, You look nice today, Miss Basia, or
Basieńka, because she looked like she might burst into
tears. She unbraided her hair and just tied it behind with a
ribbon. It still looked nice, but it wasn’t the same as when
she’d worn the braid. But no one had the courage to ask her
why she’d done it.
The Priest stopped coming to the cafeteria, and that made
you wonder as well. Apparently he went to some tavern to
eat. Then one day she happened to be bringing the main
course to the table where I was sitting when someone ran
in to say that the Priest had fallen from the scaffolding.
Either he’d fallen or it was something else, in any case the
guy shouted to the whole cafeteria that he’d fallen. She had
one more plate to put on the table and, as chance would
have it it was mine. The plate fell from her hands to the
floor. She burst out crying, covered her face with her hands
and ran into the kitchen. What went on in there I couldn’t
tell you. But people in the cafeteria could have thought it
was because of the dropped plate.
We all rushed to the door, people came hurrying from the
offices and from management, everyone was running, a