Painted Blocks

By Jakub L. Kocztorz

In Painted Blocks, a gripping and realistic drama, Vitek steps off the train, back to the town he grew up in after four years of hard labor in a foreign German warehouse. He had left with huge expectations of an adventure in a big city, making good money and trying to realize childhood goals. Bitter, exhausted, and defeated, he has retu

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781636761497

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Painted Blocks

Jakub L. Kocztorz

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 Jakub L. Kocztorz

All rights reserved.

Painted Blocks

ISBN 978-1-63676-593-8 Paperback

978-1-63676-148-0 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-149-7 Ebook

CONTENTS

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Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Homecoming

Chapter 2

My Mother’s House

Chapter 3

Fresh Bread

Chapter 4

Breakfast

Chapter 5

The Bar

Chapter 6

By the Adriatic

Chapter 7

The Old Crew

Chapter 8

The Church’s Shadow

Chapter 9

The Factory

Chapter 10

Settling In

Chapter 11

Sushi

Chapter 12

The Plot

Chapter 13

Supper

Chapter 14

Under the Sun

Chapter 15

Dust

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

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Life is lived within bounds; the final one seeming the most obvious. I didn’t appreciate this for a long time until my junior year of high school. I had spent my summer along the Baltic coast with my uncle and his family. He was my godfather, and I felt particularly close to him. An unremarkable man except for his pleasant wit and incredible decency. We spent our days in a careless way between restaurants and the beach. He told my mother, his sister, that we all had to go to the Baltic next year; after all, we never know how much time we have. His health deteriorated by winter, and he was gone by spring. I treasure those moments now more than ever because I know they’re unrepeatable.

As children, it feels like the expected answer to the question of, What do you want to be when you grow up? is an astronaut or president. Growing older, the theme repeats as we’re told to follow our dreams and change the world. At the University of Washington, I’m encouraged to be boundless. It might be my inner cynic talking, but if I was boundless, I would be a puddle of gloop. After all, my skin is a type of bond holding my inner components together.

The tragedy of dreams is that too many people live in them. In our goal-oriented society, we’re always chasing something. Some want to be rich, and others want to cure cancer, but no one ever has the time to slow down and just feel the breeze. Often things are unnoticed while we’re overcome by the disappointment of the dreams yet to be fulfilled. Life passes by like a dream, untasted and unsavored. Dear reader, you don’t have to change the world. Love your friends, work meaningfully, and savor the moments. If that changes the world, so be it. Life in its simple form is beautiful and deserves to be appreciated.

I warmly invite you to enjoy this story about nothing in particular, i.e. life. I hope you might come to know Vitek, the protagonist, almost personally and that his journey might shed some light on the philosophy laid out above and be of some enjoyment and use.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

G.K. Chesterton

Chapter One

Homecoming

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I stepped off the train onto the concrete bricks of the platform. My duffle bag was slung lazily over my shoulder while my free hand was deep inside the pocket of my gray pants. I had unbuttoned my shirt and rolled up my sleeves on the train to deal with the unbearable heat of this late August day. Beads of sweat formed on my broad forehead as I gazed up at the light blue sky with eyes bloodshot from exhaustion. The air was dead; motionless. Not even the wisp-like clouds moved, and I could almost taste the stagnant dust.

The lifelessness of the air matched my mood as I strained with every fiber to repress the rising disappointment. When I had left the village all those years ago, this was not how I expected to feel upon my return. My restlessness had not subsided; if anything, it had grown worse. I had hoped to come back with a sense of triumph but, though my bag was stuffed with cash, I still felt rather empty. I worried that my prime had been wasted but I wasn’t sure what the alternative better use would have been.

The train platform was deserted of people with only neat rows of empty benches lined up under the off-white metal awning. The shade from the awning only spread over half of the concrete slab’s width. The slab was like an island between the two sets of train tracks. The train I had disembarked from began to roll away slowly, journeying farther east, a decrepit relic of the seventies obnoxiously painted in different shades of green. I watched the engine and cars for a moment before proceeding with brisk steps toward the stairs and down into the tunnel that connected this island to the station. This route was dim with only a few recessed lights placed down the center of the ceiling, but it was pleasantly cool.

Two elderly women shuffled through the tunnel toward the platform. Clad in mohair berets, dark-colored dresses, and sweaters, they chattered in hushed tones. These old women were a staple in these parts. I had always considered them to be the eyes through which God’s judgment and wrath reached us here most palpably. They, and those like them, were the emissaries of that collective institution called shame. These elders cast suspicious glances toward me until they recognized, in my features and dress, a local. I returned indifferent glances until I had passed them and proceeded up the steps to the main station.

The doors opened automatically, a distinct improvement since I last passed through this threshold four years ago. I surmised that we were moving up in the world. The station itself was pleasantly renovated with fresh paint and more comfortable seats. However, the few people who shuffled about the cavernous room appeared much the same as when I had left. The main room of the station was large with seats in the middle, ticket windows to the left, and a shabby magazine stand to the right. In the seats, a few old folks sat around and chatted while two young parents tried to calm a brood of children. A small electronic board displayed the handful of arrivals and departures happening today. Behind the counter of the magazine stand stood a woman from farther east staring off into the distance chewing gum with long drawn out movements. She reminded me of the type of tedious menial work we would do just farther west. The smell of cigarettes wafted in through the automatic doors from outside. A grin crept across my face for a moment as I took in the hominess of the scene without stopping. I emerged from the doors and immediately noticed my father.

I would recognize my father’s proud stance anywhere as he stood squinting because of the sun reflecting off the large windows of the station. He beamed when he saw me. My father was dressed like always, wearing his best gray pants and a short-sleeved white shirt unbuttoned so you could see his gold chain with its hefty crucifix at the end. His head was crowned by a plume of hair more grayish-white than I remembered but his face was unchanged, generally flat but dominated by a large nose that he often compared to Caesar’s. He was tanned, wrinkled, and weathered by too many winters but inflated always by a certain pride peculiar to men of his generation. My father embraced me without a word. I could feel he was holding back tears; part of me was too. It felt like ages since I had set off on my quest in pursuit of the dollar. I called my parents with some regularity but it wasn’t the same.

He pulled back while still holding my arms and said, My son has finally returned home. Vitek, it’s good to see you.

"It’s good to be home,’’ I responded with a grin.

A few working men smoking outside smiled at us understandingly as they continued to puff along. Most of these people probably had relatives out west, laboring as I had for a few bucks because the exchange rate was just so good. It’s what you had to do to live decently out here. Of course, you could steal, but these folks were too honest for that. You could see it in the grooves in their weathered faces and hands. These weren’t business people, all of those had been in the Party back in the day. These were working folk, the salt of the earth. The world changed around them, but they labored just the same.

I felt somewhat like the prodigal son on this return even though there was nothing particularly prodigal about me. I had done everything people told