Zygmunt, my 86 year old neighbour on the floor below me has gone for his usual bi-monthly trip to New York to get his pacemaker checked. He has an old pal there who is a specialist. Meanwhile, his younger sister Basha has decided to have a clearout and sling a lot of rubbish. I'm a hoarder but in their place you can hardly move.
I've only ever been invited into the main salon and have never managed to get deeper into the apartment. They have lived there for 60 years. Much of the furniture is - like the flat - grand and impressive, and most probably was bought by the flat's original owner 100 years ago. You wouldn't want to move it in a hurry. A feast for the eyes, it is combined with garish kitsch which elderly people seem to acquire a taste for. Nylon clad dolls, miniature plastic and glass ornaments, teddy bears, battery powered figures which light up and dance, and other hideous knick knacks.
In the guise of helper I have seized the opportunity to take a look at the rest of their flat which has long been kept hidden and my first glance confirmed what I'd long suspected. A treasure of orginal fixtures and neglected furniture. At the other (and less ornate) end of the flat is - at in my place - the second stairwell which would have been used by the servants. Wooden panelling in the hallway (covered by years of yellowing gloss), ebony coathooks and a splendid oak framed mirror stand outside the disused kitchen which is just as it was when it was built in 1906. Art Nouveau tiling on the walls, a white tiled Aga type cooker with brass hooks and rails, a belfast type sink with brass taps, and an exquisitely tiled turquoise and cream tiled floor. Basha and an elderly helper discuss 'updating' it all, getting rid of everything and turning the room into a bathroom. I know that if I offered to fit a cheap plastic shower for them I could strip the whole space and take it upstairs.
This forgotten room is filled with copious bin bags of clothes, rubbish, and fragments of antique furniture. Serving as a junk room, the door is opened only to throw in another broken chair or worn out coat. The layout of my apartment is the same upstairs on the top floor, although I have prettier ceilings, more light and less original features.
Basha is in her sixties and a lunatic. Hundreds of pills are invariably spread out on every horizontal surface. Her brilliant make-up is applied as a clowns on smack, the outfits are ludricrous and accessories favoured include dead animals and extravagant costume jewellery. When I knocked on the door she appeared in a blonde wig and panama and insisted I don what she presented me with before I could enter. Sat sporting a purple velvet smoking jacket, long brown locks and a bowler hat, I drank vodka while she attended to her Santa Claus which lit up and skipped around on the table making HoHoHo noises. Dust covered framed photographs of Basha and Zygmunt in their youth sit on the grand piano along with dusty deflated balloons on sticks.
Quite early on in the evening Basha began pulling out curled up sepia snapshots of herself in her twenties and proclaimed belligerently how beautiful she was and how she had been adored. I've become accostomed to this routine and make all the right noises at each new photo presented to me. They have no children and no family to speak of. I often hear them arguing when I pass their door, Basha screeching obcenities and poor Zygmunt pinned into an armchair, his pacemaker working overtime.
