Mikołaj, late 1990s, Thursday

Just look at them walking, hunched over by the heat: children of the time of the fist and the closed eye.

The boy and his younger brother make their way through town, silently and laboriously, cutting across a string of housing projects, car parks and playgrounds. The August sun looks like the inside of a Jaffa cake as it slides down into the hot concrete behind the boys, the walls of the apartment towers hardly budge. The brothers each took half a sunflower head from home, for the road.

The boy’s name is Mikołaj. His brother is Kamil.

They leave town and take a little dirt road past the deteriorating lump of the half-built, long abandoned hospital. The boys’ feet kick dust up over the dry meadow, which swarms with miniscule, buzzing life. Rays of sunlight cling to the boys’ forearms, the brothers sweat immortality. The sunflower seed shells and the mosquitoes, their modest trajectories crisscross.

D’you think Patrycja will be there, the boy finally speaks up, that she’ll come to the square after?

Patrycja, repeats his brother. I don’t know if Patrycja will come to the square after. D’you have the money for Niko?

The boy grins for a second.

The money, he says, it sounds so serious.

His brother practically stops. He tosses his sunflower, picked clean, into the grass.

You don’t have the money for Niko.

When you’re 17, you get used to the fact that they can hurt you at any moment. Usually it’s nothing personal.

Come on, the boy hurries his brother along and they keep walking.

You haven’t got the money for him, his brother shakes his head and wipes the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. He’s tall and slender, as he walks, he sways slightly, his limbs succumb to the warm breezes that have been pursuing them since they left town.

Niko’s gonna kick your ass, man. Mikołaj, tell me why you haven’t got the money.

The boy blushes.

I got it wrong on my calendar. I put down that I was meant to pay him next Thursday, not today. It’s hard to remember all this stuff.

What’ve you got to remember on summer vacation, Mikołaj?

Everything, the boy replies quietly and they don’t say anything more.

Stefanka is a bar in a shed by the bus terminal, with a few plastic tables inside and a ping-pong table outside that no one ever uses. Cigarette smoke leaks out of the warped window. Inside it’s cramped and smells like sweat, village men order vodka shots and headcheese sandwiches from the woman behind the bar. A TV near the ceiling silently shows a series about FBI agents and UFOs.

The kids from town, crowded around the smallest table, are drinking beer with fruit syrup, smoking L&Ms and waiting for the brothers. Cyprian, Miller and Monika.

Those are the shoes.

Yeah, these are the shoes.

Cyprian stretches out his neck, cool shit. But how come you haven’t worn them out before?

Gimme a tissue, the boy asks Monika and carefully wipes the dust from his sneakers.

Reebok Kamikaze 2s, he recites. I was saving them, the boy says, don’t want to waste them on hanging around the project every day.

Have you played in them already?

They’re not for playing in.

What d’you mean? Those are shoes for playing, man.

I’ve only worn them once, the boy says, to church.

He sits down on the chair, his back to the table, and puts one foot on his knee, so everyone can see clearly. His eyes glisten in the clouds of smoke.

An artefact from another order, technology with increased density that reflects the world differently. A navy-blue shoe with a white zigzag cutting across it, a pictogram meaning dynamism and skill, rubber squeaking on a glistening wood floor, the California sun reflecting off a hoop. The boy is wearing shorts and his slim calf disappears into the bulbous, seemingly oversized object. Reebok Kamikaze 2s. The kids look and they know that this is beautiful, and maybe they’d even like to learn the smell of the leather the shoes are made from.

Translated by Sean Gasper Bye