Alternative Circulation

If anyone wanted to know, this is how I do it. I half fill a plastic bowl with water. It has to be hot enough to be unpleasant to the touch. I add some liquid soap and gently stir it with my fingers until bubbles appear, and there’s a scent of milk and honey in the air. I’ve always bought the same kind of soap. Then I scatter in the coins and clean them in a particular order. I start with the five-zloty pieces – unless I haven’t any in my wallet – and go on with smaller and smaller denominations. By the time I’m wiping the one-groshy coins with a soft sponge, the water has gone grey. To finish off, I lay the coins on a paper towel and dry them carefully. I never clean banknotes. Banknotes absorb everything they touch, and laundering them would mean stripping them of their soul.

            If anyone were to ask why I do it, I wouldn’t be able to answer. It’s somewhere on the border between a phobia, a habit, and a sense of duty. I can’t bear the thought that somewhere in the world there are dirty coins in circulation. Of course I know I’ll never manage to clean all of them, and that soon they’ll be dirty again, but this compulsion is stronger than I am. For more than twelve years now I haven’t been able to stop.

            I came across the boy while I was buying a paper from a kiosk at the station. He caught me putting my change into a separate wallet. Yes, I had two wallets, to avoid mixing the clean and dirty coins.

            “Spare two zlotys, sir?” he asked.

            He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his torn trousers, but I’d had time to notice that they were just as dirty as his face. I actually wanted to give him the money, but there was one important reason holding me back. I only had clean coins left, and I couldn’t get rid of those.

            I said I had run out of small change, but the boy didn’t believe me. He pouted and stood there looking offended. My son used to make a face like that if something hadn’t gone right for him.

            “I can give you a ten-zloty note, but you’d have to come to my house for it.”

            To my surprise, he nodded. I took him back to my place and offered him some soup. He didn’t refuse. I went to the cupboard and fetched out a box, in which I kept all the cleaned coins, and tipped out a handful. I glanced at the boy, and tipped out the same amount again. He stared at them in fascination.

            “How shiny they are. Are they new?”

            “I cleaned them.”

            “What for?” he asked, wiping tomato soup from his mouth.

            “I don’t know.”

            This answer was enough for him. He put a small, crumpled plastic bag on the table. There wasn’t more than five zlotys in it.

            “Will you clean my money too?”

            I nodded. I asked about his family, but he just shrugged. He spent all day at my place, and I let him stay the night. He had a long wash in the bathroom and used up most of the money-cleaning soap, but I wasn’t annoyed. I rinsed out the bath tub, watching as a stream of dirt disappeared down the plughole.

            He fitted into my son’s room. Into the clothes he’d left behind. Into the part of my life that would never return.

            In the morning he was no longer there. He’d left the little bag of coins. I cleaned them carefully, but I never let them go back into circulation.

Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.