Swimming in the Dark

by Tomasz Jedrowski

  At mealtimes I sat with Karolina and Beata, a friend from lectures. She was short and round-faced and busty, quick to laugh and quick to be frightened. She told us she was getting married right after the camp was over, to a guy from the year below.

  “You’re not pregnant, are you?” asked Karolina, looking concerned.

  “God, no!” cried Beata, blushing a little.

  “Because you know you cannot trust condoms,” Karolina said, pretending not to notice Beata’s deepening color. “Some of those old hags in the shops pierce them with the tiniest of needles and sell them on like that. They can’t bear to see us having fun. So really, you need the pill. If you want to, I’ll take you to my doctor. She’s a woman, and she won’t ask if you’re married.”

  Beata had turned beetroot-red and shook her head. “We’ve only been going out for six months,” she muttered, looking at her plate. “But the Bureau will give flats to married couples as a priority. I’m sick of living with my parents.”

  “Darling, that can take forever,” said Karolina, trying not to sound mean. “Two years or more. But maybe you’ll be lucky.”

  While the two of them talked, I watched you on the other side of the hall, sitting with the same girl I’d seen you with the night before. She wore a denim jacket, new and brilliantly blue, something that one could only buy with dollars at the government Pewex stores. I stared at her, transfixed. She wasn’t exactly pretty—not at first sight, with her straight dark hair parted so plainly in the middle. But there was something very cool and self-assured about her, in the way she held her body and smiled at you while you spoke. Next to her sat Maksio Karowski, a bulky guy who was notorious for being the son of a high Party official and for trying to seduce almost every girl (and mostly succeeding).

  On some nights, after work, Karolina and Beata and I would walk to the village nearest to the camp. We’d sit on a bench in the square, underneath some fruit trees, facing a wooden church, and we’d watch old couples stroll past, women with flowered kerchiefs covering their hair and men with canes and hats and faces as worn as their shoes. We’d go to the only shop in the village to see whether they had cigarettes or soda (mostly they didn’t). Beata would whisper that this was a sign of the economy collapsing soon, and Karolina would laugh.

  “The economy has been collapsing ever since we were born,” she said one evening, her painted lips parting, revealing her large teeth. “Our beloved Party Chairman Gierek has borrowed so much money from the West that even our grandkids won’t be able to pay our debts. But before anything actually happens, I’m the one who’s going to collapse—from countryside-induced boredom.” She lit a city cigarette, took a deep toke, and let the smoke escape through her nostrils.

  The church bell started to ring, and a flock of swallows chased invisible insects in the fading light. I began to think of what I would do with myself after the summer. Years earlier, the children I’d played with outside our flat had gone to work in factories, in shops, on buses, or in the mines, while I’d gone to the capital to study. Work had seemed like the beginning of the end, university a prolonging of youth. I’d enjoyed it, despite its limitations—we couldn’t read what we wanted and were meant to see the decadence of capitalism in all Western texts, even if most professors barely pretended to care about the Party. But now that my studies were over, I had no idea what would come next. One of my literature professors had taken a liking to me and mentioned something about a possible doctorate. But I suspected he’d try to make me study something foolish, something politically useful, a topic I’d be stuck with for years. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand teaching. Not with a lifetime of lousy pay, not with the simple truths everyone knew, our longing for Western comforts, our hatred for the Soviets, unmentionable or punished with dismissal.

  In those days I had no idea where I was going, and the work at the camp seemed to offer little release. The sun was merciless, and my body revolted against the effort, refusing to sweat. As I broke up the earth and pulled on the beets, my thoughts would snap back to you, to the bar where Karolina had taken me, to the void stretching out before me. I fought against them (the thoughts and the beets), fought their stubbornness, their toughness. I fought them, and they fought me, until I tore them out and the next one came. By now I was faster, stronger. I no longer had to kneel in the earth. I stood up like you, bent at the knees and back straight. But it was still a struggle; the real fight was not with the earth or the plants. Slowly, slowly, I found a rhythm. I stopped fighting. I stopped thinking. One day, as I worked away like this, sweat began to release itself. I allowed the union between the earth and my body, I let go, and for the first time in my life I appreciated everything for what it was, observed the miracle of it. The earth for being the earth, my hands for being my hands, the plants for growing out of seeds, and the others around me, everyone, with their own rights and dreams and interior worlds. Sweat poured over me more than ever, drenched my face, swept across the thick of my brows into my eyes, flooded down my neck and down my back like a deluge, and I accepted its gift. It was as if the sweat had washed away the past and all the thoughts and fears of the future and all that remained was now, clean and light and ever-dancing.

  That evening I left the others behind and went for a walk. The evening was mild. I crossed the fence, went past the beetroot fields, until I reached a small river. Red and yellow poppies grew by its bank, and tall grasses moved in the breeze. The murmur of the water calmed me, weaving itself into my subconscious. I kept walking. On the other bank, a hare ran across a field, stopping at the sight of me, ears propped up like furry ferns, tiny nose flickering up and down. There we stood, the two of us, motionless, taking each other in. Finally, he turned his head and hopped off.

  It did me good, that walk. It reminded me of the aimless ones I would take in Wrocław, when I could no longer stand being in the same space as Granny or at school. There was nowhere I could be without being with others, having to interact or to act. Even on my walks around the block, neighbors greeted and appraised. There were times when I’d get on the tram and ride across the city. I would get off at the last stop, in a neighborhood where no one knew me, and I’d wander, not thinking, looking at the unknown streets and houses and people and feeling free and anonymous. Like an unwritten piece of paper. I’d forgotten the pleasure of this, and then and there, by the river, with the fields stretching out before me and the camp far behind me, something of that freedom returned. The water was clear, and at the bottom I could see the bed of pebbles and light-brown mud and small fish swimming to and fro.

  I continued on, not thinking about where I was going until I stopped, not quite knowing why. There was something large moving in the water. Someone was swimming. The back of a head—black wet hair glued to it—moved away from me, and I stood and watched, seeing without being seen. Broad shoulders and fine back muscles moved in a quick, confident crawl, head underwater, coming up for air every couple of strokes. Before I knew it, the figure had turned around and started to swim in my direction. It got closer and closer with each move. The sun was behind me, and I threw a long shadow onto the water. As soon as the figure swam through this dark stretch, it stopped and raised its head.

  You wiped your eyes with the back of your hand and stood up in the water, which was only waist-deep.

  “Hello,” you said, sounding like you didn’t know who I was. Streams of water trickled down your torso. Your body was slim and strong, your chest and stomach drawn with lines and divisions, their own rules of gravity.

  “Hello,” I said, torn between wanting to run and watching you.

  You squinted and held your palm flat over your brow against the sun behind me. “You’re from our group, no?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Janusz,” you said with an easy smile. You seemed almost offensively comfortable standing there. I was the one feeling naked.

  “I’ll let you get on. Didn’t mean to disturb.” I turned to leave.

  “And you?”


  I turned back around. “Me what?”

  You laughed. It was a light and joyous sound, self-sufficient and contagious. “You have your head in the clouds, no? Your name.”

  I laughed too, feeling myself blush.

  “I’m Ludwik. Ludwik Głowacki.” It struck me how little my name meant to me, how absurd it was in its attempt to contain me.

  You nodded. “Nice to meet you properly. Don’t you want to try the water?” Your arms moved around in it. “It’s perfect.”

  “Thanks. I don’t really swim.”

  You looked at me funny. “You don’t know how to swim?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. I just don’t like to do it.”

  “Not even in this heat? Why not?” You laughed, incredulous, your smile mocking and charming.

  I shrugged and walked a couple of steps backward. “Maybe another day.”

  “OK,” you said, nodding. “Another day. I’m here almost every evening.”

  “See you, then,” I said, walking off. After a few steps I turned around, despite myself. Your body was gliding through the water, leaving a trail of ripples on its surface.

  The next day I saw you more clearly than I had before, as if you’d been drawn against the background of the others. I let myself look at you, watched you at work and when you spoke to the people at your table, especially the black-haired girl with her Western clothes. There was an inherent elegance to your way of being, an ease with yourself and the world, as if no fear had ever penetrated your mind, as if the path you walked on was pliable and ready to be molded by your feet. And yet we didn’t speak and didn’t acknowledge each other, except for a small nod and a small knowing smile you gave me on the field. Other than that, our meeting had been off-site, off the record.

  That evening I went to the same spot by the river, but you weren’t there. And so I lay in the grass and looked at the sky and listened to the water. I wondered whether you hadn’t come in order to avoid me, or what else it could mean. Then I sensed movement, a presence nearby, and I got up. There, across the high grass, a body lay on the ground, almost hidden. I approached silently. You were lying spread out on your back, one hand beneath your head, the other on your stomach. Eyes closed. The hand on your stomach rose and fell in the slow and steady rhythm of your breath, T-shirt slightly lifted, revealing your tanned midriff and the path of fine hair leading down. I stood frozen for a moment, looking at you, afraid you’d wake up and see me like this. Your long eyelashes. The beautiful veins on your arms. All I wanted was to stand there and take you in. You opened your eyes, gray-blue and brilliant. You looked at me, and my heart skipped a beat.

  “Hey.” Your voice sleepy.

  “Hey. Did I wake you?” I took a few steps back, feeling out of place.

  You heaved yourself up onto your elbows, closed your eyes with force, and opened them again. “I think so. Which is a good thing. I’d have slept until tomorrow morning.” You ran your hands over your face, yawning, and then turned to me as if registering me properly for the first time. “So you came.” You smiled. “You came to learn how to swim after all?”

  “I told you I know how to swim.”

  You stood and stripped off your T-shirt, running past me and jumping into the water in your trunks.

  “Then prove it!” you called, emerging from the water, your hair wet and dark.

  “Nah. Not that easy.”

  “C’mon! Just your feet, then. You’ll see how good it is.” You waved me over.

  I went to the water’s edge, where you were standing expectantly, and looked at the surface. It was see-through, with green, scintillating weeds swaying in the current like wheat in the wind. Your eyes said “C’mon,” and I stepped in. Soft, smooth mud gave way to the soles of my feet, coolness enveloped my ankles.

  “See what you’ve been missing out on?” you said, and looked at me with a smile. Late-afternoon light danced on the water and reflected on your face like a caress. I couldn’t say anything, only managed to nod. My belly was knotted and light. You wanted me to get in completely, but I said no. My refusal made you laugh and me even more uncomfortable. “Before camp is over, you’ll be swimming here without any hesitation,” you said, diving in and leaving me standing there in my clothes, the water reaching up to my knees.

  I got out and sat by the bank, watching you swim. The sky was turning a darker blue. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there, but I knew I didn’t want to leave. Finally, you emerged, water trickling down your body, hair sticking to your head, striking me with the reality of your presence.

  “So why do you come here by yourself, anyway?” I asked as you were drying off. I tried not to stare. “Why are you not with your friends?”

  You laughed your light laugh. “What friends?”

  I shrugged, trying not to blush. “I always see you sitting with the same people in the canteen.”

  “Oh yeah?” Your smile became teasing. Then, to my relief and dismay, you pulled on your T-shirt. “I don’t know,” you said, your head appearing through the neck of the T-shirt. “Why are you not with your friends?”

  “I guess it’s nice to be away from the crowd sometimes, to be able to hear yourself think. I go mad when I’m surrounded by others all the time.”

  “I guess it’s the same for me, then,” you said, turning around and pulling off your swim shorts, revealing your behind, quickening my pulse. Your ass was powerful, like two great smooth rocks sculpted by the sea. “And the swimming clears my head,” you went on, your voice unchanged, putting on your briefs. “Entirely. It’s like I’m bathing my mind.”

  I asked you what you needed to clean from your mind as you pulled on your trousers and turned back to me, your dark hair falling over your forehead.

  “Different things. Work. The future. And you? What clears your head?”

  “Reading,” I said without needing to think.

  “Oh yeah? What are you reading right now? Anything good?”

  I couldn’t bear to look at you while I thought. The sky had turned an even darker blue, and I felt safe in the dimming light.

  “Right now, nothing. But I’m starting a new book soon, and I think it’ll be really good.” I thought of Giovanni’s Room, hidden at the bottom of my bag, its precious pages waiting to be read.

  “What’s it called?”

  You sat next to me. I looked at you, the air in my throat suddenly immobile and heavy, my mind reeling. I didn’t know why I’d let myself bring up this secret, tried hard to think of another title to tell you. The distant sound of the camp bell rang through the air, stirring us both. Then an odd silence between us, like something balancing on an edge, deciding which way to fall.

  “It’s dinnertime,” you finally said, rising. “C’mon. I’m starving.”

  We walked to the camp, back through the fields, the light fading. I felt peculiarly close to you, and happy to have you all to myself with nothing but the sky looking at us. I asked where you had learned to swim so well, and you told me that there was a river not far from your house, where you had played with your brothers. You said that they had taught you.

  “And in the summer we’d go around the mountains and swim in the other rivers there,” you said.

  “Where?”

  “Near Rabka. By the Tatra Mountains.”

  “A southern boy,” I said, smiling.

  You nodded. “Can’t you tell from my accent?”

  “Now that you say it, yes.” Some of the words you said, even later, were inflected with a drawl, pulling the last syllable out like pliable dough.

  “And you?”

  “Wrocław.”

  “A city boy, huh?” Your eyes flashed in the dark.

  By then we had reached the camp. We stopped in front of the canteen, as if we’d agreed on it before.

  “See you tomorrow,” you said, putting your hand on my shoulder for a moment and then going in, leaving me standing outside.

  That night I took Giovanni’s Room out of the deep
est recesses of my bag and started reading it by torchlight after the others had fallen asleep. It scared and comforted me—even just the first few pages. The narrator’s guilt toward his fiancée, his desire for Giovanni, and the deep regret for whatever it is he did to him. There was something about the rhythm, the language, about the knowledge implied and the sense of internal doom, that spoke directly to me. This wasn’t distraction or entertainment: here was a book that seemed to have been written for me, which lifted me up into its realm and united me with something that seemed to have been there all along and that I seemed to be a part of. It felt as if the words and the thoughts of the narrator—despite their agony, despite their pain—healed some of my agony and my pain, simply by existing.

  I lived through the narrator for the next few days, thinking of his life during my work in the field, suddenly knowing that there was a place for me to go that was mine, which was completely my own. As soon as work was over, I changed into my clothes, grabbed the book, and walked out through the gate, but not to the spot where I knew you’d be. I wanted to be by myself for a while. I found a place by the river, in the other direction, shielded by thorny bushes, and there I’d lie on my back and sink into Baldwin’s world.

  One day, when I’d only just settled down to read, a shadow passed over the page. I turned around and saw you standing behind me.

  “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” you said, sitting down beside me. You looked at the book, which I’d quickly shut and set on the ground. “So, it must be very good, then.”

  I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t even nod.

  “What’s it about?”

  My heart started beating fast.

  “It’s about a boy,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “An American who lives in Paris.”

  You looked at me expectantly. “And? What’s he doing in Paris?”

  “He . . . He’s trying to figure out what he wants, and how to choose for himself.”