Swimming in the Dark

by Tomasz Jedrowski

  It was as if someone had turned off the music, like an electric shock in my mind. You and your perfectly shaven face, turned toward her, her earlobe between your fingers. Her long earrings reflecting the light in all the colors of the spectrum. A rush went through my belly like a snake. You moved together to the music, you holding her and her holding you. Her hands were on your shoulder, her painted fingernails flashing in the light, her long skirt shifting with the music. This is an image I cannot forget: your hands around her waist, your fingers sinking into the fabric of her skirt. They looked settled there, and I was struck by the tenderness in your eyes. I watched you both as if you were a pair of strangers. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t mean anything, that it wasn’t real. And yet I could no longer look at you without feeling absolutely drained of any power. I got to my feet, feeling light-headed, my vision blurred for a moment. I walked home, my heart beating twice for every step I took.

  * * *

  I guess you never knew that I saw you that night. Do you remember the music? Do you remember her earrings? Are there things you’ve forgotten or things I’ve missed out? My memory has its limits, of course. It may color in the blanks without admitting to it, dramatize or revise. I guess there is no photographic memory for emotions. But this is my truth right now, for better or worse.

  I left work early today. The flat was a mess, so I tidied up. Here it is beginning to grow cold, but it’s still mild for the season. In the mornings it’s best to wear a coat, but the midday sun is strong, and on the avenues of Midtown businessmen take off their suit jackets during lunchtime, their white shirts glistening in the winter light, their gym-trained asses pushing against the fabric of their trousers as they move purposefully down the street. Not like at home, where by now people must be wrapped in scarves and hats. I bet the air is already sharp, stings your face. I remember that cold, the merciless crisp cold of Warszawa in December. And for a moment it feels as if I am there among the smell of diesel and burning coal, the long broad avenues with the Palace of Culture looming over us, you beside me. Of course I still see them here, the Poles, in the streets of Greenpoint, buying their poppy-seed cakes and pierogi and twaróg cheese. I spot them a mile off. So easily. Like recognizing like. But the ones that come here are different—they have hope in their eyes, just as I did when I arrived. They are awake.

  I switched on the TV at ten o’clock. A speech by Reagan, images of some space shuttle, Muhammad Ali falling to the ground in the ring. Then the image behind the presenter changed to a white-and-red flag and my insides turned weightless. “Martial law continues in Poland,” said the lady with her bleached teeth and wide-shouldered blazer.

  “Despite the expulsion of foreign journalists, we have evidence that the Polish army has stationed tanks and thousands of troops in the five largest cities across the country in response to a wave of protests. Experts say this move shows the government’s desire to solve the crisis without the help of the Kremlin, in an attempt to avoid an escalation of violence. Despite this, the Soviets’ military bases in Poland remain on call.”

  A photo filled the screen for a moment, showing a tank parked on a snowy square, a couple of soldiers climbing out of its hatch. Right behind them a building I recognized with a pang of nostalgia—the Moskwa, a cinema where Karolina and I used to go sometimes. But most remarkable: the poster that hung above the tank, “Apocalypse Now” in bloody red type, the new film by Coppola. For a moment the absurdity of it filled my throat, threatened to suffocate me. All these years they’d let us watch foreign films, allowing us glimpses of the world across the Wall, of freedoms we didn’t have. Did they really think we’d be still forever?

  I thought of the photographer and his courage, imagining how the photo had made it out of the country: a roll of film smuggled into West Germany, in a secret compartment or an emptied tube of toothpaste. Anonymous figures trapped on the wrong side of history, compressed and rolled up inside a stranger’s pocket. No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it.

  Little sparks cause fires too.

  * * *

  The morning after I saw you with Hania, I awoke feeling hungover. I remembered the night before and my body burned, like a muscle sore all over. I lay in my bed, the sky gray and thin beyond the roofs of the blocks. My thoughts were like swallows, nosediving, avoiding the ground, flying up and away. I did not know how to stop them.

  I got up to go to the bathroom but found Pani Kolecka in the living room sleeping. Something caught my eye, something small and dark. I approached her without making a sound. Blots covered the white duvet near her mouth. The same blots on a handkerchief she was holding in her hand: dark and irreversibly crimson. I had to stop myself from gasping out loud. She was breathing quietly, her white hair untied, spread out on her pillow like a halo. She looked like an ancient child. Fear rang, vibrated, like a church bell inside me. I pulled on my shoes and coat and hurried out into the cool morning. The nearest doctor’s office was at the junction of Freedom and Lenin. I reached it, out of breath, just as they were opening. Already there was a group of people waiting by the door. A burly woman sat at the desk, looking at her schedule through thick glasses in which her eyes seemed tiny and miles away. When it was finally my turn, I told her about Pani Kolecka, my words stumbling over one another, the coughing, the blood.

  “Pan Doktor is busy,” she said, without looking up at me. “Earliest appointment is next week.”

  I insisted it was an emergency. She looked up at me for a moment, her phlegmatic face almost compassionate.

  “In that case try the hospital. But I doubt she’ll get in ahead of people with cut-off limbs and bleeding faces.” Then she bent over her papers again.

  “There must be something else you can do.” I felt the moment slipping through my fingers. “Please, can’t you make an exception?”

  She raised her eyes toward me again, this time without a trace of empathy. “I told you what to do. Now stop blocking the line for your fellow citizens.”

  I stood in the cold morning, on the large Freedom Avenue, the sun far away, not warming, only blinding, throwing its wide light across the pavement onto the throngs of people hurrying to work with downcast faces.

  One day, not long after Beniek’s departure, I’d come home from school and found Granny crying on the couch. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t even tell me what was wrong, until she finally calmed down, saying that they’d found something in Mother’s lungs. “It’s not serious,” she’d said, her tears beginning to dry on her cheeks. “The doctors will take care of it.”

  I stood in the cold morning and thought of how we’d sat in the hospital waiting for them to release Mother. How the clock in the waiting room had kept on ticking, how I’d held on to Granny’s hand like a life vest. Smoke around us, oozing from the cigarettes held by nervous hands, the air gray and heavy, impenetrable. And, finally, the doctor, tall and dry, with a rigid face, saying he had bad news.

  I walked to the nearest hospital, as the lady had said. It was an anonymous block I’d rode past countless times without ever seeing it. By the entrance, a man with crutches and a single leg, wearing a ragged dressing gown, was smoking a cigarette. Inside, gray corridors filled with the sharp smell of disinfectant. I pulled a number by the reception desk and took a seat in the queue on one of the benches. Groups of people were waiting in miserable silence, pierced only by the wails of patients lying on makeshift beds in the corridor. Hospital time took over, solid and unfeeling like a glacier. A man across from me was reading the People’s Tribune. From the front page Party Chairman Gierek glared at me. He was shaking hands with someone off-frame, his face mousy and thin-lipped and so utterly smug. My hands turned into fists inside my coat.

  “Number thirty-three!”

  It was my turn. Behind the glass, in her little cubicle, the nurse kept her eyes on the papers in front of her. I explained everything again, thi
s time in more detail, trying to sound humble, to make it seem as serious as it felt.

  “Is the patient here?” she interrupted, looking up for the first time.

  “She’s at home. I need to speak to a doctor, about the symptoms.”

  Her expression was lifeless, bored. “This is a hospital. Come back with the patient or take her to a doctor’s office. Number thirty-four!” Her eyes discarded me.

  “Please, I already went there, they have no appointments this week. Can’t I just see a doctor for a moment?”

  “I don’t make the rules around here. Number thirty-four!”

  I was about to protest again when someone shoved me away from the counter. Heat sprung up in me.

  “Move,” huffed the middle-aged man who’d been queuing behind me, smelling of sweat and onions. “You’re not the only one here with problems.”

  I wanted to push him to the floor, to bang my fists against the lady’s window, to scream my lungs out at them. I had a vision of myself doing just that, clear and vivid as if it were actually happening, and that scared me. I left without saying a word, without looking at her or the man again. I walked out onto the street, full of anger, feeling my legs tense. I walked as in a trance, hardly knowing where I was, until I felt a touch on my shoulders and I saw that I was on the New World Promenade, without knowing why. A stranger, a man in a suit and tie, was standing in front of me. Then I saw that it was you. You, looking like a different person. Your hair combed to the side, your leather shoes gleaming. I despised the sympathy I saw on your face.

  “What are you doing here? What happened?” you asked as we stood in the middle of the street.

  “Pani Kolecka . . . blood . . . no doctors.” I felt tears rising in me. Tears of anger, I think. You put your hand on my shoulder, heavy and warm.

  “Come on, Ludzio, we’ll go and have coffee somewhere. I’m on my lunch break. We’ll figure something out.”

  Your hand moved down to my back, guiding me along with you. I resisted its push.

  “Let go of me, Janusz,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ve had enough of figuring things out. Enough of the talk.”

  You were undeterred; your hand stayed where it was.

  “Ludzio, you need to calm down. Let’s not make a scene in public. Let’s go.”

  I pushed your hand off, its weight freeing me. “Go back to your office,” I said, the fury pouring out of me. “And to her, if you like.” Your face changed—understood, maybe. I turned quickly and left you standing there by yourself.

  At the next empty telephone box, I dialed the only number I knew by heart. It rang several times, the beeping slow and plaintive.

  “Ludwik, my child.” The tenderness in her raspy voice shook me to the core. There was loneliness in that voice too, and exhaustion, a voice no longer used to speaking, one that had used up most of its words. “Is everything all right, my love?” she asked. I could sense the stillness of our old flat while around me throngs of people rushed past. I nodded into the receiver.

  “Yes, Granny. I’m all right. I just wanted to hear you.” I breathed in deeply. “It’s so good to hear you. How are you?”

  “I’m well,” she said gravely. “Don’t worry about me. May God protect you, my love. Come home soon, yes?”

  Familiar guilt stirred in me, together with a longing for that faraway part of my childhood when everything had seemed almost carefree. “Yes, Granny, I will.”

  I put down the phone and walked on, agitated by my powerlessness. I walked with rage in my body, the old shame stirring, reawakening in the depths of my stomach, heavy and hard and sharp. I walked in the direction of the flat, my eyes fixed on the pavement, on the cracks in the concrete.

  I came upon a large queue by a grocery store, and without knowing why, I stopped dead in my tracks. A rush went through the street, an undeniable shift of energy. As if it was about to thunder. Everyone, including the people in the queue, looked up. A cloud was falling from the sky, white and brilliant in the sunlight, sheets of paper, like wings, light and beautiful, like time, fluttering through the October air. It felt like a dream. Everyone stood still, women with their shopping nets and couples and children, stretching out their hands, looking up and around, letting the paper rain onto them. One of the sheets landed right by my feet. There was a red hand on it, seemingly dripping with blood and grabbing stalks of wheat. “Our Land, Our Food. OUT with the Soviets, IN with Our Rights!” it said in black letters. “Brothers and Sisters, Rise Up Tonight.”

  The words resonated in me like a voice speaking in my head. The crowd’s amazement turned into apprehension as soon as they read the words. A child bent down to pick up the sheets, and his mother ripped them out of his hands, slapped him, and tore him away. Some hurried along; others looked up to the windows of the block that towered above us. I stood and watched, my senses in vertigo, my brain peculiarly calm. Already police sirens were howling and the crowd ran toward the blocks, the queue dispersed, people hurrying off like guilty foxes. In the confusion of it all, I bent down and picked up the leaflets, stuffing handfuls into my bag, wads of them, hearing my pulse pound in my ears. With the sirens coming closer, I jumped onto an approaching tram with my heart threatening to leap out of my chest.

  Pani Kolecka was in the kitchen when I rushed in. She was leaning against the counter like a small, brittle tree in a dressing gown, caught by a fit of coughing. I helped her back to bed, her weight on me.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  She looked at me with her small, watery eyes. “Maybe a little better, dear.”

  I helped her lie down. There was a large water stain where the blood had been on her sheet. I pretended not to see it.

  In my room I took out my radio and turned it on. To cover her coughing. To cover my thoughts. I wanted to drown out the voices in my head that said that even having these flyers was a folly and could get me locked up. I didn’t even hear the music. I sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands and my eyes closed.

  I remembered the procession, moving slowly against the merciless wind under a sky the color of concrete, starting from the church, where Granny and I thanked everyone who’d come to pay their last respects. Consoling faces pressed against our frozen cheeks. Relief that Father hadn’t shown up. Anger that Father hadn’t shown up. The procession of regret and helplessness moved from the church along the streets of my childhood, the pavements of our games, past our flat and the park full of drunkards. A coffin carried to the cemetery, lowered into a hole. Earth hitting wood. Handful after handful, marking the end of our previous lives. Only Granny and I remained, life having skipped a generation. The flat seemed empty. Gone were the nights by the radio. The news no longer mattered. We no longer cared about outside. We turned inward. Granny started to attend church every day, getting up at five for the first mass. She resigned herself entirely to God, handing herself over to heaven like a premature donation. And me, I withdrew into my books. The radio in Mother’s room remained covered forever. Not even music came out of it again. Not for many years.

  I heard Pani Kolecka’s coughing, sharp and thorny. Then I turned to the radio, lowered the volume, and moved the indicator to 101.2, the frequency still etched in my mind after all those years. I lay on my bed, the speakers to my ear, holding my breath. At first it was only music, but already I was calmed. I felt like that music, just for its origin, was cleansing me. And then, not long after, the familiar voice—deep and comforting and clear. There had been several of them who’d read the news over the years, and this was one of them. He was still there. It brought me back to the first time we’d all sat together, the three of us, around the radio in Mother’s room. A voice that could not be spoken over, that would be listened to until the very end: “Radio Free Europe. News at four o’clock. Friday, the tenth of October 1980.”

  He talked about the strikes that had gripped the country, halting production in dozens of known locations, including factories, mines, and shipyards. Workers had laid dow
n their tools, demanding the revocation of the increase in meat prices, as well as better working conditions, the protection of the right to free speech, and the ability to form independent trade unions. There had been no violent clashes with the authorities so far. The strikes had not yet reached the capital. But insider sources indicated that they would, most likely that very afternoon. “Residents are asked to remain indoors in case of any violent clashes with the authorities.”

  I thought of Mother, of her pointless life, her passivity. Of the years she’d spent listening to the radio, explaining her truths to me, and all of it for what? She’d died a submissive employee at the Electricity Office and had never dared to speak up or live out any of her ideas.

  “Your mother died out of loneliness,” Granny would always repeat, claiming it was because she had never remarried after my father. But I think it was despair that killed her. Having done only things she didn’t believe in, she must have been dead inside for years before her body finally gave up too.

  I switched off the radio and got up, took my bag. I told Pani Kolecka I was going out for a walk.

  She nodded weakly and whispered, “Look after yourself.”

  Outside, the air was pregnant with strife. The wind shook the trees, dry leaves rustled and dropped. I thought about where the demonstrations might be. The ones involving workers had always ended—violently or not—on the small square in front of the Party headquarters, by the National Museum.

  I jumped onto a tram that went that way and felt my heart so clearly, so distinctly, that it might as well have been the engine pushing the tram along. The first people were returning from work, and the streets were full. Before the tram reached the crossing near the museum, it stopped abruptly, a sudden, violent jolt. People screamed, trying not to lose their footing. I held on hard in order not to fall. A small girl and a man were thrown to the floor, falling with their arms spread out. The man’s walking stick slid to the end of the carriage. I helped him up, feeling his bones through the rough tweed of his jacket, his body light like a skeleton. He thanked me breathlessly. As we looked up, we saw the tram driver’s booth empty, the driver outside talking to a policeman. There was a barricade in the middle of the street, a sturdy metal fence blocking passage.