Swimming in the Dark

by Tomasz Jedrowski

  “Those Arabs are very different to us. But so kind.” There were photos of them, tall, dark men in white robes and sandals and beautiful beards. She showed me the rocks they’d brought back, the basalt and the crystals, the granite and shimmering minerals. She held them before me like the greatest treasures on earth and talked of her late husband and how much she missed him, and her small eyes shone like those precious stones.

  “You need to hold on to what you have,” she murmured, more to herself than to me, her veiny hands clasped around a cup of tea. “You never know when you’ll lose what you hold dearest.”

  I nodded, pulling her in for a hug. She smelled like home, of mothballs and comfort. I thought of you.

  Finally, the rains stopped. The world had been washed, and the city was still standing. Soon after, I received a note from Professor Mielewicz, asking me to come to his office the following week. I went into the bathroom with the big pair of scissors from the kitchen and began to cut my hair. Strands floated into the sink and onto the floor, lightly, like feathers, like the flocks of leaflets released by my hands. My head felt lighter. I looked at my face, smiled at myself, cut everything even. I looked good, I thought, shorn and new. Outside, the air already smelled different. Fresher, sharper—summer was gone. The autumn wind caressed my head, made it feel like new skin. The ladies walking their dogs down in the courtyards had changed into coats, wore them unbuttoned as they gossiped with one another, leashes tied around their soft, wrinkled wrists. Puddles filled the holes in the streets. The flowers and berries had disappeared from the market stalls, replaced by mushrooms.

  I boarded the tram, rattled along with it, saw the banks of Praga colored in a riot of dark greens and reds. I got to your street, to your house, ran up the stairs to your door. You opened up and we held each other, my face in your neck and your warm breath in my ear like gentle whispering. Your hand caressing my new hair.

  “Is she feeling better?” you asked in a whisper.

  I nodded, holding on to you tighter. “Thank you,” I said into your neck. I could feel you smiling against my cheek. I had meant to ask you again how you’d managed it, the doctor, the chicken; I’d planned the questions before coming—about Hania too, especially about her. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I was too happy to see you, too relieved. Too weary to struggle. I let myself fall on the bed. The cold air gave us goose bumps as we undressed. We found warmth beneath your covers. We tested our strengths, wrestled with the urgency of desire, conjured up heat. Our bodies like firestones. You had me, and I had you. But it didn’t feel like the other times, the first times. It felt like we were settling a score, evening something out. Like we needed this, this language, this code, to know where we were, and who. And that we were both still holding on.

  Afterward you got up and switched on the radio, sitting on your haunches, turning the tune button. Your arched back defined, your ass resting on your heels. Your tan had faded, I realized, and so had mine. Finally you found a station, a piano concerto, maybe Mozart. You lit a cigarette and came back to bed, the smoke gently floating, caressing the air. I felt weightless, again like one of the leaflets I had released into the air. I closed my eyes.

  “Maybe you were right,” I said, feeling you lie down next to me.

  “About what?” You blew out your smoke. It mingled with the air above us.

  “About needing to stay calm and finding other ways. I was foolish.”

  It felt good to say this, to shed conscience like a coat. If only the lightness would last, like another toke, another exhalation. The piano played joyfully, relentlessly. My eyes remained closed.

  “You were scared,” you whispered. “But now you know that there’s no need for that.” Your mouth covered mine. The smoke flowed from you to me, down into my lungs, filling me up, making me feel, for one moment, like I would burst.

  That Saturday you and I met by the Łazienki Gardens. It was my favorite park in the city and the only place I remember visiting the one time I’d come to Warszawa as a child with Mother and Granny. We’d taken a boat on the lake, fed the swans and the squirrels, had seen the other, complete families—mothers, fathers, and children. We’d visited the white palace on the island of the lake, the same palace that had been part of the king’s pleasure gardens and now served as a distraction for good workers and their families. As we were leaving, climbing up a gentle slope, we’d seen a man stacking blocks of hay under a small thatched roof. “Who is this for?” Mother had asked him. She was so elegant that day; I remember the moss-green hat she wore, the matching gloves. “The deer,” he’d said, and continued working. That had seemed incredible to me, that deer should live in the park, hidden from everyone’s sight.

  That Saturday night, when it was already dark and the gates of the gardens were locked, I imagined them, the deer, racing unhindered through the grounds, across the untended meadows, up and down the hills, along the tree-lined paths, their hooves clattering on the gravel and stirring the sleeping swans. What freedom to live like that, protected and boundless at once.

  You were waiting for me in the light of a streetlamp. You wore a brown corduroy jacket, and your hair was combed to the side, like that time you’d stopped me in the street in your suit, the day of the flyers. Like that day, you looked like a different person, and this both scared and excited me.

  “Very chic,” I said, clicking my tongue, hiding my discomfort.

  You smiled. “You look great too.”

  I’d worn my only jacket, a white shirt, and my good shoes. “Are you sure it’s not strange for me to go to her party?”

  You laughed briefly and placed your hand on the back of my neck. “There’ll be lots of people there. You’ll blend right in.”

  We walked the avenue along the park, past the tall government buildings patrolled by soldiers in berets. Only some windows were illuminated, the rest dark and dormant. You led us into a side street, lined by prewar buildings with large balconies on each floor. In front of us a woman in a fur coat and high heels was walking a sausage dog, her coat as shiny as her pet, a cigarette burning lazily in her gloved fingers. We stopped by a large entrance gate.

  You pressed a button on the domofon, and a crackling man’s voice came from the grid, asking who it was. You said your name. There was a buzzing noise, and you pushed the massive door open with the weight of your whole body.

  I had never been to a house like this. It was a splendid kamienica, an apartment building from before the war, one of the few that had survived. The entrance hall was high and vaulted, the ceiling covered in stucco flowers. A carpet led toward another set of doors, revealing a staircase, old and curved, with iron railings. You called the lift. We got in and rose weightlessly in the little silent box. In the glow of the single light bulb we inspected ourselves in the mirror. We looked serious and strangely put together, more grown-up than I’d ever seen us. The lift came to a halt and we got out, and you rang the bell by a wide double door. Subdued music and chatter emanated from behind it. Footsteps approached, the door opened, and a hulking figure appeared.

  “Janusz!” He opened his arms wide and you embraced, kissing each other on the cheek. It took me a moment to realize it was the friend I’d seen you with at camp, Maksio Karowski. He wore a velvet jacket and a shirt with a big collar and had the same confident and indifferent way about him that had struck me before. We shook hands, his almost crushing mine.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, his hand strong and warm, something about his momentary attention making me feel strangely charmed.

  We followed him through a wood-paneled corridor into a large room filled with smoke and people. Music blasted throughout the place, hot and loud, rockingly hypnotic. Couples danced in the middle of the room or lay spread out on a white yeti carpet. The only light came from lamps on the floor, one by a large television, another behind a pair of giant palm trees in pots. Maksio led us to the end of the room, where grand bay windows looked out onto the dark and seemingly infinite treetops of the
park.

  “Help yourself,” he said, pointing to a table covered in bottles and plates. “I need to check on somebody.” He winked at us and disappeared in the crowd.

  There were vodkas and whiskies and gins and vermouths and bottles I had never seen before and colorful plates of aspic meats and pineapple rings and cheese cubes. I wanted to taste everything. I ate some grapes and downed some whisky, feeling the liquid’s journey through my body, earthy and sweet and unburdening. The music and the laughter of the people all merged in my mind, spinning me into its net. I didn’t recognize anyone in the dim light of the room; every silhouette seemed equally important and glamorous: girls in dresses and clogs and hair piled high, boys in high-waisted blue jeans and tight shirts and jackets.

  “This place is out of this world!” I cried into your ear, over the sound of the music, and you nodded, and your mouth formed the words I know.

  We had another drink and had just started to move to the music when an arm snaked itself around my waist from behind, orange fingernails and dangling bracelets.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you with that hair, handsome,” said a mouth by my ear.

  It was Karolina. Lips the color of pomegranates, lashes large and thick and heavy with mascara like clotted spider legs.

  “What are you doing here?” I pressed her against me, relieved to see a familiar face.

  “I was invited, I swear!” she cried, taking my head in between her hands, kissing me on the mouth. I could feel her lipstick rubbing off, the petrol smell of her breath.

  She laughed and held her outstretched hand toward you like a lady. “I don’t think we’ve ever properly met.”

  You kissed the hand obligingly, playing her game.

  I took her by the waist. “Are you drunk?”

  “As a sailor. It would be stupid not to be.” She raised her glass, swayed on her heels.

  And then the music stopped. The record had come to an end; the low crackle of the speakers could be heard between the suddenly naked chatter of the crowd. We looked at each other, bemused, in anticipation. A new record was placed on the deck by a gangly boy in green bell-bottoms. At once a string of quick, light beats prepared the room, gathered our attention, ecstatic, simple, and single-minded. And before we knew it, Blondie’s siren voice had filled the room, sending a rush through us. We didn’t know the words, not a single one, but we understood everything about “Heart of Glass”—all its elation, its decadence, the pleasure of self-indulgence. We made our way through the crowd to the middle of the room, where we dissolved ourselves in her voice, in its high flight, in the rising and falling melody, in the motif of the beat, the beat that was there from beginning to end and begged to be followed. Our heads spun along with the record. Our bodies became instruments of the song, extensions of it, and we formed as one, dancing in a triangle, swaying from side to side as if possessed. When the song ended, another one began to play, one just as good and catchy and seductive, and we gave ourselves to it. It was as if someone had taken us all and placed us on a platform on top of the world. We danced until sweat ran down our backs and foreheads and we could no longer catch our breath.

  Later, the three of us took a break, filled our glasses, smoked by the large windows looking out over the black expanse of the park. The windows had glazed over with our heat, and someone opened one, letting in the cool evening air. That’s when I saw her. On the other side of the room, talking with a blond boy in a pair of dark sunglasses. She wore a long sequined dress, and her hair was large and frizzy, almost standing up from her head. She was an apparition. Then her eyes fell on you, and she made her way across the room.

  “How lovely you could make it!” She threw herself around your neck as if that’s what it was there for, her flowery-spicy perfume enveloping us all. Her eyeshadow was blue and sparkling like Ziggy Stardust’s. Her eyes came to rest on me. “I was watching you earlier,” she said, speaking slowly as if pronouncing a verdict. “Fabulous dancing. And that hair suits you.” She glanced at Karolina. “This must be your girl?”

  Karolina laughed with her mouth thrown open. “No, just a friend,” she cried, looking over to me and straightening her face. “Just a friend.”

  Hania smiled politely, looking at you and then back at Karolina. “Well, maybe we can find you someone here—there are plenty of boys around. Janusz, shall we dance?”

  You nodded and let her arm slide around yours.

  “See you later,” she cooed, and you were off.

  Karolina and I poured ourselves another drink, on the brink of total drunkenness now, and fell onto a wide, soft couch in the corner, where we could see the whole room. The whisky was still good and strong; its warmth went straight from my stomach to my head.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, kiddo,” Karolina said, her legs thrown over each other, almost lying on the couch.

  “Me too,” I slurred. “Who invited you, anyway?”

  She laughed. “Excuse you. Maksio invited me.” She pointed at him on the other side of the room, dancing closely with a blond girl in a miniskirt. “The sleaze.”

  I considered Karolina from the side, her profile clear against the white of the couch. She looked tired, and for the first time it occurred to me that we were all aging, that we would not be young forever.

  “But how do you even know him?” I asked.

  She shrugged, looking at the floor. “We may or may not have had a fling,” she said quietly, with a guilty smile.

  “How?”

  “He came and sat next to me on the bus on our way back from camp.” She shrugged. “He knows how to speak to girls.”

  “I thought he wasn’t your type,” I said, stunned.

  “He isn’t, but I was feeling lonely. Anyway—here’s to all the fun we’ve had at his cost.” We clinked glasses and took another deep comforting sip.

  “But I thought it was Hania’s party,” I said.

  “Goodness,” Karolina said with a sigh, rolling her eyes, “doesn’t he tell you anything? Maksio and Hania are siblings.”

  I was taken aback, without quite knowing why. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

  “Yes, it does,” she said, looking at Maksio, who was now kissing the blonde. “The same sense of entitlement. Did you see how she dragged Janusz away from us?”

  I shrugged, trying to keep my mind at bay. “They’re friends. Why shouldn’t she dance with him?”

  A slow song was playing now, a dark, profound voice singing in English, lamenting something bygone. And the dancing couples turned and swayed in their own orbits, their own planetary paths. I couldn’t see you on the crowded dance floor. I wished it could be us out there.

  “So how are you?” asked Karolina, seeing me look for you.

  I shrugged, feeling my head spin again. “Good, I guess. I’m seeing Mielewicz next week. I think he’s read my proposal.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know . . . He hasn’t said anything yet. But I enjoyed writing it, more than I thought I would. I’d love to do it.”

  “What if it doesn’t work out?” She looked worried for a moment, and I wondered how real this concern was and how much of it bitterness concealed. Bitterness about her own situation.

  “Somehow I think it could turn out all right, you know?” I said.

  “Wow, you’ve become awfully optimistic lately,” she replied with only a trace of irony.

  The dancing couples before us moved, parted to the sides like a curtain—revealing you. You and Hania. Entwined in your own secret constellation. Her eyes were closed, her cheek resting on your shoulder, your fingers wrapped around her gleaming sequined waist . . .

  I couldn’t think straight—my mind was like an erring line. But my body reacted all by itself, fossilizing my insides.

  “Looks like they get on well,” said Karolina, watching you darkly. You and Hania swayed to the waves of the song.

  “I don’t think she’s his type.” I held on tightly to the banister of my own words.


  “Ludzio, with this house, you’re everyone’s type.” She said this without taking her eyes off you and Hania. She said it almost absentmindedly. Then the other couples moved in their rotations and hid you from our sight again. And I looked back at Karolina. Her words remained in the air, heavy, unwilling to go away, like a fog.

  “You’re exaggerating,” I said. “Since when are you such a bloody pragmatist?”

  She laughed, as if to appease me. “Not me, Ludzio. But everyone else.” The tip of her middle finger traced the brim of her glass. Then she looked around the room, low and mysterious with the dim light and the palm trees. Her eyes shimmered. “It’s beautiful here. And there are no queues for Scotch whisky.” She clinked her glass to mine and took another deep sip.

  “You’re drunk,” I said, feeling the drink turn bitter in my mouth. The music played on. The couples danced carelessly. “I need the bathroom,” I said, and stumbled off. Someone pointed me to a door at the end of the long corridor, and I slipped inside. My head was spinning. I went to the sink and splashed water over my face. The only light came from silver bulbs arranged around the wide mirror, like in a Hollywood boudoir. It made me look tired—somehow older, like Karolina had earlier. My eyes fell on a large square machine in the corner. I believe this was the first time I’d seen a washing machine with my own eyes. It glistened in the light of the room, solid and reassuring, its little round door like the entrance to a spacecraft. I thought of Granny, kneeling over a metal basin, pouring scalding water from a kettle, dipping each shirt, each sock, each handkerchief into the water, all her life, with a block of brown soap in her sore hands—rubbing, scouring, fingers burning.