by Frank Wynne
But far be it from us to wish to expose this sham. Despite our better judgement we are attracted by the tawdry charm of the district. Besides, that pretence of a city has some of the features of self-parody. Rows of small one-storey suburban houses alternate with many-storeyed buildings which, looking as if made of cardboard, are a mixture of blind office windows, of grey-glassed display windows, of fascia, of advertisements and numbers. Among the houses the crowds stream by. The street is as broad as a city boulevard, but the roadway is made, like village squares, of beaten clay, full of puddles and overgrown with grass. The street traffic of that area is a byword in the city; all its inhabitants speak about it with pride and a knowing look. That grey, impersonal crowd is rather self-conscious of its role, eager to live up to its metropolitan aspirations. All the same, despite the bustle and sense of purpose, one has the impression of a monotonous aimless wandering, of a sleepy procession of puppets. An atmosphere of strange insignificance pervades the scene. The crowd flows lazily by and, strange to say, one can see it only indistinctly; the figures pass in gentle disarray, never reaching complete sharpness of outline. Only at times do we catch among the turmoil of many heads a dark vivacious look, a black bowler hat worn at an angle, half a face split by a smile formed by lips which had just finished speaking, a foot thrust forward to take a step and fixed forever in that position.
A peculiarity of that district are the cabs, without coachmen, driving along unattended. It is not as if there were no cabbies, but mingling with the crowd and busy with a thousand affairs of their own, they do not bother about their carriages. In that area of sham and empty gestures no one pays much attention to the precise purpose of a cab ride and the passengers entrust themselves to these erratic conveyances with the thoughtlessness which characterizes everything here. From time to time one can see them at dangerous corners, leaning far out from under the broken roof of a cab as, with the reins in their hands, they perform with some difficulty the tricky manoeuvre of overtaking.
There are also trams here. In them the ambition of the city councillors has achieved its greatest triumph. The appearance of these trams, though, is pitiful, for they are made of papier-mâché with warped sides dented from the misuse of many years. They often have no fronts, so that in passing one can see the passengers, sitting stiffly and behaving with great decorum. These trams are pushed by the town porters. The strangest thing of all is, however, the railway system in the Street of Crocodiles.
Occasionally, at different times of day towards the end of the week, one can see groups of people waiting at a crossroads for a train. One is never sure whether the train will come at all or where it will stop if it does. It often happens, therefore, that people wait in two different places, unable to agree where the stop is. They wait for a long time standing in a black, silent bunch alongside the barely visible lines of the track, their faces in profile: a row of pale cutout paper figures, fixed in an expression of anxious peering.
At last the train suddenly appears: one can see it coming from the expected side street, low like a snake, a miniature train with a squat puffing locomotive. It enters the black corridor, and the street darkens from the coal dust scattered by the line of carriages. The heavy breathing of the engine and the wave of a strange sad seriousness, the suppressed hurry and excitement transform the street for a moment into the hall of a railway station in tin quickly falling winter dusk.
A black market in railway tickets and bribery in general are the special plagues of our city.
At the last moment, when the train is already in the station, negotiations are conducted in nervous haste with corrupt railway officials. Before these are completed, the train starts, followed slowly by a crowd of disappointed passengers who accompany it a long way down the line before finally dispersing.
The street, reduced for a moment to form an improvised station filled with gloom and the breath of distant travel, widens out again, becomes lighter and again allows the carefree crowds of chattering passers-by to stroll past the shop windows – those dirty grey squares filled with shoddy goods, tall wax dummies, and barber’s dolls.
Showily dressed in long lace-trimmed gowns, prostitutes have begun to circulate. They might even be the wives of hairdressers or restaurant bandleaders. They advance with a brisk rapacious step, each with some small flaw in her evil corrupted face; their eyes have a black, crooked squint, or they have harelips, or the tips of their noses are missing.
The inhabitants of the city are quite proud of the odour of corruption emanating from the Street of Crocodiles. ‘There is no need for us to go short of anything,’ they say proudly to themselves, ‘we even have truly metropolitan vices.’ They maintain that every woman in that district is a tart. In fact, it is enough to stare at any of them, and at once you meet an insistent clinging look which freezes you with the certainty of fulfilment. Even the schoolgirls wear their hair ribbons in a characteristic way and walk on their slim legs with a peculiar step, an impure expression in their eyes that foreshadows their future corruption.
And yet, and yet – are we to betray the last secret of that district, the carefully concealed secret of the Street of Crocodiles?
Several times during our account we have given warning signals, we have intimated delicately our reservations. An attentive reader will therefore not be unprepared for what is to follow. We spoke of the imitative, illusory character of that area, but these words have too precise and definite a meaning to describe its half-baked and undecided reality.
Our language has no definitions which would weigh, so to speak, the grade of reality, or define its suppleness. Let us say it bluntly: the misfortune of that area is that nothing ever succeeds there, nothing can ever reach a definite conclusion. Gestures hang in the air, movements are prematurely exhausted and cannot overcome a certain point of inertia. We have already noticed the great bravura and prodigality in intentions, projects, and anticipations which are one of the characteristics of the district. It is in fact no more than a fermentation of desires, prematurely aroused and therefore impotent and empty. It is an atmosphere of excessive facility, every whim flies high, a passing excitement swells into an empty parasitic growth; a light grey vegetation of fluffy weeds, of colourless poppies sprouts forth, made from a weightless fabric of nightmares and hashish. Over the whole area there floats the lazy licentious smell of sin, and the houses, the shops, the people seem sometimes no more than a shiver on its feverish body, the gooseflesh of its febrile dreams. Nowhere as much as there do we feel threatened by possibilities, shaken by the nearness of fulfilment, pale and faint with the delightful rigidity of realization. And that is as far as it goes.
Having exceeded a certain point of tension, the tide stops and begins to ebb, the atmosphere becomes unclear and troubled, possibilities fade and decline into a void, the crazy grey poppies of excitement scatter into ashes.
We shall always regret that, at a given moment, we have left the slightly dubious tailor’s shop. We shall never be able to find it again. We shall wander from shop sign to shop sign and make a thousand mistakes. We shall enter scores of shops, see many which are similar. We shall wander along shelves upon shelves of books, look through magazines and prints, confer intimately and at length with young women of imperfect beauty, with an excessive pigmentation who yet would not be able to understand our requirements.
We shall get involved in misunderstandings until all our fever and excitement have spent themselves in unnecessary effort, in futile pursuit.
Our hopes were a fallacy, the suspicious appearance of the premises and of the staff were a sham, the clothes were real clothes, and the salesman had no ulterior motives. The women of the Street of Crocodiles are depraved to only a modest extent, stilled by thick layers of moral prejudice and ordinary banality. In that city of cheap human material, no instincts can flourish, no dark and unusual passions can be aroused.
The Street of Crocodiles was a concession of our city to modernity and metropolitan corruption. Obviously, we were un
able to afford anything better than a paper imitation, a montage of illustrations cut out from last year’s mouldering newspapers.
THE BIRCH GROVE1
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980) also known under his literary pseudonym Eleuter, was a Polish poet, essayist, dramatist and writer. He is mostly recognized for his literary achievements in poetry before the Second World War, but also criticized as a long-term political opportunist in communist Poland, actively participating in the slander of Czesław Miłosz and other expatriates. He was removed from school textbooks soon after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. As per his wishes, he was buried in a miner’s uniform. Some attributed it to an attempt to win communist sympathy, others thought it a metaphor for writer’s toil, however a close friend unravelled the mystery by revealing that “Jarosław simply thought he looked good in this type of a uniform”.
I
Something in the way Stanisław alighted from the chaise before the porch immediately irritated Bolesław. He flew, or rather fluttered out of the carriage. What struck him most was the bright blue colour of Stanisław’s socks, which shone garishly from under his short, baggy trousers, laying siege to his skinny ankles. But apart from that he looked perfectly well. Bolesław looked up to his brother’s light blue eyes. They were smiling, and there was a smile on his lips as well, sending fine lines radiating outwards. They kissed in greeting; Bolesław’s first kindly thought was, ‘Thank God, he’s in good health.’
It was a very long time since they had last seen each other. Staś, as Stanisław was nicknamed, had spent the past two years at a sanatorium, but it was several years since they had last met. Bolesław had long since buried himself away at this forestry lodge, and Staś had never been to visit. Quite possibly he wouldn’t have recognised him now.
‘How are you?’ asked Bolesław after a short, silent embrace.
‘I’m fine!’
‘So you’ve remembered me at last.’
‘What else could I do? The doctors insisted I go to the forest. So where else but here?’
As he spoke, he kept interrupting himself to do things. He leaped up the steps into the chaise and drew out a light trunk, put it down on the veranda, and cast off his elegant mackintosh, gloves and travelling cap, just like the ones Bolesław had seen advertised in illustrated magazines. At once they sat down to breakfast, laid out on the veranda.
‘I’m awfully tired,’ said Staś. ‘Two days and two nights’ journey.’
Little Ola emerged from inside the house. She had startled blue eyes and was carrying a rather threadbare doll. Silently, she curtsied to her uncle.
‘Goodness, what a big girl she is!’ cried Staś. Bolesław said nothing. ‘What an awful doll! I saw such beautiful dolls abroad, but I forgot to bring her one. What a thoughtless uncle I am!’
Ola went down the porch steps and walked quietly into the forest. The forest began just across the road, which ran between it and the lodge. It was a nasty day, drizzling endlessly. The woods on this side were devoid of undergrowth, and as he was animatedly describing his journey, Staś could see Ola’s pale little dress glinting between the tree trunks. He broke off his story.
‘You let her run loose like that?’ he addressed his older brother. Bolesław just shrugged. ‘As I was saying, as soon as I got down into the valley,’ he continued, ‘I felt awfully tired. What a place Poland is! I thought the journey would never end – the forest goes on and on – God knows where it all comes from.’
‘Yes, but it’s not very pretty. Just woods.’
‘Never mind – I adore pine forests. The doctors were always going on about it – off to the pine forest with you, that’s what you need!’
‘Over there behind the house there’s a very fine birch grove,’ said Bolesław, pointing, but without looking that way.
The day was overcast, and from the forest echoed a faint rustle of pine needles brushing against each other.
‘You know, two hours of listening to the rustle of pine needles and sand beneath the wheels is awfully dull!’ Staś went on, without losing his good humour. ‘I find the lack of variety in this region rather boring. So how are you?’
Bolesław shrugged again, and made an indeterminate sound.
‘You ought to get someone to take care of the little one, you know.’
‘I’ve been thinking about it …’
‘Just thinking about it isn’t enough.’
Staś pushed back his chair with a wide sweep and took his trunk by the handle.
‘Where am I to stay?’
‘Left off the hall.’
Bolesław shifted his chair slightly in order to look down the road. The sky between the porch roof and the forest had darkened abruptly and the rain had grown denser. There was an open window right next to the veranda, and he could hear Staś putting his room in order. He plucked at his beard as he listened to his brother rummaging about, unpacking his trunk and washing after his journey, humming all the while. He never stopped humming fashionable European tunes, importing a breath of foreign air. Bolesław frowned and chewed his beard, stuffing it into his mouth.
Staś opened the door from his own room into the next. Bolesław could hear him shuffling about in soft slippers, opening the door into the little hall; he must be peeping into the kitchen. Then he came back down the other side of the house, through Bolesław and Ola’s room. Four rooms – that was the entire extent of it.
‘I’ve been right around the house,’ said Staś, standing in the doorway. ‘I forgot you don’t have a piano. I thought you did, and I was looking for it everywhere. It’ll be awfully dull here without a piano. Can’t we hire one in Sławsk?’
Bolesław didn’t answer.
‘We’ll all be bored to death here.’
Even the word ‘death’ was not enough to rouse Bolesław from his trance. All he kept thinking was, ‘Oh Christ Almighty, what the hell is he doing here?’
Meanwhile Staś had poured himself a glass of hot water from the kettle that stood on the table. He went off to shave, appearing soon after through the window, his face covered in lather. ‘Don’t you go riding?’ he said.
‘No, but I’ve got a saddle.’
‘What about a horse?’
‘The one on the right,’ mumbled Bolesław.
‘Does he go?’
‘Hm, Janek says he’s very good.’
‘That’s wonderful. I’ll do some riding, then,’ said Staś and withdrew.
He soon fired another question at Bolesław, asking, ‘So how far is it to Sławsk?’
‘You came from there, didn’t you?’
‘But how far is it in miles?’
‘About two, two and a half maybe.’
‘Do you think it would be possible to bring a piano here?’
‘You’ve seen what the road’s like.’
‘Of course, but once it dries out?’
‘It’ll be sandy.’
‘But if need be would you let me have the horses?’
‘Can’t you leave me in peace about your wretched piano?!’ said Bolesław impatiently. He stood up and went into the kitchen. Staś went on humming as he shaved. He watched as Ola came slinking up the road, soaked through, but not walking any faster. She stepped carefully across the ruts, shielding her doll with a handkerchief. The sight of her made Stanisław’s heart bleed. ‘It’s going to be tough here,’ he said to himself.
Katarzyna, the old servant, was clearing away the breakfast on the veranda. Ola sat down at a little table in a nook and started chatting to her doll.
Staś was inspecting all his knick-knacks, which reminded him of his time abroad. He arranged them on a decrepit, ugly little dressing table standing in the corner. He gazed at the photographs; there he was with Miss Simons and Duparc on the snow at Davos. Smiling faces. The smell of the objects there had been different. N
ow he was enveloped in the odour of plain pine furniture and freshly washed floors. When he went out onto the porch the sky had brightened.
‘Ola, come for a walk. Show me where the birch grove is.’
Ola stood up without a word and took him by the hand. He could feel her cold, skinny little paw in his. Slowly they made their way down the steps. Heavy drops dripped from the roof.
‘When it rains early in the morning the weather’s always nice later,’ said the little girl solemnly.
They walked around the house. And indeed, on the other side there was a lovely birch grove. The trunks stretched skywards like snow-clad pillars, brittle, as if made of sugar or snow. Delicate leaves were trickling down from on high, but all one could see was the vista of white pillars.
‘It’s pretty here,’ said Staś without smiling.
Ola didn’t answer. They walked over damp grass, then a well-trodden path. The white tree trunks grew denser, forming a foggy vista; the humidity among the trees had started to vaporise. It was going to be a sunny afternoon.
‘It’s just a May shower,’ said Ola, ever so slowly unwinding the thread of her thoughts.
They were standing in front of a small mound of yellow sand, going black already, but not overgrown with grass. The mound was enclosed by a white birchwood fence, a very plain structure; sticks had simply been embedded in the ground crosswise. A huge birchwood cross stood over the mound, as white as the trunks of the surrounding trees. Staś was amazed. ‘What’s this?’
