He takes on a few side jobs. They even come out OK. Afterwards, it stops amusing him. He leaves the company. Because they’ve got a real company! Jointly planned projects, a division of labour for fulfilling their projects, an exchange of services and work. It’s an authentic collective, the Loser tells me – well-oiled and efficient. If there’s a chance of making money, they’re capable of toiling like monks. If they have to wait for something, they have no hesitation about starving themselves. Humble slaves to their passions, they have grown numb to everything that is not directly in front of their eyes. Their minds go into action only when goaded by the spur of tangible benefits. Outside these periods they sink into complete lassitude, into such vacancy, such a moment of inertia, that they are barely capable of exchanging trivialities, let alone any kind of significant meaning.
‘We don’t know each other’s languages,’ Misiek laments.
Yet they remain in touch. Does he enjoy the role of loser? That he passes for the ultimate nobody? In some ways, he even takes it seriously. By not sharing the enthusiasms of that crowd, he can denounce them and sneer at their proclivities. The Loser doesn’t throw his elbows around. He circles the vanguard like a faithful satellite, staying in its field of magnetic attraction but always remaining in an outer orbit. He knows that those closer to the centre are increasingly the ones who call the shots.
‘It’s strange, but I’ll admit that what they are doing is right. They’re creating things of worth. They have value. People are waiting for their work. No one can imagine life any more without the things they give to the world. They have a feeling for the concrete, and that’s all that matters when everything else is slipping through your fingers.’
By the same token, the Loser passes sentence on himself. He bears a sort of stigma of failure. Who needs his quandaries? Where is the audience that will listen to his vexations? ‘People sinking in the maelstrom of trivial problems,’ he says, ‘are unable to reach the surface and draw breath. The current lifts them up and the whirlpool swallows them.’
‘You’re exaggerating, Loser,’ I tell him. ‘And that exaggeration will consume you. Only the shavings will be left.’
But I’m exaggerating, too. The Loser is safe from destruction. It’s nice to meet somebody like him, although he’s laborious company. He draws us right into his dense fumes of sophistry, forcing our benumbed brains into action. At least we feel refreshed, however, after a series of aridly desert-like chats in which the unwitting effort seems to be directed exclusively to ensuring that not a single idea slips in among a hundred words.
He’s certainly an unfashionable individual. He doesn’t go on miracle diets, he doesn’t follow the serialized novel The Magic of Your Wheels, he’s not saving up, even for a push scooter. He’s tormented by questions that none of those around him are even aware of. He’s somebody on the other side of the window pane. You can see his face, and that it’s moving, but you can’t hear his voice. So he remains alone, and the solitude paralyses his volition. The Loser is full of energy, but it’s in suspended animation. He has a feeling that he ought to be doing something, but he doesn’t know what. When it seems to him that he knows, then the question arises: is it worth it? He gives up and makes a dismissive gesture.
He goes home. He turns on the radio. He reads some poetry, and then puts it down. He picks up Dostoevsky. (He ponders the sentence: ‘It seemed to me at last that he was worried about something particular, and was perhaps unable to form a definite idea of it himself.’) He lights a cigarette.
Eartha Kitt sings ‘C’est si bon’.
He stares out of the window. When will they find a cure for cancer? Children are kicking a ball around. He makes tea. Tomorrow they change the movie schedule.
Eartha Kitt sings ‘Let’s Do It’.
He reads: ‘There were, no doubt, many fine impulses and the very best elements in her character, but everything in her seemed perpetually seeking its balance and unable to find it; everything was in chaos, in agitation, in uneasiness.’ That’s Liza, he thinks. He goes back outside. He runs into someone. They talk. The hours pass. He sees nothing. Daydreams.
That’s all.
Danka
I started at the rectory. I knocked on the massive door. The lock grated, the keys jangled, and at last the door handle moved slightly. The oval of a wary face loomed out of the shadowy vestibule and froze.
‘I wanted to speak with the priest.’
‘You are?’
‘I’m from the press, and I travelled here …’
‘I thought so. Of course. I understand. Unfortunately, Father is not here. I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I? Were you counting on something spicy? My God, it could almost be funny.’
‘When will Father be home?’
‘Oh, that doesn’t depend on you or on me. It’s for others to decide. Let’s not speculate.’
The face receded into the shadows, the key jangled again, the lock grated again. The rectory stood at the end of a lane that began at the town square. It stood near the lake, in a cloud of maples and oaks, two storeys high, banal and plain in its architecture. Next to it, above the tops of the trees, rose the church spire with its gallery and bell. A little house, a small, colourful cottage, squatted further on, but still within the bounds of the parish property. That must be where they lived, I thought. I approached it to check whether the windows in the cottage were broken. Yes, they were broken.
I went back into the town. I won’t give its name, and the reportage will explain why. It lies in the northern part of Białystok province, and there is no one who has not seen, at least once in their life, one of a hundred little towns like this. There’s nothing distinctive about any of them. They put on a drowsy face, damp patches growing with lichens in the furrows of their crumbling walls, and anyone who walks across the town square has the impression that everything is staring at him insistently from under half-closed, motionless eyelids.
The town square is cobblestone, rectangular and empty. It’s raining. All of July has been streaming with rain and people have stopped believing in summer. And the little town is dripping with rain, the roofs and the lanes and the sidewalks. A few young trees growing on the square are also dripping with rain. Under the trees stands a youngster. He’s wearing a jacket in a broad check, authentic jeans and worn-out sneakers. He’s standing there without purpose or hope just for the sake of standing there, just to keep going and survive somehow, like the ones who stand in front of the Central Department Store, for whom standing is a form of existence, a lifestyle, a pose, and a game.
I asked him: ‘Are you from here?’
‘Not now. Now I’m from Warsaw.’
‘On holiday?’
‘You got it.’
We went to the inn. There was a restaurant in one room and a coffee shop in the other. The smoke hung low, in woolly grey streaks. The waiter brought wine.
‘What’s all this about?’ asked the youngster.
I started in on the business with the rectory. Maybe he knew something? Maybe he was there?
‘No way,’ he said. ‘When I got in from Warsaw it was all over. Not much to say, just a lot of talk. The guys told me about how those old biddies went there. She’s in the hospital now. She was supposedly out of this world. Legs to dream of, stacked, a pretty face, everything in the right place. Ones like that come along, and you have to move fast. I picked up a girl like that in the spring. Jesus, talk about lovely! From Śniadeckich, do you know the street? I go to the Polytechnic there. Just a kid, sweet sixteen, but wow, nothing more to say. When a man has time on his hands, that’s great, but what can you do when they make you hit the books? You can’t get away with it. Don’t waste your time on the scandal. It’s just a shame about the girl. But people here have no orientation. Is it any wonder?’
He advised me: ‘Talk to the boss of the restaurant. She always knows what’s up.’
He went off and came back with the lady. She was a stout woman, dressed with exaggerated, awkward eleg
ance. Her face was slathered with powder, rouge and lipstick. She sat down, leaning her elbows on the table and twirling her fingers in her hair.
‘I went along, of course,’ she said. ‘My business requires it. Personally, I wouldn’t have gone, but I had to for the sake of my business. If I had said no, the women would have forbidden their husbands to set foot in my restaurant. Then I lose customers and the municipal hotel takes them. The hotel has a restaurant, too. So when they started gathering in front of the house that’s now being built near the fire station, I left my husband to mind the place and went there. At first there were plans to seize the priest, but he was gone because they’d summoned him to the curia. Then somebody shouted that we should go into the church and beseech God not to take revenge on us for the affront committed in his holy sanctuary. When we went inside – have you seen the church already? – that figure was standing in the middle with wood chips all around it, because she’s wooden, and she wasn’t ready yet. So we all knelt down, but old Sadowska jumped to her feet and screamed: “Chop her up. Chop her up and burn her. Get her out of our sight.” That’s what she screamed. And she ran up to that figure, and there were various mallets lying around, and a chisel and a hatchet, and she waved it around, and I felt a chill. She struck it once, but Florkowa came flying after her, the one with the son who works at the mill, and she caught Sadowska by the arm and said: “Drop that hatchet, don’t you even dare to touch that figure, because it’s holy.” And Sadowska shouts: “Holy? She’s a harlot, not holy.” She said even worse things but I’m not going to repeat them. You know. And Florkowa shouts back at her: “Don’t blaspheme, because hell will swallow you up and us too for condoning it.” At which Sadowska turned around to face us, and we, we’re all kneeling there and our legs are leaden with fear, and she cries out: “Look, you women, don’t be blind. Look, if it’s not that harlot. It’s her after all, may the earth cover me, it’s her.” And I’m telling you, but don’t breathe a word because it’ll be the end of me – it was her. The head, the face, the figure – the exact same. Identical. And at that moment each of us felt such dread, such madness, that none of us dared to back Sadowska up. And Florkowa stood there shielding the figure and saying, “Over my dead body. Over my dead body.” And it was, sir, a beautiful day, not like today, except that in the church it was grey, gloomy, heavy with fear and the screaming of those women. Sadowska broke down sobbing, howling, and we began slipping out of the door. And what do you know, as we’re leaving, out of that little cottage next to the rectory comes the girl herself. Mother of God! I, of course, I’m not backward in terms of fashion, I’ve been to Sopot and I myself dress très chic. But nobody here had ever seen anything like that. And our priest himself used to rail against depravity until it made you quake. He forbade girls to play volleyball. I myself don’t know what’s come over him now. I try to figure it out, but I just don’t know. So that girl comes up to us and she’s wearing a bathing suit, what do you call it, a bikini. A man sneezes and everything flies away. You know, sir, women don’t like saying good things about each other, but I’m not backward and I’ll admit that girl was like a rose blossom. Any man would go through torments and purgatory for one like her. Good Lord, sir, the women see her and you can hear them hissing. If she’d just kept going then maybe nothing would have happened, or if she’d crossed our path some other day then maybe nothing would have happened either, but we had just come out of church and there had been that scene in there that I told you about, and every one of us had a heart full of terror and bitterness that we wanted to get rid of. The girl came up to us and asked, “Are you ladies looking for somebody?” At that point Maciaszkowa stepped forward and said, “Yes. You, you pestilence!” And wham! over the head with her cane, because Maciaszkowa has trouble walking and uses a cane. And then she let her have it a second and a third time. I stood there like a stone, sir, and everything went black before my eyes and I thought: What’s going on, what’s going on, and my thoughts jumbled in my head like magpies in a tree hollow. They’re laying into her and I don’t move a muscle. Then afterwards they went over to that cottage, smashed the windows, and dragged out the furniture and broke it up, even though the furniture belonged to the priest. At that moment I look up and I see Michał coming, that is, our church sexton. I call out to the women and they run for it, with me behind them. I already told them at the police station that my business requires me to always go with the people. I’m not backward, but I had to go.’
The police station is also located on the town square, across from the inn. It’s easy to see from there what condition the regulars are in when they emerge. They can be marched straight across to the opposite side of the square, where they can sober up and recover their equilibrium under lock and key. The policeman on duty sits behind the railing observing the square, and he says: ‘In general, things are calm here. But there was one incident. We never had anything like that happen before.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ I break in. ‘I’m interested in the details.’
He smiles in a vague sort of way because he wouldn’t want to talk without permission from the chief. An hour later I’m leafing through a dossier full of material that I obtained from the station chief. The chief is eagerly assisting me, suggesting names and providing addresses. I search the papers strewn across the desk and he keeps pulling new ones out of the folder.
‘I state that Citizen Helena Krakowiak my neighbour came to me first, and stated enough already of these scenes of depravity spreading through the vicinity, the Lord Jesus himself drove the moneylenders out of the church thus setting an example for us. She also stated of her own accord that we give money on the collection plate, taking it out of the mouths of our children, and they fatten themselves on it in order to commit ignominy. We have already looked on this for a month and our patience is exhausted and how long are we going to look on this sight, indicated Citizen Helena Krakowiak, may their offspring go to the devil, and she crossed herself. The above-named stressed that a figure of Our Lady could have been bought for the money collected and then there would not have been an affront to morality and debauchery such as the world has never seen. Next I would like to submit that other citizens also came to me, that is’ – numerous names here – ‘asserting their agreement with the above-named citizen who dropped a hint about driving out that prostitute as she expressed it because we have no need of whores in the rectory, as she also said. The above-named women stated that there was no other way out and Citizen Helena Krakowiak indicated a place near the fire station on the date of Tuesday, 28 June, at the time of four o’clock in the afternoon in order to be able to give the men and children dinner, wash the dishes and put them away …’
Later that day, I spoke with the secretary of the Municipal Committee. Tall and sinewy, he sat facing me, slumping his broad shoulders. He wiped his forehead, considered things, and enunciated his sentences slowly, with forethought.
‘You are aware, comrade, that this might have been a provocation after all.’
‘By which side?’ I asked.
‘By the clergy. The clergy likes doing such things whenever we try to see what they’re up to.’
He stuck to this statement and refused to admit any other version. It must have been a provocation, he repeated. I didn’t know the priest, but he knew him. The priest made moves that were very telling. You only had to analyse them. Their sense was clear. Perfectly clear.
We changed the subject. The new subject pleased him, and me. A factory was being built in town. They were already digging the foundations, and they were also going to build a housing settlement. The little town would get moving and play a new role. It would find its place on the economic map of the country. Even today its future already looked promising. I made a pledge to come and do a report. We shook hands and again I was walking the street, the rain was falling, the water was murmuring in the gutters, and that guy in jeans was standing under the trees on the square. It was he who suggested that I should meet with the sexton, and
who led me through a hole in the fence, down a passageway and through the yard. The dwelling that we entered was crowded with beds and chairs, and the walls were covered with pictures and satirical caricatures from magazines published in Warsaw. Two men were sitting at the table. One was older, with his arm in a sling, and the other was blond, robust and tall – his son, as it turned out. The old man stood up and went out.
‘My father’s sick,’ said the blond man, ‘his arm just won’t heal. I’m staying here to help him, because we also have a little land, but I’m dying to leave for the big city!’ Michał S. finished his military service and when he came home the old sexton had died, and they took him as his replacement. There’s no other work to be found, at least until they build that factory. I could tell that he didn’t take his position very seriously, he’d seen a little bit of the world, and would change jobs at the first opportunity.
‘Are you here about that brawl?’ He chuckled at my interest in it. It was starting to get dark, the rain was falling, and water ran down the windows. ‘I could make tea,’ Michał offered.
‘It was May when he came here. I was trimming the trees. A man walks up and asks about the priest. He wasn’t over thirty, dressed in a sweater with a kerchief tied around his neck, and he was holding a package. I led him into the parish office. He said hello and introduced himself. He said he was a sculptor from Wrocław. He unwrapped the parcel, and there was the head of a woman. “Take a look at it,” he said. “It’s a plaster sculpture of the Virgin Mary. Won’t you think about it, Father?” Our old man started studying it, picked it up, judged its weight, and then said no, he wouldn’t take it. The other one took the head and wrapped it back up, but then the old man told him to sit down and began questioning him about where he studied, what he was doing, whether he had had any exhibitions, and similar details. It was plain that the old man liked him, because he said: “You know, I’m not going to buy that Virgin Mary, but our little church was remodelled in the spring, we restored the side altar, and we need a statue of the Blessed Mother there. There used to be one, but the termites got to it so bad that it fell to pieces. Maybe you could do one.” The other man said: “Of course”, and so they went to look at the place. The sculptor figured and figured and then he said: “Well then, five thousand and it’ll be all right.” The old man protested. He didn’t have the money, the remodelling had cleaned him out and he couldn’t give that much. They haggled until the priest tried a new tack: “Let’s do it another way,” he says. “I’ve got a cottage for the sexton here but he lives in town, and so the cottage is standing vacant. You live there, I’ll feed you, and you make me that sculpture. There’s a lake here, the forest, a beautiful setting.” The sculptor didn’t say anything, you could see that he was working something out, and then he responded: “All right, Father, but on one condition. Right now I’m working on a sculpture that’s very important to me, and I can’t break off. I’m doing that sculpture with a model. So I’ll accept your proposal if you permit me to live here with my model.” The old man was taken aback and cried out: “Here, in the rectory!?” I looked at him and I could see that he was getting cold feet. He didn’t want to do it, he didn’t want to do it, but he’s tight-fisted and in the end he said: “It’s a deal.”
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