by Jerzy Pilch
Breakneck Love
I go to book signings less and less frequently, because I am less and less able to tolerate nights spent in hotels. Not so much even the nights themselves, as the returns to the room in the evenings. Once a person has finally fallen asleep, it basically makes no difference where he is. But the empty evenings, during which, theoretically, anything might happen, but nothing ever does happen, are unbearable.
I don’t know whether there exists a monograph entitled Hotels and Suicide, or even better: A Baedeker for the Hotels of Suicides. I don’t know whether such books exist. Probably they do exist. All books already exist, so probably there is also a Guide to Hotels in Which the Greatest Number of Suicides Were Committed. But without even reading it, I know what is written there. The chapter about individual steps in the hallway. The chapter about the decrepit television. The chapter about the view from the window overlooking the wall of the neighboring building. The chapter about the light left on in the bathroom. The chapter about empty drawers. The chapter about the semi-darkness. The chapter about the figure sitting motionless on the bed. I know those works by heart. I know those climates through and through. No one comes, no one knocks on the door, the telephone remains silent. You yourself don’t feel like calling, besides there isn’t really much of anyone to call. It is impossible to read; absolutely nothing is possible.
Every evening spent in a hotel is ghastly, but an evening spent in a hotel after a book signing is especially ghastly. In addition, there is the famous feeling of contrast—embarrassing in its superficiality, but for that reason all the more painful. An hour ago you were signing books, chatting with gusto, shining as never before. Lyceum students who secretly write poetry were asking for tips about writing, flushed female readers asked about the place of love in life with burning glances. Fifteen minutes ago, I was the incarnation of freedom and courage. Fifteen minutes ago, I was in the crowd, I was the soul of the crowd—now I sit here lonesome as the night is long. Basically, the more successful the event, the worse it is later.
None of the readers standing patiently in line for an autograph would ever come up with the daring idea of inviting the esteemed author for a vodka. It doesn’t occur to them that this stranger from Warsaw, who practically drove off the intruders, is so afraid of returning to the hotel by himself that he would have had a drink with anyone. Never did a one of the ardently staring girls broaden the bravado of her gaze or make even a tender sign with an eyelid. Zero perceptiveness. Not a hint of the intuition that a person will desperately ponder from time to time whether to propose supper to the moderately alluring organizer, who is just then adding up the costs of the trip. In the end everybody scatters, and the moderately alluring organizers remain. Someone has to remain. Someone has to remain, so that someone doesn’t kill himself.
I go to book signings less and less frequently, but when I get an invitation to make an appearance in my parts—on the whole—I don’t refuse. Sentimentalism and Lutheran phantoms are stronger than the fear of spending the night in a hotel. When Lutherans from Cieszyn Silesia invite me, the phantom of duty engulfs me.
Last year, in the middle of November, I traveled to K. Everything took place as usual, or even worse still. In my parts, even moderately alluring organizers are out of the question. In my parts, the crossbar of piety is placed high. At meetings with my brethren, I deftly play the bard of the Cieszyn land, bound with the blessed fetters of Protestantism and well versed in the Bible. It goes without saying that I always have the insane temptation to blurt out some pieces of filth, which—especially in such situations—multiply in my head like mutant rabbits, but at least for the time being, Lutheran style is stronger than the deviltry.
In any case, in my parts even the most illusory illusions that some reader might propose a symbolic snack, or that some female Lutheran reader might wink at me wantonly, drop away to the nth degree and from the very beginning. To the nth degree squared, and from the beginning of beginnings. Of course, after the evening I will have to lend my features the expression of the weary pilgrim, take my leave of even the most alluring organizers, and, at a slow pace, and in a humble pose, cross the Market Square and sink into the abysses of the hotel At the Sign of the Falcon—leaving to the citizens of K., who watch me depart, at most the vague uncertainty whether I will spend the evening reading the works of Melanchthon, or those of Zwingli instead.
In the middle of November last year this was precisely how everything went, jot for jot, tittle for tittle. I took my leave, cut across the Market Square, got the key from the clearly already thoroughly potted receptionist; in the room I turned on the TV, took Zweig’s The World of Yesterday from my bag, and sat motionless on the bed. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I could take a long shower, and then, once I had checked whether there was some detective show on television, I could begin to read. More than that. I could delay for an endlessly long time the taking of an endlessly long shower. I could check for an endlessly long time whether on the five foggy channels there definitely wasn’t a detective show. Maybe there isn’t one at the moment, but perhaps in fifteen minutes there will be. Fifteen times sixty equals nine hundred. If you count only a second per channel, that is enough to press each of the five buttons one hundred eighty times, but if you count two seconds, then it is enough to look at each of the five channels only ninety times, and if you allow three seconds per channel—which is just enough to get a sense of what they are offering on each channel—then it is enough to press each of the five buttons forty-five times. That’s nothing. One, two, one, two, and the quarter of an hour is over. In addition to this, I could—which in the onslaught of sudden possibilities I had almost overlooked—prepare for an endlessly long time to read the book, which, it is not out of the question, I could read endlessly. Upon my word, quite a decent and peaceful evening was shaping up.
As it would turn out, this was not an empty omen. I don’t know whether I had managed to push the button on the remote control even ten times when steps resounded in the hallway, and in a moment someone knocked on the door. A thousand hopes, a thousand disbeliefs, a thousand uncertainties, a thousand sweet visions flitted through my head. Flitted and vanished, just as soon as I had opened the door.
A tall, skinny old man with a neurotic face stood in the hallway. I had seen him less than an hour ago and remembered him well. He had been at the book signing; he sat in the second row and didn’t ask a single question, although it was clear that he really wanted to. I had seen him ten minutes or so ago, perhaps thirty or so, but even if I had seen him a thousand years ago, I still would have remembered him: he had the sort of face you never forget. In his features and gaze, absolute madness was joined with the most elevated dignity—a combination that was common in the nineteenth, and even in the twentieth century; today it is completely rare. He was dressed in a light colored poplin overcoat, he held under his arm an ancient, massive pigskin briefcase, stuffed to the brim.
“I beg your pardon most humbly for disturbing your peace,” he said with the strong and well-adjusted voice of someone who is used to the bold expression of his thoughts. “I beg your pardon most humbly for disturbing your peace. I wanted to call from the lobby, but poor Emil… is already in bad shape…”
“The receptionist?” My guess didn’t require much perspicacity. “Indeed, I also noticed that, in spite of the early hour, he is already somewhat…”
“Early hour?” The old man smiled broadly. “Master… Can it be that the master, contrary to appearances, has entirely broken with his roots? Can you have forgotten at what hour the lights are turned out at home, the curtains drawn? It isn’t yet nine, but for Lutherans it is the middle of the night, or in any case a very late hour, and Emil has a sacred right to lay his weary head down on the counter. Well… but I just, counting on a certain, so to say, relativism between our time and the time of the rest of the world, I make bold at such a…” he glanced at me questioningly, “basically, I don’t know, whether it is an hour that is at all acceptable
…”
We were still standing in the doorway. I hadn’t invited him into the room, because I was counting on the business with which he had come to me to be short; that he only wanted to ask for a belated autograph, because at the book signing he hadn’t had a copy of my book; that he was bringing the scarf that I had left in the coat check; that he wished only now, because he didn’t have the courage before other people, to offer me a volume of versified memoirs, which he had published at his own expense; that—whatever he wanted from me—he would vanish immediately.
It was as it always was. Just a minute ago I had been praying in the depths of my soul that someone would appear, that something would happen; but now I was absolutely certain that checking whether there might be a detective show on one of the five foggy channels was the one thing I desired to devote myself to—with passion and until late in the night. Now the endlessly long postponement of the endlessly long shower seemed to me an endangered pleasure that I needed to defend. How many times was it like that? How many times had I prayed for the presence of someone, and my prayers were heard, and God sent someone’s presence, and I, in the greatest panic, didn’t even allow that person to cross the threshold?
“I forewarn you that my business is not quick or perfunctory.” It didn’t surprise me that he was reading my mind. “I want to tell you a story.”
I wasn’t keen on other people’s stories. A least a year before, I had realized that there was no way, not even until the end of my life, that I would manage to write down what I myself remember. I wasn’t curious about his story, but I also sensed more and more clearly that it was unavoidable.
“Please,” I said with restrained cordiality, “come in, except that I don’t have anything, I have absolutely nothing at all to offer you.”
“I am invading your territory, but I don’t come empty handed.” With a sure step he entered the room, opened the briefcase, which was filled to the brim with various papers, extracted from it a gigantic bottle, its cap sealed with wax, and all of it wrapped in newspaper, as well as an equally gigantic thermos.
“They have glassware here, as far as I recall.” On an absurd, utterly useless, typical hotel chest of drawers stood a bottle of Ustronianka mineral water and two glasses. “Please, if I may allow myself such an eccentricity. True, you are at home here, but in K., even At the Sign of the Falcon, I feel that I am the host. I have spent a good bit of my life in the bar downstairs, and besides, you know, I am familiar with every square inch here. That’s right. I know the history, geography, and substance of every local square inch.”
Only now did he take off his overcoat. He was wearing an archaic brown suit, perhaps from the fifties, or perhaps even from before the war.
“Help yourself, assuming, of course, you do drink. Because people say various things. But if people say various things, then that means that you do, in fact, drink.”
“With you, I’ll have a drink,” I said with the resignation that I recall from old times, and which ritually signified, at the beginning, a few hours—and later, a few days—torn out of my life story.
“Perfect.” With a tender gesture he grasped the bottle and skillfully rapped it on the edge of the table so that the wax seal split into two halves like a walnut. He removed the screw cap that had been underneath, and he poured into the glasses a proper measure of the cloudy drink for each of us. I caught the cold scent of October grass.
“Juniper berry vodka. Homemade, it goes without saying. It goes wonderfully with hot mint tea,” he rapped a finger on the thermos.
“No thanks, for now,” I shook my head.
“I understand perfectly. Old school. Without a chaser. Your health.”
We each drank two rounds in silence. A warm sea current passed through us from head to foot. We took out cigarettes, lit them up; the smell of smoke was united with the smell of the juniper berry vodka, which was so intense that it seemed synthetic. “Are you reading Zweig?” He glanced at the book lying on the bed. “A forgotten author and somewhat, I would say, second-rate.”
“I am reading him carefully,” I responded. “I am reading him carefully and with delight. With absolute delight.”
“Carefully and with delight? Aren’t you exaggerating a bit? Chess Story is great, but the rest?”
“The rest too, God help me. Besides, you know, almost everyone would like to be a second Thomas Mann. But I wouldn’t have anything against being a second Stefan Zweig. In youth, a person worships Mann, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, but slightly scorns Zweig, Chekhov, or Steinbeck. In old age, this changes, even turns the other way around completely.”
“You know, there’s no great gulf between Dostoevsky and Chekhov. As for the rest—I’d have to give it some thought. Your ‘old age’ is also rather debatable. Especially, so to say, in my context. But I hope you dream of being a second Stefan Zweig rather in quotation marks, and not with all the details?” He pronounced the name of the author of Impatient Heart with a grotesque German articulation and smiled.
“With all the details is an impossibility,” I answered. “And besides, there isn’t any sense in it.”
“That’s the point,” he livened to the topic somehow disproportionately. “That’s the whole point, that if even one detail is lacking, it is impossible to repeat… I do not compare myself in the least degree with you, but I also dabble in writing, and it is precisely this problem… The problem of a certain lack… the lack of analogical detail is key for me. Yes, sir. I dabble in writing, and I have a few of my works with me.” He pointed to the briefcase standing next to his chair, which still—as if nothing had been removed from it—gave the impression of being stuffed to bursting.
“I have them with me not because I brought them on purpose for a meeting with you, but because I never part with some of my works. Never. Yes, sir. I dabble in writing as an amateur, and perhaps not at all as an amateur. I have written, among other things, A Natural History of the Cieszyn Land. I do not carry around with me that one and only title that has appeared, up to this point, in print. That is, I do sometimes, but not always. It depends on my mood, as well as a whole series of other circumstances. Today I took with me three of my novels, which are of a documentary nature. One is about prewar times, the second about the war and the occupation, the third about Communist rule. That last one is a sort of Polish People’s Republic family saga, and I am rather satisfied with the results. But I implore you! I implore you! Please have no fear. I do not intend to burden you with reading matter, to ask you for your judgment or some sort of support with the publishers. Granted, I have written quite a lot in my free moments, but I am in no hurry to get them published. No hurry at all.”
I wondered how old he might be. In his manner of speaking, gestures, mannerisms, dress, he made the impression of an old man, my senior by a good half century, but, finally, let’s not exaggerate here. I myself am over fifty, and even the most vigorous hundred-year-olds don’t look as vigorous as he did. How old could he be? Eighty? Seventy-five? Was he young? Not much older than me, but stylized and made up to look like a venerable old man?
“Don’t think about my age. I’m as old as everyone—to use the famous phrase of a certain Polish writer, who has been dead for quite a few years, and thereby is already, in the strict sense, as old as everyone. Eternity is endlessly short and always the same. But to return to my interests, I also have to my credit a book on March ’68, a book about Martial Law (the least successful of them all), and a still unfinished piece that is completely contemporary. But—I repeat—I do not intend to present any of these works to you, not even fragments of them. I don’t intend to summarize anything I’ve written. On the contrary, I wish to tell you a story that I haven’t written down, and which I never will write down. I mention my passions only so that you might be able to figure out what sort of maniac you are dealing with.
“So, as you can quite easily see, I am the sort of maniac whose ambition it is to reflect with his pen the surrounding world and epochs in which he chanced t
o live. The reflection of one who is involved in the support of, and sympathizes with, the most noble of values. I am from an extinct tribe, one that thought that books must contain history, the nation, society, and patriotism. This was the spirit in which I have always given my lectures, and it was these convictions that I sought to produce in my pupils. Yes, sir! I am a teacher of many years’ standing in the local gymnasium. A few times, in epochs of various thaws, I was even head of school. It never lasted long. Two years early in the Gomułka regime, one year early on under Gierek, and a few months during Solidarity the first time around. For years now, it goes without saying—retired. I belong to the tribe that was brought up on Stefan Żeromski. You would like to be Stefan Zweig, I would like to be Stefan Żeromski. Come to think of it, what an unusual couple of epigones! A second Zweig and a second Żeromski! A breathtaking stunt of the purest form. Let’s drink to our grotesque-macabre duet! Due Stefani—vedetti of the evening! Let’s also drink to the fact that we will never equal our masters. You in life, I in art. You will never commit suicide like Zweig, and I will never write like Żeromski. Incidentally, are you aware that a whole series of very interesting suicides has been committed here At the Sign of the Falcon? Yes, sir! Very interesting. But this is a topic for another time. How do I know that you won’t commit suicide? I don’t know. The thought often crosses your mind, that’s clear. It crosses everyone’s mind. It crossed the mind of the namesake of our deservedly weary receptionist, Emil Cioran. For all of his life, he was occupied with suicide. All his life, he wrote about suicide, and somehow or other he lived to be eighty. It seems that in your own family there was a figure who spent his entire life preparing to leave this one and yet, somehow or other, lived to a ripe old age. There are analogies. Besides, you know, you might simply not have time for suicide. You have to write your own suicide before the fact, and you have begun late. You simply might not have the time for it. And as Scripture says: To everything there is a season. Suicide also has its season. If a person doesn’t manage to kill himself at the appropriate moment, he has to live thereafter for nothing. And many, endlessly many people live like that. They live only because it is too late even for suicide. Yes, sir! You don’t have enough time to commit suicide, and I don’t have enough time to become Żeromski. Let’s hope! For, should it come to pass, that would be the tragedy. You, after your suicide, would at least have peace. But me? Suddenly blessed with the uncontrollable word-stream of the author of The Coming Spring? What would I do then? Please, in no way take this confession as fishing for compliments by claiming a lack of talent. On the contrary—I have talent. But I also have a certain lack. Precisely a lack. I lack the specific. I have a certain writerly lack that always seemed unimportant to me, but which, with time, has become a nagging one. Namely, I don’t know how to write about women. And in my haughty, conceited opinion, it is only in this range that I’m not a Żeromski. Only in this one aspect. Because he knew how to write about women. Say what you want, he knew. I console myself, or rather I consoled myself, I consoled myself for a long time, that my pieces weren’t any sort of romances but quasi-documents. I consoled myself that there exist outstanding works of literature—we need look no further than precisely the Chess Story of your master—in which there aren’t any women or erotic love, but there is, nonetheless, a sharp image of the world. I comforted myself with a sort of unformulated moralizing program: that, supposedly, in an epoch of universal pornography, it is time for extreme puritanism. I comforted myself as best I could, but still, with time, the lack of an aspect which is not even so much romantic as sensual, became simply unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. You know, I don’t know how to write about women, because I never think about women. I was once married, became a widower long ago; and the love affairs that came my way seem to me so remote today that I am almost certain that they didn’t occur in my lifetime. I don’t think about women, therefore I don’t know how to write about them. So much is clear. It’s impossible to record what doesn’t take shape in your head. At this point, yet another troublesome plot twist comes into play, so troublesome, that in revealing it, I am bordering on exhibitionism…
