by Jerzy Pilch
“She still didn’t stand out in any way, she was still an unremarkable student, and still an unremarkable, even a very unremarkable beauty. She didn’t depart from the pack. It goes without saying that I always knew where her slender back was in the hallway or the schoolyard. What direction she was running, whether she was approaching or withdrawing. Only I took note of the color of the hairband with which she tied up her pony tail, and when she changed that hairband. I knew by heart all her skirts, T-shirts, turtlenecks, blouses, shoes. I knew all her pairs of flip flops and all her tennis shoes. Every night I embraced her specter, and every morning I couldn’t wait to see her. And every day I cursed her; I wanted her to get lost, to finally get to her senior year, pass her matura, and go to the devil—that is to say, to the Psychology Department in Krakow. She was planning to study psychology, which casts a characteristic (gray) shaft of light upon her dullness. Whoever doesn’t know what he wants to study, what he wants to do in life in general, chooses psychology. After all, mass interest in psychology doesn’t prove that Poles are a nation of born psychologists. Mass interest in psychology proves that Poles are a nation that doesn’t know what to do with itself. In any case, the tragedy—if that’s what you can call it—continued, but it was under control. Everything seemed to be heading toward a dull and bleak, but definite, end. The next vacation passed, the empty-headed young people, covered with a Balkan suntan, returned to school. Wiktoria Złotnica was to take her matura in a few months. In a few months, my Gehenna was to end, or at least undergo a significant thinning out.
“Posters announcing the visit of the film star who was known as a ladies man appeared in our city in October. They were a vulgar yellow. That—as you know perfectly well—is the color of absolute doom. Let’s drink. The film star who was known as a ladies man came to our town two weeks later. Let’s drink, because it is time for a change in language. On the first weekend in November, he made an appearance in our theater, which sent the local intelligentsia into transports of delight. Since, in addition to the reputation of a ladies man, he also enjoyed the reputation of a fighter for liberty and independence, the delight he aroused was all the greater. During Martial Law, he had boycotted television, he had put on patriotic one-man plays in churches, all the while emphasizing that his cousin on his father’s side had been murdered at Katyń. You must admit that this is an irresistible mixture. A Katyń skull sprinkled with eau du Cologne, the scent of which burst from him a mile away, plus a good voice, plus the jaded countenance of the aging heart-throb—this was a combination before which the thighs of the noblest of Mother-Poles parted. Black lace thongs à la November Uprising fell away smoothly. So the rumor had it, in any event. On the day of his performance, I ran into him on the Market Square. I bowed obsequiously, glanced into his lifeless eyes, and I knew right away: none of it was true. There was no reason to envy him. He had dreadful sorrow in his eyes, perhaps even death. Theoretically, he was at the absolute top, and yet it was obvious that, in fact, in the depths of his soul, he was completely finished. There wasn’t anything to envy, and certainly not the women. He never had any women. And not because he was of a different orientation, which is common nowadays. He didn’t participate in this commonplace. He never had any women because he was a prisoner of his own reputation. The evening after his memorable appearance—when I again sat down to drink in solitude, and when, once again, I gained fluency in the drawing of erotic deductions—I solved this paradox. Well, you see, acquiring the name of a well known ladies man is the greatest erotic disaster that can meet a man. Since all the women know that you will take everything, not a one of them will go with you. Do you understand? Not a one of them will go with you out of—it goes without saying—reasons dictated by ambition. Namely, she does not wish to join the masses allegedly possessed by you. She does not wish to vanish in the masses allegedly screwed by you. The universal conviction that you screw on a mass scale renders individual screwing impossible for you; ergo, it renders any screwing whatsoever impossible. The final result is that you don’t screw anything. The greatest nonentity and erotic sad sack screws more than you do. Even endlessly more, because, compared with zero, any result is endless. You enjoy the reputation of a well known ladies man, but you don’t screw anything. Something for something. Life is full of dark paradoxes. The film star who was known as a ladies man was in the snares of such a paradox. I understood this at once, and I calmed down. That evening, over a lonely glass, I deftly gave the thing a name, but I had already calmed down in the afternoon. I calmed down as soon as I caught sight of him on the Market Square. As soon as I sensed the black aura of dreadful sorrow emanating from him. The envy, irritation, and fear that all men feel when, in their circle, there appears a well known seducer, withdrew from my heart. Prematurely! A hundred times prematurely! He had seduced her! He’d seduced her after all! He seduced her in the worst, the most terrible, the most far-reaching manner. Let’s drink to the perdition of all the seducers in the world. Let them be damned! Let them perish for all time!
“The evening came. The evening of Doomsday came. The performance was so-so. Dull and boring. That is, dull and boring to a certain moment. Formally, everything was OK, even more than OK. The hall of our county theater drowning in yellowish light. The cloudy crystals of prewar chandeliers and pillars of Stalinist dust over the bordeaux-colored seats. He, dressed in black from head to foot, and ostentatiously pale. Powdered. A storm of applause to greet him, a vibrant silence as he recites great Polish poetry, and enthusiastic animation as he tells anecdotes from theater scenes or film shots.
“At the end, he proposed a short course in acting, an improvised theatrical workshop in a pill. Perhaps in the auditorium there are some dormant outstanding talents—it’s high time to wake them up. Can you guess what happened next? He—so he says—considers himself a searcher, acting no longer suffices for him, he has decided to try his hand at directing. He was preparing just then, at the Old Theater in Krakow, an adaptation of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and now we, through our common efforts, will do a makeshift staging of one of the scenes—namely the scene of Raskolnikov’s conversation with the servant woman Nastasya. Could we have volunteers here on stage? We need a couple of young, courageous people. If you please, who is willing to act in Crime and Punishment under my supervision? Who is willing to square off against the immortal, but also dangerous, phrases of Fyodor Mikhailovich? He invites them to join the game, but not only the game, for he knows perfectly well that these sorts of exercises often give quite a lot. Often more than work with professional actors. So he invites them to join the game, but he also asks for collaboration. Can you guess who landed on the stage? To this day I have a feeling of unreality about this matter. Who has the courage? Who will be first? The first was a pastor’s son. It was absolutely certain that, of the boys, the son of Pastor Morowy—famous for his daredevil lifestyle—would be the first to raise his hand. And it was just as absolutely certain that the slender arm of none of the girls would be waving above the heads. Too great the phantoms, too strong the atavisms. In these parts, we never lacked for little harlots, and what harlots they were! But to respond publicly to the summons of a film star who was known as a ladies man? To react to his encouragements? To succumb to his invitation? To go up on stage? To become an actress—even for a minute? It is not fitting, it is not fitting, a hundred times no! And those snot-nosed girls—among whom there wasn’t a single virgin, especially after the last vacation—sat with sulking expressions, and, with their facial features, they made it clear that no: not them. I understand your self-restraint, I understand your stage fright—the star pontificated from the stage—those are traits that provide outstanding predictions of true artistry. Timid people—oh, the paradox!—become the greatest actors. In that case, he would help the shy neophytes of the theater and choose one of them arbitrarily. He doesn’t allow himself the word “casting.” The choice is difficult, and you can see with the naked eye, that, if not all of them, t
hen the majority of the stars sitting in the audience would be up to the task, so he has to act somewhat randomly. And he looks around shamelessly, and the beet-red flush greedily burns the powder on his mug—maybe you, yes, the lady in the fourth row, in the jeans jacket, yes, please, right this way.
“Something lay dormant, after all, in that princess from mouse lands. Not only did her heart beat mousily. Her blood must have had a higher temperature than that of a mouse. Did he sense this? Did he sense what I did? Why had he chosen her? Had I sensed what he did? Is that where my love came from? Today a person is wiser. Seemingly wiser, because over time all speculations become irrefutable. In any case, what happens, happens: the curator’s daughter goes up on the stage, and the acting assignment that is set before her—by not so much a real director, as a film star ostentatiously playing the role of a director—is the following: she is supposed to go into the little room, where Raskolnikov is sleeping, wake him up, and exchange a few lines with him. Do you recall that scene? Yes, sir! Before the murder of the pawnbroker. The star emphasized this aspect, and with pathos he suggested to the young Morowy, who was convulsed with dopey laughter, that he was supposed to play a man who isn’t yet a murderer, but who the next day would be one. A brazen little shit. A bit of a brazen little shit. No matter. They were supposed to end the scene with the rather well known fragment: ‘What are you doing?’ she asks. ‘Working,’ he responds. ‘What sort of work is it?’ ‘I think.’ And then—as you recall—Nastasya bursts out laughing, ‘she reeled with laughter.’ Because Nastasya—the star explained—is a joker, and it is very important to make sure that it comes out credibly here. It is necessary not only to burst out laughing, but to burst out laughing in such a way that the spectator would know immediately that laughter is one of the modes of being of this character. But at the same time, remember, Wiktoria, that laughter is one of the actor’s most difficult assignments. Only the greatest can truly manage this. But please, my dear child, give it a try, give it a try.
“I won’t belittle her and say that she tried, and she managed so-so. No. She managed quite well. She completely eclipsed the buffoonery of her partner. She received thunderous applause. The star clapped the most fervently, then he kissed her hand obsequiously, then he pointed out the sign of her victory—the ovation of the audience. Then he raised her arm, like a victorious boxer. My beloved was experiencing the greatest triumph of her nineteen-year-old life, and at the same time her life had ended. You know, I clapped then like the rest of them. I was proud of her. I was surprised by her unexpected ability, but I also didn’t have a shadow of a doubt that this was a one-time ability, and that it stemmed from limitation. It might seem that I was badmouthing her on account of disappointed love, but unfortunately it’s true: my beloved was thoroughly limited. You know, one of those who sit when they sit, stand when they stand, walk when they walk. No quotation marks. And so, when she was supposed to enter Raskolnikov’s little room, she entered thoroughly; when she was supposed to awaken him, she awakened him with all zeal; when she was supposed to laugh, she laughed with all her heart and all her snout. In a certain sense she had the predispositions for acting. She had the predispositions, which is to say, a certain lack of shame and a certain intellectual limitation. Unfortunately, not a red cent’s worth of talent. But it was already too late. The wind had been sown.
“The news that Złotnica was dropping psychology and setting off for acting school had, at first—at least for me—a purely rhetorical form, but then it began, drowsily, to take on flesh. People are saying that the daughter of the curator made such a good impression at workshops conducted by the famous star that, instead of going to study psychology in Krakow, she ought to go to acting school in Warsaw. I was certain that such a purely theoretical compliment was circling in the air—nothing more. But I see that she is taking on some sort of, in her opinion, riveting artistic magic! She starts dressing with bohemian promiscuity! She puts the curator’s tweed sports jackets directly over lace bras! Hair let down like the muse of all the arts blows in the wind! She answers questions not with her own, but with an allegedly actor’s voice! She sits in the school bench like the worst whore! She makes ostentatious faces! She is an actress! Jesus Christ! She is already an actress! An actress! Actress!! Actress!!! Our actress, they call her. But no, my dear sir. I wasn’t mistaken. Not a hint of talent. A complete clod! I was infatuated with her, I was bewitched, but, in spite of the amorous prism, I saw what I saw. In every pose, a false note. In every word, a lie. You sense such things. You don’t have to be an expert. You could see with the naked eye that nothing would come of this. Not a chance. She wouldn’t get into acting school. Even if the minimal requirement there was a 0 mark on the entrance exam, she wouldn’t get in, because she was considerably below that level. She wouldn’t get in on the first, or the second, or the hundredth try. Life goes into complete disarray. Of course, not our life, not my life with her. I allowed myself such visions only during my evening deliriums, and, in reality, I didn’t take this into consideration at all. I took into consideration that she would choose—out of insecurity—to study psychology; finish, or not finish, a more or less accidental education; find a job in her field, or not in her field of study; get married, for love or out of necessity; return, or not return, to K.—but that she would truly live. Perhaps in poverty, perhaps without love, but in reality, not in an illusion. Not in a humiliating illusion, humiliating because it is marked by an aspiration to superiority. Who knows which is better? Is that what you say? That is not, my dear sir, an accurate doubt. Living an illusion is ghastly; and living an artistic illusion—which is also, by the nature of things, impossible to realize on account of a lack of talent—is a disaster.
“She was nineteen years old, she crossed the Market Square with the gait—as it seemed to her—of Julia Roberts. She smiled—in her own opinion—like Sharon Stone. There stretched before her the allegedly most renowned theatrical scenes in the world, the lights of the great film studios shined. But in fact, there stood before her the muddy path into the abyss. What is more, there was no way to stop this. Supposedly, the curator and his wife were inordinately proud that they had given the world a star. There wasn’t any question of any sort of conversation with her. I didn’t even take it into consideration. I wouldn’t have managed.
“Above all, I was afraid. With time, the dread that someone might notice my affection for her became my first dread and pathological obsession. But now, when, in connection with her future career, which would assuredly be marked by famous romances, and in connection with the jackets worn over lace underwear, her—I would call it—mousy magnetism grew; now, if it should turn out that Mr. Professor has also joined our star’s fan club, which has arisen spontaneously; now, at the very thought of being unmasked, I sank below the earth. On the other hand, I was afraid that I would become known as an envier, ergo public enemy number one. I was not so afraid of being known as an envier as I was of being known as an enamored admirer, but the discomfort of becoming a public enemy hung in the air completely realistically. Almost the entire city supported her, however; almost all, even the greatest skeptics, basically hoped that, come fall, Złotnica would set off for the acting school in Warsaw, and already by spring we would get to watch her create ever more important roles on television. I couldn’t let on about my mean-spirited lack of faith in that success—not only to her, but also to essentially our entire community. It would look like the bitter old fart wishes her ill, selflessly envies her, doesn’t appreciate her talent, and God knows what else. And so, I suppressed it in myself. And I let all this out during my solitary evening drinking bouts. Witkacy used to say that without alcohol and narcotics he would never have achieved certain solutions in painting. Although, on the whole, I consider him a psychopath, I could accept this particular idea of his three-times over. First: without juniper berry vodka—as I mentioned at the beginning—I would not have attained fluency in the spinning of universal erotic deductions. Second: without juniper berr
y vodka, I would not have been able to present certain troublesome concreta and shameful details—first to myself, and now to you—with the proper realism. And third: without juniper berry vodka, I would not have crossed certain boundaries, which, supposedly, I crossed. Supposedly—because I don’t remember. For that reason, in the finale of my story I am condemned to a complete lack of details and to the speculative mood. Supposedly, I paid a nocturnal visit to the home of the curator, Mr. Złotnica, and, supposedly, I perpetrated disgraceful things there. Supposedly, an evening visit by Wiktoria at my home also took place. I imagined both events a thousand times. A thousand times I imagined my visit to Wiktoria’s parents. A thousand times, in a delirium of absolutely watchmaker’s precision, I conducted with them an inordinately important conversation. A thousand times I pronounced a thousand convincing and irrefutable arguments. A thousand times they yielded to my arguments. A thousand times I was there in my drunken dreams, and with one of my wakings it turned out that, indeed, I really was there! In a delirium, but also in reality. As always: it seemed to me that it just seemed to me, but I really had gotten dressed, set off, gotten there, and, supposedly, knocked on the door of the curator’s house at two in the morning! It seemed to me that I was dressed, but I was in incomplete dress. Supposedly, very incomplete. It seemed to me that they were receiving me in their sitting room at a copiously stocked table, that I was sharing my doubts about their daughter’s fate with eloquence and wit, whereas, supposedly, I lay down on a crate of winter apples in the hallway, and there—reeling as I lay—talked gibberish, saliva flowing from my lips; I fell asleep and woke up again, and finally, somehow, they dragged me to the car and got me back home.
