by Jerzy Pilch
It is entirely completely clear to those who, one fine day, actually meet someone, eat dinner with someone, go with someone to the movies, go to bed with someone—perhaps even sleep with someone.
But it is absolutely completely clear to those who wake up in the middle of the night and are terrified by someone sleeping next to them, and by the thought that they won’t be on their own for a few hours more, and then the whole morning, and it is awful, awful. And they count the seconds and minutes of the never ending nightmare, and somehow—with the greatest difficulty—they survive it; and then they are granted a beautiful, solitary day. They take a deep breath and suddenly feel how an overwhelming joy gives depth to their breathing. From the empty house, they gaze through the window at the city’s rooftops rising before them. The long afternoon has the taste of overripe cherries and the scent of a stuffy garden. In the evening, the telephone rings persistently; with a strange smile they do not lift the receiver.
IV
I was so accustomed to solitude, I made of solitude such an endlessly thick basis for life, that the quotidian circumstances in which people feel lonely—a journey, a train, a night in a hotel—these were, for me, crowded meetings and mass entertainments. Obviously, I preferred that no one come into my compartment (first class, smoking, by the door), but once someone did come in—be my guest, we can even exchange a few words. But on the whole, no one did come in—I have an inhospitable facial expression. I was traveling to a Cracovia match, and I felt as if someone had taken a leaden overcoat from my shoulders. I had before me a day, or even two, during which I would desire nothing other than that my team win. I wouldn’t be chasing after anyone. I wouldn’t be experiencing future fiascos, I wouldn’t spend the evenings making inquiries into what mistakes I had made and what God-sent opportunities I had wasted. Even if I should wake up bright and early in my hotel room, these wouldn’t be any sort of black hours. I would put on a bathrobe, order a pot of strong coffee and a dozen or so pieces of letter paper from room service, and I would write down what I dreamed.
I made the trips to Cracovia matches as if going on holidays or vacations. My constantly overheated nerves would calm. I would sit in the stadium of my childhood. Over the Rudawa flowed the same clouds. Behind my back was the Gomułka-era apartment block from which I had once wanted to leap. Before me, the Commons, overgrown with Asiatic grasses—everything was still like my memories, and everything had already changed, as after death. Orchestras played the most beautiful marches in the world, torches made of newspapers burned, there were no darknesses over the stadium, the singing of the fans rose on high. For ninety minutes, plus the halftime, I had the feeling of complete harmony—there was no despair, no longings, the hunger for touch did not consume me, I didn’t think about women, there weren’t any women.
As you can easily surmise, I caught sight of Anka Chow Chow for the first time in my life at a Cracovia match. True, she claims that this was not the first but the second time—that, however, is an ambiguous claim.
She sat a few rows lower, and throughout the entire match (Cracovia-Górnik Łęczna) her unparalleled head didn’t even budge. During the halftime, I went down and stood right beside her. She sat motionless. I attempted, purely rhetorically, to make eye contact. The warrior’s repose is one thing, but an unparalleled head is quite another. Besides this, the situation itself, the image itself—a babe at a match (to speak precisely: such an unparalleled babe at such a miserable match)—was a complete innovation. I didn’t tumble immediately into the abyss, I didn’t fall into the routine ruts, I didn’t jump into my old skin. The stadium didn’t suddenly become the next place for the hunt. My peace was not disturbed, but my curiosity was mightily aroused. Her perfectly indifferent sight was firmly fixed on the middle of the field. I returned to my place.
I know what you are thinking. It seems to you that, since I had come upon a young miss at a soccer match, I ought immediately to have surmised that something wasn’t quite right with her. The jigsaw puzzle is constructed from the very beginning as a logical whole, except that I didn’t see it. Or I pretend not to see it. But after all, it is obvious: a young miss, a lone young miss to boot, goes to a match—something isn’t right. I don’t know. I don’t know whether something isn’t right with a young miss who goes to a match by herself. I haven’t the faintest clue. But I do know that with Anka everything was right! Absolutely entirely right! As right as can be. She wasn’t, not in the least, some sort of tomboy or possessed of a manly nature that had been imprisoned in a woman’s body. More than that. Among the women known to me, she was in the absolute top tier of femininity. She was feminine in the deepest and thoroughly Heraclitean sense. In addition to which, she was terribly hot for girls, she liked girls, she liked chatting with girls, she was curious about girls, and she had nothing against far reaching adventures with girls. If you think that there is some sort of contradiction here—that’s your business. I don’t know the secret of her soul and body, and, to tell the truth, I never even tried to find out. I am writing down only what I experienced and what I saw. I experienced a lot, I saw “as if.”
Nothing in her came from the masculine element, from masculine disguise, from a masculine interference. And even if it did—what of it? What does this explain? What sort of relief does such psychology bring? What sort of initiation and what sort of knowledge? There was—let’s assume—some sort of excessive masculine element in Anka. So what is this supposed to prove? What is supposed to follow from this? Yet another proof of the Lord God’s absent-mindedness, in that, when He was creating Anka, He measured out the proportions imprecisely? Yet another confirmation of nature’s blindness? And so what of the fact that God is imprecise, and nature blind? May the Lord God protect us against our own precision. And may He never bestow nature with too sharp a vision.
After the match, I returned to my hotel, took a hot shower, and slept like a log. I awoke at six. I ordered coffee and paper. Fog was hovering over the city; from down below you could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves. I wrote a few sentences about Janek Nikandy, but I still had the sense of the complete elusiveness of his life. Suddenly and feverishly I felt like returning to Warsaw. A sudden fear and a sudden longing. The fear that something would happen, that someone would imprison me here, and I would never return to Sienna Street. And a horrendous longing for my 430 square feet, which are like the deck of a lifeboat. All my life I had been swimming in deep water and in the darknesses, and finally, toward the end, I felt the hardwood floor under my feet, and a good light falls from behind the armchair. A sudden longing for Warsaw, as if I’d spent I don’t know how many years in God knows what sort of emigrations. Supposedly the greatest nightmare of emigrants is the dream that they are back in the home country and can’t leave. My greatest nightmare? Toward morning, J.P. appears and says I will never return home. As in life, he trembles from hatred. I curse him as in life. I curse his eternal torments. O God, cause it that he not suffer for all eternity; cause him to disappear once and for all.
My longing took on no desperate and caricatured incarnation. I went down to breakfast calmly, I ate—as is always the case in a hotel—significantly more than normal. I collected my few pieces of gear, and I set off for the train station on foot. Along the way, on Pijarska Street, I got a stock of newspapers for the road. The express trains from Krakow to Warsaw depart on the hour. I easily made it in time for the nine o’clock train.
In first class, the compartment for smokers was completely empty. I ensconced myself skillfully; I picturesquely strewed newspapers, bag, and jacket on the seats. No one could be in doubt that all those objects belonged to numerous travelers, who had just that moment stepped out for a second; every last one of them—it goes without saying—a smoker. In order to confirm this, I smoked for six, closed the door to the corridor, and drew the curtains. Musty train car air turned, in the blink of an eye, into molten stone. There was a minute until departure, I was already in a state of homeostasis, in other words equilibrium,
when the door opened, the curtains parted, and into the compartment stepped—you guessed correctly—Anka Chow Chow.
My heart soared on high, my soul—so be it—sang out, but my defensive habits, plus my hardened arteries, did their bit. “This is a compartment for smokers,” I snarled ferociously. “For… for…” I found myself tongue-tied. The more difficult word—compartment—I remembered; the banal one—smoking—completely slipped my mind, but I immediately remembered and snarled out the entire phrase, although at the end in a voice incomparably weaker than at the beginning. To tell the truth, at the beginning my voice was routinely hostile, but at the end—having overcome my habits and realized who the miraculous interloper was—it was inordinately ingratiating.
Here is compartment for smoking. As God is my witness, I couldn’t help myself. Linguistic degradation consists not only in the fact that, with age, one’s vocabulary shrinks. This isn’t all that painful; in the end you can always find some synonym or periphrastic formula. What is painful, truly painful, is the persistence in one’s head of a constant store of phrases, which—whether you want it or not, whether they fit the context or not—one pronounces automatically in a certain moment and with a dull satisfaction.
“I know that this compartment is for smokers,” her voice was like shivering steel, “I’m looking for a compartment for smokers.”
“During the match you didn’t smoke. At least I didn’t notice that you did.”
“I didn’t smoke during the match,” she said very slowly. “During the match I didn’t smoke,” she repeated even more slowly and examined me carefully; or you would rather have to say that she struck me with a short, forceful gaze. “I didn’t smoke at the match because I don’t smoke any more. For a year—however this might sound—I haven’t had a cigarette in my mouth.”
Before I managed to express my eager and highest amazement, she pointed out a mighty impressive bag to me with her glance. With my last bits of strength and with the greatest difficulty, refraining from any commentaries concerning what must have made it weigh two tons, I placed the ghastly duffel on the rack.
“What were we talking about?” I was panting like a dog.
“We? I don’t believe we were talking. For the moment, you were attempting not to let me into the compartment.”
“Oh yes, of course,” I shouted almost triumphantly. In any case, the life of the dementia sufferer is not the worst; true, it is full of black collapses, but once a person recalls something, it’s like an orgasm. “Oh yes, of course…”
“I prefer the smell of cigarette smoke to the natural stench,” she explained calmly. “Of the two evils, I prefer smoke. Don’t feel hurt, but for the time being your only virtue is that you smoke Gauloises.”
Jesus Christ, I quietly heaved a sigh, it’s a good thing that this rabid she-cat doesn’t have a tail. She would have destroyed the compartment with it.
V
Compared to Anka, I was lacking any sorts of lust whatsoever, a young virgin, innocent of the facts of life. My obsession with broads, compared to her obsession with broads, was nil. My debauchery, compared with her debauchery, was despicable. My thing for girls, compared with her thing for girls, wasn’t a thing at all. My staring at women, compared with her staring at women, was clumsy, vulgar, and boorish.
I am not engaging in any sort of masochism, I’m not bowing and scraping before feminists, I’m not pouring the ashes of cremated instincts upon my male head. Granted, I can say that my staring at broads is bestial, but I can also say that it is metaphysical. I can repeat after Miłosz: “It’s not that I desire these creatures precisely; I desire everything, and they are like a sign of ecstatic union.” But I can also say: I stare at the them the way a dealer in live goods appraises the strongest female slaves. I stare all-embracingly.
Frankly speaking, I often leave the house only for that purpose. And if not only for that purpose, then also for that purpose. The constant thought that, on my way to work, shopping, the café, a meeting, or wherever, I’d have a little look around helps me live. That’s how it always was. If not my whole life, then quite certainly well before the definitive departure of subsequent girlfriends.
If it weren’t for the women I encounter on the street, I’d limit leaving the house to the absolute minimum. There are certain things I wouldn’t do at all. Most certainly, I would drop by Yellow Dream for my afternoon grapefruit juice less frequently, and perhaps not at all. I would buy myself a juice maker, and it would come out cheaper. Nor would I take any walks around Warsaw. I’ve come to like this spectral city, but if I were supposed to take walks around it without encountering any girls—no thanks! I wouldn’t spend time at Central Station, I wouldn’t drop by department stores, I would even go less frequently to my dry cleaner on Hoża Street, where by some divine coincidence the best pieces of Warsaw ass have their super rags cleaned.
But there they are, and I circle among them. I circle, and I stare, sharply and importunately. Not that I have any sort of strategy for importunate staring. It is simply stronger, a thousand times stronger than me. I am incapable of not staring at décolletage. I stare ravenously, I salivate like a snot-nosed kid, my snout gapes like that of a village idiot, I stand there like the ninny at a wedding, I begin to sweat and to shake like a serial murderer. Whenever some super babe passes me by, there is no force on earth that can keep me from turning around to look. Quite often I don’t just turn around to look, quite often—in order to lend stability to my backward gaze—I stop, and quite often the embarrassing thought of running after her does not seem embarrassing to me in the least. Whenever I see before me some noteworthy back, I lose consciousness.
I’m walking down the street, let’s say it’s Świętokrzyska, and my head is darting here and there like the president’s bodyguard. I check out every passing woman, I am prepared for an assault from all sides, and I am ready to attack on all sides. I am unable to control this, even when I am with a woman.
When I was with the singer in the lizard-green dress, I moderated my staring, I tried not to stare, but often I couldn’t manage it. I had more success in the company of Anka Chow Chow. I was scared to death of her, and because of that fear I didn’t even have to pretend that I wasn’t staring. I genuinely didn’t stare. I didn’t even cast any furtive glances. Until the moment when I realized that it was she who was staring for all she was worth. This didn’t happen quickly, because she was a virtuoso. She took note of every detail of the make-up of every passing miss, but it looked like she hadn’t even noticed that anyone had passed by. Even a normal, young, quick-witted fellow wouldn’t have caught on right away, to say nothing of me. Besides, Anka’s unyielding, still unyielding virginity was enough of a complication for me not to think about other complications.
“What do you like most in women?” she asked one day. “In what sense?” “In the sense of a part of the body. What turns you on the most? The bust? The rear? Legs?” “I don’t know. It depends when,” I answered. “It depends when. Depends who.” “That’s no answer.” “It is impossible to parcel a woman out in body parts,” I said loftily. “But of course it’s possible. I begin with the back, and I advise you to do the same. The back is always interesting. The back is horribly important. A woman’s back is an exceptional region.” “Yes, yes,” I said, “an exceptional region.” I didn’t remember anything. The back of Emma Lunatyczka, covered with icy sweat, like frost, and a complete void. I didn’t focus on backs. I was an ordinary guy. Even a crazed sex maniac is, at his base—if I may so put it—an ordinary guy. And an ordinary guy checks, first of all, to see whether everything is in order. Whether or not, for instance, some sort of troublesome wart or a risky birthmark overgrown with a hard bristle sticks out. If it didn’t stick out, things are OK. A back is a back. Just as long as there weren’t any disturbances, especially of a textural sort, then things are OK. The back is nothing over which to go into transports of delight. Anka Chow Chow was higher by the length of that delight. She sang a hymn of praise and
recited a great ode to the back. She told stories about the backs of Magda, Gocha, Bacha, Gracha, Ala, Ola, Viola, Jola, etc., etc. She told stories of the backs of the sleeping and the backs of the waking. About the backs of female masons, prisoners, and tennis players. About cold backs, warm backs, tired backs. About backs submerged in dusk. About the backs of Russian women, Irish women, and Bolivian women. Why precisely this combination—I don’t know. Perhaps these were the acquaintances she happened to have, or perhaps it was a question of oceanic freckledness, Latin oliveness, and—for all I know—Siberian taste? Rocky backs, sandy backs, and backs as fluid as rivers. She devoted separate and—I’ll say in all honesty—interminably boring strophes to a certain unparalleled back she had seen last summer on the beach in Kołobrzeg and which—she must have repeated a hundred times—she would never forget. “I could write a book about the female back,” she said finally, and that probably wasn’t an empty declaration. “The female back,” she argued with passion, “is a neglected artistic field. Poets and novelists have rarely extolled the back, or not at all. In the Song of Songs—not a word about the Beloved’s back. It is similar in innumerable romances and love poetry. It is much better with painting. Perhaps, in fact, you have to be a painter in order to feel and understand what an exceptional surface there is between the neck and the buttocks. Besides, just go and try to paint a back. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have any talent, those who do can’t do it either. The bust, profile, shoulder, even the hand—this they more or less manage. But the back? Not even the most talented among them can capture the back. The back is the domain of the masters. Titian’s backs. Rubens’s backs. Forget about Rubens’s busts. Take a good look at Rubens’s backs. Examine how Rubens paints backs, and you will understand the meaning of sensuality. The first sensuality always concerns the back. Everybody blathers on in circles about the first kiss, but after all, it is always the case that, when you kiss her for the first time, your hand embraces her back. And without that embrace, without that hand on the back, there is no kiss. Just try to imagine the famous first kiss with your hands hanging loosely at the side of the body. Without touching the back there is no kiss, without touching the back there is no mutual inclination, without touching the back there is no sex, without touching the back there is no love.”
