My First Suicide

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World

I

When great love comes along, a person always thinks he has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. But when a person has fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, he can have problems.

If she wasn’t The Most Beautiful Woman in the World in the strict sense, she was in the top ten, and if it wasn’t the top ten, then the top one hundred — the details are unimportant. She was dazzling in a planetary sense.

I saw her, and I committed a rookie’s mistake. Instead of being satisfied with admiring, I resolved to conquer her.

I saw her at a certain reception — that is, I saw her for the first time and in person at a certain reception. Before then I had seen her likeness hundreds of times on various photographs, advertisements, posters, and billboards. The famous visage of the depraved madonna — which so excited photographers, cameramen, and directors — was universally known. The reception took place in the gardens of a Western embassy. It was a very significant, very ritual, and very annual reception. On the societal bond market, an invitation to that reception was considered an unusually valuable security.

The uniqueness of the garden reception at the embassy was also made clear by that fact that, in addition to the habitués — virtuosos at the art of the reception — lost intellectuals were wandering around, intellectuals who never attended receptions, but who had to their credit works devoted to the culture of the Western country whose ambassador was hosting the reception. They were distinguished by their archaic suits, immoderate gluttony, and great enthusiasm. When the jaded habitués confessed to them that they hated receptions, the intellectuals tried to comfort them somehow and urged them on to eat, drink, and have fun. The jaded habitués — who, at all receptions, would drone on gloomily about hating receptions, and who found an equally gloomy hearing for their confessions among other jaded habitués of receptions, who likewise hate receptions — gazed stupefied at the hearty, smiling oldsters, who, flushed with champagne, grabbed them by the elbow with an unexpectedly iron grip, led them to the groaning table and, looking around, exclaimed in triumph:

“But why so sad, young man! You’ve got to appreciate the sunny side of life! Especially today! Especially here! What a wonderful reception! You simply must eat something! Here you are! Exquisite fish! Exquisite cold cuts! Exquisite salad!” and they shoved plates into jaded hands, and piled up heaping portions and shoved them before jaded faces. “You simply must eat something! And then the drinks await us. The libations are excellent! Please be so good as to help yourselves!”—and the intellectuals, seemingly lost, but in truth feeling like fish in water in the gardens of the embassy, winked roguishly and dove merrily into the undulating throng.

It was a steamy July day. Clouds dark as lead and light as electricity were scudding along toward Warsaw from the west. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World didn’t budge from her spot for a good two hours. I circled.

At first I didn’t notice that I was circling. Without a goal — so it seemed to me — I sauntered about the gardens of the embassy holding a glass of still water. I didn’t particularly seek anyone out. Nor did anyone seek me. I instinctively attempted to avoid the bores who were lying in ambush for victims. After enough receptions, this ability becomes second nature. Bores lying in ambush for victims are like sharpshooters in war — they sow death. Somehow I managed to pull it off. True, one bore, a colorless columnist in civilian clothes, what might be called “Independence Style,” managed to take my bearings. He approached and began to blather — for the thousandth time he told the story of how he was arrested during Martial Law. I was already beginning to think I was a goner, but once he got closer, it turned out that my assailant, in spite of the early hour, was already distinctly fuddled — I lost him without trouble. I, of course, didn’t drink a drop myself; true, in the depths of my soul I wasn’t excluding the possibility that yet that evening, having locked myself up tight and alone at home, I might uncork a bottle, but here — out of the question.

By the time I was passing The Most Beautiful Woman in the World for the third time, I realized that I was circling, and that I was circling in ever tighter orbits. She stood near one of the numerous wicker chairs set out on the grassy areas. She was smoking cigarettes, which was a rarity among the stars, who were so hysterically concerned with their health. She stood, and she didn’t budge. Time and again some sort of jittery habitué would appear in her vicinity, tight like a bow string, but all of them flagged and quickly fell away.

I made ever smaller circles. I could already see quite well the legs that had paced the most prestigious catwalks of the world; the shoulders that, season after season, were wrapped in the most expensive creations of Dior, Versace, Lagerfeld, and Montana; the hair, fragrant with the most expensive shampoos of the globe; the décolletage boldly presenting the profile of the famous bust, which the floodlights of Hollywood film studios had briefly lit up. Briefly, since she hadn’t had a big career as an actress. That is to say, it is true that fifteen years ago she played a stewardess who served Harrison Ford a drink — even that was the pipe dream of the majority of professional European actresses — but after this episode offers didn’t come pouring out of the proverbial bag. It goes without saying: this did not diminish her in the least — at least not in my eyes. On the contrary. There was a logic in this. Her uncanny beauty decided her fate. Nothing else came into play. Putting it the other way around, which is to say point-blank: in everything she took up, with the exception of her own beauty, she was rather a clod. And, unfortunately, she took up various things. She recorded a CD with her own songs — the chief value of which was its almost complete lack of background hiss. She published a slender volume of verse — a rare sort of catastrophe, since it was bloody, and at the same time completely lacking in expression. She painted and organized an exhibition of her own work — oh, Jesus Christ! To tell the truth, even her one-second performance as an actress at the side of Harrison Ford — especially considering its minuscule time span — knew no bounds. It was sorry consolation that, at the side of such a virtuoso, everyone — and especially a fledgling artist — looks pale.

But her defeats had no bearing on the fact of her beauty. Who cared about the fact that she was no singer, a wretched poet, and a miserable painter, since — when they came into contact with her — the greatest singers lost their voices, the most distinguished poets didn’t know what to say, and the most original painters peed their pants from sheer sensation?

I was already close to that beauty. I was close, but I wasn’t tight like a bow-string — I was shaking like jelly.

“I’m happy to see you alive,” I managed to stammer, absurdly. I had intended to say, of course: “I’m happy to see you live,” which was supposed to have been the ritual and safe phrase of the admirer who knows his idol from the movie theater, from television, as well as from the thousands of photographs, and now gives expression to his ecstasy at seeing her in real life. Instead of this, my nerves made me blurt out some sort of, I don’t know — some sort of post-traumatic or post-heart-attack line. “I’m happy to see you alive” sounded, after all, as if she had just escaped from some sort of life-threatening danger, but no one had heard anything of the sort. There isn’t anything bad, however, that can’t come out to the good. She looked at me and burst out laughing unexpectedly loudly. Quite clearly — to use literary Polish — my unfortunate lapsus had amused her.

“I, too, am happy to see you alive,” she said with a light touch, but that lightness immediately weighed like lead upon my brain.

It’s impossible — I feverishly began to mull over the facts — it’s impossible for her to know that, two weeks ago, I was at death’s door, in the strict sense of the phrase. How could she have known? I had locked myself up at home, I had pulled the Venetian blinds, I had turned off the telephones, I talked with no one, I didn’t go out anywhere, except to the twenty-four-hour delicatessen William… Someone must have noticed me when I was crawling to the store, and the news had immediately made its way around town. It was possible. I tried my hardest, but in the end you always had to go out to the store… Yes, someone saw me as I was crawling to the twenty-four-hour delicatessen William. There was no other possible explanation.

Except, it was also possible that she had answered without any ulterior motive; that she had answered mechanically; that, for the sake of reinforcing the joke, she had repeated my clumsy opening as an echo. Such a possibility existed, and it was even highly probable, but, in order to accept it with equanimity, I would have to have been cured of my complex. And I had a gigantic complex about this. Every time someone asked me in completely neutral tones: “How are you doing? How’ve you been feeling? How’s life? Everything OK?”; every time I received similar SMSes; every time I heard such questions posed on the phone, or face-to-face — each time I was unable to answer normally and make light of it. Instead, I always shrank with fear, and I always groaned before I answered under the weight of the one-ton question: How does he know? How does that louse know that I am hitting the bottle again? And this time it was the same, or even worse, since, after all, in the assertion “I’m happy to see you alive” lurks not speculation about, but the certainty of my downfall. Nothing to be done about it, I thought. On the whole, it’s even better that she knows about my afflictions. At least then it won’t be an unpleasant surprise if I go on a bender right after the wedding.

“It’s true. I’m barely alive,” I said carefully. “To tell the truth, I’m completely exhausted.”

“That’s not good,” she replied with an inordinately subtle motherly tone. “Not good at all. Even bad. Very bad.”

“I had a Russian teacher who spoke the same way. Exactly the same.”

“I beg your pardon?” Not that she immediately stiffened, but she was unquestionably startled, and she was well on the way to absolute stiffening. Besides, there’s nothing strange about it. There hadn’t been any teachers of Russian in Polish schools for more than ten years now, and yet the summoning of even the specter of a teacher of the Russian language continued to give rise to problematic associations. Evidently The Most Beautiful Woman in the World was, like many Poles, painfully sensitive when it came to Moscow. No doubt she had this from her parents.

“I once had a Russian teacher”—hoping to soothe her trauma, I began to tell her the story, feverishly and in haste—“he was a fantastic guy, we liked him a lot. Also because he was not only intelligent, but also understanding. He didn’t go overboard in the enforcement of knowledge. Not that he allowed us to walk all over him, but, all the same, he allowed us quite a lot. Nonetheless, every now and then, more or less once every two months, a frenzy of inordinate severity would seize him. He would enter the room with a boundlessly severe facial expression, summon us to the blackboard with boundless severity, and, inordinately severely, in absolute silence, listen to our answers. He wouldn’t interrupt, he wouldn’t correct, he wouldn’t speak up. Without a word, he would listen to the delinquent as he writhed like an eel, and when he had finally finished, he would say: ‘Very bad.’”

She laughed, she laughed the entire time I was telling my story, she laughed, and that was good, but also a bit irritating, since when the punch line came she went on laughing in just the same fashion, and, strictly speaking, it wasn’t clear whether she had noticed and appreciated the end of the story at all. But I didn’t delve deeper into this. Distant, still golden and leisurely threads of lightning intersected the dark horizon. Three, maybe four storms were approaching the city.

“Very good,” she said (she had noticed and appreciated after all!). “Very good. You get high marks from me for that answer. But it is very bad that you are barely alive, and that must change.”

“What must change?”

“Life. Life must change.”

“You know, it is difficult to change life. Life isn’t likely to change. Unless it’s for the worse. And from a certain point on, it is exclusively for the worse.”

For a moment I considered whether to intensify the pessimistic tone, and even whether to push the pedal of pessimism to the floor, but I eased off. Pessimism and bitterness were means of arousing comforting reflexes in women, which are as certain as they are standard; her all-embracing beauty, however, cautioned against playing this one from memory.

“If you go on to tell me that you don’t have anyone for whom to change your life for the better, and if you gaze meaningfully into my eyes as you say this, the situation will admittedly be clear, but also quite finished.”

She had passed me a difficult, a very difficult ball — one that would be downright impossible for a rookie to handle — but as bad as I am, out of boredom, at handling weak balls, difficult balls lend me wings, and I climb the heights.

“Of course I don’t have anyone for whom to change my life. It’s just that I couldn’t care less about that. God forbid I should change my life, or anything in my life for anyone. I am too accustomed to myself and to my own solitude, and I value it too much to change it. If you tell me that, when true love appears in my life, I will certainly and enthusiastically change my life for the better; if you tell me this, and if you gaze knowingly into my eyes as you say this, then the situation will also be clear, but also quite finished.”

I knew that she wouldn’t be able to field a riposte let loose with that sort of spin, but I also didn’t foresee that she would go for a feint.

“The situation is clear,” she said with irritating infallibility. “The situation is clear. You’ve got no idea about life. You don’t know what life is.”

“So what is it?” I feigned irritation, and even fury, in my voice. There was no retreat. The game was heating up. If she should conclude that I was a madman — game over. If, in an access of vanity, she should be filled with pride, thinking that she had destroyed my equilibrium, I will have won. “So, I humbly beg your pardon, what is life? Please be so kind as to enlighten me, because I truly don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know. He pretends to be a connoisseur of souls, a man of letters, a theoretician of everything — and he hasn’t a clue.”

I had succumbed, at that moment I had succumbed definitively and — I would say — far-reachingly. I had succumbed, because I had thought, with a rookie’s haughtiness, that I had the victory in my pocket. When a woman proceeds to a seemingly sharp, but in fact tender, attack, the victory is usually in your pocket.

“But of course I haven’t a clue about anything. And when it comes to life, not the least, not even a hint. Just what is life? I don’t know. I say this in dead earnest: I don’t know.”

“Oh God, man, don’t go to pieces on me. Don’t you see that I am full of nothing but good intentions, even eagerness? Don’t you see that either, you dope? What year were you born?”

“Fifty-three,” I responded mechanically, and not without distaste; after all, the date of my birth usually stood plain as day on the covers of my books, and she has to ask? Hasn’t she ever picked one up, or what? For a moment I even considered taking offense and giving up, but after brief consideration I came to the conclusion that the operation would succeed, that I would punish her for ignorance of my work with attacks of eccentric brutality in bed.

“That’s just beautiful. Born in fifty-three, and he has to ask about the meaning of life! Hasn’t anyone informed you by now, you poor thing, about the meaning of life. Really no one?”

“No one. And I sense that if you don’t tell me, I will never learn and I will die in ignorance.”

“Listen. Life depends on finding the right proportion between work and relaxation. Do you understand? Understand? Or is it too difficult for you?”

“As far as work is concerned, I know more or less what that is… But as far as relaxation is concerned…”

My gaze must have betrayed me. I must have gazed at her for a moment with excessively ostentatious greed, since she shook her head with pity.

“Forgive me, but that is an excessively one-sided conception of relaxation, too exhaustive and, basically, embarrassing. And as for work,” she adopted, after a second of ominous silence, a conciliatory tone, even very conciliatory, “and as for work, what — if I may allow myself the banal question of the enchanted female reader — what is the master working on at the moment?”

“God bless you for that ‘enchantment.’ No writer can resist a friendly load of crap. Especially in such a… especially in your performance. I am composing short stories now. A collection of short stories of a different sort.”

“A novel is less than a novel, but a volume of short stories is more than a volume of stories?” she suddenly blurted out.

“What gibberish,” I thought at the first, “what gibberish are you spouting, you miraculous bitch?” But the first moment had passed; after it a second, a third, and perhaps even a fourth, and in the next one, I don’t know which one, slowly, very slowly—langsam und trübe—it began to dawn on me that, who knows?… Who knows how this blind hen had stumbled upon the secret of my literary workbench.

II

As I now recreate and record our first conversation, I see clearly that literature can never keep pace with life. Even a faithfully recorded exchange of sentences — word for word — says nothing about the heart of the matter. In this instance, the heart of the matter was my terrible paralysis over the fact that The Most Beautiful Woman in the world was chatting with me at all. That’s in the first place. And in the second place, I was paralyzed by the fact that I myself was chatting. After all, greater wizards than I were struck dumb in her presence. And yet, a conversation had occurred: she spoke to me, and I spoke to her; but that’s not all — she gave the impression of listening intently to what I was telling her; then she would answer, then I would answer, then she, then I… Everything, seemingly, was going along just as normally as could be. Seemingly. Very seemingly. For at bottom, our conversation was very much feigned and very fragmentary, and I — a very illusory and very partial I — was taking part in it. With every word spoken, I was immediately panicked by the fact that a word had been spoken. Already when I was approaching her, I was in panic — in amazement and fear — that I was approaching. Oh, f…, I’m approaching her! Oh, f…, I’m close! Oh, f…, I said something! Oh, f…, she glanced at me! Oh, f…, she sees me! Oh, f…, she’s talking to me! I raised such shouts the whole time in my heart of hearts, and they dominated. They were the essence of the thing. In them also lurked the harbinger of tragedy. Instead of concentrating on the operation, I was in permanent triumph over the fact that there even was an operation. That was to be my undoing.

Three of four storms came crashing down on the garden; lightning bolts made it white like winter, thunder claps made it hushed like a silent film. Salads diluted by streams of water began to withdraw from their platters; cold cuts, cheeses, fruits swam the length of table cloths in a torrential stream; waiters soaked to the marrow tried to rescue what they could; the lawn was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into a quagmire; the army of reception-goers, decimated by the gale, tried to storm the buildings of the embassy. The chaos was spreading.

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World disappeared between my one glance at her and the next. When the heavens abruptly darkened, and the rains came down in sheets, I lifted my face; then, with the instinctive thought that one ought somehow to shield the Venus of the Third Republic — perhaps take off my jacket and throw it over her shoulders; by some miracle, produce an umbrella from somewhere; conjure up a cape out of a handkerchief — all this lasted a second, my protective visions didn’t even have time to take on concrete shape; I glanced again in her direction, and she was gone. I think I even glanced instinctively in the direction of the swaying crowns of the trees, but this was a childish instinct.

Apart from everything else — granted, she was The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, she belonged to the top ten, or to the top hundred, of the most beautiful women in the world — but some sort of slender and ethereal beauty she was not. A healthy broad, to tell the truth: six feet tall, a glorious bust, not pumped up with any element lighter than air, massive thighs, and a wrestler’s frame. Just a few years ago, all sorts of abundance had been heaped high on this frame. The story of the trademark diet she had worked out to perfection, and of her shockingly effective loss of weight, was known to the nation just as well as the story of the resurrection of Lord Jesus, and perhaps even better. Now, of course, she was slender and slim like a poplar, but still there wasn’t a chance that the wind would carry her off like a feather to the height of the genuine poplars growing next to the fence.

I searched for her like a madman. I crossed all the rooms of the embassy from the cellars to the attic. I set the entire guard on its feet; they followed me, but at a distance; I was supposedly pale as a corpse, wild gaze, disheveled hair. Water poured from my shoes and pants, since I rushed, time and again, out into the garden, to that place where she had stood motionless for two hours next to a wicker chair. I kept feeling delusional impulses that she was still standing there, and, like a fool, time and again I ran there. The guards followed me, but, as I said, at a distance, since they were operating under the reasonable assumption that they were dealing not with a calculating terrorist, but with an unpredictable madman.

Time and again someone would ask me who I was looking for — I didn’t answer, I didn’t say, I didn’t speak up at all. How could I confess to such boundless stupidity? What was I supposed to say? That I was looking for The Most Beautiful Woman in the World? Let’s say that you were looking into various rooms in deadly panic, searching, let’s say, for Sharon Stone, and let’s say someone were to ask you who you were looking for. What would you answer? I’m looking for Sharon, because she vanished somewhere. An impossible dialogue! A situation that’s beyond all categories! You can’t ask about the whereabouts of beautiful women: vile intentions, even if they don’t betray you, will be ascribed to you. Even if you were I don’t know what sort of famous ascetic. And I wasn’t. I was, however, unprecedentedly desperate, and the circumstances seemed — in spite of everything — propitious.

On account of the collective and instant evacuation of the banquet, which was now drowned by the downpour and bombarded by lightning bolts, the atmosphere became — as it happens when the commoners suddenly take control of the salons — more and more unrestrained. Under the pretext of drinking to get warm, everyone ignored the extraterritoriality of the embassy and drank as is drunk throughout our entire land: one bottle per person. And so it was no wonder that in short order almost everybody was in the same state as the colorless columnist of the so-called “Independence Style” had been from the very beginning. I wasn’t very fond of him, but I couldn’t think about his predatory swilling with anything other than respect. If a person has to be fuddled in the end, it is better that he be more generously fuddled. And so in a pinch, very much in a pinch, I could put together a thin disguise. I could attempt — pretending to be fuddled — to ask someone who was equally plastered (except that they really were), as if for a joke, about the whereabouts of The Most Beautiful Woman in the world.

But then, I didn’t know this company very well. That is, I knew more or less, who could have her cell phone number. It was clear that the designer who was living in New York most probably had it, and the former minister most certainly had it; that the famous illustrator most likely had it, and that the right-wing journalist probably didn’t; that the film director, known for his conquests, might have it, but the composer, who boasted of his monogamy, did not; that the scandalous female painter almost certainly did, but the philosophy professor from Oxford almost certainly not.* This much I knew, but I didn’t know what, in this particular case, would be the reaction to my request. I hesitated a good while, I looked around carefully, I feverishly attempted to find some friendly soul, but, in the end, fear prevailed — the fear that the person I should finally ask wouldn’t manage sufficient discretion, might even, in his cups and for a joke, make a fuss throughout the entire embassy.

As a sort of farewell, I ventured into the private apartments of the ambassador and his wife. Now I was acting in cold blood and as if for my own amusement; I knew that I wouldn’t find her there, but suddenly the power I still had over the guards began to excite me. Calmly, and even phlegmatically, I roamed through personal offices, closets, bathrooms, bedrooms; I went into the toilet for a moment; upon exiting, with an eloquent gesture to the unit that was following me, I made it clear that it was now unoccupied, and — quietly writhing with rage, sorrow, and a feeling of irreversible loss — I went home.

III

In the taxi, while still on the way, I was absolutely certain that I would suddenly be washed away. I was tired, soaking wet, hungry. (Because of nerves, I almost never eat at receptions and here, to boot, before I was able to make up my mind about some slice of cheese, the flood swept all the food in its wake.) I was alone, since, in my desperate search for the irrevocably lost star, it didn’t even occur to me to look around for some sort of substitute for the evening. I was furious at myself over this, too. After all, a couple of very impressive body doubles — you could even say, a couple of very daring and dexterous stuntwomen — were strolling consentingly, very consentingly, about the gardens.

But now the gardens and the city were plunged in rain and darkness. The temperature had fallen at least twenty degrees. I didn’t have a single reason not to have a drink. On the contrary, I had fourteen reasons to have a drink. Fourteen 50 ml bottles of stomach bitters awaited me in the refrigerator. For some time now, I had preferred coin divided up precisely in this fashion, convenient for parcelling out among my pockets. Each of the fourteen named reasons was individually good for a beginning, and all of them together were good for an end.

I paid the taxi driver, ran into my apartment, and, as is my custom when it is bad (and this time, it was very bad), without taking off my shoes I ran straight to the refrigerator in order, as quickly as possible, to open up, unscrew, drink down; in other words, to perform three ritual ceremonies, after which it would stop being bad. But before I plunged myself into the rites, and even before I had made it to the refrigerator, I remembered about the air rifle. That’s right. There was indeed something worth remembering. I had something to recall. And I’ll put it even more forcefully: there is something to tell a story about.

A week earlier I had fulfilled the eternal dream of my childhood, of my youth, and of my maturity — I had bought myself a gun. I had bought myself a pneumatic rifle, commonly known as an air rifle. For a week now, I have been the owner of a dazzling Spanish flintlock from the firm Norica. For a week now, I have been placing the smooth cherry wood butt to my cheek. I raise up the black oxidized barrel, and my dithering hands are calmed, and my weakening eyes once again see every detail. I release the safety, I pull the trigger, and all the artificial flowers, sticky suckers, and black-and-white photographs of film stars, which I shot to bits at Wisła church fairs, fly circles around my head. All the matches, threads, and glass tubes that I was able to shoot up in the shooting galleries I have happened upon in the course of my life (and I haven’t let a single one pass by) spin under the ceiling. All the targets I have managed to hit come flying like squadrons of paper swallows. I don’t like vulgar sentimentalism, but when I load my rifle (I bought — it goes without saying — a significant stock of ammunition), take aim, and hear the metallic clang, I am as happy as I was as a child.

And so, before I rushed to the refrigerator, I remembered about my weapon, and I decided, after all, to take a look at it first, to make sure it was really there. I still had a feeling of unreality. For my whole life, I had been certain (and I still have this fear) that an air rifle belongs to the realm of things that will never be accessible to normal mortals. The place for such collectors’ items was in some sort of closely guarded arsenal. Only the most privileged, and those of the highest standing, had access to them, and even they couldn’t always take them home with them. The owners of church fair shooting galleries — athletic men with insolent eyes — always made an incredible impression upon me. It was clear that they belonged to some sort of dark Areopagus, with no one knew what sort of powers. And it seemed that it would always be so, that the world of dark Areopaguses, inaccessible air rifles, church fair shooting galleries, and mysterious store rooms — full of weapons stands, heaps of artificial flowers, and pyramids of shot — would last forever. And now, when my own, my endlessly beautiful Spanish lady stands there, leaning against the wall, when I look at her — it is with the greatest difficulty that I realize that that world has come tumbling down.

I turned on the light in the room — there she was. She is.** Without taking off my shoes, without changing clothes (and without looking into the refrigerator), I approached, grasped, broke, loaded, and began to shoot.

When a person becomes the owner of a weapon (even one — as some would claim — so childish as an air rifle), the image of the world changes. The world is transformed into a collection of targets. If you have a gun, you automatically begin to examine the world from the point of view of its usefulness for shooting at. In the infinite number of objects that create the surface of reality, only those that are good for shooting count. In this sense, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling ceases to be a light bulb and becomes a perfect and very tempting target. The pigeon on the windowsill is no longer only a pigeon, a tree stump ceases to be exclusively a tree stump, an empty cigarette pack only an empty cigarette pack, etc. In my case, the Coca-Cola bottle caps ceased, in an exceptionally radical manner, to be bottle caps per se and became dazzling and narcotic targets. I placed a cardboard box on my balcony sill, I pounded a pencil into the box, I hung a bottle cap from the pencil, and out of the depths of my living room — Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire! Since — I should add — I am addicted to Coca-Cola, I have a considerable reserve of bottle caps.

Now, after the irrevocable loss — so it seemed — of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, after the irrevocable loss of a chance at The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, I was as if in a trance. I was in a fever of despair. I was blasting away mercilessly, and not only could I not stop shooting, I also could not stop hitting the target. Between my eye, the rear sight, the muzzle sight, and the target hanging from the pencil ran an icy, steely, and inexorable line. The successive bottle caps — hit each time in the very heart — flew to pieces in hundreds of tiny, yellow, lightning flashes. When I ran out of bottle caps, I increased the distance twofold, and I scattered my entire stock of empty cigarette packages and matchboxes. Then came the time to set cigarettes on end. I had four unopened packages of Gauloises, which — like it or not — offer eighty hits in a row. Then I mowed down all my pencils. Then six empty lighters. Then I began to look for what might come next. I found three sticks left over from “Magnum” ice cream pops, five cartridges for a Parker ballpoint pen. I broke an old glasses frame into a series of tiny targets. I shot through a one-grosz coin that I had glued for good luck to a miniature calendar. I hit an antique mask that was prominently displayed on the cover of Literary Notebooks. I reduced to pulp the dried up lemon that had been wandering about the kitchen since time immemorial. Finally, I found a pack of playing cards from a Playboy jubilee issue, which soothed me for a moment, but only apparently. I was convinced that shooting at the playing-card likenesses of naked beauties would occupy me for the rest of the evening.

I hung the card with the first naked beauty that came to hand on the pencil, took aim — and my hand shook. The first that came to hand — or if not the first one that came to hand, then one of ten, one of a hundred, one of a thousand of the first naked beauties that came to hand — looked a bit like The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. That same ideal outline of the shoulders, that same self-satisfied smile, that same motionless gaze.

My hand shook. I lowered my weapon. I was near tears from helplessness and sorrow. I became keenly aware that even the most accurate shot at the effigy of the first naked beauty that came to hand would be a complete embarrassment. Some trashy, per procura, symbolic execution was about to take place in my head. There was no point in shooting. Neither at the substitute likenesses, nor at seemingly neutral targets. There was absolutely no point in shooting. I would have to bear the defeat like a man. Not surrender. To fight, to search, to obtain her coordinates at any cost — even at the cost of humiliation. To try to identify a trustworthy soul, and, in spite of everything, to ask heroically, paying no heed to adversity, for her cellphone number… Heroically, since, after all, even if I would be successful, there is no guarantee what would come next… Jesus Christ! So greatly did the recurrence of a recent nightmare batter me and make me white-hot with rage that I did it. Not in a trance, but in cold calculation. All of my trances — once the trance itself has already basically been strained away — have an icy finish (recall my stroll through the private apartments of the ambassador and his wife), and that’s how it was now, too. I did this in cold calculation, with complete calm, and, toward the end, not without amusement. I brought fourteen 50 ml bottles of stomach bitters from the refrigerator, placed them methodically at decent intervals on the edge of the balcony, and — this will come as no surprise to you — I used fourteen shots on them. It goes without saying that there were no delaying tactics of the sort: empty the fourteen bottles, pour the hooch out into a jug, shoot away at the empties, and then engage in a little private revelry on top of that. No question of any of that. First, whoever has shot at a full bottle and at an empty bottle knows the difference this makes. It is a fundamental difference. It is like the difference between I won’t say which one thing and that other one. Second, I finally needed the smell of blood. And the subtle cloud of stomach bitters coming from the balcony, from the fourteen shattered 50 ml bottles, was like the smell of wolf entrails, like the vapor of tropical swamps, like poison gas. I fell asleep intoxicated and unconscious.

And when I woke up, and when, as usual, before getting out of bed I checked to see whether anyone had left some desperate message in the night, on the screen of my phone I found letters tapped out with the thumb of an angel: “I’m sorry that I disappeared so quickly, but I had to. In any case, I say yes. I say yes. Yes to the next installment of our conversation about life.” I got up, put on Vivaldi’s First Violin Concerto full blast and wrote back: “I say yes to our life.” “To our life together?” she replied three seconds later. “Yes,” I replied. “Do you think we will be happy?” she replied. “Yes,” I replied.

IV

I am writing the first bedroom scene of my life, and here I commit the classic debutant’s error: instead of getting right down to business, instead of beginning right off the bat and describing the body of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World as it evaporates like a cloud, I enter upon intricate preambles and digressions. But once you have The Most Beautiful Woman in the World in your bed, you feel so intellectually energized that you think you have the right to formulate fundamental theses. You have the right to pose and to settle key questions. And so, I pose (and also immediately settle) the following key question: What, namely, is the key question in sex? I answer: The key question in sex is the opening position. Oh, of course, it isn’t a matter of any opening position in bed. I’m not providing pitiful technical counseling here — where to place the feet, under what to place the pillow, etc. I’m concerned with the opening position in the fundamental sense, about the first — I use this term in the classical philosophical sense — position.***

To find the place to occupy the first position, and subsequently to occupy the first position — that is the fundamental question in sex. Fundamental, because it is the first. Without it, there are no further installments, and even if there are, they are chaotic and unharmonious. And chaos and lack of harmony are the extermination of sex. In short, it is a matter of sitting down in the proper place. The first position is always a sitting position. Schemes of the sort that would have us walk up to the window together, and at that window, or on the way back, have me embrace her; or the complete catastrophe that would have me lie in ambush for her on her return from the bathroom, and then romantically jump on her back — such schemes are disastrous because they are doomed to briefness. Just how long are you going to stand with her at that window? Just how long will the two of you rock back and forth in an amatory frenzy by the bathroom? Sooner or later you will have to loosen the passionate hold, and everything starts again from the beginning. Unless — God forbid! — seized by panic in such an ill-fated moment, you pick up the pace, thereby making matters worse. It is quite another matter that then at least you’ve gotten the thing over with. You’ve succumbed. You’re dead. Don’t try to tell me that death has only its bad sides.

It is my deepest conviction that the thing to do is to sit down next to the woman, to sit down properly next to the woman, to sit down next to the woman in the appropriate place — this is the essence of the art of love. He who has grasped the simplicity of this craft has learned much. He who has not grasped it will achieve little.

For various reasons, mankind has suffered amatory fiascos. It has suffered them because it was timid, because it didn’t have the proper conditions, because the hour had gotten late, because it was too early, because she wasn’t ready yet, because he was ashamed, because she became paralyzed with fear, because he got drunk, because she undressed too soon, because he said something stupid, because she suddenly remembered that she had to call her sister, because he didn’t take off his socks, because she spent half the night in the bathroom, because he had such an attack of nerves that he was constantly running to the can, because she, out of habit, addressed him as she did her husband — shnooky-lumps, because he, while sitting on the edge of the bed, began to reply to an SMS, because she suddenly broke down in tears, because he suddenly broke out laughing, because she cleared her throat significantly the whole time, because when he asked with a muffled voice, “When did you last fall in love?” she replied with hasty frankness, “Yesterday,” etc., etc. Mankind has suffered amatory disasters for a billion reasons. Mankind has suffered disaster a billion times, a billion times it came to nothing, because he didn’t know how to move from the armchair to the couch. A billion disasters — or perhaps a billion billions — derived from the fact that he didn’t know how to take up the first position. It’s quite another matter that, if you have a small apartment, then this is a genuine tragedy. That’s right — a small one. It’s worse in a small one than in a large one. After all, you’re not going to pile on next to her on the sofa bed, just as soon as she sits down, on account of the cramped quarters. Contrary to appearances, in a small apartment — stricter rules apply.

I had a small apartment. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World sat on the couch, I, on the other side of a small coffee table, on the arm chair. Seven mountains, seven rivers, seven seas, and seven infinities separated me from the first position. And that was terrible. But I already had scores of mountains, rivers, seas, infinities behind me. And that was good. Although incomprehensible. All the more incomprehensible in that, basically, it was not so much that I myself had overcome all those obstacles, as that The Most Beautiful Woman in the world had transported me across them. I didn’t have to make my way across scores of rivers in order to ask her to go to a bar, because right away she said: OK. I didn’t have to climb scores of mountains with the goal of taking her to the movies, because right away she said: OK. I didn’t have to sail across scores of oceans in order to go with her for a walk, because right away she said: OK. Whatever I said, she said OK. To each and every of my propositions — OK. And I, instead of taking a moment to give it some thought — that something isn’t OK here, because everything was too much OK — was in permanent euphoria over the fact that it’s OK. Oh f…! OK! Oh f…! OK! Oh f…! OK! Oh God! OK! She is eating dinner with me! Oh God! OK! She is with me in the Saxon Garden! Oh God! OK! She allows me to be with her when she walks the dog! Oh God! OK! She is holding my hand! Oh God! OK! She is kissing me at the gate! Oh f…! OK! Oh God! OK!

It was the second half of July. The sky over a deserted Warsaw shimmered like a field of lime. We sat in Yellow Dream on Marszałkowska Street, in Modulor at the Square of the Three Crosses, in Tam Tam on Foksal Street, in Antykwariat on Żurawia Street. We went to the Iluzjon to see Dolce Vita, to the Rejs to see Seven Seals, to the Kinoteka to see Other Torments.

In the Atlantic, at Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World cried with delight. I skillfully pretended that I shared her emotion. It came easily to me, because in my euphoria I shared all her emotions and said OK to everything.

I said OK to her conception of life on earth; it was grounded — as you will recall — in finding the appropriate proportion between work and relaxation. I said OK to her conception of life beyond the grave: after death, the soul goes to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory; but if it doesn’t want to, it doesn’t have to; it can enter into another body — whether human, animal, or vegetable depends upon the deceased’s Zodiac sign when he was alive. I even said OK to her literary hierarchies: she adored Wharton and Coelho. It didn’t come easy — but I said OK. My God! Deny a detail like literary taste for the sake of such a beauty? No problem. I said OK. We strolled around deserted Chmielna, Krucza, Wspólna, Hoża, and Wilcza Streets, and I constantly shared her emotions, and I constantly said OK. The empty city ennobled her gibberish. The burning-hot cement center of the city was dead, as if the world had ceased to exist. Even the few specters of dying drug addicts, drunken beggars, and municipal watch guards, all tormented by the sweltering heat, had disappeared somewhere. We were the last people on earth, and the last people on earth have the right to talk nonsense.

“Drop by my place,” I said. We were standing in front of her building. Her dog, in whose evening pissing I had once again had the honor to participate, looked at me with hostility.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll be there at six.”

Everything was clear. A pure love united us, but the time for getting dirty was drawing near. I had fears, premonitions. I foresaw a catastrophe. After all, at some point she would have to stop saying OK. And when she stops saying OK, she will say No. And most certainly she will say No at that point when they all say No.

I sat across from her as if on red-hot coals. I was a million light years away from the first position, and I knew that as soon as I should make even one move to approach her, as soon as, with even one reckless gesture, I should signal my wish to move from the armchair to the couch, I would hear the word No. Basically, I couldn’t move at all, because in my panic I became hysterical at the thought that, as soon as I make any move at all, I would hear No. And I couldn’t let this happen. True, women often say No, and sometimes—as is well known — this doesn’t mean very much. But if a woman who says OK all the time says No even once, this can have far-reaching — and catastrophic — significance. Still, one way or the other, sooner or later, I would have to make my move. And so I moved. I moved because the telephone rang. As soon as I heard the ring, I knew right away — by the very sound of the tone, so to speak, I recognized that it was the Lord God who was calling me. I was absolutely certain that when I lifted the receiver I would hear the voice of the Lord God. And I was not mistaken. I lifted the receiver, and I heard:

“Hey. Did you read what that cretin wrote?” the Lord God spoke in the voice of my friend Mariusz Z.

“Of course I read it. You bet I read it!” my voice shook with joy — I was saved, I was delivered. The Lord God Himself was leading me to the first position.

“Actually, it’s odd that you’ve read it. It’s basically unreadable. The typical class dunce’s composition.”

“Something bad has happened to him. He’s lost control of his thought.”

“What thought? There isn’t a trace of thought there. That is a piece by a guy who has lost control — not of his thought, but of his urine.”

“However you look at it, it’s a downhill slide. There was a time when what he wrote still made sense.”

“Rubbish. It never made sense. I always said he was a graphomaniac.”

“At the beginning at least he was humble.”

“Every graphomaniac is humble at the beginning. Him too. He used to be a humble graphomaniac, but now he is a brazen and impudent graphomaniac.”

“It’s quite another matter that they print this blather. This basically belongs in the editor’s waste bin.”

“Why are you surprised that they print the stuff? After all, they’re all imbeciles.”

I chatted eagerly with my friend, the well-known literary critic Mariusz Z. With expert knowledge and taste, we discussed in great detail an article (or perhaps a book, today I no longer remember) by one of our mutual friends. With the receiver on my ear I circled about the room. I took turns feigning this and that: first complete immersion in the deep substance of the conversation, then I would make conspiratorial glances and apologetic gestures in the direction of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. I was in ecstasy. God was reaching out to me. I jabbered with absolute inspiration, I made my analysis, I interpreted, and I summed up. I circled — just as in the embassy gardens — in ever tighter orbits. And when, from behind the voice of my friend, I heard in the depths of the receiver the true voice of God, Who, in the language that today fulfills the function of Latin, called out to me—Now! Man! Boy! It’s time! — I feigned total immersion in the conversation, together with total separation from reality, and in this immersion and separation I made yet another circle around the room, and I began the next, and half way through the next — in complete fervor, trance, and reverie — I sat down next to her on the couch. I didn’t, however, pay the least attention to her, as if I didn’t know where I had happened to sit down. I jabbered away, I jabbered a good two, three minutes more, and when I had finally finished, when I put the receiver down, and when God, seeing that I had occupied the first position for good, withdrew and grew silent, I looked around. And I saw not only that I was occupying the first position; I saw that slowly the first position was being occupied by… that toward the first position slowly glided the hand of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

V

Everything fell into place. My fingers skillfully unbuttoned her blouse, and my fingers were pleasing to the buttons of her blouse. And her blouse was pleased that it was slipping from her shoulders, and her shoulders were pleased that slipping from them was her blouse. The clasp of her bra probably felt unsatisfied by the fact that my fingers were occupied with it so briefly, but my fingers were proud of themselves. Her jeans, which I grasped at the height of her hips, were pleased by the strength of my hands, and they were pleased by the fact that I compelled The Most Beautiful Woman in the World to stand for a moment. Her jeans knew that they look best on straightened legs, and they knew perfectly well that, if they were to slip from her hips, then it certainly wouldn’t happen sitting down. And they slipped away like an ocean wave revealing the thighs of Aphrodite. And that was all. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World as a general rule—as she put it—didn’t wear panties, and not only during heat waves.

You can’t please everybody. We closed the Venetian blinds, which didn’t please the light of day very much, for only its remnants passed through the slits, but the sweltering dusk eagerly embraced us. Not to cast aspersions, but The Most Beautiful Woman in the World was about to turn forty — and with this age, which is most correctly seen as the apogee of feminity, comes the unconscious reflex of turning down the lights. It was, however, a luminous July dusk, and it was, in spite of the Venetian blinds, sufficiently light that I could appreciate, not only by touch, the artistry of her depilation, the simplicity and modesty of the coiffure under her belly button — thin like a watch band; the full moon of the evenly tanned breasts; the sternum between them, unsymmetrically wide and bumpy; the back, endlessly perfect and — as is usual with backs — marked with endless sadness.

The sheet beneath us was intoxicated with our sweat. The light of day withdrew from between the Venetian blinds. Her skin was created for my hands. God had created her ribs and sides thinking about my arms. Her thighs were fantastic, but only once they were intertwined with mine did they form an absolute whole. We crooned a great love song in two-part harmony. We blurted out fiery filth in two whispers. The specters of my solitude left me once and for all. The superstition that you had to have intellectual communication with a woman fell to dust. I knew, I knew without a doubt that I had finally met someone (“someone,” my God!), with whom I would spend the rest of my life, who would give me strength, who would watch over me, and over whom I would watch. I had finally met someone with whom I would live in a house eternally buried in snow, feed the dogs and cats, watch films on HBO in the evenings, and drink tea with raspberry juice. I knew this without a doubt, and I immediately decided to share my new knowledge with The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (by now also The Only Woman in the World): “I will spend the rest of my life with you,” I whispered into her ear. “That’s impossible,” she replied with an unexpectedly strong voice. “Why?” I touched her wet hair with my lips. “Because I love my husband.” I don’t know whether she said this in a whisper or out loud. I don’t remember. I do remember the catastrophic silence that set in over the bed sheet, over us, and over the whole deserted city. Somewhere you could hear the sound of a child crying on a balcony, the far-off siren of an ambulance, a radio playing in a window, the rumble of a train leaving Central Station, then a sudden and interrupted car alarm. “I love my husband,” she repeated after some delay, or perhaps because of the sleepiness that slowly, after the amatory frenzy, had taken her in its grasp. “I love him. He just came back from Paris. That’s why I could come to you. Because today was his day to walk the dog. That’s how we arranged it.”

VI

Life consists in establishing the appropriate proportion between work and relaxation. After three weeks of relaxation, and real relaxation at that, even — I would say—extreme relaxation, after three weeks of complete rest from the world, after three weeks of truancy and absence from the world, I came back and got down to work. I wrapped my Spanish rifle in black plastic, I put a box of Diabolo Boxer sharp shot in my pocket, and an hour before the zero hour I set off in the obvious direction. The air rifle wrapped in black plastic looked, under my arm, like a curtain rod or some element of some piece of furniture. The dead expression on my face said nothing to anyone.

Across from the gate in which I had madly kissed the divine lips of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World — several times goodbye, and twice in greeting; across from this gate, on the other side of the street, rose the two-story building of an elementary school. It was already the end of August, and from all sides feverish repair work was underway. Even now plasterers were bustling about before the front wall. In the back, however, on the side of the school playground, there wasn’t a soul. Emptiness and stillness, and heaping stacks of broken objects, up which I easily climbed onto the roof.

With a couple lightning fast bounds, worthy of the special forces, I reached the opposite edge and lay down on my belly in the classic position of the sharpshooter. I removed the air rifle from the plastic, loaded it, and waited. I had about thirty minutes to wait. The roof under me had heated up like a pond toward the end of summer. Three red Fiats drove by below. A Fiat Seicento, a Fiat Brava, and a Fiat Punto. Along the sidewalk went a woman with a yellow plastic shopping bag, a bald guy in black, two workers carried a mirror that was turned in my direction. I hid in fear that they would catch sight of the reflection of my head. After a moment I looked out again — now there went a redheaded girl in a jean-shirt, after her another, black-haired in a black T-shirt and red slacks, then a guy with a black plastic shopping bag, and just when it seemed that black was beginning to predominate, again there appeared three red Fiats. My head was spinning. I was on the roof of a two-story pavilion, but my fear of heights bordered on insanity. Three red Fiats drove around my skull. I turned over on my back and looked up at the sky. When was the last time I had lain on a heated surface, on warm grass or on hot sand, and looked at the sky? Into space that became, supposedly, ever colder and darker? Forty years ago? The sun was shining, clouds scudded by. I half-shut my eyes, and I guess I fell asleep, for when I again opened my eyes, the air was one degree darker, and The Most Beautiful Woman in the World — I knew it without looking — was already standing by the gate. I turned over on my belly. At least you, my intuition, hadn’t let me down. There she was. In a white blouse, gray slacks, she stood in her full beauty and surrendered herself to thought. The dog, just like all living creatures, fawned at her feet. Calmly, I raised the weapon to my eye. I had one last minute, but a good full one. I knew quite well that The Most Beautiful Woman in the World would ponder for at least a minute whether to go left or go right. The dog sat motionless and frozen, as if in a canine presentiment of its final hour. I had him in my sights. From down below you could hear the even murmur of the engines of three red Fiats. In a moment the live round of Diabolo Boxer would pierce dog skin, dog muscles, and dog guts, and a terrible squeal would resound. I unlocked the safety, and I delicately touched the trigger, and I knew that I wouldn’t pull it. Genuine life was insuperable and impenetrable. And I raised the oxidized barrel of my air rifle, beautiful as a dream, and I guided it carefully upward in the direction of an analogous beauty. I passed by the thighs, belly, heart, and when I was at the height of the neck, I took aim very precisely. I could shoot with a clean conscience and without any fear that blood would flow — I had before me Beauty, as perfect as geometry and as permeable as air.

*Actually, it was precisely the professor who could have had it — and even, as I think about it now — most certainly did.

**“He is!”—the ecstatic text on a license plate of a certain American automobile noted in an essay by Stanisław Barańczak. I like this phrase, and I use it rather frequently in various forms and with various intents.

***The first position is analogous to Aristotelian prote philosophia, first philosophy. Of course, it is possible to gain practice in the understanding and occupation of the first position without knowledge of Aristotle, but then the taste of corporal relations will be less substantial.