My First Suicide

Breakneck Love

I go to book signings less and less frequently, because I am less and less able to tolerate nights spent in hotels. Not so much even the nights themselves, as the returns to the room in the evenings. Once a person has finally fallen asleep, it basically makes no difference where he is. But the empty evenings, during which, theoretically, anything might happen, but nothing ever does happen, are unbearable.

I don’t know whether there exists a monograph entitled Hotels and Suicide, or even better: A Baedeker for the Hotels of Suicides. I don’t know whether such books exist. Probably they do exist. All books already exist, so probably there is also a Guide to Hotels in Which the Greatest Number of Suicides Were Committed. But without even reading it, I know what is written there. The chapter about individual steps in the hallway. The chapter about the decrepit television. The chapter about the view from the window overlooking the wall of the neighboring building. The chapter about the light left on in the bathroom. The chapter about empty drawers. The chapter about the semi-darkness. The chapter about the figure sitting motionless on the bed. I know those works by heart. I know those climates through and through. No one comes, no one knocks on the door, the telephone remains silent. You yourself don’t feel like calling, besides there isn’t really much of anyone to call. It is impossible to read; absolutely nothing is possible.

Every evening spent in a hotel is ghastly, but an evening spent in a hotel after a book signing is especially ghastly. In addition, there is the famous feeling of contrast — embarrassing in its superficiality, but for that reason all the more painful. An hour ago you were signing books, chatting with gusto, shining as never before. Lyceum students who secretly write poetry were asking for tips about writing, flushed female readers asked about the place of love in life with burning glances. Fifteen minutes ago, I was the incarnation of freedom and courage. Fifteen minutes ago, I was in the crowd, I was the soul of the crowd — now I sit here lonesome as the night is long. Basically, the more successful the event, the worse it is later.

None of the readers standing patiently in line for an autograph would ever come up with the daring idea of inviting the esteemed author for a vodka. It doesn’t occur to them that this stranger from Warsaw, who practically drove off the intruders, is so afraid of returning to the hotel by himself that he would have had a drink with anyone. Never did a one of the ardently staring girls broaden the bravado of her gaze or make even a tender sign with an eyelid. Zero perceptiveness. Not a hint of the intuition that a person will desperately ponder from time to time whether to propose supper to the moderately alluring organizer, who is just then adding up the costs of the trip. In the end everybody scatters, and the moderately alluring organizers remain. Someone has to remain. Someone has to remain, so that someone doesn’t kill himself.

I go to book signings less and less frequently, but when I get an invitation to make an appearance in my parts — on the whole — I don’t refuse. Sentimentalism and Lutheran phantoms are stronger than the fear of spending the night in a hotel. When Lutherans from Cieszyn Silesia invite me, the phantom of duty engulfs me.

Last year, in the middle of November, I traveled to K. Everything took place as usual, or even worse still. In my parts, even moderately alluring organizers are out of the question. In my parts, the crossbar of piety is placed high. At meetings with my brethren, I deftly play the bard of the Cieszyn land, bound with the blessed fetters of Protestantism and well versed in the Bible. It goes without saying that I always have the insane temptation to blurt out some pieces of filth, which — especially in such situations — multiply in my head like mutant rabbits, but at least for the time being, Lutheran style is stronger than the deviltry.

In any case, in my parts even the most illusory illusions that some reader might propose a symbolic snack, or that some female Lutheran reader might wink at me wantonly, drop away to the nth degree and from the very beginning. To the nth degree squared, and from the beginning of beginnings. Of course, after the evening I will have to lend my features the expression of the weary pilgrim, take my leave of even the most alluring organizers, and, at a slow pace, and in a humble pose, cross the Market Square and sink into the abysses of the hotel At the Sign of the Falcon—leaving to the citizens of K., who watch me depart, at most the vague uncertainty whether I will spend the evening reading the works of Melanchthon, or those of Zwingli instead.

In the middle of November last year this was precisely how everything went, jot for jot, tittle for tittle. I took my leave, cut across the Market Square, got the key from the clearly already thoroughly potted receptionist; in the room I turned on the TV, took Zweig’s The World of Yesterday from my bag, and sat motionless on the bed. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I could take a long shower, and then, once I had checked whether there was some detective show on television, I could begin to read. More than that. I could delay for an endlessly long time the taking of an endlessly long shower. I could check for an endlessly long time whether on the five foggy channels there definitely wasn’t a detective show. Maybe there isn’t one at the moment, but perhaps in fifteen minutes there will be. Fifteen times sixty equals nine hundred. If you count only a second per channel, that is enough to press each of the five buttons one hundred eighty times, but if you count two seconds, then it is enough to look at each of the five channels only ninety times, and if you allow three seconds per channel — which is just enough to get a sense of what they are offering on each channel — then it is enough to press each of the five buttons forty-five times. That’s nothing. One, two, one, two, and the quarter of an hour is over. In addition to this, I could — which in the onslaught of sudden possibilities I had almost overlooked — prepare for an endlessly long time to read the book, which, it is not out of the question, I could read endlessly. Upon my word, quite a decent and peaceful evening was shaping up.

As it would turn out, this was not an empty omen. I don’t know whether I had managed to push the button on the remote control even ten times when steps resounded in the hallway, and in a moment someone knocked on the door. A thousand hopes, a thousand disbeliefs, a thousand uncertainties, a thousand sweet visions flitted through my head. Flitted and vanished, just as soon as I had opened the door.

A tall, skinny old man with a neurotic face stood in the hallway. I had seen him less than an hour ago and remembered him well. He had been at the book signing; he sat in the second row and didn’t ask a single question, although it was clear that he really wanted to. I had seen him ten minutes or so ago, perhaps thirty or so, but even if I had seen him a thousand years ago, I still would have remembered him: he had the sort of face you never forget. In his features and gaze, absolute madness was joined with the most elevated dignity — a combination that was common in the nineteenth, and even in the twentieth century; today it is completely rare. He was dressed in a light colored poplin overcoat, he held under his arm an ancient, massive pigskin briefcase, stuffed to the brim.

“I beg your pardon most humbly for disturbing your peace,” he said with the strong and well-adjusted voice of someone who is used to the bold expression of his thoughts. “I beg your pardon most humbly for disturbing your peace. I wanted to call from the lobby, but poor Emil… is already in bad shape…”

“The receptionist?” My guess didn’t require much perspicacity. “Indeed, I also noticed that, in spite of the early hour, he is already somewhat…”

“Early hour?” The old man smiled broadly. “Master… Can it be that the master, contrary to appearances, has entirely broken with his roots? Can you have forgotten at what hour the lights are turned out at home, the curtains drawn? It isn’t yet nine, but for Lutherans it is the middle of the night, or in any case a very late hour, and Emil has a sacred right to lay his weary head down on the counter. Well… but I just, counting on a certain, so to say, relativism between our time and the time of the rest of the world, I make bold at such a…” he glanced at me questioningly, “basically, I don’t know, whether it is an hour that is at all acceptable…”

We were still standing in the doorway. I hadn’t invited him into the room, because I was counting on the business with which he had come to me to be short; that he only wanted to ask for a belated autograph, because at the book signing he hadn’t had a copy of my book; that he was bringing the scarf that I had left in the coat check; that he wished only now, because he didn’t have the courage before other people, to offer me a volume of versified memoirs, which he had published at his own expense; that — whatever he wanted from me — he would vanish immediately.

It was as it always was. Just a minute ago I had been praying in the depths of my soul that someone would appear, that something would happen; but now I was absolutely certain that checking whether there might be a detective show on one of the five foggy channels was the one thing I desired to devote myself to — with passion and until late in the night. Now the endlessly long postponement of the endlessly long shower seemed to me an endangered pleasure that I needed to defend. How many times was it like that? How many times had I prayed for the presence of someone, and my prayers were heard, and God sent someone’s presence, and I, in the greatest panic, didn’t even allow that person to cross the threshold?

“I forewarn you that my business is not quick or perfunctory.” It didn’t surprise me that he was reading my mind. “I want to tell you a story.”

I wasn’t keen on other people’s stories. A least a year before, I had realized that there was no way, not even until the end of my life, that I would manage to write down what I myself remember. I wasn’t curious about his story, but I also sensed more and more clearly that it was unavoidable.

“Please,” I said with restrained cordiality, “come in, except that I don’t have anything, I have absolutely nothing at all to offer you.”

“I am invading your territory, but I don’t come empty handed.” With a sure step he entered the room, opened the briefcase, which was filled to the brim with various papers, extracted from it a gigantic bottle, its cap sealed with wax, and all of it wrapped in newspaper, as well as an equally gigantic thermos.

“They have glassware here, as far as I recall.” On an absurd, utterly useless, typical hotel chest of drawers stood a bottle of Ustronianka mineral water and two glasses. “Please, if I may allow myself such an eccentricity. True, you are at home here, but in K., even At the Sign of the Falcon, I feel that I am the host. I have spent a good bit of my life in the bar downstairs, and besides, you know, I am familiar with every square inch here. That’s right. I know the history, geography, and substance of every local square inch.”

Only now did he take off his overcoat. He was wearing an archaic brown suit, perhaps from the fifties, or perhaps even from before the war.

“Help yourself, assuming, of course, you do drink. Because people say various things. But if people say various things, then that means that you do, in fact, drink.”

“With you, I’ll have a drink,” I said with the resignation that I recall from old times, and which ritually signified, at the beginning, a few hours — and later, a few days — torn out of my life story.

“Perfect.” With a tender gesture he grasped the bottle and skillfully rapped it on the edge of the table so that the wax seal split into two halves like a walnut. He removed the screw cap that had been underneath, and he poured into the glasses a proper measure of the cloudy drink for each of us. I caught the cold scent of October grass.

“Juniper berry vodka. Homemade, it goes without saying. It goes wonderfully with hot mint tea,” he rapped a finger on the thermos.

“No thanks, for now,” I shook my head.

“I understand perfectly. Old school. Without a chaser. Your health.”

We each drank two rounds in silence. A warm sea current passed through us from head to foot. We took out cigarettes, lit them up; the smell of smoke was united with the smell of the juniper berry vodka, which was so intense that it seemed synthetic. “Are you reading Zweig?” He glanced at the book lying on the bed. “A forgotten author and somewhat, I would say, second-rate.”

“I am reading him carefully,” I responded. “I am reading him carefully and with delight. With absolute delight.”

“Carefully and with delight? Aren’t you exaggerating a bit? Chess Story is great, but the rest?”

“The rest too, God help me. Besides, you know, almost everyone would like to be a second Thomas Mann. But I wouldn’t have anything against being a second Stefan Zweig. In youth, a person worships Mann, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, but slightly scorns Zweig, Chekhov, or Steinbeck. In old age, this changes, even turns the other way around completely.”

“You know, there’s no great gulf between Dostoevsky and Chekhov. As for the rest — I’d have to give it some thought. Your ‘old age’ is also rather debatable. Especially, so to say, in my context. But I hope you dream of being a second Stefan Zweig rather in quotation marks, and not with all the details?” He pronounced the name of the author of Impatient Heart with a grotesque German articulation and smiled.

“With all the details is an impossibility,” I answered. “And besides, there isn’t any sense in it.”

“That’s the point,” he livened to the topic somehow disproportionately. “That’s the whole point, that if even one detail is lacking, it is impossible to repeat… I do not compare myself in the least degree with you, but I also dabble in writing, and it is precisely this problem… The problem of a certain lack… the lack of analogical detail is key for me. Yes, sir. I dabble in writing, and I have a few of my works with me.” He pointed to the briefcase standing next to his chair, which still — as if nothing had been removed from it — gave the impression of being stuffed to bursting.

“I have them with me not because I brought them on purpose for a meeting with you, but because I never part with some of my works. Never. Yes, sir. I dabble in writing as an amateur, and perhaps not at all as an amateur. I have written, among other things, A Natural History of the Cieszyn Land. I do not carry around with me that one and only title that has appeared, up to this point, in print. That is, I do sometimes, but not always. It depends on my mood, as well as a whole series of other circumstances. Today I took with me three of my novels, which are of a documentary nature. One is about prewar times, the second about the war and the occupation, the third about Communist rule. That last one is a sort of Polish People’s Republic family saga, and I am rather satisfied with the results. But I implore you! I implore you! Please have no fear. I do not intend to burden you with reading matter, to ask you for your judgment or some sort of support with the publishers. Granted, I have written quite a lot in my free moments, but I am in no hurry to get them published. No hurry at all.”

I wondered how old he might be. In his manner of speaking, gestures, mannerisms, dress, he made the impression of an old man, my senior by a good half century, but, finally, let’s not exaggerate here. I myself am over fifty, and even the most vigorous hundred-year-olds don’t look as vigorous as he did. How old could he be? Eighty? Seventy-five? Was he young? Not much older than me, but stylized and made up to look like a venerable old man?

“Don’t think about my age. I’m as old as everyone — to use the famous phrase of a certain Polish writer, who has been dead for quite a few years, and thereby is already, in the strict sense, as old as everyone. Eternity is endlessly short and always the same. But to return to my interests, I also have to my credit a book on March ’68, a book about Martial Law (the least successful of them all), and a still unfinished piece that is completely contemporary. But — I repeat — I do not intend to present any of these works to you, not even fragments of them. I don’t intend to summarize anything I’ve written. On the contrary, I wish to tell you a story that I haven’t written down, and which I never will write down. I mention my passions only so that you might be able to figure out what sort of maniac you are dealing with.

“So, as you can quite easily see, I am the sort of maniac whose ambition it is to reflect with his pen the surrounding world and epochs in which he chanced to live. The reflection of one who is involved in the support of, and sympathizes with, the most noble of values. I am from an extinct tribe, one that thought that books must contain history, the nation, society, and patriotism. This was the spirit in which I have always given my lectures, and it was these convictions that I sought to produce in my pupils. Yes, sir! I am a teacher of many years’ standing in the local gymnasium. A few times, in epochs of various thaws, I was even head of school. It never lasted long. Two years early in the Gomułka regime, one year early on under Gierek, and a few months during Solidarity the first time around. For years now, it goes without saying — retired. I belong to the tribe that was brought up on Stefan Żeromski. You would like to be Stefan Zweig, I would like to be Stefan Żeromski. Come to think of it, what an unusual couple of epigones! A second Zweig and a second Żeromski! A breathtaking stunt of the purest form. Let’s drink to our grotesque-macabre duet! Due Stefani — vedetti of the evening! Let’s also drink to the fact that we will never equal our masters. You in life, I in art. You will never commit suicide like Zweig, and I will never write like Żeromski. Incidentally, are you aware that a whole series of very interesting suicides has been committed here At the Sign of the Falcon? Yes, sir! Very interesting. But this is a topic for another time. How do I know that you won’t commit suicide? I don’t know. The thought often crosses your mind, that’s clear. It crosses everyone’s mind. It crossed the mind of the namesake of our deservedly weary receptionist, Emil Cioran. For all of his life, he was occupied with suicide. All his life, he wrote about suicide, and somehow or other he lived to be eighty. It seems that in your own family there was a figure who spent his entire life preparing to leave this one and yet, somehow or other, lived to a ripe old age. There are analogies. Besides, you know, you might simply not have time for suicide. You have to write your own suicide before the fact, and you have begun late. You simply might not have the time for it. And as Scripture says: To everything there is a season. Suicide also has its season. If a person doesn’t manage to kill himself at the appropriate moment, he has to live thereafter for nothing. And many, endlessly many people live like that. They live only because it is too late even for suicide. Yes, sir! You don’t have enough time to commit suicide, and I don’t have enough time to become Żeromski. Let’s hope! For, should it come to pass, that would be the tragedy. You, after your suicide, would at least have peace. But me? Suddenly blessed with the uncontrollable word-stream of the author of The Coming Spring? What would I do then? Please, in no way take this confession as fishing for compliments by claiming a lack of talent. On the contrary — I have talent. But I also have a certain lack. Precisely a lack. I lack the specific. I have a certain writerly lack that always seemed unimportant to me, but which, with time, has become a nagging one. Namely, I don’t know how to write about women. And in my haughty, conceited opinion, it is only in this range that I’m not a Żeromski. Only in this one aspect. Because he knew how to write about women. Say what you want, he knew. I console myself, or rather I consoled myself, I consoled myself for a long time, that my pieces weren’t any sort of romances but quasi-documents. I consoled myself that there exist outstanding works of literature — we need look no further than precisely the Chess Story of your master — in which there aren’t any women or erotic love, but there is, nonetheless, a sharp image of the world. I comforted myself with a sort of unformulated moralizing program: that, supposedly, in an epoch of universal pornography, it is time for extreme puritanism. I comforted myself as best I could, but still, with time, the lack of an aspect which is not even so much romantic as sensual, became simply unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. You know, I don’t know how to write about women, because I never think about women. I was once married, became a widower long ago; and the love affairs that came my way seem to me so remote today that I am almost certain that they didn’t occur in my lifetime. I don’t think about women, therefore I don’t know how to write about them. So much is clear. It’s impossible to record what doesn’t take shape in your head. At this point, yet another troublesome plot twist comes into play, so troublesome, that in revealing it, I am bordering on exhibitionism…

“If you permit, another round for courage? To your health. To the health of the ladies. That’s just it. It’s easier after a drink. After a drink, it is a lot easier. After a drink, it is much easier to think about women. Much, much easier. The fact of the matter is, I don’t think about women at all when I am sober. But once I have had a drink, I begin to think about them intensely, I begin to think about them fluently, and I begin to think about them copiously. Such is my — you must admit — rather boorish syndrome. After a drink, I get a hankering for the erotic. Not in any practical sense. After a drink, I get a hankering for sex — but in the intellectual sense. After a drink, I can compose romantic aphorisms; after a drink, I can think about the erotic in orderly fashion; after a drink (but a big one!), I am even able to sketch a bedroom scene. But only orally. Not in writing. If I knew how to write after a drink, I would be — if you please — Stefan Żeromski, in the strict sense; I would be Żeromski through and through; I would be more than Żeromski. You will forgive me, but if I knew how to write after a drink, I would be Żeromski to a significantly greater degree than you are Zweig when sober. Granted, better a sober Zweig than a drunk Żeromski, but the tragedy of Polish literature depends — among other things — on the fact that Żeromski didn’t drink, and that Zweig wasn’t present at all. Yes, sir. After a drink, I’d write totally unprecedented histories of sin, but after a drink I am unable to write a single letter. I can only narrate orally. Only oral transmission comes into play. The song of the Wajdelota. Then, I can tell a story. Yes, sir! That’s when I can tell a story.

“When I found out that you were coming to K., I decided to have a drink with you and tell you the story that torments me. I decided that I would tell you a story that I am able to tell, but which I am unable to write down. It’s a love story. It’s easy to guess that I felt the lack of a sensual aspect in my works especially acutely when an emotional plot turn occurred in my own life.

“I fell in love. I fell in love with a student. I fell in love with a woman more than forty years my junior. With a woman, not a child. With a woman, not a girl. Anyway, her womanliness manifested itself rather occasionally and rather sporadically. The charm of changeability. Thanks to this charm, gray mice sometimes win the competition with out-and-out beauties. The out-and-out beauty is once-and-for-all and unchangeably out-and-out beautiful, and that’s that. Zero changeability and zero surprises. But the gray mouse, for whom you wouldn’t give five cents, all of a sudden — it sometimes happens — somehow magically rearranges her hair; the blouse on her flat chest opens mysteriously, although deceptively; her eye sparkles; a ray of light falls on her asymmetrical face — and there you see it: the mouse is transformed into the Miss! The potato-eater into the angel! Grayness becomes light!

“The virtues of my angel were basically exhausted with this sort of sporadic charm. To be perfectly clear: I sing the song of a very unremarkable person. This, in fact, was to be my doom. When an unremarkable person comes to be considered remarkable, it usually ends badly. Precisely this course of events occurred. First, she was a normal woman of unremarkable looks and average intelligence, but then — God knows who. Most certainly a fallen woman with a bird’s brain and the looks of a whore. And even that isn’t certain. In other words, it is even worse, because wandering about the cracks of existence is worse than whorishness. She’s gone. It was the art of today, miserable and devoid of values, that destroyed her. It was aspiring to superiority, the appearance of which is given by the cultivation of art, that depraved her and cast her out of life. And it was the devil himself, who — having taken on the form of a film star who was known as a ladies man and had come to our parts — pushed her to this. He spent a night here. In the hotel At the Sign of the Falcon. I don’t know whether it was precisely this room. Probably not. He didn’t commit suicide. But he didn’t live all that long afterward. No, I didn’t kill him. I wished him nothing but the worst — death, too — but I didn’t kill him. He died in an accident. You can’t even speculate that I caused the accident through my obsessive thoughts. My thoughts were highly intense in their obsessiveness, but they didn’t have any force, because they were mainly drunk. What are you doing? — I think. — He destroyed her life. He plunged her into the abyss of superiority. He seduced her with the mirages of alleged triumphs. He made her giddy, without even seducing her. Which is basically all the worse.

“Let’s say her name was Wiktoria. It is only for the sake of appearances that I change her name, since the story is, to this day, discussed over and over and from every angle in K., and tomorrow morning, as soon as you exit the hotel, the first chance passerby will tell you who she was. Actually, you don’t even have to go out. Emil will also be happy to reveal to you who the prototype for Wiktoria is. She was the daughter of the curator of the Lutheran church. Our parts — as you well know — abound in daughters of curators, daughters of pastors, daughters of presbyters, or daughters of organists. In spite of the indisputable sexiness of such descriptions, none of them ever came into question for me. Nor did Wiktoria — until a certain balmy September day — come into question. Never did any of my female students come into question. Absolutely not! Not even the hint of a thought. For an old teacher, who never thinks about women, thinking about female students as women was beyond all categories and didn’t come into question a thousand times over. The dark side of the moon. The light of a star that would arrive on Earth in a million light years. Above all, my female students had no bodies. They were composed of navy blue skirts, white blouses, and sailor collars. Their heads contained, at best, superficial summaries of readings, badly memorized verses, and paltry essays. At best, because, on the whole, they didn’t contain anything. And after the holidays, their skulls, light as dandelion fluff, had been absolutely swept clean of any sort of material. You could recognize this by their suntans and bovine bliss. On their faces, my dear sir, an even Balkan suntan, in their eyes, bovine bliss, and in their heads, a complete void. I know that I express myself like an old and grumpy pedant. Unfortunately, the continuation of this story will require much worse expressions. I will tell the beginning of the story in high pedant style. And the crux of the beginning, to which I am now passing, occurred right after the holidays.

“One fine September day, I called upon her to answer. O doom! O fate! O bloodied arrowhead! Yes, sir! One fine September day, a student, a third-year lyceum student, composed of a dark skirt, white blouse, and sailor collar, with the first name, let’s say, Wiktoria, and the surname, let’s say, Złotnica, stood at the blackboard and — not a peep. I ask about the greats — nothing. I ask about Mickiewicz — nothing. I ask about Gombrowicz — nothing. I ask about Sienkiewicz — nothing. I ask about whatever — nothing. What did you read during your vaction? Nothing. Where were you during the vacation? In the mountains. What mountains? In our mountains. In Wisła. And you didn’t read anything in that Wisła? Nothing during the entire vacation? Nothing. Well, yes — I say with the studied venom that my students, especially the boys, adore — you, Złotnica, ought not go to the mountains, but rather to the sea. That’s what I’d advise you to do. At the seaside, at least there is iodine. In the mountains, even in our mountains, and maybe especially in our mountains, there is no iodine. And the lack of iodine, plus Lutheranism, produces — as it turns out — pitiful intellectual results. At least in your case — I enunciate clearly and slowly — at least in your case, Złotnica.

“The class, of course, howls with laughter. I cast my victorious glance over the laughing faces, I turn my face toward her in order to wrap up and conclude the matter with a final grimace full of pity, and suddenly I see a miracle taking place before my very eyes. Suddenly I am witness to a most genuine, biblical miracle. Suddenly I see how the word — forget the word! — suddenly I see how the lack of the word — for, after all, she wasn’t able to stammer out a single word — and so, suddenly I see how the lack of the word becomes flesh! Suddenly I see how ignorance becomes flesh! First — from her head, through the collar, blouse, skirt, down to her very feet — there runs a most distinct shiver. It is as if a delicate lightning bolt had pierced her, and immediately thereafter the void was filled. Suddenly I see how a delicate neck, the most delicate in the world, just now created, emerges from a sailor collar. Suddenly there appears from under the sailor collar the outline of collarbones just a moment before shaped from clay. And the thin shoulders begin to support the white blouse, and the frail outline of a bust takes form before my eyes, and the daringly projected construction of hips becomes noticeable under the dark skirt, and even the shoes with flat heels are suddenly filled with feet, and all of this takes place quite literally before my very eyes.

“‘Professor,’ says the body created only the moment before, and shivers, as if it had experienced the cold of the earth’s atmosphere for the first time, ‘Professor, I did, indeed, read a few books, but none of these books was a book by Stefan Żeromski, so, in the professor’s opinion, it is as if I didn’t read a single book.’

“For the first time in my life, I look her right in the eyes, and so, it seems to me that her eyes, too, had only now been called into existence. For the first time in my life, I look a female student in the eyes, and, for the first time in my life, I see gray lightning bolts. In the classroom, it is as quiet as the grave. The quiet before the storm. But no one knows that it will be a storm full of gray lightning bolts, and that it will be a storm raging in my heart.

“‘In other words, when I say that I didn’t read a single book, from the professor’s point of view I am telling the truth. But my admission is none of the professor’s business, nor where I go for the holidays. I am a Lutheran, and I am certainly a better Lutheran than your Żeromski, who converted to Lutheranism only in order to get a divorce. But he is buried in the Protestant cemetery, and, if only for that reason, you ought to have respect for us, and not ridicule us for lacking iodine — in other words, for having a screw loose.’”

My collocutor, or rather, my narrator, interrupted his story; he poured some more into the glasses, and he drank it off, without raising a toast or even checking to see whether I would join him; and he poured again, and he drank again; he made a motion as if he wished to take off his jacket, but then shrugged it off, lit a cigarette, inhaled two times or so, and looked me in the eye.

“Yes sir!” Gray. She had eyes like mine, like my father’s, like my brother’s, and, funny thing, like those of my departed wife. Very funny, but also slightly terrifying. One of a thousand very funny, but also slightly terrifying, details. If I knew how to capture all of them, I could write a shocking love story. The very first scene, the very beginning of emotion — seemingly nothing: the boorish professor and the desperate snot-nosed kid, but what an avalanche, what a cataclysm, what an earthquake. In my absolute confusion, I was certain that she, in a sudden illumination, knows everything, that she saw my sudden infatuation as clearly as can be, and she came out with — God help us — the story of Żeromski’s Lutheranism, which was, in fact, lined with a romantic plot turn, in order to finish me off with an ostentatious allusion.

“As a non-believer, I’m not crazy about either Catholics or Lutherans, and I’m especially not crazy about Lutherans. Why? Because I know you. I know you better than the Catholics. As the author of The Natural History of the Cieszyn Land, I have come to know, inside and out, all — as you would put it — the Lutheran phantoms. Lutherans are more convenient for caricature and derision. To make fun of Catholics in Poland is a shallow art. Lutheranism, through its exoticism, lends to an anecdote an additional — I would say — aesthetic force. Besides, in my agnostic opinion, in matters of faith and God, Lutherans are more right than Catholics. And whoever is more right is more comical. It’s an old truth. The most ludicrous are those who are right a hundred percent of the time. May the Lord God defend us from those who own one-hundred-percent infallibility. My truth is as old as the world: there is no God. We are mayflies who have learned how to build Gothic churches, fly into the cosmos, and compose symphonies. We are mayflies who have written the Bible, painted The Final Judgment, and made films with Greta Garbo. We are mayflies who elect the pope, and we are mayflies who sometimes withdraw our allegiance from the pope. We are mayflies who turn to dust after death, and we are mayflies who are capable of composing a sentence about that turning to dust. And please do not protest and assert that mayflies who have constructed violins and are capable of composing string quartets are not mayflies. All the more are they mayflies. All the more tragically — mayflies. Sometimes, when great misfortune incapacitates us, it seems to us that there exists something more; it seems to us that we see or hear signs: a light over a house, a knocking at the window, the cry of a child in the garden… Perhaps you know that, in a certain piece of biblical apocrypha, one of Job’s clones utters the sentence: ‘Suffering incapacitates me like a crying child?’ We are all clones of Job. Our appearance has been altered in the hands of the demon of fate. We are all mayflies. We are mayflies, who suffer from a lack of iodine.

“No. I never asked her to forgive me. Broad anti-Lutheran jokes were, in my classes, a daily affair. My joke about the connection between iodine and Lutheranism was nothing exceptional. The exception was the fact that she talked back. And of course it was exceptional, and even very exceptional, that — when she mouthed off — I fell in love with her. As far as that joke is concerned, to this day I believe that I am right. To this day, I believe that Lutheranism plus the lack of iodine is an intellectual tragedy. You can prove this, if only through negation. For you can turn the matter around and say legitimately that Lutheranism plus iodine is an intellectual, and not only intellectual, fulfillment. Just why is it that Protestantism enjoys all sorts of triumphs, for example, in Scandinavia? Well, it is precisely because those are maritime countries and full of iodine. Scandinavian Protestantism, my dear sir, is the height of democratic freedom, economic efficiency, and intellectual power. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same about Beskid Mountain Protestantism.

“I interrupted the lesson and left the classroom. I told the head of school that I wasn’t feeling well, and that wasn’t a lie in the least. I didn’t feel well. Not at all well. I shut myself up at home, having covered the windows tightly, and put on a CD with the sonatas of Franz Schubert, and I drank, in the course of the afternoon and night, three bottles of vodka, pure vodka, if you please. It went down like water. The best proof is this: in the morning, as if nothing had happened, I was off to school. Not that I was happy as a lark and in a perfect mood. Not at all! Ill treated, dejected, with a pierced heart, but still as if nothing had happened. Each subsequent day, it was as if nothing had happened. Life went on as if nothing had happened. I conducted my lessons and performed all my obligations according to routine. I limited the number of anti-Lutheran jokes during my lessons, but I didn’t give them up entirely. I never returned to the aforementioned incident. I took great care not to betray my emotions, in other words not to be especially severe with her. It is well known that showing affection is most generally, and most ineptly, masked with brutality. I tried not to make that mistake, and I think I was successful. For a time, of course. In the evenings, I would get drunk, and then I would allow myself embarrassing scenes. I imagined that we were doing together all those things that make for a great love: we go to the movies, we eat suppers, we play chess, we watch detective programs on television. I staged in my mind our shocking conversations about what we needed to buy for the house, when we would finally decide to remodel the bathroom, and where we would go for vacation. With complete detachment from this world, I began to believe that we would be accepted, that our neighbors, and, in general, all the inhabitants of K., would respect the uniqueness and beauty of our story. Sometimes a drunken blubbering accompanied my amorous cantos, but everything was done behind closed doors, in isolation, as a conspiracy of one. And she? Nothing. To be honest, it isn’t worth talking about her. If it weren’t for the fact that I had fallen in love with her, there wouldn’t be anything to talk about at all. You couldn’t even say that my love had lent her a glow, or something like that. Rather, on the contrary. What hadn’t been extinguished up to then, now went out. The eyes went out. I avoided the gray fire. I was to see how they burn only one more time. Only once. Altogether, two times. For a shocking love, this is not, you must admit, an excessively overwhelming result.

“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, then 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 berry 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.

“A thousand times I imagined that Wiktoria came to me; a thousand times I opened the door for her in my delusions; a thousand times I embraced her in greeting and farewell, and suddenly it turned out that one of those delusions wasn’t a delusion. Which of her phantasmagorical visits took place in reality? Was it the time when she came in a black jacket and a scarf, light blue like the Roman sky? Or the time when it was well below zero, and she came in a balaclava helmet? Or the time when she stood quite a while in the doorway and smiled mysteriously? Or the time when she ran in, literally burst into the entryway, and, with the exclamation — I’m about to pee my pants! — fell like a bomb into the bathroom, and immediately a bestial sigh of relief resounded from in there? When was she here? The time when she stood over my corpse and cried? The time when my corpse sat in an armchair and spoke to her. I don’t know. Everybody but me in K. knew — not me. Everybody knew all the details — not me. You understand that the consequences of such a stormy finale — with my participation, but without the participation of my consciousness — was my retirement. Moving out of K. was beyond my means. I thought about suicide, but those were weak thoughts, deprived of expression. I took up literary work, which had always been on my mind, and for which I now had ideal conditions. I was completely isolated, no one came to see me, no one called. Even the postman, the kiosk keeper, or the saleswoman in the store communicated with me — I would say — rather perfunctorily. I was in ideal solitude, ergo I had ideal conditions for writing. And I did not waste that gift.

“I could — and maybe even I ought to — end my story here, but like the debutant who is uncertain of definitive meaning, I will add an epilogue. I add it because it happened. The curator’s daughter got into drama school. Supposedly. Supposedly, with gigantic success. Supposedly, at the top of her class. Supposedly, the entrance commission, which was composed of nothing but actorly celebrities, was absolutely delighted. How those pieces of information came to me — I truly don’t know. I don’t recall any informer or any conversation that initiated me into new details. In K., for a long time, absolutely no one wanted to talk with me — and about Wiktoria, to this day no one will exchange a word with me. But I did find out. Apparently, in small towns pieces of news literally fly through the air. Further news appeared. The sparrows on the rooftops twittered triumphantly that the doom of my life was an unusually victorious student, that she was passing all the exams with bravado, that she was receiving exceptionally interesting and lucrative proposals. For the time being, however, she wasn’t accepting any; first she wanted to complete her diploma course, then she would make a choice. It wasn’t certain, however, whether the choice of the first serious role would be in the homeland or abroad.

“Do you understand? The curator and his wife, stupefied and hounded by the necessity of the success of their allegedly remarkable child, were close to bullshitting their neighbors that Hollywood was fighting over this complete loser! They continued without moderation in that fiction. The curator, whenever he set out for a meeting of the parish council — a glow radiated from him. The curator’s wife, whenever she bought cheese in the market — she assumed the pose of the mother not so much of Sharon Stone or Julia Roberts, because those names said little to her, but rather the pose, let’s say, of the mother of Gina Lollobrigida. She summoned up the pathos and the dignity, and her gestures were a bit hit or miss, but still she was called the “Mother of Gina Lollobrigida” in the more astute circles. In addition to this, there appeared the so-called highly eloquent detail. Very eloquent. So eloquent that it was much more than a detail. Namely, Wiktoria completely stopped showing up in K. She didn’t come for holidays, not even for Christmas Eve. No triumphal visits of the future, or already almost fulfilled, star in the hometown. Didn’t she have the strength for such shenanigans? Was she learning her parts, and since she was receiving nothing but Shakesperean roles, there was in fact no time for anything else? Was she slaving away — day in, day out, and nighttime, too? In my opinion — day in, day out, and nighttime, too — if there was anything Shakespearean about it, she was at best giving blow jobs in some Warsaw brothel. One way or another, I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. I decided to check on the course of her Shakesperean career with my own eyes and palpibly.

“After two years — when the storm around me had died down, when they had stopped following my every step, and when The Natural History of the Cieszyn Land had appeared in print, which had repaired my reputation a bit — I set off for Warsaw. In conspiratorial secrecy, it goes without saying, and skillfully laying a false trail. I confided in the kiosk keeper — who had become, with time, a bit quicker to chat with his customer — that I was heading to Krakow for a few days in order to do some digging in the archives of the Jagiellonian Library. In the course of a couple hours, or perhaps in the course of one hour, the entire city knew where I was going and why. The matters of the world are simple. I went to Krakow by PKS bus, from Krakow by the InterCity express train to Warsaw. I intended to stop in the Hotel Europejski, in which I had had the occasion to stay in the old days. Never mind in which years and under what circumstances.

“It was the beginning of April, and pathological heat waves prevailed. You know how, sometimes in early spring, when the snows have barely receded, there occur two, three scorching days. Sudden and deceptive surges of tropical temperatures. Blinding white air, sultry weather, women’s bared necks, a narcotic and basically perverse aura. I walked from Central Station, tired, slightly tipsy, because, of course, I had been drinking the whole way, incessantly, but very prudently. I was delighted with the masses of yellowish air that were surrounding me, and I was absolutely certain that right away, on Aleje Ujazdowskie, on Nowy Świat, at the latest on Krakowskie Przedmieście, I would run into Wiktoria. At first it seemed to me that every fifth woman on the street looked like her; then every second one; then all of them. Do you understand? I saw her everywhere.

“Was I still in love with her? Had I loved her at all? Is the story I am telling definitely a love story? Granted, there can be love without a single touch, for in the end I never touched even her hand, not even accidently. Granted, there can be love which is accompanied by barely two glances, or even a glance and a half; for I saw her grey eyes the second time when she was at my place, when she was lamenting my corpse. So the second glance was not only blurry, it was also partial. There are also loves that are more platonic, and more reserved. But were my delusions love? Was my breakneck love a real love? If love is a delusion, then I loved her. If what goes on in a severed head can be called love, then I loved her. I loved her, and I longed for her. And sick with love and savage longing for her, I went to look for her in Warsaw. That is to say, I went to meet her in Warsaw. I was absolutely certain that I needn’t do a thing — not a gesture, no telephone call, no need to help fate along. That any moment, she herself would come out to meet me with her dance step. She didn’t. This didn’t shake my intution, and it strengthened my certainty of her downfall. In the hotel kiosk, I bought a newspaper with the obvious classifieds, and having settled into my room, freshened up, taken a shower, and opened the bottle planned for the afternoon, I began to look for her. It didn’t take long. After a minute, I came upon the classified ad: “Slender student — privately,” and right away, all the words and all the letters of that offer shined with the green light of hope and began to flicker at me like an emerald neon. I called. Her voice had changed. I, too, pretended to be someone else. I didn’t want to frighten her off. Once she appears, it will be too late for flight. After half an hour, there reverberated a knock at the door. True, in the course of that half hour I had drunk a significant portion of the alcohol allotted for the entire afternoon, and yet, I was sober like never in my life. But even if I had been unconscious, I still would have known the taste of defeat. I still would have known the fiasco of my own intuition. It goes without saying: it wasn’t her. A massively built, gloomy young lady from the suburbs entered the room and asked what I felt like. What I felt like? An immediate return home. Immediate flight, running like hell. Suddenly I saw, with crystal clarity, all my lunacies, all my childishness, suddenly I regained the fullness of my shaken cognitive powers. Suddenly I saw myself, a retired teacher in a brown suit, sitting in a hotel room in the company of a paid tart. Through the open window came the clatter of the hot city. You could hear the whirr of the jackhammers, the high creak of cranes, the murmur of cars driving by, foreigners were chatting in front of the hotel entryway, someone laughed, someone called somebody from far away. I was outside of all this. I was separated from everything by an impenetrable Chinese Wall. Suddenly I understood how horrendous and terrible my life was. Suddenly, in a deep and thoroughly existential sense, I sobered up, and in the flash of a second I understood that, as soon as I was alone, I would do myself in, I would hang myself on my belt or slit my wrists in the hotel bathtub, because I just didn’t have the strength any more. I didn’t have the strength to leave here, to return to the train station, to go to K. by the night train. I didn’t have the strength to do anything. I wouldn’t ever leave here. I would die here.

“Luckily, I’m a drunk, and we all know what a drunk does when he sobers up, especially when he sobers up in tragic fashion. Yes, sir: he starts drinking all over again. So I poured myself a drink then. The massively built, gloomy young lady from the suburbs didn’t refuse the refreshment. We sat, and we chatted about life. We went on living. The nightmares didn’t stay long. They came in through the window, they went out the door. It wasn’t bad. It already wasn’t bad. A pleasant chat with a Warsaw whore as a means for saving one’s life, and perhaps even a means for living. It goes without saying that I didn’t question her whether there wasn’t perhaps among her colleagues a certain failed actress named Wiktoria. I didn’t proceed to such shamelessness, but also — judging by her bored expression — there wasn’t any great innovation in my questions. I asked her why she did what she did for a living, when she had decided to do it, how it was the first time, etc. Supposedly, all her clients posed the same questions. Oh, why should I have been original? I didn’t worry in this case about my lack of originality. All the less did I worry about the fact that it was she who turned out to be the original. I would say, very original. ‘Why do you do this?’ ‘For the money. I need the money. I need quite a lot.’ ‘Do you have some serious expenses? Debts?’ ‘Debts, no, but expenses, yes. I have to put on my daughter’s First Communion in May. You need money for a good First Communion.’ Yes. The story is reaching its end. As you can see, my new acquaintance was not only not Wiktoria — she wasn’t even a Lutheran. In a sentimental reflex, I paid her a couple grosz more, and the next day I returned to K. From that time, which is to say, for the last two years, I haven’t budged from the spot.

“In a fundamental sense, nothing has changed here. The latest local news says that Wiktoria completed her degree with distinction, that she has accepted a role in an unusually popular series, and soon all of K. will be sitting down before their television sets in order to marvel at the pearl that our land has produced. Sometimes I think that if this had been true, I would have the punchline of all punchlines. A punchline that is light, edifying, comic, and surprising. But this is not very likely. Back then, two years ago, on the next morning, I dropped by the acting school on Miodowa Street on my way out of town. Besides, this was not far at all from the Hotel Europejski. For Warsaw — very near by. A person named Wiktoria Złotnica had never studied there, nor had anyone by that name been accepted in the program. We have few, desperately few surprises in life. Time for bed. You especially deserve it. Please forgive the intrusion. In any case, we have spent a pleasant evening, a remarkably pleasant evening. And now — however this might sound — I vanish without a trace.”

I awoke in quite good shape. I felt ill treated — it goes without saying — by the story I had listened to; with pathological clarity, I recalled my guest’s every word and every gesture, but I was not threatened with any interruption in my life’s story. I ate breakfast, packed, and turned in the key at the reception desk. Emil was also already moving about, barely, but still — he was moving. I didn’t ask about anything. I knew perfectly well that if I were to ask about the retired teacher in a brown suit, who knew the history, geography, and substance of every local square inch inside and out, I would discover that he was either an absolute lunatic, or a complete drunk, or both.