My First Suicide

A Chapter about a Figure Sitting Motionless

I

Anka Chow Chow was crazy about girls, and the pipe dream of the majority of men — to find themselves in an intimate situation with two young women who have a thing for each other — was within reach.

It took a few months, however, before I realized what sort of chance was standing before me. I was approaching fifty at a dizzying pace, and for two years I had become less and less successful at hiding an unpleasant fact: namely, that I was becoming obtuse at an equally galloping tempo. Above all, I wasn’t able to hide it from myself under any circumstances.

I didn’t recall the family names of people I knew perfectly well. I would forget the first names of my closest friends. I would ask someone a question, and a minute later I would repeat it, convinced that I was asking it for the first time. Keys, glasses, IDs, watch, money, telephone — everything was constantly vanishing without a trace. Every morning I took fortifying vitamins and pills that are supposed to enhance the working of the brain, but by around noon I was never a hundred percent certain whether I had already taken the redemptive tablets, or not yet. Plans I had made to meet with people slipped my mind. Telephone numbers I had known by heart for years — as if drowned in my bodily fluids — blurred and couldn’t be recreated. I had to check the day’s date a hundred times. A few times, while filling out various forms, I had to really concentrate in order to recall my own address. Forget about family names. A year ago, maybe half a year, for a good quarter of an hour, I wasn’t able to recall the first name of John Paul II.

In such a pitiful state, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t even understand Anka Chow Chow’s hints for a long time — just as perverse as they were subtle — as that they completely escaped my attention. She was always the first to notice the super misses on the street. She subtly sketched breathtaking scenes, she tempted with the skill of the seasoned habitué, and I didn’t have a clue about what was going on. It’s quite another matter that a deception had taken place at the beginning, which excuses me a little, although it adds no finesse to the affair. In any event: at the dawning there was a deception, which lulled me to sleep.

Namely, when, on the first night, I poured a hailstorm of typical male questions upon Anka, she answered them all in the negative. Or, at best, hesitantly. No. Never. Don’t know. Maybe. When? What do you mean when? When was your first time? Don’t know. At the university? No. In the lyceum? No. Grade school? No. Well, when then? Never. You were never with a guy? No. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? No, it doesn’t. If it wasn’t with a guy, then maybe with a girl? No. Listen, I don’t want to be indiscrete, but whom were you with finally? Nobody. Nobody? Nobody. He was a nobody? No. He turned out to be a nobody? He didn’t exist at all. You don’t want to talk about him? No. He was a nobody, because you don’t know who it was? No. No one? Don’t know. You don’t know by what miracle it happened? Don’t know. You suddenly found yourself at a risqué party? Maybe. You got drunk, and you don’t remember anything? I’ve never been drunk in my life. If you weren’t drunk, you have to remember. Don’t have to. Have to. I’m the specialist on memory losses in this story. You have to remember. You can’t remember something that didn’t happen. I’m not sure we are understanding each other: I’m not asking how many times you went with whom, or whether you were engaged; I’m asking who it was you slept with. I didn’t sleep with anyone. Are you sure? Yes.

Anka Chow Chow had never slept with anyone, and not so much that piece of news in itself, as the laborious road of questioning to get there, so exhausted my cognitive facilities that along the way I didn’t notice how she shuddered and swallowed hard when the question came about the girlfriends. She denied it, but she shuddered and swallowed hard.

She was twenty-three years old, and she was a virgin. I didn’t get excessively excited about this. In times of excesses, you come across excesses like this one, too. For instance, these days, among the thoroughly purebred aristocracy, the snobbism of the old-style wedding night is supposedly spreading. True, Anka didn’t look like a purebred aristocrat — or any other sort of melancholic who isn’t in a hurry to go to bed with you — but that was without significance. The reasons why she remained pure to such a ripe old age — whatever they were — were not sensational. Anka’s virginity was not in and of itself sensational. What was sensational was the fact that, in spite of having slept with me, she desperately maintained that she remained intact.

Daybreak was approaching, and she was still intact! A bloody, icy sun was rising over the horizon, and she dug in her heels, insisting that nothing had changed! After a night spent in my arms, she was still intact! And that was after a night without sleep! After an active night! Exceptionally active! Without any miracles, because never, not even in my glory days, did I perform miracles, nor did I promise them, and now — it goes without saying — all the more so; or rather — all the less so. After all, I am growing weaker not only in the brain. Last week, for example, I did five deep knee bends on the balcony, the result of which was that I sustained a painful contusion of the calf muscle. And so, I repeat, without any miracles and without acrobatics. But what was supposed to happen, happened. But I was in you, wasn’t I? Yes, you, were, but not entirely. I’m not completely typical.

In fact, her architecture was atypical, and although her long (five feet, eleven and a half inches) serpentine body performed remarkable contortions, it wasn’t easy to slither into her. But for God’s sake! I did it! And not just once that night! And not just superficially, but profoundly! I have gone dull-witted, perhaps I have hardening of the arteries, the beginnings of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, but, after all, it isn’t the case that half an hour ago I hadn’t had a woman, and now I am dreaming that I slid into her to the full length. If it were the other way around — that I had had her half an hour ago, but now the fact had completely slipped my mind — I would be quicker to agree. But this? Although, on the whole? Who knows? There is no way to be sure. The sex maniac always overestimates his possibilities. And the sex maniac who is aging and showing signs of dementia? Forget about it. I decided to stick to the facts. I decided to recreate the events step by step, and even to record the facts.

II

Half a year ago, I was abandoned by the last in a series of women with whom I had intended to live in a house eternally buried in snow, watch films on HBO in the evenings, drink tea with raspberry juice, etc. I will answer the question whether that was the fledgling singer in a lizard-green dress with a warning: never get involved with fledgling artists. If they begin to develop — art will, perhaps, be a winner, but life (especially yours) will be the loser. And if they don’t begin to develop — well, forget about it.

However this may be, feeling an ever more painful void and despair, I plunged once again into the whirlwind of casual comforts. Each time, the desperation of such doings was greater, and their effect — ever more pathetic. I tried to pick up waitresses in bars, saleswomen in stores, I sought out girls sitting alone in movie theaters. With lonely female swimmers on the brain, I began to go to the pool. In a search of rash manicurists, I became a regular client of beauty salons. Since it is much easier to find a vegetarian on her own than a carnivorous single, I forced myself to eat the grassy fodder, and I started frequenting vegan bars. I responded to even the riskiest of invitations, and I wandered around what were often completely hopeless vernissages, launchings, and premières. I went to shopping centers. It has long been well known that, in the heat of shopping, some young ladies grow weak and bare their souls in risqué fashion. Almost every day, I spent some time at Central Station, and, in the shoals of female travelers ceaselessly swimming through the underground passageways, I sought out those who quite obviously were not in any special hurry. By some miracle, I refrained from the street pick-up, but I considered completely seriously listing a matrimonial classified in the newspaper.

I placed great hopes in Empik bookstores and music shops. For a guy past fifty, who is afflicted with mental deconcentration, these were not bad spots. After all, I was unlikely to penetrate discotheques, cult bars, or enthusiastically engage in clubbing. And it wasn’t a matter of my old gray head, which could arouse panic and embarrassment in such company. I could handle that with ease. I’ve gotten through much greater moments of shame in my life. For me, for motor reasons, there can be no question of any form whatsoever of late-evening, to say nothing of night life. In the evening — I’ll say something shocking now — I’m often sleepy. After watching “The Facts” and the main broadcast of “The Evening News,” my day is basically done. I’ll look the newspaper over once again in the armchair, glance again at the book I’ve been reading for a week, but my head is getting heavy, my eyelids are drooping. In that sense, the bookstores or other newsstands that are open until 10 p.m. are night clubs as far as I am concerned, and at that late hour I didn’t even go there.

I would drop by in the early afternoons and make a solemn inspection of the candidates. Only those who sat in the armchairs and read serious literature came into question, or who listened to classical music with cosmic headphones perched on their heads. Readers of magazines and those listening to rock I eliminated a priori—this is, by the nature of things, a shaky selection pool. I put my bets on connoisseurs of Beethoven and Tolstoy: communing with the classics usually guarantees quite decent perversions. Besides, it is clear that if they sit for a long time — reading carefully or listening at the store — they’ve got time. What is more, since they read and listen at the store, they quite clearly don’t have a penny to their names. They clearly don’t have enough cash to buy a book or a CD and take it home with them. Poverty is never especially required, but in this case it isn’t bad. It is always easier to persuade, and to lure into harlotry, a poor one than a wealthy one. Finally, spying on what they are just then reading or listening to facilitates striking up the conversation remarkably.

But the matter is, I never did strike up a conversation. In practically none of the places mentioned did I once successfully strike up a conversation. I managed a few futile wheezings, but let’s pull the curtains on all that. My agony was intense. I chased after them like a madman, and I set off like a lunatic, but I had no certainty, and the uncertainty weakened the beauty of the madness and the impertinence of the lunacy. Sensing that I didn’t have a chance anyway with the conspicuous super babes, I placed my bets on the middling ones. But before I could approach the middling-gal I had singled out, I was seized by embarrassment over taking the easy way out, and I gave it up. Falling from one extreme into another, I now raised the bar to the maximum, and I desperately swore that from now on I would penetrate nothing but masterpieces. But whenever any miracle of nature appeared, I lacked reflexes and courage. As a result, the one and the other, and basically all of them, slipped by right under my nose. I would return home, and the mistakes I had made, the capitulations and the bad estimations, made my head burst. Suddenly, I became starkly aware what treasures had slipped through my fingers that afternoon. In my imagination, I replayed all the episodes one more time, corrected the mistakes, I was quick and decisive; now everything was a success, everything came true, the specter of the beauty seen an hour before took me by the arm, set her hair and her shoulder strap in order, and the pain was unbearable.

At the same time, I tried to keep a tight rein on myself. I didn’t spend entire days searching for the next woman of my life. In the mornings, I worked as before, although somewhat more nervously. Toward evening, as usual, I would drop by Yellow Dream for a grapefruit juice. Every two or three weeks, I would make the trip to watch Cracovia matches. Somehow I got by. Somehow, with the greatest difficulty, I continued to breathe.

III

I don’t rule out the possibility that I traveled to Cracovia matches in order to liberate myself, even briefly, from apparitions. While I was still on the express train to Krakow, I would check to see what sort of female travel companions were sitting in the adjoining compartments — but just as a matter of habit and reflex, without translation to reality. Whoever travels knows that there are always at least a few intriguing female travelers in every express train between Krakow and Warsaw. But the fact that I left them alone was not a question of choice. By getting on the train at Central Station, in a certain sense I was abandoning myself. I left my Warsaw solitude, which was unbearable and without which I couldn’t live, and, together with that solitude, I left the despair of warding it off.

I hope this is clear. Although it is entirely clear only to those who wake up alone, turn on the radio, take a shower, and are not even in the worst of moods. Who knows? Maybe they will meet somebody today.

It is completely clear only for those who eat their dinner alone in an almost empty café and lose their sense of taste. Even when they daringly order the most expensive frutti di mare, their sense of taste is gone — the whole time, it seems to them that, besides them, no one eats alone. Besides them, no one ever eats alone — the entire city sees this, and everybody is staring at them. How many times can you look at your watch and let the audience know that you have dropped by just in order to have a bite as quickly as possible, since in a moment — thank you very much! — you have an incredible date, perhaps it will last until the crack of dawn. So how are you supposed to perform the bite as quickly as possible, when you feel like sitting a bit, even with a leaden heart; and everyone knows that it was only after leaving that the lead would become all consuming.

It is completely clear only for those who wake up in the night, and their throats go numb because they are alone; they have no one to embrace or to cover up, they have no one to bring a glass of juice from the kitchen, and in the morning they won’t have anyone with whom to listen to the radio, read the paper, eat breakfast.

It is entirely completely clear to those who, one fine day, actually meet someone, eat dinner with someone, go with someone to the movies, go to bed with someone — perhaps even sleep with someone.

But it is absolutely completely clear to those who wake up in the middle of the night and are terrified by someone sleeping next to them, and by the thought that they won’t be on their own for a few hours more, and then the whole morning, and it is awful, awful. And they count the seconds and minutes of the never ending nightmare, and somehow — with the greatest difficulty — they survive it; and then they are granted a beautiful, solitary day. They take a deep breath and suddenly feel how an overwhelming joy gives depth to their breathing. From the empty house, they gaze through the window at the city’s rooftops rising before them. The long afternoon has the taste of overripe cherries and the scent of a stuffy garden. In the evening, the telephone rings persistently; with a strange smile they do not lift the receiver.

IV

I was so accustomed to solitude, I made of solitude such an endlessly thick basis for life, that the quotidian circumstances in which people feel lonely — a journey, a train, a night in a hotel — these were, for me, crowded meetings and mass entertainments. Obviously, I preferred that no one come into my compartment (first class, smoking, by the door), but once someone did come in — be my guest, we can even exchange a few words. But on the whole, no one did come in — I have an inhospitable facial expression. I was traveling to a Cracovia match, and I felt as if someone had taken a leaden overcoat from my shoulders. I had before me a day, or even two, during which I would desire nothing other than that my team win. I wouldn’t be chasing after anyone. I wouldn’t be experiencing future fiascos, I wouldn’t spend the evenings making inquiries into what mistakes I had made and what God-sent opportunities I had wasted. Even if I should wake up bright and early in my hotel room, these wouldn’t be any sort of black hours. I would put on a bathrobe, order a pot of strong coffee and a dozen or so pieces of letter paper from room service, and I would write down what I dreamed.

I made the trips to Cracovia matches as if going on holidays or vacations. My constantly overheated nerves would calm. I would sit in the stadium of my childhood. Over the Rudawa flowed the same clouds. Behind my back was the Gomułka-era apartment block from which I had once wanted to leap. Before me, the Commons, overgrown with Asiatic grasses — everything was still like my memories, and everything had already changed, as after death. Orchestras played the most beautiful marches in the world, torches made of newspapers burned, there were no darknesses over the stadium, the singing of the fans rose on high. For ninety minutes, plus the halftime, I had the feeling of complete harmony — there was no despair, no longings, the hunger for touch did not consume me, I didn’t think about women, there weren’t any women.

As you can easily surmise, I caught sight of Anka Chow Chow for the first time in my life at a Cracovia match. True, she claims that this was not the first but the second time — that, however, is an ambiguous claim.

She sat a few rows lower, and throughout the entire match (Cracovia-Górnik Łęczna) her unparalleled head didn’t even budge. During the halftime, I went down and stood right beside her. She sat motionless. I attempted, purely rhetorically, to make eye contact. The warrior’s repose is one thing, but an unparalleled head is quite another. Besides this, the situation itself, the image itself — a babe at a match (to speak precisely: such an unparalleled babe at such a miserable match) — was a complete innovation. I didn’t tumble immediately into the abyss, I didn’t fall into the routine ruts, I didn’t jump into my old skin. The stadium didn’t suddenly become the next place for the hunt. My peace was not disturbed, but my curiosity was mightily aroused. Her perfectly indifferent sight was firmly fixed on the middle of the field. I returned to my place.

I know what you are thinking. It seems to you that, since I had come upon a young miss at a soccer match, I ought immediately to have surmised that something wasn’t quite right with her. The jigsaw puzzle is constructed from the very beginning as a logical whole, except that I didn’t see it. Or I pretend not to see it. But after all, it is obvious: a young miss, a lone young miss to boot, goes to a match — something isn’t right. I don’t know. I don’t know whether something isn’t right with a young miss who goes to a match by herself. I haven’t the faintest clue. But I do know that with Anka everything was right! Absolutely entirely right! As right as can be. She wasn’t, not in the least, some sort of tomboy or possessed of a manly nature that had been imprisoned in a woman’s body. More than that. Among the women known to me, she was in the absolute top tier of femininity. She was feminine in the deepest and thoroughly Heraclitean sense. In addition to which, she was terribly hot for girls, she liked girls, she liked chatting with girls, she was curious about girls, and she had nothing against far reaching adventures with girls. If you think that there is some sort of contradiction here — that’s your business. I don’t know the secret of her soul and body, and, to tell the truth, I never even tried to find out. I am writing down only what I experienced and what I saw. I experienced a lot, I saw “as if.”

Nothing in her came from the masculine element, from masculine disguise, from a masculine interference. And even if it did — what of it? What does this explain? What sort of relief does such psychology bring? What sort of initiation and what sort of knowledge? There was — let’s assume — some sort of excessive masculine element in Anka. So what is this supposed to prove? What is supposed to follow from this? Yet another proof of the Lord God’s absent-mindedness, in that, when He was creating Anka, He measured out the proportions imprecisely? Yet another confirmation of nature’s blindness? And so what of the fact that God is imprecise, and nature blind? May the Lord God protect us against our own precision. And may He never bestow nature with too sharp a vision.

After the match, I returned to my hotel, took a hot shower, and slept like a log. I awoke at six. I ordered coffee and paper. Fog was hovering over the city; from down below you could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves. I wrote a few sentences about Janek Nikandy, but I still had the sense of the complete elusiveness of his life. Suddenly and feverishly I felt like returning to Warsaw. A sudden fear and a sudden longing. The fear that something would happen, that someone would imprison me here, and I would never return to Sienna Street. And a horrendous longing for my 430 square feet, which are like the deck of a lifeboat. All my life I had been swimming in deep water and in the darknesses, and finally, toward the end, I felt the hardwood floor under my feet, and a good light falls from behind the armchair. A sudden longing for Warsaw, as if I’d spent I don’t know how many years in God knows what sort of emigrations. Supposedly the greatest nightmare of emigrants is the dream that they are back in the home country and can’t leave. My greatest nightmare? Toward morning, J.P. appears and says I will never return home. As in life, he trembles from hatred. I curse him as in life. I curse his eternal torments. O God, cause it that he not suffer for all eternity; cause him to disappear once and for all.

My longing took on no desperate and caricatured incarnation. I went down to breakfast calmly, I ate — as is always the case in a hotel — significantly more than normal. I collected my few pieces of gear, and I set off for the train station on foot. Along the way, on Pijarska Street, I got a stock of newspapers for the road. The express trains from Krakow to Warsaw depart on the hour. I easily made it in time for the nine o’clock train.

In first class, the compartment for smokers was completely empty. I ensconced myself skillfully; I picturesquely strewed newspapers, bag, and jacket on the seats. No one could be in doubt that all those objects belonged to numerous travelers, who had just that moment stepped out for a second; every last one of them — it goes without saying — a smoker. In order to confirm this, I smoked for six, closed the door to the corridor, and drew the curtains. Musty train car air turned, in the blink of an eye, into molten stone. There was a minute until departure, I was already in a state of homeostasis, in other words equilibrium, when the door opened, the curtains parted, and into the compartment stepped — you guessed correctly — Anka Chow Chow.

My heart soared on high, my soul — so be it — sang out, but my defensive habits, plus my hardened arteries, did their bit. “This is a compartment for smokers,” I snarled ferociously. “For… for…” I found myself tongue-tied. The more difficult word—compartment—I remembered; the banal one—smoking—completely slipped my mind, but I immediately remembered and snarled out the entire phrase, although at the end in a voice incomparably weaker than at the beginning. To tell the truth, at the beginning my voice was routinely hostile, but at the end — having overcome my habits and realized who the miraculous interloper was — it was inordinately ingratiating.

Here is compartment for smoking. As God is my witness, I couldn’t help myself. Linguistic degradation consists not only in the fact that, with age, one’s vocabulary shrinks. This isn’t all that painful; in the end you can always find some synonym or periphrastic formula. What is painful, truly painful, is the persistence in one’s head of a constant store of phrases, which — whether you want it or not, whether they fit the context or not — one pronounces automatically in a certain moment and with a dull satisfaction.

“I know that this compartment is for smokers,” her voice was like shivering steel, “I’m looking for a compartment for smokers.”

“During the match you didn’t smoke. At least I didn’t notice that you did.”

“I didn’t smoke during the match,” she said very slowly. “During the match I didn’t smoke,” she repeated even more slowly and examined me carefully; or you would rather have to say that she struck me with a short, forceful gaze. “I didn’t smoke at the match because I don’t smoke any more. For a year — however this might sound — I haven’t had a cigarette in my mouth.”

Before I managed to express my eager and highest amazement, she pointed out a mighty impressive bag to me with her glance. With my last bits of strength and with the greatest difficulty, refraining from any commentaries concerning what must have made it weigh two tons, I placed the ghastly duffel on the rack.

“What were we talking about?” I was panting like a dog.

“We? I don’t believe we were talking. For the moment, you were attempting not to let me into the compartment.”

“Oh yes, of course,” I shouted almost triumphantly. In any case, the life of the dementia sufferer is not the worst; true, it is full of black collapses, but once a person recalls something, it’s like an orgasm. “Oh yes, of course…”

“I prefer the smell of cigarette smoke to the natural stench,” she explained calmly. “Of the two evils, I prefer smoke. Don’t feel hurt, but for the time being your only virtue is that you smoke Gauloises.”

Jesus Christ, I quietly heaved a sigh, it’s a good thing that this rabid she-cat doesn’t have a tail. She would have destroyed the compartment with it.

V

Compared to Anka, I was lacking any sorts of lust whatsoever, a young virgin, innocent of the facts of life. My obsession with broads, compared to her obsession with broads, was nil. My debauchery, compared with her debauchery, was despicable. My thing for girls, compared with her thing for girls, wasn’t a thing at all. My staring at women, compared with her staring at women, was clumsy, vulgar, and boorish.

I am not engaging in any sort of masochism, I’m not bowing and scraping before feminists, I’m not pouring the ashes of cremated instincts upon my male head. Granted, I can say that my staring at broads is bestial, but I can also say that it is metaphysical. I can repeat after Miłosz: “It’s not that I desire these creatures precisely; I desire everything, and they are like a sign of ecstatic union.” But I can also say: I stare at the them the way a dealer in live goods appraises the strongest female slaves. I stare all-embracingly.

Frankly speaking, I often leave the house only for that purpose. And if not only for that purpose, then also for that purpose. The constant thought that, on my way to work, shopping, the café, a meeting, or wherever, I’d have a little look around helps me live. That’s how it always was. If not my whole life, then quite certainly well before the definitive departure of subsequent girlfriends.

If it weren’t for the women I encounter on the street, I’d limit leaving the house to the absolute minimum. There are certain things I wouldn’t do at all. Most certainly, I would drop by Yellow Dream for my afternoon grapefruit juice less frequently, and perhaps not at all. I would buy myself a juice maker, and it would come out cheaper. Nor would I take any walks around Warsaw. I’ve come to like this spectral city, but if I were supposed to take walks around it without encountering any girls — no thanks! I wouldn’t spend time at Central Station, I wouldn’t drop by department stores, I would even go less frequently to my dry cleaner on Hoża Street, where by some divine coincidence the best pieces of Warsaw ass have their super rags cleaned.

But there they are, and I circle among them. I circle, and I stare, sharply and importunately. Not that I have any sort of strategy for importunate staring. It is simply stronger, a thousand times stronger than me. I am incapable of not staring at décolletage. I stare ravenously, I salivate like a snot-nosed kid, my snout gapes like that of a village idiot, I stand there like the ninny at a wedding, I begin to sweat and to shake like a serial murderer. Whenever some super babe passes me by, there is no force on earth that can keep me from turning around to look. Quite often I don’t just turn around to look, quite often — in order to lend stability to my backward gaze — I stop, and quite often the embarrassing thought of running after her does not seem embarrassing to me in the least. Whenever I see before me some noteworthy back, I lose consciousness.

I’m walking down the street, let’s say it’s Świętokrzyska, and my head is darting here and there like the president’s bodyguard. I check out every passing woman, I am prepared for an assault from all sides, and I am ready to attack on all sides. I am unable to control this, even when I am with a woman.

When I was with the singer in the lizard-green dress, I moderated my staring, I tried not to stare, but often I couldn’t manage it. I had more success in the company of Anka Chow Chow. I was scared to death of her, and because of that fear I didn’t even have to pretend that I wasn’t staring. I genuinely didn’t stare. I didn’t even cast any furtive glances. Until the moment when I realized that it was she who was staring for all she was worth. This didn’t happen quickly, because she was a virtuoso. She took note of every detail of the make-up of every passing miss, but it looked like she hadn’t even noticed that anyone had passed by. Even a normal, young, quick-witted fellow wouldn’t have caught on right away, to say nothing of me. Besides, Anka’s unyielding, still unyielding virginity was enough of a complication for me not to think about other complications.

“What do you like most in women?” she asked one day. “In what sense?” “In the sense of a part of the body. What turns you on the most? The bust? The rear? Legs?” “I don’t know. It depends when,” I answered. “It depends when. Depends who.” “That’s no answer.” “It is impossible to parcel a woman out in body parts,” I said loftily. “But of course it’s possible. I begin with the back, and I advise you to do the same. The back is always interesting. The back is horribly important. A woman’s back is an exceptional region.” “Yes, yes,” I said, “an exceptional region.” I didn’t remember anything. The back of Emma Lunatyczka, covered with icy sweat, like frost, and a complete void. I didn’t focus on backs. I was an ordinary guy. Even a crazed sex maniac is, at his base — if I may so put it — an ordinary guy. And an ordinary guy checks, first of all, to see whether everything is in order. Whether or not, for instance, some sort of troublesome wart or a risky birthmark overgrown with a hard bristle sticks out. If it didn’t stick out, things are OK. A back is a back. Just as long as there weren’t any disturbances, especially of a textural sort, then things are OK. The back is nothing over which to go into transports of delight. Anka Chow Chow was higher by the length of that delight. She sang a hymn of praise and recited a great ode to the back. She told stories about the backs of Magda, Gocha, Bacha, Gracha, Ala, Ola, Viola, Jola, etc., etc. She told stories of the backs of the sleeping and the backs of the waking. About the backs of female masons, prisoners, and tennis players. About cold backs, warm backs, tired backs. About backs submerged in dusk. About the backs of Russian women, Irish women, and Bolivian women. Why precisely this combination — I don’t know. Perhaps these were the acquaintances she happened to have, or perhaps it was a question of oceanic freckledness, Latin oliveness, and — for all I know — Siberian taste? Rocky backs, sandy backs, and backs as fluid as rivers. She devoted separate and — I’ll say in all honesty — interminably boring strophes to a certain unparalleled back she had seen last summer on the beach in Kołobrzeg and which — she must have repeated a hundred times — she would never forget. “I could write a book about the female back,” she said finally, and that probably wasn’t an empty declaration. “The female back,” she argued with passion, “is a neglected artistic field. Poets and novelists have rarely extolled the back, or not at all. In the Song of Songs—not a word about the Beloved’s back. It is similar in innumerable romances and love poetry. It is much better with painting. Perhaps, in fact, you have to be a painter in order to feel and understand what an exceptional surface there is between the neck and the buttocks. Besides, just go and try to paint a back. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have any talent, those who do can’t do it either. The bust, profile, shoulder, even the hand—this they more or less manage. But the back? Not even the most talented among them can capture the back. The back is the domain of the masters. Titian’s backs. Rubens’s backs. Forget about Rubens’s busts. Take a good look at Rubens’s backs. Examine how Rubens paints backs, and you will understand the meaning of sensuality. The first sensuality always concerns the back. Everybody blathers on in circles about the first kiss, but after all, it is always the case that, when you kiss her for the first time, your hand embraces her back. And without that embrace, without that hand on the back, there is no kiss. Just try to imagine the famous first kiss with your hands hanging loosely at the side of the body. Without touching the back there is no kiss, without touching the back there is no mutual inclination, without touching the back there is no sex, without touching the back there is no love.”

Her fetishism confirmed an eloquent detail, which — it goes without saying — I noticed late. In general, it is good that I noticed it at all. The material for observation was abundant and near. She often brought girls along. To me. To my apartment. Like a complete sucker, I offered them permanent hospitality. Come on by, whenever you like, and with whom you like, the second room is free. Anka Chow Chow lived with her parents. This didn’t bother her at all. Orgiastic inclinations are one thing, living with one’s parents quite another. I understood this like Mozart understood music. Chasing after babes is one thing, waking up alone is quite another. My offer concerned the first part of that conjunction. Breakfast for three figured minimally in my considerations. But I imagined the role of host with juvenile generosity. Perhaps I didn’t want to be the master of ceremonies, it wasn’t quite that kitschy, but all the same I counted — no point in trying to hide it — I counted on the idea of being admitted one of these times.

She brought along girls who were wise and stupid, short and tall, with long hair and closely shorn, clothed indifferently and dressed to kill, fat and skinny, pretty and ugly, and when, finally, I began to suspect her of complete chaos in her tastes, I discovered the key. When, the next morning, I stumbled over the next backpack of the next girlfriend lying in the hallway, the puzzle arranged itself in a logical whole. Anka had a weakness for girls with backpacks. After the discovery of this shocking truth, I knew in advance the course of the subsequent evenings. If the girl who was accompanying Anka had a handbag, it ended with supper, and often only with tea. If the new conquest had a haversack or a shoulder bag, they would sit and chat for a long time, but always, even if it was in the middle of the night, the other one would go home. It was exclusively girls with backpacks who spent the night. On these occasions, supper would be intense, but short, they would quickly go to the other room, and the light was quickly turned off in there. Once, I couldn’t stand it, I pretended that, half asleep, after a drink and in the dark, I had lost my way, and although I didn’t see anything, to this day it seems to me that, in the white bank of tangled bedclothes, I saw Anka’s hands on the duskiest and smoothest back in the world. (My delusions had not lost their panache.) I apologized, withdrew, and, pretending that I was reading a book, sat in the highest tension. It was just getting light when I finally heard steps. First Anka went to the bathroom, then looked in on me. “Why are you so upset?” she asked. “I hope you aren’t jealous about a girl. Until you can remember where you saw me for the first time, nothing doing. To make it easier for you, I will add that it was not at the match. And if you remember, who knows — maybe?” She looked me in the eye, and it was clear that she knew my most shameful thoughts. She claimed that she was teasing me, but she inflicted torments upon me.

To force me to recall anything whatsoever — that was yanking my chain enough. To force me to recall something that I couldn’t for the life of me recall — that was flagrant yanking. Just how much time had I spent in determining who looked like Tolstoy’s son-in-law in a newspaper picture? And I was able to do that only because the matter concerned my childhood. Anka Chow Chow was most definitely not a character from my childhood. Of that I was one hundred percent certain.

Once, in my youth, a girl on a Cross Section cover enraptured me. There was something extraordinary in her facial features, in the arrangement of her shoulders (back?), in any case, I kept that issue for a long time, a very long time, I think it was still wandering about my papers until recently. Quite a few years later, I made the acquaintance of a fattish, but appetizing, retired model in her thirties. Among the yellowed photos from her glory days, which she eagerly showed me, was also that cover from Cross Section. The thought that the fattish retiree once had had an incarnation so intensely remembered by me gave unusual fuel to my fading desires. Now I instinctively repeated that path; I attempted to find among old photographs, images, street scenes, the one on which there appeared some sort of excavational image of Anka. Nothing of the sort came to the surface. I badgered her to give me at least some sort of trail, the trace of a trail. For a long time she dug in her heels, saying that she wouldn’t.

Finally, seeing the total hopelessness of my dementia, she sighed and said: “OK, you could simply have seen me for the first time in Yellow Dream, since I, too, was a regular. The secret of our first meeting is not all that shocking. We simply saw each other in a café. As a consolation for that poverty, I’ll tell you a certain story, or rather a scene, at which — in my opinion — you were present two or three years ago. That’s right: you, too, were there indeed, drank the wine and the mead, but you didn’t see a thing. Maybe you were staring in another direction, or maybe you were having a collapse. There isn’t any sort of great plot to it, but hear me out, write it down, and print it; maybe the girl I will tell you about will read it, recognize the details, and report to us. I have been looking for her, and this story is like a letter in a bottle. I hope such a metaphor doesn’t irritate you.”

VI

And so, one day, let’s say it was on Friday, 2 September, in the year 2…, a few minutes before 5 in the afternoon, Anka Chow Chow dropped by Yellow Dream, and, as she did every day, she ordered a double espresso. Her usual place by the window and at the same time right by the door — looking at it from within, on the righthand side — was occupied by a colorless and badly dressed girl feverishly tapping out SMSes.

“That spoiled my mood a bit, but only a bit. For the time being, it wasn’t so bad that I would engage in a sclerotic battle for territory in a practically empty café. ‘I beg your pardon most earnestly, but I always sit here. Would you care to… etc.’”

Nothing of the sort. She calmly sat down at that same panoramic window, except that she was four chairs to the right. Right in front of her, she had the little café garden, further, a view of Marszałkowska Street. She was in the very heart of Warsaw, and that still made an impression on her. Not that she was constantly staring at the Palace of Culture; for something like two years now, with the naturalness of the locals, she had ceased to notice that building, but she felt not bad—even very not bad — in its shadow.

She screened — if one may so put it — the house part and the garden part, and she didn’t note anything worth noting. True, in the corner sat a rather ripe and rather spacious busty one with a daring décolletage in a brick-red dress, but her ripeness, spaciousness, bustiness, and even brick-redness could be located just as well on the plus side as the minus. Overall balance: zero. I do not need to add that in describing the brick-red busty one, Anka glanced at me unusually significantly. The phrase brick-red busty one made an impression on me, and I attempted to disinter her incarnation from countless layers of brain dust. Supposedly, I had stared at her so ravenously that I didn’t see anything of the world beyond her. But neither her, nor the world beyond her, could I remember for all the tea in China.

The colorless girl finished tapping out SMSes, drank up what was left to drink, and left. Anka immediately moved and occupied her favorite position.

As a regular, I knew perfectly well the virtues of that spot. You sat on the invigorating border between the scorching day and the cold of the air conditioning; you saw everything, and simultaneously you remained in partial hiding. At any moment, you could set off on the chase for someone, and, at any moment, you could avoid unwanted company. At any moment, you could leave, or order something more, or — if a dire situation arose — you could dive into the depths and disappear in the toilet.

Anka took out a lighter and cigarettes. Before she lit up, that one wasn’t yet there, but by the time she had lit up, she was already there. She must have arrived in the moment of concentration on the flame. In general, this didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in what fragment of a second and from what direction she arrived, whether she arrived from the left or from the right, whether from the Roundabout or from Wspólna Street. Nothing mattered. You could see with the naked eye that she was out of the question. And it is a matter of thorough indifference from what direction women who are out of the question arrive.

She was young, tall, and ravishing. But she was out of the question not because she was too young, too tall, and too ravishing. On that particular day, Anka had boundless enthusiasm and would have lunged at even that sort of beauty. But it was clear that this one had not dropped by for a solitary coffee. She had a date with someone.

“She looked around, searching for the lucky guy, whom I had already managed to hate with all my heart. She looked around, but he — most clearly — was not there yet. The ninny hadn’t gotten there yet. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let’s not be reckless. He hasn’t gotten there? Would he be late? Something didn’t add up here.” Anka Chow Chow pondered the situation, which was, on the one hand, seemingly entirely normal, on the other hand, entirely impossible. She pondered deeply and with a sort of quasi relief. She realized that her hatred was most likely premature.

It was more or less four after five, in other words the super babe had had a date for five o’clock, and since she came almost on time and was the first to get there, she had a date, almost a hundred percent for certain, with a female colleague, or some other cousin. If it had been a guy, no matter who he was — a Russian millionaire, a Hollywood star, a Milanese fashion designer — no matter who he was, he would have been waiting for her for at least a quarter hour. She was the sort of woman for whom you don’t arrive late, or even merely on time. She was the sort of woman for whom you come well ahead of time, in order to have the illusion that the dates last longer.

She spotted a free table in the corner of the garden, at a maximal distance from Anka, but with ideal visibility.

“This offered me favorable conditions for observation. From the very beginning, I rejected all attempts at establishing contact with her. I drank coffee and contemplated her without painful emotion. The ritual thoughts that I would never have her, that I would never find out what her name is, and that, having seen her once in my life in Yellow Dream, I would most certainly never see her again, didn’t trouble me in the least. She was a tall, slender, delicate, long-haired blonde. Tall, slender, and delicate blondes were, if I’m not mistaken, the absolute hit of your youth.”

VII

So they were. She didn’t have to look at me questioningly. I knew perfectly well what she was talking about. Of course, they were a hit. They were the ideal. They were the ideal not only of my youth, they were the ideal in general. Until quite recently, tall, slender, and delicate blondes constituted the unrivaled model of beauty. They became Miss Europe and Miss World. They were chosen as the queens of lyceum balls and the Miss Congenialitys of university villages. In stifling visions, they descended to us from the pages of western journals, we saw them on the screens of movie theaters, we read about them in novels, sometimes they passed us by on the street. They took our breath away, but we didn’t suffer; we were reconciled to our fate. We rejoiced that they had been created; but we knew that they were not created for us, and this caused us no pain. But they — seemingly still worshipped and adored — began to show up less and less frequently. There were fewer and fewer of them. They began to disappear, imperceptibly but inexorably. The extinction approached as quietly as a whisper. In the following years and decades, tall, slender, delicate, and long-haired blondes began to die out as a species. I don’t say that in the following years and decades there occurred a holocaust of tall blondes, but something like an extermination took place in all certainty. And this wasn’t a symbolic or metaphoric extermination. No. The cataclysm began suddenly. Suddenly, there arose the brutal storm of various retro- and afro-brunettes, multicolored Iroquois women, wet Italian women, and punkers shaven as if for delousing. Dusky pipsqueaks in combat boots, alleged Mullatoes, and hothouse Latinas bred in solariums suddenly began to sting venomously. It never occurred to poor Witkacy, who prophesied extermination through the attack of Asiatic hordes, that hordes of female Vietnamese vendors, Ukrainian cleaning women, and Russian whores would bring this extermination on their rickety busts. In addition, a propaganda campaign, prepared by who knows whom, was launched to defile and slander blondes.

Thousands of jokes about blondes perfectly familiar to you, pasquinades about blondes, pamphlets against blondes got under the skin of the masses, who were always inclined to mount pogroms. The ideal of the blonde beauty has reached the pavement. The great extermination has come for the blondes.

How were the subtle and delicate, fearful and defenseless poor things supposed to defend themselves? What were they supposed to do? They did what all hounded tribes do in the face of extermination. They changed their confession and hair color, cut their hair short and colored it dark. They denied it over and over, and not for all the treasures in the world would they acknowledge their blonde roots. Those who had fallen the lowest, and those who were dyed the most, were first in line to attack their blonde former sisters. The most noble of them emigrated or went into the underground. And the tall, slender, delicate, and long-haired blondes definitively — so it would seem — disappeared from the face of the earth. Once in a while, we would see their shadows in archival films or on old photographs, but such traces only increased their absence.

I wanted to say that it is time to return tall, delicate, and long-haired blondes to grace; I wanted to deliver a daring and convincing defense of blondes; after the defense, I wanted to go on to a soaring encomium of blondes, but I gave it up. Anka’s hair, thick as graphite, gleamed like Siberian anthracite.

VIII

The girl was wearing a dirty-russet blouse with shoulder straps and jeans. What sort of shoes she had on, Anka — strange to say — didn’t know. In general, she didn’t remember other details except for a wide pants belt with classical patterns. Was she aware that, sooner or later, the greater part of the image would irrevocably slip from her mind, and so — just like me in such situations — she concentrated on fundamental things? One way or another, God gave her a sign. The blonde’s back was like a soaring flame. She had sat down, however, facing Anka. God had given her a sign, but He didn’t allow her to contemplate it.

“What was I supposed to do? Get offended? Avert my glance? My cult of women’s backs had not reached the point of such deviations, nor had I completely lost my marbles. Quite the contrary. What is more, the splendor of her collar bones rivaled the splendor of her shoulder blades. A rare case of complete harmony. I stared greedily. Not only at the collar bones. There is no point in hiding it: I was desperately and shamelessly fixed on the movements of her breasts under the dirty-russet blouse.

“Incidentally, the dirty-russet blouse was of an exclusive label, which one, I don’t precisely know, but top of the line. That was quite certainly a piece of clothing purchased that summer in Rome or Barcelona.” Anka emphasized this circumstance for my sake.

“For your generation, dirty-russet will be, until the end of your days, the color of People’s Poland’s train linemen. Granted, her blouse was dirty-russet, but this doesn’t mean that it was a rag from a second-hand store or an air-dropped tatter from the times of Martial Law. But returning to her breasts, you have to say in all simplicity: they were fantastic. I don’t know whether you are aware of this, but there exist certain types of fantastic busts that are not accepted by their owners, but even on account of that, on account of their — so to say — self-questioning, are all the more fantastic.”

I wasn’t aware of this. Anka, on the other hand, immediately knew perfectly well that the blonde beauty was not satisfied with her bust. It goes without saying that then, in Yellow Dream, that skepticism wasn’t visible. It was quite easy to imagine, however, and even to behold clairvoyantly, how she stands day after day in front of the mirror and is in a bad mood, or, in the best case, has hefty doubts, because she thinks obsessively that they are too small, too delicate, too soft, too spindly, not spherical enough, etc. And what is more, those manias were justified in some sense. She did not — according to objective measurements — have an ideal figure. The geometrical profile of her body was not the full sinusoid in the desired places. Her bust was, in fact, too small, too delicate, too fidgety, and too spindly.

“Not that I would, you know, carp, but the rear that flashed at me a moment ago — regardless of its fieriness — is too flat. And yet, the overall sum: dazzling, captivating, and — as in some dreams — suffocating. The ideal of beauty is based on geometry, but the ideal of femininity is based on changeability. Forgive the erudite metaphors, but the ideal of femininity in its essence is not Euclidian — it is Heraclitean.”

The blonde belle approached the counter, ordered tea (let’s not get all excited about the informality of this choice), returned to the table, glanced at her watch. Anka wasn’t especially curious about her tardy female colleague, nor was there even a hint of the rookie’s speculations whether she, too, would be dazzling. That was even out of the question from the point of view of probability. There are few lasting and verifiable principles in the world, but the principle that, in a pair of girlfriends, one is the cow always comes true! Always! This is incontrovertible. “And so, I was curious, at the most, about the shape of the shadow that would approach her splendor any moment now.”

And suddenly, there you have it! A complete change of situation! A sudden and unforeseen turn in a plot that had been foreseen to the last iota. Not one, but two shadows glide to her light! And those are not shadows in miniskirts or summer dresses! Those aren’t shadows at all! Two flesh-and-blood guys approach her, greet her, make certain that they have come to the right person, take a seat, and immediately begin the conversation. Two guys of flesh and blood, and especially one of them. Although it is not easy to determine definitively which one of them was of flesh and blood, and which one less so. They seemed to be a couple: director and vice-director. Supervisor and the supervisor’s deputy. Manager and the manager’s assistant. Boss and his — for want of anything better — bodyguard. The boss, at first glance, gave the impression of being the guy of flesh and blood, everything in him was strong and distinctive: the solarium skin, the black shiny hair, the dark sports jacket, the gray slacks, the shirt with white and blue stripes, the appropriate tie, the impressive height, the beefy shoulders — in a word, a classic imitation of the Mediterranean lout. Whereas the other was grayish, slovenly, badly composed; it seemed that he was wearing a suit, but perhaps he didn’t have a suit at all; his hair was somehow combed, or maybe not, maybe he was even bald; it was as if he held a stuffed briefcase tightly under his arm, but maybe that was an illusion. He was there, but perhaps he didn’t exist at all. The first was distinctive in the extreme, the second extremely indistinct. Hence the doubt: which one was of flesh and blood?

The first spoke incessantly; as if persuasively and politely, but you had the feeling that this was the infamous “tone that does not tolerate objection.” She listened, as if attentively and with interest, but you had the feeling that she was in an obedient, or even submissive pose.

The sudden presence of the bizarre — or stereotypical — couple didn’t change Anka’s situation in the least. The blonde remained beyond her reach and beyond her designs. She didn’t even stop to ponder whether she had now become, more or less, attainable. She continued not to invest any hopes in this, but she became all the more attentive an observer. More and more attentive. More and more alert. More and more anxious. For something bizarre and morbid was beginning to happen in a corner of Yellow Dream. Some sort of deviltry was arising there, something viscous was flowing, something reptilian was slithering, an almost visible, yellowish and hideous aura began to engulf the entire trio.

“Do you understand? Have you ever had such situations? Seemingly nothing is happening, and yet an intangible filth is gathering? I’m not saying that it began to look like the boss of a brothel and his chief pimp were establishing conditions with a newly hired girl, but, to tell the truth, little was lacking for it. There was contempt in those guys, they were contemptuous in every gesture and inch of their bodies; even the fact that they didn’t order anything was contemptuous, that they took care of business coldly and dryly, without even a mineral water. And no matter what sort of business this was: whether they were hiring her, or she them, whether she was borrowing money from them or they from her, whether, as a result of this conversation, she was to go to the bottom or they to jail, whether they were offering her a lucrative trip to the Canary Islands, whether she was their last chance, whether they were proposing a role in a TV series to her, whether she was recruiting them for a sect — no matter what the arrangement was: in them, there was contempt; in her, humility. Nothing more occurred. The fake Mediterranean lout finished his speech; she raised her head, asked about something; he answered, perfunctorily and while looking at his watch; she wanted to say something more, but they weren’t listening, they were already getting up, already leaving.”

IX

A helicopter flew over the city, the clock on the Palace of Culture showed a quarter past six. The light of dusk was as it was a thousand years ago, when, after a long trip, I got off the train, and I ran into Janek Nikandy at the station in Wisła. The black towers of the Palace soared into the rust-colored sky. The slender, long-haired blonde in the dirty-russet blouse opened up a copy of Home and Interior and read absorbedly. There wasn’t any sign that the recent conversation had left a mark on her. She drank her tea slowly; all indications were that she would sit there who knows how much longer. I saw her precisely. Anka was right: I had been there. I, too, was there indeed, drank the wine and the mead. Suddenly the curtain disintegrated, and I saw everything: the badly dressed girl tapping out SMSes, the busty woman in the brick-red dress, the blonde in the dirty-russet blouse, the boss and his body guard, the throngs of passersby, the cars driving up Marszałkowska, the masses of scorching air. I saw, and I remembered, point for point, the entire July afternoon, all the intangible events and all the characters. All except for Anka Chow Chow. She wasn’t there. She was right, but she wasn’t there. Ever. I never met her at any match. Of course not. Columns of light over the stadium and suffocating downdrafts of ether on the Commons. The return to the hotel. The pot of coffee and letter paper. The station at dawn. The empty compartment for smokers. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a thing. I haven’t left the house for a long time. I haven’t left my room for who knows how long. For years I haven’t ventured outside of my own skull. No one is here. It will soon be six. All of this is divine punishment for aversion to ambiguity. I tread very ambiguously. Step by step. Cautiously, and on the other side of Marszałkowska. Fluidly, as happens in the most fluid of dreams. As that time when we climbed up the railway embankment, and from the heights you could see everything as if it was on the palm of your hand: the cart crossing the bridge, Pastor Kalinowski leaving the parish house, the biplane over Jarzębata. I look from afar. From on high. The sky is ever darker. The coal-black light of your hair dies away. I am alone. I regain pain.