“Come and have a seat,” said an old woman by the table in the corner. “You must be hungry.”
We sat on wooden chairs that creaked under our weight. Everything felt as if it had been covered in dust, worn out by generations of use. The plates were chipped and glued back together, the motifs on the cups faded. Faint, pearly light came from a small window.
The old woman looked us over shrewdly, curiously. “My husband is out,” she said. “Help yourself.” It dawned on me that she wasn’t so old after all and that she wasn’t the girl’s grandmother, but her mother.
We started to eat. There were cucumbers and radishes, a pot of honey, and a hunk of bread. The daughter came over from the stove and poured the hot milk into our cups.
“So you’re students,” the mother said.
“Yes, ma’am,” you said through a bite of radish, looking more at ease than I felt. “Just finished our studies.”
She nodded, as if she was agreeing to something uncertain. “Married?” she asked, looking at you.
“No, ma’am,” you said, shaking your head, smiling at her. “Not yet. Am still young.”
She laughed in her hoarse voice, revealing a set of missing front teeth. “And you?” she said, turning to me.
I could feel myself blush. “No, ma’am.” I took a sip of milk to hide my discomfort. My lips brushed against the floppy skin that had formed on top, sending a wave of nausea through my belly, and the liquid scalded the inside of my mouth. I tried to keep a straight face and reached for the bread.
She watched us eat with apparent satisfaction. “So you’re traveling. Know where you’re going?”
“Just looking for a quiet spot,” you said. “Can you recommend anywhere, ma’am?”
She looked out the window, where nothing much of the outside could be seen, only a hazy green from the trees and a vague blue of the sky. “There is a place not far from here where we go and pick mushrooms in the autumn. Travelers don’t know about it. It’s pretty.” Her eyes sparkled, and in one moment I saw, really saw, that she had once been young. “I’ll tell you how to get there.”
After breakfast, we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed our things.
“Just walk, about four miles straight through the forest from the Marianki junction,” the woman said, standing by the entrance of the house. “You’ll know when you’ve arrived.”
“Thank you. You’ve been very kind,” I said.
She took my face in her solid waxy hands and kissed me drily on the cheek. “Come and see us on your way back. Have a good trip.”
In a nearby village we found a small truck going in the right direction. The driver was bringing a load of cherries up north, and the only space he had for us was in the back, in the mountains of fruit. We ate beyond hunger. Stuffing our faces, staining our hands, we spat the pits into the passing fields. The sky was infinite and light; it felt as if we were flying through it. Almost every farm we passed had a stork’s nest on the roof, with the elegant creatures atop, resting or flying off to look for food after their long journey from Africa.
We drove without stopping. We passed people working their fields with their carts and horses, men and women and children with large wooden hoes. Wild flowers and high yellow fields met the blue sky, and then the land became flatter and the first cerkwie came into sight, the first Orthodox churches, black and small and mysterious with their bulbous domes. They signaled a different land, the beginning of the wild and unaccountable east, where kings used to hunt for bison and where the plains are infinite. The driver stopped at an almost invisible crossing, stuck his head through his window. “This is it, boys.” We jumped off and found ourselves standing at the mouth of a pine forest.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He nodded and wished us good luck, then drove off, leaving a cloud of dust behind. We looked at each other, hesitating.
“Are we sure about this?” I said, suddenly aware that it was just you and me again, nervous like on the first day I’d met you.
“What else can we do?” you said calmly, smiling. “Let’s go.” You put your hand on my lower back and pushed me with you into the forest, sending a shock of warmth through my body.
There was a narrow path, just like the woman had said. We walked into the sea of pines. Inside it was cooler and darker than in the heat of the sun. Side by side we walked on a bed of dried needles the color of cinnamon. The previous night floated on the surface of my mind like a buoy: the rain on the roof, the weight of your head on my shoulder. I tried to shake it off. You were wearing the same white linen shirt as the day before, dried overnight, cherry-stained, unbuttoned to reveal your collarbones, the dark halos of your nipples guessable beneath the fabric.
As the forest grew denser and thicker, the sky seemed farther away and the sunlight barely reached us. But the small path, made by the feet of those who’d walked before us, was always there. You walked ahead swiftly, and I followed. We didn’t speak, and you never turned around to check whether I had fallen behind, as if there were a thread attached between us.
“They were nice, weren’t they?” I said at one point to fill the silence, to cover my thoughts.
You nodded, without turning round. “Yes. They were.”
You seemed as deep in thought as I was. We walked on, and the trees became less dense; the sun trickled through again. And not long after, in the distance, we could see the forest ending, something shimmering there. We quickened our steps, almost ran then. As we came to the last rows of trees, we saw it: a clearing filled with a large, brilliant lake, lined by high grasses like a secret. We moved closer, my knees weak with discovery. The water’s surface glistened in the afternoon light, a deep, calm blue. There was not a soul around. We walked to the edge and let our bags drop to the ground, looking across the lake, gleaming like a mirror hit by midday sun. The forest was all around us, and we were in its center, protected and soothed by this glittering eye.
“We have arrived,” I whispered.
You nodded.
“She didn’t promise too much, that old woman!” Your cry was sudden, jump-starting you into action. You stripped off your clothes, abandoned them one by one until you were completely free, the white of your ass contrasting with the brown of your back, jumping in with a scream that echoed across the clearing. You reemerged with a triumphant smile.
“You coming?”
First I slipped off my sandals, then my shirt, which I folded carefully and laid on a soft spot on the ground. I took off my shorts, and then, with a flicker of hesitation, my underwear. You had turned away, swum a little way off. I stood there feeling the wind graze my chest, tickle me between my legs. I looked at the water. I couldn’t see through its body, couldn’t assess its contents. But I stepped in. And the water embraced me completely, softly and coolly. I felt myself anew, as if something in me had been switched on after a long time. It was a sensation of lightness and power and total inconsequence. I began to move, and every movement propelled me forward. The sky above was lighter than the water, specked with tiny clouds. I was conscious of the unknown underneath.
“See, you can do it!” you screamed from across the lake, ecstatic.
I was calm.
My body moved in your direction, and you looked at me, suddenly calmed too. With your arms outstretched to the sides, you were like a ballet dancer hovering in flight. Under the surface of the water something warm rattled in my belly. I approached, until I could see the drops of water on your forehead and on the tip of your nose and in the corners of your mouth. We didn’t say a thing. We looked at each other, already beyond words. You were there, and I was there, close, breathing. And I moved into your circle. All the way to your waiting body and your calm, open face and the drops on your lips. Your arms closed around me. Hard. And then we were one single body floating in the lake, weightless, never touching the ground.
That evening, as the sun began to set, we pitched the tent underneath a large pine. It was still warm and the lake had turned
black and cicadas sang calmly and there was no light anywhere but the thin slice of moon. We lay down on our sleeping bags. Wind blew softly against the tent, and the only sound was that of the tree above us swaying along, its needles rustling and whispering to themselves. We lay on our backs, hands folded beneath our heads, our elbows touching lightly. Through the flap in the tent’s roof we saw the sky filled with stars. They were tiny and there didn’t seem to be many, but the closer you looked, the more there were. You could never hold on to all of them. Looking at them made my head spin warmly.
“I’m glad this happened,” I said, enjoying the sound of my voice and its gentle vibration in my body.
“Me too.” You turned your head toward me, your eyes bright. “I knew it would happen since the beginning,” you said, smiling.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. When you looked at me that first day, when we arrived. You’re easy to read.”
I laughed and pushed against you. “Oh yeah?”
You smelled of water and pines. There was softness, and there was hardness. I could sense your tan under my fingertips, and with your strong, solid hands you drew me afresh, creating me, the small of my back, my inner thighs . . . and you. Your back, your chest, your stomach, your thighs, your cock. Hard and impossibly close beneath the softness of your briefs, caressing my palm, obvious, world-shattering, demanding. We moved fervently, struggling. There was so much I could not get enough of, so much I would never be able to grasp or possess, no matter how much I tried. And I tried, we tried. Covering ourselves with each other, merging into one, pulling, following the pull, letting its current take over. Our sighs were shared, refused to release us. The night reminded me of the Easter bonfires I would watch as a child in the park nearby, where the pyramid of wood burned from top to bottom, chasing the ghosts of winter, bringing a thaw, releasing the warmth from the dormant, the resting. The flames would hypnotize me. I’d merge with them, with their dancing, destroying, and bearing. We played this struggle, breathless and elated, heads light and filled and spinning, until exhaustion, until we released ourselves onto each other and fell asleep entangled like weeds.
I don’t know how many days we stayed at the lake, because each one was like a whole world, every moment new and unrepeatable. In a way these felt like the first days of my life, as if I’d been born by that lake and its water and you. As if I’d shed a skin and left my previous life behind.
The lake and the forest became our territory. We fished, making rods from branches and using bits of bread as bait, and we grilled the fish—flat and gray and delicious—over the fire and ate them with our fingers. We walked into the forests behind the lake and found berry bushes and small clearings the size of living rooms, where branches hung over beds of white flowers. We’d lie down and make love, falling asleep afterward. We’d wake in hazy happiness with the sun still above us, and when we’d walk back to the tent, the only thing we’d leave behind was the shape of our bodies in the flattened grass.
The lake cleaned us every morning and evening. It washed off the sweat of summer and of lovemaking, maybe even the fingerprints on our bodies. And every time I swam I experienced the same elation I’d felt the first time I stepped into the lake, devoid of struggle, a feeling of weightlessness I hadn’t thought I could feel. During these days the shame inside me melted like a mint on my tongue, hardness releasing sweetness.
I floated in the water, and you lay by the shore reading Giovanni’s Room. The air was the same temperature as our skin, or a little lower, caressing us. Later we’d lie next to each other and watch the clouds, observe the change of their fantastic shapes: from unrecognizable to familiar, familiar to unrecognizable.
One afternoon, toward the end of our stay, we went to the nearest village, about an hour’s walk away. We found a small shop and bought bread and cucumbers and apples and beer. The sun was descending as we made our way back. It was dark before we reached the forest. You’d forgotten your torch. The path was lit only by moonlight. And as we walked along the fields, the image of my childhood nightmare returned to me, like a challenge from the past—the empty silence of the world, the fields stretched out on all sides, a sense of the monoliths staring back at me. But I didn’t even have to decide whether or not I was scared. I wasn’t. The tombstones—along with the shame—were a mere memory, dissolved like sugar cubes in summer rain.
We walked on through the forest, taking in its furtive sounds, until we reached our clearing and saw the moon on the surface of the lake. We stopped and watched. Then, without a word, we undressed and slipped into the water. We swam, fearless and free and invisible in the brilliant dark.
Chapter 4
Night fell particularly early today, and outside the city glimmers across the other side of the river like a sequined dress of steel. I was hungry when I got home and decided to make a sandwich. The bread is white and already sliced. Over here, all you have to do is chew. I buttered the bread and sprinkled sugar on it. It’s not the same as home, but it did the trick. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Granny’s number. The signal was still busy. I’ve been trying for days. I tried not to worry and wrote her a letter instead, asking how she was. Of course they will open and read it before she does. But I no longer care.
After that I switched on the TV. The news is getting worse: they’re hunting down the opposition, arresting the key figures of Solidarność, dispersing the underground, hunting down trade union leaders. Probably torturing them, said the presenter, her pretty face matter-of-fact. I believe it. I don’t want to, but I cannot help myself. I wonder: Are you involved? That’s the question that follows me around like a shadow. Would you still defend the Party now?
Maybe the worst thing is that I have no one to speak to, no one who could open the window on this stale air of speculation. I know that, eventually, I will need to find someone to trust. At the office they ask me how I am every day, about a dozen times. It took me a while to understand why they were so baffled by my attempts to answer, to understand that my answer isn’t the point. That asking is. So now I say that I’m fine. I even attempt a smile. But I sense that either way my foreignness somehow absolves me from their judgment. To them, it must explain my strangeness completely.
* * *
When I was still a child, Mother and Granny would lock themselves in my mother’s room every evening. I never knew what they were doing in there, and they never allowed me in. Whenever I asked, they’d say that I wasn’t old enough to know.
“And you mustn’t tell anyone we do this,” Mother would say, crouching down to my level and placing her large, hard hands on my shoulders. “You understand? No one. If you do, something bad might happen to us.” Her face was tense, the deep worry lines above her brows making her look spent.
“Are you doing something bad?” I asked, scared.
“No, my darling.” Her voice mellowed. “But even when you don’t do bad things, bad things can happen to you.”
“Why?”
She tried to look soft, but the lines on her forehead didn’t disappear altogether. “This is how it is.”
They wouldn’t say anything more, no matter how much I begged. I would put my ear to the door, but all I could hear was a very low sort of crackling, indistinguishable voices. I couldn’t see anything—the keyhole was filled with the key. Much later they’d emerge from the room talking in urgent, hushed voices, sometimes sad, sometimes almost joyful. And though I was used to their nightly ritual, it still frustrated me to be excluded from its secret.
The day I learned that Beniek and his family had gone, my mother came home and found me in my room, wrapped into myself, crying. She must have known this was serious because I didn’t cry often, and when she asked me what the matter was, tears choked my words. She sat on the bed, and I put my head on her lap, the material of her skirt cool against my cheek, her arms around me. I continued to cry, encouraged by her comfort, letting the tears out until there were none left. She stroked my hair, and when I had calmed down, I
told her I had gone to see Beniek, how that strange woman had opened the door, and what the lady from church had said.
“Why did they leave?” I asked. “Will they come back?”
I could see indecision in her eyes. Before she could speak, Granny appeared in the door, as if she’d been listening all along.
“I think he is old enough now,” she said, looking at my mother gravely. “He needs to know.”
Mother looked from her to me, silent for a moment. “Ludzio, you won’t say anything, will you?”
I shook my head, suddenly jerked out of my sadness. She looked at her watch. “Come on, then.” We went into her room, where Granny closed the door behind us and shut the window and drew the curtains. It was still light outside, and children were playing hopscotch in the street below, hopping and skipping across the pavement.
“First of all, you need to be quiet,” said Granny, pointing at the wall we shared with the neighbors. “And don’t ask any questions until it’s over. Just listen.”
She walked to the dresser and lifted the protective cover off the radio, revealing its compact body, the dark, smooth wood glistening in the light. We placed three chairs around it and sat down. Mother pushed the black button and carefully adjusted the indicator. At first there was nothing but a low crackling. Then there was music, a flute playing a jolly tune. Then the music ended, and I could feel Mother’s and Granny’s bodies tense. A voice began to speak:
“This is Radio Free Europe, broadcasting live from Munich, West Germany. News at 8 o’clock. Monday, the twenty-first of June 1968.”
Swimming in the Dark Page 6