“What’s new with you?” I made myself ask.
“Me?” She continued plucking. “Your friend here got herself a job.”
“What? That’s great.”
She set down her tweezers, took a cigarette from a packet on the desk, lit it, and quickly blew the smoke through her nostrils. The tips of her fingers were blackened from the soot of her cheap Romanian Snagovs. “As a secretary to some asshole in the Ministry of Justice.” She sounded like a judge announcing someone’s prison sentence, matter-of-fact, a little gleeful.
I was taken aback. “What about the placement? Weren’t you going to train with the divorce lawyers?”
“No spaces.” She blew out smoke with her head lowered, staring at the carpet. I could see her eyelashes pointing toward the floor. “Turns out I had no chance of getting anywhere without connections, whatever my grades. Who was I fooling anyway?” She sighed, lifting her head. Her sad eyes grazed mine for an instant, and then she turned her head toward the window. “But maybe it’s better that way, I don’t know. Maybe I would have hated it. I might apply again next year.”
I nodded, tried to seem encouraging. “Yes, you will. This is just temporary.”
She nodded, as if she were trying to believe me.
“So what’s it like?” I asked.
She shrugged, took a deep drag. “I only started last week. Don’t ask me what they actually do in that office. I get the councilor his vodka in the morning and type up a letter or two in the afternoon. Other than that he treats me like a showpiece for his colleagues. He asked me to wear my tight sweater more often. So much for my four years of higher education.”
She took an ashtray from her desk and crushed the half-finished cigarette. “I smoke too much,” she muttered, placing the ashtray on the table, trying to smile at me.
“Come here.” I patted the empty space beside me on the bed. She obeyed. Her head sunk onto my shoulder, and I slung my arm around her. We sat like this for a while, seeing ourselves in the mirror, searching for something in our own reflections. “I’m sorry,” I whispered finally.
“Oh, don’t be. It never turns out the way we think it will. And anyway, I was one of the lucky ones. At least I have permission to stay in the city now that we’ve graduated. Otherwise they would have sent me straight back to Tychy, and God knows what I’d be doing there. Living with my parents.” She straightened and tried to laugh. “I’m just not sure I’ll be able to take it for long.”
“You won’t have to,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah?” There was doubt in her eyes, a need for reassurance. I nodded and took her into my arms. Her body was like a furnace. I almost felt like I was burning myself.
“It swallows up all your thoughts, all your self-respect,” she said, with a note of despair I had rarely heard her use. “I can already see myself becoming one of those bitter office ladies.”
“You won’t become one of those,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and looking her straight in the eyes. “I’ll make sure of it. Not while I’m alive.”
She smiled and released me. “See, you have changed,” she said. “You’ve become an optimist.”
She stood and walked over to the window. Branches of blindingly green leaves rocked in the breeze, slowly, peacefully. She opened the window and stood there for a moment, looking out, breathing in deeply.
“And you? Have you figured out what you will do with yourself, Ludzio?”
“I’ve had some time to think this summer,” I said, hyperaware of my voice. I was looking at my hands, assembling my words. “I think I’ll try for that doctorate after all. You know, the one Professor Mielewicz said I should do.”
She turned around slowly, her face immobile. “Really.”
I shrugged, meeting her eyes for a moment. They were hard and vulnerable at the same time.
“What made you change your mind?”
“I thought about it again. The allowance from my father will run out soon, and I have to do something. This might be better than rotting away in some school or library, no?”
“You once said you’d rather work in a factory than sell out.”
I bit my lip. “Well, that wasn’t true, was it?” I said, trying to smile.
“And what about the topic? What if they make you write about what they want?”
I shrugged again, harder. “I’ll find a way around it. Or not.”
She nodded, turning back to the window, putting her hands on the sill. I got up and joined her there.
Beyond the branches, in the houses across the street, clothes hung from lines strung outside the windows: the fabric of people’s lives drying in the sun, swaying with the wind. Large dresses in faded reds and mustard-yellow, shirts with stiff collars that resembled obese men whenever a gust of wind filled their interior, towels rubbed down over the years. In the street, girls in knee-high white socks had drawn boxes on the ground with chalk, were counting and singing, jumping one-legged along the potholed sidewalk.
“I was serious when I said we can always leave,” she said, lifting her head toward me. “You know that, right? My uncle in Chicago could find us something. Or we could book a bus tour to Germany or France, and just get off and run away.” She smiled, somehow sadly.
“There’s no need to rush into anything,” I said, feeling the weight of her stare. “We always said we’d try our chances here first. Maybe things will get better.”
“Nothing ever gets better here,” she said, closing the window and walking back to her bed.
“We don’t know that yet.”
“Do we not?” She looked at me with curiosity. “I guess you still need to find that out for yourself.”
The next day I walked to the Old Town, along the New World Promenade, Nowy Świat, past the cafés and busy shops, past the church where Chopin’s heart is buried in a pink marble column and where the students rioted in 1968 and were beaten by the police. I walked through the iron entrance gate of the university, into the faculty grounds. It was strange to come here in the middle of summer, before term had begun: empty lanes and empty lawns and the large shade-giving trees with no one underneath them, the library deserted but for a couple of researchers. The peace of the place took me aback. I felt like a ghost as I passed through the literature department, the corridor that echoed every single one of my steps, and knocked on the thick door that read “Professor Mielewicz.” I could hardly believe it when my knock was answered with a “Come in.” As usual the professor was sitting in his armchair, surrounded by stacks of books, papers piled before him like the unsteady skyscrapers of a conjured-up city. He was a round man of about fifty, with dark hair he combed back over his large head, an affable expansive face with round glasses.
“Pan Głowacki, what a pleasure to see you.” He said this calmly, as if somehow he’d known I’d come that very day. “Have a seat.” He closed the book he was reading, slipping a pen between the pages. “You’ve come because of the doctorate, isn’t that right?” He smiled knowingly.
I nodded. “Yes, Professor.”
“You want to do it, then?”
He looked at me intently, almost too directly. It made me feel see-through.
“Yes, Professor,” I said, this time a little less assured.
“Good.” He smiled and leaned back, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes as if he was wiping something away. “You know what you’re getting yourself into?”
I hesitated. “Not really, sir.” He laughed, deep and bearish. “But I want to try.”
“That’s the right attitude.” He leaned forward and put his chunky arms on the desk, his fingertips touching one another. “Because I cannot guarantee anything, you see. Ultimately, the board needs to accept your proposal, and they’re a tough bunch.” He turned sideways in his chair, bent over, rummaged in a drawer. Finally, he pulled out a thin stack of papers. “Here, fill these out. And bring me a proposal by the end of the week. We’ll look it over together.”
Before he ha
nded me the papers, he threw a careful look at the door, then back to me. He spoke with a lowered voice, a sort of thought-through whisper.
“I need hardly tell you what the conditions are. Something that won’t be too upsetting, you see.” He made a wave-like gesture with his hand. “Nothing controversial. Nothing remotely anti-socialist, no whiff of pro-Westernism, my dear. Recently they’ve been getting increasingly nervous about that sort of thing.”
“I understand,” I said, taking the papers from him.
We shook hands, and I turned to leave.
“And, Ludwik?”
I turned back around. He was looking at me with almost paternal concern.
“Make sure it’s good. All right? There are other candidates. I want you to get this.”
I nodded and left his office, shutting the door behind me with trembling hands. Standing in the empty corridor, I let out a deep breath.
I walked home slowly. The air was suffocating. The sky was gray, and sticky wind blew through the streets, swirling up dust. The few people around looked hurried, caught inside their own minds even more than usual, their faces like masks. I was relieved to get home. Pani Kolecka wasn’t there. I sat and took out the papers the professor had given me. My head was empty, but I started anyway, placed pen to paper. I forced myself to think. I didn’t really want this, but neither did I want to let it slip away. I had nothing else, no other path. And there was a certain pleasure in doing what I had not allowed myself before, a satisfaction in the forbidden, a challenge. I knew what I really wanted to write about, the book that had moved me more than anything, more than any book before. But I also knew I couldn’t write about Giovanni’s Room. It had never been published in Poland. I wasn’t even supposed to know about it. But I had read Baldwin’s other stories. They dealt mostly with the black man in American society, of his discrimination and shunning. I could see its relevance, could see how it exposed the double standards of the West, how it showed racism and white supremacy behind the liberalism and democracy extolled by the capitalist powers. At the same time, of course, I could identify. I carried my difference, my shame, on the inside. It wasn’t visible—not to everyone straightaway, at least—but it was there, and it was a danger. That’s what I began to write about.
I remembered what I’d read about Malcolm X, about his friendship with Baldwin, and his struggle, his radical views on oppression and self-defense. I wrote furiously, my body dissolving, my head spinning, losing all sense of time.
The keys turned in the lock, and Pani Kolecka stood in the door. I was struck by how short she was, how dwarfed by the size of her shopping net, which I took from her and placed on the kitchen counter.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, removing her beret. “The queues are getting longer. Or my legs are getting weaker. But I managed to get meat.” She smiled her small smile that came through her eyes. “It’s a miracle.”
A moment later potatoes were boiling, and I sat at the table, grating carrots.
“Let’s be happy,” she said, taking the meat out of its stained gray paper and placing it on the counter. “If things continue this way, any kotlet might be our last.” She started beating it with a prickly mallet, the banging almost drowning out her words. “You heard the news?” She handed me a dry white roll, a plate, and started to crack open eggs on the edge of a bowl. I shook my head.
“Gierek decided to increase the meat prices.”
“What?” I looked at her in disbelief.
She turned to me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Meat products are up by sixty percent in the canteens.”
“They can’t just do that,” I said, disbelief mingling with anger.
She turned back to the meat, beating it again with her mallet. “That’s what we thought before. But they can, and they will.”
Later we ate without speaking, savoring every mouthful, the kotlet with its crispy breading and the grated carrots with cream and the buttery potatoes sprinkled with dill. Usually, Pani Kolecka would tell me stories of her life and her marriage, her travels with her husband, how she had accompanied him on his expeditions. But not that night. That night something hung over us. One by one, in the night outside, the lights went on in the blokowisko.
Your house, like all the others in Praga, was tired and beaten down. Bullet holes shaped like stars covered the facade, and rusty balconies faced the street, some with clothes hanging to dry. Beyond the arched entrance was the courtyard, where, surrounded by high grasses and yellow gladiolas, stood a Madonna. Her face was pale, and she wore a blue gown, palms turned up to the sky, a halo of gold-painted stars around her delicate head.
In those days, I was as far away from the church as I would ever be, but there was something about the beauty of this statue, in the midst of the courtyard’s decay, that moved me, stayed with me as I walked up to your flat. The stairs looked so old and fragile I wasn’t sure they would carry me. They smelled of dampness and groaned with each step, but they held. On the first floor an old woman looked at me suspiciously, ignored my greeting. On the third floor a band of children ran across the landing, screaming and cursing like drunkards. Your place was on the fourth and last floor.
“Ludzio,” you whispered when you opened the door, throwing a searching glance at the landing behind me.
Your room was small, but you lived by yourself. That in itself was luxury. Old wooden floors, two fragile windows facing the courtyard, a desk, an iron-framed bed in the corner where we lay down. We kissed for a long time, hard, trying to still a bottomless thirst.
You asked whether I was hungry and fished out a loaf from behind the curtains, pulling them shut. You cut the bread, holding it against your chest like a baby and moving the serrated knife toward your heart. We sat there for a while, chewing with satisfaction on the fat slices, hearing the creaking sounds of the house and the muffled voices of the neighbors. I told you how I’d shown my idea to Professor Mielewicz that day and how excited he’d been. The proposal would be ready for submission that week.
“That’s great,” you said between bites, your eyes glistening. “I hope you get it.”
“Me too,” I said. “And if not . . . I don’t know what I’ll do then.”
You turned to me, seemingly encouraged. “I could try to get you work in my department once I’m settled.”
I shook my head. “No.” You looked at me, as if expecting an explanation. For a moment, neither one of us spoke. “Did you hear about the food prices?” I finally asked.
You nodded and looked away.
“And?” I probed. Now the silence was yours.
“And what?” You shrugged. “If they do it, it needs to be done.”
“Are you serious? They are doing it because they don’t know how to run the country. Where do you think all our food is going, all the food we produce? It’s paying debts. It’s going to Russia and to the West. And we have nothing left.”
You were quiet for a moment, your face frozen. “You need to watch who you say this to. You know that, Ludzio, don’t you?”
I held your stare. “But you know it’s true,” I said, determined.
You got up, retrieved a half-empty bottle of Mazowszanka from under your desk, and poured it into a glass. “Yes.” You said this quietly, with your back to me. “But there’s no good in knowing that. None at all.” You returned to the bed, handed me the water. “For your own sake, don’t be so hotheaded. Or you’ll get yourself in a lot of unnecessary trouble.”
“So why don’t we—”
“Let’s drop it,” you said abruptly, your tone striking me with its sudden coldness. “We haven’t had the same lives. We won’t agree on this.”
My head was reeling, the glass cold in my hand. You had never spoken to me like this, with such detachment. I didn’t know whether I wanted to run away or be appeased. Either way, I no longer felt like talking. A new silence took hold and began to scatter your last words, to cool their vehemence. You lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and I lay down beside
you. Then your hands found their way to me, your eyes meeting mine consolingly, blinking an apology. Our bodies moved toward each other by instinct. I felt your chest underneath your shirt, retraced the swing of your collarbones, the hardness of your shoulders. You tasted the same, warm and earthy. I pulled off your clothes in the dim light. Your tan was still visible, and around us the house was alive—feet shuffled below, water pipes gurgled, taps were turned on and off, accompanying our struggles. Later, when night had fallen and we had exhausted ourselves, we lay facing each other, the tip of your nose on the bridge of mine. Nothing else mattered in the dark.
“I’m starting my job tomorrow,” you said after a while.
“I’ll come and pick you up if you like.”
You shook your head. “Better not. Better not give them a reason to suspect. I’ll meet you at the pool. On Wednesday.”
I said nothing, letting your words echo in my mind, weighing them individually. “So we’ve suddenly become a secret, huh?”
You lifted yourself on to your elbows, your eyes looking darker.
“We’ve always been a secret, Ludwik. It’s just that until now there was no one to hide from.” You smiled for an instant, maybe out of discomfort. “Do you know what they would do if they found out?” Your brows furrowed. “They have lists. They keep track. And they know how to use information.” You let your index finger pass across my cheek, gently. It felt like a threat. I flicked my head; your hand moved away.
“There’s no law against what we’re doing.”
“I know that.” Your voice softened. “But we need to act as if there were. Do you know what they did to Foucault?”
I looked at you blankly. “The philosopher?” You nodded. “What’s he got to do with us?”
You sat up on the bed, your back against the wall. “He came to Warszawa when he was young to head some French cultural institute, and the Secret Service knew about him. So they found a handsome student and introduced him into Foucault’s circle and made sure the guy charmed him. It worked. One day the two of them took a room at the Bristol and boom”—you snapped your fingers—“in come the agents, catching them in bed. They charged Foucault with soliciting prostitution. A week later he’d resigned and was back in Paris.” Your voice sounded almost triumphant, as if impressed by their efficiency. But for an instant I saw a wavelet of anxiety ripple across your face. “You see?”
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