“We have a problem,” the director called to me, emerging from the gallery.
He was followed by six straaków lumbering in Nomex and Kevlar suits and toting axes, fire hoses, and an extinguisher the size of a small beer fridge.
“Przenie si!”
We obeyed and moved out of the way while they blew dry chemicals over Chicago, clouding its skies and coating the streets with an eerie off-white powder. The fire was reduced to smouldering ash. A giant hole had burned away where City Hall was; municipal hell was a pit of blackened sodium bicarbonate that ended at the grass.
“Who is responsible for this?” one of the firefighters asked. The big one.
“S’il vous plaît n’hésitez pas à gouter le fromage,” I told him. “The grapes are good, too.”
“Your French is impeccable,” lit girl told me. “My name is Dorota.”
“The department never authorized this show,” he said. “We’re shutting you down.”
“What about you?” I said, showing him the stopwatch I kept handy, anticipating his visit. “It took you six minutes and thirty-two seconds to get here. That’s far past the national average of five minutes.”
“I could have you arrested for public endangerment—like this.” He snapped his fingers.
He looked peeved and maybe a little horny. I detected vapours of potato and bison grass on his breath; bootlegged vodka almost always means “party-time.” I pictured the gang of them punishing me by stuffing a fire hose up my ass. The fantasy was all right, as long as they didn’t loosen the valve ...
Dorota stepped through the ranks of the crowd—now shrunken to a gossipy whisper—and moseyed over with her glass of wine. Swish. She was mesmerizing.
“You know, Radeki isn’t the only one who broke the rules. You entered what you knew was a burning building without attaching a lifeline to your belts.”
“Radeki.” My birth name is Radosław, though I use the diminutive form “Radek.” She had just made my name even more kid-like.
The straaków looked down at their waists, dumbfounded, except for the boss. He stared straight at her and smirked.
“That is not your business, woman.”
“Listen, we didn’t mean to cause trouble,” I said. “There will be no more fires.”
“Radeki, don’t be gutless. This man is a nincompoop, an idiot, a bestia. He didn’t even bring floor plans of the building. If we were all dying and choking in smoke, these supposed ‘firefighters’ wouldn’t have been able to save us.” Now she addressed them, her eyes showing contempt. “Go home, and don’t tell anyone what happened. You will be too embarrassed.”
She was the ideal warrior: knowledgeable, fearless, an ass of sculpted glass. I realized on the spot that we could accomplish great things together, as long as I didn’t ruin it by requesting a blowjob.
The big firefighter poked my forehead with his finger. “You are a marked man.”
The straaków left and so did about half the crowd. My true fans remained. The shaken director handed out plastic glasses and opened a bottle of champagne.
“Gratulacje!” he said. “I’ll probably get an official reprimand for this, but it was worth it.”
“Applause for Dorotka,” I said, returning the diminutive.
Later, after she and I had downed a few bottles of Veuve Clicquot and piwo jasne, and had talked about school, art, politics, the Pope’s floundering white blood cells, and the dark days ahead, she pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket.
“It’s by Czesław Miłosz.” She read it to me.
At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this: To glorify things just because they are.
“What is that from?” I said.
“Fucked if I know ... but the old fart just died, so I figured it was appropriate.”
“Harsh.”
“His work is good, but I’m sure he was a rat, like the rest of us.”
Just so you know, Człowiek Obcy, the name of the gallery, means “outsider.” I know Polish is confusing, but please try to keep up.
YOUTUBE
May Day 1983, Warszawa
Black screen.
They gather in the Old Town. The crowd slowly thickens with bodies as people stream through the archway like meat through a sausage machine. Zoom in on a man with glasses, batting away the red and white Solidarnoflag. He can’t see. There is nothing to see yet. The crowd is too calm.
Zoom out. The young are dressed in red and white, the colours of the revolution. The old are wearing grey or blue or beige. They want the revolution, but it will not disrupt their dressing routines. Nor should it.
Static.
All Poland is with us.
The crowd begins to chant. Out of focus, a man with a moustache echoes the words a split second before we hear them. He gets hit by a white balloon, but we don’t see who has thrown it. Perhaps a child.
Nie ma wolnoci bez Solidarnoci.
Nie ma wolnoci bez Solidarnoci.
No freedom without Solidarity.
The camera zooms out a bit too far, then readjusts. There are many balloons, only they are not balloons but white rubber batons the police are flailing. A woman falls to the ground as the police beat people back through the archway. The batons sometimes bounce back, like in a cartoon, but the officers are wearing helmets with visors to protect themselves. From themselves. The fallen woman collects the contents of her purse on the cobblestone. We see a change holder for grosze and keepsakes. One of her high heels is broken. It lays dismembered at her side.
We want the truth.
They are inchoate, but everyone knows what the other is starting to say. Words they never thought possible. Never thought Polish.
We want the truth.
The visors are smoke-coloured. The police always see smoke and never know when it’s real.
A stampede. The crowd crushes through the stone gate. Solidarity flags coil around them like taffy. Blinding and tripping them. The camera fixes on officers beating their riot shields. An old man approaches them, shaking his fist.
All Poland is with us.
All Poland is wet. Water everywhere. The police turn hoses full blast on the crowd who cannot escape fast enough. The water hammers their heads. Their hair is soaked and matted, and their faces turn purple. They look like newborn babies, but this is not yet a new country.
A stampede. The crowd crushes through the stone gate. Solidarity flags coil around them like taffy. Blinding and tripping them. The tape loops. We see the same activities. It is always the same.
All Poland is with us.
We want the truth.
Try chanting with water spraying the back of your throat. See how it feels.
Nearly all the demonstrators have left. Zoom in on an old woman who remains. The old remain the longest. It is their nature. In Poland, “old” is not a bad word.
She is the brightest of all in a crimson cardigan. She is holding her hands over her ears to block out the mayhem. She must hear far more than we do. The riot police approach. Another woman—a younger one—pleads with her, tries to pull her hands off her ears. But the old woman’s arms have locked. The younger one pulls and pulls. One gnarled hand comes loose, hesitates in the air.
The country waits.
Blood comes out of the old woman’s ear. She was trying to hold it in all this time. She just didn’t know what side was bleeding.
Nobody knows which side is bleeding more.
All Poland is with us.
We want the truth.
You fucking bastards.
Fade to black.
Cut to red and white.
CMENTARZ
The herbatka was bitter, just how we like it. Tea should never be a sweet affair.
Dorota sat in an armchair in the corner of my one-room studio apartment (millionaire I am not). She sipped her tea at intervals of exactly thirty seconds, surreptitiously watching me dress. I kno
w when I’m being watched, a talent that has served me well in life.
She was reading a copy of Rzeczpospolita abandoned by the neighbours. The older folks in my building have given up on the national newspaper. They gripe that ever since Poland joined the EU the year before, the paper has become a political hand puppet. They don’t cancel their subscriptions, because there’s no refund policy in Poland; “bought” is bought. So copies pile up in my building entranceway and get mashed to a pulp by wet galoshes. Unless I read them.
I am a good tenant. I help clean up and digest the weekly tidbits before they’re completely illegible.
Rarely did I let anyone into my personal space. I thought about dismantling my Pink Floyd shrine before Dorota arrived (no one else had ever seen it), but in the end, I resisted the urge. It would be too complicated to reassemble and, besides, I wanted her to know more about me.
It was typical, as far as shrines go:
LP albums arranged left to right according to the band members’ favourites, starting with the most senior musicians
Papier-mâché models of the inflatable pig that floated loose during the Animals album cover shoot, suspended from my ceiling with threads of varying length, marking the ascent
Fan photos of reclusive founding member Syd Barrett transporting quarts of milk in the basket of his banana-seat bicycle
A re-creation of The Wall, made of real bricks, with the middle one missing and a picture of my face peeking through
She didn’t say a word about this stuff, even though it took up half a wall directly across from where she was sitting near the balcony.
My black jeans had faded to off-black and no longer matched my T-shirt. I never had this problem with my beloved corduroy overalls, but the evening’s activities called for a change of wardrobe. Dorota continued to watch me.
“I can’t go out like this,” I told her. “Can I try on your pants?”
Dorota put her newspaper down, maintaining her ruse of being absorbed in reading. “Yes, you ‘haven’t got a stitch to wear,’ just like Morrissey. Very cute. Just hurry up and tuck that sausage into whatever will hold it.”
“Do you like men or women?” I asked her. A point-blank kind of gal would have no qualms with a direct hit like this.
“I like body parts. Guys, mostly, but different people have the parts I like. I’m attracted to the ones who show them off. What kind of question is that, anyways?”
“I just want to know more about you.”
“Interrogating me isn’t going to help you. But I know you mean well.”
“Doesn’t seem that weird to me ... a really cool person walks into my life and I want to ask a few questions.”
“You’re talking too much.” She melted a bit in her chair, and gave me a smile I’ll never forget. “And actually, sweetie, you walked into my life. I was going to that gallery years before you even knew about it.”
Dorota continued reading and her smile faded. She pulled a pair of surgical scissors out of her purse and snipped out a rectangle of newsprint, violently crumpling the rest of the section and throwing it—unknowingly, I hoped—at my rare Dutch pressing of Dark Side of the Moon.
“Listen to this,” she said with a sneer, reading from the newspaper. “ ‘If deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons ... a couple of baton strikes will deter them from coming again. Gays are cowards by definition.’”
“And what hero of ours said this?”
“Wojciech Wierzejski, Deputy of the Polish National Assembly. I’ll add it to the collection.”
“You have more?”
“An endless supply,” she said.
We finished our herbatka in silence. I was soon done fussing over my outfit.
We got off the tramwaj at Rakowicki Cemetery, and walked through the gates just after midnight. I felt a frisson. This was the Euro Disney of cemeteries, a necropolis. Death is done right in Poland, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect. I mean that angels are sculpted of marble, not granite, tombs are kept clean and accessible, the catacombs and columbariums pristine. Corpse names are written in fonts so sexy they make you want to cum. The architecture of remembrance is not left to lie fallow, not here. The parents of Pope Jan Paweł II were buried here, but that wasn’t why we’d made the trip.
Dressing in black to visit a cemetery is cliché, but when the purpose of your visit is to candle-bomb the place, it’s just practical. Stealth is prime in such situations.
Dorota carried the candles in a burlap sack, and I brought my lighter of choice. For our first gentle act of terror we chose the grave of Helena Modrzejewska, a female theatre star who, as not many people know, had occasionally played men onstage. She had fucked with the order of things, and now we would, too.
“You write. I’ll light,” I said.
Dorota placed the cylindrical, windproof candles like widely-spaced dominoes, taking her time to form the letters. I gave them life. When she was redoing the elbow of a K, I noticed how the light carved shadows into the hollows of her face, making her look like a Jack-o’-Pumpkin. I was following her too closely to read the words (I was a little scared, so stayed close for protection).
“Windproof” is about as solid a concept as “fireproof.” On that breezeless night, I managed to blow a bunch of candles out with my excited talking. “How long do these candles last? Will they be visible by daylight? We should be taking pictures. Next cemetery!”
When we had finished the first word, Dorota laughed like a crazy abka and hugged me close, pressing her mouth to my neck. I was about to put her into a playful headlock, but she grabbed my hand and ran. We tore through the obstacle course of nagrobeks, tripping over ivy tentacles and kicking flower planters like footballs, blind in the dark but headed, our ankles told us, toward higher ground. We were sinning, and it was delicious.
We turned around to see Helena’s grave, lit up prettily by Dorota’s imagination and my steady hand:
SUCK THIS DEVIANT COCK IN THE INTERMISSION
Cemeteries usually only saw mass candle activity on All Souls’ Day, a compulsive keening for the dead you might recognize as Halloween. That was months away, so we knew our texts wouldn’t get drowned by other lights. Our accents would flicker crisply, and I hoped this activity would lead to bigger fires together.
“Who’s next?” I said.
“You mean which dead body?”
“Which bigoted asshole.”
She reached into her purse, slung across her torso commando-style, and fished out a swatch of news clippings.
“Take your pick,” she said. “Either ‘homosexual practices lead to drama, emptiness, and degeneracy,’ or ‘if a person tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom.’ I’m leaning toward the second one, because it’s from Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. The prime minister.”
“The first one is more poetic,” I said.
“But the prime minister is a swine.”
“Art before activism.”
“You’re impossible,” Dorota said.
We found a magnificent tomb encased in green moss. This time I chose the wording (rather long, and taxing on the lumbar muscles), and Dorota lit the candles. The firelight eroded a bit of the cemetery’s soft, sepulchral charm, sharpening moon shadows into right angles. You can’t get anywhere, I reminded myself, without disturbing the peace.
Radeki. Dorotka. Using diminutive names was the hot, new trend. I was sure the prime minister would accept our raspberry kisses:
KASIO, BE NICE TO US. DON’T BE A DRAMA QUEEN
Cemeteries are made for parkour. Yes, that’s what I said about Nowa Huta and Kraków, but this time I really mean it.
Tombstones make the perfect hurdles, especially if commissioned by a poor family (not too high). Some of them are staggered diagonally in Rakowicki, so there’s enough room to Breakfall after you clear one. Although it gets a lot more fun when a security guard is chasing you.
We got lu
cky.
“Ditch the candles,” I said to Dorota. “You’ll be able to run faster and focus on your movements. Just follow my lead.”
We performed lazy vaults over unimposing stones, but had to switch to time-consuming sauts de précision when we ran into old money, a minefield of graves so big I almost twisted my ankle in the inscription letters. Even so, we put a comfortable fifty metres between ourselves and the guard.
“Id do diabła!” he screamed at us, giving up the chase when he reached a fence too high to jump.
“That’s funny,” I said. “We’re going to hell anyways.”
The glory of parkour was leaving people like him, folks who don’t know the body language of freedom, behind.
We stopped running, however, when we saw sprays of light illuminating the grass in front of us, and turned around. Back at the crime scene, the bastard was kicking over all our hard work, jumbling the letters, rendering our messages wonky and dyslexic. The security guard wasn’t the target of our messages; we had bigger ryby to fry. I hadn’t planned for this kind of failure.
Dorota held out the bag of candles.
“You didn’t get rid of those, like I told you?”
“I’m not sure why you think I should listen to you,” she said. “And just so you know, Pink Floyd isn’t that good. They write okay songs but the instrumental solos are ... well, too long.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
We spelled our last fragment of the night. It wasn’t our best, but I went to bed hoping it would crawl across the country on the lips of the disobedient and the curious:
SOLIDARITY FOR POLISH QUEERS
VERMICULITE
Thank you for visiting the Vermiculite Association website.
[No, thank you. Pictured is a rock with a glassy face that looks suspiciously like magnetite or obsidian after a dandruff shampoo and molecular combover. Thoroughly unconvincing.]
Krakow Melt Page 3