Warsaw

by Richard Foreman

  A serving maid opened the door to the three-storey town house. Unsure as to his importance, or the esteem in which the family held the private tutor, the dour looking servant treated him with begrudging respect. After they eventually assessed his station and rank the staff soon treated the pretentious tutor with the same level of respect as they did the chimney sweeper or coal man. The antagonism between him and the rest of the staff only increased with the student's clever comments towards them - and acting as if he were above them in social status. He bowed and was suitably well-mannered and professional in dealing with his new charge's mother and father. He was charming and intelligent, equally equitable towards both husband and wife alike (he told the father, a lawyer, that he was studying to enter the legal profession and engaged the lady of the house in a conversation about the latest fashionable novels, complimenting her on her taste). After the business of settling upon his fee and hours the tutor would work Adam was introduced to his new pupil, Michael - a plump, pre-teen brat with a decidedly unimpressed look upon his chubby face and equally unimpressive intellect.

  The parents were happy to accommodate the tutor when he mentioned that he could start straightaway. Adam suggested that he be allowed to see some of Michael's previous work in order to assess the level he was currently at. Furthermore he suggested that, whilst looking over this work, he set his student a small composition exercise. He asked him to write about his family, thus giving the tutor an immediate piece of source material to help insert himself into the favour of his employers. So as not to disturb each other the tutor mentioned that it would be best if both he and his pupil be allowed to work in private.

  "A good idea," father pronounced, "you're welcome to use my study upstairs. Michael can work in his bedroom next door."

  "Would you like anything to eat Mister Duritz?"

  "No, I do not want to put you to any trouble Mrs Goldman. And please, call me Adam."

  "It will not be any trouble. I can get Thelma to make you something," the motherly, mothering, Mrs Goldman replied, without making the point that it was fine for Adam to call her Deborah.

  "As long as it's no trouble. A sandwich would be fine. Thank you."

  Within fifteen minutes the student was loosening his tie in the heat, wolfing down a beef and onion bagel and drinking cold lemonade. Although he was excited by the prospect of his new position, upon travelling to the house - meeting the family, playing a part and making the right impression - the moody student nevertheless came back down to earth. It was just another job. The family ultimately looked down on him as staff. He felt out of place and would have to suppress his pride. There was no daughter of the house and his pupil was just another lazy, spoilt cretin. Again Duritz felt weary, frustrated, that his genius did not deserve this paltry existence. He should be touring Europe, writing a book, being noticed. Life was unfair.

  It took the tutor all of five minutes to go through the folders of work involving different subjects before he formed his judgement concerning the child. He took a few minutes inspecting his employer's study but there was little of interest. He yawned and finished his sandwich and lemonade. As delicious as his supper was, however, his body craved some chocolate - or some of the sugared pastries that his mother made which melted in the mouth - to finish off his meal and lift his spirits. Adam took a pencil and some notepaper from the lawyer's bureau and started to doodle and then draw a couple of caricatures of his new employers in the style of Pushkin. After finishing off a couple more cartoons, in which he turned the Goldman’s into a peacock and bald-headed eagle respectively, the irritable student ripped up all of the pictures and threw them in the bin, dissatisfied as he was with them. He yawned again and burningly thought to himself, whilst exercising his memory at the same time,

  ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

  To the last syllable of recorded time;

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

  And then is heard no more; it is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.’

  The sound of laughter outside attracted his attention as if the voices were wind chimes. The ‘music’ emanated from the garden next door to the house. The breeze from the window fanned his face but nothing could cool the instant ardour of his thoughts and will. He was enraptured immediately, sublimely. She was beautiful; indeed Adam later postulated that he did not know what beauty was until that moment. He craned his head further out of the window, to the point perhaps where he was in danger of falling, as if he were a sailor being drawn to his death by the siren's song. Adam's heart faltered yet beat wildly as well - pumping blood to that more significant of organs. He was the poet, she his inspiration and muse the youth exclaimed to himself later that evening. She would be his ‘Beatrice’, ‘Lotte’. Fate and Love no longer seemed subjective, fiducial ideas. He suddenly believed Dostoyevsky when he had posed that ‘Only Beauty can save the world.’ She laughed - as did the child who she gaily pushed on the swing - and seemed to colour the air with flowers and music as she did so. Jessica wore a short sleeve navy blue blouse and a knee-length white skirt. Such was her womanly figure - but adolescent features and vitality - she could have been aged fifteen to twenty-five, the student imagined that sultry night. Indeed the idealist stayed up all that evening writing about her,

  ‘...Her lips are the colour of strawberry ice-cream. Her arms are slender, graceful, her bosom a treasure chest. She has both taste and elegance wearing even the most simple, casual of outfits. What I would not have given to be that child (her brother I suspect) who she lovingly embraced and kissed upon the cheek. If I envy the boy I like him also, for being so clearly devoted to my seraphim. Should I envy the rays of the sun also for kissing her fair complexion and enriching the lustre of her fine golden hair?’

  A possessed Adam went on during that first evening to write half a page about her eyelashes alone. His heart and imagination were fired. He could not stop thinking, nor writing, about her. He kept a special journal which he half filled even before their first meeting. Duritz got to the house early and left as late as possible the next day in sweet hope of some form of contact with his employer's neighbours. Our ‘Pip’ devoured every piece of information about his ‘Stella’. Her name was perfect for her, Jessica. Adam found out which school she attended and read its syllabus so that he could have something in common and display his intellectual plumage when they finally met. Thankfully there was a bench on the street and he often waited there, pretending to read a book, for his heroine to pass by on her way home from school. Just to see her fed and teased out his desire; so too she was a fresh picture for the poet every day as his subject always seemed to wear some new outfit, or do her hair differently, or enchant him with a new mannerism or facial expression. He blushed, gulped and shyly looked away the first time that she appeared to notice him there. He cursed himself for half of the night for not smiling the smile he had prepared, or introducing himself with the lines he had rehearsed. For the rest of the evening however the willing slave bathed in the relief and excitement that she had noticed him and, somehow, he had advanced his campaign. The would-be philosopher was consumed with passion, or with forming stratagems to bring their worlds closer together. To further ingratiate himself into her life the wily student came up with the idea of telling Mr Goldman of Michael's deficiency in the sciences. As the house's library appeared to lack the necessary text books - and it would have been a needless expense to purchase them - were the family friendly enough with the doctor next door to borrow the books that he needed? So the tutor made a brief foray into the house and introduced himself to the Rubenstein’s, convinced that the sortie had been a success (the father indeed seemed pleased and impressed with the young student
that he was considering a career in the medical profession) - although unfortunately their daughter was out that evening.

  Such was the student's obsession that his studies suffered. What few friends Adam possessed he saw even less of. He would feign illness and stay at home writing poetry; he composed a sonnet sequence and a brilliant verse romance about a Knight Errant who experiences a vision and then sets off upon a quasi-religious quest to rescue a princess from a citadel and ogre. As much as the real world seemed to narrow however and fall into the background the besotted youth was duly awarded by the work he put in ingratiating himself into the affections of his employers. He was invited to one of the Goldman's dinner parties. Believing that the Rubenstein’s would be present he gladly accepted the invitation and said he would be happy to help serve drinks during the evening.

  ‘The cream coloured silk dress she transformed into a unique gown, such is her regal figure. Her earrings and brooch matched perfectly, though it was an act of will for me to take my eyes off her lively features. Her flesh was like burnished gold in the candle light, like Cleopatra's... Her voice is as expressive and seductive as her features... Her preening, shallow suitors were but satellites to her universe... On the surface she's a natural coquette - her smile can fell a celibate and profligate alike and she can blink and out pops an earth moving oelliard - but yet there were brief moments where I witnessed again the sadness, loneliness, behind Jessica's mask.’

  The several glasses of wine the student had that night instilled in him the courage to finally approach his intended. He served Jessica a drink and attempted to open up a conversation. He asked her what she was reading at the moment, stammering and blushing. She shrugged and replied "different things", eyeing him with suspicion and a certain amusement that a serving boy had deigned to try to speak with her with such familiarity. He smiled at her with the gentle, charming expression that he had worked on in front of the mirror but it just served to prolong the awkward pause between them both. The young, albeit sophisticated, socialite rescued herself by attracting the attention of one of her fawning suitors and that was the end of their novel exchange.

  As disheartened as our love sick student was, his love sickened not. Were not Julien Sorrel and Mathilde the same at the beginning? He also qualified the evening as a success due to his performance after his encounter with his subject. Mrs Goldman, as if showing off a new toy or pet to her friends, put the tutor on the spot and asked him to perform a party trick. Having shown off his talent to the family a week before Mrs Goldman made the youth repeat the phenomenon to her guests. She told the room how someone could open up any page of Shakespeare's Hamlet, quote a line, and her tutor could finish off the remaining sentence or passage from memory. Nervous and angry at the woman's request and affront for turning him into some kind of dancing pony for the audience the young scholar nevertheless grew in confidence and enthusiasm as he observed the impression he was making. Jessica too couldn't fail to be impressed, he imagined. The episode pretty much sealed his conceit and parallel with Stendhal's Julien Sorrel in "Scarlet And Black" - for had not that personal tutor too played out a similar scene reciting from the Scriptures to seduce his audience?

  A week later, after his display, the Goldman's tutor was invited to help serve drinks and do his party piece (but with the Book of Job) at one of the Rubenstein's soirees. Again Duritz made progress in relation to charming the mother and father, but Jessica again snubbed the sensitive student when he tried to engage her in conversation. She but arched her narrow eyebrow and then almost broke into laughter at his daring, ridiculous play for her. After that his advances - and the unresponsive responses from Jessica - were no less awkward or calamitous. When not ignoring his warped attentions altogether Jessica felt insulted or hassled by the clingy student. Or she would tease him. Again and again over the next few months, without her knowing the extent of the damage she was doing, Jessica would wound the fantasist. Yet again and again Adam would lick and even kiss his wounds - for she had made them. He suffered. He cried himself to sleep at night in religious admiration of her beauty; yet sometimes he would cry in despair at not being able to possess such beauty, flesh. Yearning. Adam was young and in love. He became ill. He lost weight. He began to drink vodka to take the pain away and forget. He wasn't himself. He grew desperate one day and composed a letter - inserting a number of poems in the envelope also - that he intended to post to his muse anonymously. What stopped him was the thought that she might never speak to him again if he did such a thing - not that Jessica was speaking to him anyway at the time. But he desperately wanted to declare his love in some grand romantic gesture. If they could only get to know each other, away from society and all its charades. He painted futures of them together, of courtship, marriage, a family. He sometimes even stalked her. Duritz hated and became insanely jealous of her real (false) suitors. He sometimes dreamed of being with her, sometimes had nightmares of her being with someone else. He had to win the unattainable prize. Life was not worth living without her, or it was but half a life.

  It did not happen overnight, although I think the year's anniversary of his first seeing her had something to do with it perhaps, but our poet eventually began to turn upon his cruel muse. She was ungrateful, a snob. She must have known she was hurting him. Bitterness spread throughout his being like a disease of the blood. She was as vain and as ignorant as her goy boyfriends. The angel became a whore. His passionate hatred for her - and in turn of womankind for she was a typical woman - was just as destructive and unhealthy as his previous amorous obsession. Thankfully there was still a sage voice inside of the student which knew that he needed to shelve her under his past. He needed to be indifferent to her, bury her - weaned off her. After a tortuous month thinking about it, Duritz resigned from his position in the Goldman household. It was on the day in which he overheard one of her vapid girlfriends asking Jessica, "So, how was Paul? What was it like?"

  Slowly but surely Duritz thought about Jessica less, though not without the odd relapse. She was achingly beautiful. When his mother died it was the doctor's daughter who the distraught student wished most to open up to. Adam even pictured himself breaking down and crying with Jessica wiping the tears away. He also secretly hoped that Jessica would attend the same University as him. She might be more mature or appreciative if she saw him again. Unlike high society, he was master of the academic arena. But from thinking about her once a day Duritz eventually got it down to dwelling upon the affair once a month. But unrequited loves are the most memorable. But Adam eventually ploughed his energies back into his studies. He even managed to have a couple of girlfriends, although they could never live up to the dream of Jessica. He could be funny, engaging to women - or a puzzle they wanted to solve - but ultimately he was a cold fish. Adam would always keep his heart under lock and key, as if perhaps still waiting for the day when she would open it. The melancholic was self-absorbed, non-committal. When he had the money, or was suffering from that particular strain of depression and solitude, he visited prostitutes. Love, marriage, was but a similar transaction he reasoned honestly with himself. His father died. Duritz was saddened by his lack of remorse. He felt bad because he did not feel bad.

  The student was perceptive and pessimistic enough to see war on the horizon. He sold off the bakery and hoarded supplies - which he could use or sell off at an inflated price - long before the rest of the neighbourhood prepared for the war and occupation. The drama and viciousness of the quick fall and ghettoisation of Warsaw surprised the student however. The world turned upside down. For just helping the man next to him up, when he fell over in the ice shovelling snow, a soldier struck Duritz across the forehead with a baton (with nails inserted into it) and scarred his face for life. He was unable to transfer his provisions to the ghetto so his status of comparative wealth vanished overnight. Duritz descended into a debilitating depression and then fever. He did not go to a doctor or hospital for fear of the Germans disposing of him as being an unfit worker. He paid the m
oney, though he suspected her of fleecing him, for a washer-woman in the building to take care of him. His money soon ran out however. She would not take care of him for nothing.

  Where the summer had brought fever, winter brought acute hypothermia. A sense of serenity came over the depressive however as, bed-ridden and too weak to resist anymore, Duritz prepared himself (philosophically, emotionally) for death. He just had to wait for his broken body to catch up with the resolution. A day after his vow - the certitude of his fate brought the ironist a certain amount of comfort - there was a knock at the door. With a heroic effort the malnourished, shivering student answered it. A spasm of terror, which veritably nearly stopped his heart, first gripped the Jew. What new misery was being confounded upon him now? They would even wrestle his peaceful end away from him.

  Thomas Abendroth, at first taken back by the Jew's devitalised appearance, apologised for having disturbed Duritz and introduced himself. The Corporal said he meant him no harm; indeed it was the opposite for the German had sought the Jew out, from a recommendation by Rabbi Samuel, so that the ex-tutor may be of some assistance. The Corporal wanted to learn Polish. He promised to pay Duritz for his trouble, either in money or provisions. Those early scenes were a blur now to the policeman. At first the Corporal nursed the enfeebled Jew back to health. Confused and suspicious initially of the soldier's generosity Duritz, despite his ego and hatred of the uniform, grew to be genuinely impressed by the engaging German. He could match the Jew's intellect and sardonic wit - they even used to play a game in which they'd trade Shakespeare quotes as a substitute to their own conversation. Despite Thomas' goodness he was never self-congratulatory. He never judged or patronised Duritz either, indeed if anything he was too indulgent of the student's difficult moods. Furthermore he warned Duritz of the dangers and isolation that might ensue should he go through with his decision to become a policeman, but the Corporal still kept his promise.