by Jerzy Pilch
“No one. And I sense that if you don’t tell me, I will never learn and I will die in ignorance.”
“Listen. Life depends on finding the right proportion between work and relaxation. Do you understand? Understand? Or is it too difficult for you?”
“As far as work is concerned, I know more or less what that is… But as far as relaxation is concerned…”
My gaze must have betrayed me. I must have gazed at her for a moment with excessively ostentatious greed, since she shook her head with pity.
“Forgive me, but that is an excessively one-sided conception of relaxation, too exhaustive and, basically, embarrassing. And as for work,” she adopted, after a second of ominous silence, a conciliatory tone, even very conciliatory, “and as for work, what—if I may allow myself the banal question of the enchanted female reader—what is the master working on at the moment?”
“God bless you for that ‘enchantment.’ No writer can resist a friendly load of crap. Especially in such a… especially in your performance. I am composing short stories now. A collection of short stories of a different sort.”
“A novel is less than a novel, but a volume of short stories is more than a volume of stories?” she suddenly blurted out.
“What gibberish,” I thought at the first, “what gibberish are you spouting, you miraculous bitch?” But the first moment had passed; after it a second, a third, and perhaps even a fourth, and in the next one, I don’t know which one, slowly, very slowly—langsam und trübe—it began to dawn on me that, who knows?… Who knows how this blind hen had stumbled upon the secret of my literary workbench.
II
As I now recreate and record our first conversation, I see clearly that literature can never keep pace with life. Even a faithfully recorded exchange of sentences—word for word—says nothing about the heart of the matter. In this instance, the heart of the matter was my terrible paralysis over the fact that The Most Beautiful Woman in the world was chatting with me at all. That’s in the first place. And in the second place, I was paralyzed by the fact that I myself was chatting. After all, greater wizards than I were struck dumb in her presence. And yet, a conversation had occurred: she spoke to me, and I spoke to her; but that’s not all—she gave the impression of listening intently to what I was telling her; then she would answer, then I would answer, then she, then I… Everything, seemingly, was going along just as normally as could be. Seemingly. Very seemingly. For at bottom, our conversation was very much feigned and very fragmentary, and I—a very illusory and very partial I—was taking part in it. With every word spoken, I was immediately panicked by the fact that a word had been spoken. Already when I was approaching her, I was in panic—in amazement and fear—that I was approaching. Oh, f… , I’m approaching her! Oh, f… , I’m close! Oh, f… , I said something! Oh, f… , she glanced at me! Oh, f… , she sees me! Oh, f… , she’s talking to me! I raised such shouts the whole time in my heart of hearts, and they dominated. They were the essence of the thing. In them also lurked the harbinger of tragedy. Instead of concentrating on the operation, I was in permanent triumph over the fact that there even was an operation. That was to be my undoing.
Three of four storms came crashing down on the garden; lightning bolts made it white like winter, thunder claps made it hushed like a silent film. Salads diluted by streams of water began to withdraw from their platters; cold cuts, cheeses, fruits swam the length of table cloths in a torrential stream; waiters soaked to the marrow tried to rescue what they could; the lawn was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into a quagmire; the army of reception-goers, decimated by the gale, tried to storm the buildings of the embassy. The chaos was spreading.
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World disappeared between my one glance at her and the next. When the heavens abruptly darkened, and the rains came down in sheets, I lifted my face; then, with the instinctive thought that one ought somehow to shield the Venus of the Third Republic—perhaps take off my jacket and throw it over her shoulders; by some miracle, produce an umbrella from somewhere; conjure up a cape out of a handkerchief—all this lasted a second, my protective visions didn’t even have time to take on concrete shape; I glanced again in her direction, and she was gone. I think I even glanced instinctively in the direction of the swaying crowns of the trees, but this was a childish instinct.
Apart from everything else—granted, she was The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, she belonged to the top ten, or to the top hundred, of the most beautiful women in the world—but some sort of slender and ethereal beauty she was not. A healthy broad, to tell the truth: six feet tall, a glorious bust, not pumped up with any element lighter than air, massive thighs, and a wrestler’s frame. Just a few years ago, all sorts of abundance had been heaped high on this frame. The story of the trademark diet she had worked out to perfection, and of her shockingly effective loss of weight, was known to the nation just as well as the story of the resurrection of Lord Jesus, and perhaps even better. Now, of course, she was slender and slim like a poplar, but still there wasn’t a chance that the wind would carry her off like a feather to the height of the genuine poplars growing next to the fence.
I searched for her like a madman. I crossed all the rooms of the embassy from the cellars to the attic. I set the entire guard on its feet; they followed me, but at a distance; I was supposedly pale as a corpse, wild gaze, disheveled hair. Water poured from my shoes and pants, since I rushed, time and again, out into the garden, to that place where she had stood motionless for two hours next to a wicker chair. I kept feeling delusional impulses that she was still standing there, and, like a fool, time and again I ran there. The guards followed me, but, as I said, at a distance, since they were operating under the reasonable assumption that they were dealing not with a calculating terrorist, but with an unpredictable madman.
Time and again someone would ask me who I was looking for—I didn’t answer, I didn’t say, I didn’t speak up at all. How could I confess to such boundless stupidity? What was I supposed to say? That I was looking for The Most Beautiful Woman in the World? Let’s say that you were looking into various rooms in deadly panic, searching, let’s say, for Sharon Stone, and let’s say someone were to ask you who you were looking for. What would you answer? I’m looking for Sharon, because she vanished somewhere. An impossible dialogue! A situation that’s beyond all categories! You can’t ask about the whereabouts of beautiful women: vile intentions, even if they don’t betray you, will be ascribed to you. Even if you were I don’t know what sort of famous ascetic. And I wasn’t. I was, however, unprecedentedly desperate, and the circumstances seemed—in spite of everything—propitious.
On account of the collective and instant evacuation of the banquet, which was now drowned by the downpour and bombarded by lightning bolts, the atmosphere became—as it happens when the commoners suddenly take control of the salons—more and more unrestrained. Under the pretext of drinking to get warm, everyone ignored the extraterritoriality of the embassy and drank as is drunk throughout our entire land: one bottle per person. And so it was no wonder that in short order almost everybody was in the same state as the colorless columnist of the so-called “Independence Style” had been from the very beginning. I wasn’t very fond of him, but I couldn’t think about his predatory swilling with anything other than respect. If a person has to be fuddled in the end, it is better that he be more generously fuddled. And so in a pinch, very much in a pinch, I could put together a thin disguise. I could attempt—pretending to be fuddled—to ask someone who was equally plastered (except that they really were), as if for a joke, about the whereabouts of The Most Beautiful Woman in the world.
But then, I didn’t know this company very well. That is, I knew more or less, who could have her cell phone number. It was clear that the designer who was living in New York most probably had it, and the former minister most certainly had it; that the famous illustrator most likely had it, and that the right-wing journalist probably didn’t; that the film director, know
n for his conquests, might have it, but the composer, who boasted of his monogamy, did not; that the scandalous female painter almost certainly did, but the philosophy professor from Oxford almost certainly not.* This much I knew, but I didn’t know what, in this particular case, would be the reaction to my request. I hesitated a good while, I looked around carefully, I feverishly attempted to find some friendly soul, but, in the end, fear prevailed—the fear that the person I should finally ask wouldn’t manage sufficient discretion, might even, in his cups and for a joke, make a fuss throughout the entire embassy.
As a sort of farewell, I ventured into the private apartments of the ambassador and his wife. Now I was acting in cold blood and as if for my own amusement; I knew that I wouldn’t find her there, but suddenly the power I still had over the guards began to excite me. Calmly, and even phlegmatically, I roamed through personal offices, closets, bathrooms, bedrooms; I went into the toilet for a moment; upon exiting, with an eloquent gesture to the unit that was following me, I made it clear that it was now unoccupied, and—quietly writhing with rage, sorrow, and a feeling of irreversible loss—I went home.
III
In the taxi, while still on the way, I was absolutely certain that I would suddenly be washed away. I was tired, soaking wet, hungry. (Because of nerves, I almost never eat at receptions and here, to boot, before I was able to make up my mind about some slice of cheese, the flood swept all the food in its wake.) I was alone, since, in my desperate search for the irrevocably lost star, it didn’t even occur to me to look around for some sort of substitute for the evening. I was furious at myself over this, too. After all, a couple of very impressive body doubles—you could even say, a couple of very daring and dexterous stuntwomen—were strolling consentingly, very consentingly, about the gardens.
But now the gardens and the city were plunged in rain and darkness. The temperature had fallen at least twenty degrees. I didn’t have a single reason not to have a drink. On the contrary, I had fourteen reasons to have a drink. Fourteen 50 ml bottles of stomach bitters awaited me in the refrigerator. For some time now, I had preferred coin divided up precisely in this fashion, convenient for parcelling out among my pockets. Each of the fourteen named reasons was individually good for a beginning, and all of them together were good for an end.
I paid the taxi driver, ran into my apartment, and, as is my custom when it is bad (and this time, it was very bad), without taking off my shoes I ran straight to the refrigerator in order, as quickly as possible, to open up, unscrew, drink down; in other words, to perform three ritual ceremonies, after which it would stop being bad. But before I plunged myself into the rites, and even before I had made it to the refrigerator, I remembered about the air rifle. That’s right. There was indeed something worth remembering. I had something to recall. And I’ll put it even more forcefully: there is something to tell a story about.
A week earlier I had fulfilled the eternal dream of my childhood, of my youth, and of my maturity—I had bought myself a gun. I had bought myself a pneumatic rifle, commonly known as an air rifle. For a week now, I have been the owner of a dazzling Spanish flintlock from the firm Norica. For a week now, I have been placing the smooth cherry wood butt to my cheek. I raise up the black oxidized barrel, and my dithering hands are calmed, and my weakening eyes once again see every detail. I release the safety, I pull the trigger, and all the artificial flowers, sticky suckers, and black-and-white photographs of film stars, which I shot to bits at Wisła church fairs, fly circles around my head. All the matches, threads, and glass tubes that I was able to shoot up in the shooting galleries I have happened upon in the course of my life (and I haven’t let a single one pass by) spin under the ceiling. All the targets I have managed to hit come flying like squadrons of paper swallows. I don’t like vulgar sentimentalism, but when I load my rifle (I bought—it goes without saying—a significant stock of ammunition), take aim, and hear the metallic clang, I am as happy as I was as a child.
And so, before I rushed to the refrigerator, I remembered about my weapon, and I decided, after all, to take a look at it first, to make sure it was really there. I still had a feeling of unreality. For my whole life, I had been certain (and I still have this fear) that an air rifle belongs to the realm of things that will never be accessible to normal mortals. The place for such collectors’ items was in some sort of closely guarded arsenal. Only the most privileged, and those of the highest standing, had access to them, and even they couldn’t always take them home with them. The owners of church fair shooting galleries—athletic men with insolent eyes—always made an incredible impression upon me. It was clear that they belonged to some sort of dark Areopagus, with no one knew what sort of powers. And it seemed that it would always be so, that the world of dark Areopaguses, inaccessible air rifles, church fair shooting galleries, and mysterious store rooms—full of weapons stands, heaps of artificial flowers, and pyramids of shot—would last forever. And now, when my own, my endlessly beautiful Spanish lady stands there, leaning against the wall, when I look at her—it is with the greatest difficulty that I realize that that world has come tumbling down.
I turned on the light in the room—there she was. She is.** Without taking off my shoes, without changing clothes (and without looking into the refrigerator), I approached, grasped, broke, loaded, and began to shoot.
When a person becomes the owner of a weapon (even one—as some would claim—so childish as an air rifle), the image of the world changes. The world is transformed into a collection of targets. If you have a gun, you automatically begin to examine the world from the point of view of its usefulness for shooting at. In the infinite number of objects that create the surface of reality, only those that are good for shooting count. In this sense, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling ceases to be a light bulb and becomes a perfect and very tempting target. The pigeon on the windowsill is no longer only a pigeon, a tree stump ceases to be exclusively a tree stump, an empty cigarette pack only an empty cigarette pack, etc. In my case, the Coca-Cola bottle caps ceased, in an exceptionally radical manner, to be bottle caps per se and became dazzling and narcotic targets. I placed a cardboard box on my balcony sill, I pounded a pencil into the box, I hung a bottle cap from the pencil, and out of the depths of my living room—Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire! Aim! Fire! Since—I should add—I am addicted to Coca-Cola, I have a considerable reserve of bottle caps.
Now, after the irrevocable loss—so it seemed—of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, after the irrevocable loss of a chance at The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, I was as if in a trance. I was in a fever of despair. I was blasting away mercilessly, and not only could I not stop shooting, I also could not stop hitting the target. Between my eye, the rear sight, the muzzle sight, and the target hanging from the pencil ran an icy, steely, and inexorable line. The successive bottle caps—hit each time in the very heart—flew to pieces in hundreds of tiny, yellow, lightning flashes. When I ran out of bottle caps, I increased the distance twofold, and I scattered my entire stock of empty cigarette packages and matchboxes. Then came the time to set cigarettes on end. I had four unopened packages of Gauloises, which—like it or not—offer eighty hits in a row. Then I mowed down all my pencils. Then six empty lighters. Then I began to look for what might come next. I found three sticks left over from “Magnum” ice cream pops, five cartridges for a Parker ballpoint pen. I broke an old glasses frame into a series of tiny targets. I shot through a one-grosz coin that I had glued for good luck to a miniature calendar. I hit an antique mask that was prominently displayed on the cover of Literary Notebooks. I reduced to pulp the dried up lemon that had been wandering about the kitchen since time immemorial. Finally, I found a pack of playing cards from a Playboy jubilee issue, which soothed me for a moment, but only apparently. I was convinced that shooting at the playing-card likenesses of naked beauties would occupy me for the rest of the evening.
I hung the card with the first naked beauty that came to hand on the pencil, took aim—and my han
d shook. The first that came to hand—or if not the first one that came to hand, then one of ten, one of a hundred, one of a thousand of the first naked beauties that came to hand—looked a bit like The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. That same ideal outline of the shoulders, that same self-satisfied smile, that same motionless gaze.
My hand shook. I lowered my weapon. I was near tears from helplessness and sorrow. I became keenly aware that even the most accurate shot at the effigy of the first naked beauty that came to hand would be a complete embarrassment. Some trashy, per procura, symbolic execution was about to take place in my head. There was no point in shooting. Neither at the substitute likenesses, nor at seemingly neutral targets. There was absolutely no point in shooting. I would have to bear the defeat like a man. Not surrender. To fight, to search, to obtain her coordinates at any cost—even at the cost of humiliation. To try to identify a trustworthy soul, and, in spite of everything, to ask heroically, paying no heed to adversity, for her cellphone number… Heroically, since, after all, even if I would be successful, there is no guarantee what would come next… Jesus Christ! So greatly did the recurrence of a recent nightmare batter me and make me white-hot with rage that I did it. Not in a trance, but in cold calculation. All of my trances—once the trance itself has already basically been strained away—have an icy finish (recall my stroll through the private apartments of the ambassador and his wife), and that’s how it was now, too. I did this in cold calculation, with complete calm, and, toward the end, not without amusement. I brought fourteen 50 ml bottles of stomach bitters from the refrigerator, placed them methodically at decent intervals on the edge of the balcony, and—this will come as no surprise to you—I used fourteen shots on them. It goes without saying that there were no delaying tactics of the sort: empty the fourteen bottles, pour the hooch out into a jug, shoot away at the empties, and then engage in a little private revelry on top of that. No question of any of that. First, whoever has shot at a full bottle and at an empty bottle knows the difference this makes. It is a fundamental difference. It is like the difference between I won’t say which one thing and that other one. Second, I finally needed the smell of blood. And the subtle cloud of stomach bitters coming from the balcony, from the fourteen shattered 50 ml bottles, was like the smell of wolf entrails, like the vapor of tropical swamps, like poison gas. I fell asleep intoxicated and unconscious.