Was this country ever in any way affluent? Perhaps centuries ago. Since then, nothing but desperation. The Poles are a proud, hearty people. They survived the Nazis, the Russians. They are survivors. They rebuilt a country that was smashed to smithereens. The only price they had to pay was killing all the Jews. No more Jews. All taken away, the children, the old folks, everyone. But no one talks about that.
In the early evening, I attended a public reading of my novel. An impressive actor with tremendous gravitas recited my work in translation. When he concluded, he bowed ceremoniously and received ovation after ovation. I felt the love. I was led up onstage. Someone handed me a bouquet of roses. I wasn’t sure what to do with the roses.
More irony: After the reading my hosts took me out to dinner at a “Jewish” restaurant off the main drag in Lodz. As we munched on kasha and pickled beets, a smallish woman played a violin while perched upon a makeshift chunk of thatched roof built over the bar above our heads. She was playing Jewish folk tunes. My host’s eye twinkled as he pointed at her with his fork. “The Fiddler on the Roof!” he laughed as he munched his cabbage roll. Then he knocked back his fourth shot of the house speciality, an intensely evil vodka/turpentine concoction.
Stoned on booze, I am now in my cold room auditing Slavic soft porn on the retro TV. A faint smell of lavender oil pervades. If someone is watching me, I hope I don’t disappoint.
October 20, 1979
I can’t do this. I have no work, no money. I am seriously thinking of moving back to Stoneham to live with Dad. I mean, what’s the point? And as far as writing goes, why do I have to be in New York City to write? Why is it so important to make money writing? I can go back to Stoneham, work as a landscaper and write at night. Why do I need to be in the thick of things? Anonymity was good enough for Dickinson, good enough for Kafka. I need to write like a madman, then when I have achieved my goals, I will burn everything.
Zim says the objective of the writer is to persist, to survive, like a cockroach. Katie says I have no choice. I will have to stay until I get run out of town.
Katie has convinced me to give myself another six months. The only way I can think about it is “If not me, who?” I know my writing is better than the others. But there’s no proof of this “fact.”
Katie is getting ready for her first gallery show. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard. She never shows any sign of doubt. It’s like she’s going to war, she’s so determined. She won’t let me visit, won’t let me see her work.
August 3, 2006
My driver waited in his idling Honda as I rang the doorbell of Dagmara’s flat. A buzzer sounded, the electronic latch released. I shouldered the tall heavy street door inward and waved the driver off. Everything in Warsaw is styled à la nineteenth century or earlier. Except, as I was to learn later, virtually everything has been reconstructed. My eyes adjusted to the dark corridor within. A stairwell. Clean, dark, cool, and sterile.
I climbed the scrubbed cement steps to the third floor, confused momentarily because floors are counted differently in Europe. The third floor landing was actually what I would count as the fourth. I heard Dag’s voice one story above me, calling from her opened door. “Richard?” I rounded the final flight to discover her silhouette. Why was I here? Why couldn’t I leave her in the petrified forest of my memory? I brought her back to life. Here she was. All of her.
As I moved closer, she cross-faded from an outline into something with a face. Her hair was darker. But her eyes were the same, large, innocent, searching. Dag had not gone to fat. She was herself, only older. The perfect slope of her nose was still there, her cheekbones. She had matured from ingenue to fading beauty.
She said: “Look at you!” I kissed her cheek, because it seemed to be the thing to do. She presented the other and I kissed her again, inhaling her scent. It felt as if we were the last two people in the world. I wanted to hug her tightly to me and not let go. Instead I handed her a gift-wrapped copy of A Gentle Death. She accepted it the way a turnpike clerk might take a toll. In singsong, she said, “Come in, come in!”
Dagmara’s place was surprisingly sunny and roomy. I stood in the middle of her small kitchen as she brewed a pot of tea. I told her I saw Haim in Tel Aviv. Dag smiled weakly, and asked, “Is he well?” Something happened between them after I had left, that was clear. I abandoned the topic and described my heart surgery for the umpteenth time, my story polished and supple. Dag half-listened while she poured out the tea.
In her living room I sank into the old-fashioned couch. I asked how her life was in Poland. She replied that it was quiet. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent reforms, she had returned to real estate. Without any prodding, she let me know that she has been married for ten years but that the husband was no longer around. They had had one child, a girl, who was working in Kraków. She smiled gently and added, “You look prosperous, Richard.”
“I am.” What could I tell her about my life for the last twenty-five, thirty years without sounding boastful? My pursuit of success, my achieving it, my struggle to maintain some sort of dignity with my work, my slow but sure transformation into a wealthy hermit. Describing any of this was pointless because it had no meaning in this context of post-Soviet drudgery. What it would be like to sleep with her now?
I asked Dag what she did for fun. She said that she worked long hours and that she spent her nights alone at home. She enjoyed American television shows, especially Law & Order. She was enamored of Sam Waterston. I told her that I often see the film crews working in the streets of the city. She replied, “Really?” with faint interest.
I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t you miss it?”
“What?”
“The city.”
“I still live in the city.”
“But Warsaw is so quiet.” A faint clatter in the cobblestoned square below filled our silences. When I drove up, workers were erecting stalls. I rose from the armchair and found a window. Below, I saw a man serving ices to children. A mime was pestering people. Groups strolled through the historic center, checking out the makeshift market. It couldn’t have looked more dreary.
Dagmara said softly, “I like the peace. In the end, New York frightened me.”
“Certainly not when you were with me. You liked to party. You and your blond friends.”
“Did I?” An offended tone crept into her voice.
“Of course! You were a hot ticket. You had a hundred boyfriends. You and I had fun.”
“Yes, fun. You made me do things I wouldn’t normally do.”
“I made you? In what way did I ‘make’ you do anything? Are you saying, I forced you to do something against your will?”
“Yes. Of course. You know that.” Her clear and virtuous eyes searched mine.
This seemed to be a ruse, to what end I had no idea. “What could you be referring to, Dag? We had a great time when we were roommates.”
“You perhaps. You had a great time.” She was examining her teacup, as if she could see us in the bottom, thirty years ago, in the apartment.
“Wait a sec. Not me. Both of us. Both of us had a great time in New York.”
“Some memories are enjoyable from one perspective and not another.” Her accent had become much stronger over here. It gave her speech a formal quality. She drained the dregs.
“Wait a minute, what on earth are you talking about? We lived together as friends.”
“As ‘friends.’ Like the TV show, eh?”
“We were young. And it didn’t work out as a stable relationship, but I have no regrets. Do you?”
“D’accord. C’est ça.”
“So tell me.”
“Richard, you haven’t changed in, what is it, thirty years? You intentionally forget.”
“Dagmara, I didn’t come all the way here to play twenty questions.”
“Okay. Okay. I don’t want your trip to Warsaw to be a waste of time. I don’t want to play games.” She collected my cup and headed for the
kitchen. “Do you remember the night we got very drunk on port wine? My family had sent me a bottle of very old wine. Someone coming to the States had brought it to me from Warsaw. Do you remember that night?”
Water was running in the kitchen. If I could make an inventory of every single second Dag and I had spent together, I probably would not remember the night “of the port wine.” In fact, I didn’t recall specifically any of the nights we had spent together. I only recollected her white skin, her mouth. Her endless fussing over her hair and clothes. I recalled her perfume. I remembered her tending to me when I was ill. But not much else. From the journals I had the idea we didn’t fuck much. Certainly I never penetrated her. But now I remembered, we had, I did. I called out to her: “The port wine? We drank the whole bottle, right?”
“Oh yes. Very like you. It was special, that wine. I wanted to save it, but you insisted that we continue drinking. We became quite drunk.” She returned to the living room, drying her hands on an embroidered dish towel.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You don’t remember anything else from that night?”
She wandered out again, forcing me to raise my voice. “I think we were kissing on the couch. We did that often. Haim never knew. He still doesn’t.”
She called out from the kitchen: “You told me you enjoyed keeping secrets from Haim. It gave you power over him. And me!”
“Well, it didn’t make sense to give him the sordid details. He worshipped you. You know that don’t you? I’m sure he told you. It was obvious.”
Dag reentered and sat down next to me. I could smell her perfume. “Let’s not discuss Haim.” She sought my eyes. “The night of the port wine. You don’t remember anything else?”
“You got sick?” A vague memory asserted itself. But parts were missing.
“I got very drunk. And you wanted to have sex. Do you remember that?”
“I always wanted to have sex.”
“We had actually begun to break it off. It was getting too tense in the apartment and you were seeing other women. You had sex with my best friend.”
“Right.” When had Dagmara become a nun?
“But that night. We got drunk. And then, well, if you don’t remember…”
“What?”
“No, it’s okay, Richard.”
“What? Obviously you’ve remembered. It’s something important to you. Tell me. I want to know, because it’s important. To you.”
“Use your high-powered imagination.”
“I wanted to have sex. You didn’t want to have sex.”
Dagmara lit a cigarette. “Your eyes. What’s that Eagles song? ‘Lyin’ Eyes’?”
“Lemme guess, we had sex!”
“Yes. We had sex.”
Okay, time to fold. “And you didn’t want to.”
She kept her gaze steady, as if bequeathing a great truth. “There’s really no other way to describe it: You raped me, Richard.”
Why was she doing this to me? “We were seeing each other. It isn’t rape if you’re sleeping with someone.”
“I was sore for a week. I got an infection. Don’t you remember, I couldn’t get out of bed the next day? You crept around the house, looking guilty.”
“Are you saying I had sex with you in a blackout?”
“Okay, okay, you don’t remember. Very flattering. But there’s more. Do you want to hear this or what?”
“Of course.”
“I became pregnant. From that night. I couldn’t bear to tell you then. I knew you’d just make a cynical remark and pack me off to the abortion doctor. Besides, you were just a boy, what could you do about it? We weren’t about to get married!” Dagmara laughed out loud, as if genuinely amused. “Still, it made me crazy knowing I was carrying your child inside me. Because I could have loved you and I was certain you didn’t love me. Oh! Don’t jump to any conclusions. There was a, how do you say it, miscarried before this good Catholic girl had to face the music. But not before I passed through a very struggling time in my life.”
Dag’s command of English was decaying. This had always happened when she was upset. No point in correcting her. “I don’t remember any of this, Dag. How could I, since I didn’t know?”
“In those days, you were spending more and more time away at night. With your friends in Brooklyn, I think. That woman ’Gitte, who you worshipped. And her husband.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Fortunately I didn’t do anything dramatic like jump myself in front of a subway train. What made it more depressing was that you didn’t notice my sadness. I reached a time when just seeing you in the apartment upset me. I told you I was taking a night course and had to study, so I had an excuse for staying in my room. Then one day you announced you were moving out and suddenly you were gone. And I did not see you again until right now, today. We both, Haim and I, missed you for different reasons, although by that point, I was happy that you left. There was a sense of relief.”
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No. I’m glad to see you. You’re not the only one who becomes curious with old age. I had read about you in the American magazines. And besides, what happened was a long time ago. Deep down, I still care for you. Love you, in my way. How can I not have those feelings? And I’m happy for your success. There’s a lovely sense of accomplishment when someone you know has done well. I feel like I share it in a way.”
“You’re making me feel very guilty.”
Dagmara smiled warmly. “I had made a—how do you say it?—deal with myself not to mention any of this today.”
“You left New York because of me?”
Dagmara slapped her thigh. “Now, wouldn’t that be a souvenir you could take back to New York? An idea you could cherish! Unfortunately, no! Well, not because of you, specifically you. It was the whole thing. You were a part of New York for me and my New York experience had many unpleasant aspects. It was all too rough for me. Too heartless. And so I left, yes.”
My book lay on the coffee table. I wondered if she would ever open it. “You’re telling me that no man in Poland acts selfishly?”
“No, I’m telling you that in Poland there is some sense of another person. What’s the word? Empathy? There is some sense of love. My husband is an alcoholic and so we had to separate. But we are married to this day. And as selfish as he was, he admits it. He is remorseful. He goes to church and confesses. You did what you did as a young man, and then you just kept going, same as before. What you did is a part of you, your modus operandi. It’s what makes Richard Richard. It’s what attracted me to you. You know? All those adages about leopards and spots and scorpions and frogs. Your destiny was clear.”
“You have a few spots of your own, Dagmara.”
“Maybe. But different, eh? Not as black.”
I had hoped for a quiet afternoon, maybe some sightseeing. The driver would not be returning to pick me up for another two hours. I didn’t want to spend another minute with this narrow-minded woman who had once been so lively and sensuous and was now sitting here trying to wound me with a thirty-year-old resentment. Her husband had left her angry and bitter. Who needed it?
She said, “It’s in the past, Richard. You should eat. “And again, she disappeared into the kitchen. My anger vied with my pity. This is what Dagmara’s life had come to. She was trapped in a vapid day-to-day existence in a struggling country. She hadn’t had the guts to stick it out in New York. And so now, here she was. Confined to the prison cell of her own nonhistory. Why should I be angry with her? She had the worst of it.
We consumed a boring lunch of sliced cucumber, cheese and bread. Later we visited perhaps the most tedious museum in which I have ever set foot. Gallery after gallery of oil portraits of royalty long turned to dust in their graves. Men who ruled an empire no one now remembers.
The driver was waiting for us when we returned, so we said our goodbyes quickly and without emotion. Exhausted, I slipped into the car and dozed all the way back
to Lodz. At the hotel dining room another overwhelming dinner of fish and veal and potatoes and cabbage. Tomorrow the flight leaves at eight a.m.
August 10, 2006
After days of jet lag, I decided to make the trip to the city to a backyard barbecue at Leon’s brownstone in Brooklyn. I have so few friends in the world, I must cherish the remaining few I do have. This is without seriously looking at whether Leon is in fact my friend. We’ve been through a lot, so I suppose he is. We amuse one another. We laugh out loud when we’re together. That’s friendship, right?
Once it was so much easier to motivate myself. All I had to do was follow my desire: money, fame, women. I had goals that flowed from my gut unbidden, seized my heart and set me in motion. I had no choice, I had to pursue what I wanted. I never questioned the imperative. I no longer have that drive. So I set goals to force some direction to my day. Ergo my attendance at Leon’s barbecue. Having made the commitment, I forced myself up at a reasonable hour, showered, shaved. I drove into the city, daydreaming as I plied the traffic.
The Polish trip had left me feeling rancid and irritated. I knew it was just fatigue and some viral bug I had caught, probably in the restaurant. All the same, I was not myself. Thirty years ago I was a rapist. Live and learn.
It’s funny how Leon has kept up with the times. Me, I’m content to have an apartment on the Upper West Side and a country house in Connecticut. But Leon is much hipper than me. Long before it became fashionable, Leon lived in a loft down in TriBeCa and then ten years ago, with perfect timing, he sold the place for two million bucks, and moved his young family across the river to a brownstone in Brooklyn. At first it seemed like a crackpot move. Why would anyone want to live in Brooklyn? He appropriated a massive brownstone for a sum in the low five figures. Repointed and reroofed the whole damn thing, installed a new furnace, landscaped the backyard and in the process became two million dollars richer.
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