Lovetown

by Michal Witkowski

  A boy would sit there fidgeting. He’d drape his jacket over the stool and sit down on it. But then he’d remember he had a pack of cigarettes in the pocket, carefully hidden from his mother! He’d realise he’d have to retrieve them somehow, light one, his hands trembling, and make sure they all knew how grown-up he was. And above all, he’d have to try not to fall off the stool, not to flinch at the sudden roar of the espresso machine behind him, not to jump at his own reflection in the window with the inscription SIBRO: Brand-name Beverages, Cakes to Order, Coffee, Cognac, and definitely not to collapse from excitement or embarrassment whenever the other men winked at him, fondled their crotches, and glanced at the toilet door. And they’d all be winking; they’d wink at each other and point at the boy.

  I was that boy.

  I, who back then confused art with smoking, who confused being an artist with drinking, who confused writing with being a whore, with autumn, with everything. It was 1988. The espresso machine howled like a fury, and a melancholy song was always running through my mind. Outside, autumn was underway, and it smelled of burning leaves. The first frost of winter is not a great time for a young man with an awakening lust for life. After a few cognacs I began to feel ill and puked into the urinal a brown mélange of sugary coffee and spirits. Someone walked in after me and squealed with exaggerated horror: ‘Heavens, chicken here’s about to be sick!’ I must have been fifteen. The man, who had a moustache and a shoulder bag, was probably thirty. What was I thinking, engrossed in the spluttering sound of the espresso machine, on that wet, grey day when I bunked off school and spent my lunch money on coffee and cognac instead? He told me that if I was up for it, we could go to the toilets at the railway station, that the toilet lady rented out a special cubicle with an Out of Order sign, and that by slipping her a hundred thousand zlotys we could both sit in the cubicle for as long as we liked.

  It was horribly cold at the railway station. I was shivering, and my legs were like jelly. My fingers smelled of cigarettes and stale, dried vomit, nervous sweat and cologne. My legs continued to shake as I stood in the cubicle, although it wasn’t so cold anymore. Afterwards, when it was all over, I had the taste of genitalia in my mouth – salty, syrupy – along with that awful aftertaste of cigarettes: I wasn’t used to smoking. I vomited a few more times that day. My jumper reeked of it, too. Love bites surfaced on my neck, reddening treacherously like the first symptoms of AIDS. I’d hide them under a polo-neck, under a scarf. My lips were sore, dirty, chapped. The guy took a liking to my watch and asked if he could have it. I was so out of it I gave it to him without a word. Later, of course, I remembered that I wasn’t even a grown up yet and that my parents were still curious about what happened to my possessions.

  That was how I first met them. Years later, returning from some literary event or other, I ran into Patricia at the railway station, and we arranged to do an interview.

  The Little Fairy was managed by Mother Joan of the Homos, aka Pani Jola – the only real woman among that crowd. She must have been sixty. She was heavyset, crude, with piercing eyes that were always winking, always reflecting the moustached or smooth-shaven faces of her conversation partners perched along the bar, their glasses of cognac raised in a toast. She tended the bar but never served anyone. Instead, she drank with her patrons, denouncing themas slags and whores, and they loved her for it. Her eyes, always a little bleary and bloodshot, reflected not just people but entire histories. They were so shiny and glassy you could watch the front door opening and closing in them, and see the heavy crimson curtain that kept the heat from escaping; you could also see who was doing what to whom and for how much. Mother Joan of the Homos could have – no, she should have! – written a book of the Wrocław streets.

  Every day she should have written the stories down on the bar tabs with her Orbis pen. Story A: Two cognacs, one coffee, one strawberry torte with jam; story B: coffee and a pack of Carmens; story C: four vodkas followed by four shots of the same, on the tab. Oh, what has become of those bar tabs of 1988? Where are those stories now, sticky from sugary cakes and grimy with cigarette ash? Where are Mother Joan’s enormous bosoms now, their spacious luxury, which went unheeded, unneeded, by everyone? Bosoms that no doubt had a little amber heart dangling between them, an inebriated and good heart, filled with understanding for everybody’s problems. With the obstinacy of a true maniac, Mother Joan of the Homos insisted they were all affairs of the heart. All of them. And that’s exactly what she would say: ‘Jessica’s not about, she’s in the toilet. Some affair of the heart has banished her there.’

  But Mother could talk like that because she’d been endowed with two enormous hearts, not to mention that amber pendant rocking between them. Her puffy face, her emergency loans, her giving of booze on credit, her buying a stolen set of Finnish knives and all sorts of other hot merchandise, and her discreet anti-Semitism, shown for example when she hugged one of the queens:

  ‘Sweetness, you know I have nothing against Jews, but for God’s sake, shaaaave!’ she would gurgle, nestling the unshaven face between her bosoms. But she sniffed out the Jew in all of us. I had only to go to the toilet for Mother Joan of the Homos to exclaim:

  ‘Look at Snow White’s profile… Wouldn’t you girls say she’s got something of the Ahashrachabash about her?’

  As a woman of at least three hearts, she had more than enough maternal instinct to spare for the black-market moneychangers across the road, in the café of the Hotel Monopol. Out of all the queens in the world, the moneychangers tolerated only Golda, aka La Belle Hélène. I don’t know much about her. She always wore an impeccable suit, and she went through life without ID papers, until they were procured for her at the old people’s home. Before that, after she’d lost her money, she lived in the kitchen of her former maid. On her fiftieth birthday the moneychangers threw her a party at that awful Monopol, and Golda sat on a golden throne wearing a golden jacket. But none of the other queens went because they weren’t allowed in.

  In any case, although the moneychangers entered the haze of the Little Fairy with visible revulsion, certain interests kept luring them back. Mother would buy gold from them, and she operated as a kind of one-person pawnshop-cum-bureau de change. The moneychangers would stand at the high bar, embarrassed by their satchels (known as fag-bags), shifting their weight from foot to foot. Their legs were invariably wrapped in bright nylon tracksuit bottoms, their waists girdled with bum-bags. Russian signet rings, watches, all sorts of tokens – Mother would test each item with her teeth, then deposit it in her bra, or some other cranny of her ample body, to keep it warm.

  Goodness, how jealous Mother’s regulars would become, how they hated the moneychangers! Was it because she referred to their petty, dirty business, all of which reeked of illicit hard currency, as affairs of the heart, too? Was it because of her generosity? Or was it ultimately because she satisfied the moneychangers’ need for maternal love and kindness, as well? No, there was another reason for the queens’ hostility: the moneychangers viewed her with completely different eyes, and she, for her part, played erotic games with them.

  ‘Pani Jola’s grumpy today, Pani Jola can’t have got much sleep…’ Without the moneychangers, Pani Jola was simply Mother Joan, but in their presence she became a Woman. When she talked to the queens, she would smile indulgently and show curiosity. She looked at us as if we were two-headed calves. And she never tired of hearing the simplest jokes: ‘That’s what she said!’ Or: ‘I’ll pick up my skirt and leave you in the dirt!’ Whenever any of us uttered one of those one-liners, Mother Joan of the Homos would burst into paroxyms of laughter, and with her chubby fist mop away the tears that smeared her makeup. She loved talking to us like we were women, but her own repertoire of witticisms was far skimpier than the ones that made her laugh.

  Pani Jola was one of those people who disappeared completely after the fall of communism. The ground simply swallowed them up sometime in the mid-nineties. Even as late as 1991 she’d had a go at setting up
a little sweet stall, but it didn’t work out. If I ran into Pani Jola today, I’m sure she’d either be in the gutter or else stylishly slim, all done up like a spoilt European.

  And instead of her book of the streets, she’d only be interested in her chequebook.

  ***

  Today I know what I need to ask them about. Will they talk?

  ‘When did you first start going to the barracks?’ Both of them, as if on command from their corporal, lower their eyelashes and start examining their faded fingernails. Lucretia stands up and in one move switches off the record player. This is serious.

  ‘Oh my God, the things that used to go on! Like once when the police came, they were hauling off the drunks near the barracks and they shouted at us: “Off to see the Russians at the barracks again!?”

  ‘And you, Trisha, started jabbering and swinging that empty vodka bottle in their faces:

  ‘“What? We are friends with the Soviets, aren’t we? All I want’s to drink a vodka to my Soviet friends. Na zdorovye! I’m a member of the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society!’

  ‘And then that one cop slipped his finger in and out of his mouth:

  ‘“That’s what you mean by friendship! Fucking homo!”

  ‘And all the other cops sniggered in unison!

  ‘Then Trisha shouted:

  ‘“But I just want to go out for drinks with them!”

  ‘And the cop says:

  ‘“Right, get so plastered your arse won’t hurt!” And they all started sniggering! Oh my Lord, when the Russians left, some queens hanged themselves!”’

  ‘Please, ladies, one thing at a time!’ I say. They get serious.

  ‘When I moved here from Bydgoszcz… Well, at first I was going to go to Legnica, because the other queens at the station in Bydgoszcz had told me how pansies from all over Poland go there. But the crowd there turned out to be too big, the soldiers couldn’t stave them off. You know what, I told myself, they have armies in Wrocław, too. And the Russkies have no money for prostitutes because they’re kept in their barracks without pay. And with them, of course, no one wants to be the bitch. So I put on my thinking cap and said to Patricia:

  ‘“Girl, now’s our chance.” We talked about it all through the night. We took a number 17 bus and got off next to the bushes, then made our way over to the barracks. We went during the day, so we could see what the fences were like and everything. But there were no fences there, just a high wall plastered with harmless phrases that in four different languages warned you against coming within shooting distance. It was topped with coils of rusted barbed wire, and every dozen metres or so a watchtower and a guard. I said, “Patricia, what are we getting ourselves into?” But it all worked out, and twelvemonths later it was all a matter of course. One never appreciates what one has until it’s gone. Later on, other queens claimed they’d been there first, but who believes that bunch of kangaroos? You’re at the very fount of all knowledge here.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘What was it like? What do you think it was like? Day in, day out is what it was like. Around one o’clock in the morning, we’d climb the wall, one of us giving the other a leg up. In no time a helmet would appear in one of those guard towers in the wall, and the soldier would ask in a whisper:

  ‘“Chto?”*

  ‘And we’d always answer:

  ‘“Eto my, dyevochki!”**

  ‘Snow was falling, the walls were bathed in moonlight… that’s how you should be describing it for him – the gentleman is a novelist after all!’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t matter if it was snowing or pissing down with rain, we were there all the time, with our Dyevochki prisli, vpustitye nas!* And the soldier would whisper either tyepyer nye nado,** or that we should come back za pyat’ minut…*** Once upon a time they had a huge pile of coal for heating their barracks on the other side of the wall, a whole slag heap high enough to jump on to. Supporting each other, Patricia and I would leap on to that pile of slag… More fuel for the fire! And there they were, five of them, waiting, steam shooting out of their drawers! We got ourselves all dirty because there was still barbed wire left on the wall and we had to jump several metres on to the heap.’

  ‘Oh my God, to se ne vrati!’**** Patricia downed a full shot glass.

  ‘We used to take them porn magazines, Taiwanese ones;we’d take them coffee in thermoses, and booze. All those queens standing in queues at the butcher’s weren’t there on their own account; they went so they could make kielbasa sandwiches for them! Lordy, Lordy… They were always competing, who could piss the furthest, or spit the furthest, who farted the loudest. What a shame, Michał, that you weren’t even born.’

  ‘Oh please! Don’t remind me!’

  ‘So why didn’t you go to Legnica?’

  ‘We don’t like crowds…’

  ‘There was too much… What is it called? What’s that word? What is it now?’ Lucretia can’t remember.

  ‘Competition?’

  ‘That too. But there was another word, too… What was it? When there’s plenty of something? Oh, supply! Supply exceeded demand. At the barracks Mirejka said to us, “A person can only work it so much, you can only work it so much, right? Well, I couldn’t do it. No sense carrying coals to Katowice! Patty, come and sit down beside me here in the grass. Come on, you whore, sit down, do that for me. We’ll drink some vodka, I’ll put a Validol under my tongue, feeling weak like I do… Oy, I’ve probably had eighteen of them… The one was ready to beat the crap out of the other, they were fighting cause they all wanted to… I mean, fuck if I’m taking every last cock down my throat!”

  ‘But in Legnica, they couldn’t process so many queens.’

  ‘The Legnica queens…’ – Patricia donned an army cap adorned with a red hammer and sickle and stood in front of the mirror, carefully arranging it like an old woman does her beret – ‘… the Legnica queens would stroll by the barracks all tarted up like women. At first they actually pretended they were women; they’d tell them they couldn’t do it from the front because they were having their period… And if one of them was being especially cheeky, she’d say, “I’m still a virgin and I intend to stay that way!” Right! “But you can still dome from behind…” – Virgin! – “or I can give you a blowjob!” And for a while, there in the dark, those soldiers even bought it, I reckon. But you see there was the Legnica school, which was all tranny, and the Wrocław school, which we’re the founders of, and the Wrocław school wasn’t tranny at all. I mean, they were used to their punks anyway, so it didn’t much matter whether it was their punks sucking them off or someone from outside the barracks. They’d even piss on you, if you asked them nicely…’

  At that last remark, Lucretia froze at the table with the teapot in her hand. The blood went out of her face, and she said through clenched teeth: ‘Tell me you’re making that up.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth. They pissed on me, three of them together, as I lay on the gravel, on the coal, the slag! It’s just that you – ha! – you were laid up with syphilis in a hospital bed that night, eating cold milk soup! That’s right, my love! And the steam shot right out of them…’ Patricia took obvious pleasure in teasing Lucretia.

  ‘If that’s the truth, then I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore. God, you could have at least told me they’d even agree to something like that, that there was even a possibility…’ Lucretia slowly started to put on her jacket and beret. At eight o’clock every evening she went to mass.

  ‘And there was one of them…’ – here Patricia’s face lit up with an ironic, jaded smile and twisted into a grimace – ‘…there was one I took a real fancy to. But he always kept himself to himself, off to the side, and didn’t seem interested. So what do I do? I put on my proverbial thinking cap and say to myself, “Patricia, it looks like you’ll need a bit of psychology with this chap.” So I go up to him, this big blond – actually he wasn’t, they all had mousey hair, just mousey brown. So I go up, and he says something l
ike, “Kak eto? Malchik s malchikyem?”* And here I’m thinking: Aha! I’ve got you. There he was, Alyosha from The Brothers Karamazov. Fine, then I’ll be Grushenka. So I say to him:

  ‘“Look, I’ve been in Gyermania – three years – and there – eto normalno – lads with lads.” And he just looks at me, dithering:

  ‘“No, ty nye zhenshchina.”* And it was like a bolt of lightning hit me; I flew into a fit, squealing so loudly they started hissing at me to shut up:

  ‘“What do you mean I’m not a woman?!” I said, “I have a mouth, don’t I? And a vagina, too?” – and I showed him my bare arse – “I do, I do!” But my Gyermania is what did the trick. For them it was like paradise, unattainable, to travel to Germany! Those twentysomething young men, their whole lives in Russia, and other than Poland, other than their barracks, they never saw anything of the world!

  ‘“Kak eto, v Gyermanii tak eto dyelayut, eto normalno!”** And hardly had he unbuttoned his flies than I was on it like a leech!

  ‘But one time they came to us at night outside the wall. They were leaning against it when – whoosh! – one of their caps slid off, and a shaved head flashed in the darkness, and then another, and then a third. We burst into tears:

  ‘“You’re leaving! You’re abandoning us!”