‘Mind if I join you?’ And without waiting for my answer, she ‘joins’ me, like we were sitting in a café or something. And she was so full of herself! Says to me:
‘So where are you from?’ She was talking down to me like I was some chump on the street. So I said to her:
‘I’m from Wrocław, more or less.’ By now I had her number.
‘Basically? Oh, you mean, you’re from outside of Wrocław?’ She was pleased as Punch to have found a country boy, thought she’d be able to do whatever she wanted with me. If she had any idea she was dealing with Madame de Merteuil in the flesh, she wouldn’t have taken the bait and wouldn’t be running off in a panic now either. That’s what people are like these days, Vicômte! No style, no taste, no class, and no panache! No sense for ruling by the sword, no feeling for the cloak and dagger, for intrigue, for love – nothing at all! All they do is consume, consume, consume! Everywhere you look, fat slobs gorging themselves on chips! Anyway, having provoked her question, I answered it:
‘Umm, more or less means I spend half the year in Paris.’ Well, she screwed up her nose, but continued talking down at me:
‘Oh? And what do you do there?’
A chump, Vicômte. She was asking me what a chump does in Paris. So the chump replied:
‘I’m doing a Ph.D.’
Well, at that she retreated into herself entirely; it was clear that the furthest her intellectual ambitions had ever taken her was a few poems published in the journal of the Proletarian Cultural Workers’ Club, Zgierze Section. But then she asked me, flamboyantly:
‘Huh. Really. So what is your topic?’
At which point the chump took a deep breath and rattled off the topic of your (unfinished) dissertation, Vicômte:
‘Well, it’s a deconstruction of the Cartesian subject in light of Derrida’s early work, with special consideration given to Rosi Braidotti’s deconstruction of the feminine subject!’ There, eat that!
Eat that, intellectual! What more can I say? With all the wind knocked abruptly out of her sails, she threw in the towel and slunk off…
St Mary of the Relics
‘We have another saint on our hands, I’m telling you.’ Paula is talking about Mary of the Relics, whom she ran into before her trip and whom they sometimes call the ‘Lover of All Priests’. Another saint? Rolka may be a saint, but her? ‘Her of all people. Just imagine: an ordinary young queen, eyebrows plucked, a collection of old relics. Her life is entirely bound up with the church, her speech larded up and down with Latin and archaisms; she knows everything, and she’s no stranger to carnal desires either… Oh, honey! The things she’s told me! Heavens! But she told me never to tell you. What she said was:
‘“If I’m ever really down on my luck, I’ll sell it all to Fakt! That little princess Snowflake will have to scrape my uterus six times before she gets anything out of me…”’
‘Brrr!’
‘But I will say this, Michał: we were stupid, we were so stupid, not to have entered the priesthood ten years ago. What we could have had there… I mean really. Of course, there’ll always be some beastly prioress around, some chubby alpha queen wearing glasses who just happens always to have the whip ready, and if you cross her you’re done for. But so what? Get her off and it all blows over. Just think: the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries, and so on! Maybe she was making it all up. I really don’t know. Queens will tell you anything about anyone, for them nothing’s sacred: insert name of politician – oh, him? I did him. Or of some well-known paragon of virtue – I’ll give you paragon, girl! That slag had the run of the picket line, dishing out her honour to all comers! I did him a thousand times! The higher the position, the more obvious it is that he’s a queen, a queen, with a cruising-ground history. That’s how they talk, Vicômte, and it’s hard to hear. After all, as you know, I was raised in a country house, in an ancient, patrician Jewish family. With respect for values.’
‘Oh, they’re just making it up! They see everything in their own image.’
‘Mary told me about two queens, priests from Poznań, who lived in the presbytery. They would fuck the night away in dark rooms (dressed in civvies of course), then rush back to the presbytery early in the morning to prepare for matins. But in order to avoid performing mass in a state of sin, they’d go out to the balcony and take turns saying and giving confession to each other. Typically one of them would bow her head as if deep in thought, a distressed look on her face, and listen to the (for her very familiar) catalogue of the previous night’s sins, before giving her friend the blessing. Then they’d switch. They even did penance. And then the two clergymen would put on their vestments and go out to perform, their eyes lowered devoutly.’
Mary herself personified the hypocrisy of it all. She’d sewn herself a black and white habit, the kind worn by nuns, and put it on when she was at home, just like putting on a hairpiece. ‘If you ever saw her with that thing on her head, you’d crack up! She has that look of a jolly old soul about her, plus she’s a fatty, and then there’s that habit she made, looks totally realistic, and her eyes turned heavenward, wearing those horn-rimmed, old-lady glasses of hers… She laughs at herself: “This here psycho queen’s gone and made herself a nun!”
‘She keeps her money in an old eucharist wafers bag. It has the words Eucharist Wafers prepared in full accordance with Canon Law under the Supervision of a Priest Chaplain printed on it!’
‘Eucharist wafers?’
‘You know, for communion, the… umm, host. It says A CHRISTUS Co. product on it. And that whore keeps her money in it.’
And she collected religious relics, too.
‘She buys them?’
‘No, you’re not allowed to. Since the Middle Ages the trade in relics has been strictly regulated.’
‘So how does that tart get them?’
‘You have to write a special letter to the Vatican, a really long one, and write about your beliefs in it… And you have to describe how you’re on your knees begging for a relic in order to boost your lapsing faith. Saints are multiplying like rabbits these days, as you know, and when someone is canonised there’s a whole procedure, relics categorised A, B and C… The C’s are the worst. All you need is for the saint to have touched an object, and even part of it, a rosary bead for instance, will count as a category-C relic. In any case: the Pope makes someone a saint, or a blessed. Then they pull him out of his coffin and cut him up. The thighs are distributed to parishes around the world, parishes that have been on the waiting list for them for years; the head goes to Rome; fingers to some important place or other; and slivers of the various remaining bits go off to private individuals. Some parts of the saint are considered holier than others. For instance, Mary has loads of category-C relics and blesseds, but only one category-A. Of the Polish saints, she has a small patch of St Faustyna’s clothing and a wood chip from the coffin of St Rafał Kalinowski, and then there are the bone fragments of the two Spanish Carmelites in that gold double medallion. She has a Joan de Chantal and a St Mary à la Cock… I asked her about medieval relics, Michalina, so I could maybe get you a St Alexis for your birthday, you always loved the Legend of St Alexis… but unfortunately, the really old ones, including all the St Alexises, no longer “circulate”, they’re not available any more. The Renaissance is the limit.’
‘But wait, maybe you could still get me a Renaissance…?’
‘And that whore’ – here Paula laughs – ‘got all conspiratorial with me, she was like, “I’ll show you something, but it’s a secret.” And out of her shopping bag she pulls out that double medallion, which was inscribed with some kind of flowery script… “Here, take a look. Bones of Spanish Carmelites…”’
‘Where did she show it to you then, at her flat?’
Paula chortles: ‘No, guess where…’
‘No! Not there!’
Paula nods, stifling her laughter.
‘No, you must be kidding! She showed it to you on the picket?’
‘
On a bench, on the picket line. She was like: “Well, I know it’s a sacrilege to show holy things in a place like this, but you’ve got to see it.” And she reached into an ugly plastic carrier bag from the supermarket and pulled out the gold medallions. She didn’t have a problem with it. She’ll end up like Rolka, our Mary will, just wait and see.’
‘Did you look inside the medallion?’
‘What are you talking about? It’s locked permanently! No way to open it.’
But when I ask her if Mary is still collecting relics, if she’d acquired any of the old ones yet, she tells me that that sinner was tempted by a snake, and ever since she ate of the forbidden fruit she’s given up collecting, which is to say: Mary still had an ounce of decency left in her.
Trash Queen
Brrring-Brrring! It’s Anna:
Oh Annie, what I went through yesterday… You know how I’m from a very good, old Jewish family, to the manner born. Even if I were poor, I’d still have class, which is not so much about money as about breeding and good taste. I always buy Hutschenreuther china from Niskie Łąki… And you know I forbid the use of certain words in my presence; I simply refuse to acknowledge ever having heard them. Like that word that begins with ‘b’, which everyone’s doing in the parks now, smoke billowing all over the place… That’s not something I do. I will, however, consent to a ball, with a glass of delicious French wine sent down from the château by our very own Nadya Nadyeyevna Yepanchin…
Which reminds me, there was this fellow I went to meet, a straight man, who used to come and see me every now and then for the obvious reasons. He said to me: My wife is out of town, come over. Somewhere out by Kowale. I really had no interest in taking the train out there; I’m thinking, what good is a bachelor in Kowale to me…? But I went; it seemed silly to refuse. It was dark, cold; I was afraid to walk the streets of Kowale. Of course the street went on for a whole kilometre, and nada: there was no such address. Finally it turned out he lived in an old schoolhouse that had been converted into cheap flats. Oh, Annie, that place was like a chicken coop! The way some people live! Just imagine, the minute you walk in you’re assailed by mustiness and decay. A tiny, depressing cubbyhole… but what depressed me most was the old television set, and this big, dusty, plush dog on top of it, its paw drooping over the screen. I thought I’d faint. Of course, you know that even having a television is suspect – but a stuffed animal? Utter kitsch! If only he’d get on with it… But he must have watched too many American movies; he’d got it into his head that we were going to have a romantic evening together, just the two of us (his child was sleeping in the next room). He clutched my hand and offered me a glass of wine…
‘Fancy a glass of homemade wine?’
I told him I had no idea what that meant – ‘homemade wine’? What is that? Aucune idée: ‘homemade wine’? C’est quoi?
His response:
‘Well, I made wine from grapes!’ See, my dear Michalina, the things one gets exposed to by associating with the proletariat!
My response:
‘I was not aware that they produced wine in this sorry country… Je ne savais pas que dans ce pays triste on fabrique le vin!’
He became upset. Of course there had been no mention of sex yet. But the way some people live! That place simply stank, it was vile! And all these dusty posters for American films everywhere. Of course: filth and squalor everywhere, but he still had time for a DVD! He offered me tea in Duralex (I’m not kidding, in Duralex!), but those DVDs, that was really the last straw… Figure-toi ma petite il existe les maisons dans notre pays triste oú on sert le café dans une tasse, o! Non, non, non! Pas dans une tasse, mais dans une bidule qu’ils appellent ‘Duralex’, mon Dieu! C’est vraiment horrible! The atmosphere was stuffy, like in a dusty antique shop, like the window display in a pawn shop; there were some dusty artificial flowers, roses made of dirty, coloured foam rubber… And in the midst of it all, his little one was sleeping in the next room. I was a wreck; how on earth would I get back home from Kowale?
And there I was, straight from Paris, where among other things I’d been to the premiere of Almodóvar’s La mala educación. I’m telling you, mon ami: it was a tiny cinema, a typical Parisian premiere, the hall packed with queens, and all of them acting simply scandalously! They were swooning and simpering, asking each other for the smelling salts. They insisted that the film was all about them, and that they couldn’t bear to watch any more. They were camping it up in French, copulating, singing! I’m telling you – compared with them, we’re just a bunch of girl guides!
Paula and Her Men
‘You have no idea, my dear Michalina, what a huge role has been played in my life by the gesture of a hand being taken. My hand, that is. How my entire life is shaped by it, how it returns in the most extraordinary moments. A man, taking me by the hand, leading me somewhere.’
Paula is sitting on the blanket, wearing her enormous white hat. We’re telling each other things we’ve always avoided before, despite our knowing each other for fifteen years.
‘The first time it happened to me I must have been six years old. There was a real rascal who lived locally. He had jug ears, red hair, freckles, protruding shoulder blades, bulging eyes… Everything about him was bulging and leering… He was the worst student; he was already going to school, in fact. The little queen who was the caretaker at the school once told me how this rascal climbed up the tall pole they used for flying flags during assemblies, in the middle of the sports field. Crowds came and begged him, Get down from there, Andrzej! Get down! The school nurse, the teachers, nothing worked. All he did was dig in his heels and laugh through those yellow teeth of his, the huge gaps between them, his shoulder blades sticking out, his ears sticking out, everything sticking out all over! The pole swayed to the left, then to the right. He refused to climb down. That’s how he was. Later he told me the story from his point of view, how he’d watched them all from up there.
‘I recall that time in my life as being truly remarkable. I remember the marshes and some crossroads with the Virgin Mary. That was when I committed the sacrilege – I took the statue off a roadside shrine and it turned out to be hollow, like a “Virgin Mary Bottle” with a screw-on head, attached to the floor by a rusty wire. Good, good, I thought, the spell is broken… Then suddenly a lizard scurried out of the statue right into my hand…
‘Well, getting back to the story. Hands. Right. So anyway, the rascal said to me: “Listen, let’s run away.” And I had this picture I’d cut out of Przekrój or some other magazine of Antarctica. So our plan was to run away to Antarctica. He asked me if I by any chance knew where Antarctica was? And I said, probably not far. But where? On the other side of the marshes, no doubt.
‘We had to run away at night. I must have felt subconsciously aroused to be running away to Antarctica with a rogue like him. I brought a half-kilo of sausage, a warm sweater, and so on. We agreed to meet near the shrine, the one with the lizard. I slipped out of the house. And we started off, unnoticed by anyone, for the woods, and all of a sudden he offered me his hand – a gesture that brooked no resistance – so that we’d make it through the marshes faster. The woods were on the other side of the marshes, which I was horribly afraid of walking through. But he gave me his coarse and furtive hand, and was my guide. Then, when we reached the very middle, in absolute darkness, he told me that we probably wouldn’t make it to Antarctica; we both knew we weren’t really up for it and were having second thoughts. So we started heading back. And all of a sudden he told me that he’d brought me there to kill me. I stood there, petrified. He wouldn’t let go of my hand; he kept squishing it until our fingers were slick with sweat. And so we stood there, for a very long time. And he said:
‘“It’s going to suck you in. We’ll wait until the marsh sucks you in.” I started to cry. It seemed like it would never end… He said:
‘“Now I’m going to drown you…” Then, when I began to sink into the marsh, he said once again:
‘
“Give me your hand…” And he clutched my hand tightly, as if he wanted to both drown me and reassure me at the same time.
‘It wasn’t until day started to break that search lights came towards us, and they discovered us just standing there in the marsh, which doesn’t seem dangerous at all to me now… Maybe people just called it a marsh, but actually it was just marshy terrain, not anything you could get sucked down into. Who knows. Later on, I was at this camp in Czechoslovakia…
‘It was one of those communist camps with barracks made out of plywood. But it was paradise for me. I was fifteen by then, and the entire boys’ side of the camp was in a homosexual frenzy. Constantly. They’d go up to each other, for example, and just start rubbing each other and groaning. They’d organise these mock orgies every night. Everyone paired off with someone else, and every night it was someone different. We slept on the floor, on pallets, and on the ‘bunker’, that is, on the very top bunk of the bunk beds. And just as I spent that summer sleeping by turns with a bit of rough on the ground, with a nobody on the first floor, and with a metaphysical poet up top, so too would all the men who would later come into my life belong to one of those three categories. You know, from the monkeys – the pure, standard-issue grunt libido – through to something more or less quotidian, all the way to the acme of romantic love. Naturally I remember the one from the ground best; the one in the ‘middle’, the ordinary one, I’ve forgotten entirely. So anyway, that first day I was sleeping with the one on the floor. He said to me:
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