But meanwhile, the precursor of this revolution stood before me and spoke:
“What did you write?”
“Why don’t you smile?” I managed to stutter.
She remained silent for a moment. She looked at me with the intense inquisitiveness of the innate psychoanalyst, and then she said:
“Because that’s how I am. I don’t smile, and that’s all there is to it. Understand?”
And she smiled mysteriously, took me by the arm, and said:
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
It was strange, and, to tell the truth, neither earlier nor later (especially not later) did I ever meet such a peculiar example of the female body: from up close she looked younger.
•
And it was as it always would be in my life: weakness prevailed, but contrariness also prevailed. I ought to have led her. But it was the other way around. It was she who led me, led me through the park that smelled of alcohol, through the soccer field that was going to weed, along the warm river, there and back again. I knew all those places so well that I had long ago ceased noticing them. Long ago those places had left my head. But now she, a scantily clad vacationer, returned being to that which lacked it. I breathed in the smell of her hair. It smelled of Tatar-hop shampoo. I breathed in that smell, and I distinctly felt the gravel of the park lane under my feet. I felt the touch of her hand, and I saw the dark surface of the playing field, the outline of the rotting goals, rooted together with the black stalks of dill, intertwined with the nets that had not been taken down for years. I listened to her peculiar voice, as if stifled, as if struggling with an incessant giggle, and I breathed in the air coming from the river. I didn’t know yet that my situation could be described using classical aphorisms: “You will come to know the lands of childhood, known to you through and through, only at the side of the woman of your life,” said the first aphorism. “You won’t grow up until your beloved looks at your baby photograph,” declared the second piece of wisdom. “The first day of your first love is the last day of your childhood. Until then you didn’t exist,” went the next truth, unshakable in its arbitrariness. To this day I don’t know who the authors of these immortal maxims were. I don’t even recall where I read them or where I heard them. Their author could just as well have been King Solomon as Mr. Trąba, a forgotten classic or a chance traveling companion, the author of school texts or a young poet whose verses no one wanted to print. Even today it is a question without significance. But then, more than thirty years ago, when the angel of my first love led me through the very middle of the land of my childhood, it was absolutely without significance. At that time, not only didn’t I know who wrote the aphorisms that described my situation, I didn’t even know that there were any aphorisms that described my situation. At that time, some indistinct creature, the winged reptile of fear and lust, began to move slowly in the depths of my entrails and in the depths of my soul. I was happy then that I didn’t have to say anything, since she, the angel of my first love, talked incessantly.
•
“I saw you seven times,” she said in a stifled voice that constantly seemed to herald an outburst of heartfelt laughter. “I saw you seven times. Yes, Jerzyk — you man, you — I saw you seven times. You see, I even know your name. But I won’t tell you my name. OK, OK, don’t get your feelings hurt, don’t go away, don’t leave me, don’t break off so suddenly a romance that has barely begun. OK, I’ll tell you my name. But in a moment. The first time, I saw you in front of the Ruch kiosk. To tell the truth, I was standing in line just behind you, and your shoulders, shamefully clothed in a white shirt, captivated me. Don’t be angry, Jerzyk, but by that white shirt, I recognized that — how should I say this to you so that you won’t fly into a rage again — well, by that white shirt, I recognized that you don’t spend vacations here; you spend life here. OK, in general, you dress very well, but here and there one could improve this and that. In any case, I, a poor sleeping beauty, lulled to erotic sleep for seven years, living in amatory lethargy for seven years, saw before me a teenage boy with very manly shoulders, and I felt that I was waking up. Well, maybe I shouldn’t exaggerate that bit about waking up. In any case, I strained to hear the sound of your voice with great anxiety, Jerzyk. I was afraid that you would speak with the macabre tone of a boy whose voice was changing. I was afraid that I would get over it immediately, but my fears were premature. ‘I’d like a copy of The People’s Tribune and The Catholic Weekly,’ you said in a calm voice that was low and just as harmoniously shaped as your shoulders.
“The second time I saw you, you were hot on the trail of the two bodies who rent a room in your attic. Oh, Jerzyk, Jerzyk, I don’t like those two bodies at all. You mustn’t take any interest in them, Jerzyk. Why do you spy on them? Why did you go creeping after them? If you absolutely must, why not just climb the stairs to the second floor, today even — knock, and it shall be opened unto you; ask, and it shall be given unto you. I’m not at all worried about the lawlessness of those two. After all, they aren’t all that lawless. For instance, the absurd rumors everyone repeats about the morphine. Come on, come on. Those bodies are too lazy to get morphine. They’re too languid to figure out how to use a hypodermic needle. They’re not buoyant enough for even morphine to give them wings. Jerzyk, you are wrong,” said the angel of my first love, and, with all her strength, she painfully dug her fingers into my shoulder and stopped talking.
Although at first I greeted the sudden silence with relief, I won’t attempt to hide the fact that, on the whole and in the long run, it didn’t suit me. I was completely under the spell of her frenzied and omniscient narration. Even if I had brought along my saving props — a notebook and pencil — I wouldn’t have been able to record a thing, to say nothing of predicting the final word. Besides, none of her words gave the impression of being the last. Her mind moved with alarming speed and in all directions. It was faster than sound and at least as fast as light, for just like light it reached everywhere. I listened to her avidly, losing myself in the listening, and then I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say, how to interrupt a silence that was becoming more and more troublesome in its profundity.