Ah, Flounder! Where have you swum off to? It's so still, and nothing is decided. What's to become of us? We're worn out, our quarrel has dozed off, it's only talking in its sleep. Little words hang on. Apples of discord roll across the table. You have. You are. I want. I will. Our child will. Your daughter already has. What I'm entitled to. What I haven't got. My needs. Your interests. The second residence. The additional insurance. Travel folders. Wish for this. Wish for that. Go ahead, it's all right with me. It's perfectly all right with me. But it's expensive. Expensive and nothing else. So beat it. So why don't you beat it.
Ah, Flounder! Your story has a dismal ending.
Three months after the birth of our daughter, when she had begun to smile—"Look, she's smiling!" — and the sweet peas on the fence were still in bloom and the swallows were flying high and the summer lingering on and Ilsebill's belly was whole again and everything had been paid for (and
nothing more had been heard of the Flounder), I said to my Ilsebill, who was slender and again full of unrest: "Pork and cabbage! That's something you can't understand. Just plain pork and cabbage. In his bellyful of pork and cabbage. I've got to go back. I've got to go back there again. That's where I came from. That's where it all began. That's where my umbilical cord was cut. We're shooting a film there. No. No actors or actresses. Just a documentary for TV. About the reconstruction. How the Poles have gone about it. All the streets and churches. All the Gothic claptrap. More authentic than before. And how much it cost. What do you mean, pleasure trip! Of course I want to see her. Naturally. Why not, we're related. . "
After saying that (and still more) to Ilsebill, who wanted to go somewhere entirely different (Lesser Antilles), I took an Interflight plane from East Berlin across Kashubia to Gdansk, where the Third Program television team was already inspecting shooting sites and storing up cutting copy, had already been to see the municipal conservator, had had a little trouble with customs (about their equipment), and were waiting for me with an old Pharus map of the Hanseatic Free City of Danzig.
The Charter City was now called Glowne Miasto, the Long Market Dlugi Targ, Brotbankengasse Chlebnicka, and Jopengasse, its extension, Piwna. We shot on Hawkers' Street (Straganiarska) and in the ruins of Saint John's. From Warehouse Island (Spichlerze) we shot the reconstructed line of narrow-chested houses and brick-red gates along the Mottlau (Motlawa). We shot up or down Long Street (Dluga), according to the position of the sun. In the Charter City Rathaus we shot Anton Moller's painting The Tribute Money. Pan Chomicz, the conservator, recited his explanations, which disregarded costs. Suddenly the current went off. While we were waiting for the house electrician, Prince Philip of England paid a semiofficial visit to the Rathaus. And other incidents. And constant sushine. Perfect shooting weather. Tourists. And sometimes when we stopped to rest, I sat down on the perron of the Gothic, gabled Writer's Club building on Frau-engasse (now called Mariacka), because I had often sat there with Jan, talking of this and that; after a while Maria Ku-czorra came by with her plastic shopping bag.
Of course she's more beautiful than ever. But she doesn't laugh any more. And right after her daughters were born, she cut off her corkscrew curls. She still works hard at the canteen of the Lenin Shipyard. She's saving up for a car. She has sold Jan's old Skoda.
With short-cropped curls, in sweater and jeans, Maria came by as I was sitting on the Frauengasse perron, drinking my gritty coffee, and (inwardly rich in figures) waiting for Agnes Kurbiella or fearing Dorothea Swarze, who at this time of day (vespers) often had her visions at Saint Mary's.
I called her—"Marysia!" — as Jan would have called her. She didn't want to join me for coffee; she wanted to get away, to go somewhere else. I paid and gathered up my papers. Notes on Opitz. What Hegge brought from Wittenberg. Extracts from the Klug Hymnaclass="underline" "Oh, God in heaven, now look down…" Extracts from the regulations of the Scania mariners' guild. The names of Napoleonic generals at the time when the Republic of Danzig was being besieged by the Russians and Prussians. .
We made our way between perrons to Our Lady's Gate and the Mottlau. Frauengasse is a street that takes a lifetime to walk down. I'd have liked to buy Maria an amber necklace in one of the many shops on the perrons. She said she didn't wear jewelry any more. We went to an old barge tied up near the Long Bridge (Dlugie Pobrzeze) that operated as a snack bar and, standing at narrow little tables, ate fried codfish from paper plates. I asked to know more of Maria's daughters than just their names. The girls, she told me, were staying with Jan's mother. She had pictures on her. When she asked the name of my daughter, I lied and said Agnes. I had no pictures on me. Maria went to get paper napkins. There'd been a dollop of ketchup with the codfish. The Mottlau smelled stronger than the fried fish. Not a word about Jan. But when we had left and were arranging to meet the next day, Maria said suddenly, "He came from Warsaw. His name is Kociolek. He gave the order. So then they fired. He's out of the country now. In Belgium. In charge of the embassy there."
At last it was all confirmed. Fairy tales only stop for a time, or they start up again after the end. The truth is told, in a different way each time.
Next day we shot Saint Bridget's, the Radaune, a muddy little river, the Big Mill, and the pinnacles sitting on blocks and waiting to be mounted on Saint Catherine's. For forty seconds I spoke sentences to end the film with.
In the late afternoon I called for Maria at the shipyard gate. In her plastic bag she had a dinner pail full of pork and cabbage. It was still warm, she said. She had also brought spoons. They rattled. The square outside the shipyard showed no sign of anything. In passing, Maria pointed to an undistinguished part of the asphalt roadway: "That's where he lay, over there."
We took the streetcar to Heubude, a fishing village now called Stogi that is still a popular bathing beach, equipped with bathhouses. We rode along the Outer City Ditch, across the Old Mottlau, Warehouse Island, the New Mottlau, through the Lower City, turned off to the left after Island Gate, crossed the Dead Vistula, and didn't say one word until we got to Heubude.
Of course that sentence isn't true. Heubude was the last stop. We walked through the shore woods on sandy paths. It was one of those early-September days when the light becomes ambiguous. We walked side by side, then in single file, first Maria, then me. From then on, her back: unfriendly, round.
Once out of the woods, Maria took her shoes off. I took mine off, too, and my socks. That was something I knew— walking barefoot through beach grass in the dunes. We heard faint waves lapping against the beach. To the west, you could see the installations of the new oil port. On the last dune, which sloped gently down to the shore, Maria stood still. The beach was deserted except for a few figures receding in the distance. Maria let herself slip down into a hollow and took off her jeans and panties. I dropped my trousers. She helped me until my member stood erect. I don't know how long I took, or whether she finished. She didn't want any kissing, just the one thing, quickly. As soon as I came, she tipped me out and pulled on her panties and jeans. The distant figures on the beach had receded still farther.
After that we took the tin spoons and ate the lukewarm pork and cabbage out of the dinner pail. Maria chattered about her daughters and about the car she'd made a down payment on, a Fiat. The pork and cabbage reminded me. When the dinner pail was empty, Maria jumped up and ran across the beach to the sea. I stayed behind and saw her running: her back again.