Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

“She still didn’t stand out in any way, she was still an unremarkable student, and still an unremarkable, even a very unremarkable beauty. She didn’t depart from the pack. It goes without saying that I always knew where her slender back was in the hallway or the schoolyard. What direction she was running, whether she was approaching or withdrawing. Only I took note of the color of the hairband with which she tied up her pony tail, and when she changed that hairband. I knew by heart all her skirts, T-shirts, turtlenecks, blouses, shoes. I knew all her pairs of flip flops and all her tennis shoes. Every night I embraced her specter, and every morning I couldn’t wait to see her. And every day I cursed her; I wanted her to get lost, to finally get to her senior year, pass her matura , and go to the devil — that is to say, to the Psychology Department in Krakow. She was planning to study psychology, which casts a characteristic (gray) shaft of light upon her dullness. Whoever doesn’t know what he wants to study, what he wants to do in life in general, chooses psychology. After all, mass interest in psychology doesn’t prove that Poles are a nation of born psychologists. Mass interest in psychology proves that Poles are a nation that doesn’t know what to do with itself. In any case, the tragedy — if that’s what you can call it — continued, but it was under control. Everything seemed to be heading toward a dull and bleak, but definite, end. The next vacation passed, the empty-headed young people, covered with a Balkan suntan, returned to school. Wiktoria Złotnica was to take her matura in a few months. In a few months, my Gehenna was to end, or at least undergo a significant thinning out.

“Posters announcing the visit of the film star who was known as a ladies man appeared in our city in October. They were a vulgar yellow. That — as you know perfectly well — is the color of absolute doom. Let’s drink. The film star who was known as a ladies man came to our town two weeks later. Let’s drink, because it is time for a change in language. On the first weekend in November, he made an appearance in our theater, which sent the local intelligentsia into transports of delight. Since, in addition to the reputation of a ladies man, he also enjoyed the reputation of a fighter for liberty and independence, the delight he aroused was all the greater. During Martial Law, he had boycotted television, he had put on patriotic one-man plays in churches, all the while emphasizing that his cousin on his father’s side had been murdered at Katyń. You must admit that this is an irresistible mixture. A Katyń skull sprinkled with eau du Cologne , the scent of which burst from him a mile away, plus a good voice, plus the jaded countenance of the aging heart-throb — this was a combination before which the thighs of the noblest of Mother-Poles parted. Black lace thongs à la November Uprising fell away smoothly. So the rumor had it, in any event. On the day of his performance, I ran into him on the Market Square. I bowed obsequiously, glanced into his lifeless eyes, and I knew right away: none of it was true. There was no reason to envy him. He had dreadful sorrow in his eyes, perhaps even death. Theoretically, he was at the absolute top, and yet it was obvious that, in fact, in the depths of his soul, he was completely finished. There wasn’t anything to envy, and certainly not the women. He never had any women. And not because he was of a different orientation, which is common nowadays. He didn’t participate in this commonplace. He never had any women because he was a prisoner of his own reputation. The evening after his memorable appearance — when I again sat down to drink in solitude, and when, once again, I gained fluency in the drawing of erotic deductions — I solved this paradox. Well, you see, acquiring the name of a well known ladies man is the greatest erotic disaster that can meet a man. Since all the women know that you will take everything, not a one of them will go with you. Do you understand? Not a one of them will go with you out of — it goes without saying — reasons dictated by ambition. Namely, she does not wish to join the masses allegedly possessed by you. She does not wish to vanish in the masses allegedly screwed by you. The universal conviction that you screw on a mass scale renders individual screwing impossible for you; ergo , it renders any screwing whatsoever impossible. The final result is that you don’t screw anything. The greatest nonentity and erotic sad sack screws more than you do. Even endlessly more, because, compared with zero, any result is endless. You enjoy the reputation of a well known ladies man, but you don’t screw anything. Something for something. Life is full of dark paradoxes. The film star who was known as a ladies man was in the snares of such a paradox. I understood this at once, and I calmed down. That evening, over a lonely glass, I deftly gave the thing a name, but I had already calmed down in the afternoon. I calmed down as soon as I caught sight of him on the Market Square. As soon as I sensed the black aura of dreadful sorrow emanating from him. The envy, irritation, and fear that all men feel when, in their circle, there appears a well known seducer, withdrew from my heart. Prematurely! A hundred times prematurely! He had seduced her! He’d seduced her after all! He seduced her in the worst, the most terrible, the most far-reaching manner. Let’s drink to the perdition of all the seducers in the world. Let them be damned! Let them perish for all time!

“The evening came. The evening of Doomsday came. The performance was so-so. Dull and boring. That is, dull and boring to a certain moment. Formally, everything was OK, even more than OK. The hall of our county theater drowning in yellowish light. The cloudy crystals of prewar chandeliers and pillars of Stalinist dust over the bordeaux-colored seats. He, dressed in black from head to foot, and ostentatiously pale. Powdered. A storm of applause to greet him, a vibrant silence as he recites great Polish poetry, and enthusiastic animation as he tells anecdotes from theater scenes or film shots.

“At the end, he proposed a short course in acting, an improvised theatrical workshop in a pill. Perhaps in the auditorium there are some dormant outstanding talents — it’s high time to wake them up. Can you guess what happened next? He — so he says — considers himself a searcher, acting no longer suffices for him, he has decided to try his hand at directing. He was preparing just then, at the Old Theater in Krakow, an adaptation of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , and now we, through our common efforts, will do a makeshift staging of one of the scenes — namely the scene of Raskolnikov’s conversation with the servant woman Nastasya. Could we have volunteers here on stage? We need a couple of young, courageous people. If you please, who is willing to act in Crime and Punishment under my supervision? Who is willing to square off against the immortal, but also dangerous, phrases of Fyodor Mikhailovich? He invites them to join the game, but not only the game, for he knows perfectly well that these sorts of exercises often give quite a lot. Often more than work with professional actors. So he invites them to join the game, but he also asks for collaboration. Can you guess who landed on the stage? To this day I have a feeling of unreality about this matter. Who has the courage? Who will be first? The first was a pastor’s son. It was absolutely certain that, of the boys, the son of Pastor Morowy — famous for his daredevil lifestyle — would be the first to raise his hand. And it was just as absolutely certain that the slender arm of none of the girls would be waving above the heads. Too great the phantoms, too strong the atavisms. In these parts, we never lacked for little harlots, and what harlots they were! But to respond publicly to the summons of a film star who was known as a ladies man? To react to his encouragements? To succumb to his invitation? To go up on stage? To become an actress — even for a minute? It is not fitting, it is not fitting, a hundred times no! And those snot-nosed girls — among whom there wasn’t a single virgin, especially after the last vacation — sat with sulking expressions, and, with their facial features, they made it clear that no: not them. I understand your self-restraint, I understand your stage fright — the star pontificated from the stage — those are traits that provide outstanding predictions of true artistry. Timid people — oh, the paradox! — become the greatest actors. In that case, he would help the shy neophytes of the theater and choose one of them arbitrarily. He doesn’t allow himself the word “casting.” The choice is difficult, and you can see with the naked eye, that, if not all of them, then the majority of the stars sitting in the audience would be up to the task, so he has to act somewhat randomly. And he looks around shamelessly, and the beet-red flush greedily burns the powder on his mug — maybe you, yes, the lady in the fourth row, in the jeans jacket, yes, please, right this way.