Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

VIII

She died nine years after his death, and she behaved dreadfully at the time. Not as dreadfully as Pospiszil, but, nonetheless, as if she didn’t believe in God at all. She didn’t want the pastor. In the end, it was only after long persuasion and urging that, not even so much with reluctance as with hostility, she received communion. Then for three days she howled and shouted; we weren’t certain whether it was in delirium. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, she repeated with a voice so hoarse it seemed absolutely not hers. From her leg flowed puss mixed with blood, as if from an open faucet. Before her very last breath, she livened up so much that it seemed that her strength had really returned, as if she had recovered and arisen from the dead. Then she collapsed somehow strangely into the depths of the damp sheets. It was clear that this was the end. The end, but not quite. Suddenly, with yet another strangely energetic motion, she reached her hand out in our direction, and with a bent finger she indicated that someone should follow her. She wanted to take someone with her. There’s no point in trying to hide it: everyone had real shivers going up and down their spines. Father died a year later. Death never ends. As we were burying him, a black tropical storm passed over one half of the cemetery. Ten yards away there was still sun, but over his grave it poured so much that it seemed that any moment his coffin would float to the top.

The rocking chair is still like new. No one has sat in it for thirty years. Once it suddenly rocked in the void. As if a powerful draft had passed through the closed doors and windows. As if someone nearby had spread their wings darkened by the damp.

I

Anka Chow Chow was crazy about girls, and the pipe dream of the majority of men — to find themselves in an intimate situation with two young women who have a thing for each other — was within reach.

It took a few months, however, before I realized what sort of chance was standing before me. I was approaching fifty at a dizzying pace, and for two years I had become less and less successful at hiding an unpleasant fact: namely, that I was becoming obtuse at an equally galloping tempo. Above all, I wasn’t able to hide it from myself under any circumstances.

I didn’t recall the family names of people I knew perfectly well. I would forget the first names of my closest friends. I would ask someone a question, and a minute later I would repeat it, convinced that I was asking it for the first time. Keys, glasses, IDs, watch, money, telephone — everything was constantly vanishing without a trace. Every morning I took fortifying vitamins and pills that are supposed to enhance the working of the brain, but by around noon I was never a hundred percent certain whether I had already taken the redemptive tablets, or not yet. Plans I had made to meet with people slipped my mind. Telephone numbers I had known by heart for years — as if drowned in my bodily fluids — blurred and couldn’t be recreated. I had to check the day’s date a hundred times. A few times, while filling out various forms, I had to really concentrate in order to recall my own address. Forget about family names. A year ago, maybe half a year, for a good quarter of an hour, I wasn’t able to recall the first name of John Paul II.

In such a pitiful state, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t even understand Anka Chow Chow’s hints for a long time — just as perverse as they were subtle — as that they completely escaped my attention. She was always the first to notice the super misses on the street. She subtly sketched breathtaking scenes, she tempted with the skill of the seasoned habitué, and I didn’t have a clue about what was going on. It’s quite another matter that a deception had taken place at the beginning, which excuses me a little, although it adds no finesse to the affair. In any event: at the dawning there was a deception, which lulled me to sleep.

Namely, when, on the first night, I poured a hailstorm of typical male questions upon Anka, she answered them all in the negative. Or, at best, hesitantly. No. Never. Don’t know. Maybe. When? What do you mean when? When was your first time? Don’t know. At the university? No. In the lyceum ? No. Grade school? No. Well, when then? Never. You were never with a guy? No. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? No, it doesn’t. If it wasn’t with a guy, then maybe with a girl? No. Listen, I don’t want to be indiscrete, but whom were you with finally? Nobody. Nobody? Nobody. He was a nobody? No. He turned out to be a nobody? He didn’t exist at all. You don’t want to talk about him? No. He was a nobody, because you don’t know who it was? No. No one? Don’t know. You don’t know by what miracle it happened? Don’t know. You suddenly found yourself at a risqué party? Maybe. You got drunk, and you don’t remember anything? I’ve never been drunk in my life. If you weren’t drunk, you have to remember. Don’t have to. Have to. I’m the specialist on memory losses in this story. You have to remember. You can’t remember something that didn’t happen. I’m not sure we are understanding each other: I’m not asking how many times you went with whom, or whether you were engaged; I’m asking who it was you slept with. I didn’t sleep with anyone. Are you sure? Yes.

Anka Chow Chow had never slept with anyone, and not so much that piece of news in itself, as the laborious road of questioning to get there, so exhausted my cognitive facilities that along the way I didn’t notice how she shuddered and swallowed hard when the question came about the girlfriends. She denied it, but she shuddered and swallowed hard.

She was twenty-three years old, and she was a virgin. I didn’t get excessively excited about this. In times of excesses, you come across excesses like this one, too. For instance, these days, among the thoroughly purebred aristocracy, the snobbism of the old-style wedding night is supposedly spreading. True, Anka didn’t look like a purebred aristocrat — or any other sort of melancholic who isn’t in a hurry to go to bed with you — but that was without significance. The reasons why she remained pure to such a ripe old age — whatever they were — were not sensational. Anka’s virginity was not in and of itself sensational. What was sensational was the fact that, in spite of having slept with me, she desperately maintained that she remained intact.

Daybreak was approaching, and she was still intact! A bloody, icy sun was rising over the horizon, and she dug in her heels, insisting that nothing had changed! After a night spent in my arms, she was still intact! And that was after a night without sleep! After an active night! Exceptionally active! Without any miracles, because never, not even in my glory days, did I perform miracles, nor did I promise them, and now — it goes without saying — all the more so; or rather — all the less so. After all, I am growing weaker not only in the brain. Last week, for example, I did five deep knee bends on the balcony, the result of which was that I sustained a painful contusion of the calf muscle. And so, I repeat, without any miracles and without acrobatics. But what was supposed to happen, happened. But I was in you, wasn’t I? Yes, you, were, but not entirely. I’m not completely typical.

In fact, her architecture was atypical, and although her long (five feet, eleven and a half inches) serpentine body performed remarkable contortions, it wasn’t easy to slither into her. But for God’s sake! I did it! And not just once that night! And not just superficially, but profoundly! I have gone dull-witted, perhaps I have hardening of the arteries, the beginnings of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, but, after all, it isn’t the case that half an hour ago I hadn’t had a woman, and now I am dreaming that I slid into her to the full length. If it were the other way around — that I had had her half an hour ago, but now the fact had completely slipped my mind — I would be quicker to agree. But this? Although, on the whole? Who knows? There is no way to be sure. The sex maniac always overestimates his possibilities. And the sex maniac who is aging and showing signs of dementia? Forget about it. I decided to stick to the facts. I decided to recreate the events step by step, and even to record the facts.