Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

It is completely clear only for those who wake up in the night, and their throats go numb because they are alone; they have no one to embrace or to cover up, they have no one to bring a glass of juice from the kitchen, and in the morning they won’t have anyone with whom to listen to the radio, read the paper, eat breakfast.

It is entirely completely clear to those who, one fine day, actually meet someone, eat dinner with someone, go with someone to the movies, go to bed with someone — perhaps even sleep with someone.

But it is absolutely completely clear to those who wake up in the middle of the night and are terrified by someone sleeping next to them, and by the thought that they won’t be on their own for a few hours more, and then the whole morning, and it is awful, awful. And they count the seconds and minutes of the never ending nightmare, and somehow — with the greatest difficulty — they survive it; and then they are granted a beautiful, solitary day. They take a deep breath and suddenly feel how an overwhelming joy gives depth to their breathing. From the empty house, they gaze through the window at the city’s rooftops rising before them. The long afternoon has the taste of overripe cherries and the scent of a stuffy garden. In the evening, the telephone rings persistently; with a strange smile they do not lift the receiver.

IV

I was so accustomed to solitude, I made of solitude such an endlessly thick basis for life, that the quotidian circumstances in which people feel lonely — a journey, a train, a night in a hotel — these were, for me, crowded meetings and mass entertainments. Obviously, I preferred that no one come into my compartment (first class, smoking, by the door), but once someone did come in — be my guest, we can even exchange a few words. But on the whole, no one did come in — I have an inhospitable facial expression. I was traveling to a Cracovia match, and I felt as if someone had taken a leaden overcoat from my shoulders. I had before me a day, or even two, during which I would desire nothing other than that my team win. I wouldn’t be chasing after anyone. I wouldn’t be experiencing future fiascos, I wouldn’t spend the evenings making inquiries into what mistakes I had made and what God-sent opportunities I had wasted. Even if I should wake up bright and early in my hotel room, these wouldn’t be any sort of black hours. I would put on a bathrobe, order a pot of strong coffee and a dozen or so pieces of letter paper from room service , and I would write down what I dreamed.

I made the trips to Cracovia matches as if going on holidays or vacations. My constantly overheated nerves would calm. I would sit in the stadium of my childhood. Over the Rudawa flowed the same clouds. Behind my back was the Gomułka-era apartment block from which I had once wanted to leap. Before me, the Commons, overgrown with Asiatic grasses — everything was still like my memories, and everything had already changed, as after death. Orchestras played the most beautiful marches in the world, torches made of newspapers burned, there were no darknesses over the stadium, the singing of the fans rose on high. For ninety minutes, plus the halftime, I had the feeling of complete harmony — there was no despair, no longings, the hunger for touch did not consume me, I didn’t think about women, there weren’t any women.

As you can easily surmise, I caught sight of Anka Chow Chow for the first time in my life at a Cracovia match. True, she claims that this was not the first but the second time — that, however, is an ambiguous claim.

She sat a few rows lower, and throughout the entire match (Cracovia-Górnik Łęczna) her unparalleled head didn’t even budge. During the halftime, I went down and stood right beside her. She sat motionless. I attempted, purely rhetorically, to make eye contact. The warrior’s repose is one thing, but an unparalleled head is quite another. Besides this, the situation itself, the image itself — a babe at a match (to speak precisely: such an unparalleled babe at such a miserable match) — was a complete innovation. I didn’t tumble immediately into the abyss, I didn’t fall into the routine ruts, I didn’t jump into my old skin. The stadium didn’t suddenly become the next place for the hunt. My peace was not disturbed, but my curiosity was mightily aroused. Her perfectly indifferent sight was firmly fixed on the middle of the field. I returned to my place.

I know what you are thinking. It seems to you that, since I had come upon a young miss at a soccer match, I ought immediately to have surmised that something wasn’t quite right with her. The jigsaw puzzle is constructed from the very beginning as a logical whole, except that I didn’t see it. Or I pretend not to see it. But after all, it is obvious: a young miss, a lone young miss to boot, goes to a match — something isn’t right. I don’t know. I don’t know whether something isn’t right with a young miss who goes to a match by herself. I haven’t the faintest clue. But I do know that with Anka everything was right! Absolutely entirely right! As right as can be. She wasn’t, not in the least, some sort of tomboy or possessed of a manly nature that had been imprisoned in a woman’s body. More than that. Among the women known to me, she was in the absolute top tier of femininity. She was feminine in the deepest and thoroughly Heraclitean sense. In addition to which, she was terribly hot for girls, she liked girls, she liked chatting with girls, she was curious about girls, and she had nothing against far reaching adventures with girls. If you think that there is some sort of contradiction here — that’s your business. I don’t know the secret of her soul and body, and, to tell the truth, I never even tried to find out. I am writing down only what I experienced and what I saw. I experienced a lot, I saw “as if.”

Nothing in her came from the masculine element, from masculine disguise, from a masculine interference. And even if it did — what of it? What does this explain? What sort of relief does such psychology bring? What sort of initiation and what sort of knowledge? There was — let’s assume — some sort of excessive masculine element in Anka. So what is this supposed to prove? What is supposed to follow from this? Yet another proof of the Lord God’s absent-mindedness, in that, when He was creating Anka, He measured out the proportions imprecisely? Yet another confirmation of nature’s blindness? And so what of the fact that God is imprecise, and nature blind? May the Lord God protect us against our own precision. And may He never bestow nature with too sharp a vision.

After the match, I returned to my hotel, took a hot shower, and slept like a log. I awoke at six. I ordered coffee and paper. Fog was hovering over the city; from down below you could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves. I wrote a few sentences about Janek Nikandy, but I still had the sense of the complete elusiveness of his life. Suddenly and feverishly I felt like returning to Warsaw. A sudden fear and a sudden longing. The fear that something would happen, that someone would imprison me here, and I would never return to Sienna Street. And a horrendous longing for my 430 square feet, which are like the deck of a lifeboat. All my life I had been swimming in deep water and in the darknesses, and finally, toward the end, I felt the hardwood floor under my feet, and a good light falls from behind the armchair. A sudden longing for Warsaw, as if I’d spent I don’t know how many years in God knows what sort of emigrations. Supposedly the greatest nightmare of emigrants is the dream that they are back in the home country and can’t leave. My greatest nightmare? Toward morning, J.P. appears and says I will never return home. As in life, he trembles from hatred. I curse him as in life. I curse his eternal torments. O God, cause it that he not suffer for all eternity; cause him to disappear once and for all.