The Pole and Other Stories, page 8
First Pani Jabloṅska, then the daughter in Berlin—Ewa—and now Señora Weisz. The circle is widening. When Pani Jabloṅska set aside the manuscript for the mystery woman in Spain, she must surely have sneaked a look at it and been struck by that glaring intimacy on the very first page. And Ewa, despite her denials, must have seen it too. No wonder she was so sniffy on the telephone! How humiliating! How galling!
7. She, Beatriz, comes from a cultivated family. Her grandfather, her father’s father, had as a student at the University of Salamanca been witness to a public book-burning and had never forgotten it. A true act of barbarity, he called it. In due course he became a professor of law and assembled a considerable library, which after his death went to his eldest son, her uncle Federico. Burning books is a prelude to burning people, her grandfather had said, an utterance that became part of the family’s folklore. He passed away when she was five years old; she remembers him only as a stout old man with a prickly beard and a cane with an ivory handle.
Burning letters is not the same as burning books. People burn old letters every day of the week. They burn them because they contain nothing of abiding interest or because they have become an embarrassment: letters from childhood sweethearts, for example. The same holds true, more or less, for diaries. But the Pole’s eighty-four poems are not letters except in a certain, unusual sense, nor do they constitute a diary, again except in a certain sense. They constitute a manuscript, that is to say, the embryo of a book. Burning the poems would be more like burning a book than burning old letters. The question is, would burning the poems be an act of barbarity, a prelude to burning people?
The answer is not wholly obvious. In Spain the Pole is a nobody, the record of his love affairs of no interest. Back in Poland, however, he is not a nobody. In Poland there may be a degree of interest, perhaps even a degree of pride, in what a noted interpreter of Poland’s national composer has to say about the time he spent between the legs of women. Burning his poems may indeed, to Poles, constitute an act of barbarity. The civilized thing to do would be to return the poems to Poland, to the Chopin Museum or the National Patriotic Library, for their manuscript collection. To return them anonymously, eliminating all trace of herself, so that no one will ever come knocking at the door, now or in the future, saying, ‘Are you the original of Beatrice? Are you the woman from Barcelona between whose legs Witold Walczykiewicz had his spiritual revelations?’
8. For days she mulls over the question: Should she burn the poems, or on the contrary should she commission Senõra Weisz to translate them (at no small cost); and, if the latter, is she prepared to read Señora Weisz’s translations and thereby submit herself to probable pain and humiliation?
She mulls over the question; then, when the mulling has run its course, gives herself a shake and turns her attention to other things. The folder with the eighty-four poems goes into the bottom drawer of her desk.
Even in the bottom drawer, however, the poems refuse to be forgotten. They burn there with a slow fire.
The Pole wrote the poems to tell her that he went on loving her long after their time together in Mallorca. But he could have achieved the same with a simple letter in the mail: ‘My dearest Beatriz, from my deathbed I write to tell you that I loved you to the end. Your faithful servant, Witold.’ Therefore, why poems? And why so many of them?
The answer can only be: because he wanted not merely to say that he loved her but to prove it—prove it by performing for her sake a lengthy and inherently meaningless task. Nonetheless, why poems? If lengthy and meaningless labour is the criterion, why not engrave the Sermon on the Mount on a grain of rice and send it to her in a little plush box?
The answer: because, through his poems, he aspires to speak to her from beyond the grave. He wants to speak to her, to woo her, so that she will love him and keep him alive in her heart.
There are good kinds of love and bad kinds of love. What kind of love is it that burns day and night between the legs of a woman in the bottom drawer of her desk?
When she was young she would act on impulse. She followed her impulses because she trusted them. Nowadays she is more prudent. The prudent course of action—no doubt about it—would be to distance herself from the fire, to wait until it had burnt itself out, then, perhaps, if she were still curious, to poke around in the ashes.
9. In Mallorca, in bed with her, he had called it her rose. At the time it felt false, a false word, and now, in his poems, it feels false too. Not a rose in truth, not a flower at all; but what?
She remembers her boys growing up, and their unending curiosity about girls. If girls did not have it, what did girls have? It could not be nothing; but if it was not nothing, what could it be? Curiosity; horror too. The two of them in the bath, splashing each other, laughing, raucous, overexcited. What is it, mama! It: is that its name?
It: where they came from, covered in blood and mucus, emerging into the noise and glare of the world. No wonder they wailed—too much! too much!—no wonder they clamoured to go back, to curl up in the old familiar nest and suck their thumbs and drowse in peace. And now the Pole, a big man—huge!—but no less babyish, emerging from her body and her bed no less confused, no less frightened. It: the rose that is no rose.
10. Boasting. That is how men defend themselves against the confusion. Her sons too, for all she knows, grown men now, men of the world. I had her, that smart woman from Barcelona. I crushed her in my arms, I crumpled her rose. The war between men and women, primeval, never-ending. I had her, she was mine, read all about it.
She hurt him. She wounded him in his pride. After that insult, all of his labour was self-protective, spinning nacre, layer upon layer of it, over the wound. She invited him into her bed, then she threw him out. His revenge on her: to freeze her, aestheticize her, turn her into an art-object, a Beatrice, a plaster saint to be venerated and carried in procession through the streets. Mother of mercy.
11. Yet if he wrote the poems to take revenge on her, how come the epigraph to poem 10, credited to Octavio Paz, whom he quotes in English? A paradox of love: we love simultaneously a mortal body and an immortal soul. Without the attraction of the body, the lover could not love the soul. To the lover the desired body is a soul. Was that Witold’s story too: that through loving her body he came to love her soul? Fair enough. But it does not answer the question: why her body, why her soul?
Go back to Beatrice, the real Beatrice. What was it that made Dante choose her over all other women? Or go back to Mary. What was it about Mary full of grace that made God decide to visit her by night? What flexion of the lip, what arch of the eyebrow, what contour of the buttock? At what moment did she, Beatriz, the woman whose job it was to take the visiting soloist out to dinner that fatal evening in 2015, become his destined one? What was it about her that brought about her election? Where was the divine in her, that evening? And where is the divine in her now?
12. Out of the blue, a call from Poland. Vous parlez français, Madame? Pani Jabloṅska, sounding much younger and more spry than she had imagined her to be. Apologies for not responding earlier, but there had been a crisis in the family, she had had to go to Łodz in a hurry, in fact she is still in Łodz. Apologies for not being able to open the apartment, apologies for missing her visit, did she recover all the materials Witold left for her? Dear Witold, so sorely missed. And Ewa, always so busy, and now having to arrange everything from a distance: so inconvenient, such a pity!
She, Beatriz, is in no mood to listen to a torrent of words in an unfamiliar language (un peu plus lentement, s’il vous plaît!), but there are things she would like to know, things that only the Polish neighbour can tell her. Such as, for instance: what has been the fate of the apartment where she spent her solitary Polish night, an abode still haunted (if her experience counts) by the ghost of its master? Such as: aside from the poems, is she, Pani Jabloṅska, in possession of any supplementary message meant for her, Beatriz, the lady from Barcelona? Such as (if she can bring herself to ask): did the late lamented Witold ever show her his poems, in particular the first poem, with its metaphoric use of the word rose?
You must know, continues Pani Jabloṅska, that Witold owned not one but two apartments in the block—two adjacent apartments—and put in a communicating door—this was back in the 1990s, when everything was going cheap—but that unfortunately it was done without the proper paperwork, builders did things à l’arabe in those days, and now the apartment that is in fact two apartments with two postal addresses cannot be sold until the paperwork is regularized, which Ewa, poor Ewa, is having to do from Germany. Ewa got people to come with a truck and clear it out, the furniture, the books, everything, including Witold’s piano, so at the moment it is standing empty, yet it can’t be put on the market, such a tragedy.
À l’arabe: what can that mean? Or did she mishear?
‘If I may interrupt,’ she says, ‘did Witold happen to say anything about me?’
There is a long, long silence. For the first time it occurs to her that the story of a sudden dash to Łodz may be fabricated, that Pani Jabloṅska may be not at all the wizened little old Polish widow dressed in black whom she has pictured to herself, that the very phrase Witold’s neighbour may itself be a delicate euphemism not unconnected with the talk of a double apartment with a communicating door.
‘If he didn’t have anything to say, it doesn’t matter,’ she says, breaking the silence. ‘Thank you for getting in touch. It is very kind of you.’
‘Wait,’ says Pani Jabloṅska. ‘Is there nothing else you would like to know?’
‘About Witold? No, Madame, I don’t think so. I know all that I need to know.’
13. Is there nothing else? What was the woman threatening to tell? How poor Witold suffered? How he faced his death? No, she would prefer it if that were left in decent obscurity.
If she opens the gate a crack, who knows what might not come pouring through?
14. She calls Señora Weisz. ‘I have decided that you should translate all the poems, from beginning to end. I will send the full set via courier to the travel agency, addressed to you, marked Personal. I don’t want anyone else to see them. Can I rely on you?’
‘You can rely on me. Poetry is not my strong point, but I will do my best. Perhaps you can make a down payment.’
‘I will enclose a cheque with the file. Shall we say five hundred?’
‘Five hundred would be good.’
15. After a week, a message from Señora Weisz. The translations are done. The bill comes to fifteen hundred Euros.
I will drop by and fetch the translations this evening, she replies.
The door is opened by a young man. ‘Hi. You are the lady for the poems? Come in. I am Natán. My mother isn’t home yet, but she won’t be long. Please sit down. Do you want to see the poems?’ He passes her a bulky packet: her photocopies plus the Spanish translations neatly printed out. She glances at the first one. The lady between whose legs is still there.
‘I helped her now and again,’ says Natán. ‘Poetry isn’t really my mother’s thing.’
‘You speak Polish too?’
‘Not really. But I have read lots of Polish poetry. In Poland poetry is a disease, everyone catches it. Your poet—what is his name?’
‘Walczykiewicz. Witold Walczykiewicz. He died not long ago. Have you been to Poland?’
‘Poland is shit. Who would want to go there? It used to be bad. Now it’s even worse.’
It dawns on her that they are Jews, Clara and her son, with good and sufficient reason not to like Poland.
‘Walczykiewicz.’ He pronounces the name like a native, better than she does, she between whose legs its bearer has lain. ‘He is not a great poet, is he?’
‘Poetry wasn’t his medium. He was really a musician, a pianist. He was well known as an interpreter of Chopin.’
‘The poems are pretty average, but there are a few that stand out. Are they about you?’
She is silent.
‘He was in love with you, I would bet. If he knew you couldn’t read Polish, why didn’t he translate them for you?’
‘Polish was his mother tongue. You can only write poetry in your mother tongue. At least that is what I was taught. Maybe it didn’t matter to him that I couldn’t read his poems. Maybe the important thing was to express himself.’
‘Maybe. What I like best about them is that they aren’t dry and ironic like everyone else’s. Do you know Cyprian Norwid? No? You should read him. Walczykiewicz is like Cyprian Norwid, only not in the same class. His best poem—you will see it—is the one where he dives down to the seabed and finds himself face to face with a marble statue, and realizes it is Aphrodite—you know, the goddess. She has big painted eyes that look through him without seeing him. Eerie. I read somewhere that the Mediterranean is full of stuff from old shipwrecks—coins, statues, crockery, wine jars. I would like to go diving off the Greek coast sometime—who knows, I might be lucky.’
‘Witold wasn’t lucky.’
The boy looks at her oddly.
‘I mean, he wasn’t a lucky person. If he had gone diving he wouldn’t have found a goddess. He would have come up empty-handed. Or he would have drowned. That’s the way he was. What are you studying?’
‘Economics. It isn’t my thing, as my mother would say, but nowadays one has to. To get on.’
‘I have two sons, a bit older than you. They didn’t study economics but they have got on pretty well. They have made successes of their lives.’
‘What did they study?’
‘One studied biochemistry, the other studied engineering.’
There is more that she could say about her sons, much more, but she does not. She is proud of her sons, of the way in which they assumed responsibility for their lives early on, as though their lives were business enterprises that needed to be managed firmly and wisely. They take after their father, both of them. Neither takes after her.
‘What are you going to do with the poems?’ the boy asks. ‘Will you be publishing them?’
‘I don’t think so. If they are not very good, as you say—and I am sure you are right—who would want to buy them? No, I won’t publish them, but I did promise Witold before he died that I would take care of them, look after them. I can’t find a better way to say it.’
Clara Weisz arrives, her arms full of packages. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Has Natán shown you the poems? I hope you like them. It wasn’t as hard as I had feared, once we got going. An interesting man, Walczykiewicz. I looked him up on the Internet. As you say, he was a pianist, but did he tell you that when he was a young man, back in the 1960s, he published a book of verse? What we call a publikacja ulotna, a fleeting publication or fugitive publication. He wasn’t popular with the authorities of the day.’
‘I don’t know much about his early life. He wasn’t a very communicative man.’
‘Well, it’s all in the Polish Wikipedia, if you can read Polish.’
‘Let me write you a cheque. You said fifteen hundred, less the advance?’
‘That’s correct. One thousand. I translated the handwritten notes too, but on separate pages. You will see.’
‘Oh. I thought the handwritten bits were part of the poems—revisions, additions, that sort of thing.’
‘No, I don’t think so. But you can decide for yourself.’
She takes her leave. They will not see each other again, she and the Weiszes. A relief. They know too much about her. Yet what does it amount to, what they know? That she had an affair with a man? It happens every day. That the man was left heartbroken and wrote poems about her? That too happens, though not every day. No, the shame is that Clara Weisz, who is no one to her and no one to Witold, has had access to what was going on in Witold’s soul, clearer access than she, for whom the poems were written, will ever have, given that there must be tones, echoes, nuances, subtleties in the Polish that no translation can ever transmit. Without the slightest effort Clara Weisz has become the Pole’s first, best reader, with her son in second place, while she comes limping behind, a poor third.
16. She reads Clara’s handiwork through from beginning to end, rapidly. Not all the poems are comprehensible, though the prose versions are remarkably lucid. But by the end she has an answer to her overriding question. The poems are not an act of revenge, not at all. They are, in the broadest sense, a record of love.
She rereads a block of poems towards the end in which the phrases ‘the other world’ and ‘the next life’ come up repeatedly. The poems must date from when the Pole was facing death and trying to convince himself it was not the end of everything.
She tries to imagine what deus ex machina he could have thought would extract him from his present world, a world of loss and woe, and install him in the next one. As far as she can see, transport would be achieved in an instant, more or less magically. He would arrive in the next world a fully formed adult with an adult’s bagful of memories and longings, to begin preparing for the day when she too will arrive, his Beatrice, to set up house with him in holy matrimony. She shivers. He cannot wait to see her again, but does she care to see him? The truth is that by the time the daughter phoned to announce his death she had all but forgotten him, or at least moved him into the no-longer-active bin.
Mourning is a natural process. All the peoples of the planet have rituals of mourning. Even elephants. She, Beatriz, lost her mother early. The loss left a gaping hole in her life. She grieved, she mourned, she missed her. Then at a certain point the mourning came to an end and she moved on. But the Pole does not seem to have moved on. Having lost her, he mourned her and went on mourning, nursing his loss like a mother who refuses to give up a dead child.
He says he expects to be reunited with her in the next world, but what can that possibly mean? There must have been moments when, sitting alone in his dreary apartment in Warsaw, he knew he had seen the last of her. To make that real-life loss bearable he must have thrown all his failing powers into invoking, creating, calling into being a new Beatriz, a transfigured yet substantial version of herself, who, far from dismissing him and—even worse—forgetting him, was by secret, mystical means urging him to prepare a celestial home for her.
