It was the second half of July. The sky over a deserted Warsaw shimmered like a field of lime. We sat in Yellow Dream on Marszałkowska Street, in Modulor at the Square of the Three Crosses, in Tam Tam on Foksal Street, in Antykwariat on Żurawia Street. We went to the Iluzjon to see Dolce Vita, to the Rejs to see Seven Seals, to the Kinoteka to see Other Torments.
In the Atlantic, at Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World cried with delight. I skillfully pretended that I shared her emotion. It came easily to me, because in my euphoria I shared all her emotions and said OK to everything.
I said OK to her conception of life on earth; it was grounded—as you will recall—in finding the appropriate proportion between work and relaxation. I said OK to her conception of life beyond the grave: after death, the soul goes to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory; but if it doesn’t want to, it doesn’t have to; it can enter into another body—whether human, animal, or vegetable depends upon the deceased’s Zodiac sign when he was alive. I even said OK to her literary hierarchies: she adored Wharton and Coelho. It didn’t come easy—but I said OK. My God! Deny a detail like literary taste for the sake of such a beauty? No problem. I said OK. We strolled around deserted Chmielna, Krucza, Wspólna, Hoża, and Wilcza Streets, and I constantly shared her emotions, and I constantly said OK. The empty city ennobled her gibberish. The burning-hot cement center of the city was dead, as if the world had ceased to exist. Even the few specters of dying drug addicts, drunken beggars, and municipal watch guards, all tormented by the sweltering heat, had disappeared somewhere. We were the last people on earth, and the last people on earth have the right to talk nonsense.
“Drop by my place,” I said. We were standing in front of her building. Her dog, in whose evening pissing I had once again had the honor to participate, looked at me with hostility.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll be there at six.”
Everything was clear. A pure love united us, but the time for getting dirty was drawing near. I had fears, premonitions. I foresaw a catastrophe. After all, at some point she would have to stop saying OK. And when she stops saying OK, she will say No. And most certainly she will say No at that point when they all say No.
I sat across from her as if on red-hot coals. I was a million light years away from the first position, and I knew that as soon as I should make even one move to approach her, as soon as, with even one reckless gesture, I should signal my wish to move from the armchair to the couch, I would hear the word No. Basically, I couldn’t move at all, because in my panic I became hysterical at the thought that, as soon as I make any move at all, I would hear No. And I couldn’t let this happen. True, women often say No, and sometimes—as is well known—this doesn’t mean very much. But if a woman who says OK all the time says No even once, this can have far-reaching—and catastrophic—significance. Still, one way or the other, sooner or later, I would have to make my move. And so I moved. I moved because the telephone rang. As soon as I heard the ring, I knew right away—by the very sound of the tone, so to speak, I recognized that it was the Lord God who was calling me. I was absolutely certain that when I lifted the receiver I would hear the voice of the Lord God. And I was not mistaken. I lifted the receiver, and I heard:
“Hey. Did you read what that cretin wrote?” the Lord God spoke in the voice of my friend Mariusz Z.
“Of course I read it. You bet I read it!” my voice shook with joy—I was saved, I was delivered. The Lord God Himself was leading me to the first position.
“Actually, it’s odd that you’ve read it. It’s basically unreadable. The typical class dunce’s composition.”
“Something bad has happened to him. He’s lost control of his thought.”
“What thought? There isn’t a trace of thought there. That is a piece by a guy who has lost control—not of his thought, but of his urine.”
“However you look at it, it’s a downhill slide. There was a time when what he wrote still made sense.”
“Rubbish. It never made sense. I always said he was a graphomaniac.”
“At the beginning at least he was humble.”
“Every graphomaniac is humble at the beginning. Him too. He used to be a humble graphomaniac, but now he is a brazen and impudent graphomaniac.”
“It’s quite another matter that they print this blather. This basically belongs in the editor’s waste bin.”
“Why are you surprised that they print the stuff? After all, they’re all imbeciles.”
I chatted eagerly with my friend, the well-known literary critic Mariusz Z. With expert knowledge and taste, we discussed in great detail an article (or perhaps a book, today I no longer remember) by one of our mutual friends. With the receiver on my ear I circled about the room. I took turns feigning this and that: first complete immersion in the deep substance of the conversation, then I would make conspiratorial glances and apologetic gestures in the direction of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. I was in ecstasy. God was reaching out to me. I jabbered with absolute inspiration, I made my analysis, I interpreted, and I summed up. I circled—just as in the embassy gardens—in ever tighter orbits. And when, from behind the voice of my friend, I heard in the depths of the receiver the true voice of God, Who, in the language that today fulfills the function of Latin, called out to me—Now! Man! Boy! It’s time!—I feigned total immersion in the conversation, together with total separation from reality, and in this immersion and separation I made yet another circle around the room, and I began the next, and half way through the next—in complete fervor, trance, and reverie—I sat down next to her on the couch. I didn’t, however, pay the least attention to her, as if I didn’t know where I had happened to sit down. I jabbered away, I jabbered a good two, three minutes more, and when I had finally finished, when I put the receiver down, and when God, seeing that I had occupied the first position for good, withdrew and grew silent, I looked around. And I saw not only that I was occupying the first position; I saw that slowly the first position was being occupied by… that toward the first position slowly glided the hand of The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.
V
Everything fell into place. My fingers skillfully unbuttoned her blouse, and my fingers were pleasing to the buttons of her blouse. And her blouse was pleased that it was slipping from her shoulders, and her shoulders were pleased that slipping from them was her blouse. The clasp of her bra probably felt unsatisfied by the fact that my fingers were occupied with it so briefly, but my fingers were proud of themselves. Her jeans, which I grasped at the height of her hips, were pleased by the strength of my hands, and they were pleased by the fact that I compelled The Most Beautiful Woman in the World to stand for a moment. Her jeans knew that they look best on straightened legs, and they knew perfectly well that, if they were to slip from her hips, then it certainly wouldn’t happen sitting down. And they slipped away like an ocean wave revealing the thighs of Aphrodite. And that was all. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World as a general rule—as she put it—didn’t wear panties, and not only during heat waves.
You can’t please everybody. We closed the Venetian blinds, which didn’t please the light of day very much, for only its remnants passed through the slits, but the sweltering dusk eagerly