Fragment - Frajda FR

Frajda

Tu es parti le lendemain. Moi, je suis restée. Encore une fois on a choisi des chemins différents. Séparément et parallèlement. Tu ne me manquais pas. Je ne voulais pas que tu me manques.

J’ai joué à d’autres jeux, j’ai joué avec des autres. Après un certain temps une lettre est arrivée. Trois pages d’un aveu passionné à lire entre les lignes. Trois pages fortes comme un tsunami. Je me suis noyée. Je suis restée allongée, inerte, essoufflée pendant des heures, des jours, des semaines. Tu m’as attachée avec cet aveu. Tu m’as fait ce qu’on n’aurait jamais dû se faire. Trois mots qu’on ne devait jamais prononcer. Aucun « je », aucun « te » et aucun « aime » sur ces trois pages, mais chaque mot le criait. J’ai bien planqué ta lettre et j’ai décidé d’oublier.

Tandis que j’oubliais, tu étais assis sur le trottoir d’une ville brûlante du sud de l’Europe, tu buvais du vin à même la brique, quelqu’un battait le tambour et toi, tu crachais le feu et virevoltais en rythme. Les pièces tintaient. Les langues s’entremêlaient : espagnol, portugais, russe, anglais.

Tous ceux qui souriaient devenaient de suite de bons potes, des amis d’un soir. Bière, vin, vodka, jazz. – Te quiero mucho – tu murmurais à l’oreille de celles qui étaient attirantes et disposées. Tu fermais les yeux, mais il y manquait un truc. Tu savais bien ce qu’il y manquait.

La nuit caniculaire ne connaissait pas de fin.
Tu ramassais des fraises. Tu peignais et vendais tes dessins à même le trottoir. Les soirs tu dansais avec le feu et laissais la musique te guider.

Tu donnais aux rats de la pizza froide aux pieds de Notre Dame. Tu regardais la Sagrada Familia se refléter dans un étang et quand tu y jetais un caillou, le bâtiment se mettait à onduler des hanches et à danser. Tu as planté la tente entre un lac et la plage Halikounas, tu fouillais dans le sable à la recherche de petite monnaie et quand tu avais ce qu’il te fallait, tu allais dans un bar fréquenté par des surfeurs et commandais un mojito. Tu as rencontré des gars qui sautaient en parapente d’une falaise. Toi aussi, tu sautais avec eux. Un gars, à moitié Finlandais qui construisait des maisons en paille, t’a pris en stop.

Aux puces, un homme a essayé de te vendre la figurine d’un Lassie sans oreilles, un manteau en fourrure miteuse et un kaléidoscope.

Tu as pris le kaléidoscope, mais tu l’as perdu lorsque, dans la folie, tu courais à travers cette ville portuaire arabe, où plusieurs dizaines d’années auparavant un écrivain connu s’était terré, après avoir maladroitement joué à Guillaume Tell avec sa femme. Tu voulais visiter l’endroit où il vivotait, mais tu t’es perdu en chemin. Dans des recoins sombres on te chuchotait « hachisch, hachisch », mais ce n’était pas ce que tu cherchais.

Ce n’était pas ça.

(…)

C’était il y a longtemps, et peut-être même pas vrai, à l’époque où les gens s’écrivaient des lettres avec un stylo. À l’époque où la pellicule photo ne comptait que trente-six poses, à l’époque des cassettes audio.

J’ai lu ta lettre des centaines de fois, mot par mot, phrase par phrase, jusqu’à ce que je l’aie connue par cœur. Je me disais alors : ça suffit. Ne reviens pas. Tu me manques trop, je n’en veux plus. Alors je te désirais encore plus fort. Et plus encore.

J’ai lu ta lettre des centaines de fois et je n’ai jamais réussi à y répondre.

Tu es revenu quand je n’attendais plus. Ou peut-être ce n’était qu’une illusion que tu sois revenu. Ou l’illusion c’était peut-être l’idée que je n’attendais pas.

On faisait comme s’il ne s’était rien passé, comme s’il n’y avait pas eu de lettre.

On était assis sur l’herbe humide, la nuit sentait bon, sur le ciel une comète volait vers nous. Le monde devait toucher à sa fin quelques mois plus tard, et tout tendait vers ce moment. On s’en moquait. Petite Ourse, Grande Ourse, toi, moi, le garçon avec qui je sortais à l’époque, la fille que tu as emmenée et qui parlait tout le temps, et lorsqu’elle s’arrêtait un instant, elle mettait dans la bouche une mèche de ses cheveux blonds. Elle riait fort et le garçon avec qui j’étais m’a fait comprendre que son bavardage incessant le fatiguait. J’ai bu un peu trop, j’avoue, mais ce jeu m’amusait. Je faisais mine de ne pas y tenir, qu’avant c’était du passé, mais on a quand même échangé quelques regards qui en disaient long. J’observais ta gentille babilleuse qui, à chaque gorgée de vin devenait de plus en plus vermeille et de plus en plus sans-gêne. Je me suis imaginé que je lui enlevait sa robe, que je parcourais avec mes doigts le creux de son dos et que je l’embrassais sur la bouche, elle, tout intimidée et désorientée. Je l’ai fait ou pas

Je ne me souviens pas. Et toi ? Tu te souviens ?

C’était il y a des lustres. À l’époque où notre planète était sur le point d’être frappée par une comète. Sa queue flambait sinistrement et beaucoup prédisaient la fin. Millénaire. Nouvelle ère. Le monde s’achèvera et nous avec. On vivait comme si ça devait se produire, comme si chaque instant devait être le dernier, comme si au coin de la rue nous attendait la mort ou un nouveau début fascinant.

Mais au final la comète a tout simplement disparu derrière l’horizon, un nouveau jour s’est levé et, comme si de rien n’était, jeudi est venu.

Peu a changé depuis, et pourtant tout.

La Terre tourne toujours, mais je n’arrive pas à me souvenir, où sont passés les gamins que nous étions. (…)

Oh, que oui. Parfaitement. On était allongés dans l’herbe sur le dos et avec un bâton tendu vers le ciel, on écartait les nuages. Les chevaux buvaient de l’eau à même le ruisseau, tu avais les seins nus. J’étais alors prêt tout le temps, il me suffisait de te regarder, rien que ta présence, ton odeur, ta proximité.

Une douzaine de minutes plus tôt, on avait mangé une plante magique, une herbe-miracle, on voulait faire l’expérience de tout, plus fort et plus encore. Et même si on ne croyait pas trop à son pouvoir magique, il fallait essayer. Pour le fun, l’aventure, pour vivre quelque chose de nouveau. Et quand je pensais que les miracles ne se produiraient pas, toi, tu as plongé dans un demi-sommeil très long et moi, j’avais l’impression d’avoir avalé un papillon, d’en avoir plein le ventre. La forêt s’est transformée en jungle et d’un coup tu t’es trouvée sous un arbre enroulée d’un fil coloré. Plongé dans la terre, de mes jambes ont poussé des racines. Tu me parlais dans une langue inexistante, je ne comprenais pas. Je te regardais donner aux chevaux des morceaux de sucre. Ils se laissaient caresser, tirer la crinière. Ils étaient sauvages mais toi, tu t’en moquais. Tu en as choisi un qui brillait et tu as galopé. Je ne t’ai pas suivie. Mes bras ont poussé comme des branches, longues, vers le ciel, je touchais les nuages et les déplaçais afin qu’ils n’obscurcissent pas le soleil. Pour que ce soit toujours l’été. Et chaud. Et bien.

Je me disais : c’est si simple, pourquoi je n’y avais pas pensé avant, ça a du sens, il n’y a besoin de rien d’autre. Je caressais le soleil et le faisais tourner dans mes mains jusqu’à ce que je me brûle le bout des doigts, jusqu’à ce qu’il s’avère que tu es à côté de moi et me demandes, étonnée : Quels chevaux sauvages ? Je n’en sais rien.
Tu disais qu’il n’y avait pas de chevaux. En revanche tu m’as montré des spirales dessinées sur le sol avec un bâton, à peine visibles. Tu prétendais avoir trouvé une formule d’équation grâce à laquelle on peut résoudre tous les problèmes.
Plus tard je te portais dans mes bras, épuisée, à travers un pré rempli de brebis bêlantes. Nous nous sommes endormis sur une meule de foin, dans une clairière que j’ai baptisée pour toi la clairière des désillusionnistes.
On était alors dans une autre dimension, dans un autre univers, peut-être je te rêvais, je ne sais plus, je n’en suis plus sûr.
Le lendemain tandis que tu nageais dans le lac, j’ai sculpté pour toi une cuillère en bois, car de cette façon seulement, de cette unique façon, je savais te dire alors ce que nous ne devions jamais nous dire.

Parcourant le long de la colonne vertébrale, du haut de la tête, des bulbes capillaires jusqu’à la pointe des pieds. Des frissons. C’est ce que je ressens quand tu m’attrapes par derrière, quand je tends mes fesses vers toi en toute confiance et toi, tu glisses en moi et me remplis tout entière.

Ou encore : un spasme rythmique délicieux dans le bas ventre – c’est quand je suis en-dessous, mes jambes autour de tes hanches, quand tu m’écrases de tout ton poids, ta présence palpitante en moi et une chaude volupté.

Dedans, tout au fond, c’est à chaque fois que tu es sur le dos, pointu et plein et moi, je m’empale sur toi et je bouge de manière subtile et délicate et ensuite, en secouant, en resserrant alors presque toujours je jouis et j’explose la première, car le frisson me transperce d’un coup, à l’improviste.

Et parfois tu te blottis contre moi quand je suis allongée sur le côté. Tu colles ton corps à mon dos, glisses ta main dans ma fente gonflée, tu promènes ton doigt caressant la dure protubérance. Alors le plaisir est du côté intérieur des cuisses, c’est là où je le ressens le plus fort.

J’adore aussi : souffler dans le creux de ton cou et quand tu respires dans mon oreille, sucer tes doigts, mordre légèrement ta fesse tendue et quand tu m’attrapes par les cheveux, sentir l’odeur de ta peau; j’aime aussi quand tu me lèches et quand nous restons allongés juste après; tu t’assoupis et pour moi l’acte sexuel dure encore, car je m’attiédis beaucoup plus lentement.

Parfois tu demandes, comme si tu n’étais pas sûr :
- Ça a été bien pour toi ?
- Oh, que oui. Ça l’a été très.

Traduit du polonais par Dominika Wierzbowicz

Fragment - Thrills

Thrills

It was one of those few evenings that last an eternity.

We stood on the balcony together. We watched the lights go out in window after window. I was humming a song and you were tapping a restless beat on the railing with your fingers. My legs were bare, I felt a pleasant chill. The stars winked at us and I thought that maybe there, in the silver-specked night sky, there was a parallel couple – a girl and a boy, just like us. They’d be looking in our direction, they’d see us on the balcony amid the many identical concrete ten-storey blocks, and they’d be surprised that we were blinking back at them.

And then time accelerated rapidly. It was morning already. You slipped out thinking I was still asleep. Without saying goodbye, you ran down the stairs, silent and stealthy. You didn’t turn back. You couldn’t have known that I was standing on the balcony, still warm from sleep, that I was watching you, that…

I didn’t want anything. I had no expectations. I let you go, even though I never really had you.

Maybe you scared yourself talking about you and me in thirty years. Maybe you didn’t want to frighten me away with thoughts stretching so far into the future. Maybe that was actually the perfect moment to break it off, to retreat, beforehand. To run away just to avoid coming to a dead end, awakening when there was no way of reversing.

How could you have known I was watching you if you didn’t look back.
You left the next day. I stayed. We were walking different paths again. Separate and parallel. I didn’t miss you. I didn’t want to miss you.

I entertained myself in other ways, played other games with other people. After some time a letter arrived. Three pages of passionate declaration to be read between the lines. Three pages as strong as a tsunami. I drowned. I lay without feeling, breathless for hours, days, weeks. With this confession you bound me. You did the thing we were never to do to one another. Those three words we weren’t allowed to utter. No “you”, or “love”, or “I” on those pages, but every other word was screaming it out. I buried your letter away and decided to forget it.

 

While I was forgetting, you were sitting on the pavement in a hot city in southern Europe, drinking wine from a box; someone pounded a drum, and you breathed fire and span to the beat. Coins clattered. Languages mingled: Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, English, Italian. Everyone who smiled immediately became your best mate, your friend for the evening. Beer, wine, vodka, jazz. “Te quiero mucho,” you whispered in the ears of those who were enticing and willing. You closed your eyes, but something was missing. You knew perfectly well what it was.

The hot summer night continued.

You picked strawberries somewhere. You painted pictures and sold them from the pavement. In the evenings you danced with fire and let the music lead you.

You fed cold pizza to the rats at Notre-Dame. You saw the Sagrada Família reflected in a pond, and when you threw a pebble, the building began to shake its hips and dance. You pitched a tent between the lake and Chalikounas beach, every morning you dug coins out of the sand, and when you had enough, you went to a surfer bar and ordered a mojito. You met some blokes who were paragliding from an escarpment. And you paraglided with them. You hitched a ride with a half-Finnish guy who built straw houses.

At the flea market, a man tried to sell you a Lassie figurine with no ears, a threadbare fur coat and a kaleidoscope. You took the kaleidoscope, but you dropped it when you were running madly through the Arab port city where a famous writer had hidden several decades earlier, after a game of William Tell with his wife had gone awry. You wanted to visit the hotel where he’d vegetated, but you lost your way. They whispered to you in the alleys – “ashish, ashish” – but it wasn’t that you were seeking.

Not that.

You bought a ticket and headed further south. The bus scudded through the sands all day and night. From time to time you looked out of the window and saw, like a mirage, either a girl holding a desert fox, or rams hung from their legs and bathed in blood. At some point, you saw a huge skeleton, maybe a camel’s, maybe an elephant’s, maybe a dinosaur’s. In the burning sun, everything was possible and at the same time unreal. The bus raced on, sometimes it stopped at stands where you could buy something resembling shashlik made from rat, and hot, sweet mint tea. “Shukran, shukran,” you said, but you couldn’t say anything else in this foreign language of serpentine lines, swirls and ribbons.

The natives nodded their heads and it wasn’t clear if they understood or were simply nodding. Forty degrees in the shade. The bus stopped. Someone told you that you wouldn’t be going any further, because that was where the disputed territory of Western Sahara began. An informal border. He spoke French and was roughly your age. His uncle’s cousin, or maybe his cousin’s uncle, ran a hostel. Very-good-price-for-you-my-friend. You followed him down a narrow street, then an even narrower one, around the corner to the left, and through a dark gateway. That’s where you stayed. In a room with green walls, on a dirty, greying mattress.

In the morning on the beach, at the oceanfront, the sand was lighter and finer than ever. On a dune in the distance, you noticed a small plane, a tiny replica, and a placard marking the place where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had written The Little Prince.

And then you remembered: ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you’ve tamed.’

You ran back to the hostel. You asked if they had a telephone, you had to make an urgent call. The number you knew by heart, because it rhymed nicely, because you knew that at the other end of the cable, thousands of miles to the north-east, over the sea, in a desert of concrete ten-storey tower blocks, there was a flat on the sixth floor, and inside it a red telephone receiver and a voice that would tell you: “You won’t find me in twenty years, and even if you do, you won’t recognise me.”

Someone gave you a lengthy and convoluted description for how to get to the post office. You raced off in that direction. They looked at you like you were crazy – in this sleepy little town, people rarely ran like that. Let them look. At that moment, all you wanted was to hear “hello”. You were desperate to say: “How good to hear you. Your voice is so sweet. Like honey.”

And to hear laughter in response. Trying your hardest to sound serious, you’d ask: “Have you got a boyfriend at the moment?”

And I’d reply lazily, casually: “No, not at the moment.”

You’d say: “Would you like one?”

And a moment later, in a hesitant whisper: “Would you like… me?”

That’s not how it went. The phone wasn’t working. There was no signal. You hung up, then picked up the receiver again as if in a trance. The man at the post office didn’t understand what you were saying. Until finally, agitated, in a language full of twists and turbulence, with something like four different types of “h”, he made it clear that you wouldn’t be calling because the phone was broken. His entire argument went something along the lines of “hala, alah, ala, halah and allah”, and maybe even “akbar”. The handset, deaf and dumb, hung wistfully, gently nodding to a rhythm. Your speeding heart beat twice: once south, once north-east. Do you remember? ‘What you’ve tamed.’

This was in the days before ubiquitous coverage, before free Wi-Fi, before limitless LTE, before all this technology that lets you send a Snap rather than writing unnecessary words. Nowadays, maybe you’d have taken a selfie in a turban, marking your coordinates 27°56’ N 12°55’ W and your location Tarfaya, Morocco. And I’d have liked it fifteen minutes later. You’d have known that I knew. And I’d have known you wanted me. You wouldn’t be missing me, you wouldn’t be feeling this uncertainty, you wouldn’t hesitate. You’d be checking my My Story, you’d see what I was eating, where I was going out, who I was taking pictures with.

But then…

In a desert frenzy, in the African heat, in the sun, burning down on the earth virtually at a right angle, with a pen on a sheet of paper, you wrote a three-page love declaration. You stuck on a stamp and posted it. And that same afternoon you began to regret your decision.

But it had happened, it was done. There’s a phrase for that now: ‘YOLO’. You only live once, so don’t think twice. It’s gone.

For a while, you thought about writing a second letter, asking me not to read the first, or if I had read it, to forget it. But you didn’t, because your pal good-price-for-you-my-friend, whose uncle’s cousin ran the hostel, took you to a bar where music was playing, you smoked hashish, and a colourful bird sat in a tiny cage hanging from the ceiling. And it sang.

In the morning your head was thumping. You ran to the ocean, dived under the water, and it crossed your mind then that the letter you’d sent me the day before was bound to get lost along the way. You convinced yourself it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, you believed it, and in doing so you made it true, because the more you believe in something, the more certain it is to happen.

You returned along the beach, wet and salty. Girls in hijabs were played boules in the school playground. They peeped at you shyly. You turned onto the narrow street, then the even narrower one, collected your backpack from the hostel, got on the bus and set off in the opposite direction, heading north. You fell asleep quickly and dreamed that every mile was bringing you closer to me.

 

That was a long time ago and perhaps untrue, in the days when people wrote letters to each other with a pen. In the days when a roll of film had thirty-six frames, in the days of cassette tapes.

I read your letter hundreds of times, word by word, sentence by sentence, until I’d learned it by heart. I thought to myself, that’s enough. Don’t come back. I miss you too much, I don’t want this anymore. I desired you then more than ever. Far more.

I read your letter hundreds of times and not once did I manage to reply.

translated by Kate Webster

Fragment - Slast

Slast

„Chtěl bych všechny pozabíjet a nechat jenom nás,“ řekl jsi.
Měla jsem tehdy na sobě světlé šaty, lehké a rozevláté, pamatuješ? Večer byl červencový a plný. Lepkavý vzduch. Pramínek potu mezi prsy. Tvoje slova voněla bulharským vínem, nebo možná maďarským, nebo možná. Určitě bylo červené. Jedno z nejlevnějších, takové, jaké si můžou dovolit lidé, kteří nejsou bohatí penězi.
Jsou však bohatí úplně jinak.
„Chtěl bych jenom nás,“ řekl jsi.
Nebe se růžově rozpučelo, z ulic se odpařoval den. Rozléval se líný západ slunce. Červenec, kdy nám oběma bylo dvacet a všechno bylo naše. Tvůj jazyk byl sladký a nechtěl jsi přestat. Ještě a ještě. Tehdy nebylo důležité, jestli je to láska a jestli nám vystačí do zítřka, navždy anebo třeba na nikdy víc. Byli jsme tady a teď. Noc byla naše a nalévala se jenom pro nás. Když jsi klouzal prstem vzhůru po mém stehně, cítila jsem horko a vlhko.

Všechny pozabíjet a nechat jenom nás.
Posadila jsem se ti na klín, vyhrnul jsi mi šaty. Z dálky jsme možná vypadali vcelku nevinně jako zamilovaný pár tulící se na lavičce v parku. Cítila jsem na šíji tvůj zrychlený dech. Proběhla kolem nás malá holčička, honila veverku.
Možná bychom neměli? Co když nás někdo uvidí?
Vzala jsem do úst tvoje prsty.
Pojďme se schovat.
„Vzrušuje mě, když pochybuješ, když jsi takhle rozechvělá, nejistá. Když se červenáš a vlhneš dychtivostí a teplem.“
Pamatuješ?
Zavřela jsem oči.
Všechny... A nechal bych jenom nás.
„Chtěla bys?“
Zajel jsi mi rukou do vlasů a lehce zatáhl.

Bylo jasné, co se nesmí říct. Že jsou dvě slova, která máme zakázaná. Žádné „miluju“ a žádné „tě“. Nic, co by mohlo svázat, připoutat, omezit. Že ten náš vztah, ta blízkost se nikdy nesmí změnit v rutinu, domácnost, děti, obědy, trpké výčitky, prázdninové dovolené, rekonstrukci koupelny. Že přetrváme jedině takhle.

Vstupovali jsme do různých více či méně vážných vztahů, měli jsme jiné kluky, jiné holky. Pamatuješ? Nosil jsi mě v náruči a já vdechovala vůni tvé zpocené šíje. Tehdy na tebe zrovna čekala jedna z těch mnoha, jejichž jména zmizela v nepaměti. Možná ta, jejíž náušnici jsem našla v peřinách vzápětí potom, co jsme se domilovali. Zelenou, ve tvaru slzy. V ranním světle se mihotala. Obracela jsem ji v rukou, házela jsem s ní prasátka na stěnu.

Hladil jsi mě po nahém břiše.
„Jaká je?“ zeptala jsem se.
Řekl jsi, že si lakuje nehty na nohou křiklavě červenou barvou a jazyk má drsný jako kočka.
Pominula jako všechny ostatní. Moc mi na tom nezáleželo, zatímco tys to měl právě naopak. Někdy jsi z ničeho nic, jakoby v žertu, ale přesto naštvaně, přišel s výčitkou, že všichni ti chlapci, jak žádostivě se na mě dívají, že přece víš, na co myslí, co si představují.

Já na to:
„Nech toho, jen ať se dívají, jen ať se dotýkají, víš, že to dovolím,
když budu mít chuť.“
Pamatuješ?

Chodili jsme svými cestami, jakoby každý zvlášť, ale vždycky rovnoběžně, tak, že jsme si kdykoli, dokonce i po dlouhé nepřítomnosti, byli nablízku. Někdy se mi stýskalo, jindy jsem se oddávala svým vlastním příběhům, v nichž pro tebe nebylo místo. Věděla jsem, že se vrátíš. Že budeš refrén, který se opakuje.

Chtěla jsem. Nechtěla. Bylo to dávno. Kdysi dávno v Polsku. V paneláku na předměstí se stropem zavěšeným tak nízko, že každá myšlenka vypuštěná z hlavy se od něj odrá10 žela a s rachotem padala na zem, kde se tříštila o podlahu. Výtah byl rozbitý a na dveřích byl nalepený papír vytržený ze sešitu, kde stálo, že je mimo povoz, protože do něj lidi načůrali.

Moji rodiče odjeli na chalupu, byt byl malý a zavalený knihami, ale naštěstí jsme ho měli celý pro sebe. Konečně jsme se mohli milovat v posteli. Jako dospělí. Pomalu a bez obav, že nás někdo objeví.

Tehdy jsi řekl:
„Vidím nás spolu za dvacet třicet let. Ležíme tak jako teď.
Nazí, rozcuchaní a ty se uspokojeně usmíváš.“
Se smíchem jsem odpověděla:
„Kdepak. To určitě ne.“
„Proč?“
„Protože za dvacet let budu někým úplně jiným. Někým, koho nikdy nenajdeš. A i kdyby, nedojde ti, že jsem to já...“
„Poznám tě i v tom nejdůmyslnějším životním maskování. Nečekaně tě potkám a překvapím tě. Řeknu: ‚Krásně jsi dozrála, ale pořád jsi holčička.‘ Zaváháš, jestli tu situaci rozvíjet, nebo spíš odejít, uteklo přece tolik času. Budeš dělat udivenou: ‚S někým jste si mě spletl.‘ Zeptáš se: ‚Určitě se známe?‘ A po chvíli: ‚Měli jsme už někdy to potěšení?‘ Jiskření tvých očí mi nadiktuje odpověď: ‚Ano, měli jsme to potěšení. A nejednou.‘
Sladké napětí mezi námi a neví se, co dál. Budeš mít černé, elegantní šaty těsně pod kolena se zipem vzadu. Přijdu k tobě a pomalu, jemně ten zip rozepnu.“

Překlad: Anna Plasova

Fragment - Thrill

Thrill

“I want to kill them all so there’s only us,” you said.

I was wearing a bright dress, the light flowing one, remember? It was a rife July evening. The air was sticky. A trickle of sweat running down between my breasts. Your words smelt of some Bulgarian wine, or maybe Hungarian, or maybe. I’m sure it was red, one of the cheapest, one that only those who aren’t rich in money can afford. They are rich in other things instead.

“I want only us,” you said.

The sky was bursting with pinkness, the day was evaporating from the streets. The sunset was spilling out lazily. July, we were both twenty and everything was there for us. Your tongue was sweet and you didn’t want to stop. More and more. It didn’t matter if it was love or if it would last until tomorrow, forever or never again. We were right here, right now. The night was ours and it was swelling only for us. I felt heat and wetness when you ran your finger up my thigh.

Kill them all so there’s only you and me.

I sat on your lap, you pulled up my dress. We may have looked innocent from afar — just like some two lovebirds, embraced on a park bench. I felt your rapid breathing on my neck. A little girl ran past us chasing a squirrel.

Maybe we shouldn’t? What if someone sees us?

I put your fingers in my mouth.

Let’s hide.

“It turns me on when you have second thoughts, when you’re all so shivery, unsure. When you blush, eager and warm, when you become wet.”

Remember?

All of them…only you and me.

“Would you like to?”

You touched my hair and pulled it lightly.

It was clear what is not supposed to be said. That we were not allowed this one sentence. Not a single love, not a single you. Nothing that could tie up, bind or limit us. That this relation must never turn into routine, a home, children, dinners, lamentation, family holidays, bathroom renovation. That only in this way we will last.

 

We had various, less or more serious relationships, we dated other boys, other girls. Remember? You carried me around and I smelt your sweaty neck. One of those many girls whose name has since slipped into oblivion was waiting for you just then. Maybe it was the owner of the earring I found in your sheets right after we made love. A green, teardrop-shaped one. I swirled it in my fingers, so it reflected light on the wall.

You stroked my naked belly.

“What is she like?” I asked.

You told me she painted her toenails bright red and had a tongue as sharp as cats do.

She has passed just like all of the others. I didn’t care too much, but you, quite the opposite. Sometimes, out of the blue, jokingly, yet with anger and resentment, you’d say that all those boys, that they look at me so hungrily, that I know what they think, what they imagine.  And I would answer:

“Come on, let them look, let them touch, you know I’ll only allow it when I want to.”

Remember?

We would go our own ways, kind of separately but always alongside, so that we were close in every moment, even after a long absence. There were days that I missed you, and days that I lived my own stories, where you had no place. I knew you would come back. Like a chorus.

I wanted it. I didn’t. It was a long time ago. A long time ago in Poland. In a block of flats in the suburbs, with the ceiling hanging so low that every single thought released from one’s head would bounce back, hit the floor with a bang, and shatter into pieces. The lift was broken and a ripped-out piece of paper hanging on the door informed that this was due to people pissing in it.

My parents were gone to the allotment, the flat was tiny and cluttered with books but luckily all ours. Finally, we could make love on a bed. Like adults. Slowly and without worrying that someone would catch us.

You said: “I see us together in twenty, thirty years. We’re lying down just like this. Naked, messy, you with your satisfied smile.” I answered laughing: “No way, definitely not.”

“Why?”

“Because in twenty years I’ll be a whole different person. Someone you will never find. And even if you do, you won’t recognize me…”

“I’d recognize you even in the most sophisticated life camouflage. I’ll bump into you in an unexpected moment and take you by surprise. I’ll say: You’ve become a beautiful woman but you’re still just a girl — you’ll hesitate whether to stay like this or leave; after all it’s been so long. You’ll pretend to be surprised: — Sir, you must have confused me with someone else — you’ll ask: Are you sure we know each other? — And after a while: — Have we had the pleasure? — The gleam in your eyes will prompt the answer — Oh yes, we’ve had the pleasure, and more than once. Sweet tension between us, no idea what comes next. You’ll wear an elegant, black knee-length dress, with a zipper at the back. I’ll come closer and then slowly, gently unzip it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to take any of this seriously. In my spacetime there was no in twenty years, let alone in thirty. I was in right-here, and I was in right-now. I had you now and didn’t want it any other time.

It was one of these rare evenings that last forever.

We were standing on the balcony. We saw lights going out in other flats, one after another. I was humming a song and you were tapping an unsteady rhythm on the railing. My legs were bare, and the chill was so pleasant. Stars were blinking at us and I thought that maybe out there, in this night sky twinkling with silver dots, is an identical, parallel couple — a boy and a girl, just like us. They are looking in our direction, they see us standing on one of the balconies attached to one of these same-looking, concrete, ten-storey buildings, surprised that we, too, are blinking at them.

And then time sped up rapidly. It was morning already. You’ve sneaked out thinking I was still asleep. Without a goodbye and without making any noise you ran down the stairs. And you haven’t turned around. You couldn’t have known that I was standing on the balcony, still bed-warm, that I was watching you go, that.

I didn’t want anything. Had no expectations. I let you go although I’d never really had you.

Perhaps you were afraid of your “me and you in thirty years” dreams. Maybe you didn’t want to scare me off with such a fat-fetched thought. Maybe it was the right moment to stop it, retreat, before. To run away only to avoid waking up at a point of no return.

How could you have known I was watching if you hadn’t turned around?

You left the city the next day. I stayed. We went our own ways again. Separately but alongside. I didn’t miss you. I didn’t want to.

I played different games, had fun with different people. After some time, a letter came. Three pages of passionate confessions, to be read between the lines. Three tsunami-strong pages. I drowned. I lay numb and breathless for hours, days, weeks. You’ve tied me up with this confession; you’ve done what we were never supposed to do to ourselves. Not a single love or you in those three pages, but all the other words screamed it out. I buried the letter deep down and decided to forget.

As I was forgetting, you were sitting on the pavement in one of hot southern European cities, drinking wine out of the box, someone was hitting the drum and you were breathing fire and spinning around to the rhythm. The coins were pinging. Languages were mixing: Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, English, Italian. One smile was enough to become best mates, friends for one night. Beer, wine, vodka, jazz — “Te quiero mucho” — you’d whisper to those nubile and keen. You’d close your eyes, but something was missing. You knew exactly what.

            The heat of the summer night lasted.

            You picked strawberries in some place. You painted pictures and sold them on the streets. In the evenings you danced with fire, letting the music lead you.

            In winter you’d feed pizza to local rats at the Notre Dame. You’d watch the reflection of the Sagrada Familia in a pond, and when you threw a stone, the building would dance and bounce its hips. You pitched a tent between the lake and Chalikounas beach, each morning you’d dig out some coins from the sand, and when you collected enough, you’d go to this surfer bar and order a mojito. You met some paragliders and you jumped off the cliff with them. A half Finnish guy building houses out of straw gave you a ride.

            Not this.

            You bought the ticket and headed further South. The bus glided through the sand night and day. From time to time you’d look through the window and, like a mirage, see some girl holding a desert fox, or a ram hanging upside down and dripping blood. One day you spotted a huge skeleton, maybe a camel’s, or an elephant’s, or maybe some dinosaur’s. In this scorching heat, everything seemed both possible and unreal. The bus sped, sometimes it would stop by some stand where one could buy something that resembled a rat shashlik, they’d treat you with a cup of hot sweet tea with mint. You’d say “Shukran, shukran”, but it was everything you knew in this snake-like, swirled serpentine language. The locals would nod and no one knew if they understood or just nodded. Forty degrees Celsius in the shade. The bus stopped. Someone made it clear that you won’t go any further because this was where the disputed territory started: Western Sahara. Unofficial border. He spoke French and was about your age. His uncle’s cousin or maybe his cousin’s uncle, ran a hostel. Verygoodpriceforyoumyfriend. You walked down a narrow alley, then an even narrower one, to the left, around the corner and then into a dark gate. This is where you stayed. In a room painted green, on a dirty, greyish mattress.

The next morning, the sand on the beach by the ocean was bright and fine as never before. On the horizon you spotted a small plane on a dune, a miniature replica with a plate informing that right here, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince.

And then you remembered:

You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.

translated by Marcelina Karcz

Fragment - Solidarity according to women

Solidarity according to women

They had the best years of their lives ahead of them.

They were in their twenties and thirties and they chose to rebel instead of settling down and living fairly peaceful lives. Those who they rebelled against tried to destroy their marriages. Threatened them with placing their children in orphanages or that something bad would happen to them if they did not agree to collaborate with the secret service.

They were offered relocation to another country on the condition they refrained from activities injurious to the system. The did not refrain from anything.

On a Saturday in August 1980, when workers, happy with having been given a raise, ended the strike and wanted to leave the Gdańsk Shipyard, they closed the gates and thus began the strike in solidarity. If it had not been for the initiative of a few determined women, perhaps the Polish history of August ’80 would not have taken place at all.

During the Martial Law, when men were imprisoned, women stepped in their shoes. They would print the independent press, they launched and ran an underground radio station. They did not care about sitting on the board of the Union, they did not care about ranks.

What mattered to them was work and its results. When the Solidarity Radio was broadcasting an illegal programme, lights would be blinking on and off all over the city as this way people showed that they were listening. The underground Tygodnik Mazowsze weekly had a print run of a few dozen thousand copies. Some people called them the “Female Operational Group”…

What kept them going was a belief that the revolution was meaningful, hope for a change, a feeling of togetherness. Their perspective was delivering Poland from the oppression of the Soviet Union. Their objective was freedom and democracy. They were absent at the Round Table talks, however. They let themselves be forgotten when their male colleagues were assuming the most important positions in the public administration bodies after the first free elections. They thought politics was not for them.

They keep fighting till this day but in a different way than they did at the time. Henryka is helping rural families whose income depended on collective farming which was abandoned after the fall of communism. Joanna is a columnist and is critical of capitalism and the mechanisms governing modern economy. Barbara is teaching young women how to be leaders. Ewa continues to be an active member of the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarność. Barbara claims that there are no free women in the free Poland she had been fighting for. Jadwiga is still wondering whether Poland is in fact a free country. When asked where solidarity is to be found today, Henryka answered: “At my house!” Joanna recapitulates: “Solidarity cannot be repeated but knowing that a different world is possible, leaves us hopeful”.

The feature-length documentary entitled Solidarity according to women is a story about some of the brave Polish women whose wisdom, determination and commitment in the opposition movement of the 1980s helped bring about a change of the political reality in Poland. The link between two aspects of the film is Marta Dzido – its co-director and narrator. Born in 1981, being a symbolic daughter of the Solidarity movement, Dzido makes an attempt at locating and reinstating women who were written out of recent Polish history.