So we started drinking with Maciej in a small dive somewhere near the old market, beer beer beer until I ran out of money. Cigarettes had already run out earlier, which wasn’t a problem—Maciej immediately bought some at the bar, Pall Mall, probably the strong ones. So we smoked, and I finished what was at least for now my last beer, in a pitiful and sad mood, even though earlier we’d been talking about how I have to become a legend, how I’ve got the predispositions, how it’s all going great. We also talked about my new love, who seems less selfish, more demanding, definitely not a one-night thing but rather for life, and maybe for the first time I’m right. So I raised a toast to Her, and thought then that I could use some money, so I wanted to borrow it from someone. Marta was in town, and I thought she’d surely be kind and understanding as always, and lend me a few coins so I could survive the night at least until four, as is my habit. My Lady was probably already asleep. Returning to Her all the time until morning, and then dreaming that strange dream about Her a few years later, how she’d change and what we’d be doing on the night bus going to the pub—I’d get off at the right stop, distracted by a friend I hadn’t seen in ages, wanting to introduce Her, but She wouldn’t be there anymore, She’d stayed on the bus and gone somewhere else. And later She’d explain to me why She did it, that She loved me very much, but they were opening that new pub a little further on and She had to go, and all of this She’d do over the phone—and if that really happens, let me be damned. So thinking about what will or won’t be, I felt the full force of a powerful crescendo of choices I have to make, since my life began 20 years ago and so far it’s hard to call it a life. Yes, sometimes I’m happy, sometimes too much, sometimes I run half-naked in the snow of the old market and a taxi driver shouts “Looks like summer’s back!” and nobody understands, though some laugh and others just stare. More often I feel like a 40-year-old, my soul is old and ruined, and I don’t know what will happen when another 20 years pass. I want a peaceful life beside a beloved person, so I can love her, write, listen to jazz, take long walks, and all the rest of those awful clichés that nonetheless make a person happy longer than being drunk or high or both together with something extra for an encore. Anyway, I had no intention of betraying that unspoken love, not yet unfolded, and I decided not to dance. I also decided to start a week of peace, drink green tea, listen to Gong Live Etc., and not leave the house. Sit there completely alone, since She won’t come. Lock myself in my prison of habits—new ones, but quite similar to the old, since both are escapes from responsibility and decision-making, and above all escapes from everything that overwhelms me and makes up the prose of my pitiful drinking. And above all, not to dance in a billowing white shirt with some random chick. And so it was. Maciej stayed at the table with his beer, I threw on my coat, left my scarf, and went out to the square where I’d arranged to meet Marta. She was with her cousin, we chatted a bit, “what’s up with you,” the usual crap, I got the money and went back to the pub. We probably ordered another beer and started talking about the film we want to make. A film without a script, an open film, a film about the two of us, since the rest considered their lives too uninteresting to make a film about, and some couldn’t imagine filming without a script, probably because they don’t know who Godard is. The discussion about film and with film took up some precious evening time, and it got late, so we decided to get up, buy some decent wine at the night shop, and go to the pub where Marta and her cousin were sitting—basically just to borrow a corkscrew and open the wine—and only for some fucked-up kid to throw Maciej against a crate marked “Warning, high voltage,” while his brother fed me some pathetic bullshit about how they’re from Holland, and Maciej spoke English so he’s a sucker because he’s Polish and shouldn’t do that again. They must have been drinking harder than us, because I didn’t understand a single word of their crap. Anyway, after these marginal adventures on the way, we opened the wine inside, I started drinking, and we decided to go to the citadel—which didn’t happen, because on the way we thought of walking to the dorm to make sandwiches, and I wanted to sleep. But when we got there, through wonderful shortcuts across mud, bushes, fields, trees, the stadium, and a huge street not busy at that hour, and then another one, it turned out that fucking indifference reigns everywhere, even where it shouldn’t, and the pitiful people at the reception desk probably do nothing else in life but stare at faces, because they remembered I don’t live there and wouldn’t let me in. And honestly, judging by my appearance, I wouldn’t have let myself in either. I remembered Ziggy in another dorm a few steps away, and there a gray-haired angel with indescribable calm said, “410, right? Just please, no noise, and only for an hour.” And we talked with Ziggy about the Stones concert, about our generation, about youth, about the cultural hole in our fucking city that no one can fill, and it so happens we’re young and great and only here once in this world, and instead of doing something we sit here drinking—I red, Maciej and Ziggy white wine—and then Ziggy treated us to sandwiches, and we talked about that nonsense with breaks for cigarettes in the corridor, which we put out in a jar filled with water and the butts of previous speakers. And nothing really came of that conversation except the brilliant thesis that Maciej would drop by his place and make sandwiches, I’d wait, and we’d head back to the city, catch the night bus, and then find a pub open at 4 a.m. willing to take in two alcohol-thirsty guys—which in Poznań is practically impossible, since almost all the night dancers politely go home, lacking stamina, topics, money, and everything else, so they go to sleep. And honestly, I don’t blame them—if I didn’t have money, I’d have been asleep long ago instead of riding a rickety night bus to the center, this time even with some cheerful, lively people inside, drunk but funny, not pitiful as usual. We got off, sang something, and went looking for a pub, but didn’t find one, which was predictable—except two crazy girls found us, clearly looking for suckers to buy them drinks. One professionally scanned my clothes for signs of how expensive they were, and asked me what I do. I said I play jazz. She said she doesn’t understand jazz, which I expected, because she was really uninteresting and ugly to the point of pain in that glaring light, but very self-confident. And I thought, man, that’s what you’re missing—look at her, look at yourself, and tell yourself what the fuck you’re doing here. But Maciej went downstairs with the other one to check out the party, because we finally found a pub—which didn’t change the fact that the fucking entry fee was 15 złoty, and I was still sober enough to tell the girls, “Oh no, no way. It’ll be harder for you to find two suckers to pay for your dancing than for us to find two beautiful—beautiful, I repeat—girls at this hour. So goodnight, have fun, and same to you.” And we went into another pub, just the two of us again, and I felt good, and thought, man, that’s progress. In the past you’d have used every trick to mess around with one of those hustlers, but now no, oh no, you remember your promises—may it stay that way. And in the pub, which seemed very exclusive, though I’d been there once with a certain blonde dressed in white from head to toe, which doesn’t matter now, artificial people indulged in a bit of artificial spleen with artificial music, but the beer, though expensive, was quite good, and those cigarettes in the golden pack I’d never seen before, called Benson & Hedges—and in the morning, the tenth, around two p.m., came the reflection tied to them. Then just tram line 2 and home, each to his own, of course, though I stopped by the cemetery on the way, as morning entertainment before going to sleep. Then bed, and again a dream of Her—this time I don’t remember what about or who else, I have them every day, maybe because I go to sleep and wake up with Her name on my lips. And now I sit and finish writing this pitiful fragment about a wonderful day, and wish you pleasant reading—and if you haven’t yet, then fuck you all, because between these lines is life. And I love my Little Lady.
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