Word Document (draft of July 2008)
Ulica Krokodyli
IN THE bottom drawer of his deep desk, my father kept an old and beautiful map of our town.
It was a whole in-folio volume of parchment sheets, originally bound with linen strips, which formed an enormous wall map in the form of a panorama in bird’s-eye perspective.
Hung on the wall, it almost spanned the whole room, and it opened a distant view onto the entire valley of the Tyśmienica — a pale-gold ribbon winding its wavy way — onto the whole lake-land of widely dispersed marshes and ponds, onto the folding forelands drawing to the south, at intervals at first, then in ever more gathering strands, a chessboard of curved hills, smaller and paler the further they sank into the golden and smoky mist of the horizon. Out of that sagging, distant periphery our town came into view end p.74 and grew to the fore, at first in still undifferentiated complexes, compact blocks and masses of houses cleft by deep ravines of streets, to be separated closer up into individual tenements etched with the sharp distinctness of views seen through a telescope. On those closer plans the engraver had elicited the entire embroiled and manifold turmoil of the streets and alleys, the sharp distinctness of their mouldings, architraves, archivolts and pilasters, shining in the late and deep gilt of an overcast afternoon, which plunged all of their curves and recesses into a deep sepia of shadow. The solids and prisms of that shadow, like dark honeycombs, cut their way into the ravines of the streets, submerged here a whole side of a street, there a gap between the houses in their warm, juicy mass; the shadows dramatised and orchestrated with gloomy Romanticism that manifold architectural polyphony.
On that plan, executed in the style of baroque panoramas, the region of Ulica Krokodyli shone in empty white, as the Polar Regions are usually indicated on geographical charts, countries inscrutable and of uncertain existence. Only the lines end p.75 of a few streets were drawn there, in black strokes, and afforded their names in plain, unembellished script, in contrast with the noble antiquity of the other legends. The cartographer had apparently been hesitant to acknowledge that district’s affiliation with the collective body of the town, and his reluctance showed in that separate and slighting treatment.
To understand that reserve we must now turn our attention to the ambiguous and dubious character of that district, so very much at odds with the fundamental tone of the whole town.
It was an industrial and commercial district with a glaringly emphatic character of sober utilitarianism. The spirit of the time, the economic mechanism, had not spared even our town, and it had taken root in a patch of its periphery, where it had developed into a parasitic quarter.
While a nocturnal, solemn and ceremonious unlicensed trade still held sway in the old town, modern, sober forms of commercialism had developed in a trice in that new district. Pseudo-Americanism, implanted in the musty old ground of the town, had shot up there — a lush but empty and colourless vegetation of cheap and paltry pretentiousness. The crooked old suburban houses had hastily acquired botched portals, which were unmasked only on closer inspection as pitiful imitations of big city features. Their shaky, dim and dirty panes, breaking up the darkly mirrored street into wavy reflections, the unplaned wood of their portals and the grey atmosphere of their barren interiors, cobweb and tufts of dust settling on their high shelves and along their tattered and crumbling walls, had impressed on the shops there the stamp of a wild Klondike. And so, one after the other, end p.76 tailors’ shops had come, ready-made clothiers’ shops, china shops, chemists’ shops and barbers’ shops. Their great, grey display windows bore inscriptions of artistic gilt lettering, flowing obliquely or in a semicircle: CONFISERIE, MANUCURE or KING OF ENGLAND.
Natives of the town kept themselves at a distance from that region; they lived apart from the dregs, the rabble, the characterless wretches — away from the downright moral squalor and that tawdry turn of man that is born in such ephemeral environments. But on fallen days, at times of base temptation, some or other of the inhabitants of the town did happen, half by chance, to stray into that dubious district. The best of them were not occasionally insensible to the temptation of wilful degradation, the levelling of barriers and hierarchy, wallowing in that shallow mud of society, its easy intimacy and grimy hubbub. That district was an El Dorado for such moral deserters, fugitives who had forsaken the banner of propriety. Everything appeared dubious and ambiguous there; everything beckoned — with a secret wink, a cynically articulated gesture and a solicitous, suggestively narrowed eye — toward impure hopes. Everything liberated base nature from its fetters.
Almost no one, however detached, could really comprehend the strange oddness of that district: its lack of hues, as if the luxury of colours was unaffordable in that shabby town sprung up in haste. Everything was grey there, like in monochrome photographs or illustrated catalogues. This semblance went beyond an ordinary metaphor, for it occasionally seemed, wandering about that part of town, that one was in fact browsing through the tedious advertising sections of some catalogue, where suspect end p.77 announcements, indecent notices and dubious illustrations had parasitically nested; and, moreover, those wanderings were barren and without result, like the excitation of a fantasy provoked by the rows and columns of pornographic publications.
One entered some tailor’s shop to order a suit — a suit of the cheap stylishness so typical of this district. The premises would be vast and empty, lofty and colourless. Many storeys of enormous shelves towered one after the other into the indistinct heights of that hall. The tiers of empty shelves led one’s gaze up to the ceiling, which might be the sky, the paltry, colourless and dilapidated sky of this district. Storerooms further off, however, visible through an open door, were crammed to the ceiling with boxes and crates, heaped up in an enormous card index, which fall to pieces in the heights, under the jumbled sky of the attic, the cubature of its emptiness, the barren timber of its nothingness. No light comes in through the great, grey windows, cross-ruled many times over like sheets of chancellery paper, for an indifferent, faint grey light, like water, fills the expanse of the shop, casting no shade and accentuating nothing. Soon, some slim youth appears, astoundingly servile, compliant and amenable, to indulge our desires and swamp us with his shop assistant’s cheap and easy eloquence. But as he chatters and unwinds the enormous rolls of cloth, as he folds, arranges and tries on the unending stream of the material, flowing through his hands and forming illusory overcoats and trousers from its waves, all that manipulation appears to be something inessential, an appearance or a comedy, a veil flung ironically over the true meaning of affairs.
Salesgirls come and go, slender and black, each with some blemish in their beauty (typical of this district of faulty goods); they stand in the doorway leading to the storerooms, their eyes inquisitive as to whether a certain matter (entrusted to the experienced hands of the shop assistant) is being brought to a close. The shop assistant wheedles and minces, and occasionally has the air of a transvestite. end p.78 One wants to squeeze him under his soft, weak chin or pinch his pale, powdered cheek when he discretely, with a knowing half-glance, calls our attention to a trademark, a label of transparent symbolism.
The matter of choosing the suit gradually gives place to a new proposal. Full of sympathy for his client’s most intimate stirrings, that youth, debauched and effeminately limp, now passes curious trademarks before his eyes, a whole library of trademarks, a room housing a sophisticated connoisseur’s collection. It is now apparent that the ready-made clothier’s shop is merely a façade, behind which is concealed a shop dealing in out-of-print books, an assortment of highly ambiguous publishing houses and private editions. The servile shop assistant opens further emporiums, crammed to the ceiling with books, drawings and photographs. These vignettes and these drawings surpass a hundredfold our boldest dreams. Never have we envisaged such culminations of debauchery, such ingenuities of immoderation.
The salesgirls slip with increasing rapidity between the rows of books, grey and parchment-like yet full of pigment in their debauched faces, the dark pigment of brunettes, with a glistening and greasy blackness lurking in their eyes, which suddenly darts out from them along sleeking zigzag cockroach path. But also, in their scorched blushes, in the piquant stigmata of their beauty-spots and their shy indications of dark down, they disclose their breed of black, clotted blood. That colouring with its too intense force, that dense and aromatic mocha appears to smear the books they take into their olivaceous hands — their touch seems to colour them and to leave a dark rainfall of freckles in the air, a streak of snuff, like a puff-ball with its rousing, animal aroma. Meanwhile, the general profligacy has been breaking ever freer of the restrictions of appearances. The shop assistant, having exhausted his insistent end p.79 endeavour, has slowly succumbed to feminine listlessness. In silk pyjamas, displaying a woman’s décolletage, he now lies on one of many sofas which are dispersed among the regions of books. The salesgirls, taking turns, re-enact figures and positions from book-cover illustrations, while others now go to sleep on makeshift beds. The pressure on the client has eased. He is released from the encirclement of insistent dealing — he is left alone, to his own devices. Busy with their conversations, the salesgirls pay no further attention to him. Turning away or aside from him, they strike an arrogant contrapost, they shift their weight from one foot to the other, flaunting their coquettish footwear, and they allow a snaking play of their limbs to pass along their slender bodies, from top to bottom, attacking the aroused onlooker with it from the safety of their nonchalant irresponsibility, while at the same time ignoring him. Thus they withdraw, slip calculatedly into the depths, leaving their guest to do as he pleases. Let us take advantage of that unguarded moment and sneak away from the unforeseen consequences of that innocent visit — and escape into the street.
No one detains us. Through the corridors of books, between the long shelves of periodicals and prints, we emerge from the shop — and here we are in that part of Ulica Krokodyli where, from its high vantage point, almost the entire length of that broad highway can be seen, all the way to the distant, unfinished railway station buildings. It is a grey day, as it always is in this district, and occasionally the whole scene seems like a photograph from an illustrated newspaper, so grey, so flat are the houses, people and carriages. That reality is paper-thin, and it betrays its imitativeness in its every chink. One occasionally has the impression that only in the tiny scrap before our eyes is everything properly arranged end p.80 into that pointillist image of big city boulevards, while from the sides that improvised masquerade has come undone and is unravelling — unable to persevere in its role, it is falling to pieces above us into plaster and oakum, into the lumber room of some enormous, empty theatre. On that outer skin, tense poses, the artificial solemnity of masks and ironic pathos shudder. But far be it from me to want to unmask the spectacle. Despite my better judgement, I am drawn to the tawdry charm of the district. Besides, even certain traits of self-parody are not lacking in the town’s aspect. Rows of small, single storey suburban houses alternate with tenements of many storeys, which are a conglomeration of sign-boards, blank office windows and grey display windows, commercials and ruses, as if made of cardboard. The river of the crowd flows past the houses. The street is as wide as a big city boulevard, but it is a walkway of trodden down mud, full of pot-holes, puddles and grass, like a village square. The street traffic of the district is a byword in the town; the locals speak of it with pride, with a knowing glint in their eyes. That grey, impersonal crowd is most earnest in its role, and full of zeal in demonstrating its semblance of a big city. One has, nevertheless, despite all the perplexity and mercenariousness, the impression of the erratic, monotonous and aimless wandering of some sleepy pageant of marionettes. An atmosphere of strange triviality pervades the whole scene. The crowd flows monotonously on, and, strangely enough, it always seems to be seen indistinctly — the figures flow in a tangled, docile commotion, not quite coming into clear focus. Occasionally from this hubbub of many heads we might just catch some dark, lively look, some black bowler hat pulled down low over a head, one side of a face rent into a smile, the lips precisely mouthing something, or some leg stopped in its tracks and rigidified now and forever.
Driverless droshkies are a peculiarity of the district, dashing about the streets on their own. It is not that there are no droshky drivers here, but, mingling with the crowd and occupied by a thousand affairs, they are unconcerned about their carriages. In this district of semblance and the empty gesture it hardly matters end p.81 where one’s drive ends up, and the passengers subject themselves to those erratic carriages with the same levity that characterises everything here. Many a time they are to be seen at dangerous bends, leaning far out of the crooked carriage hoods as they execute with considerable effort, taking the reins into their own hands, the tricky manoeuvre of overtaking.
We also have trams in this district, in which the town councillors’ ambition displays its supreme triumph. But, made of papier-mâché and with their sides battered and crumpled after long years of use, the sight of those wagons is lamentable. Often they have no front end whatsoever, and so the passengers are visible as they go by, sitting stiffly and bearing themselves with great dignity. These trams are pushed along by municipal porters. Strangest of all, however, is the railway system on Ulica Krokodyli.
Now and again, at irregular times of day, somewhere toward the end of the week, one might catch sight of a crowd of people waiting at the turning of a street for a train. It is never certain to arrive, or where it might stop, and it often seems as if the people are waiting in two different places at once, unable to agree among themselves where the stand is actually located. They wait for a long time; they stand in a black, taciturn crowd all along the barely perceptible traces of the track, their faces in profile like a row of pale, paper masks, drawn out into a fantastic line of contemplation.
And at last, unexpectedly, it arrives — it pulls in from the side street where it had been looked for, as low as a snake, a miniature train with a squat, chugging little locomotive. It pulls into that black lane and its wagons, scattering coal dust, darken the street. For a moment, the dark chugging of the locomotive and a breeze of strange solemnity, full of sadness, end p.82 and the subdued hurrying and excitement transform the street into the hall of a railway station in the rapidly falling winter dusk.
Bribery and a street trade in railway tickets are a plague of our town.
At the last moment, while the train is standing at the station, hurried entreaties are made to corrupt officials of the railway service. Before these negotiations are concluded, the train moves off, pursued by the slowly moving, disappointed crowd, who follow it a long way, finally to disperse.
The street, full of twilight and a hint of faraway travels, concerned only for a moment with that improvised railway station, brightens up again, widens and once more admits a carefree, monotonous crowd of pedestrians along its walkway, who wander past the shop displays in a cloud of gossip — those dirty, grey quadrants full of shabby goods, great waxen mannequins and barber’s dolls.
Prostitutes pass through, provocatively attired in long, lacy dresses. They walk with long, predacious strides, notwithstanding that they might be the wives of barbers or restaurant bandleaders, and in each of their impish and debauched faces there is a trifling blemish which negates them: either they have a squint, a blackened eye, a crossed walleye or a harelip, or the tip of their nose is missing.
The inhabitants of the town are proud of this odour of debauchery which pervades Ulica Krokodyli. We needn’t deny ourselves anything, they think with pride — we too can afford genuine big city licentiousness. They maintain that every woman in this district is a coquette. And in fact one need only turn one’s attention to one of them to encounter that obstinate, cloggy look that chills us with pleasurable assurance. Even the schoolgirls here tie their ribbons in a certain characteristic way; end p.83 they comport their slender legs in a particular manner, and in their glances they have that impure flaw in which their future debauchery lies, preformed.
And yet — and yet, am I to betray the last mystery of this district, Ulica Krokodyli’s carefully concealed secret?
Several times in the course of my account I have made certain warning signs; I have, in a delicate way, given expression to my reservations. The attentive reader will not be unprepared for this conclusive turn of the affair. I am referring to the imitative, illusory nature of this district — but these words are too definitive, too explicit in their meanings to delineate the incomplete and undecided character of its reality.
Our language does not possess epithets fine enough to weigh, as it were, the degrees of its reality, to define its pliability. Let me say it bluntly: the tragedy of this district is that nothing here ever reaches completion; nothing transcends its definitivum — all movements, once begun, hang in the air; all gestures are prematurely exhausted and cannot proceed beyond a certain deadlock. We can now appreciate its great luxuriance and prodigality — in the intentions, projects and anticipations that characterise this district. It is all nothing more than the fermentation of desires, prematurely luxuriant and therefore impotent and empty. Every merest whim germinates in its atmosphere of inordinate facility; a fleeting tension swells and grows into an empty, puffed out excrescence, a shot up, grey and light vegetation of downy weeds — colourless shaggy poppy heads composed of a weightless tissue of illusion and hashish. A languid and profligate aura of sin rises over the whole district, and the houses, shops and people not uncommonly seem to be a shudder on its fervid body, the gooseflesh of its feverish reveries. Nowhere so much as here do we feel so threatened by possibilities, end p.84 so shocked by the propinquity of fulfilment, scared pale and stiff by the pleasurable terror of realisation. But it ends there.
Having gone beyond a certain point of tension, the tide ebbs and turns back; the atmosphere dies away and dissipates; the possibilities shrivel and crumble into nothingness; the crazy grey poppies of excitation scatter into ashes.
We will regret forever that we left for a moment the ready-made clothier’s shop of dubious repute. We can never find our way back to it now. We will blunder from sign board to sign board, and be mistaken hundreds of times. We will visit dozens of storerooms, finding some quite similar; we will wander through lanes of books, browsing through periodicals and prints; we will confer at length and convolutedly with salesgirls of inordinate pigment and tainted beauty, who are unable to comprehend our wishes.
We will be embroiled in misunderstandings until our fervour and agitation is entirely dissipated in unnecessary effort, in our futile pursuit.
Our hopes were misplaced; the ambiguous appearance of the premises and its employees were a semblance; the ready-made clothier’s shop was only selling off-the-peg suits; the shop assistant had no ulterior motives. The domain of the women on Ulica Krokodyli is a really quite mediocre debauchery, steeped in thick layers of moral misconceptions and banal vulgarity. This town of cheap human material also lacks the exuberance of instinct, lacks dark and unusual passions.
Ulica Krokodyli was our town’s concession to modernity and big city debauchery. Apparently we could afford nothing better than a paper imitation, like a photomontage made up of cuttings from last year’s mouldered newspapers.
end p.85