Tomasz Jedrowski

C'est ainsi que je vivais à l'époque : à travers les livres. Je m'enfermais dans leur histoire, je rêvais de leurs personnages la nuit, je me prenais pour eux. Ils étaient mon armure contre les arrêtes dures de la réalité.

C'est ainsi que je vivais à l'époque : à travers les livres. Je m'enfermais dans leur histoire, je rêvais de leurs personnages la nuit, je me prenais pour eux. Ils étaient mon armure contre les arêtes dures de la réalité. Je les emportais partout avec moi, comme un talisman dans ma poche, et ils me semblaient presque plus réels que les personnes autour de moi, qui parlaient et vivaient dans le déni, destinées à ne jamais rien faire qui mérite d'être raconté, pensais-je.

This is how I lived back then – through books. I locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night, pretended to be them. They were my armour against the hard edges of reality. I carried them with me whenever I went, like a talisman in my pocket, thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth recounting.

“They know that I’m . . .” I couldn’t face her eyes, couldn’t say it. Had
never said it to anyone. Not even to myself. It felt like jumping over a five-
meter wall.
“Tell me,” she said gently, her weightless hand on my shoulder again.
“Go on. Don’t be scared.”
I almost crumbled. I took on the words again, as if they had fallen to the
floor. I picked them up, lifted them, tried to push them over the threshold,
like something immensely heavy that could crush me.
“I’m a . . .” I tried and failed under her gaze.
It was the same feeling, the same pulling to and fro, one feels when
standing on the edge of a diving board.
“I’m a—” My voice almost steady. “I’m a homosexual.”
The world did not tumble. Her face remained calm. The white winter
light still streamed into the room as if into a church, illuminating the floor
and us, my heart pumped blood around my body—accelerated but still—
and a shiver ran through me, through my entire being, and I felt as if
something dead and heavy inside had been expelled, as if I’d been carrying
a leaden ghost within me all that time. I felt dizzy. I tried to say something
else, but there was nothing to say. She took me into her arms, and I allowed
her to—into her soft arms, against her pullover, cushioned by the soft
breasts beneath it.
“It’s OK,” she whispered. “I understand.” She stroked my hair. “You’re
good. Don’t you worry. You’ll be fine. You’re good.”
Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the tears. They
poured out all by themselves, a force of their own, agents of relief and
consolation, flooding my face, emptying my mind. And we sat like this,
enveloped in each other, in the bright light, for an immeasurable amount of
time. When I straightened myself, she left, returning moments later with a
tissue.

Certaines choses ne peuvent être effacées par le silence. Certaines personnes ont ce pouvoir sur nous, que cela nous plaise ou non. Je commence à le comprendre. Certains êtres, certains événements peuvent nous faire perdre la tête. Comme une guillotine, ils coupent notre vie en deux, ils séparent le vivant et le mort, l'avant et l'après.

I remember how I left our country and how I thought my nightmare of
loneliness would return. The nightmare of fossilized time, where I walk
through the desolate landscape of overgrown gravestones, not a soul
around, condemned to a life among the dead. But it didn’t. I came to a new
country, a new city, and decided to leave my loneliness behind. America is
good like that. Even if it isn’t true, even if you can’t ever completely shed
your past, no one here will tell you that. It makes it easier. Easier to fool
yourself. You, of all people, must know what that feels like.
And yet, it occurs to me now that we can never run with our lies
indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We
can choose the when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful
and uncertain it will be. Even our country is doing it now—facing its
archive of lies, wading through the bog toward some new workable truth.

And then the music stopped. The record had come to an end; the low
crackle of the speakers could be heard between the suddenly naked chatter
of the crowd. We looked at each other, bemused, in anticipation. A new
record was placed on the deck by a gangly boy in green bell-bottoms. At
once a string of quick, light beats prepared the room, gathered our attention,
ecstatic, simple, and single-minded. And before we knew it, Blondie’s siren
voice had filled the room, sending a rush through us. We didn’t know the
words, not a single one, but we understood everything about “Heart of
Glass”—all its elation, its decadence, the pleasure of self-indulgence. We
made our way through the crowd to the middle of the room, where we
dissolved ourselves in her voice, in its high flight, in the rising and falling
melody, in the motif of the beat, the beat that was there from beginning to
end and begged to be followed. Our heads spun along with the record. Our
bodies became instruments of the song, extensions of it, and we formed as
one, dancing in a triangle, swaying from side to side as if possessed. When
the song ended, another one began to play, one just as good and catchy and
seductive, and we gave ourselves to it. It was as if someone had taken us all
and placed us on a platform on top of the world. We danced until sweat ran
down our backs and foreheads and we could no longer catch our breath.

Et pourtant, il me vient maintenant à l'esprit que nous ne pouvons jamais faire durer nos mensonges indéfiniment. Tôt ou tard, nous sommes forcés d'affronter leurs ténèbres. Nous pouvons choisir quand, mais pas si. Et plus nous attendons, plus ce sera douloureux et incertain. Même notre pays fait cela à présent - il affronte les archives de ses mensonges, il patauge dans le bourbier dans l'espoir d'atteindre une vérité vivable.

Maman et Grand-mère m'avaient bourré le crâne de récits de terreur, d'histoires de gens qu'elles avaient connus jadis, disparus pour un seul commentaire critique.

-Ça fait longtemps que Staline est mort, disait Karolina. Nous savons que le système est une farce, même eux savent que c'est une farce. Et nous ne sommes pas en Allemagne de l'Est, Dieu merci. Ici, ils sont somnambules.

I thought of Mother, of her pointless life, her passivity. Of the years she’d
spent listening to the radio, explaining her truths to me, and all of it for
what? She’d died a submissive employee at the Electricity Office and had
never dared to speak up or live out any of her ideas.
“Your mother died out of loneliness,” Granny would always repeat,
claiming it was because she had never remarried after my father. But I think
it was despair that killed her. Having done only things she didn’t believe in,
she must have been dead inside for years before her body finally gave up
too.

I remembered the procession, moving slowly against the merciless wind
under a sky the color of concrete, starting from the church, where Granny
and I thanked everyone who’d come to pay their last respects. Consoling
faces pressed against our frozen cheeks. Relief that Father hadn’t shown up.
Anger that Father hadn’t shown up. The procession of regret and
helplessness moved from the church along the streets of my childhood, the
pavements of our games, past our flat and the park full of drunkards. A
coffin carried to the cemetery, lowered into a hole. Earth hitting wood.
Handful after handful, marking the end of our previous lives. Only Granny
and I remained, life having skipped a generation. The flat seemed empty.
Gone were the nights by the radio. The news no longer mattered. We no
longer cared about outside. We turned inward. Granny started to attend
church every day, getting up at five for the first mass. She resigned herself
entirely to God, handing herself over to heaven like a premature donation.
And me, I withdrew into my books. The radio in Mother’s room remained
covered forever. Not even music came out of it again. Not for many years.

I switched on the TV at ten o’clock. A speech by Reagan, images of
some space shuttle, Muhammad Ali falling to the ground in the ring. Then
the image behind the presenter changed to a white-and-red flag and my
insides turned weightless. “Martial law continues in Poland,” said the lady
with her bleached teeth and wide-shouldered blazer.
“Despite the expulsion of foreign journalists, we have evidence that the
Polish army has stationed tanks and thousands of troops in the five largest
cities across the country in response to a wave of protests. Experts say this
move shows the government’s desire to solve the crisis without the help of
the Kremlin, in an attempt to avoid an escalation of violence. Despite this,
the Soviets’ military bases in Poland remain on call.”
A photo filled the screen for a moment, showing a tank parked on a
snowy square, a couple of soldiers climbing out of its hatch. Right behind
them a building I recognized with a pang of nostalgia—the Moskwa, a
cinema where Karolina and I used to go sometimes. But most remarkable:
the poster that hung above the tank, “Apocalypse Now” in bloody red type,
the new film by Coppola. For a moment the absurdity of it filled my throat,
threatened to suffocate me. All these years they’d let us watch foreign films,
allowing us glimpses of the world across the Wall, of freedoms we didn’t
have. Did they really think we’d be still forever?
I thought of the photographer and his courage, imagining how the photo
had made it out of the country: a roll of film smuggled into West Germany,
in a secret compartment or an emptied tube of toothpaste. Anonymous
figures trapped on the wrong side of history, compressed and rolled up
inside a stranger’s pocket. No matter what happens in the world, however
brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking
themselves to document it.
Little sparks cause fires too.

The bus was waiting for more people to arrive. I sat by the window, the
orange wool curtains drawn to block out the sun, rereading Quo Vadis. I
cared less about the religious part than about the love story, the heroic turns,
the bravery of opposition. This is how I lived back then—through books. I
locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night,
pretended to be them. They were my armor against the hard edges of reality.
I carried them with me wherever I went, like a talisman in my pocket,
thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke
and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth
recounting.

Tu ne peux pas forcer les gens à t'aimer comme tu le voudrais.

Nous faisons simplement la queue pour une possibilité, pour quelque chose, peut-être pour rien, a-t-elle dit avec son sourire triste et affectueux. Mais ça passera, mon petit. Même la plus longue file d'attente finit par se dissoudre.

Je pense que c'est le désespoir qui l'a tuée. Á force de ne faire que des choses en lesquelles elle ne croyait pas, elle devait être morte à l'intérieur depuis des années avant que son corps ne finisse par renoncer à son tour.

Peu importe ce qui se produit dans le monde, si brutal ou dystopique que soit l'événement, tout n'est pas perdu s'il y a des gens qui risquent leur vie pour en rapporter un témoignage. Les petites étincelles causent elles aussi des incendies.

Le pire est peut-être de n'avoir personne à qui parler, personne qui puisse ouvrir la fenêtre pour renouveler l'air de ces interrogations qui sentent le renfermé. Je sais que je finirai par avoir besoin de trouver quelqu'un à qui me confier.

Certaines choses ne peuvent être effacées par le silence. Certaines personnes ont ce pouvoir sur nous, que cela nous plaise ou non. Je commence à le comprendre. Certains êtres, certains événements peuvent nous faire perdre la tête. Comme une guillotine, ils coupent notre vie en deux, ils séparent le vivant et le mort, l'avant et l'après.

C'est ainsi que je vivais à l'époque : à travers les livres. Je m'enfermais dans leur histoire, je rêvais de leurs personnages la nuit, je me prenais pour eux. Ils étaient mon armure contre les arêtes dures de la réalité. Je les emportais partout avec moi, comme un talisman dans ma poche, et ils me semblaient presque plus réels que les personnes autour de moi, qui parlaient et vivaient dans le déni, destinées à ne jamais rien faire qui mérite d'être raconté, pensais-je.