Les Nageurs de la nuit

“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.

In those days I had no idea where I was going, and the work at the camp
seemed to offer little release. The sun was merciless, and my body revolted
against the effort, refusing to sweat. As I broke up the earth and pulled on
the beets, my thoughts would snap back to you, to the bar where Karolina
had taken me, to the void stretching out before me. I fought against them
(the thoughts and the beets), fought their stubbornness, their toughness. I
fought them, and they fought me, until I tore them out and the next one
came. By now I was faster, stronger. I no longer had to kneel in the earth. I
stood up like you, bent at the knees and back straight. But it was still a
struggle; the real fight was not with the earth or the plants. Slowly, slowly, I
found a rhythm. I stopped fighting. I stopped thinking. One day, as I worked
away like this, sweat began to release itself. I allowed the union between
the earth and my body, I let go, and for the first time in my life I appreciated
everything for what it was, observed the miracle of it. The earth for being
the earth, my hands for being my hands, the plants for growing out of seeds,
and the others around me, everyone, with their own rights and dreams and
interior worlds. Sweat poured over me more than ever, drenched my face,
swept across the thick of my brows into my eyes, flooded down my neck
and down my back like a deluge, and I accepted its gift. It was as if the
sweat had washed away the past and all the thoughts and fears of the future
and all that remained was now, clean and light and ever-dancing.
That evening I left the others behind and went for a walk. The evening
was mild. I crossed the fence, went past the beetroot fields, until I reached a
small river. Red and yellow poppies grew by its bank, and tall grasses
moved in the breeze. The murmur of the water calmed me, weaving itself
into my subconscious. I kept walking. On the other bank, a hare ran across a
field, stopping at the sight of me, ears propped up like furry ferns, tiny nose
flickering up and down. There we stood, the two of us, motionless, taking
each other in. Finally, he turned his head and hopped off.
It did me good, that walk. It reminded me of the aimless ones I would
take in Wrocław, when I could no longer stand being in the same space as
Granny or at school. There was nowhere I could be without being with
others, having to interact or to act. Even on my walks around the block,
neighbors greeted and appraised. There were times when I’d get on the tram
and ride across the city. I would get off at the last stop, in a neighborhood
where no one knew me, and I’d wander, not thinking, looking at the
unknown streets and houses and people and feeling free and anonymous.
Like an unwritten piece of paper. I’d forgotten the pleasure of this, and then
and there, by the river, with the fields stretching out before me and the
camp far behind me, something of that freedom returned. The water was
clear, and at the bottom I could see the bed of pebbles and light-brown mud
and small fish swimming to and fro.
I continued on, not thinking about where I was going until I stopped, not
quite knowing why. There was something large moving in the water.
Someone was swimming. The back of a head—black wet hair glued to it—
moved away from me, and I stood and watched, seeing without being seen.
Broad shoulders and fine back muscles moved in a quick, confident crawl,
head underwater, coming up for air every couple of strokes. Before I knew
it, the figure had turned around and started to swim in my direction. It got
closer and closer with each move. The sun was behind me, and I threw a
long shadow onto the water. As soon as the figure swam through this dark
stretch, it stopped and raised its head.
You wiped your eyes with the back of your hand and stood up in the
water, which was only waist-deep.
“Hello,” you said, sounding like you didn’t know who I was. Streams of
water trickled down your torso. Your body was slim and strong, your chest
and stomach drawn with lines and divisions, their own rules of gravity.
“Hello,” I said, torn between wanting to run and watching you.
You squinted and held your palm flat over your brow against the sun
behind me. “You’re from our group, no?”
I nodded.
“I’m Janusz,” you said with an easy smile. You seemed almost
offensively comfortable standing there. I was the one feeling naked.
“I’ll let you get on. Didn’t mean to disturb.” I turned to leave.
“And you?”
I turned back around. “Me what?”
You laughed. It was a light and joyous sound, self-sufficient and
contagious. “You have your head in the clouds, no? Your name.”
I laughed too, feeling myself blush.
“I’m Ludwik. Ludwik Głowacki.” It struck me how little my name meant
to me, how absurd it was in its attempt to contain me.
You nodded. “Nice to meet you properly. Don’t you want to try the
water?” Your arms moved around in it. “It’s perfect.”
“Thanks. I don’t really swim.”
You looked at me funny. “You don’t know how to swim?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. I just don’t like to do it.”
“Not even in this heat? Why not?” You laughed, incredulous, your smile
mocking and charming.
I shrugged and walked a couple of steps backward. “Maybe another day.”
“OK,” you said, nodding. “Another day. I’m here almost every evening.”
“See you, then,” I said, walking off. After a few steps I turned around,
despite myself. Your body was gliding through the water, leaving a trail of
ripples on its surface.

She walked to the dresser and lifted the protective cover off the radio,
revealing its compact body, the dark, smooth wood glistening in the light.
We placed three chairs around it and sat down. Mother pushed the black
button and carefully adjusted the indicator. At first there was nothing but a
low crackling. Then there was music, a flute playing a jolly tune. Then the
music ended, and I could feel Mother’s and Granny’s bodies tense. A voice
began to speak:
“This is Radio Free Europe, broadcasting live from Munich, West
Germany. News at 8 o’clock. Monday, the twenty-first of June 1968.”
The man’s voice was different from the voices that usually came out of
the radio. It was calmer, less aggressive. He wasn’t shouting or proclaiming.
Mother and Granny sat frozen, their hands holding up their chins and
covering their mouths. I tried to concentrate like them, but I didn’t
understand much of what was said. He used many words I didn’t know,
acronyms that meant nothing to me. It was like another language. At one
point he mentioned “Israel,” those jagged syllables that had become so
potent in only a day. I tried to guess the meaning of it all but only saw
blanks. When the program was over, Mother moved the indicator back to
another station and turned up the volume. This, I discovered, is what she
would do every night, so no one would ever know they had listened to the
forbidden station. And while the music played, they began to explain. They
explained about the Jews, that there had been many in Poland before. For a
thousand years. That most had been killed in the camps that the Germans
had set up during the war. Granny recalled seeing her neighbors forced onto
trains, never to be seen again. Of course we weren’t really taught this at
school. We were taught that the Germans had suppressed the Poles and how
our Russian brothers had saved us. Jews weren’t Polish, of course. Some
Poles still blamed them for the war. That year, Mother said, there had been
unrest, student strikes all across the country. So the Party had turned on the
Jews. They had called them traitors, dismissed them from their jobs. This
was why Beniek’s family had left. Once they were gone, no one ever spoke
about them again. One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.
Beniek’s departure spelled the end of my childhood, and of the childhood
of my mind: it was as if everything I’d assumed before had turned out to be
false, as if behind every innocuous thing in the world lay something much
darker and uglier. Every evening now Granny and Mother would let me into
the little room. We’d huddle together by the speaker, silent and serious,
leaning forward, listening to the voices from across the Wall, and after the
program was over, Granny and Mother would explain something new about
our history. How for over a century the country had been divided by Russia
and Germany, how it had ceased to exist on the maps. How our culture had
survived in the underground, parents teaching children their forbidden
language and history, and how the country had finally gained independence
after the First Great War. They taught me about the second one too, the side
we were never told. How, after years of occupation, the people of Warszawa
rose up against the Nazis, how the Soviets arrived, and how, instead of
helping the Uprising, they stayed on the other side of the Wisła and waited.
They knew they’d win the war, knew the Germans would retreat eventually,
so they let them take revenge on the Poles. The Soviets watched on as the
city was decimated and its population slaughtered or deported. When the
Germans finally left, there were fewer than a thousand survivors in the
capital.
I guess you believed what they told us in school, that the Soviets were
our liberators. That they were the good ones. Our allies. Sometimes I wish I
could have been as light as you. Because I didn’t enjoy those nights in my
mother’s room, those terrible truth-spills. They were a ritual, their pull too
strong to resist. Even if I didn’t understand it all, I understood enough for
anger to collect at the bottom of my stomach. The fact that I couldn’t tell
anyone made it all worse. I’d been handed a poisoned gift, powerful truths I
could never admit to knowing. Mother had made me swear never to
mention anything to anyone, lest they sack her—or worse.
I suppose the scariest thing was the lack of certainty. The fifties were
over, and people no longer disappeared for speaking out. But in the sixties
—and even later—things were more arbitrary. Almost anything was
possible, depending on who happened to denounce you and what they
thought they could get from you. Even with my childish intuition I sensed
that a single mother was more vulnerable than most.

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.

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.