Cover

Dedication

To Laurent, my home.

Epigraph

As to the action which is about to begin, it takes place in Poland—that is to say, nowhere.

—Alfred Jarry

Ubu Roi

Wszystko mija, nawet najdłuższa żmija.

(Everything passes, even the longest of vipers.)

—Stanisław Jerzy Lec

Unkempt Thoughts

Prologue

I don’t know what woke me up tonight. Not the branch of the chestnut tree knocking against my window, not Pani Kolecka coughing in the room next door. Not anymore. Maybe it was the ghosts of these noises, swept up by the wind, carried across the ocean to knock on my consciousness. Maybe. What I am certain of is this: my body feels depleted, like a foreign country after a war. And yet I cannot go back to sleep.

I think of you. The face that my memory can conjure up with its rough outlines and fine details, with the gray-blue eyes the same color as the Baltic Sea in winter. I think of your face while I get up, while I move in the darkness from bed to window, clothes lying around the floor like unfinished thoughts. And then I recall yesterday evening, and the chill of it makes me stop in my tracks. The radio was on, song hour like every day after work: something light was playing, I can’t remember what. I was standing in the kitchen looking for the coffee when the music stopped.

“We are interrupting the program for a special announcement,” said the lady in her soft, round voice. “This morning, on December the thirteenth, martial law has been declared in the Socialist Republic of Poland. It follows weeks of strikes and unrest by pro-democracy protesters and the meteoric rise of the first independent trade union of the communist bloc, Solidarność” (mispronounced). “In a televised address, the government announced a series of drastic measures: schools and universities have been shut down, the country’s borders have been closed, and curfews have been imposed on the population. We will keep you updated on any further developments.”

The music went on.

I can’t even tell you what I felt in that moment. It was the purest form of paralysis. My body must have shut down before my mind could react. I have no idea how I made it into bed.

I light a cigarette by the window. Outside, the street is empty, and the night’s rain shimmers on the pavement, reflecting the two-story buildings and crackling neon. “24 hours,” says the hamburger joint down the block. “Wanda’s Greenpoint Convenience,” whispers another in red and white. Police sirens wail in the distance. Bizarrely, they are the same as at home. Whenever I hear one, the hair on my forearms stands on end. They remind me of the night when that same shrill sound filled the air of a city far away. Before that city became an outline, an item on the foreign news. Before loneliness covered me like night-blue tar.