His Current Woman

Copyright © Jerzy Pilch,
translation copyright © Bill Johnston , reproduced by kind permission.

[The story so far: Pawel Kohoutek, veterinary doctor and inveterate womanizer, lives in the Lutheran town of Cieszyn in southern Poland in a huge rambling house inhabited by a wide assortment Of relatives and lodgers, including his wife and child, One day, his "current woman" arrives unexpectedly at the house from Krakow, where Kohoutek works, intending to move in with him. Horrified, Kohoutek hides her temporarily in the attic of an old slaughterhouse across the yard. In the meantime, the inhabitants of the house are occupied with the coming birthday of Kohoutek's grandmother, Oma, and with the search for a two-liter jar of meatballs which the old lady has concealed about the house. Night has come. ]

IV

Kohoutek was awake; he lay on his back and cogitated. What's to be done, dear Lord, what is to be done? Dear Lord, it's not that I'm taking Your name in vain, but for God's sake what's to be done?
Over the roof of the house the frenzy of the November night intensified; it was eleven o'clock in the evening, but at that time of year it was already pitch black, the midpoint of a dark road with no turning back and no end in sight. The inhabitants of the house had long been sound asleep. Bright clouds were racing across the sky at a fearsome pace like canoes full of Indians; the eternally immobile hills seem to be entertaining all kinds of movement, while, over there, in the attic of the old slaughterhouse, my current woman is sleeping, wrapped up in three woolen blankets.
What's to be done? What's to be done? What's going to happen tomorrow when someone notices that the three woolen blankets are not where they belong? And what's going to happen when mother notices that the bread has been cut crookedly and that a sizeable length of hunter's sausage is missing? I'll say that I ate it. Even then there'll be a row because I ate it any old how, instead of setting the table properly first. The blankets are more of a problem. Any moment now someone will notice that three woolen blankets aren't where they belong, and then the fun will begin in earnest.
The three woolen blankets are supposed to be on the wooden benches in the hearth room. At this time of year hardly anyone goes into the hearth room; actually, hardly anyone ever goes into the hearth room, but there's always the terrifying possibility that tomorrow someone might just pop in there. And if someone does, whoever it might be, Kohoutek's father, or his mother, or Oma, or Kohoutek's child, whoever it might be, there's no way they could fail to notice that three woolen plaid blankets are not in their place.


By the by, thinks Kohoutek, I wonder how it's possible that no one ever goes into the stove room and yet everyone knows that there are three Skoczów woolen blankets on the wooden benches in there. A curious paradox. Kohoutek would like to pursue his inquiry, since he senses subconsciously that it may bring relief to his fraught nerves; but no such luck, there's no chance of relief as yet another fear pierces his body and soul like a darkling blade. What will happen tomorrow morning when at the crack of dawn everyone continues the search for the two-liter jar of beef meatballs which they had thus far failed to find? They might start looking in the old slaughterhouse, and if they don't find it in the old slaughterhouse they'll climb up to the attic of the old slaughterhouse, and then they're absolutely sure to find something, only it won't be a two-liter jar of beef meatballs, but instead they'll find my current woman. True, I did build her a shelter which the most meticulous searcher would never find; but they, the members of my family-they're bound to find it.
Kohoutek turns on his side and assumes the fetal position; and, as always when in the fetal position, his thoughts turn to crime. Best of all, he whispers to himself, seized with a sudden rage, best of all would be to kill her. I ought to get up, go out and kill her. When they find the body there'll be a row anyway, but not such a fearful one as if they'd found her alive. If they find her alive there'll be such a fearful row that they're all likely to end up killing each other. Father'll try to kill me, Grandfather will defend me so Father will kill Grandfather, Oma will kill Father, Mother will kill Oma, the Pastor will kill Mother, the Pastor's wife will kill the Pastor, then, taking advantage of the situation, since she's long hated her, Miss Wandzia's mother will kill the Pastor's wife, Miss Wandzia will kill her mother because she doesn't want to play the violin, I of course will be killed by my own wife, and the long and the short of it will be that for weeks on end everyone will be offended with everyone else to the point that no one will be speaking to anyone.
The custom of death threats was an ancient one in their home. Kohoutek had heard immortal phrases about killing ever since he learned to listen. I'll kill you, Kohoutek's mother would say to Kohoutek's father. We should just kill her and have done with it, both of them would say when Oma had hidden yet another item of food. Practice or I'll kill you, Miss Wandzia's mother would say to Miss Wandzia. I'm going to kill him, Oma would say when once again Grandfather returned home three sheets to the wind.
Kohoutek had never come to terms with this domestic rhetoric of death, and each time he was seized by the most genuine fear that in the end someone would indeed get killed. Whenever he wandered through the endless corridors, hallways and suites of rooms, whenever he looked into chambers into which no one ever looked, he was always afraid he would stumble across the body of one of the inhabitants of the house, wrapped in bloody plastic sheeting, or some inhumanly battered torso, hurriedly and carelessly covered with newspapers. As he walked into the yard, he was terrified that he would come upon a patch of freshly dug earth, and sticking out of it, as in a cheap horror movie, someone's dead hand.

Best of all, repeats Kohoutek, would be to kill her. Best of all would be to kill her and to hide the corpse properly; then there wouldn't be any row. Or at the least he ought to have a serious heart-to-heart with her. I mean, during these few weeks we've never really had a proper talk. I told one lie after another and she went on and on about literature, Kohoutek admits to himself. What's to be done? Where can I put her? A hotel is out of the question, since everyone would know all about it at once. The whole town, inhabited as it is exclusively by Lutherans, would know the whole story immediately. Maybe-the glimmer of a vague notion brightens Kohoutek's mind-maybe she could be passed off as a vacationer, and maybe they could be persuaded to rent out one of the rooms to her? After all, for years there's been talk of the money to be made from renting out rooms, every year hundreds of summer visitors ask if there are rooms to rent and are met with a sneering rebuff. Every time there's someone who won't agree to it, either Kohoutek's folks, or Oma, or Miss Wandzia's mother. Though she rents a room herself, she's opposed to the other rooms being rented. But no one will agree, thinks Kohoutek, to my current woman. When they see her in that little curio of a hat, as one man they'll all be opposed to her renting a room even for an hour. What's to be done? thinks Kohoutek feverishly. How long will she be staying in the attic? I mean, she needs certain comforts; she has to wash, to use the bathroom. How will I be able to handle all that? How could she do this to me?
All at once the floor creaked and Kohoutek sat bolt upright, because he thought he saw his current woman standing at the foot of the bed.
"Come here," he said with that particular kind of tenderness which human fury can sometimes turn into in the space of a few seconds. The specter standing at the foot of the bed vanished, but the tenderness remained.
Dear Lord, thought Kohoutek, dear Lord, it's not that I'm taking Your name in vain, but when all's said and done, my current woman is sleeping in the attic of a pre-war slaughterhouse, separated from the cosmos by no more than a layer of crumbling roof tiles and a piece of cardboard. I mean, it's ridiculous.
At this point, in Pawel Kohoutek's soul and body deadly fear gave way to stupendous audacity. Since I was capable of concealing her, since I was able to take her bread, sausage, lemonade and three blankets from the hearth room, since I managed to accomplish all that, I'll accomplish even more: Unnoticed by anyone, I will go to her and I will make love to her, said Kohoutek almost aloud, and rose from his bed. By the by, his thoughts continued, what is it that she sees in me? She's just like all the others; she's attracted by that damned veterinary science, he answered himself. In the silence and the darkness he set about getting dressed. He put on pants and a sweater, pulled his shoes on his bare feet, threw his trench coat around his shoulders and moved off with extreme caution down the long hallway toward the front door. As he was passing the room in which his wife slept, he paused for a moment to assure himself he was safe. He placed an ear to her door and listened to her peaceful breathing. The poor thing's asleep, he thought, and was suddenly overcome by another wave of emotion. This time it was an emotion connected strictly with the matter of marital fidelity. The poor thing, she's sleeping peacefully, and I'm up to all this. I mean, I've been with this woman for so many years, whispered Kohoutek to himself, so many years, and what I'm doing is so immoral. And upon a sudden impulse Kohoutek opened the door and, still dressed in his clothes, climbed onto her bed and began to shower her with passionate kisses. Kohoutek's wife, who was in a deep sleep, didn't immediately realize what was going on. But when she woke up fully, when she turned on the light and saw Kohoutek lying next to her in his trench coat and shoes, she spoke unto him the following words:
"Have you lost your mind? Why are you all dressed? Has the one gray cell that until recently was rattling around in that brain of yours, has that solitary gray cell of yours finally disappeared too? Why won't you let me sleep? What disgusting things have you gone and thought up now?"-Kohoutek's wife thought that he had some kinky purpose in getting dressed; but Kohoutek wasn't really listening to her complaints.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," he kept repeating convulsively, as he continued showering her with kisses and feverishly pulling off her nightgown. And in the end Kohoutek's wife, who truth to tell didn't really have much of a thing for Kohoutek, gave in and allowed him to stay till morning. First, though, like a decent person he had to put his pajamas on.


We ancient libertines will make no bones about it: The next morning Kohoutek climbed up to the attic of the old slaughterhouse with an exceedingly dubious mien. Kohoutek could generally speaking be described as a man with a dubious mien, but this time his mien was especially dubious. After all, he carried with him the awareness that that night he had been unfaithful to his current woman. In addition, he realized full well that the latter, guided by her diabolic intuition, already knew everything. He was taking her breakfast: a thermos of hot coffee and a slice of bread and ham, yet even though preparing the coffee and the slice of bread and transporting it out of the house constituted a heroic fear, he was aware that this would little avail him. A stormy scene lay ahead of him. But so did an extraordinary surprise.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he beheld his current woman. Wearing a green dress which he had never seen before, she was sitting on one of the boxes; on her lap she had a jar of beef meatballs, which she was eating cold.

"No!" shouted Kohoutek. "Don't eat those!"

"Why not?" asked Kohoutek's current woman. "The consume-by date hasn't passed yet. I checked on the label."
"Don't eat them! Don't eat them!" Kohoutek continued to exclaim. "Here, I've brought you some proper breakfast."
"So I'm not allowed to eat either," said Kohoutek's current woman. She set aside the jar and wiped her mouth carefully on a paper tissue.
"Where did you find that jar?" asked Kohoutek.
"In yonder box," she retorted in a sarcastic tone of a would-be culprit, pointing to a cardboard container that bore the inscription: "Jan Buszek, Colonial Goods, Stelmacha St., Cieszyn."
"That's impossible."
"Please don't accuse me of lying; you know full well that I never lie," announced Kohoutek's current woman in a tone so icy it portended the explosion of an entire iceberg.
"How many of them have you eaten?"
"Listen"-this time her voice took on a note of apparent conciliation-"I've only eaten one meatball; but I'll pay you for the whole jar." And with an ostentatious earnestness she set about digging in her purse, which, as if genuinely taken out in readiness for the settling of accounts, lay on a nearby cardboard box.
But Kohoutek was paying no attention whatsoever to the performance being played out before him. The fact that she's eaten one meatball is neither here nor there, he thought, analyzing the situation. Naturally, it's a pity she opened the jar, but in the end that can be hushed up; in the worst instance the blame will fall upon Oma. There's no need to make a tragedy out of the fact that she's opened the jar and eaten one meatball. And an indubitably positive aspect of the situation is that the meatballs have been found; in a moment I'll put them back where they belong, and the feverish search will come to an end. But it turns out that this place isn't safe! And that is a disastrous, even a tragic piece of information. How is it possible that Oma, who walks with a stick and can barely drag herself around on her feet, managed to find her way up here? How is it possible that she was able to climb those stairs, as steep and narrow as a ladder? How is it possible that someone so infirm, someone who once a year has to be taken to church in a rocking chair, was capable of accomplishing such a vertiginous ascent? Clearly anything was possible. Since it's possible that my current woman came to me out of the blue, and what's more came to stay with me forever, it's also possible that a frail old lady climbed the stairs with the agility of a monkey, concludes Kohoutek bitterly.
"It may not come to this, but you'll have to be prepared for it," he says to his current woman.
"And what precisely is it that I'm supposed to be prepared for?"

"Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, maybe in a few days' time Oma will come here. There's lots of food in the house and she's bound to try to hide something again. I told you she does that from time to time."
"Fine," said Kohoutek's current woman, seemingly listening to her instructions closely, "when Oma appears here, what am I to do?"
"Hide."
"And what if she catches me by surprise?"
"Keep a cool head. Remember one thing. If she catches you by surprise, if she sees you here, it's entirely possible that she'll ask you the question."
"What question?"
"She'll ask if you're not by any chance Catholic, and you have to deny it and say that you're a Lutheran. That'll put her mind at rest."

"I told you just now that I never lie."
Kohoutek gazes at his current woman in silence and he is suddenly stunned by a blindingly simple thought. Kohoutek realizes that his current woman is a lunatic. Kohoutek's flesh creeps. Surely no normal woman would ever come here under such circumstances, and yet she did come. So what is it about her, wherein lies the mental defect that leads her, permits her, to set out on an expedition so nightmarish both for everyone else and also, after all, for her herself'.?
"Fine, I'll handle it," says Kohoutek's current woman, this time in a tone that not only indicates the end of one topic but announces a transition to another. "You were with her again."
Kohoutek, who knows that it is pointless in such situations to put up any kind of resistance, however desperate, remains silent, and after a moment asks helplessly, as if in the hope that helplessness and confession of guilt are in fact his strong suit:
"How did you know?"

"I can see it; I'm a woman." And all at once Kohoutek's current woman bursts into hysterical tears.
"You were with her, you were with her, on the very day when I came here, when I came here to stay with you forever."
"I've told you umpteen times, there's nothing I want more, but at the same time things are not so simple." Kohoutek does indeed utter this assertion with terrifying facility.
"But you promised, you promised that we'd be together, that we'd live in this house together and we'd make our living by renting rooms to vacationers."
"It's true, I did promise that," says Kohoutek reservedly, "but at the same time I indicated that for it to be possible, all the inhabitants of the house, or at the very least the great majority of them, would have to die. So those were not so much promises as vague dreams."
"You don't love me," whimpers Kohoutek's current woman.
"You know how much I love you," replies Kohoutek in a somewhat weary voice, since the conversation has taken a decidedly stereotypical turn. "I love you more than life itself, but I have to leave you now. You know that it's Oma's birthday today, and there's a huge amount of work to be done." Kohoutek stands, kisses his current woman on the top of her bent head and, awkwardly, aware that his gesture has something of a gesture of confiscation, picks up the jar of beef meatballs.
"I'll come by this evening," he says.

As he is walking down the stairs, cautiously so as not to drop the jar, he hears a rustle above him. He looks up and sees the face of his current woman leaning towards him.
Her features are distorted with such tremendous fury that Kohoutek is literally petrified with fear.
"Maybe I'll come by this evening, too. I'll come by this evening to wish Oma many happy returns," Kohoutek's current woman spits out with a truly reptilian hiss.

VI

It was true: Kohoutek was in the habit of setting out before any woman he came to know more closely a vision of their life together. This was the key to his successes. The women were happy to hear tales of trips taken together, breakfasts eaten together, and, naturally, children raised together. We ancient libertines are well aware of the age-old banal truth, that the thing the vast majority of women most long for is stability, stability in the most general and the most strictly philosophical meaning of the word. Even women who seek adventure want stability above all else, since stability is the foundation and virtually the prime requirement for true adventure. Speaking in his dreamy voice of their life together, Kohoutek offered his women the illusion of stability. Even stable married women leading stable lives were happy to listen to Kohoutek's stories, for it seemed to them that the life together that Kohoutek proposed would be even stabler. Furthermore, as Kohoutek set out before every woman he came to know more closely a vision of their life together, he was by no means lying. He was not playing some erotic game, nor was this some strategy for seduction. When it came to seduction, Kohoutek was a natural. He thoroughly believed what he was saying. At the time of the telling, he really did want to spend the rest of his life with the woman he was talking to. He really did imagine to himself all those details and episodes. This was where his credibility and his narrative proficiency came from. In his straightforwardness, Kohoutek was entirely unaware of the psychological contexts we have just mentioned. He would wake up in the morning at the side of a woman with whom the previous evening he had been planning a life together, and he would say to himself. Good grief, what a load of nonsense I came out with yesterday, and he would flee in absolute panic. In just such a way, willy-nilly, this erotic simpleton (there is no other way of labeling Kohoutek) had acquired a considerable series of sexual experiences. Yes, even we old hands in the bed department have to admit, not without a touch of envy, that Kohoutek had known a great number of women.
He had known wise women and he had known foolish women. He had known loose women and he had known virtuous women. He had known women who giggled like crazy in bed. He had known women who at crucial moments had almost died laughing. He had known prideful women who, irritated by the defenselessness they inevitably felt at such moments, became aggressive. He had known women who throughout the whole thing were silent as the grave, and he had known women whose talkativeness rose in proportion to the intensity of their bodily sensations. He had known women who talked of nothing but sex, and others who would do anything yet who treated any attempt to talk about sexual matters as an unbreakable taboo.
He had known a woman who liked to babble in bed like an infant. "Goo goo, boo boo," that particular ardent thirty-year-old would say to Kohoutek. "What id diddums doing? No, no, givey handy-pandy, givey, ooboodooboo," she would repeat over and over, and Kohoutek in his confusion would continue to do what he had been doing, though he had the absurd impression that for the first time in his life he was doing it inside a huge baby carriage that the brunette's efficiency apartment had turned into.
Kohoutek had known a woman whose husband gave her rides to her dates. He had known a high-school senior who, as an entrancing evening had come to an end and a tired Kohoutek was ready to walk her to the taxicab stand, announced all of a sudden that she would have to wait for another couple of hours and drink some vodka, because if she went home too early and in a sober condition her parents would know immediately that something was amiss. Kohoutek had known women who went with him because they had been unhappily in love with someone else for years, as a consequence of which they would go with anyone.
He had known a second-rate singer, and his affair with her had been one of the longer affairs of his life. When Kohoutek woke up in the morning he didn't flee in panic, but stayed, and stayed for a good few weeks. The intensity and surprising longevity of Kohoutek's affair with the second-rate singer arose from his fascination with music. Kohoutek of course didn't know the first thing about music, and as far as a musical ear was concerned, he was spectacularly tone-deaf. And yet music was a vital component of his erotic consciousness, or rather unconsciousness. It could be said that he saw music as a domain which lent women an exceptional charm. It could be said that he saw music as a peculiar and extraordinarily kinky item in a woman's wardrobe. It could be said quite simply: Kohoutek preferred female singers to male singers, female pianists to male pianists, female percussionists to male percussionists. There existed domains of life in which, in Kohoutek's view, the division of roles between men and women should run with truly stunning symmetry. Music was one such domain. Music, according to Kohoutek, should be composed exclusively by men, while it should be performed exclusively by women. There should simply not be any male singers operatic or popular, male choirs or even mixed choirs; all singing, to Kohoutek's mind, should issue exclusively from female larynxes. Music should be born in men's bodies, but should be realized by the bodies of women. All musical instruments were also in essence created for women. Grand pianos, upright pianos, guitars, violins, trumpets, trombones, double basses, and all other music-making devices were basically intended for the female sex. When Kohoutek listened to music and at the same time saw the female pianist in a straight black dress rising over the keyboard, he was overcome with a paroxysmal sense of the equilibrium of life. The man (for it must have been a man) who for the first time handed a musical instrument to a woman was, in Kohoutek's opinion, one of the leading forefathers of the harmony of the world. Who was the first female instrumentalist in the history of humanity, and what did she look like? What instrument did she play? Alas, Kohoutek generally imagines this scene to himself in a superficial, comic-book fashion: He sees a dainty blonde dressed in animal skins being given a horn in jest by her fellow caveman. With unexpected desperation and skill, she puts the horn to her paleolithic lips and blows.
Occasionally, however, a nobler version of this scene occurs to Kohoutek. It occurs to him that the first female instrumentalist was of the Jewish persuasion. The scene of the handing over of the biblical horn then becomes an apocryphal episode of the Exodus unrecorded in the holy scriptures.
The second-rate singer was not, of course, the first female instrumentalist of humanity. She was merely a descendant of hers, and by a crooked and extremely indistinct line at that. She was her great-great-great-great-granddaughter in the thousandth generation. And so Kohoutek's affair with her, though exceptional by his standards, could not last forever. It lasted a month. Then, for a long time nothing happened in his life. That is, Kohoutek breathed, ate, drank, conducted endless discussions with Doctor Oyermah, worked, vaccinated animals, clipped dogs' overgrown nails, and treated coughing calves and horses with colic; he traveled to Krak6w and back a thousand times; but as far as his dealings with women were concerned, nothing noteworthy occurred. A few insignificant conversations, chance encounters, casual meetings.
Right up until the moment when, on a sultry June evening, at the central train station in Krak6w Kohoutek climbed onto an A line express bus that at that time of the day was almost empty. On board, a deafening female singer could be heard. The carefree driver had turned his radio up to full volume and the voice of Mireille Mathieu seemed to intensify the stifling air inside the bus. Kohoutek sat on the left hand side. For a minute or two he gazed out the window at the walls and buildings of the town, slowly crumbling into dust and presently immersed in yellowish masses of heated air. Then he turned his head and saw a woman sitting in front of him. There was nothing special about her. He closed his eyes for a moment; the bus drove through the crossroads at Lubicz and Rakowicka, while Mireille Mathieu sang her head off. Kohoutek opened his eyes and stared absently at the divine outline of the skull of the woman sitting by chance before him. She raised a hand and straightened her hair, which was fastened in a loose bun. Kohoutek caught the scent of olive cream and with that scent a mighty enchantment descended upon him. Enchantment is all very well, he thought lucidly, but I should check out what she looks like. He stood up, crossed to the other side of the bus and sat down two rows in front of her, though-to repeat-on the opposite side of the bus. For a moment he watched out the window again; the bus drove round the Mogilskie Circle, and then Kohoutek, as if by chance, pretending to be curious about the new hotel that was being built, turned his head, looked... and indeed, it was Her. Admittedly she was reading a book, something Kohoutek wasn't fond of, but without a doubt it was her. She was the first female instrumentalist of humanity. She was the one who had blown the shofar as she crossed the wilderness with the people of Israel. She was the one to whom, in the Hart Inn, Kohoutek's great-grandfather, the master butcher Emilian Kohoutek, had presented in jest a trombone abandoned by a drunken musician. She was the one who, wearing a claret red dress with a white collar, climbed onto the stage with an uncertain step, where she was then joined by others emboldened by her example: Helena Morcinkowna (trumpet), Krysia Kotula (accordeon), Marysia Jasiczek (clarinet), and Nathalie Delong (drums), who was swathed entirely in Istebna lace. When Kohoutek saw her for the first time, he knew he had already seen her a thousand times. She had been the first Czech stripper he had secretly watched through the window of the Centrum cafe. She was the one who had sometimes sat alone in the Warszawianki, drinking one cherry vodka after another, as tears streamed down her face. She was the one whom he had called so many times, then when she answered he said nothing. She was the one who had taken confirmation classes with Kohoutek. She was the one who in the sixties used to go sunbathing near the Debnicki bridge. She was the one who once walked down Karmelicka in a banana yellow dress. She was the one now riding on the A line express bus.
Kohoutek, led not so much by experience (his frequent liaisons with women had taught him nothing) as by his native instinct, changed places again. This time he sat right in front of her and without even attempting to pretend that his actions were accidental, he turned round and asked:

"Sorry to disturb you, miss, but what are you reading?"

Jerzy Pilch
Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

Jerzy Pilch is an essayist and fiction writer, living in Cracow, Poland. His most recent books include Tezy o glupocie, piciu i umieraniu (1997) and Bezpowrotnie utracona leworecznosc; (1998). The present excerpt comes from his Inne rozkosze (1995).

Bill Johnston has published translations of books by Boleslaw Prus and Andrzej Szczypiorski. His latest publication is Stefan 2eromski's The Faithful River (1999). He currently holds a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship for the translation of Juliusz Slowacki's drama Balladyna.