The Subject


by Olga Tokarczuk


translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Copyright © by Olga Tokarczuk, translation copyright © Antonia Lloyd-Jones, reproduced by kind permission of the author and translator

In the monograph on his work that he started to read over morning coffee he found a small mistake. It was that his novel, The Open Eyes of Life, was published in ‘82, not ‘84. For some reason, the woman who wrote the monograph had left out the first, uncensored edition that came out abroad. He added a correction in pencil and lit his first cigarette. He only had four left now – he had to limit himself. The doctor had told him that at his age he should give up smoking altogether, but he knew that with no smoking there would be no writing. There was a direct dependency between drawing on cigarette smoke and writing. As it filled his lungs, the smoke seemed to set his memory going, probably because smoke and memory are similar in nature – both consist of transient trails that swirl together into little rings, flourishes and transparent layers that hang in their adopted shape for a brief moment before vanishing for ever. With just a little concentration, it was possible, thanks to some incredible miracle, to transform these ephemera into words and sentences.

        He turned a few pages, and suddenly the following words caught his attention: “The hero of this amazing story, the author’s alter ego, has the same first name as him and even lives at the same address in Warsaw, off Jerozolimskie Avenue”. He read it over several times, dragging on his cigarette. He thought back to the time, twenty years ago, when he’d written The Open Eyes of Life. It was a terrible time, hopeless. It felt as if the end of the world had come, though everything had turned out all right in the end. But what’s all right, and what’s not, he thought, casting a predatory glance at the four cigarettes he had left until the end of the day. The writing had gone well in those days. That vague sense of despair, that feeling of indifference and absurdity had given him an impetus; they were like a loving mother who caressed the words into being, nurtured whole paragraphs and handed him ready-made images on a plate. These days everything had become papery; however solid it might look from the outside, if you tried to describe life nowadays in some way, you’d have to battle your way through layer upon layer of rubbish. Normality was uninteresting, full of trivial little details that poured from the newspapers each morning like sand and immediately gathered dust.

        Samborski stood up, took a look at the cigarettes and decided to go out. It was a fine day, so he just threw on a jacket. He took his usual route, through courtyards and passageways between buildings, to reach the high street, where he turned into the square with the church, and there he was, at his favourite café. On the way several people greeted him, including a young couple with knapsacks. They stopped at the sight of him and went on standing there as he smiled in answer to their greeting and passed by. Encounters of this sort were nice, but not nice too. They reminded him that he was himself all the time, and could never again become anyone else, while other people, like that young couple with the knapsacks, for instance, still had a whole ocean of opportunities ahead of them, a whole medley of roles to assume – they could still become whoever they wanted. He no longer could. He was already defined. He even thought of the word “finished”, and something very unpleasant went fleeting by, a gust of chill, musty air. Sometimes he used to feel as if he had a brass plaque screwed to his forehead, reading: “Stanislaw Samborski, writer”. Just like now – as he entered the café, all eyes discreetly turned towards him, but here they were used to him, so the usual café hubbub didn’t even change pitch. He went over to the buffet, exchanged smiles of welcome with the waitresses and sat down at a little table. He ordered a “black breakfast”: coffee and a pack of cigarettes – this way the four on his desk would last him until evening. On her own initiative, a familiar waitress brought him two of his favourite egg mayonnaise sandwiches. “You should eat something first thing in the morning, sir”, she said. He didn’t protest. He reached for the newspaper and calmly read it, conscious of being at the centre of the universe.

        He first came upon the man in his own stairwell, standing at his front door – he was bending over the keyhole, tinkering with the lock. For one long, fly-plump, fully rounded minute he was too amazed to react. At first glance the man looked familiar, something more than familiar even – there was something of the doppelganger about him. He was repulsive, with thinning grey crew-cut hair, a sallow complexion, a small body in a checked jacket, and good but worn out shoes. Samborski wanted to say something, but just then the lock sprang back with a loud click, the door opened and the man went inside the flat first, with the flustered Samborski after him. The man utterly ignored him. He sat down at the desk over the monograph and, pencil in hand, began to read it. He made a few careful notes in the margin and underlined whole sentences. He pushed the ashtray away from himself in disgust, then threw the four remaining cigarettes into the wastepaper basket. When the telephone rang, Samborski hardly had a chance to get near it before, with a confident air, that man had picked up the receiver and drawled “Ye-e-es?” into it. As he listened to the person at the other end, he put on an intense expression, making the furrow in his brow deeper, which gave his whole face a tragic look. After a short silence he said, “Literature is a challenge. It alone is able to define the boundaries of human existence, while also endowing it with a transcendental dimension. Life itself is not enough. Please send me the text for authorization.” And he put down the receiver. Then, resting brow against palm, he sat a while longer in silence, until finally he began to pace the room with his hands behind his back. At that moment Samborski hated him.

        It was strange, but that man never ate anything. He just drank coffee. Later it turned out that he also liked to swig vodka. One morning, Samborski saw him in his café, sitting at his table surrounded by young people, all gazing at him in worship. Samborski stopped outside and watched this scene through the window. The man was telling them a story, describing vague shapes in the air with his hands. He wrinkled his brow, fell silent for a moment, as if lost in thought, and, with a gesture that Samborski seemed to know from somewhere, rubbed his chin. Then he raised his finger again, like a nursery school teacher, and continued his oration. Of course, in the first instant Samborski wanted to rush in and make a scene – that was his table, they were his student friends, and that was even – yes, now he recognized it – his chin-rubbing gesture. And, in a frenzy of indignation, he was already moving towards the door, when suddenly he saw that man rather theatrically raise a hundred-cc glass of vodka to his lips and down it in one gulp. The students’ eyes grew round with wonder as he went on holding forth, without even swallowing a chaser. Samborski very rarely drank vodka, not because he didn’t want to – he liked it very much – but because he couldn’t. In a country where everyone drinks like a fish, he was a born teetotaller. A hundred cc’s drunk in one go would have made him vomit. “Drunkard,” he muttered to himself, but in that one word he was actually swallowing the bitter taste of his own admiration. Deeply upset, he walked past his café and went on down the road, to a small bar, which in the good old days was once a self-service café and had now been turned into a sort of pub; there he lurked in the corner, ordered a small beer and lit a cigarette. He watched some boys with close-cropped hair, decked out in chains, who were leaning towards each other, talking about something quietly. A sunbed-tanned waitress with a fed-up look on her face was reading a colour magazine. Some simple music was pouring from the radio, with a neat little phrase recurring: “Sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, don’t play games with my whole life”. Samborski felt good. He nestled into the cosy corner seat, lit a cigarette and, along with the smoke rings, began to emit proper sentences. He calmly jotted them down on a napkin.

        That man came back towards evening slightly tipsy, with a carnation in his buttonhole, which Samborski thought the height of pretension. What a ghastly sort, what a buffoon. He couldn’t bear to look at him, he felt real nausea, as if the fellow were made of congealed aspic, cold pig’s trotters in human form – there was something pig-like about him, a beastly smugness. Just touching him would be repulsive. The man didn’t so much as glance at Samborski, just grabbed the telephone and called someone to complain about the lack of funding for universities. In his next call he expressed support for something, but Samborski didn’t hear for whom or what, because he was busy washing his socks in the bathroom, and wanted nothing more to do with him. But later on, when he went into the bedroom, he found the man absorbed in a text freshly pulled from the typewriter. He was crossing things out and making additions with a concerned look on his face. “What sort of an attribute is this: ‘For one long, fly-plump, fully rounded minute he was too amazed to react’?” he suddenly asked, holding the sheet of paper up to Samborski’s face. Samborski tore it from his grasp and quickly gathered up the rest from the desk. “Don’t you dare meddle with this. There are other things you can be getting on with, but not this,” he said firmly. The man just smiled ironically, and said: “You’ve got no class, Sambo. Maybe you do write quite well, but you’ve got no class at all.”

        And another thing: that man never slept at all. He just sat at the desk for nights on end in that concerned pose of his with the table lamp on. If anyone had peeked through the window, they’d have thought he was a writer at work. A writer, pondering some weighty matter, busy spinning his next yarn about the world and its meaning in that writer’s head of his. As his mind reveals vista after vista, his thought extricates itself from the box in which ignorance and narrow horizons once kept it shut. He is considering the boundaries of human knowledge, the absurdity of history, the loneliness of man, good and evil, the hopes and pitfalls of relativism, and beauty – of course. First and foremost, the question of beauty.

        Meanwhile that damned lamp in his office was disturbing Samborski. Thin streaks of light were seeping through a crack in the door and drawing patterns on the floor. He began to worry about his parents’ tomb, which because of the frost over the past winter had developed a nasty crack. Should he have a row with the stonemason? Then, for some unearthly reason he thought of his teacher from high school and her dress. They were still in the East then. How real the patterns became before his eyes: white flowers with fuchsia-coloured centres against a black background. It was as if he could stretch out his hand in the darkness and touch the cool material. Was it cretonne? Or silk georgette? Amid these flights of fancy he fell asleep, but had a rude awakening. That man was standing over him with his arms folded, looking freshly washed, brushed and shaved. “Why don’t you write something about the role of the writer in the modern world?” he said. “Tell us what the duties of literature are, Sambo. Whether or not we should expect it to provide a testimony to the real world, to describe the changes we’ve witnessed.” “Fuck off,” said Samborski, giving himself a shock with those words. Ever since childhood, swear words had stuck in his throat. “Don’t you fuck off though,” said the man, picking up the thread. “Get up and get to work, you lazy creep.”

        Luckily, the man went out, but while he was shaving Samborski heard his voice on the radio. He was opining on the role of literature. At this unpleasant surprise the writer froze, with the razor against his chin. That evening he saw him on television. Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, he was taking a stand on the topics of pornography and euthanasia. Samborski felt the blood rise to his head. He rushed for the door, turned all the locks and, just to make sure, pulled up a heavy chest-of-drawers and jammed the door handle shut with it. Late that evening he had the satisfaction of hearing the man rattling at the door.

        For a few days he stayed barricaded in his empty flat. He didn’t answer the phone or switch on the television. He had eaten all his supplies from the fridge and used up all the soap. He had mislaid the cigarettes. At first he had reckoned he’d manage without them, but on the third or fourth evening it proved beyond his strength. He put on his coat and pulled a hat over his ears. Looking around him nervously, he dashed out to the kiosk on the corner. That man had vanished. He bought the longed-for cigarettes and immediately lit one on the street. Unfortunately, when he got home, he found the man already there. He was sitting at the desk, keenly examining the notes from the past few days. If Samborski had had a gun at that moment, he’d have shot him without a second thought. If he’d had a knife, he’d have leaped at him and sunk it into his back. But he didn’t have – so there he stood, with his pack of cigarettes, shaking with fury. “What do you want from me? Come down from there!” he intoned. The man glanced over his shoulder, gave Samborski a look that was either patronizing, or maybe just indifferent, and said, “Don’t disturb me. I’m working.” Ah, so that’s it, thought Samborski with rising anger, so he’s working at my desk on my papers, the cheeky swine. Blind with rage, he threw himself at the man, trying with one hand to tear the papers from him, and with the other to seize him by the collar. But the man was quicker. He grabbed Samborski by the wrists, squeezed painfully and pushed him against the wall. A fine engraving fell and the glass shattered. The man pressed him to the wall like a girl; he was bigger, as if better nourished. His breath stank of coffee. Driving his cold, aspic stare into the horrified Samborski, he gasped straight into his face, “I invented you, understand, you bloody swine. I invented you and I can cross you out whenever I like – you’re just a common narrator, a lyric subject, an unfortunate construct, or something of the sort. So sit still and don’t jump about.” He let go of Samborski with disgust and went back to the desk. The writer rubbed his aching wrists and then, to avoid disturbing the man, quietly began to gather the bits of glass from the floor. His anger was evaporating, and, as he looked at the ruined engraving, he even felt an unexpected sense of relief. Everything is always simpler than it first appears. There before his eyes stood that bar in a side street and the barmaid’s grill-pan tan.

        Samborski didn’t have to think twice. He pulled his hat low over his brow and headed into town.