Jakub Zając “Anna and Mr. B.”, Great Letter – excerpt:
9.
The world is very different in the countryside than in the city. In the city, he is extremely fast and always ahead. The urban extraordinary is violent and appropriating, and man – a victim of the city becoming unfamiliar – is thrown into a whirl of hasty and unfinished extraordinary, and then wakes up crumpled, exhausted and dirty, as if washed in cold water.
The world is very different in the countryside. He does it slowly and in a circular rhythm. In the country, a man becomes extraordinary walking or sitting, eating and looking at the tree rising above the pure roar of the stream.
The unusualness of the city is orange and sharp, the unusualness of the countryside is content with pastels. The uniqueness of the city is a curse.
Rural extraordinary blesses man.
*
The unpleasant smell that had accompanied me for several days disappeared the moment Anna opened the car door and invited me inside. With the smile of her hazel eyes, other scents approached me – tender and stimulating.
Anna brought almond moisture, freshly plucked from the shell, and some red cardamom, which resounded in the car like an exquisite string quartet.
There was butter in it, which reminded me of home, and cream, the greasy whiteness of which increased the afternoon drowsiness. There was a tempting lovage that sneaked up on me and sprayed some lazy erotica.
I got into the car enchanted and intimidated, only to become drowsy and dreamy after a few minutes.
We drove through Jelenia, and I, who was here for the first time, looked around. We passed an old, quite neglected town. Deserted and sad.
My attention was drawn to the closed swimming pool. The sun was pouring from the sky and melting the landscape, and the inhabitants could not take advantage of the most natural relief and simply cool down in the municipal reservoir. The high chairs that the paramedics should have been sitting on were folded and propped against a metal box in which I imagined an ice cream vendor. The children, instead of running across the yellow grass and jumping into the water, sat on the cracked curbs, biting their dirty fingernails and cursing with treble. They were rancid as butter and stupid from idleness. Time was tearing Jelenia Góra’s reality, which – distracted and not ready to slow down – tried to wait out the overripe and swollen days from the heat. Until dusk, until evening, until the first cool breeze of the night.
“?I need to go to the store and buy some things,” Anna said. “We’ll stop, okay?” she asked, and I woke up from my thoughts and nodded.
While she was shopping, I got out of the car. I was stale and tired. I thought that after arriving in Pilchowice I would like to wash up and take a nap. I got back in the car and turned off the radio, the crackling of which had already given me a headache.
I sat for a long time in silence and tried to adjust myself to the new situation. I dreaded that first awkward afternoon together and the forced conversations that were bound to happen.
So what if Anna told me so much about herself in the recordings, since these were words thrown several hundred kilometers away, virtual, easy to erase, and their subject – released from responsibility. Now we were together and stuck side by side in the same concrete world. And it was here that contact had to be made again.
Anna returned, pushing a basket of groceries in front of her and talking on the phone. I got out of the car, took the nets from her and put them in the trunk without a word. She just made gestures, instructing me how to open the trunk and arrange my groceries. She went on talking about the heat and some upcoming meal event.
On the way, we exchanged brief remarks about my journey and our plans for the afternoon and evening. The words we threw out groped, missed or evaded. It’s as if they couldn’t find their proper tracks or sense the frequency on which they would be able to reach their recipients.
“? If you want, we can go for a walk.
-?I do not want to impose.
The words I spoke were similar to my behavior – studied, artificial and carried too general, prosaic meanings. They cut through the air in black, bold type, then stubbornly held their positions. Anna’s words, more submissive and careful, writhed around mine, teasing and teasing them, trying to soften my seriousness.
“It’s very nice here.
–? Yes, because almost everyone ran away from here.
We pretended to be free, we forced it and put it against the wall. We spoke not to get closer, but to keep a safe distance. Each sentence became not a probe into our worlds, but a soundproof screen. One of the ones we passed when entering the Bóbr Valley.
At some point, we both decided to keep quiet. Anna focused on the road while I stared at the landscape outside the window. I noticed a disused railway viaduct, a fragment of a massive wall, and a few abandoned houses that had once belonged to wealthy Germans.
I hate cars, even though my father finished a car, he knew a lot about cars and I accompanied him in repairs many times.
After finishing my studies, I decided to get a driving license for the first time, but both during the exercises and subsequent exams I was accompanied by a huge stress that I couldn’t control. I passed seven times and failed each time. And sometimes I hit a post in the square, sometimes I didn’t look in the mirror when changing lanes, and sometimes I didn’t stop in front of the “Stop” sign. absent-mindedness was different, deeper.
I have a complex about not having a driver’s license and I feel that I am not fully a man. Each of my partners, sooner or later, urged me to retake the test, and repeatedly made me understand that the fact that I did not have a driving license was a big problem for her. I’ve ditched every woman who wanted me to drive.
During the conversations about the need for a driver’s license, I felt like a conscript at the Army Recruitment Command who has to undress in front of a committee and present himself in all his imperfection to four strangers who will decide whether he is representative, fit or unfit for military use, and at the end – icing on the cake of humiliation – they make him go behind a screen, spread his legs, lean forward, touch his fingers to the cold floor and cough to diagnose his inclination or lack of inclination to sodomy.
I’d like to come home from the garage on Saturday nights, scrub my greasy hands over the sink, or pick iron filings from under my fingernails, and see my face rough and tired from manual labor in the foggy mirror. Switching from summer tires to winter tires, talking about the ignition, the carburetor, the camshaft, and finally about some wife of mine, some children of mine, holidays in Croatia, a barbecue in the garden, a mortgage for an apartment and endless arguments with nosy, conservative in-laws.
Instead, I write poems. I paste them in comic speech bubbles next to my sad face and put this homemade collage on unpopular internet portals. Then I sit with a thin and unmanly cigarette in my mouth, responding to the comments under the photo and counting the hearts, virtual sympathy sent by people who don’t know that I don’t have a driver’s license, that I lack confidence, that I don’t experience satisfying sex and that I never I will not be a real man with a rough, tired, greasy face.
“When I’m driving, I like to stick my face to the window and look at the line that separates the road from the shoulder,” I broke a few minutes of silence.
“? When I’m not driving, I’m driving too,” Anna replied, “then it seems to me that the line is racing against the world.
‘I’d like to be her,’ I added, ‘stay where I am and make them believe I’m going somewhere.’
We drove into a row of green lime trees. The afternoon sun shone through the roof made of leaves and dazzled our eyes. It was one of those moments which in the blink of an eye rise to the rank of illumination, but so fleeting that it is difficult to perceive it otherwise than surreptitiously and feel for a moment like a metaphysical trickster, like a thief of time.
“Lovers Alley,” Anna said.
Just behind it, we turned right and crossed a small bridge over the Bóbr River. We passed a playground and a shop, at the height of which we entered a neglected road. Ruts, shabby walls, bars on empty windows and dust swirling in the sun.
We stopped in front of the entrance gate to the yard, in front of which was a tall tree. Several people gathered around him. Each of them carried a tired face and a sack.
“They’re waiting for bread,” Anna said, and waved to the woman standing under the tree. The other answered her with a lift of the corners of her lips. We sat in the car as Anna searched for the remote control to open the gate, and I – avoiding the eyes of people standing under the tree – looked through the windshield of the car.
Behind a green wire fence stood a large rectangular building. It was pale, probably cream, though bathed in shadows it seemed darker now.
There were only two windows in its shorter front wall, while I counted twelve windows on the side wall that ran along the road – six on the ground floor, six on the first floor, all closed.
A small, covered porch led to the inside of the building, which was accessed by several steps. It was located between two windows, which made the front wall look like a human face. The house was very solid and could accommodate at least a few families. Anna must have guessed that he had impressed me.
“?I rent an apartment upstairs,” she said, nervously pressing the gate remote. “The building belongs to a married couple who live below me.
“I like it a lot,” I added.
The gate parted and we entered the yard. On his left side, opposite the front door to the house, there was a wooden carport, under which three cars could fit.
Anna walked past her, turned right, and stopped in front of the porch.
“You’re not allowed to park there?” I asked, turning over my shoulder to take another look at the shelter.
“?I’m scared,” she replied and turned off the engine.
I wanted to ask why, but she beat me to it. She looked at me meaningfully, and I saw the urgency in her eyes. So I got out, opened the back door of the car, took out my bags and put them on the stairs.
When I went back to shop, Anna was talking to a tall blonde girl from under a tree who came over to say hello.
–? This is K., he came to me from Krakow – Anna introduced me.
A bit confused, I approached the stranger.
-?My name is Maria. “She surprised me with her energy.
She shook my hand and introduced herself as Anna’s aunt. I was surprised because both women looked to be the same age.
–? You are lucky – said Maria – you will live in the biggest and most beautiful house in the heart of Pilchowice.
She smiled and, looking once at me and once at Anna, added:
“?And with the most famous resident of the village.
Anna and Mr. B. – cover Capital letter
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
