Krakow Melt (6 page)
Dressing in black to visit a cemetery is cliché, but when the purpose of your visit is to candle-bomb the place, it’s just practical. Stealth is prime in such situations.
Dorota carried the candles in a burlap sack, and I brought my lighter of choice. For our first gentle act of terror we chose the grave of Helena Modrzejewska, a female theatre star who, as not many people know, had occasionally played men onstage. She had fucked with the order of things, and now we would, too.
“You write. I’ll light,” I said.
Dorota placed the cylindrical, windproof candles like widely-spaced dominoes, taking her time to form the letters. I gave them life. When she was redoing the elbow of a K, I noticed how the light carved shadows into the hollows of her face, making her look like a Jack-o’-Pumpkin. I was following her too closely to read the words (I was a little scared, so stayed close for protection).
“Windproof” is about as solid a concept as “fireproof.” On that breezeless night, I managed to blow a bunch of candles out with my excited talking. “How long do these candles last? Will they be visible by daylight? We should be taking pictures. Next cemetery!”
When we had finished the first word, Dorota laughed like a crazy
abka
and hugged me close, pressing her mouth to my neck. I was about to put her into a playful headlock, but she grabbed my hand and ran. We tore through the obstacle course of
nagrobeks
, tripping over ivy tentacles and kicking flower planters like footballs, blind in the dark but headed, our ankles told us, toward higher ground. We were sinning, and it was delicious.
We turned around to see Helena’s grave, lit up prettily by Dorota’s imagination and my steady hand:
SUCK THIS DEVIANT COCK IN THE INTERMISSION
Cemeteries usually only saw mass candle activity on All Souls’ Day, a compulsive keening for the dead you might recognize as Halloween. That was months away, so we knew our texts wouldn’t get drowned by other lights. Our accents would flicker crisply, and I hoped this activity would lead to bigger fires together.
“Who’s next?” I said.
“You mean which dead body?”
“Which bigoted asshole.”
She reached into her purse, slung across her torso commando-style, and fished out a swatch of news clippings.
“Take your pick,” she said. “Either ‘homosexual practices lead to drama, emptiness, and degeneracy,’ or ‘if a person tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom.’ I’m leaning toward the second one, because it’s from Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. The prime minister.”
“The first one is more poetic,” I said.
“But the prime minister is a swine.”
“Art before activism.”
“You’re impossible,” Dorota said.
We found a magnificent tomb encased in green moss. This time I chose the wording (rather long, and taxing on the lumbar muscles), and Dorota lit the candles. The firelight eroded a bit of the cemetery’s soft, sepulchral charm, sharpening moon shadows into right angles. You can’t get anywhere, I reminded myself, without disturbing the peace.
Radeki. Dorotka. Using diminutive names was the hot, new trend. I was sure the prime minister would accept our raspberry kisses:
KASIO, BE NICE TO US. DON’T BE A DRAMA QUEEN
Cemeteries are made for parkour. Yes, that’s what I said about Nowa Huta and Kraków, but this time I really mean it.
Tombstones make the perfect hurdles, especially if commissioned by a poor family (not too high). Some of them are staggered diagonally in Rakowicki, so there’s enough room to Breakfall after you clear one. Although it gets a lot more fun when a security guard is chasing you.
We got lucky.
“Ditch the candles,” I said to Dorota. “You’ll be able to run faster and focus on your movements. Just follow my lead.”
We performed lazy vaults over unimposing stones, but had to switch to time-consuming
sauts de précision
when we ran into old money, a minefield of graves so big I almost twisted my ankle in the inscription letters. Even so, we put a comfortable fifty metres between ourselves and the guard.
“
Id
do diabła!
” he screamed at us, giving up the chase when he reached a fence too high to jump.
“That’s funny,” I said. “We’re going to hell anyways.”
The glory of parkour was leaving people like him, folks who don’t know the body language of freedom, behind.
We stopped running, however, when we saw sprays of light illuminating the grass in front of us, and turned around. Back at the crime scene, the bastard was kicking over all our hard work, jumbling the letters, rendering our messages wonky and dyslexic. The security guard wasn’t the target of our messages; we had bigger
ryby
to fry. I hadn’t planned for this kind of failure.
Dorota held out the bag of candles.
“You didn’t get rid of those, like I told you?”
“I’m not sure why you think I should listen to you,” she said. “And just so you know, Pink Floyd isn’t that good. They write okay songs but the instrumental solos are ... well, too long.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
We spelled our last fragment of the night. It wasn’t our best, but I went to bed hoping it would crawl across the country on the lips of the disobedient and the curious:
SOLIDARITY FOR POLISH QUEERS
Thank you for visiting the Vermiculite Association website.
[No, thank
you
. Pictured is a rock with a glassy face that looks suspiciously like magnetite or obsidian after a dandruff shampoo and molecular combover. Thoroughly unconvincing.]
Vermiculite is the mineralogical name given to hydrated laminar magnesium-aluminum-iron silicate.
When subjected to heat, vermiculite has the unusual property of exfoliating, or expanding into wormlike pieces. It is used to make fire protection materials, insulation, ovens, brake pads, acoustic finishes, sound-deadening compounds, seedling wedge mixes, fertilizer, and animal feed.
[Expanding animal feed. Hmmm. Maybe that’s how Mrs O’Leary’s cow got so fat and klutzy.]
Vermiculite is one of the safest, most unique minerals in the world.
[A vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana was closed in 1990, after it was discovered to be contaminated with asbestos. While in operation, it supplied most of the vermiculite used in the construction of thirty-five million homes across America, in the form of the supposedly fireproof Zonolite Masonry Insulation. Cough, cough. Cancer’s in the attic. And in those cookies you baked.]
It is lightweight and non-combustible.
[Big lie. Vermiculite can most certainly burn. It can only withstand temperatures of up to 1,100°C—far cooler than a natural gas flame (1,250°C), a blowtorch flame (1,300°C), or an oxyhydrogen inferno (2,000°C). You want your house to incinerate? Build it with “fireproof” material. Drizzle vermiculite around your bedposts and say a hex. I invite skeptical scientists out there to spend an educational afternoon with me.]
Our objective is to promote wider use and increased consumption of vermiculite-based products.
[Wish us all luck.]
I would’ve been a likelier candidate as a janitor or football mascot than as a visiting speaker at Universytet Jagiello
ski, one of the world’s most revered educational facilities. I’ve learned, however, to accept life’s injustices with a smattering of grace.
By the way, when I say “football,” I mean “soccer.”
There was no way to turn down Dorota’s invitation to present to her fellow art history students without pissing her off. Besides, the gig paid 100
złotych
, rent was due any day, and I didn’t want to get into another tiff with the
administracja
.
For that price, I came with black nail polish.
“What do you want me to talk about?” I asked Dorota. We had arrived in class ahead of the other students. I knew nothing about art history.
“Don’t worry, they’ll ask lots of questions,” she said with a wink. “They’re an inquisitive bunch. This is a remedial class, so there are clueless students from all disciplines.”
“Literature, too?”
“You’re looking at her.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said, embarrassed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you ... are you writing poetry, or just studying it?”
“Is there a difference?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“Radeki, don’t let me be an asshole to you,” she said, laughing. “I’m experimenting right now, and I’m not ready to show you anything yet.”
“I just want you to remember that I’m terrible at judging poetry. I’ll love even what you hate.”
Once the class had filled in and everyone had taken their seats, the professor gave Dorota a piece of chalk, the cue to introduce me.
“I want you to remember this name,” she said to the class, scrawling S. MOK WAWELSKI on the blackboard. Whiteboards were not Ivy League enough for Jagielloski. “Please give him a warm welcome.” She gave me the chalk.
After lukewarm applause, I sat on the corner of the professor’s desk but tried not to give too much of a ball show; my overalls had shrunk in the dryer the night before.
“What do you know about me?” I asked, casting my line into a room I felt knew too much.
“You keep the fire department busy,” a student said, getting a rise from the class. He was a redhead, arms covered with strawberry down. “Can you tell us about your influences?”
“Pink Floyd.”
The professor shot Dorota a warning look worth 100
złotych
and maybe more.
“I meant what miniaturists do you admire?”
“Uh, none,” I said, taking advantage of the resulting silence to take a sip from my one-litre carton of chocolate milk.
“So you’ve never heard of the Beckonscot model village, the one with the burning house?” pressed the redhead, wrinkling the freckles on his nose. “I find it weird you don’t acknowledge precedents for your work.”
“
The Wall
is a great album, and if you listen carefully, it’ll teach you all you need to know about building and tearing down.”
Of course I studied precedents, but he was thinking miniature, and I tend to go oversize. For me, art history is about Christo and Jeanne-Claude unleashing their epic whims on the earth, visible from outer space. It’s about having the gumption to hang a 14,000 m
2
orange curtain across the Rifle Gap Valley in the Rocky Mountains, to change the planet’s very
topografia
at your vernissage. You can’t think small without thinking large, but that wasn’t a very academic thought, so I kept it to myself.
