Vera (13 page)

I meet Jan at the Journalists' Ball, which journalism students are permitted to attend. I know him by reputation, of course: one of the finest journalists in Poland, solidly of the left, a brilliant writer. I think he is the most handsome, most charming man I have ever met. When he starts talking, a sort of enchantment overcomes me and I hope he will never stop. I look at his face as he speaks, without the least embarrassment, on the verge of lifting my hand and caressing his cheek. He is talking of politics – well, of course – but if he were reciting the Warsaw telephone directory I still would have remained spellbound. Jan's good looks are of the sort that match perfectly the quality of a man's mind; his thought, so perfectly developed, has moulded his face.

It is not always this way, in fact, hardly ever; it is quite possible for a man of the most brilliant and daring intellectual accomplishment to offer the world the face of a camel, or, in the case of Sartre, of an ancient turtle. And the same might be said of a woman. Nothing so attracts me to a man as intellect – and this is the same for so many women, those, at least, who value intellect – but once attracted, it can all be over in a week unless the man's intellect is complemented in important ways.

Jan is kind, and his kindness shines in his eyes. Kindness in a man has a different quality than kindness in a woman; it is braced in a particular way, no hint of the maternal, more as if it were a conscious choice, a willed emphasis. Jan's political convictions are themselves an expression of kindness; his belief in a foundational equality, such as you find in the Scottish poet Robert Burns' poem ‘A man's a man, for a' that'.

Do you know the lines at the end of the poem? – ‘It's comin' yet, for a' that, That man to man the world o'er, Shall brothers be, for a' that.' That is what Jan believes. Personal liberty means everything to him, not only in the big things, like politics, but in relationships. But I have to tell you that although Jan is very Burns in some things, he is not at all Burns in others. You'll recall that Burns had a famous appetite for lassies, whether from the highlands or lowlands, and wrote a great many poems celebrating sexual intercourse. Jan, on the other hand, has no interest in sex and it never becomes part of our communication. I don't care, or maybe I do, but it is not an impediment. I adore him anyway.

He says to me in the Karmeralna nightclub where we are drinking – me, a glass or two; Jan, four, five, six glasses of vodka, brandy – ‘You are Vera, good, you are beautiful, good, but the important thing is that you are clever. Isn't that right?'

I say, ‘I am Vera, I am gorgeous, I am clever.' I answer him satirically, but I am glad of the praise – glad that he can see something that other people miss when I act up and make jokes and slip into the mood for mockery. What hope is there for you if you make a point of showing that you're clever? People have to see it without any help.

Jan says, ‘Listen to me. I want you to ask me a question. I want you to say, “Jan, my dear, what do you love? A woman who is clever? Is that what you love?”'

I ask him the question. And he says, ‘Of course. This woman, this Vera, very clever, I love her.'

We sit at the bar, smiling at each other, and everyone knows that we are together forever. Some say, ‘Werunia, do you know what you're doing?' And they say, ‘Can Vera live happily in a domestic situation with Jan? Vera? With her appetites?'

Another journalist, a man of fabulous intellect, tells me an instructive tale of those who can fly. He says, ‘Do you see? Someone whose thoughts give him wings, he soars past the clouds, like Icarus, except that his wings have no wax and nothing melts. And the words he must write? They are written against the blue sky.'

Is he talking about Jan, maybe? And is he saying that Jan and I will thrive? I choose to believe that he has Jan in mind when he talks of those who can soar.

Jan lives with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment, and shortly after we meet and fall in love, I move in with him, together, of course, with Marek, who at this time, 1955, is two years old. They are crazy about each other immediately, Marek and Jan, and this warmth between them is Marek's consolation for having such a lousy mother.

What can I say? I am no good at it. I love Marek like a madwoman, but somehow all the bits and pieces that go with being a mother are not there. When Marek cries, I say, ‘Jan, do something.' Mealtimes go by without my noticing that he needs food. Nappies – okay, I remember to change him: good for you, Vera. Sometimes I attempt to play with him. ‘This is a truck. What noise does the truck make? It goes rrrrrrr! It goes brrrrrm!' Marek looks at me sceptically, as if he is thinking: ‘A truck? Do me a favour. What does Mama know about trucks?'

But Jan knows exactly what to do with a toy truck. He is entirely unselfconscious when he plays with Marek. Comforting, nurturing, being a big mama, it comes to him naturally. You know, if you look at a cat being a cat, grooming itself, curling up to sleep, leaping to catch a moth, you think, ‘The cat didn't make a study of this, it's just there in its head and its heart.' That is how being a big gorgeous mama is to Jan. It is in his head and his heart.

But for me, having Marek is the vital thing, turning a deaf ear to all those who counselled me to terminate the pregnancy. That is all about conviction. Another woman in another place – it may be the right thing to terminate. Plenty of times it is the right thing. Plenty. For me at that time, it is the right thing not to terminate. But beyond having the baby – that I know nothing about. It doesn't cause me any grief. I simply think,
Vera, you're hopeless. Too bad about that.

And I call to my mother, and then to Jan, ‘Do something. He's hungry or wet or tired. Do something.'

Roman Polanski is here, a man whose genius shines out of him. At the age of twenty-four, twenty-five, he looks like a boy of fourteen. Except for his eyes, which are very grown up. He's been to the National Film School in Łödź, and he's made a fabulous short movie,
Two Men and a Wardrobe
, which has been shown here and there in Poland before its official release. Everyone knows he is going to be famous.

He comes to the bar for the company, the conversation, but not for the liquor. He doesn't drink.

He is my age, and his experiences during the war in Kraków are almost a mirror image of mine in Lvov: living feral, outwitting the Nazis, passing himself off as a Catholic kid after learning a few prayers. What I saw, he saw. We converse, but we don't speak of such things, of course not, no more than to confirm a type of kinship in our having emerged from that worst of hells. In Polanski, there is that unfaltering spark of appetite of one who has outlived a plan of extinction that was meant to result in death; that same spark that glows in my chest and in my stomach. It expresses itself often enough in a sort of cockiness, as if I am saying to the world, ‘You wouldn't try this, of course you wouldn't, but I would, so watch.'

Back in the nightclub, Polanski's other special appetite is also pretty evident: his appetite for young girls, much younger than me. Maybe I think, ‘Roman, one day this will make trouble for you.' Or maybe not.

I have seen his short film. I know he is a genius. You can excuse a great deal for the sake of genius. If he finds trouble, at least it will be trouble he makes for himself.

When I come to Australia, people say, ‘From Poland? Poor Vera! So backward! So tedious! The communists, full of shit! But you escaped.' It is difficult to make such people understand – and do I even have the patience for it? – that the bars and nightclubs of Warsaw, those that I knew, where the scornful, the disdainful, the happy-go-lucky, the satirical went for consolation – they were places of excitement and spectacle; if dancing on a table-top with a cigarette hanging from your lip, a glass of red wine in your hand, your legs on full display can be considered a spectacle. Maybe the best thing happening anywhere on earth was happening in those bars of Warsaw.

This is the great thing: we had a common enemy, which was the hidebound state and the secret police and the informers and the philistines on the one hand, and the capitalist state (elsewhere, of course, in America mostly) with its complacent bourgeoisie, its bland consumers and its philistines on the other hand. We scorned all of that, mocked all of that, mocked ourselves, too, but we could listen with a type of reverence whenever someone said something new and clever, or who – like Polanski – threw a bright light out into the world illuminating things we hadn't thought of before. The people in Australia who say ‘From Poland? Poor Vera!' are unaware that in one or two streets of the city of Warsaw, more that was lively, more that glittered, more that could enlighten was on display than anywhere else on earth.

1956: In Russia, a tremor; in Poland, an earthquake.

Bolesław Bierut – a turnip – has been in charge in Poland since just after the war. Now he's dead. He went to Moscow in his role as doormat to the Russians, allowed them to wipe their boots on him, as he'd done many times before, but this time he doesn't get up.

Gomułka takes over as president, after a few months of hysterical shouting in the Polish United Workers' Party and the Syet, the parliament.

It's Gomułka who says, ‘Poles, you are a happy people; Gomułka says you are free.'

What is this? Somebody in the Politburo, somebody in Moscow has had a rush of blood to the head?

In the nightclub, we chatter: ‘Who knows what's going on?'

Jan knows. ‘After Stalin, whose grave I spit on, we get Nikita Khruschev, a peasant. Nikita never liked Stalin: good for him. Nikita wants a different sort of Soviet Union, not so many people murdered. So when Bierut goes to God, the Russians give the Poles a chance to relax. “Choose your president,” they say. “What do we care? Choose your own president. You want Gomułka, okay, have him.” Gomułka wants more freedom for the Polish people, what's left of them. Why not? Gomułka always stood up to the Russians; he's a hero of the Polish people. But here's what I think. Gomułka has promised the Russians that Poland is an ally of the Bear forever. “Okay, fraternal colleagues from Moscow, a little bit more freedom, not too much. Any trouble, I shoot a few people, throw a few out of a window, everything's under control again. Trust me, Nikita.” So the Russians have made a gamble. They think they can have Gomułka as a friend, and if he's not so friendly anymore, off with his head. Look what's happening in Hungary. The Russians don't want to be fighting in Budapest and in Warsaw.'