Warsaw (6 page)

Adam’s black, greasy hair was washed and brushed. His mother
had cleaned and ironed his best white shirt. He also borrowed (stole) one of
his father's best ties. He looked suitably smart in the shirt and tie and hoped
they would compensate, or draw attention away from, his worn trousers and old
shoes. Adam wanted to make a good impression on his prospective new employers.
They lived in a monied district, populated by doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats.
Not only would their employment of him help pay for University but they were
also would-be contacts for when he would complete his studies. He wanted to one
day exist in their world not as an outsider, but as an equal. He was seduced by
their polished sphere, the refined manners, beautiful possessions, intelligent
conversation, love of books, fine foods, tastes, liberties and glamorous women.

A serving maid opened the door to the three-storey town
house. Unsure as to his importance, or the esteem in which the family held the
private tutor, the dour looking servant treated him with begrudging respect.
After they eventually assessed his station and rank the staff soon treated the
pretentious tutor with the same level of respect as they did the chimney
sweeper or coal man. The antagonism between him and the rest of the staff only
increased with the student's clever comments towards them - and acting as if he
were above them in social status. He bowed and was suitably well-mannered and
professional in dealing with his new charge's mother and father. He was
charming and intelligent, equally equitable towards both husband and wife alike
(he told the father, a lawyer, that he was studying to enter the legal
profession and engaged the lady of the house in a conversation about the latest
fashionable novels, complimenting her on her taste). After the business of
settling upon his fee and hours the tutor would work Adam was introduced to his
new pupil, Michael - a plump, pre-teen brat with a decidedly unimpressed look
upon his chubby face and equally unimpressive intellect.

The parents were happy to accommodate the tutor when he
mentioned that he could start straightaway. Adam suggested that he be allowed
to see some of Michael's previous work in order to assess the level he was
currently at. Furthermore he suggested that, whilst looking over this work, he
set his student a small composition exercise. He asked him to write about his
family, thus giving the tutor an immediate piece of source material to help
insert himself into the favour of his employers. So as not to disturb each
other the tutor mentioned that it would be best if both he and his pupil be
allowed to work in private.

"A good idea," father pronounced, "you're
welcome to use my study upstairs. Michael can work in his bedroom next
door."

"Would you like anything to eat Mister Duritz?"

"No, I do not want to put you to any trouble Mrs
Goldman. And please, call me Adam."

"It will not be any trouble. I can get Thelma to make
you something," the motherly, mothering, Mrs Goldman replied, without
making the point that it was fine for Adam to call her Deborah.

"As long as it's no trouble. A sandwich would be fine.
Thank you."

Within fifteen minutes the student was loosening his tie in
the heat, wolfing down a beef and onion bagel and drinking cold lemonade.
Although he was excited by the prospect of his new position, upon travelling to
the house - meeting the family, playing a part and making the right impression
- the moody student nevertheless came back down to earth. It was just another
job. The family ultimately looked down on him as staff. He felt out of place
and would have to suppress his pride. There was no daughter of the house and
his pupil was just another lazy, spoilt cretin. Again Duritz felt weary,
frustrated, that his genius did not deserve this paltry existence. He should be
touring Europe, writing a book, being noticed. Life was unfair.

It took the tutor all of five minutes to go through the
folders of work involving different subjects before he formed his judgement
concerning the child. He took a few minutes inspecting his employer's study but
there was little of interest. He yawned and finished his sandwich and lemonade.
As delicious as his supper was, however, his body craved some chocolate - or
some of the sugared pastries that his mother made which melted in the mouth -
to finish off his meal and lift his spirits. Adam took a pencil and some
notepaper from the lawyer's bureau and started to doodle and then draw a couple
of caricatures of his new employers in the style of Pushkin. After finishing
off a couple more cartoons, in which he turned the Goldman’s into a peacock and
bald-headed eagle respectively, the irritable student ripped up all of the
pictures and threw them in the bin, dissatisfied as he was with them. He yawned
again and burningly thought to himself, whilst exercising his memory at the
same time,

‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.’

The sound of laughter outside attracted his attention as if
the voices were wind chimes. The ‘music’ emanated from the garden next door to
the house. The breeze from the window fanned his face but nothing could cool
the instant ardour of his thoughts and will. He was enraptured immediately,
sublimely. She was beautiful; indeed Adam later postulated that he did not know
what beauty was until that moment. He craned his head further out of the
window, to the point perhaps where he was in danger of falling, as if he were a
sailor being drawn to his death by the siren's song. Adam's heart faltered yet
beat wildly as well - pumping blood to that more significant of organs. He was
the poet, she his inspiration and muse the youth exclaimed to himself later
that evening. She would be his ‘Beatrice’, ‘Lotte’. Fate and Love no longer
seemed subjective, fiducial ideas. He suddenly believed Dostoyevsky when he had
posed that ‘Only Beauty can save the world.’ She laughed - as did the child who
she gaily pushed on the swing - and seemed to colour the air with flowers and
music as she did so. Jessica wore a short sleeve navy blue blouse and a
knee-length white skirt. Such was her womanly figure - but adolescent features
and vitality - she could have been aged fifteen to twenty-five, the student
imagined that sultry night. Indeed the idealist stayed up all that evening
writing about her,

‘...Her lips are the colour of strawberry ice-cream. Her
arms are slender, graceful, her bosom a treasure chest. She has both taste and
elegance wearing even the most simple, casual of outfits. What I would not have
given to be that child (her brother I suspect) who she lovingly embraced and
kissed upon the cheek. If I envy the boy I like him also, for being so clearly
devoted to my seraphim. Should I envy the rays of the sun also for kissing her
fair complexion and enriching the lustre of her fine golden hair?’

A possessed Adam went on during that first evening to write
half a page about her eyelashes alone. His heart and imagination were fired. He
could not stop thinking, nor writing, about her. He kept a special journal
which he half filled even before their first meeting. Duritz got to the house
early and left as late as possible the next day in sweet hope of some form of
contact with his employer's neighbours. Our ‘Pip’ devoured every piece of
information about his ‘Stella’. Her name was perfect for her, Jessica. Adam
found out which school she attended and read its syllabus so that he could have
something in common and display his intellectual plumage when they finally met.
Thankfully there was a bench on the street and he often waited there,
pretending to read a book, for his heroine to pass by on her way home from
school. Just to see her fed and teased out his desire; so too she was a fresh
picture for the poet every day as his subject always seemed to wear some new
outfit, or do her hair differently, or enchant him with a new mannerism or
facial expression. He blushed, gulped and shyly looked away the first time that
she appeared to notice him there. He cursed himself for half of the night for
not smiling the smile he had prepared, or introducing himself with the lines he
had rehearsed. For the rest of the evening however the willing slave bathed in
the relief and excitement that she had noticed him and, somehow, he had
advanced his campaign. The would-be philosopher was consumed with passion, or
with forming stratagems to bring their worlds closer together. To further
ingratiate himself into her life the wily student came up with the idea of
telling Mr Goldman of Michael's deficiency in the sciences. As the house's
library appeared to lack the necessary text books - and it would have been a
needless expense to purchase them - were the family friendly enough with the
doctor next door to borrow the books that he needed? So the tutor made a brief
foray into the house and introduced himself to the Rubenstein’s, convinced that
the sortie had been a success (the father indeed seemed pleased and impressed with
the young student that he was considering a career in the medical profession) -
although unfortunately their daughter was out that evening.

Such was the student's obsession that his studies suffered.
What few friends Adam possessed he saw even less of. He would feign illness and
stay at home writing poetry; he composed a sonnet sequence and a brilliant
verse romance about a Knight Errant who experiences a vision and then sets off
upon a quasi-religious quest to rescue a princess from a citadel and ogre. As
much as the real world seemed to narrow however and fall into the background
the besotted youth was duly awarded by the work he put in ingratiating himself
into the affections of his employers. He was invited to one of the Goldman's
dinner parties. Believing that the Rubenstein’s would be present he gladly
accepted the invitation and said he would be happy to help serve drinks during
the evening.

‘The cream coloured silk dress she transformed into a unique
gown, such is her regal figure. Her earrings and brooch matched perfectly,
though it was an act of will for me to take my eyes off her lively features.
Her flesh was like burnished gold in the candle light, like Cleopatra's... Her
voice is as expressive and seductive as her features... Her preening, shallow
suitors were but satellites to her universe... On the surface she's a natural
coquette - her smile can fell a celibate and profligate alike and she can blink
and out pops an earth moving oelliard - but yet there were brief moments where
I witnessed again the sadness, loneliness, behind Jessica's mask.’

The several glasses of wine the student had that night
instilled in him the courage to finally approach his intended. He served
Jessica a drink and attempted to open up a conversation. He asked her what she
was reading at the moment, stammering and blushing. She shrugged and replied
"different things", eyeing him with suspicion and a certain amusement
that a serving boy had deigned to try to speak with her with such familiarity.
He smiled at her with the gentle, charming expression that he had worked on in
front of the mirror but it just served to prolong the awkward pause between
them both. The young, albeit sophisticated, socialite rescued herself by
attracting the attention of one of her fawning suitors and that was the end of
their novel exchange.

As disheartened as our love sick student was, his love
sickened not. Were not Julien Sorrel and Mathilde the same at the beginning? He
also qualified the evening as a success due to his performance after his encounter
with his subject. Mrs Goldman, as if showing off a new toy or pet to her
friends, put the tutor on the spot and asked him to perform a party trick.
Having shown off his talent to the family a week before Mrs Goldman made the
youth repeat the phenomenon to her guests. She told the room how someone could
open up any page of Shakespeare's Hamlet, quote a line, and her tutor could
finish off the remaining sentence or passage from memory. Nervous and angry at
the woman's request and affront for turning him into some kind of dancing pony
for the audience the young scholar nevertheless grew in confidence and
enthusiasm as he observed the impression he was making. Jessica too couldn't
fail to be impressed, he imagined. The episode pretty much sealed his conceit
and parallel with Stendhal's Julien Sorrel in "Scarlet And Black" -
for had not that personal tutor too played out a similar scene reciting from
the Scriptures to seduce his audience?

A week later, after his display, the Goldman's tutor was
invited to help serve drinks and do his party piece (but with the Book of Job)
at one of the Rubenstein's soirees. Again Duritz made progress in relation to
charming the mother and father, but Jessica again snubbed the sensitive student
when he tried to engage her in conversation. She but arched her narrow eyebrow
and then almost broke into laughter at his daring, ridiculous play for her.
After that his advances - and the unresponsive responses from Jessica - were no
less awkward or calamitous. When not ignoring his warped attentions altogether
Jessica felt insulted or hassled by the clingy student. Or she would tease him.
Again and again over the next few months, without her knowing the extent of the
damage she was doing, Jessica would wound the fantasist. Yet again and again
Adam would lick and even kiss his wounds - for she had made them. He suffered.
He cried himself to sleep at night in religious admiration of her beauty; yet
sometimes he would cry in despair at not being able to possess such beauty,
flesh. Yearning. Adam was young and in love. He became ill. He lost weight. He
began to drink vodka to take the pain away and forget. He wasn't himself. He
grew desperate one day and composed a letter - inserting a number of poems in
the envelope also - that he intended to post to his muse anonymously. What
stopped him was the thought that she might never speak to him again if he did
such a thing - not that Jessica was speaking to him anyway at the time. But he
desperately wanted to declare his love in some grand romantic gesture. If they
could only get to know each other, away from society and all its charades. He
painted futures of them together, of courtship, marriage, a family. He
sometimes even stalked her. Duritz hated and became insanely jealous of her
real (false) suitors. He sometimes dreamed of being with her, sometimes had
nightmares of her being with someone else. He had to win the unattainable
prize. Life was not worth living without her, or it was but half a life.