The artist Marek Zulawski, translation & Polish-British culture

Hi,

My father was a womaniser throughout his life.

Once I realised, as a teenager, that he had had countless lovers and carried on a polyamorous (some would just say adulterous) personal life, I often wondered if I had any half-siblings out there that I didn't know about. I suspect this will eventually all become clear, if not to me then to my children, thanks to the increasing popularity of home DNA testing and genealogy sites like geni.com and 23andMe. We shall see.

But with all that in mind, I selected this passage from his autobiography to translate this week.

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Linda, Marek & Michael too

I talked to Linda on the phone today. She called to tell me she was expecting a baby again. 

I took the news with some sadness. When will the anxiety she arouses in me finally go away? When will I finally stop thinking about her and stop recognising the rattle of her phone calls?

What had happened exactly — and why did it end so quickly? She was my daughter and wife for a very short time. She had soft red hair, a pale body with that extraordinary whiteness that glows in the dark, and delicate freckles on both sides of her snub nose. She was twenty years old and wrote poetry of incredible depth. She giggled at the slightest thing, before taking the next moments to dream up frivolous theories about life, politics and parapsychology with childish seriousness.

But it only lasted eleven months. I let her go at the first opportunity, even though I could’ve held onto her.

Via Leonardo.ai

It was in Paris in the spring of 1970, in a small hotel near the Odeon, on a large bed covered with a floral quilt reflected in the mirrored doors of a baroque wardrobe that had been painted white like the coffin of an innocent virgin. 

It was there that Linda conceived the fruit of our love in her tiny womb.

When her university friend Michael asked her to marry him, she openly told him that she was pregnant and that she was my lover.

“That’s just delicious,” I exclaimed, laughing happily. “What did he say?”

“He said,” Linda replied slowly, “that even if I married him just because I was pregnant, he would still be happy. ‘I’ll take care of you and Marek’s baby,’ he said.”

What an extraordinary young man, I thought, and I stopped laughing.

“Maybe he really does love you more than I do,” I said. “Maybe you really should take him seriously...”

“Maybe I should,” Linda replied. 

It became very quiet in the studio.

I heard little about Michael after that, until one of the many letters she wrote to me arrived. She had been visiting her parents in Bury St Edmunds for a couple of days. At the very end — after news about her father’s health and about her younger sisters, after comments about the behaviour of her favourite hamster and a description of how some clouds were being driven by the sea wind — I read that their wedding would take place on Saturday, June 20th, but that next weekend she would come and visit me as usual.

They arrived on Friday evening — both of them. By motorcycle. They were dirty and tired — and so incredibly young in their matching jeans. Linda started organising things in the studio and I took out a bottle of whiskey. 

Both Michael and I drank too much. We sat opposite each other at my round table and talked non-stop. It was our first face-to-face meeting, as we’d so far only heard about each other from Linda. During this confrontation, Michael wanted to appear older than he was and I wanted to appear younger. He said I was “a wonderful person”, that he knew how much I loved Linda, and that he, Michael, was incredibly grateful to me — I don’t know why — because he too loved her more than life itself. And then, as if echoing from a great distance, I heard him repeat: “Linda can always come and see you whenever she needs you... whenever she needs you... needs you…”

Linda sat on the sofa and looked at us with big round eyes and didn’t say a word.

The three of us spent that night together. She lay between us like a pink caramel, perfectly composed, sweet and serene — perhaps even a little amused by our secret attempts to caress her body.

At some point, I pulled her towards me. She didn’t resist. Back then she was still much more my lover than his wife. Michael was too intimidated by my presence to imitate me. He sobbed. In sympathy, Linda stroked the wavy locks that covered his forehead.

I got up and put water on for tea. It was four o’clock in the morning. We all sat naked at the table, while Linda and I both tried to be nice to Michael.

But the grim weight of what had happened hung over us like a cloud. I, suddenly completely sober, couldn’t help but compare his wonderfully smooth body, like a Greek ephebe, with my wiry body, expressionistically elongated like the body of a medieval Christ on the cross — and suddenly I realised that there was a difference of forty years between me and this boy. 

I went to the cupboard and took two powerful sleeping pills. Then all three of us piled back into bed. I fell asleep like a log.

In the morning, Linda was still deeply asleep and lay in his arms. Her white hand, like in a Tintoretto painting, rested thrown over his black shaggy head. I looked long and hard at the sleeping couple — but I came to no conclusions.

This is not how the story ends though. The glass has to be drunk all the way to the bottom. A few months later, at 11 o’clock in the evening, I got a long-distance phone call. It was Michael.

“Hello, Michael,” I tried to make my voice as friendly as possible. “How are you?”

He didn’t respond to the greeting.

“Linda’s lost the baby,” he announced without preamble. “She’s in the hospital. She’s bleeding. No, it wasn’t surgery, it was a miscarriage. We wanted to save the child, but we couldn’t.” He said it all in a wooden voice, like an automaton.

“Michael,” I panicked. “Where is she? How is she? What hospital is she in? I’m getting in the car immediately. I’ll be at your place in two hours.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Michael!” I screamed. “Can you hear me? Give me the address!”

“I hear you...” he replied excruciatingly slowly. “Linda’s out of danger. She told me to let you know, so I called. But don’t ask me what hospital she’s in. If you come here, I’ll have to either kill you or kill myself.”

He hung up the phone.

'Lamentation over the Dead Christ' by Tintoretto, c.1562, via WikiArt

I'm sorry if that was upsetting. I felt upset translating it.

I do keep trying to find stories about fun and laughter to translate from my dad's autobiography, but life isn't always like that unfortunately, and these painful pieces are admittedly quite powerful.

It leaves me feeling we need to lighten the mood for the end of this newsletter though...

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A tongue twister

Many thanks to the reader who recently sent me this horrible tongue twister.

Żaby rzępolą na Rzeszowszczyźnie

W deszczu szczaw aż do Ustrzyk

Dżezują dżdżownice na Hrubieszowszczyźnie

A w puszczy piszczy puszczyk

Czcigodnym czcicielom czystości w Pszczynie

Szeleszczą pszczoły w bluszczu

Trzeszczą trzewiki po szosach suszonych

Szemrzżeż rzeżucho w Tłuszczu

It's the kind of poem that confirms people's impressions that Polish is all Z sounds....

Watch the video to see how to say it - I find it near impossible.

If you're looking for a translation, I just don't have it in me to figure out rhymes right now. But it's about frogs in Rzeszów, sorrel in the rain, earthworms in Hrubieszów, owls squawking in forests, bees buzzing on some ivy, that sort of thing.

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That's all for this week. Many thanks for reading.

Don't forget, if you know anybody who needs a translator specialising in memoirs or diaries, my new website for that is here.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / TranslatePolishMemoirs.com / Other stuff

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