The artist Marek Zulawski, translation & Polish-British culture

Hi,

This week I've translated another alcohol-fuelled story from my father Marek's youth.

Much like in the last drunken episode I translated, about the last NYE before WWII, he used minimal punctuation to create a giddy intoxicated feeling. I've tried to recreate that again.

The story is set in the mountain town of Zakopane this time, and it starts in an old famous restaurant that was once the hip place to be for the era's creatives and athletes

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"We're such gentlemen brothers students louts"

Hotel Morskie Oko, built by Władysław Dzikiewicz, source: public domain

It's the year 1930, maybe 1931. At Dzikiewicz's, a company of mountain-climbing brothers sit around lowered tables: Wiesiek Stanisławski, Jacek, me, Fredek Szczepański, Pstruś Pawłowski and I don't remember who else. Oh that ox Jaś Sawicki is right in the middle. I'm twenty-two years old.

Right from the start my head is spinning because a couple of vodkas got poured down at the buffet before dinner so everyone is talking over each other about new routes problems achievements.

Napkin-covered white tables with portions of "hamenek" undulating with crystalline simplicity and glass still life with an unfashionable bottle because that was the fashion simply vodka and snacks because we're so cool strong young no women in our crew innocent boys with homosexual feelings without mutual desire but we exclude the weaker sex because we're such gentlemen brothers students louts equal brothers in ice-axes and ropes.

A terrible deep loyalty to one gender.

When time comes to pay the waiter leans over this one then over that one each turning his head as if it's not his problem busy talking pretending he doesn't see so the waiter talks to Jaś Sawicki for the second or third time because he's sitting in the middle and he's the biggest until Jaś Sawicki gets annoyed and stands up to slap the waiter but he knocks over the entire table and everything on it falls on the floor.

The waiter grabs him by the lapels and that's a serious matter we won't allow it but someone from the side quickly pushes the waiter and he goes flying into the floor and he's yelling that we're attacking him and as if through a mist I see a circle of crow-like waiters move in double time with napkins like archangel swords in their hands all bent over in attack position while we're just little drunkards pushing them into each other hitting them with anything that comes to hand bottles or plates but irregularly sporadically while they have a system blasting us in the face with their napkins like whips they are sober they fan us to the exit towards the door and they push us out onto the wide steps outside.

That's when the real battle starts the waiters holding on tight while we're on the rocks some more cautiously kicking legs because someone's yelling police police.

Small and agile like a cat Fredek wants to jump over a wall but the police grab his legs what are you doing here sir they ask I'm running away because they're beating people he says pointing in the opposite direction so they let him go then Hanka comes galloping towards me away from the mess Marek she shouts Wiesiek is beating your brother like he's a drum so I gallop too and in the gutter in front of a café veranda where Bodo's music is playing for those who dance I see Wiesiek sitting straddled on Jacek and punching away like crazy so without halting my pace or my anger I leap onto his head like a goalkeeper onto a ball in flight grabbing him by the throat with both hands pulling him off Jacek in a single motion.

We both land hard on the pavement and people are yelling police again but I don't want to fight Wiesiek he's my best companion on my expeditions so I just grab him round the waist squeezing with all the might in my arms and I scream into his open throat Wiesiek pull yourself together.

I'm not afraid of you Wiesiek screams back struggling he's strong as a bull but I'm no weakling either so I don't let him out of my grip and after a while Wiesiek leans his head onto my shoulder and starts crying I'm glad you came because I would have killed Jacek.

He sobs.

Come with me I say let's walk a bit and I also want to cry because I don't know if Jacek is alive but Hanka and Pstruś lift him up out of the gutter and put him on his feet they go in one direction while Wiesiek and I go in another Marzałkowska Street then Kościuszki towards the station but every ten steps we grab each other's shoulders again instead of fighting waiters we're wasting our strength because that's what made the despair grow in his heart we step through the darkness of unlit roads Sienkiewicza Street smells like Antałówka black spruces against a night sky and the silence of a mountain night and in this silence Wiesiek complains about his fate yes he knows that nothing good will ever happen to him anymore because his only dream is Hanka but Jacek has claimed her as his own.

Kościuszki Street at night, Zakopane, circa 1930s, source: public domain

And suddenly he's overcome with anger again he throws himself at me with his fists because you he says you're his brother you're on his side you're defending him against me so I grab him again and squeeze until his ribs crackle but he breaks free and runs into the darkness the emptiness of the street and slips and topples over then sits on the curb and cries.

So I pick him up and cheer him up there are other girls I say even though I'm jealous he's had those experiences because I still don't know how to love women.

We end up sitting together on a roadside wall and Wiesiek tells me about a dream he'd had about death.

He's in an amphitheatre made out of rock and all the people who were killed in the mountains are sitting there Klimek Bachleda Bronikowski Świerz the Skotnicównas and they're calling him to them.

Wiesiek holds his head in his hands and tries to puke.

And then he lunges at me again with his fists only to end up in my arms like in a lover's embrace and we walk on like that further and further into the dark night up Chałubińskiego Street in a terrible stupor moved beyond measure exhausted feral from vodka and fatigue fighting one moment then kissing the next. And in this madness of exhaustion Wiesiek begins to prophesise.

You will live he says nothing will happen to you but they're already calling me I will die I won't even fall away from a rock wall like a man I'll just slip like a cow on a grassy slope and smash my head on a stone...

When we finally made it to the Tatra Society building for the night, dawn was breaking and the stars were disappearing one by one in the east.

A few years later, in August 1933, the great mountaineer Wiesław Stanisławski died in the mountains, aged twenty-four. They found him on the scree with his head smashed in.

He had only one boot on. Apparently, while changing his shoes before climbing the wall, he slipped on the grass like a cow and fell onto the rocks in the valley.

Nightmares, apparitions...

Wiesiek Stanisławski in the Tatras, source: Tatra Museum

If you speak Polish, there is a whole documentary about Wiesiek and his mysterious death here on YouTube.

Also, just to clarify, Wiesiek and Hanka say that Jacek is my father's brother, but he was actually his first cousin. This is because in some parts of Poland there is a custom of saying that your cousin is your brother or sister. Fun fact: this is how I have two sisters who are nearly 40 years older than me.

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T.S. Eliot & Eastern Europe

Now for something more sober.

My friend, the academic and journalist Juliette Bretan, recently published an article for the Critical Quarterly on the American-British poet T.S. Eliot and how we understand his view of what was happening in Europe at the end of World War One. His thoughts would inspire The Waste Land, his poem that just about every teenager in the UK and US has had to study at school.

But were Eliot's thoughts on Europe a bit xenophobic? 👀

"The number of languages worth writing in is very small, and it seems to be a waste of time to attempt to enlarge it."

- T.S. Eliot

Read Juliette's article here.

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

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Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / TranslatePolishMemoirs.com / Other stuff

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