Promise at Dawn Read online

  “Are you going to eat it raw?”

  “Yes.”

  I gulped down one morsel, then another; under her warm and at last grateful gaze I truly felt that I was becoming a man—a perfectly correct impression, for this was my first taste of things to come. I cut more deeply into the rubber, puffing and blowing a little with each mouthful, and continued with my labor of love even after a cold sweat began to appear on my forehead. My eyes were bulging, I was fighting against a growing nausea, gathering all my virile strength in an effort to give satisfaction, and to remain undefeated on the field, as I’ve had to do so often since then, with as little luck.

  I was very ill. They took me to the hospital. My mother sobbed, Aniela screamed, the workroom girls ran around in panic while I was carried to the ambulance on a stretcher. I was very proud of myself.

  Twenty years later this puppy love inspired my first novel, A European Education, and also some passages in The Company of Men.

  For more than twenty years, in the course of my wanderings, I carried among my belongings a child’s rubber galosh with four large holes in it. Wherever I went, it was always within easy reach of my hand. I waited and waited. But it never happened again, or perhaps I had given once and for all everything I had in me. In the end, when I was more than forty years old, I left the galosh behind me, somewhere along my way. It’s no use pretending; one lives only once.

  My affair with Valentine lasted for almost a year. It brought about a complete change in me. It forced me to compete, to engage in pitched battles with my rivals; to assert and prove my virility I had to walk on my hands, steal from shops, smash windows and fight, always fight—defending myself on all fronts. One of my torments was a Polish boy whose name I have forgotten but who courted Valentine by juggling with five apples—and there were times, after hours and hours of desperate attempts at juggling, the apples scattered around me, when I hung my head and felt that life was not worth living. But even today I can still keep three apples in the air at the same time, and often, on my hill at Big Sur, when the challenge of the sea and the sky’s immensity sparks in me some last trace of defiance, I grab three apples, raise my head nobly, advance one foot and perform my exploit, just to show that I am still a man to be reckoned with.

  In winter we used to dash down the hills on our sleds, and since I could not do this standing up, like that beast Jan, I felt compelled to jump into the snow from a height of fifteen feet while Valentine watched, and I dislocated my shoulder. That awful Jan, how I loathed and how I still loathe him! I never found out exactly what there was between him and Valentine, and even now I prefer not to think about it, but he was almost a year older than I was, and could do everything I could do, only much better. He had the look of a gutter cat, was incredibly agile and could spit five yards, hitting the bull’s eye. He had a particularly impressive way of whistling between his teeth, a trick which I have never learned to this day and which I have never known anyone to perform with the same stridency, with two exceptions: my friend, Ambassador Jaime de Castro and Countess Nelly de Vogue. I owe to Valentine my slow realization that my mother’s love and the warmth and affection surrounding me at home were not typical of what life and the world had in store for me. Jan, with an uncanny genius for finding the right insult, had nicknamed me “the little blue one.” I cannot say why I found it especially offensive, but in order to demonstrate, for all to see, that there was nothing of the tenderfoot in me, I had to multiply the proofs of my toughness and daring, with the result that I very rapidly became the terror of the neighborhood. I can say without boasting that I broke more windows, stole more boxes of dates and Greek halva, pulled more doorbells and poured more cold water over the heads of passers-by than any other diplomat in the French Foreign Office. I also learned to risk my life with a facility which stood me in good stead during the war when that sort of thing was so much appreciated.

  I remember particularly a certain “death game” which Jan and I played on a fourth-floor window sill. It mattered little to us that Valentine was not there to admire us—we both knew that she was the fair lady for whom this duel was fought. The game was very simple, but I am inclined to think that the famous Russian roulette is safe by comparison. We climbed to the fourth floor of the building, opened the window and sat on the sill with our legs dangling outside. The game consisted in pushing the other fellow in the back, just hard enough to make him slide from the window sill onto the ledge—not more than ten inches wide—without actually plunging into the void.

  We played this strangely desperate game an incredible number of times. Whenever a quarrel broke out between us, and sometimes for no apparent reason other than a blind and deep rooted hostility, we would look at each other defiantly and then proceed without a word to the fourth floor of the building, and “play the game.”

  The truly desperate, and yet, at the same time, peculiarly loyal character of this duel derived from the fact that you put yourself entirely at the mercy of your greatest enemy; if the force of the push were miscalculated, deliberately or not, the victim would be sent to certain death on the stones below. I still have a very vivid recollection of my legs dangling oyer emptiness, of the cold metallic sill under my bare thighs and the feel of my rival’s hand on my back, ready to push.

  Jan is today an important member of the Polish Communist party. Some ten years ago, I met him in Paris at an official reception at the Polish Embassy. I recognized him at once. He had changed astonishingly little. At thirty-five, he had the same gaunt look, the same thin body, the same feline movements and the same hard, narrow eyes as in the old days. Since we were both attending the reception in an official capacity as representatives of our respective countries, we treated one another with studied courtesy. The name of Valentine was never mentioned. We drank vodka and exchanged toasts. He spoke to me about his fighting days in the Polish Resistance and I told him something of my battles in the Royal Air Force. We treated ourselves to another glass of vodka. Somehow the atmosphere was growing tense and the little freckled nose could almost be seen sniffing the atmosphere voluptuously.

  “I was tortured by the Gestapo,” Jan said.

  “I was wounded three times,” I countered.

  We glared at each other. Then, without a word, setting down our glasses, we made for the stairs. We climbed to the second floor and Jan opened the window and bowed politely. After all, we were in the Polish Embassy and I was a guest. I already had one leg over the window sill when the Ambassador’s wife, a most charming lady, well worthy of her country’s finest love poems, emerged from one of the reception rooms. I hastily withdrew my leg and bowed with a pleasant smile. She took us both by the arm and off we went to the buffet.

  I must say that I find myself occasionally wondering what the world press would have said if, at the very height of the Cold War, an important Polish Communist or a French diplomat had been found lying on the pavement, thrown from one of the upper windows of the Polish Embassy in Paris.

  CHAPTER 12

  The impression left in my mind by the courtyard of Number 16, Grand Pohulanka, is that of an immense arena where I served my apprenticeship for life’s future battles. One entered it from the street through a huge tunnel-like porte-cochère. In the middle of the yard rose a great pile of bricks, the last remains of a munitions factory which had been blown up by the partisans during the patriotic struggles between the Lithuanian and Polish armies. Beyond was the woodshed, and a thick field of nettles against which, armed with my wooden sword, I fought bravely in the name of France, under a “tricolor” flag specially made for me by the girls in the workroom, with the words liberté, égalité, fraternité lovingly embroidered in letters of gold by my mother herself. At the far end was the fence of an apple orchard. To the right was a row of old barns; a fairly easy access into them could be gained from the roofs, after taking out a few planks. The barns were used by the tenants as storehouses. They were filled with trunks and boxes which I inspected thoroughly after forcing the locks. I wo
uld lift the lid of a trunk, and in a pervasive smell of mothballs there would lie glittering under my eyes a whole mysterious life of strange objects, a forgotten world of unwanted and discarded traces of past lives. I spent hours of wonder there, in an atmosphere of shipwrecks, sunken treasures and mysterious messages. Each old-fashioned hat, each casket of ribbons and medals, each sharply-pointed tantalizing lady’s slipper spoke to me of a remote and bizarre universe, of private worlds once glittering with life and now buried in darkness; and echoes of ghostly laughter, of ghostly joys, sorrows and loves reached me like a light from a long-dead star. A fur scarf; strange costume jewelry; the contents of a theatrical wardrobe; a toreador’s headdress, a top hat, a ballerina’s tutu, yellow and shabby with age; cracked mirrors with drowned, forgotten eyes peering out at me; tail coats, black lace drawers, tattered mantillas, a uniform of one of the Tsar’s regiments, with the red, black and white ribbons of decorations, albums of sepia photographs and picture postcards; dolls, wooden horses—the whole pathetic bric-a-brac which humanity leaves behind on the bank as it flows on, as present becomes past and oblivion, and all that is left on the deserted shore are discarded objects, the battered and humble traces of a thousand vanished encampments. I would sit there, looking at the objects, trying to help them, to bring them back to life by imagining what they meant, to whom they had belonged—ancient atlases, broken watches, black velvet masks, empty perfume bottles, bouquets of artificial violets, gorgeous evening dresses still longing for beautiful shoulders and a lovely neck; gloves with something almost imploring in their outstretched, torn fingers.

  One afternoon, having climbed to the roof and removed the planks, I saw, lying among my treasures, beside a tail coat, a fur scarf and a wooden tailor’s dummy, an extremely busy couple. I modestly replaced the plank, leaving a crack just wide enough for my eyes to peer through in the interest of science. The man was Michka, the pastry cook, the girl, Antonia, one of the servants who worked in the building. I must say that what I saw intrigued me so much that more than once I nearly fell from the roof in my attempts to make out what, exactly, was happening. Later, when I described to my friends what my eyes had seen, they indignantly accused me of lying, and the kindlier souls among them explained that, since I had been looking from the roof, I must have been seeing everything upside down, which could possibly account for my obviously mistaken conclusions. I, however, had seen what I had seen, and I vigorously stuck to my story. It was finally decided that all of us should take turns acting as watchman on the roof, armed with a Polish flag borrowed from the porter. As soon as the couple showed up, the flag would be waved and the gang would make a beeline for the observation post, so that, by putting our heads together, some sense could be made out of all this.

  The first to witness the hair-raising events was little Marek Luka, a lame youngster with corn-colored hair, and he became so completely fascinated by what he saw that he forgot to wave the flag, to the despair of all of us. He confirmed, however, detail by detail, the description I had given of the extraordinary goings-on, and he did it with a mimicry so lively, and with such a zeal to communicate his experience, that he bit his finger quite badly in an excess of realism. We held a long discussion in an attempt to explain the motives of such crazy behavior; finally, it was Marek himself who presented the only plausible explanation:

  “Perhaps they don’t know how to go about it, and so they keep looking everywhere.”

  Next day, it was the local pharmacist’s son who took his turn on watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we saw the Polish flag triumphantly waving from the roof of the bam. A few seconds later, six or seven boys were making a dash for the rallying point. The plank was carefully drawn aside a little farther, and for more than two hours we were given our first lesson in artistic greatness.

  On that day, Michka, the pastry cook, surpassed himself, as though his generous nature had guessed the presence of six angelic faces leaning above his labors.

  I have always loved good pastry, but I have never been able, since that memorable day, to look at cakes with quite the same eyes. This particular pastry cook was a great artist. Pons, Rumpelmeyer and the famous Lours of Warsaw should all bow low before him. True enough, at our tender age we lacked the knowledge to indulge in comparisons, but today, having traveled widely, having tasted the petit fours at Florian’s in Venice, the incomparable strudel and Sacher torte of Vienna and, generally, having visited the best teashops of two continents, I remain convinced that Michka was a very great pastry cook. If, instead of settling in a small, remote town of eastern Europe, he had set up shop in Paris, he would have become rich, famous and decorated. The loveliest ladies of the French capital would have delighted in his cakes. In the field of pastry he had no equal, and it is heartbreaking to think that his talents never found a more extensive market. I do not know whether he is still alive—something tells me that he died young—but I wish to bow my head in reverence to the memory of this great artist, with all the humility of a mere scribe.

  So moving was the spectacle and, in some ways, so disturbing that the youngest member of our group, little Kazik, who couldn’t have been more than six years old, became frightened and began to cry. We were all shaken, but what we feared above all was to disturb the artist and cut short his inspiration, and so we lost several precious moments covering the innocent’s mouth with our hands to silence his howls.

  When, at last, Michka’s inspiration left him, and all that remained on the ground was a crushed top hat, a twisted fur scarf, and a stunned tailor’s dummy, it was a little group of silent and exhausted boys who descended from the roof. A story was going around at the time of a boy named Stas who had lain down between the rails under a passing train, and whose hair, as a result of this experience, had turned white. Since none of us found that our hair had turned white after Michka’s tumultuous passage, I regard this story as apocryphal. There was a solemn look on our faces as we huddled together in a strange, respectful silence, as if we had just visited sacred ground. I think we were gripped by an almost mystical feeling of wonder at the revelation of the prodigious and mysterious force men carry within them.

  Little Kazek seems to have been particularly impressed.

  I came upon him next morning behind the woodpile. He had pulled down his pants and was lost in contemplation of his male organ. There was a frown on his forehead and a look of profound meditation on his face as he held the object delicately between his thumb and first finger, with his little finger lifted, precisely as my professor of deportment had forbidden me to do when I held a cup of tea in my hand. He had not seen me coming, and when I shouted “Boo!” in his ear he jumped high into the air, and then took to his heels, holding his pants with both hands, and I can still see him scampering at full speed across the yard like a startled rabbit.

  I have never forgotten the sight of that great artist at work. I often think of him. I recently saw a film about Picasso, and as I followed the Spaniard’s brush moving quickly across the canvas, the image of the pastry cook of Vilna came irresistibly to my mind. It is difficult to be an artist, to keep one’s inspiration intact, to believe in the masterpiece, to possess the world over and over again—the dream of perfection, of total fulfillment, of permanent and completely satisfying mastery. I watched the painter’s brush in its frenzied pursuit of the absolute, and a great sadness came upon me at the sight of this bare-chested gladiator whom no new triumph could save from being defeated in the end.

  But it is still more difficult to become resigned. How many times, since I first raised my eyes toward those dizzy heights, have I found myself clinging to the flying trapeze, launched across a yawning void, trying to grasp, to attain, to give, to get there, my heart ready to burst, my teeth clenched and every fiber of my body at the breaking point; and while you thus hang on by the skin of your teeth, trying to postpone the inevitable fall, you still have to bother about style, give an impression of ease and grace; and when you are back on earth, empty of strength but
secure, so you think, in the certainty of your fine performance, the trapeze is lowered toward you once more, the page is blank once more, and you throw yourself forward again, seeking new heights and trying to reach something that is there only to elude you.

  The artist’s compulsion, the obsessive pursuit of the masterpiece, in spite of all the beauty I have seen, in spite of all the greatness I have witnessed, and in spite of all my own efforts on the flying trapeze, has remained for me unto this day no less of a mystery than it was thirty-five years ago, when I leaned from a roof over the inspired labors of the greatest pastry cook in the world.

  CHAPTER 13

  While i was thus opening my eyes for the first time on the mysterious world of art, my mother was devoting herself to the task of discovering in me the nugget of some hidden talent. The violin and the ballet set aside once and for all, and painting rejected as the cause of many a damned and unhappy life, I was next introduced to singing. The great masters of the local opera were invited to interest themselves in my vocal cords and discover, if they could, the seed of a new Chaliapin, destined to the applause of multitudes against a background of dazzling lights, of purple and gold. Much to my regret, after more than thirty years of hesitation and stubborn hope, I have to admit that the most malicious misunderstanding has crept in between me and my vocal cords. I have no ear and no voice. I don’t know how it happened but I have to face the fact: I am not the great basso profundo I have always dreamed of being. For some reason that escapes me, it was Chaliapin yesterday and Boris Christoff today who have been given my voice. This has not been by any means the only misunderstanding in my life, but it still hurts deeply. I cannot tell at what precise moment, as a result of what sinister machination, the substitution took place, but those who wish to hear my true voice are invited to buy one of Chaliapin’s records. They should, for instance, listen to Moussorgsky’s “The Flea”: they will hear me at my best. They have only to imagine me standing on the stage, one hand proudly posed on my chest, and thundering: “Ha! ha! ha! blokha!” 1 in my magnificent bass, to see how good I am. Unfortunately, what emerges from my throat when, one foot forward and my head held high, I give free rein to my vocal powers is to me a constant source of surprise and melancholy. There is not the slightest doubt about it: I have been robbed. It wouldn’t have mattered at all if I didn’t have it in me. But I do. I have never admitted this to anyone, not even to my mother, but what point is there in still concealing the fact? I am the true Chaliapin, even if everything was taken away from me and given to someone else. I am a great and noble basso profundo who has been tragically misunderstood, and I shall remain so until the end of my days.