I’m walking down the street, let’s say it’s Świętokrzyska, and my head is darting here and there like the president’s bodyguard. I check out every passing woman, I am prepared for an assault from all sides, and I am ready to attack on all sides. I am unable to control this, even when I am with a woman.
When I was with the singer in the lizard-green dress, I moderated my staring, I tried not to stare, but often I couldn’t manage it. I had more success in the company of Anka Chow Chow. I was scared to death of her, and because of that fear I didn’t even have to pretend that I wasn’t staring. I genuinely didn’t stare. I didn’t even cast any furtive glances. Until the moment when I realized that it was she who was staring for all she was worth. This didn’t happen quickly, because she was a virtuoso. She took note of every detail of the make-up of every passing miss, but it looked like she hadn’t even noticed that anyone had passed by. Even a normal, young, quick-witted fellow wouldn’t have caught on right away, to say nothing of me. Besides, Anka’s unyielding, still unyielding virginity was enough of a complication for me not to think about other complications.
“What do you like most in women?” she asked one day. “In what sense?” “In the sense of a part of the body. What turns you on the most? The bust? The rear? Legs?” “I don’t know. It depends when,” I answered. “It depends when. Depends who.” “That’s no answer.” “It is impossible to parcel a woman out in body parts,” I said loftily. “But of course it’s possible. I begin with the back, and I advise you to do the same. The back is always interesting. The back is horribly important. A woman’s back is an exceptional region.” “Yes, yes,” I said, “an exceptional region.” I didn’t remember anything. The back of Emma Lunatyczka, covered with icy sweat, like frost, and a complete void. I didn’t focus on backs. I was an ordinary guy. Even a crazed sex maniac is, at his base — if I may so put it — an ordinary guy. And an ordinary guy checks, first of all, to see whether everything is in order. Whether or not, for instance, some sort of troublesome wart or a risky birthmark overgrown with a hard bristle sticks out. If it didn’t stick out, things are OK. A back is a back. Just as long as there weren’t any disturbances, especially of a textural sort, then things are OK. The back is nothing over which to go into transports of delight. Anka Chow Chow was higher by the length of that delight. She sang a hymn of praise and recited a great ode to the back. She told stories about the backs of Magda, Gocha, Bacha, Gracha, Ala, Ola, Viola, Jola, etc., etc. She told stories of the backs of the sleeping and the backs of the waking. About the backs of female masons, prisoners, and tennis players. About cold backs, warm backs, tired backs. About backs submerged in dusk. About the backs of Russian women, Irish women, and Bolivian women. Why precisely this combination — I don’t know. Perhaps these were the acquaintances she happened to have, or perhaps it was a question of oceanic freckledness, Latin oliveness, and — for all I know — Siberian taste? Rocky backs, sandy backs, and backs as fluid as rivers. She devoted separate and — I’ll say in all honesty — interminably boring strophes to a certain unparalleled back she had seen last summer on the beach in Kołobrzeg and which — she must have repeated a hundred times — she would never forget. “I could write a book about the female back,” she said finally, and that probably wasn’t an empty declaration. “The female back,” she argued with passion, “is a neglected artistic field. Poets and novelists have rarely extolled the back, or not at all. In the Song of Songs—not a word about the Beloved’s back. It is similar in innumerable romances and love poetry. It is much better with painting. Perhaps, in fact, you have to be a painter in order to feel and understand what an exceptional surface there is between the neck and the buttocks. Besides, just go and try to paint a back. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have any talent, those who do can’t do it either. The bust, profile, shoulder, even the hand—this they more or less manage. But the back? Not even the most talented among them can capture the back. The back is the domain of the masters. Titian’s backs. Rubens’s backs. Forget about Rubens’s busts. Take a good look at Rubens’s backs. Examine how Rubens paints backs, and you will understand the meaning of sensuality. The first sensuality always concerns the back. Everybody blathers on in circles about the first kiss, but after all, it is always the case that, when you kiss her for the first time, your hand embraces her back. And without that embrace, without that hand on the back, there is no kiss. Just try to imagine the famous first kiss with your hands hanging loosely at the side of the body. Without touching the back there is no kiss, without touching the back there is no mutual inclination, without touching the back there is no sex, without touching the back there is no love.”
Her fetishism confirmed an eloquent detail, which — it goes without saying — I noticed late. In general, it is good that I noticed it at all. The material for observation was abundant and near. She often brought girls along. To me. To my apartment. Like a complete sucker, I offered them permanent hospitality. Come on by, whenever you like, and with whom you like, the second room is free. Anka Chow Chow lived with her parents. This didn’t bother her at all. Orgiastic inclinations are one thing, living with one’s parents quite another. I understood this like Mozart understood music. Chasing after babes is one thing, waking up alone is quite another. My offer concerned the first part of that conjunction. Breakfast for three figured minimally in my considerations. But I imagined the role of host with juvenile generosity. Perhaps I didn’t want to be the master of ceremonies, it wasn’t quite that kitschy, but all the same I counted — no point in trying to hide it — I counted on the idea of being admitted one of these times.
She brought along girls who were wise and stupid, short and tall, with long hair and closely shorn, clothed indifferently and dressed to kill, fat and skinny, pretty and ugly, and when, finally, I began to suspect her of complete chaos in her tastes, I discovered the key. When, the next morning, I stumbled over the next backpack of the next girlfriend lying in the hallway, the puzzle arranged itself in a logical whole. Anka had a weakness for girls with backpacks. After the discovery of this shocking truth, I knew in advance the course of the subsequent evenings. If the girl who was accompanying Anka had a handbag, it ended with supper, and often only with tea. If the new conquest had a haversack or a shoulder bag, they would sit and chat for a long time, but always, even if it was in the middle of the night, the other one would go home. It was exclusively girls with backpacks who spent the night. On these occasions, supper would be intense, but short, they would quickly go to the other room, and the light was quickly turned off in there. Once, I couldn’t stand it, I pretended that, half asleep, after a drink and in the dark, I had lost my way, and although I didn’t see anything, to this day it seems to me that, in the white bank of tangled bedclothes, I saw Anka’s hands on the duskiest and smoothest back in the world. (My delusions had not lost their panache.) I apologized, withdrew, and, pretending that I was reading a book, sat in the highest tension. It was just getting light when I finally heard steps. First Anka went to the bathroom, then looked in on me. “Why are you so upset?” she asked. “I hope you aren’t jealous about a girl. Until you can remember where you saw me for the first time, nothing doing. To make it easier for you, I will add that it was not at the match. And if you remember, who knows — maybe?” She looked me in the eye, and it was clear that she knew my most shameful thoughts. She claimed that she was teasing me, but she inflicted torments upon me.