To force me to recall anything whatsoever — that was yanking my chain enough. To force me to recall something that I couldn’t for the life of me recall — that was flagrant yanking. Just how much time had I spent in determining who looked like Tolstoy’s son-in-law in a newspaper picture? And I was able to do that only because the matter concerned my childhood. Anka Chow Chow was most definitely not a character from my childhood. Of that I was one hundred percent certain.
Once, in my youth, a girl on a Cross Section cover enraptured me. There was something extraordinary in her facial features, in the arrangement of her shoulders (back?), in any case, I kept that issue for a long time, a very long time, I think it was still wandering about my papers until recently. Quite a few years later, I made the acquaintance of a fattish, but appetizing, retired model in her thirties. Among the yellowed photos from her glory days, which she eagerly showed me, was also that cover from Cross Section. The thought that the fattish retiree once had had an incarnation so intensely remembered by me gave unusual fuel to my fading desires. Now I instinctively repeated that path; I attempted to find among old photographs, images, street scenes, the one on which there appeared some sort of excavational image of Anka. Nothing of the sort came to the surface. I badgered her to give me at least some sort of trail, the trace of a trail. For a long time she dug in her heels, saying that she wouldn’t.
Finally, seeing the total hopelessness of my dementia, she sighed and said: “OK, you could simply have seen me for the first time in Yellow Dream, since I, too, was a regular. The secret of our first meeting is not all that shocking. We simply saw each other in a café. As a consolation for that poverty, I’ll tell you a certain story, or rather a scene, at which — in my opinion — you were present two or three years ago. That’s right: you, too, were there indeed, drank the wine and the mead, but you didn’t see a thing. Maybe you were staring in another direction, or maybe you were having a collapse. There isn’t any sort of great plot to it, but hear me out, write it down, and print it; maybe the girl I will tell you about will read it, recognize the details, and report to us. I have been looking for her, and this story is like a letter in a bottle. I hope such a metaphor doesn’t irritate you.”
VI
And so, one day, let’s say it was on Friday, 2 September, in the year 2…, a few minutes before 5 in the afternoon, Anka Chow Chow dropped by Yellow Dream, and, as she did every day, she ordered a double espresso. Her usual place by the window and at the same time right by the door — looking at it from within, on the righthand side — was occupied by a colorless and badly dressed girl feverishly tapping out SMSes.
“That spoiled my mood a bit, but only a bit. For the time being, it wasn’t so bad that I would engage in a sclerotic battle for territory in a practically empty café. ‘I beg your pardon most earnestly, but I always sit here. Would you care to… etc.’”
Nothing of the sort. She calmly sat down at that same panoramic window, except that she was four chairs to the right. Right in front of her, she had the little café garden, further, a view of Marszałkowska Street. She was in the very heart of Warsaw, and that still made an impression on her. Not that she was constantly staring at the Palace of Culture; for something like two years now, with the naturalness of the locals, she had ceased to notice that building, but she felt not bad—even very not bad — in its shadow.
She screened — if one may so put it — the house part and the garden part, and she didn’t note anything worth noting. True, in the corner sat a rather ripe and rather spacious busty one with a daring décolletage in a brick-red dress, but her ripeness, spaciousness, bustiness, and even brick-redness could be located just as well on the plus side as the minus. Overall balance: zero. I do not need to add that in describing the brick-red busty one, Anka glanced at me unusually significantly. The phrase brick-red busty one made an impression on me, and I attempted to disinter her incarnation from countless layers of brain dust. Supposedly, I had stared at her so ravenously that I didn’t see anything of the world beyond her. But neither her, nor the world beyond her, could I remember for all the tea in China.
The colorless girl finished tapping out SMSes, drank up what was left to drink, and left. Anka immediately moved and occupied her favorite position.
As a regular, I knew perfectly well the virtues of that spot. You sat on the invigorating border between the scorching day and the cold of the air conditioning; you saw everything, and simultaneously you remained in partial hiding. At any moment, you could set off on the chase for someone, and, at any moment, you could avoid unwanted company. At any moment, you could leave, or order something more, or — if a dire situation arose — you could dive into the depths and disappear in the toilet.
Anka took out a lighter and cigarettes. Before she lit up, that one wasn’t yet there, but by the time she had lit up, she was already there. She must have arrived in the moment of concentration on the flame. In general, this didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in what fragment of a second and from what direction she arrived, whether she arrived from the left or from the right, whether from the Roundabout or from Wspólna Street. Nothing mattered. You could see with the naked eye that she was out of the question. And it is a matter of thorough indifference from what direction women who are out of the question arrive.
She was young, tall, and ravishing. But she was out of the question not because she was too young, too tall, and too ravishing. On that particular day, Anka had boundless enthusiasm and would have lunged at even that sort of beauty. But it was clear that this one had not dropped by for a solitary coffee. She had a date with someone.
“She looked around, searching for the lucky guy, whom I had already managed to hate with all my heart. She looked around, but he — most clearly — was not there yet. The ninny hadn’t gotten there yet. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let’s not be reckless. He hasn’t gotten there? Would he be late? Something didn’t add up here.” Anka Chow Chow pondered the situation, which was, on the one hand, seemingly entirely normal, on the other hand, entirely impossible. She pondered deeply and with a sort of quasi relief. She realized that her hatred was most likely premature.
It was more or less four after five, in other words the super babe had had a date for five o’clock, and since she came almost on time and was the first to get there, she had a date, almost a hundred percent for certain, with a female colleague, or some other cousin. If it had been a guy, no matter who he was — a Russian millionaire, a Hollywood star, a Milanese fashion designer — no matter who he was, he would have been waiting for her for at least a quarter hour. She was the sort of woman for whom you don’t arrive late, or even merely on time. She was the sort of woman for whom you come well ahead of time, in order to have the illusion that the dates last longer.
She spotted a free table in the corner of the garden, at a maximal distance from Anka, but with ideal visibility.
“This offered me favorable conditions for observation. From the very beginning, I rejected all attempts at establishing contact with her. I drank coffee and contemplated her without painful emotion. The ritual thoughts that I would never have her, that I would never find out what her name is, and that, having seen her once in my life in Yellow Dream, I would most certainly never see her again, didn’t trouble me in the least. She was a tall, slender, delicate, long-haired blonde. Tall, slender, and delicate blondes were, if I’m not mistaken, the absolute hit of your youth.”