The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch

Author:Szczepan Twardoch [Twardoch, Szczepan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542044462
Published: 2020-04-20T22:00:00+00:00

I haven’t written for a few months. Or longer. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I haven’t written in a long time, but today I’m sitting down at my typewriter again and writing.

In spite of it all, those were beautiful times, in their way. Back then.

A few days after the picnic, Jakub gave me my first pistol, a Spanish .25 caliber, and taught me how to shoot, our bullets shattering bottles in the woods of Bielany district, far behind the Central Institute of Physical Education. We stood shoulder to shoulder, shooting, pistols held high in our right hands, our elbows slightly bent, like in shooting competitions, the empty beer bottles we’d lined up on a wooden crossbar burst so beautifully, bang, bang, bang, bang.

I guess that’s how it was, it seems that way. Or maybe it was only Jakub shooting. But we were living.

But today, now, there’s no living anymore.

This morning I saw on TV they killed Abu Jihad. In Tunis.

Our commandos killed him. We won’t admit it. And I find out from TV and I can only guess it was our commandos, I don’t even know what unit, though of course I have my suspicions. Only suspicions. But I should be one of the ones advising the whole operation. And two or three years from now I should be someone who’d plan the whole thing. But now I never will.

No hunching over military papers. And no more crawling over the sand all night with a rifle in my hand, or plunging a knife into a guard’s neck, all that’s behind me now.

I’m out of cigarettes. But I won’t leave the apartment anymore, not at all.

I feel like I’ve forgotten Hebrew. Now I only think in Polish. I forgot Yiddish a long, long time ago.

I haven’t written for a long while. And I wasn’t planning to write today either. The typewriter stayed under its cover. I ate a little dry bread, two tomatoes, drank a Coke, turned on the TV. They were showing a rebroadcast of Holyfield’s bout with de León last week, so I watched the whole thing.

In the first round, de León danced bravely around Holyfield, guard low. The same way Jakub fought with one of the Doroba brothers. He kept changing the rhythm of his steps, throwing hooks at his torso, Holyfield barely got in a couple of straight punches, one hit its target.

In the second round he went on offense, pushed de León up against the ropes and started bashing away, in contact, with uppercuts all over his torso. Bam, bam, bam, impassive and implacable, as though tenderizing meat for a cutlet, like Polish women did, I remember they’d pound pork to make cutlets once in a blue moon, pork was expensive. Emilia, gorgeous Emilia, Szapiro’s wife, also pounded pork for cutlets, like the Polish women, like Holyfield arduously and implacably bashing away on de León’s torso.

Even here I sometimes hear the blows of mallets on meat, pounding, wham, wham, wham, but maybe it just seems that way, maybe it’s some distant afterimage.

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