Zbigniew Kruszyński

The Final Report

Excerpt

The main character in Zbigniew Kruszyński’s latest novel is a past-master at using language to describe the world. When the reign of communism is in its decline in Poland he makes himself useful to the secret police, for whom in exchange for a passport and certain advantages that will make life easier he reports on his meetings with people. He starts his career as a collaborator in quite a cynical way, but in time he gets more deeply involved in working for the opposition and becomes a double agent of unclear identity. During martial law he goes away to Switzerland, where he organizes fund raising for the underground wing of Solidarity. He returns to Poland as a hero of the opposition and goes into hiding. Fed up with the prolonged conspiracy, he denounces another underground activist in hiding to the security service, himself falls victim to denunciation, is arrested and spends several years in prison. After the changes of 1989 he does not try for a high position, but simply leaves for Stockholm as a diplomat. Apart from that he remains an outsider.
The sharp end of the novel does not actually spike and expose the main character, despite his cynicism and moral indifference, because it is impossible to define who he is: a traitor or a fighter for a just cause, because he is not the typical coward or traitor, but rather a narcissist and hedonist. If there is something off-putting about him, it is his smug self-satisfaction, or his tendency to exploit the women with whom he has affairs. In his affairs he prefers the “love triangle”, and has a similar arrangement in his relationship with the secret police and the opposition, and so in this book every commitment immediately seeks for itself an antithesis.
First and foremost the main character is a writer, in other words someone who records events. For him, the actual writing process involves a special, affected ritual. Moreover, Kruszyński stresses that the style is the man, i.e. his hero fulfils himself chiefly in language and in his ability to describe the world. But in his style we cannot fail to recognize Kruszyński’s own style. So is the author simply saying: “I could have been like this too if my life had developed differently”? Or maybe: “There is a particular cruelty and moral ambiguity in the very process of recording life”? Or more simply: “A record of events is always literature, in which it’s no use seeking the objective truth”?

Jerzy Jarzębski

Zbigniew Kruszyński (born 1957) is a prize-winning author, very popular with readers and critics alike. He lectures at Uppsala and Stockholm universities.