| About the book
Since the envoys had brought news of the arrival of the Emperor, Bolesław’s kingdom had been overwhelmed by an all-encompassing state of commotion. Aside from the settlers living deep within the deepest forests, there was probably no one who did not, in some way or other, (...)
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8
The phones are always going wrong, so my parents aren’t upset when there’s no dialling tone. They’re at the fortieth birthday party of a female friend from their class at high school. They say they’re going downstairs to the phone booth for a (...)
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Aleksander JurewiczA True Ballad About Love
About the book
No light was burning in her window. The cross of the window frame held panes so encrusted with hoar frost that they looked like silver stained glass. Last wisps of smoke leaked out of the chimney and dissipated imperceptibly in the darkness. From under a snowdrift caked with glittering scales of frost, the tops of currant bushes and a desiccated hedge poked out. Everything appeared to be deserted, in hibernation. The trees along the road, the well-trodden paths in the yards, the rectory, the bridge, and the river congealed into ice, birds somewhere hidden from view, hills and valleys, all were sound asleep. Asleep, too, were the orchards, wells, and garden gates, the doorknobs, cobwebs in the corners of picture frames, stalks of icicles over the windows, children’s red sleds, and the belfry in front of the church. The kitchen drowsed with its bread knives, sour milk in clay pitchers, linen towels hanging in front of cast-iron washbasins, mice in their burrows beneath the floor, dried bunches of wild herbs hung on rusted nails, braids of onions and garlic. And slumber had overtaken the cold tiled stoves, the moths in the wardrobes, the Sunday suits and white shirts, cuckoo clocks, clothes draped over the backs of chairs, worn-out shoes, tablecloths, tables, scattered toy building blocks, sewing machines, and wedding portraits on the walls. Slumber had taken for its own foreshortened loves and postponed separations, sorrows, memories, dreams, the onset of despair and the debris of hope. The world drifted off into a snow-mantled sleep. Voices and murmurs fell silent; even the wind, which in the evening had revealed itself in a brief, furious blizzard, had fallen silent. Michał stared at the dark house as if he believed the intensity of his desire alone could summon her shadow from the frost covered window. ”Even if I’m just seeing things,” he whispered into the icy air. ”I beg you, I beseech you, reassure me at least in this way that you’re there, that this search for you isn’t in vain. Give me a sign, even the most negligible, your footprints in the snow, or reveal yourself in the cry of a surprised bird, flare up in the sky like a falling star. So many days have passed, Sunbeam, I’ve lost track of them, and though they’re shorter now, it feels like centuries have passed since you were here. Evenings are the worst; I don’t know what to do with myself — I help Father with accounts in the office; sometimes we play cards; Mother makes me read War and Peace or Essenin’s poetry; all she does the whole day is read books or tea leaves, or play old arias on the gramophone, on records so cacophonous you can hardly hear the voice or the music. But whatever I do, you appear in front of me, and wherever I look, it’s you I see — in the bone beads of the abacus, in the figures on the playing cards, in the spoon stirring honey into the hot milk; and then everything starts to confuse me. I go outside, but here there’s only wind, ice, and silence interrupted by the barking of dogs or the song of drunkards. I look in the direction you took when you left, and it almost seems as though I can see the tracks of the sleigh again, as on that day when I came back from Lida and saw the tracks in the snow leading from your farmstead to the road. Then I followed them almost to the bridge, where they merged with the tracks of other sleighs. And so I look in that direction, towards where you might be, and force myself to realise that you’re somewhere else now, among unfamiliar snows. All I have left of you is a tiny mark on my jacket, a trace where the button was torn off and I still haven’t managed to sew one back on, though at home they keep yelling at me that I go around like a ragamuffin. And I go around the whole time looking only for those hands that ripped it off. You probably think I’m losing my mind, but for you I’d lose my mind gladly. The best thing would be simply to take off, to wander in the blizzard looking for your uncle’s house, reconnoitring on some farmstead for traces of your footsteps, and to wait somewhere, hiding out until you leave the house to go to the well for water or show up in a window. How often I imagine this; and it’s only the fear that we might miss each other that keeps me here. I’ve been having a recurring dream about torn envelopes that I pick up from the floor, and finding nothing inside them, I greedily begin rifling through all the envelopes again, because something tells me that in one of them there’s a scrap of paper with your handwriting on it. Then someone forces open the door; I hear the latch jiggling and see someone’s fingers in the crack, and at that very moment the old clock we sold before leaving announces itself with an ear-piercing ring; I wake up and at first I have no idea where I am or why I cannot open my clenched hand. Do you see, Nina, what it’s like for me now, how I don’t even recognise myself, can’t even remember my own name sometimes, because for me the whole world has turned into a single name, yours…”
Translated by William Martin
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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