Beautiful Twentysomethings

Marek Hlasko, Ross Ufberg

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780875806976, 9780875804774
• eBook ISBN: 9781609090951
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Marek Hlasko's literary autobiography is a vivid, first-hand account of the life of a young writer in 1950s Poland and a fascinating portrait of the ultimately short-lived rebel generation. Told in a voice suffused with grit and morbid humor, Hlasko's memoir was a classic of its time. In it he recounts his adventures and misadventures, moving swiftly from one tale to the next. Like many writers of his time, Hlasko also worked in screen writing, and his memoir provides a glimpse into just how markedly the medium of film affected him from his very earliest writing days.

The memoir details his relationships with such giants of Polish culture as the filmmaker Roman Polanski and the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski. Hlasko is the most prominent example of a writer who broke free from the Socialist-Realist formulae that dominated the literary scene in Poland since it fell under the influence of the Soviets. He made his literary debut in 1956 and immediately became a poster boy for Polish Literature. He subsequently worked at some of the most important newspapers and magazines for intellectual life in Warsaw. Hlasko was sent to Paris on an official mission in 1958, but when he published in an \u00e9migr\u00e9 Parisian press his novel of life in post-War Poland, he was denied a renewal of his passport. In effect, he was called back to Poland, and when he refused to return he was stripped of his Polish citizenship. He spent the rest of his life working in exile.

Marek Hlasko was a rebel whose writing and iconoclastic way of life became an inspiration to those of his generation and after. Here, in the first English translation of his literary memoir, Ross Ufberg deftly renders Hlasko's wry and passionate voice.

Chapter One

Belt, Shoelaces, Tie,If You Don’t Mind

In February 1958, I disembarked at Orly Airport from an airplane that had taken off in Warsaw. I had eight dollars on me. I was twenty-four years old. I was the author of a published volume of short stories and two books that had been refused publication. I was also the recipient of the Publishers’ Prize, which I’d received a few weeks before my departure from Warsaw. And one more thing: I was known as a finished man, and it was taken as a given, beyond any doubt, that I’d never write anything again. As I said, I was twenty-four years old. Those who’d buried me so quickly with the skill of career gravediggers were older than me by thirty years or more. Adolf Rudnicki once wrote that the most fashionable trend in Polish literature is carving others into mincemeat. That same Adolf Rudnicki, when I published my first story, asked me:

“Are your colleagues already saying you’re a finished man?”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Well,” said Rudnicki, “when I wrote Rats, my first book, I met Karol Irzykowski, and Irzykowski asked, ‘Are your colleagues already saying you’re a finished man?’”

Disembarking from the plane at Orly Airport, I thought I’d be back in Warsaw in no more than a year. Today, I know I’ll never return to Poland. I also know, writing this, I wish I were wrong. I haven’t spoken Polish for many years. My wife is German, all of my friends are either American or Swiss, and I notice with horror that I’ve begun to think in a foreign language and translate it for myself into Polish. I know this spells the end for me; the gravediggers from Warsaw weren’t wrong. In their line of work, people are rarely mistaken.

I’ve never told anyone of the motives that induced me to stay behind in the West. When journalists used to ask me, I’d answer as stupidly as I knew how. Finally they backed off. I couldn’t tell them why I abandoned my country, because I never did abandon it. But I’m going to try to write about why I live in a different country, or rather, in different countries: I’ve already lived in England and Spain, in Germany, in Switzerland, France, Austria, Denmark, Israel, and a few other places.

I began writing when I was eighteen. The fault is my mother’s, who used to give me books to read—so much that it became another addiction for me. I didn’t finish school, partly as a result of family complications, partly because my teachers diagnosed me as a moron. To this day I’m not sure if there’s a difference between physics, algebra, math, and chemistry, and I’ll never find out. I don’t know if forty-nine is divisible by anything. If, by some miracle, the problem can be solved, it certainly won’t be by me. I pushed through elementary school thanks only to the fact that my math teacher was the same teacher who taught Polish language. In the war years, I went to a school run by the nuns on Tamka Street, where there was a practice of pinning huge paper donkey ears on the worst pupil; I wore them the entire time. After the war, “when a new Poland erupted,” my situation improved somewhat. I didn’t have to wear the donkey ears. I just stood in the corner, facing the wall. Under such conditions, it was difficult to learn anything at all, but until eighth grade I skated by on the strength of my compositions.

Then the hell began. I went to School Number Two, a comprehensive school that was first named after La Guardia, then renamed for Maria Konopnicka. I was kicked out of there on account of stupidity. On the suggestion of the superintendent, I was sent to a psychometric clinic. I’m not sure if I’m recalling the term correctly. They made me arrange building blocks, ordered me to fill in the missing words to some idiotic text, asked shocking questions about my parents and relatives. Finally, they had me undress completely and found me unfit for studying in a school with a focus on the humanities. They sent me to a vocational school in Wrocław, or rather, a cooperative-vocational school, based on the premise that idiots are indispensable to trade. Maybe they were thinking about the welfare of the buyer. I don’t know.

My career ended after a few math classes. At that time in Warsaw the theater production school was opened. My brother Józef and I went there together. For three months my brother did my assignments in math, chemistry, and algebra, but then on account of a family feud he stopped. I was kicked out again. It was a good school, housed in the YMCA building in Warsaw, and we had a swimming pool. The director of the school, as far as I can remember, was the bearded Żmigrodzki, an impressive fellow who could have played the part of the captain of the ship in an adaptation of Conrad’s The End of the Tether. And it was there I met Basia Świdzińska, a lovely little Rubens angel, and I fell hard for her. But it didn’t go both ways.

I returned to Wrocław, where I began to work and at the same time attend trade school at night. I can’t remember why I got thrown out of there anymore. Then I started playing center forward for the soccer team. I wasn’t very talented, but I was a brute on the field. Like in that Čapek short story, before every match the coach would call me over and say, “Hłasko, if you don’t take out at least two guys, you’re cut from the team for bad behavior.” I learned how to play poker while on the team, and I also met Tadek Mazur, who was the “nephew” of a certain writer indifferent to even the greatest of female charms. Tadek tried writing himself. Sometimes I’d go to see him, and that’s how I met his “admirer.” He was the first person I’d ever met who wrote. I also met KP there, another schoolmate, who was our left winger and knew how to kick an opponent in the shin and then, once the guy was on his way down, in the face, too. KP stood for “kick the opposing player” with either foot, whichever was facing out. He would try to kick so the referees wouldn’t notice. On top of that he was extremely polite: he always helped the players up and bowed to the referees. Later I came across a similar guy: he was a lightweight boxer, Debisz from Lodz, the “Gentleman of the Ring”: he would try to land a lightning shot below the belt while getting in an elbow to the forehead. Meanwhile, he’d bow to the referees in contrition. He won 90 percent of his fights by TKO.

Tadek, KP, and I went to Century Hall in Wrocław every week, where the boxing matches took place. Since we didn’t have any money, we got in through the roof, at risk to our lives. The manager of the hall was a referee named Mikula. He was heavyset but athletic, and he used to kick us out. Later, though, he came to like us for our fanaticism and let us in without tickets. Our idol then was Ryszard Waluga, from the sports club in Wrocław, I think: a good fighter who packed a heavy punch and had splendid technique. Later everyone went nuts for Janusz “The Doll” Kasperczak, our first postwar European champion. Attending the matches, I recognized—from afar—two different writers. One of them was Staś Dygat, who always sat in the first row with a disapproving look on his face, and during the Polish Championships in 1949 I saw “Terrible Józ” Prutkowski. That’s when I saw the most beautiful fight of my life: Antkiewicz vs. Bazarnik, in the featherweight division. But our idol was “Tolek.” The three of us traveled without tickets from Wrocław to Warsaw to see the fight between Tolek and the Czechoslovak Torma. We made it into the fight without tickets, and we traveled back to Warsaw without tickets.

We all—Tadek, KP, and I—lived off of poker, playing for RGO food stamps. Slowly our affairs started to go sour. We were thrown out of the club for gambling. Tadek went to jail, and KP and I became petty thieves. We pulled off our first real job in the school for commerce. “Drake,” our friend from the club, told us about the opportunity. Drake “accidentally” broke a window in the school cloakroom that led out onto the neighboring street. The next day KP was already waiting there, and I went with the other students to the cloakroom and hid behind the coats. I had a briefcase with me. Back then I was a small young man with an honest Slavic face, the kind that always lies. Classes began, the school janitor locked the door, and I picked out the valuables from the cloakroom and gave them to KP, then I went through the window myself. An hour later and we’d already sold everything on Bishop Nanker Square, where the black market used to operate. One day we found out there was going to be a school party in High School Number Two, on Stalin Street. A lieutenant from the UB, the Ministry of Public Security, who was in love with one of the students, was going to be there, too. We were positive that the lieutenant would leave his pistol in the cloakroom, where I’d already be waiting. The weapon came in handy a couple of times. Then KP got sauced, lost the pistol, and we dissolved our partnership.

I turned sixteen, and the law was, since I wasn’t in school, I had to find a job. I worked as a driver’s helper for the Public Building Trust, then for a company called Paged, at the Bystrzyca Kłodzka depot. I wrote a book about it. Years later, in an article called “Sainted Youngsters,” Krzysztof Toeplitz called it a story about people as little Mareczek (that was me) imagined them. People have often asked if it was really that way, how I wrote it. No, it wasn’t. It was much worse: We woke up at four in the morning, and at ten at night we finished unloading at the station. Then we had to drive another forty kilometers home, which, along mountain roads in an automobile like a GMC with a manual transmission, took about two hours. We’d still have to get ourselves something to eat, and only then would we lie down to sleep. There were no weekends or holidays. At the end of the month the depot director at Bystrzyca Kłodzka would announce we’d met about 40, sometimes 45 percent of the norm. I worked there relatively briefly. I left because they threatened me with prison for government sabotage. While I was there, I saw two fatal accidents and one accident that ended with a broken back. I guess that guy died, too, in the hospital, since we were in no condition to transport him right away. Our trucks were modified for log hauling, so it wasn’t possible to lay him down flat. I was making around seven hundred zlotys a month.

Tadeusz Konwicki once said to me, “This isn’t a book, it’s a Western.” He was right. I never could grasp why Polish literature had such bad luck. Looking at it logically, there are few nations who have so many chances for good literature as we, the Poles, do. We’ve got everything: misfortune, political assassinations, eternal occupation, informers, mystery, despair, drunkenness. By God, what else could you ask for? When I was in Israel, I lived with the scum of the earth, but still I never met people as desperate, detestable, and un...

Table of contents

• cover
• portrait
• copyright
• contents
• Introduction
• Preface
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• Glossary
• Photo Gallery