Husband,How I long for you, though you never say a kind word. Last time you wrote, you called me your infectious demon. Dear Malaria, you began, my faithful disease. What news? Well here it is, dearest. The news from the cholera pit. Like a virulent plague, I hope it burns your eyes and inflames your black heart.
Emeryk has planned my death for a while. I know this because I’ve seen it in his eyes. And also in a telegram that came for him last Wednesday. In black and white, on onion skin paper, my future spilled into my palm like a death read in tea leaves.
Oh, you know how I love to go to clairvoyants, psalmists, tarot-readers – like that psychic whore we visited in Oslo. Remember that time on your birthday when she tickled our life-lines from our hands like trout? She cackled at us, her chins and bellies shaking when she said we were destined to be together always!
But I think this is a fortune I’ll never laugh off with you, my love. For what I saw - the letters struggling across the watery paper like ants fording a river - was that my funeral is already arranged.
At this moment, an undertaker is on his way to collect my body from here, the Grand Hotel in Tiflis. And my sister Ragnhild is traveling from Christiania by train to take our son. He’s sitting on the bed as I write this, playing with that wooden soldier you gave him last Christmas. He suspects nothing.
I am without passports for Zenon or myself. You never sent them, though I pleaded. I am in Emeryk’s power, with no money for another lodging, no one to help me, no place to hide.
I am simply waiting. For the undertaker. For Ragnhild, who will come in with her handk
erchief pressed to her thin lips to view what’s left.
I am simply waiting. For the undertaker. For Ragnhild, who will come in with her handk
erchief pressed to her thin lips to view what’s left. And yet, when I put down my pen a moment ago and pinched my wrist, I tell you darling, my pulse quivered with the wild blood running to my heart!
When Edvard Munch painted me, I resembled the angel of death. When Konrad Krzyzanowski painted me I stood in my shroud and flames licked my neck and hair. Perhaps they saw the truth. I must stop this writing. It’s not helping me.
I just took Zenon for a little walk and now, dearest, I am back. We went as far as the cliff edge and then we stood and watched a pair of black sea birds building their nest in a crevice between rocks. The sea spitting at them, as if it felt contempt for their enterprise. Zenon asked me (clever little boy, he takes after you) what kind they were. I said I did not know. It was bitterly cold out.
Although you’ve not written for weeks, I imagine you want to know about Tiflis. The old you would want to know. We’ve been here one bleak month. The name Tiflis means the warm place, like some quaint euphemism for Hell. All the more amusing, because it’s a cold toad that squats on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. Like me, a sluggish creature that has left its hole in winter and lacks the wit to find a safe hiding place. And The Grand Hotel is one of those ironic monikers. Meaning a rat hole decorated with flaking, birdlime-coloured paint. There are rusty stains on the bed sheets. I shall die in a rotten lodging in an off-season resort. The venue of choice for murdering one’s mistress.
Konrad Krzyzanowski wrote a few days ago. He told me you laughed when you heard I had run off with Emeryk of all people. Emeryk, the lame dog, whimpering like a sick animal in the corner. Emeryk, the faithful follower hanging on your every word. Emeryk the madman. Twenty years old and full of piss and bile. I don’t even like him. It’s just that he was all there was left after you ran away from Warsaw, my only ticket out.
Rest assured, I don’t let him touch me, though he tries every night, his thin hands clawing at the old fur coat I’ve taken to sleeping in. And I cringe on the edge of the bed, hoping his sad attempts will not wake Zenon. I found a hat pin at the bottom of my valise and tonight I plan to pierce him through the hand with it. Unless he shoots me first.
Hard to believe that it’s been five years since I felt a man’s hands stroke the soft skin in the small of my back. That, or the sandpaper of an unshaven chin scraping my throat. Strange how, in their absence, even little hurts seem sweet. I wish I could feel them afresh. Like the time you came back to the apartment in Marszalkowska Street with some drunken friend I didn’t know the name of. I was asleep under our bedsheets, naked because the night was hot. You stumbled in, the pair of you. I pretended to go on sleeping, thinking you would take some money and go out. But then you lifted up the sheet and showed your friend my naked body and told him, See, she is just a piece of meat.
The next day, when you said train tracks were more interesting to you than a woman’s feelings, I laid down in the street and made you step on my heart so that you could feel it beating. You never touched me after that.
Here comes Emeryk with a glass of Aquavit. He's smiling. I feel as if he can see inside me. It’s a disgusting feeling. Who would want to know what that looks like? You are the only one who has truly seen it. It’s why you sent that telegram to Emeryk. The one that looked like drowning insects when, with trembling hands, I read your economical advice. A gun and poison. Poison and a gun. It’s cold in this room and I am an evil spirit. I drink this drink in your honour.
***
I just took Zenon for a little walk and now, dearest, I am back. We went as far as the cliff edge and then we stood and watched a pair of black sea birds building their nest in a crevice between rocks. The sea spitting at them, as if it felt contempt for their enterprise. Zenon asked me (clever little boy, he takes after you) what kind they were. I said I did not know. It was bitterly cold out.
Although you’ve not written for weeks, I imagine you want to know about Tiflis. The old you would want to know. We’ve been here one bleak month. The name Tiflis means the warm place, like some quaint euphemism for Hell. All the more amusing, because it’s a cold toad that squats on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. Like me, a sluggish creature that has left its hole in winter and lacks the wit to find a safe hiding place. And The Grand Hotel is one of those ironic monikers. Meaning a rat hole decorated with flaking, birdlime-coloured paint. There are rusty stains on the bed sheets. I shall die in a rotten lodging in an off-season resort. The venue of choice for murdering one’s mistress.
Konrad Krzyzanowski wrote a few days ago. He told me you laughed when you heard I had run off with Emeryk of all people. Emeryk, the lame dog, whimpering like a sick animal in the corner. Emeryk, the faithful follower hanging on your every word. Emeryk the madman. Twenty years old and full of piss and bile. I don’t even like him. It’s just that he was all there was left after you ran away from Warsaw, my only ticket out.
Rest assured, I don’t let him touch me, though he tries every night, his thin hands clawing at the old fur coat I’ve taken to sleeping in. And I cringe on the edge of the bed, hoping his sad attempts will not wake Zenon. I found a hat pin at the bottom of my valise and tonight I plan to pierce him through the hand with it. Unless he shoots me first.
Hard to believe that it’s been five years since I felt a man’s hands stroke the soft skin in the small of my back. That, or the sandpaper of an unshaven chin scraping my throat. Strange how, in their absence, even little hurts seem sweet. I wish I could feel them afresh. Like the time you came back to the apartment in Marszalkowska Street with some drunken friend I didn’t know the name of. I was asleep under our bedsheets, naked because the night was hot. You stumbled in, the pair of you. I pretended to go on sleeping, thinking you would take some money and go out. But then you lifted up the sheet and showed your friend my naked body and told him, See, she is just a piece of meat.
The next day, when you said train tracks were more interesting to you than a woman’s feelings, I laid down in the street and made you step on my heart so that you could feel it beating. You never touched me after that.
***
Here comes Emeryk with a glass of Aquavit. He's smiling. I feel as if he can see inside me. It’s a disgusting feeling. Who would want to know what that looks like? You are the only one who has truly seen it. It’s why you sent that telegram to Emeryk. The one that looked like drowning insects when, with trembling hands, I read your economical advice. A gun and poison. Poison and a gun. It’s cold in this room and I am an evil spirit. I drink this drink in your honour. Skål.
Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska (8 June 1867 – 5 June 1901) was a minor Norwegian writer, famous for her liaisons with various prominent artists, and for the dramatic circumstances of her death. She was the model for some of Edvard Munch's paintings. She had relationships with Munch and briefly with August Strindberg. In 1893, she married the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski. Together they had two children. She was shot by a young lover in a hotel room in Tbilisi in 1901, three days before her thirty-fourth birthday...
Dagny had me going there for a minute.
ReplyDeleteOkay, a few minutes.
Hot stuff ... and very interesting.
Glad you're back, Kate. No more slacking ...