CONVERSATIONS IN WARSAW
271
people didn't judge only by money. There was a real sense of com–
munity, especially among the intelligentsia. "In every country I
lived in, more than half a dozen, I felt lonely. Here I don't." Yet
he was not a supporter of the regime, nor was he a revisionist.
In a
curious sense, he was apolitical. Altbough a Jew, he had no sense
of Jewish identity. He was cynical about politics and about all poli–
tical motivation. He puzzled me--l found it hard to accept his
cynicism, and I felt it was a pose. Yet there was such ease about
the man, such earthy good humor, such a complete naturalness that
I felt him to be completely genuine. He reminded me strongly of
Benya K rik, the laughing, robust Jewish gangster that Isaac Babel
had created in his stories of raffish Jewish life on the Odessa water–
front. T.'s attitude was: This is the world, and there is little one
can do about it; the important thing is to be true to one's friends,
and have fun . And yet somewhere there was an undertone of seri-
' ousness to the man.
It
came out, oddly, just before we mounted his
motorbike for the ride back to the hotel. "Look," he said quietly,
"tell M. [the Berlin friend] that if he sends people to see me, they
should not telephone from the hotel room. All the calls are re–
corded, and checks are made. It's easier to call from a street
phone." We rode back in silence, and parted with an embrace.
That evening, I went with Griffiths to an informal dinner
party at the apartment of a Western diplomat. There were about
a dgzen people there, and except for Mary McCarthy, who came in
later, we were the only Americans present. Conversation bubbled
in English, French, German and Polish. There was a forced gaiety
that, combined with the hothouse atmosphere, made one feel rather
as if one were on a
Zauberberg.
A strikingly beautiful Polish
actress was there ; several jazz musicians and their wives, one of
whom flirted conspicuously with some of the other men; a novelist
and his wife, who wrote about fashion for a popular weekly; and a
literary critic. The last, a man with a rubbery face and frizzy hair,
set out to be the clown of the party. Dressed in baggy, oversize pants,
his buttoned jacket pulled out wide at the shoulders, he walked
around on his heels, grinning idiotically, like Red Skelton.
The novelist, a small, bony man, with a quick smile and ready
wit, was quite engaging. His novels, which dealt with the seamier
side of Warsaw life, had been translated into several foreign lan-
