ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
From
Another Beauty
D
LUGA STREET DIDN'T BELONG TO OUR WORLD. It had little in
common with the historical moment, with the moment desig–
nated by that proud, often misused phrase "the present day." It
was a flagrant anachronism, even though a few steps away Warsaw
Street ran obligingly in the direction of the capital and Dluga Street itself
bisected Three Poets' Boulevard, already a busy thoroughfare by the
1960s. But of course this kind of distance from the reigning age is some–
thing completely different for a street than it is for living, feeling people.
Streets are usually mindless: their low brows don't conceal hope,
despair, or ideas. The rooftops lie placidly on apartment buildings. But
one may suppose or suspect certain things nonetheless. Thus it seems to
me that Dluga Street preferred horses and horse-drawn carriages. Peas–
ant carts probably suited it best, but it had no objection to smart
coaches with cushioned rubber wheels rolling merrily on their springs.
There was a place for such things, they fit the street's tricky character.
In the winter fragrant horse dung garnished the white snow with yellow
spots, steaming lavishly; it lured the local sparrows, greedy for any sort
of diversion. Dluga Street was caught painfully off guard by modern his–
tory.
It
didn't like electricity or internal combustion engines; it didn't
like Hitlerism, introduced by the triumphant Wehrmacht, or Stalinism,
imported by the Red Army.
It
would have been happy with horses, carts,
and the sweet scent of manure. Servants' shouting, the parasols of ele–
gant ladies, the changing seasons, rain, snow, and sun-these would
have filled its modest life completely. Some of these enduring things lin–
gered on. In the fall, heaps of coal rose on the sidewalk, transported in
scuttles, or shoveled with spades straight into cellars. Before the Christ–
mas holidays, firs and pines sprouted on balconies, and luckless, bug–
eyed carps with voluptuous lips were brought home by patresfamilias in
nets from which drops of water fled. There, in the dense hedgerows of
Editor's Note: Excerpted from
Another Beauty
by Adam Zagajewski. To be
published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
LLC.
Copyright
©
2000
by Adam
Zagajewski. All rights reserved .
