ZAGAJEWSKI
397
my heart alone; it promises something it can't deliver, it's as chaotic as
desire, as longing, which will never be appeased.
I have headphones over my ears; the typewriter keys, pencil, pen, or
computer keyboard are my controls; and the stylized English caption
Cracows Historic Town Centre
sprawls before me, blocking part of the
monastic orchard belonging to the Bernardines and encroaching also–
I hadn't noticed this before-on the southern fortifications of Wawel
Castle.
It
may not be a plane after all, but a helicopter, since I'm not
moving over the city's green Gobelin, I'm hovering in one spot, above
the clump of St. Catherine's Church. I don't move over the city, I hover
in one spot; the picture must have been taken in midsummer, the town
is brown and green, surfeited with light, serene. But no, the tops of some
trees are already turning yellow, I see them from above. So perhaps Sep–
tember has already begun, the first week of fall, and only I can see the
yellowing treetops, they're still invisible below, for someone looking up
it's still midsummer, but for me, far above, the first fine streaks of fall
are already visible.
It's late afternoon, nearly evening, the sun slopes westward, the shad–
ows are long and languid, nourished by the sunny day, sated. They've
stretched out precisely along the line running east to west, and so run
parallel to the churches' elongated bodies, which were, as we know,
built upon exactly the same axis, between the sunrise and the sunset, the
two most important events of the day.
A bird's-eye view reveals the city's petty secrets, secrets that would be
difficult to detect from street level. The view from above resembles a con–
fession, the town admits its venial sins-but not its true, cardinal mis–
deeds, you have to look for these elsewhere, in memory and forgetting.
I see how many gardens and orchards lie concealed within Krakow's
walls. These gardens and orchards are invisible to ordinary mortals, to
pedestrians. The high walls shield this priceless green: poplars, ashes,
but also apple and pear trees. Some of the gardens cover a fair amount
of territory-these are the monastic orchards. A shadow blankets them.
The setting sun says goodbye to the town, which has managed to retain
its rural nature, but is ashamed of it, and so keeps its green treasures con–
cealed behind the screens of walls and fences. Perhaps it wishes to pass for
a modern, cosmopolitan city and doesn't want to acknowledge its idylli–
cally provincial courtyards, the grass that sprouts between the paving
stones, the cherry trees blooming blithely in the very heart of the city.
I fly over Krakow lightly, effortlessly, like a spirit.
It
even seems to me
that I feel the warmth of this earth, these rooftops, the lazy warmth of
a summer day.
