408
PARTISAN REVIEW
a black rectangle, lies before him-the place where the scene ends and
the shadows take over.
MR. SOBERTIN WAS FRIENDLY with my parents; they may have known
each other even before the war. His family was French; before it was
Polonized, his last name was probably pronounced with the stress on
the final syllable and a nasal
n.
He was a tall man, elegantly dressed–
you had only to look closely to realize that this was the elegance of
another era . I don't remember if he'd had trouble with the police back
in the I950S. But in principle he should have been locked up just for
deviating so completely from the model man of the new age. Courteous,
beautifully bred, civil to all-how on earth did he survive those times?
He was a bachelor, a gallant gentleman, a troubadour ready to serve
any fair lady in the most disinterested and noble fashion . I sensed that he
was smitten with my mother, that she was one of his sacred Dulcineas.
What struck me most, though, was his manner of taking leave; I made fun
of it, after he'd gone, of course. He couldn't allow himself to turn his back
on us, so he withdrew with his rear to the door, clicking his heels together
repeatedly with an almost military precision.
It
was irresistibly comic.
Mr. Sobertin should have lived in Provence, not in Communist
Poland. He'd muddled both his epoch and his geography. His forebears
had erred by settling in my country.
He was a bachelor in both the new and old senses of the word: a
knight bachelor who'd found neither a wife to settle down with nor the
proper historical moment to inhabit.
His closest friend was the handsome Mr. Cybulski, with his thick
graying mane and bushy brows; he'd lost his wife and child in the War–
saw Uprising. They often came to see us together, the widower and the
aging bachelor, two mournful men with a melancholy charm, as if
drawn from some old-fashioned deck of cards.
I enjoyed their visits. They didn't stay long, usually just for afternoon
tea and not for supper. Then they'd disappear and return to the myste–
rious land inhabited by widowers, old bachelors, cats, and memories.
A
WRITER WHO KEEPS a personal diary uses it to record what he knows.
In
his poems or stories he sets down what he doesn't know.
