A long, long time ago, there was communism in Poland. It wasn’t Russian communism, nor African communism, nor Yugoslav communism. It was our very own Polish communism. I never saw communists in Poland. There were opportunists, plenty of scoundrels, dreamers like Jacek Kuroń, enchanted by utopia and wanting to build it, and there were fools like me, who got duped by the idea of revisionism—that is, softening it from the inside. (Maybe I’ll write separately about my adventure with revisionism one day.)
There were no communists, because in private it always turned out they were pretending—for bread and for career. It was the year 1962. Associate Professor Włodzimierz Wesołowski called me into his office and asked if I’d read Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution. Giedroyc had published Burnham in Polish in 1958; I knew about the book and had been looking for a way to access it. Wesołowski knew I was fascinated by Weber. He asked if I’d like to write a paper on Burnham. I laughed. I asked if it could be an honest paper. He replied that a few quotes from Marx would come in handy. He wrote me a permit for the prohibits section (that is, permission to borrow a restricted book from the university library). He paused and asked: “Do you know Ms. Jakubowicz?” I shook my head. He said, “She’s a very intelligent student. She’s already read it—maybe you two could write the paper together.” He gave me her address.
Małgorzata Jakubowicz lived on Trębacka Street, in a building for employees of the Ministry of Culture, where her mother worked. I rang her doorbell the next day and told her about the associate professor’s proposal. She invited me into her little room. Light-colored furniture, a narrow bed, a desk under the window with an “Underwood” typewriter on it (a heavy office monster, but indestructible), and a bookshelf behind her.
“Have you read Burnham yet?” Student Jakubowicz asked sternly. I replied that I hadn’t, but I already had a copy, and I’d read quite a bit about it. “Have you read books on similar topics?” came the next question. I wasn’t sure what to say; I told her I’d written about Weber and his concept of the ideal bureaucracy. Małgorzata nodded and began summarizing Burnham’s book. After a few minutes, I pulled the Underwood toward me, rolled in a sheet of paper, and started typing.
“What the hell are you doing, idiot?” my new acquaintance asked. I said I was writing down what she was saying because it was the best summary I’d ever heard.
That was when I saw her first smile. She took the typewriter from me and finished presenting the idea of a world hijacked by manager-bureaucrats, controlling capital, politics, and media.
And then, this girl—three years younger than I—gave me an exam. What had I read? What did I think? How did I envision our joint paper?
I left Trębacka with a reading list and the task of returning in three days.
Then for a while, we saw each other every day. I met her boyfriend. Marek, older than she, a historian already working as an assistant in the history department, looked at me suspiciously. I don’t blame him now, but back then I found it funny, because there was not a trace of sexual attraction in my friendship with Małgorzata. I was head over heels in love with my first wife, and for Małgorzata, I was just a guy she enjoyed talking to—somewhat suspect because I was a Party member.
One day she asked sternly: “Why are you in the Party?”
I replied: “Kołakowski’s in the Party too. Communism won’t end on its own—it can only be changed from within.”
“And you believe that?”
I shrugged. I already suspected I’d made a mistake. My father used to say: “Be careful—history turns everyone into an idiot. It’s a mean bastard.”
We wrote that paper. The friendship stayed, as did the need for frequent, one-on-one meetings, so no one would interrupt our conversations. My first wife, Krystyna, an actress much older than I who had left theater to write, was also uneasy about this friendship.
That first marriage of mine was from another world—bohemian, soaked in alcohol, a madhouse of narcissists and pretenders. My meetings with Małgorzata were a relief. The most down-to-earth person under the sun, zero emotion, pure practicality—the beauty of logic enchanted her more than the sublimity of sonnets. And yet, from time to time, we drifted in our talks into personal matters. Marek’s family was nationalist, rabidly antisemitic. Marek hadn’t told his parents that Małgorzata was Jewish. I listened and couldn’t understand. My world was falling apart too. Krystyna had fallen into alcoholism, and on top of that came drug addiction. She tried to drag me into it—thankfully, I didn’t succumb. Our affair had begun when I was in my first year. I failed several exams, lost two years of study. When I met Małgorzata, I was working and finishing university. Krystyna kept ending up in hospitals for forced treatment; she was caught forging morphine prescriptions. Treatment didn’t help. My life turned into hell. I watched the woman I loved turn into a wreck. After three years of struggle, I gave her an ultimatum: either quit alcohol and drugs completely, or I leave.
I’d go to work and come home knowing I’d find her unconscious again. She stopped going to work (she had worked in radio), stopped writing. I tried to convince her to write a book about the nightmare of addiction. It didn’t work. My concern sparked aggression and hatred in her. I asked a doctor what would happen if I left. He said: the same as if I stayed—only then we’d both go under. My singing beauty was already at the bottom. Now I could do only one thing—push off and come up for air.
In January 1967, I finally moved out to my sister’s place.
One day I visited Małgorzata. We hadn’t seen each other in a year—maybe longer. She was happy to see me, asked how things were and why I’d vanished. I told her I’d lost the fight to pull Krystyna back onto her feet.
Małgorzata made me recount the entire addiction story, my attempts to help, the doctors’ opinions. She asked how Krystyna was managing now. I said she was on sick leave, being helped by the Writers’ Union and her first husband, who was fairly well-off.
“Sometimes you have to start life from scratch. I broke up with Marek, too. A relationship between a Jewish girl and an nationalist family didn’t have good prospects.”
I said I had to run—new job, needed to get up to speed.
“What’s the job?”
“I’m now the head of a one-man unit pompously named the Center for Public Opinion Research at the Workers’ Agency—BOS-AR for short.”
Małgorzata burst out laughing and repeated, “a one-man center.” I nodded, saying they wouldn’t let me change the name, but I could be a rapporteur analyzing the research of other idiots doing pseudo-science called sociology.
At the door, she said quietly, "Come again."
I came. Sometime in mid-February, we went to “Rycerska” for dinner. It’s the oldest story in the world. I kissed her in front of the gate on Trębacka. She laughed. Turning away, she said, "We’ll talk about it later."
Next time I came over, she grabbed her sheepskin coat and said, "We’re going for a walk."
We sat in the park in silence, looking ahead, only our hands running toward each other, shouting that we both wanted something more.
Finally, Małgorzata said: “Tomorrow is Sunday.”
I asked if I could come over.
“You can—I’ve got the key to my aunt’s apartment. She’s away. We’ll go there.”
A few days later, Małgorzata’s mother, Anna—a wonderful woman—stopped me on my way out.
“Stop fooling around,” she said. “Stay the night. You two can’t keep your hands off each other.”
We insisted bravely that we were still just friends, that this was just a fling until we found someone else, no commitments, we just liked talking, and now, a bit more, because we didn’t mind the lack of clothes. The masks had come off long ago—only the rest of the wardrobe remained.
Małgorzata, who had written her master’s thesis under Wesołowski, was now doing a PhD under his supervision. She had a position at the Institute of Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and more and more often we talked about how empty this sociology thing was, how few sociologists said anything worth hearing to the end.
“I should have gone into biology.”
“You’re being stupid,” I replied. “You have a brilliant legal mind. You should have studied law. But then I wouldn’t have met you, and that would’ve been very wrong.”
“Are you trying to say you’ve fallen in love?”
“I’m starting to suspect I fell in love with you at our first meeting, I just didn’t know it.”
“Hmm, let me think… Who knows—maybe it was mutual, mutually unconscious.”
March passed, April too. She liked my sister Barbara. Still uncertain, though—worried rejection would surface somewhere, some trace of antisemitism buried deep in Polish culture. She was surprised that my sister’s husband was Jewish too. Russian father, Jewish mother (a friend of my mother's), and yet he was one hundred percent Pole—just a Jewish one.
We still went on walks, and when violets finally appeared, I bought her a bouquet at a flower shop. She quickly stuffed it into her coat pocket—she needed her hands to gesticulate.
May 1967 was ending. Israel was surrounded on all sides by massive armies. Egypt and Syria armed by the Soviet Union, and Jordan armed and egged on in its hatred of Israel by the British. Polish newspapers were blathering like Pravda. We sat glued to the radio, listening to Radio Free Europe. Małgorzata was a bundle of nerves. I knew she was right. Israel didn’t stand a chance. Its days were numbered. I tried to comfort her, spinning absurd scenarios—maybe America would intervene. But the reality was clear. No hope.
From the night of June 4 to 5, I was staying at Trębacka. In the morning, we learned Israel had attacked three Arab countries. We stared at each other in mute shock.
The first shock was nothing. After three days it was clear—billions of dollars’ worth of Soviet weaponry was turning to scrap metal before our eyes.
We weren’t alone in our insane joy. Now we listened to Radio Free Europe in groups—and with alcohol. On, I think, the fourth day of the war, we went to my sister’s place with a friend from the department, Jacek Tarkowski (now deceased). We drank a lot, and around midnight, on our way out, we danced a hora under Barbara’s window. Jacek improvised:
Hey there on the hill, there on a camel
Nasser’s fleeing, the dust clouds swirl
Oh my Dayan, oh my Dayan
Oh my Dayan, my one-eyed pearl
The second time, all three of us were shouting it. After the third time, we figured that was enough and headed toward the nearest taxi stand.
Barbara lived in a building for Polish Army officers’ families. A few days later I heard Gomułka spit into a microphone:
“Israel attacked the Arab countries, and in Warsaw, Jews were dancing in the streets with joy.”
If it weren’t for the fact that he said “Jews,” and it was two Polish Poles and one Polish Jew dancing under an officers’ block, I might’ve thought he was talking about us.
And Warsaw’s streets really were thrilled then. Every now and then, you’d hear someone say: “Our Jews gave it to those Russian Arabs.”
My girl was, once again, wonderfully down-to-earth, fiercely logical, and economical with emotions.
