|
I was in Zakopane in the Polish Tatras. Several people told me that there was a man I should meet. He was 91, lived alone in an isolated mountain hut and was writing a biography of the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, who he had known well.
As I am a little over seven feet tall I well knew there was no room for me inside Herr Drodz's cosy little hut. So upon arrival I took no offence that he did not invite me inside. I said my hello and sat outside on a log. He sat on a stool in his doorway rolling an egg from hand to hand. It was newly boiled. His hands patted it to one another while it cooled. Suddenly he cracked the egg on his forehead, stripped the shell off with his thumbs, then took tiny bites of the thing, quickly, cackling all the while. We hadn't spoken properly yet. He went first, shrill, nervous.
"You've read your Sienkiewicz, of course?"
"Yes, I have, quite a bit," I said.
"How is he these days? Do you know?"
I returned a piece of information I thought essential to the biographer. "He is long dead, I do believe."
My deep voice, full of gravity with this news, had gone off the scale of deepness. Herr Drodz cackled some more and ate the rest of his egg. As his mouth opened and shut I saw the egg's yellow on his 91-year-old tongue. How many eggs had it tasted was what I was thinking when he suddenly hopped up and came towards me. He stroked my hair.
"Such lovely long dark hair," he said.
"Thank you," I said.
"Should I put on my jacket or would it be better if I took everything off? Or what? Hm? What's the etiquette, hm?"
I was so far from understanding him that I said nothing.
He had tiny bits of eggshell stuck under his dirty old nails. He cleared them out with a sliver of twig. Then he caressed my hair again.
Suddenly, he was impatient, angry, shouting: "Cummon, then! Let's go!"
He threw on his jacket and strode off into the high woods. I followed, stooping to avoid the many branches. We had been walking for nearly three hours before he sat down, exhausted, shaking all over.
"This is still my earthly body, isn't it?" he asked. He was slapping and poking himself. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, might have been during our whole long walk, but as he'd been in the lead I hadn't seen.
|
