Chapter seven: Loony Józek

CHAPTER VII

Loony Józek

Wojciech Mazur worked as a night watchman on Czerniakowska Street. Miracles and wonders were told about his great strength and about the adventures he had experienced on journeys to every corner of the world. The stories and legends about his life grew and changed easily, helped along by Wojciech himself, who neither added anything nor denied anything.

He lived in a small attic room with a girl of about nine years old—or perhaps she was not his daughter, since he had brought her home when he was already an old man and no one knew from where. Later, he was seen only as he walked with measured steps, tapping the cobblestones with the iron tip of his cane, which made a loud sound, all through the night. On Sundays, he visited the church with the girl. When someone greeted him, he returned the greeting, but he had no close relationship with anyone.

The girl grew up. Wojciech did not grow older. His gray beard could not turn any whiter, his tired eyes could not grow any dimmer, and on his wrinkled face there was no more room for additional lines.

The old man and the girl were treated with respect. No one resented his solitude, and his silence aroused no curiosity. When he walked down the street, people made way for him. When he came down with a bucket to draw water, someone always stood by the pump. Even the most vulgar laughter and coarse jokes froze on people’s lips when the old man’s white beard appeared nearby.

No thefts were committed in the area under his watch—not because thieves feared his physical strength, but because of something else. Who could know what?

The girl grew up. Her voice was rarely heard among the shouts of children playing in the yard, and when it was, it sounded so clear, and her laughter so bright, like the sound of bells, that no one laughed with her but listened in silence.

Her hair was dark and silky, her eyes a bright blue, looking out deeply from behind long lashes. Her movements were quick and confident. No one could catch her in a game of tag; she dodged with such agility. No one dared grab her roughly.

Sometimes in the late evening, she would sing alone in her locked room, and then her father would stop by the house and stand still, gazing up at the attic window. The tapping of his iron cane on the cobblestones would fall silent for a moment.

His daughter grew up and was no longer a child. Every day he brought her several dozen squares of cardboard and a sack of mother-of-pearl buttons. Her job was to sew the buttons onto the dark cardboard squares. Twelve hours of work a day brought her only twenty kopecks. But she could work at home, not in a factory among many boys and girls, far from the hands of foremen and overseers.

Perhaps old Wojciech feared all those men around the working girls. And it seemed that in the shabby attic room the old man had made a safe nest for himself and his daughter. But reality was different…

Loony Józek came into the world in that damp, chilly room.

Wojciech tapped his cane harder on the stones now but slowed his pace. No new wrinkle appeared on his forehead—there was no more room for wrinkles—but the line of his lips changed. His mouth broke into a new expression—not evil, not hard or bitter, but dark.

Two months after his birth, Józek was an orphan. Wojciech Mazur did not give little Józio to a wet nurse. No one advised him to. Every morning and evening, he bought milk and fed the baby. In the evening, he bought milk, tucked the bottle into the pocket of his fur coat, wrapped Józek in a scarf, covered him with fur, and the old man’s chest became his cradle. At night he continued to make his rounds, only more slowly… Even the tapping of his cane on the stones grew softer.

Thus Józek grew, and when he was one year old, the cold night air did not kill him, nor did the cool milk, warmed only by his grandfather’s breath, weaken him. Later, locked in the little attic room, Józek slept soundly through the night. Wojciech continued to walk his route, only pausing now and then to look toward the window, listening for the baby’s cry.

Józek could have died a hundred times—from fumes seeping from the stove, from fire, from falling, being trampled by galloping horses, drowning in the Vistula, falling from a roof or a window, or cutting himself on a knife—but by age five, the only injuries he had suffered were a sprained ankle from slipping on ice, a week-long illness from a stone thrown at his head, and a severed little finger on his left hand when he stuck it into a neighbor’s lathe. With nine remaining fingers and a scar on his head where hair never grew again, Józek grew into a healthy child. He could beat boys three years older in a fight, ate whatever came his way—from raw potatoes to rolls that his grandfather did not begrudge him and which he found by any means. He skated on the drainage canals and arranged his time so that his grandfather could not complain about his absences; he could hide anything he thought should not be revealed so well that it was difficult to point to any of those traits typical of a street child.

But when Józek turned five, his grandfather enrolled him in a children’s home. The place was cramped, boring, stuffy, so he ran away—not once, not twice. When the spring sun first shone into the crowded room full of children, and the rumble from the river signaled that the ice on the Vistula had begun to move, the boy grabbed his cap and fled the home in front of the nurse in her lace dress. For two days his grandfather searched for him in vain.

Józek was expelled from the children’s home, and because of this became even more attached to the Vistula. The great river sang him a song that the shrill voices of the children could not replace. The river whispered to him fairy tales that could not be compared to the monotonous stories told at the home. It presented him with pictures more vivid than the color illustrations of the “object-teaching” method, images decorated with fly specks. That river was his river; he could wade in it up to his knees, throw stones into it. The lady from the children’s home was unapproachable and smiled only when some lady in a lace dress came to visit…

Who should be blamed for the fact that a nursery teacher, looking after her own children on a meager salary, could not compete with the Vistula and could not offer Józek more than the river and the street did? Nature is the greatest artist, and the soul of a “child of nature and life” is a vast, complex soul. Therefore, only exceptional people can compete with the charm of nature and win a child’s heart. Pestalozzi in Switzerland, Fröbel in Germany, Madame Carpentier in Paris, and a few others—so few that one is filled with sadness when reading the history of their solitary efforts.

When Józek was six, he lost his grandfather. One evening, he found him dead.

The funeral was large—not for the cost of the hearse or the coffin, but for the number of sighs and prayers that accompanied the old man on his last journey. And Józek remained an orphan with no relatives. On Czerniakowska Street, a night watchman tapped his cane on the cobblestones; the attic room was taken by another family, and Józek found a corner on the boat of “Dry” Felek. But he didn’t stay long. He didn’t need a home but the whole city. The six-year-old boy tolerated no guardians, no restraints. What did he need? A little corner to sleep in could be found anywhere; he wasn’t too worried about food. All he longed for was an accordion, and fate helped him get one.

A gang of thieves planned a “job”—a bigger theft than usual. A “scout,” a snoop, found an apartment whose layout he knew well. Ground floor, side wing, easy access. The owners had gone to a wedding; it was a transit house. In the attic there was a perfect hiding place, and access to the roof was easy; only a sheet of tin needed to be cut, and it was already partly loose. Ignatz the blacksmith was in on it. They just needed a lock picker and a “Lulu” small enough to squeeze through a narrow window.

They found Józek, and everything was agreed upon. In exchange for his help, he was promised an accordion. The job went smoothly. They glued a piece of tarred paper to the windowpane and broke it near the handle. Józek climbed through the window and opened the door as agreed. The “buzzard” brought him to the attic; the “spider” pulled him out and lowered him over the fence. Józek ran to the Vistula, to the agreed spot.

The job succeeded because no one interrupted them, but it also failed because the loot was meager: less than twenty rubles in a desk, a little silverware in the buffet, a few cheap rings in a wardrobe. Not much to divide. But Józek got a good accordion as payment for a job well done and as an advance for future work.

If anyone wanted to detach Józek from the street now, they would have had to fight two forces in addition to those already binding him to it: first, the lure of night adventures, slipping away from “squares,” “whispers,” and “cross-eyes,” the bond of solidarity that demanded suffering in silence; second, his attachment to his accordion.

Why did they call him Loony? Because he himself often used the word. It didn’t always seem appropriate, but anyone thinking a bit deeper would see that to him it had magical meaning.

When he grew sad, when painful thoughts tormented him, when fresh memories of prayers whispered with his grandfather rose in his mind—and perhaps noble blood flowed in his veins—Józek spat and said: “It’s all Loony!” And the words brought him relief.

It seems Józek’s character complemented Antek’s, and so the two became close friends.

The friendship of “street children” contains little poetic idyll but great, unbreakable, tragic strength. It is not based on long conversations and shared dreams but on shared business. It is characterized by several key traits: division of labor, profits, and responsibility on the basis of complete equality; solidarity to the point of denying oneself, even of destroying an enemy of a friend. These are the sacred, unbreakable rules of their friendship.

The two boys lodged together with Bronek the waiter and Andrzej the cook, two utterly depraved men. Bronek was twenty-four and no longer felt even a trace of self-respect. He bowed deeply and flattered anyone who gave him a tip. He spent most of his time at the parties of drunk gentlemen, a perpetual smile on his face. Again and again, he whispered “Yes, sir,” while burning with a deep desire that someone might address him as “sir” one day. For now, he had to settle for the role of servant at the feasts of the upper classes, living off their leftover liqueurs and cold meat pies.

Andrzej the cook was no better. A little older, his cynical behavior impressed Bronek, though he still feared to follow in his footsteps.

Antek and Józek found themselves work. During the day, they roamed the streets catching runaway dogs—pinschers and mopsies—and returning them for a “generous reward.” Bronek, who could read, scanned the newspapers for lost dog notices and told them where to find the owners.

Another line of work was “working” the “kind-hearted.” They would put a bottle of water in a basket, drop the basket in a busy street, and when the bottle broke, they burst into pitiful tears until a “kind soul” took notice.

“Why are you crying?”

“The foreman sent me to get vodka, and it all spilled. Now he’ll beat me, maybe even kill me.”

Such tears brought at least half a ruble.

In this, Antek was particularly successful.

In the evening, they escorted visitors to the circus, earning a few coins, and tricked the cashier by distracting him and slipping inside for the show.

For months, their luck held.

A special event in Antek’s early “career” was his encounter with a painter.

The painter was a famous, talented man. He thought Antek’s features were perfect for a painting he planned. He gave Antek his card, and the next day Antek went to his studio.

Forty kopecks an hour Antek earned as a model. As he sat there, the painter and his friends discussed various things. He also liked to talk to his “pyramidal” model, the boy who said such funny things that “you could die laughing.”

“I tell you”, said the painter, “this brat will grow up to be either a great crook or a great man.”

The painter missed no chance to make Antek a crook. He did it almost absentmindedly and enjoyed it. He deliberately drew the boy into talking and later repeated his words among friends in the tavern where artists gathered. Antek, of course, knew nothing about it.

Strangely, the painter, spiritually on a higher plane than the street boy, did not wish to see him as a person, only as a model.

The job, with its conversations, lasted two weeks. One day the painter suddenly asked Antek if he could read.

“I can’t,” said Antek.

“You should be ashamed; such a big boy.”

Antek felt his blood boil. An injustice had been done to him. Instinctively, more than consciously, he sensed that this painter was the last person with the right to preach to him about shame, what was degrading, what his virtues and duties were.

“You should be ashamed that you can read,” said Antek, jumping up.

“Sit down, what are you jumping for?”

“Because I don’t want to pose for you anymore.”

Antek threw off the painter’s drape, put on his torn pants and jacket, and before the man could react, he was gone.

“What got into him?”

Antek ran to the riverbank. He felt an urge to pour his heart out to someone, to ease the choking in his chest, the tearing in his heart.

“Idiot! Jackass!” he muttered through clenched teeth.

A schoolboy passed, Antek bumped into him, and the boy called him “bum.” Why didn’t Antek hit him? Why did he only run faster to the river, throw himself on the planks, and start crying?

He was furious at everything around him, at what he saw and heard and lived. Rage shook his skinny chest, rage expressed in tears and curses.

Through his tears, he saw a familiar figure and heard a warm, soft voice call his name in a sing-song tone. He stopped crying and gazed at the wide Vistula, at the sun’s glitter on the icy snow scattered over it, and sank into thought.

“Loony,” he suddenly thought.

He got up and went home.

He felt very lonely and very unhappy.

There was no one in the room. Three unmade, dirty beds stood there. On the floor lay cigarette butts and empty bottles. On the table sat a plate with scraps of congealed meat. Two dogs greeted him with whimpers.

Antek lay down on one of the beds, lit a cigarette, and in the slowly rising smoke he saw another room, and Mania dressed in a clean dress with her hair smoothly combed.

Antek remembered Jędrek. Suddenly, curiosity stirred in him: Had the Count taken Jędrek?

He got up and dragged himself slowly toward the boy’s parents’ apartment.

Marcin was a doorman on Czerniakowska Street. He lived with his seven children in a tiny room under the stairs. In summer, some of the family slept outside; in winter only Marcin’s wife slept on the bench at the gate. In the past Marcin himself had slept there, but after the pains in his bones had twisted his hands and legs so badly that he lay groaning in the hospital for two months, the doctor forbade him to stay outside on cold nights.

Marcin’s wife, Marcinowa, greeted Antek kindly after recognizing him through the steam rising from a basin of hot water.

“Oh, Antek, may the Lord Jesus bless you with a long life for taking Jędrek off our hands.”

“So that gentleman came here and took Jędrek?” Antek asked.

“Oh, he came and took him. Gave the old man twenty-five rubles. And the old man bought himself a watch. What a fool! A watch, of all things!” she finished almost in tears.

“He took Jędrek with everything?”

“Oh, with everything. And how he talked and talked. ‘You,’ he said, ‘did a terrible thing not letting the boy study and beating him.’ Oh, Antek, how foolish he was. How can you not beat Jędrek when he’s always under your feet, pestering you for books and notebooks? It’s different with a gentleman’s son—that’s known. He has to study. But what’s Jędrek of mine going to do with schooling, eh? I tell you, at first, I was really scared because I didn’t know what he wanted. But when he started talking, my heart trembled… Wacka! Oh, Wacka! Where did you get to? Come here when I call you.”

The girl appeared out of the steam, stepping out from under the staircase.

“Go to your father, tell him Antek’s here. Tell him to bring vodka. Quick, you hear?”

Wacka’s dress was damp from the steam. Drops of water glistened on her forehead and temples. Her eyes were a faded blue. The little girl slipped out through the open door, frightened and coughing.

“I couldn’t make head or tail of what he wanted,” continued Marcinowa. “If Jędrek had been a pretty boy, I’d have understood. But such a poor thing... Only when he said: ‘So-and-so, Antek said he wants to learn but you beat him,’ then I started to understand something. I thought he was from the police, that some law came out forbidding beatings because of schooling, or something like that. Well, then he started to explain that he wasn’t here because of me, only because of Jędrek. And I thought he felt so sorry for me because I kissed his hands and feet. In the end he got annoyed because I kept interrupting. Finally, he explained that he wanted to take care of Jędrek’s education. I would have preferred to give him to some craftsman, but never mind. One mouth less, that’s what counts.”

A baby’s cry came from the depths under the stairs.

“You see, Antek, what it’s like. Oh, Jesus, Jesus…” she said and disappeared into the cloud of steam.

“And what else did he say?” Antek asked.

He wanted to know—he wanted very much to know—what else the Count had said.

“He talked a lot, and I don’t remember it all. He said something about how when Jędrek comes back, he won’t just work for his parents, meaning me and Marcin, but for everyone.”

“What else?”

“What do I know? He talked and talked, and in the end I don’t even know if he’ll send Jędrek back from time to time or what exactly he wants to do with him. I was too scared to ask. I hope he’ll be well there. He had such a beautiful coat, that gentleman. He seemed like a good man, just a bit… confused.”

Marcin came in and brought vodka to drink in Antek’s honor. The glass went from hand to hand, and the conversation became more cheerful.

Antek left. Because of the steam and after three glasses of vodka he felt dizzy. The cold air helped clear his head.

He had a few hours left until evening. Today luck hadn’t been on his side. He hadn’t taken any money from the painter and hadn’t gone downtown to earn something. Now he was cold and hungry. Something was nagging at him.

He remembered the suitcase Wojciech had left for him in Praga. How could he have forgotten it for so long?

Wearily, he walked along Powiśle, crossed the bridge, and entered a part of Praga. Antek was hungry.

At Wojciech’s, he was given a meal.

In the suitcase he found clothes, underwear, and five books: Pan Tadeusz by Mickiewicz, the three volumes of With Fire and Sword, and a fifth book, a novel unknown to you, dear readers.

Antek gave some shirts to Wojciech’s children, and on their father’s orders they approached him and kissed his hand. Antek discovered that this gesture, the children kissing his hand, gave him pleasure. He straightened up and felt equal to adults.

“What’s new with you?”

“Nothing special, we manage somehow. Only the woman’s getting weaker. She has this pain in her chest. Well, not really inside the chest, but here, in the front and on the side. The doctor gave her three pills. She took the first, but it was so bitter she wouldn’t take the second. Instead, she crumbled it and scattered it under the baby so the fleas would bite it at night. The flea is so small, so either it’ll die from the bitterness or run away. The third pill’s still in the drawer.”

“When Wojciech gets drunk, I’ll slip it into his vodka, maybe then he’ll stop drinking, because a lot of money goes on booze. And it’s not like he has a big salary—eight rubles a month, and at least one or more goes to the grocer for debts. Seven rubles left, and it’s still hard to make ends meet. But it’s good the boy’s apprenticed to a tailor. The girl goes out sewing—earns a ruble a month. Bartek and Ponka are hardly ever home, and one’s in an orphanage. We get by somehow.”

Antek put on his coat, tied the books, underwear, and clothes into a bundle, and went home. He left the suitcase with Wojciech—he might need it for something...

Loony Józek was waiting for Antek. Luck had smiled on him. He had met a woman named Wiktka. He took off his shoes, handed them to her to hold, and stood barefoot against a wall on Marszałkowska Street. Immediately a lady came up and gave him forty kopecks. An officer gave him half a ruble. Then a few ordinary people “took pity” on him, and each gave him ten kopecks. One gentleman started talking to him, asking where he lived. Józek gave him an address “in Psanów.” The gentleman wrote it down, gave him three rubles, and told him to buy shoes. He promised to come himself to check if Józek had really bought them.

“I tell you, what a softy. He almost started bawling, he took it so to heart. ‘What’s wrong with you,’ he asked, ‘don’t you have any shoes in this cold?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘Then why don’t you wear them?’

‘Because I wanted to go visit my father in the hospital.’

‘Is your stepmother so cruel?’

‘Oh, she’s good, sir, only poor, and hunger makes her head play tricks.’”

Antek listened but did not laugh at his friend’s humor.

“I tell you,” Józek went on, “he filled my head with words for three rubles as much as it could hold. Said I should love my father and stepmother, behave well, and that I’d grow up to be a decent man. As if you need shoes to be decent, as if thieves don’t wear shoes… And I was scared they’d take him to the Hive, so I listened but kept looking around. And then—shoes on my feet and home. What a crazy day.”

He picked up the accordion, played a few notes, and sang:

“I’m a little rascal boy,
I went out with a burglar to the old potters’ street…”

“What about your painter?”

“I left him.”

“What happened?”

“I left, that’s all.”

“You’re crazy, you are.”

“That’s what I felt like. So what.”

Who would have imagined that the old night watchman—an embodiment of moral strength, feared and respected by thieves who tipped their hats to him—could have a grandson so cynical as Loony Józek? And that the same corrupt Józek, condemned to a life of crime and sin, could one day become a hero, dare to act courageously, and do something like that…

But why rush ahead of the story?