When death approaches it’s best to be in the place it’s approaching, or else it’s all in vain
by Jacek Podsiadło + [translated from the Polish by] Margret Grebowicz

For Dorota Różycka

            With the advent of the New Year I decided to begin a new life.  No more lateness.  No more swearing.  No more martinis on the express train to Kraków, curbing the boredom of travel with belles readings of belles lettres and a mild, artsy buzz.  Most importantly, no more belles lettres.  I sat down to write the farewell poem, “Two Lips.”

            Two Lips

                                    For Tulip

            Two lips told me of a future

            I didn’t write anything else, because I couldn’t find a word to rhyme with “future” except “butcher”, which was an exceptionally bad option.  Two lips told me of a future in which we go to the butcher?  I had never been to any butchers with Tulip.  I soaked the paper set aside for the farewell poem and used the resulting paste to insulate the windows. […]  I took the gum out of my mouth and stuck it in the peephole.  I covered the kitchen and bathroom vents with the pictures hanging nearby.  While doing this I remembered what little Letycja had said upon seeing her two grandmothers at the same time: “scary holed ladies.”  From outside came the first pops of champagne corks and fireworks.  I turned off the lights.  I turned on all the gas burners, laid down on the kitchen table, and placed a muzzle in my hands because I had no rosary.  I had instead a dog, a blind bitch, Tulip.  No more blind bitches.  The hiss of the burners calmed me and mixed ever more pleasantly with the explosions and squeals coming from every direction.  As the canon squad and exclamations reached their apogee, something strange occurred.  The hiss stopped.
            I cleared my throat.
            Deep in thought I scratched my chin with the heel of my foot.  I got up, turned on the light, and reached for the holiday paper.  In the section with emergency phone numbers I found the number for gas-related emergencies.  Despite the muzzle on my hands I managed to dial.
            – Emergency Gas Services?
            – Right, gas.
            – Happy New Year to you.
            – The gasmen are always on call.
            – And praise be.  As it happens, my gas just stopped, Mr. Gasman.
            – When?
            – Just a moment ago, exactly at midnight, I believe.
            – Right, just as we expected.
            – I don’t understand.
            – The Y2K problem.
            – The what problem?
            – Y2K.  The predicted end of things.  Do you have a computer?
            – No, I write on a typewriter.
            – Then I suggest you go to your typewriter and try to write something.  Excuse me, I have to take this other call.  Cheers.
            I walked over to the typewriter and tried to write the title “The Life and Especially the Death of Angelika de Sance.”  My typewriter wouldn’t type; instead of staying put on the paper the letters took off like a horde of liberated, feminist flies.  I put on a record of Marcel Ponseele whipping out sonatas for oboe and bazooka, but instead heard only Robert Wyatt singing “Yolanda” over and over.  There was nothing I could do to stop it.  From this moment on, things began to snowball, as they say. 
            Snowdrops sprouted inside the fridge.  The shower rang off the hook with calls from acquaintances asking how I was doing in the New Year.  The vacuum blew out all its inner dirt and decided to have babies with the hairdryer.  Whenever it was flushed, the toilet water flowed upwards and disappeared into pipes which grew up into the sky.  History books written for the third millennium will end with the words: “and people shat into reservoirs.”
            My blind bitch Tulip, whom I retrieved from the pound after a few days, had regained her sight.  Now she could even see the future.  She obsessively read history books about our strange epoch.  Ski jumpers were jumping backwards in the Four Hills Tournament.  My disoriented neighbor complained to me in the stairwell that his wife, previously very righteous and firmly opposed to any perversions of nature, now wished to be taken only from behind.  
            – It’s called a topsy-turvy world, I read about it in a book once.  My shower broke off.
            – To hell with a shower when your own wife wants it only from behind.
            – So give it to her--I shrugged.  
            – But I can’t get it up.
            – Watch the language.  I’m planning to record all this in a documentary narrative about these extraordinary times, to serve as a warning for future generations.
            – So how should I say it: I am unable to obtain a hard-on?
            – Maybe you drank too much at all those holiday parties?
            – Nope.  I’m on my way back from a sexologist in Warsaw.  He diagnosed me with the Y2K problem.  Is your equipment in working order?
            All this because of the zeros that have suddenly started finishing out the dates.  At the end of every thought and deed now stands an unavoidable, distended zero.  Shoes with snow melting beneath the soles now leave a new zero on the sidewalk with each step.  A zero takes up the whole bed when I try to lie down to sleep; an elongated zero stares at me from the mirror as I shave in the morning.  I have trouble falling asleep and I don’t feel like shaving, honestly.  I shave in spite of myself.  I try to read the future in the new eyes of my old dog, round like two zeros.