It isn’t pleasant: to feel blood in your mouth, even if it’s not blood, but fear and exhaustion. It happened to me sometimes, but that particular taste of bloodless blood I will never forget. It was years ago. I was coming back from Sopot, got off in Gdańsk Główny and was in a hurry to get home at Górka Street. Why not run, would be faster, I thought merrily, as it must have been quite a nice evening. I took off a light backpack and grabbed it with my right hand. Started with a trot and gradually gained speed. This saved me.
I was running lightly along the railroad tracks, down Podwale Grodzkie Street. And just when I started to revel in being aware of my youth, my flexible muscles, and my free breath through which I felt united with the crisp air of an early autumn evening – when airy lightness was engulfing me – out of a black lump of a square overgrown with wild bush and old trees, out of this hole throbbing with darkness that spilled behind the building which today houses the Gdańsk City Council, emerged a big guy, running and shouting at me: “Police! Freeze!”
It’s kind of encoded in my genes that I don’t trust the police. Let alone big guys in tracksuits, who yell at you to stop, when you want to run. Guys in plural, because the darkness of the neglected park produced another bloke, who jumped right after the first one. The one who was trying to halt me with a scream, this would-be policeman, was already by my side. I felt him grab me by my leather jacket, somewhere around the hips, tug and take a swipe with his left arm to throw a punch or to push me off the sidewalk, down the slope, onto the tracks, into oblivion, straight to hell. Luckily, I was going at full speed. I had my rhythm. Without thinking I picked up the pace. Dived under this huge arm and yanked my jacket from this horrible hand which was tightening its grip. The guy was really big and I promise you it wasn’t my fear that made him so.
Despite the jolt I didn’t lose my rhythm, although I swayed a little. The giant was left behind. I heard him shout to the other one “Catch him!” But his mate, skinny and silent – maybe he was drunk or maybe I was real fast – didn’t manage to cross my path. Out the corner of my eye I saw that he was just four or five steps short. I passed him, but he didn’t even swear, like he wanted to hide his presence, maybe already planning the next assault – if so, a scream would give away the trap.
They were behind me, but it didn’t mean a lot. They could have been great runners, after all. That’s why I quickened my pace, though I thought I couldn’t run any faster. Dread leaped onto my back, sucked all the youth out of my body, leaving me twenty years older and twenty kilos heavier. I was racing with all my might, but it felt like I was running in place. Fear that they were still chasing me and would eventually catch up not only stiffened me, it flooded me with lead. Panic overwhelmed me, and panic enforces a lack of rhythm, unintentional syncopation banging inside your head with a beat of heart trying to keep up with the effort of the whole organism, with the rapid spurt that sometimes saves the weaker from an attacking predator. Blood in my mouth which was not blood but a taste of exhaustion, clogged my nose and ears. On the horizon loomed the outline of Hucisko Street, getting closer and closer with its lamps and their salvific light – evil prefers to lurk in darkness and to attack from darkness. In the bright current of the street I almost reached, I saw a lean figure. I hesitated for a moment but didn’t stop, because I knew too well I that what I had behind my back was way worse than this person before me. “They’re not chasing you!” a voice called in my direction.
I passed a young boy, slowing down a little bit, as I was out of breath. “They stayed there,” he said reassuringly, but I didn’t come to a halt, as I was too scared. “Thanks,” I gasped out. And then, bitterly: “Fuck me, what assholes.” I ran towards the intersection of Hucisko and 3 Maja Street. When I reached the bank, I started to walk, as I was totally drained. I was trembling, nervously glancing over my shoulder. I couldn’t control this tremble. Only when I made my way through the parking lot, which looks exactly the same as it used to look back then, only when I hid in the seclusion of Górka Street, which looks exactly the same today as it used to look back then, and only when I entered the flat I was renting together with Iwona – only then did I calm down. And only then did I notice that the giant had torn a piece of leather from my jacket the size of two male palms, and it wasn’t along the seam. He grabbed and he tore, a big hole memory has never patched up.
I don’t know if back in the day, twenty something years ago, this dark grove was called Czesław Niemen Square. What I know is that you gave it a wide berth. At least, I gave it a wide berth. And today? A tamed space, lit with led lamps at night. A nice corner in the middle of the city, with benches, gazebos, neatly trimmed lawns, beds of ornamental flowers and shrubs. The building which houses the Gdańsk City Council handsomely illuminated, not shrouded in darkness, like in the past – even though there was a student club Żak, where, with my head filled with a green cloud, I watched Oliver Stone’s The Doors. But that’s student days, prehistoric and long gone.
Yet I think to myself as I look at Czesław Niemen Square, walk across it, sit on its benches and savor its tranquility, I think to myself, in uncomplicated terms, that the past is not always bright and cheerful – just on the strength of its youth. Also, it’s far more pleasant to stroll along Podwale Grodzkie today, not tripping over uneven pavement slabs, because today these pavement slabs are smooth, not cracked like back then, not hooking onto your feet. And somehow it’s far more pleasant when there are more lamps which give light, and which are not being broken with stones, as it happened in the past, because it drives away the demons lurking in the dark. It also limits their proliferation.
And although I used to run way faster back then, as my running was younger, lighter and airier, it’s way better to run without the need to flee at the same time. It’s somehow nicer to run just for the pure pleasure of running. And I think to myself, in clichéd, dégagé terms, as I watch today’s Gdańsk, more and more glowing, I think to myself that it’s good when fear belongs to the past, not to the present. Better yet, when the present inspires well-founded hope for a better future. Then it’s easier for a man, who becomes older with every day, and with every step, to run towards this whole ageing thing, or rather – for lack of vitality – to walk, to stroll. And even if this man runs, walks or strolls uphill, or climbs up his Górka Street with more and more difficulty, he somehow stays young when surrounded by light, not by the dark.
translated by Zofia Szachnowska-Olesiejuk
