Things to Do in Warsaw When You’re Dead
“You’re not a man, Jimmy, you’re a waltz.”
–Christopher Walken in “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.”
One of the funniest movie lines I’ve ever heard wasn’t even in a movie. Instead it was said by a tardy theatre-goer who walked in after “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” started and tried to find his friends.
“Pavel,” he said in a stage whisper loud enough to be heard two counties away.
In response, four men from opposite sides of the theatre all said, “Yes.”
The audience roared.
I wouldn’t normally consider a movie the high point of a visit, but “Things to Do in Denver” isn’t a normal film and Warsaw isn’t the most exciting city in the world.
Although it was in and out of US theaters within a month of my departure, “Things to Do in Denver” is a fun movie because it has a great cast, the dialogue is brilliant and the casting is so against type that I was off-balance from the start. After all, who would expect action hero actor Treat Williams to play a violence-prone, mentally unbalanced ex-convict with a hair trigger mechanism or Christopher Lloyd, Jim from “Taxi” to portray a solemn, dignified former convict who works in an adult theatre and has a skin condition that causes him to lose body parts? Then there’s the pair of mobsters who have been studying fashion and dictionary words in their off time.
Warsaw Ghetto Memorial.
Warsaw suffers from the same disease as Singapore: “There’s no there there.” And the cause is almost the same in both cities: rebuilding. In Singapore, the constant razing of the old and raising up of the new everywhere but the city’s small colonial district made me feel I was visiting a city with no past.
Although Singapore’s government adopted the strategy of constantly rebuilding the burg by choice, Warsaw’s officials did it out of necessity: the entire city was leveled by the Nazis during World War II and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. The Jewish Quarter was the first victim of “the German beast” after the April 1943 Ghetto Uprising when a small group of Jews’ few weapons held Nazis at bay for more than a month. The rest of the ghetto fell victim to the German wrecking ball after a 63-day uprising in which Poles tried to free the city and set up their own government before the Russian Army could liberate it. In retaliation, the Germans spent the next three months systematically demolishing the city.
The restoration job is brilliant, especially in the Old City. It’s perfect, without a brick out of place. Perhaps, too perfect. For some reason, it doesn’t ring true. The new Old City has all the detail work in its architecture you’d expect to find in an Old City: the requisite cobblestone streets and narrow alleys leading into courtyards. But it’s not right. Maybe the old is too new. Many of the artists I met at a party in the city said their hometown had no soul. One even told me if I wanted to see real Poland I should go to Krakow.
“Krakow, now there’s a city,” he said.
The city’s apparent lack of substance didn’t keep me from having amusing experiences, however.
Shortly after I arrived, for example, I wandered to the Old City in the rain and heard a little old man playing an accordion. Hoping to tape him without being too obvious about it, I turned on my tape recorder and slipped it into the pocket of my raincoat. Since I was the only person on the street he asked where I was from. Once I told him he played “We Shall Overcome” — and not just the popular verses. He played lyrics I’d never even heard of. He also encouraged me to sing along. I resisted at first, but eventually joined in. Listening to the tape later, I realized what an appropriate song choice he’d made. Anyone who’d heard it would be overcome or need to overcome it.
Whenever I visited a major city, I always went to the main synagogue and attended services. I did it in Latvia where I was invited to dinner and in Vilnius where I was panhandled inside the synagogue. Warsaw was no exception. Such synagogue visits were problematic because I really didn’t know what the hell was going on around me.
Well, praying of course, but beyond that I wasn’t educated enough to find my way around a prayer book that didn’t have English in it. This was not a problem in Singapore and Hong Kong where there were half Hebrew, half-English prayer books. The prayer books in Warsaw had translations too, but they were in Polish. I may know enough Hebrew to sound out words and find my place when I’m on the right page, but I don’t know how to find the right page if I’m not already there. Although I usually just sit through services meditating rather than looking for the right page, this time I didn’t even bother.
Services led to lunch with expats and fellow travelers. And the lunchtime discussion prompted Michael, a Warsaw born-U.S. citizen who was in attending a telecommunications standards conference, to invite us to a Yugoslavian pig roast and birthday party. The invitation confused me briefly because I wasn’t sure if Yugoslavian pigs were better than regular pigs (the European answer to smoked Kentucky ham, for example) or if the method of grilling was what made it a Yugoslavian barbecue. I was also puzzled why the partygoers would celebrate the pig’s birthday by eating it. There was also the irony of being invited to a pork roast by a Jew, but by this point in the trip, the unconventionality of it escaped me completely.
A woman literature student from Chicago and I accepted the invitation and ended up in the loft apartment where Michael was staying during his brief vacation following the conference. Considering that it was an artist’s loft, I wasn’t too surprised by the décor. There was the requisite black cloth over the windows along with a bed, kitchen, shower and toilet all in the same room plus a sculpture of a leg with an ashtray on top of it and a female torso with light sockets sticking out of it.
The roasted pig wasn’t bad, really. What disturbed me was liking the mustard/ketchup on the salad side dish better than the salad dressing, even though the condiment mixture was for the pork. Once we ate, the group sat out in the increasingly cold outdoors–waiting for what I’m not sure–until 9:30, when someone announced it was time to go to the birthday party. No one seemed to know whose party it was or where it was, but they all shook hands and hugged like long lost friends once we arrived. Then, the band played and we went inside where it was warmer and the band’s lead singer sang a song with almost all of the lyrics in Polish except for one English phrase repeated, louder each time: “I love you. I Love You! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!“
During the band’s break the singer grilled me on my background. Was I American? Was I Jewish? Did I believe Poland was a sovereign nation? If Poland was a sovereign nation, shouldn’t it be able to do whatever it wanted with land inside its borders? And why did America feel it had a right to tell Poland what it could do with its own land?
I would say the direction of the conversation puzzled me, but that would suggest it was a polite discussion. It was anything but. He was busting my chops over the continuing controversy on whether Poland should develop the land surrounding Auschwitz, one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. The issue first flared up over the location of a convent filled with Carmelite nuns. It was in the news again during my trip because the Polish government had approved plans to develop a shopping center nearby. As far as I knew, America had never expressed any official disapproval of the move. I’m sure the Jewish community had, but I’ve never considered this country’s Jewish leaders to speak for America. Hell, there have been times when I’ve doubted whether the country’s Jewish officials reflected the attitudes of the American Jewish community.
The anger of the singer and his fellow Poles over the issue made no sense. Anyone who knows Polish history is aware the Nazis sent many of the country’s leading political dissidents to Auschwitz where they were to be worked to death or gassed. In addition, Poles were next on Hitler’s extermination list after the Jews. Consequently, I remain baffled why they’d want to trivialize the country’s brush with extinction by building a mall nearby. What would be next? A housing development called Auschwitz Estates? (Possibly with the motto, “If you died here, you’d be home by now”?)
I didn’t share my feelings with the singer out of fear things might turn ugly. Fortunately, I was able to stall until the band’s break was finally over and the strange conversation ended. It was the only time any Pole ever came close to hassling me over my religion. The tolerance of my Judaism (I never volunteered the information, but I never lied when asked, either.) also caught me by surprise because Poles have a reputation for anti-Semitism. It was explained to me this way: Apparently, Poles don’t believe even native Jews are real Poles because they’re Jewish. Under this way of thinking it is possible to be Catholic and a countryman because all Poles are Catholic, not Jewish.
About this time I met Maurina. Not typically my type, an attractive woman in her 20’s, but most likely too young with far more make-up than I usually like. Way too much make-up, but there was a lot of contact and mutual interest. As the night wore on I realized I wanted this woman in a way I’ve never wanted a woman before. I didn’t want to marry her, date her or spend several weeks in Warsaw with her. No, I wanted to bed her, make mad, passionate love, have earth-shaking sex or just a good fuck.
A one night stand.
The feeling surprised me because I’ve never thought myself capable of a one-nighter. As a rule, I’ve always needed to know someone before all the parts that needed to respond would. But not tonight. I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble ripping off her clothes and going at it right on the crowded dance floor.
It was a belated sexual awakening. During the early part of the trip I found myself staring at women’s’ chests even though I’ve never considered myself a chest man and now I had discovered serious hard core lust and I wasn’t embarrassed at all. It was definitely a testosterone thing. Where earlier in the trip I was chagrinned to even think about going out of my way to chase a woman, now I was unapologetic. I was horny, I wanted to get in her pants and it was two in the morning, then three and I was still on the case when I usually would have given up and gone home. But then I got worried.
It wasn’t a fit of guilty conscience. Even though I had mastered the art of guilt without sex, what slowed me down was a lack of condoms and the realization that I didn’t know these people that well. The condom problem was fixable, but the other problem was far more pressing. Since this guy I barely knew invited me to a party, who’s to say he wasn’t setting me up? I would have been quite a target. They could attack me when I got back to her place and take everything while I was out cold. Or they could steal my money while we were in bed. There’s no shortage of stories about tourists being rolled, and I didn’t want to be another member of the dumb victim’s club. The concerns
cooled my ardor and slowed me somewhat, but I was still chasing her when the bar closed at 4 a.m., but I went home by myself at 5.
It had been a long time since I had slept with (or not slept with) a woman, but it wasn’t just sheer desperation that fueled the chase because there was another good looking woman who kept coming on to me, hanging on me and telling me that she loved me, but I just wasn’t interested. I only had eyes for Maurina.
I realized I was changing as I traveled and not always in ways I liked, but it was part of growing up. And that was a pretty weird thing for a 32 year-old man to discover.
It wasn’t the discovery I made during my time in Warsaw, however. A trip to the city’s Jewish cemetery made me think of my mortality and my attitudes about myself. After seeing all the untended, overgrown graves (there just aren’t enough Jews or enough money left to take care of them all), I resolved to be a good man so that people would remember me after I’m gone and possibly take care of my grave. That way I would know I was remembered and that I had left a mark on the planet.
Just as important, I thought about how I would become a better person. One of the keys was to let go of the past. All my life there had been so many ghosts haunting me, so many mistakes dogging me, so many botched relationships that I haven’t allowed myself to live down. It was odd, coming as it did the night after I tried to have a one-night stand. I still don’t know how or why, but I realized that my old failed relationships were festering sores that wouldn’t go away because I kept scratching at the memories so they never scabbed over and heeled.
For me, the answer appeared to be repeating three statements each time the bad memories cropped back up: I’m a handsome man, I’m a good man, and I have made mistakes in the past, but they have made me a better person. I had to say it in that order. I didn’t know what it was about that order that worked, it just did. It didn’t undo the damage I had done, it didn’t make up for my treating a few ex-girlfriends badly. It also didn’t make up for all the women I had allowed to mistreat me because I just didn’t get it at the time, but it stopped me from continuing to beat myself up.
And that’s a good thing.