Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski Page 0,62

They smiled at me and followed my lead, all drinking too. We sat around looking at each other, Hania rubbing my hand across the table, giggling. You held her hand, and Maksio’s hand. We all took each other’s hands and formed a chain. And moments later – or was it more than that – we were all sitting on the couches, spread out, joyous. My body was weightless. There was nothing on my mind, nothing at all; it was so light it floated. I saw you sitting near me and all I felt was love. I closed my eyes and saw fields, and flowers and the lake, the lake from that summer, and everything was there for me, only for me, and I loved myself – all of it, every atom – like I never had before. The music that was playing was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Every word of it – it was Serge Gainsbourg singing in French – I understood. It carried messages I had never expected were there. And we danced. You and me, Hania and you, me and her. Agata and Maksio. All of us together.

I was warm, so warm. The fire was burning, heat enveloped us, and we started to undress, dreamlike, entranced. Looking at each other, like children, without a trace of shame. One by one, clothes fell to the ground – jeans and skirts and shirts and blouses, socks and pants. Until we were all naked, the air on our white bodies, the night around our pale skin. We were an army of erotic ghosts. And we were all beautiful. Hania and Agata with their dark triangles between their thighs and their breasts like overripe fruit, Agata rounder and softer than Hania, whose skin was translucent, blindingly white, a Venus and a nymph. Maksio, his fleshy body like Samson, a colossus, his penis massive like a bull’s, his chest hairy and broad like a drum. But you were the most beautiful of them all. Your body was made of marble and absorbed the light of the moon.

Agata opened the veranda and we ran outside, like children on midsummer night. We didn’t feel the cold, only the embrace of the night air on our skin. It was like swimming, dipping into the air. Our arms outstretched, reaching for the moon.

‘Let’s play hide-and-seek!’ cried Hania, taking a cloth from the garden table, blindfolding Maksio. We turned him around and around, our fingers on his waist and hips, his penis swinging along with the turns, our hands slapping his backside.

‘Count to thirty!’

We ran into the garden, into the forest. The girls in one direction, you and I in another. Grass and twigs tickled our feet.

‘You can take off your blindfold now!’ Hania’s voice called from far away.

You and I behind a tree, somewhere by the edge of the forest. Our hands on the bark, beginning to freeze, and then finding warmth, our arms around each other. Our bodies formed one, protecting each other from the cold, perfect in the night. We kissed. You were mine. I realised then that this was the only thing that counted. Nothing else had ever existed. Just our lips and hips and sighs. I fell into different galaxies through you, your mouth a porthole to a better universe, and then the cracking of twigs behind us and there was Maksio, standing naked a couple of metres away, looking at us with his mouth wide open. His eyes dilated, his body frozen.

I could sense a quiver of fear run through your body. You tried to say something, but Maksio, completely out of nowhere, started to laugh. He laughed out loud like a crazed bear. It seemed like his laughter would bring the forest down, make the pines shed their needles.

Your face lightened up suddenly, and you laughed too. ‘It was a joke!’ you cried, concentrating, looking at him. ‘Ludwik challenged me. I lost a bet.’

Maksio stopped laughing, his eyes flickering between you and me.

The girls emerged from behind the trees. ‘What happened?’ asked Agata. ‘Why were you laughing?’

Maksio turned around to them and started walking away. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘A hallucination. I won.’

We walked back to the veranda, and I couldn’t look at you, only at the ground, not sure what had just happened. I was hot. I was burning. I was entirely aflame. Then it was the next round, and my turn to be blindfolded. I laughed and laughed as they spun me, despite myself, and I counted