Swimming in the Dark by Tomask Jedrowski

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THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

 

 

This is a powerful narrative, a felt the weight of the unreconciled relationships within it, although only a little over two hundred pages I found I had to read it over a number of days to prevent the sorrow it brought up within me becoming overwhelming, it left me punch drunk.

Set in 1980s Poland the context of a creaking Communist regime heightens some of the challenges of finding an identity as a gay man, but within the particularity of this story there are many themes that were all too familiar.

What Jedrowski writes about Giovanni’s Room can also be said of his own work “If felt as if the words and the thoughts of the narrator – despite their agony, despite their pain – healed some of my agony and my pain, simply by existing.” (p51)

Ludwik as narrator addresses his recollections to “you”, Janusz, and this had the effect of drawing me as reader into the heart of it. For much of the Janusz is not a sympathetic character, Ludwik is hurting and it is Janusz’s actions (and inactions) that are the, immediate, cause of that pain so it is uncomfortable to find yourself, as reader, cast in that role.

As they negotiate their relationship…

...The water pipes churned with a low thud, and I felt a heaviness settle over me.

“And you want to live like that, Janusz, in fear?”

You laughed, your confidence in place again. “I’m not afraid. We just need to mind our own business. Avoid risks, be smart. As long as we do that, we’ll be fine. Don’t you think?”

I shrugged, feeling defeated. (p108)

It is a theme that was in Proud of Me by Sarah Hagger-Holt – we move from holding our sexuality as a secret to holding it privately yet we are still not really living openly – at different levels we edit our lives for public consumption, this is not a uniquely LGBT+ exercise by any means – but I caught myself just this week talking to a colleague at work without giving the gender of my partner, I have a “coffee roulette” in a couple of weeks with someone from another part of the organisation and I don’t know if I will “come out” to them. It is an oppressive drip-drip-drip, that place at the back of your mind that is held ready to deal with a negative reaction.

The power of the state to discriminate is expressed in chilling terms “One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.” (p81) – anytime we allow a division between those that have rights and those that do not have rights we open the door to oppression – it becomes the moment we look upon two human beings and strip one of dignity.

The passage towards the end of the book (p203) when Ludwik has applied for a passport and is pressured to disclosure names of other homosexuals is so corrosive – someone else has given his name – do we see that as an act of betrayal, Ludwik doesn’t appear to blame the individual – it is not the individual but the system that has betrayed him, but there must be some role for personal responsibility and moral courage in the face of oppression even if we chose to judge kindly those faced with impossible decisions.

Janusz compromises with the state, and society, and marries Hania, meanwhile Ludwik leaves for America but needs Hania’s party connection to get his passport. It is a bitter moment, feels like Winston Smith giving in to Big Brother – whatever liberty Ludwik finds in America it is at the gift of the Party that he is escaping.

While earlier in the novel you are tempted to make lazy moral judgement between Janusz and Ludwik you can not do so by the end. So, Ludwik thinks kindly of Janusz “… the odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?” (p227)

That final question seems to be running through so much at the moment (I am half way through Matthew Todd’s Straight Jacket and it could so easily be a quote from him too) – it is the flip side of coin from “Its a Sin” which reminded us that too many gay men internalise a narrative that they deserved AIDS.