The Collected Stories

grippe, and I couldn’t wait for her. I had plenty of connections in Poland, but in such a catastrophe they are not worth a sniff of tobacco. Later I was told that the house where I lived was hit by a bomb and reduced to a pile of lime and bricks. I never heard from Manya again.
    “This Manya might have been considered an ordinary girl. She came from some little village in Greater Poland. When we met, we were both virgins. But no power and no treachery on my part could destroy the love between us. Somehow she knew of all my abominations and kept warning me that she would leave me, get married, and whatnot. But she came to me regularly every week—often more. The other women never spent the night in my room, but when Manya came she stayed. She was not particularly beautiful—dark, not tall, with black eyes. She had curly hair. In her village they called her Manya the Gypsy. She had all the antics of a gypsy. She told fortunes from cards and read palms. She believed in all kinds of witchcraft and superstitions. She even dressed like a gypsy in flowered skirts and shawls, wore large hoop earrings, and red beads around her neck. There was always a cigarette between her lips. She made a living as a salesgirl in a lingerie shop. The owners were an elderly couple without children, and Manya became almost a daughter to them. She was an excellent saleswoman. She could sew, embroider, and even learned how to make corsets. She managed the whole business. If she had been willing to steal, she could have had a fortune, but she was one hundred percent honest. Anyhow, the old people were going to leave her the store in their will. In later years, the old man had a liver ailment, so they traveled to Carlsbad, Marienbad, and to Piszczany. And they left everything with Manya. Why did she need to get married? What she needed was a man, and I was that man. This girl, who could barely read and write, was, in her way, very refined—especially in sex. In my life I had God knows how many women, but there was never one like Manya. She had her own caprices and peculiarities, and when I think about them I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sadism is sadism and masochism is masochism—are there names for all this nonsense? Each time we quarreled we were both terribly unhappy, and making peace was a great ceremony. She could cook fit for a king. When her bosses went to the spas, she cooked meals for me in their apartment. I used to say that her food had sex appeal, and there was some truth in it. This was her good side. The bad side was that Manya could never make peace with the idea that I had other women. She did everything she could to spoil my pleasure. By nature I am not a liar, but because of her I became one. Automatically. I didn’t have to invent lies—my tongue did it by itself, and I was often astonished at how clever and farsighted a tongue can be. It foresaw events and situations—a matter I realized only later. However, you cannot fool anybody for thirty years. Manya knew my habits and she never stopped spying on me; my telephone used to ring in the middle of the night. At the same time, my business with other women gave her a perverse enjoyment. Now and again I confessed to her and she would ask for details, call me the worst names, cry, laugh, and become wild. I often felt like an animal trainer—like one who puts his head in the mouth of a lion. I always knew that my successes with other women made sense only as long as Manya was in the background. If I had Manya, the Countess Potocka was a bargain. Without Manya, no conquest was worth a groschen.
    “It sometimes happened that I returned from one of my adventures, perhaps at an inn or a nobleman’s estate, and I would be with Manya that same night. She refreshed me and I would begin all over again as if nothing had happened. But as I grew older I began to worry that too much love might do me some damage. I am something of a hypochondriac. I read medical books and articles in the newspapers. I worried that I might be ruining my health. Once, when I returned completely exhausted and was to meet Manya, the thought ran through my mind: how good it would be if Manya would get her period and I would not have to spend the night with her. I called her and she said, ‘A funny thing happened, I got my holiday’—this is what she called it—‘in the middle of the month.’ ‘So you’ve turned into a miracle worker,’ I said to myself. But I remained skeptical about