Skyliner

Unfortunately, lately I had spent less time at home, and during the day I was almost never there. 

Well after ten one night, as soon as I returned there was a knock on my door. I thought that it was probably that idiot Tufta and that they messed something up with the army and with this whole EXTRA term. 

When I opened the door, stood there not Tufta, but Ciążyński, the director of the pool, whom I knew well and who every evening, returning from work, passed my house. 

“I have for you very unfortunate news,” he began. “Last night there was a break-in to our locker room… they broke in to and cleaned out your locker as well. The thieves had, I think, a lot of time, because as they stole the clothing in the lockers, they were so courteous that when they hit upon documents, they left them. I thought you would come today, but as it were when you didn’t come, I decided to come by myself and drop them off on the way.” 

“What?” I asked. 

“Only this lay on your shelf,” and he handed me my military booklet, which from the time of the assentierung calmly rested in the right pocket of my General Douglas MacArthur shirt, closed in my pool locker, to which entry was blocked by two large locks. 

“Tell me, better, bitch, how did you arrange this for yourself?” 

“What?” I naively asked, after which I with repugnance opened and for the first time looked into the military booklet, the whole time having absolutely no idea what could be in there. 

I read the note written inside: TALENTED TO NON-MILITARY SERVICE, RESERVE INACTIVE, and two signatures, the colonel’s and the major’s, the round seal of the Regional Army Commission and the date, from two months ago, of the assentierung. 

“What does this mean?” I asked Ciążyński. 

“It means, bitch, practically no military service applies to you.” 

Dear God, and I had to find this out now! 

I could not gather myself after all this at all and if that weren’t enough, at ten to eleven the phone rang. 

When I picked it up, I almost followed the footsteps of the unforgettable Karl during the assentierung. 

On the telephone was the patron saint of the miners. She said that for some time she was not around and that just today she had returned. She asked if we could see each other tomorrow, because she had for me even some very important matter. 

Trying with the timbre of my voice to imitate velvet, I said I would meet her wherever and whenever she wanted. She responded that before noon she would be in the museum because she had to meet with some friend of hers, an art historian. 

“From the back a high school, from the front a museum,” I interrupted like an idiot. 

“Oh no, my friend Bozena is a beautiful young woman,” laughed the patron saint of the miners as she corrected me. 

“I can wait for you in the front at one,” she proposed 

“OK.” 

“In that case, until tomorrow.” She hung up. 

It became very hot and humid for me. 

From this double excitement I got a kind of monkey brain. Despite that, the evening was rather cold. I opened wide the door of my terrace. 

Eleven o’clock came and I did something which I hadn’t ever done before, or since, but which I always considered the epitome of refined trashiness. 

From this monkey brain, from this double joy, from the radio, which stood at the very edge of the table, almost at the terrace, punctually at eleven in the evening at full blast I played Charlie Barnet’s SKYLINER—the signal of the station AMERICAN FORCES IN EUROPE, the melody a symbol for me and those like me of America, a symbol like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building or Hollywood, the America which we so loved and of which we so dreamed, which I was beginning to comprehend, unfortunately began to recede from me, temporarily, for a month, a year, three, five, ten, twenty or even thirty. 

Nevertheless SKYLINER rang with the wonderful sound of my America, the sound so foreign in any one of so many consecutive sad Stalinist nights, nights ruled by the same criminalistic and dire mustachioed sponsor who had already twenty months ago happily swelled the ranks of angels. 

SKYLINER rang to the last bar of its swing perfection and for three minutes and four seconds as a beautiful colored rainbow it extended itself over this wondrous town of my youth.