His face is an unmade bedwhere ghosts wrestle

Podia ser outra coisa, mas é antes o relato cândido, directo
e tocante de uma relação que durou anos da vida de Jerzy Kosinski, até pouco tempo antes da sua morte. O texto é da autoria de Laurie Stieber, uma estudante de 24 anos que, mais do que um mentor literário, quis "tantalize the tantalizer". E conseguiu. Uma relação que espelha o seu local – Nova Iorque – e o seu tempo – o final dos anos 70 e o início dos anos 80 – num texto publicado na revista New York em Janeiro de 1999 (e depois incluído na edição de The Best American Essays 2001, edição Houghton Mifflin), 8 anos após o suicídio de Kosinski, e que termina assim:

"It's a few months before Jerzy died, and he and I are having dinner at a quaint Japanese restaurant a short walk from his 57th Street apartment. We haven't seen each other for a couple of years. Jerzy has a wife, and a lover, who is a singer from Poland. He tells me she has great promise here in America. I don't know if he is referring to her career as a singer or her career as his lover.
Jerzy and I are enjoying dinner together for the last time, but I don't realize it. His face is an unmade bed where ghosts wrestle. He is worn out. I am looking for a glimpse of the younger Jerzy, who inspired and dazzled. I don't find it.
Jerzy tells me he is losing his mind.
He says he cannot trust anything to be familiar. His lover's favorite restaurant. The name of her perfume. His talent and ability to write. He is a sitting duck for memory lapses, sometimes disoriented in his own environment of intellect and erotica. I try to shake him with humor.
'Are you telling me you forgot where to put it?'
'Put what?' he answers.
Dinner should be over. We've had enough to eat, but Jerzy is starving for something intangible and so he stalls. He avoids asking for the check and continues to draw circles in his cup of soy sauce with a chewed chopstick.
Outside, we linger beneath a lamppost. Jerzy looks better. The harsh light flatters his intensity. He kisses me on the lips rather than on both sides of my face, and he holds me much longer than expected. I have been forewarned."

E nós também.

PS.: I beg to differ, Vasco. Voyeurismo (intelectual or otherwise) é um jogo unívoco, predatório ou parasítico até. Isto é mais uma sala de espelhos que reflectem no espaço e no tempo: todos nos conseguimos rever aqui e, pessoalmente, dos textos que li sobre o JK, creio que este é um dos que mais o humaniza. Além disso, o estilo dela é muito semelhante ao dele, e de uma forma quase consciente: que mais bela homenagem poderia haver de uma ex-amante a um sátiro desiludido?
(PM)
Foto © 1992 Czeslaw A. Czaplinski
Excerto © 2007, New York Magazine Holdings LLC.