Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Krzysztof Varga
factories in industrial cities; I was pining for articles on Dutch art, but all
I came across was the most everyday graffiti. Moments of tranquillity came
to me in bright ice-cream parlours, where I blithely spent small sums of
money on such highly promising names as straciatella, tiramisu or
zabaglione. All too often, however, I came away feeling disappointed. My
appointment was based on a sense of disappointment, if I may make such
a simple pun, but perhaps I can allow myself to, for surely I deserved
something for what I had lost, as each evening I waited hopefully for the
next day to dawn, only to confirm with stunning regularity that none of
them ever brought any change.
Following in the footsteps of people who collect side-arms and valuable
coins, I collected ice cream flavours and consistencies, storing them
in my taste buds’ trusty memory, just as you store priceless computer files
on your hard drive. Just like the people who find lost old masters or crumbling
manuscripts by poets killed in the war in forgotten attics and buried
cellars, I stumbled upon places where ice cream was sold in scoops
and avoided ice cream on a stick (I do have some principles), even the
chocolate-coated ones with grated peanut stuck to them. I was a refined
gourmet and at the same time a dispassionate professional who harnesses
his sense of good taste to slave labour, telling it to forget about pleasure. I
got to know the city’s ice-cream parlour topography, I knew where the
best classically elegant vanilla and chocolate flavoured ice cream was, and
where it was worth trying extravaganzas with names like something out
of a kitsch film about romance in the tropics. In search of new attractions
I even went into exclusive restaurants, whose pretentiousness alternately
grated on me or sent me into fits of silent amusement. But it was actually
in those ghastly places that I would find new wonders with names as overthe-top
as the décor, like »A Breath of Summer« »A Night in Tahiti«, »Fruity
Frenzy«, »Arabian Nights« or »Midsummer Night’s Dream«, and with
flavours that simply cannot be put into words, for how can something be
described when nothing like it really exists?
My tongue became familiar with the texture of ice cream, its non-durable,
milky-fruity substance; I knew that in this particular parlour the
strawberry was soft like whipped cream, but the cherry both looked and
tasted more like the sort of congealed blood I had so often swallowed as
it poured from my nose in childhood, real blood (that sounds disturbing),
but liberally diluted with water (which if it doesn’t amuse you, calms
you down at least). I never found the love of my life round the corner, or
fell into the arms of any long-lost friends, I never ran into my destiny – all
I came up against was ice-cream parlours. I knew that in the next one the
ice cream called Malaga would taste like cold cappuccino out of a carton
flavoured with rum, and the one called Sultan was bound to remind me
of brandy cappuccino from the same chemicals factory making ersatz
flavours. In another place the banana ice melted too quickly, before the
tip of an impatient tongue could get to it, and all that would remain of its
flavour for longer than a second was a reminder of children’s toothpaste,
just as mint ice cream brought a similar specific taste from adolescence
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