Keep on Losing

Killing the Second DogBy Marek HlaskoTranslated by Tomasz MirkowiczNew Vessel PressDuring World War ll, Poland found itself caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, two regimes intent on genocide and together responsible for the murder of over a quarter of the country's inhabitants. Like this year's Nobel Prize winner, French author Patrick Modiano (The Search Warrant, 1997), Marek Hlasko grew up intimate with the war's residual atrocities, and they colored the foundation of his writing. His noir gem, the semi-autobiographical Killing the Second Dog (published in 1965, first translated into English by Tomasz Mirkowicz in 1990), has just been reissued by New Vessel Press.Early in life, Hlasko began honing his persona as the outsider, the nonconformist, and one who was “misunderstood.” His craving to do so came from his parent's early divorce, moving, even being small for his age. However, earlier records of his life were supposedly destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising, and Hlasko himself admitted to embellishing his past. Nothing can be proven except through the failing memories of family and friends, who for reasons of their own saw him in a forgiving light. Those Hlasko bullied did not.By 1952, he'd established a relationship with the Polish Literary Association and in 1953, was awarded a three month scholarship. Finally, he felt like he belonged. He embraced the literary community and it loved him back, endorsing his bleak, working-class narratives and celebrating his rise as the most gifted writer of his generation. Unfortunately, the PLA also ignored his lack of education, uncontrollable behavior and escalating alcoholism.Though Hlasko did write about his life in Beautiful Twentysomethings (1966), much of his earlier fiction can also be viewed as autobiographical (The Graveyard, published in Paris in 1958, ostracized him from Poland for the rest of his life). Killing the Second Dog centers on two Polish con-men, Robert and Jacob, who arrive in Tel Aviv intending to con rich women (in this case an American widow with a young son) out of their money. Robert is the artist, the scriptwriter, and the director. Jacob is the follower, the actor, the aging Lothario who just might be getting too old for the game.Jacob guides us through this particular con, and begins questioning his and Robert's lifestyle and the consequences of their actions. But not enough to change, as we learn in a passage raw with pitch-black philosophizing:

I remembered reading in some book that man is but the shadow of the dream, but I couldn't think of the book's title or the name of the author. I don't know who had dropped that line on me or at what point in his life the author had written it. Was it while he was gazing at the dying flame of a candle, or watching a dog with a bone in its jaws, its eyes shining with fearful ecstasy? Or maybe it was the voice of God that had suddenly rumbled inside him and made him mutter those words while staring wide-eyed at the people around him, certain all of a sudden that he would not disappear without a trace when he reached the end of the road. And maybe it seemed to the people around him they had been allowed to glimpse some wonderful light that would never shine again. It must have been a glorious moment and I can only thank God I wasn't present, since most likely I would have added a few words and spoiled the whole show. That's the way I am. And then what would have happened to the light? But I don't like light. I like the darkness, which frees us from our faces and the shadows we cast.

Robert, on the other hand, enjoys planning the cons, and upon auspiciously meeting Jacob in jail years before, immediately saw how to make money utilizing both of their talents as well as his love for a certain playwright:

Look, it's like with Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays shouldn't be performed. You just have to know how to say the lines. The worst thing is everybody insists on performing Shakespeare; it makes me want to puke. How can you perform a scene like the one where Hamlet and Ophelia's brother quarrel by the grave? Olivier had this brilliant idea how to perform Shakespeare, so he turned his plays into theater. Shakespeare is life, not theatre.

Robert chooses his cast carefully, including a seedy hotel clerk, a bouncer who reluctantly finances the delusion, and a hunchback who sells rubs on his back for good luck (and romps in the sack). The set Robert chooses for his play may be in a different locale each time, but the act is the same: close proximity to a wealthy middle-aged widow. This time, she's lonely and just a balcony away. Robert has Jacob portray himself as an educated man who will be forced to take a dangerous job in order to pay his creditors, a man close to the edge and so ruthless that he'd shoot his own dog. Naturally, the women whom Robert selects never shy away from, emotionally or financially, the challenge of offering Jacob redemption. Here, Hlasko projects both cynicism and hope against Robert's latest mark:

She didn't look too bad; she was one of those women who got a late start in life, and her face was still young and bright. I like women with bright, innocent- looking faces like that, faces that have a nun-like air about them. These are the only faces that provide the emotions and the element of surprise that make life bearable. And that was exactly her appeal. When you wake up in the middle of the night and the cogs of your brain start turning and throttling your heart, and it's almost dawn and you know you won't be able to fall asleep again, you can screen yourself from sadness and anger with the image of a face like that. I could use her face the way a child brings up his hand to shut out the view of something he's afraid of.

This time, Jacob seems to have a change of heart; or perhaps, he's fed up with the game. He plays his part to perfection but then, right before the closing scene, he admits to the woman that she's about to be conned. This act of valor backfires when she insists on giving him the money, anticipating that he will, at some point, follow her to America. "I love you, you know?” she said. "I'm glad I said it first. I really am. Did you hear me? I said it first. Will you remember that?"Killing The Second Dog isn't without comedic moments. Dark as it is, Hlasko opens the story with his con-men sharing a cab with a dying man who, once expired, has his face covered by a tabloid with a handsome actor on the cover. Then there's the inside group of con artists involved in the plan who aren't too bright; and Johnnie, the American's rambunctious seven year old son, is bent on the destruction of whatever and whomever he can target. Truly fascinating, however, is how both of the shady protagonists (as well as the youthful Johnnie) reflect specific components of Hlasko's own self-destructive psyche. Whether he created these characters like many authors do, subconsciously, or had bolder autobiographical intentions, is for his audience to decide.Telling is the fact that Jacob experiences a surge of conscience that is easier portrayed in fiction than carried out in a life of drinking and debauchery. Through Jacob, Hlasko offers an explanation (or perhaps, apology) for the bleakness of his writing by describing the kinds of atrocities that likely tainted his own childhood.

It would have been a relief to tell her everything. It would have been a relief just to tell her about the Jewish hiding next door until they were murdered by the Germans. A man, a woman and three children: when their bodies were lying on the ground, the Germans stopped some men walking by and ordered them to piss on the corpses; a German called me over and I pissed, too, shaking with fear, while the Germans photographed the living profaning the dead. And it would have been a relief to tell her one day when I was walking to school, the Germans blocked the street and made us watch them hang people from balconies; no one moved or screamed, not those forced to watch, not those who were being hung. But how was I to tell her all that? I didn't know.

After Poland denied him reentry, Hlasko traveled the world as an exile, a nomad. He occasionally tried to return and was always firmly rejected. Becoming the lost soul he'd grown famous for depicting in fiction, he attempted suicide several times, followed by stays in psychiatric clinics. He then went to America and used his friendship with director Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, 1968) to get work writing screenplays. Unfortunately, Hlasko sabotaged his career by having an affair with the wife of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) director Nicholas Ray. That actor James Dean, to whom Hlasko bore an uncanny resemblance, made his legend in the film speaks brazenly to Hlasko's obsession with being an outcast. Or, as Jacob asks Robert, “do you know what a loser is? It's a guy who keeps on losing.”For over twenty years neither Hlasko nor his work could touch Polish soil; not until he, like Jacob, grew weary of the game. He committed suicide in Wiesbaden, Germany at the age of thirty-five. As with most of his conflicting personal narrative, some people clung to the belief that he was murdered. Hlasko would probably laugh at the controversy, considering it one last con. But there was no disputing the rough life he led, exacting its mental and physical toll. Unlike other compatriots, though, he left a small yet powerful body of work, establishing him as a brilliant author and securing the respect he desperately coveted. More importantly, Poland finally welcomed her son home and buried him in Warsaw. Then again,

if you close your eyes, you can improve on anybody's life...if you don't like this ending, I can make up a different one: he let a monkey jump on his back and can still be seen from time to time in the company of leprous beggars. A true Hollywood ending.

____Carole Shepherd is a painter and freelance writer living in Boston.