Swimming in the Dark

By Tomasz Jedrowski, 2021

Although the story line feels a bit contrived, this novel is interesting for its realistic details about a young man growing up gay in 1980s Poland.

The protagonist Ludwik grows up with his mother and his granny in a small post-war apartment, barely getting by on his mom’s government salary. They listen to Radio Free Europe and she tells him how the Russians, now allies, murdered Poles in the Second World War. The Soviet Palace of Culture dominates the grey skyline. He knows the regime is corrupt and repressive, but does not question it as a youth.

Ludwik has boyhood crushes on other boys, and meets the handsome and accomplished Janusz at a farm work camp when he finishes high school. They fall in love, but Ludwik wants to escape the repressive state, while Janusz believes that accepting the compromises is worthwhile because the state has lifted the lives of poor working people. And he believes he can rise within the system. Janusz gets a job censoring newspapers and is satisfied. Ludwik can’t get behind anything, and studies for his doctorate. They see each other only in secret.

Janusz introduces Ludwik to some powerful, wealthy Poles, and Ludwik sees first-hand the corruption in the Polish government. Ludwik is drawn to the underground anti-government movement, but as he goes through college, he makes more compromises. When his landlady becomes sick and cannot get the care she needs in the public health system, he turns to his powerful new friends. Desperate to get a visa to America, he confesses his sexuality and finds that his friends’ worldly experience has made them more accepting than the broader Polish society.

The inevitable conflict with Janusz plays out. They hide their sexuality because Janusz knows it would block his bureaucratic future. Ludwik pleads with Janusz to leave with him, but Janusz has too much to lose. In parts of the novel, Ludwik addresses Janusz from America, relishing the freedom while expressing his loneliness. In spite of the dark tone of the novel, it ends on a somewhat more hopeful note in America.

The novel, set in the 1970s and ’80s – that is, before the revolutionary Solidarnosz movement – sets the freedom of America as a contrast to the repressive Polish soviet regime. However, there is no detail about Ludwik’s new life in New York. It exists only as a vague beacon of freedom, with no reality to it. This and the loneliness Ludwik feels in the USA tempers its attractiveness. Knowing the opening of Polish politics and society that are to follow shortly after the novel ends makes me think that there might be a more hopeful outcome in Poland. Certainly, the deep conservatism of Polish society – and its recent homophobic government – would not make an easy queer life in Poland. But at moments in the novel, Ludwik is deeply connected to Poland, as when he stops into a village church and feels spiritually united with the singing crowd.

The storyline with its lovers at cross purposes and its noble compromises feels in places like a set up. Ludwik seems rather naïve for someone who grew up in a corrupt system. Janusz is a bit of a straw puppet, and other characters, like the professor who explains how Ludwik needs to get an influential sponsor, don’t seem quite believable.

In spite of its weaknesses, I did find the novel compelling and revealing. It’s the first story of growing up gay in the soviet system that I’ve come across, and it’s interesting to see the same themes show up as in western coming out stories – the youthful crushes, the attachment to revealing books, the struggles to overcome social pressures while attempting to build a relationship. The specific differences in the repressive and corrupt challenges are there, but the story is familiar. (And perhaps this story is more a western one than a Polish one as its author was born in Germany to Polish parents, and educated in England and France.) It’s an interesting and relatable story for queer readers.