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The Pilgrim of Łódź

Ł Rachel says—said—the lowercase Polish ł looks like a funambulist, balance-pole angled exaggeratedly, tightrope invisible beneath the walker’s feet. Funambulist. Her word. But the pole is too short. The figure, somehow, too perpendicular (ł), too secure. She sees correction, balance. I see error, nullification. Its pronunciation, according to A New Polish Grammar 1 by Joseph Andrew Teslar, “should present no real difficulty to the English pupil . . . the majority of Poles nowadays pronounce this sound with the lips, exactly like the English w.”2 Useful drawings display the exact placement of the tongue. We practiced: ła-la—łu-lu—ło-lo—łe-le—łi-li . . . We’d refill our glasses with wódka and laugh nonsensically at our lips’ and tongues’ machinations. Łatwo, she said, her lips, tongue, perfect. It is easy. But I was a poor learner. Later, jetlagged, incoherent, I walked to her across the room, one foot directly in front of the other, my balance-pole angled exaggeratedly, tightrope invisible beneath my feet, and fell finally into the net of her arms. We should not be like this, here, she said, holding in her laughter, holding in her tears. She spun the spent cubes in her glass and looked around the room, looked into these hotel walls, as if she could see beyond them to the dark streets of Łódź. But by then we had to drink, we had no choice. Our dissolution had already begun. Further examples follow.