Swimming in the Dark

“So we’d sneak away without a word and imagine we were pirates riding through the city on our own. I felt both free and protected in his company.”

Beniek is Ludwik’s first crush and the first boy whom he feels attracted to. The attraction is not merely physical, however, as Ludwik enjoys his company and feels safe with Beniek. This demonstrates to Ludwik at a young age, even if he does not realize it, that he can have a meaningful relationship with another man beyond his sexuality.

“I was aware of wanting to see Beniek naked, surprised by the swiftness of this wish, and my heart leapt when he undressed. His body was solid and full of mysteries, white and flat and strong, like a man’s (or so I thought).”

As Ludwik’s relationship with Beniek goes on, his feelings of attraction become stronger and often surprise Ludwik. In this instance, the desire to see Beniek naked comes quickly to Ludwik and is a natural occurrence. Even Ludwik’s reaction to seeing him naked is natural, with his heart reacting. The naturalness of Ludwik’s desire suggests that the shame he feels later is unnatural, imposed on him by society’s prejudices.

“Did you ever have someone like that, someone that you loved in vain when you were younger? Did you ever feel something like my shame? I always assumed that you must have, that you can’t possibly have gone through life as carelessly as you make out.”

Throughout Swimming in the Dark, Ludwik compares his life to Janusz’s, often wondering how their lives are different. Ludwik’s formative experiences as a gay child surround his relationship with Beniek, and he wonders if Janusz is influenced by a similar experience. He wants to know if Janusz struggled with his sexuality growing up or always exuded confidence.

“It was she who’d taught me half of what I cared to know. She had a stack of under-the-counter books, which we read and discussed together.”

After Ludwik’s mother’s death, Ludwik does not have an outlet to discuss his disagreements with the government or a source of forbidden knowledge. When he attends university and meets Karolina, she becomes this person for him. Karolina supplies Ludwik with new ideas that help him expand his political conscience. Karolina also connects Ludwik to the LGBTQIA+ community. All these experiences deepen Ludwik’s sense of having a split identity.

“There was an exuberance about them that disturbed me deeply. It was their curling voices, the ‘darlings’ that padded their sentences, the movement of their hips as Donna Summer moaned ‘I Feel Love’ over hypnotic electric beats, a song I had loved and now berated myself for ever having liked. They threw one furtive glance at me and I felt see-through.”

Ludwik’s complicated relationship with his sexuality is tested when Karolina brings him to a gay bar. Ludwik immediately identifies the stereotypical qualities of the gay men around them, and it makes him uncomfortable to be surrounded by people who accept what he cannot. He even discovers that he has a similar interest in the song “I Feel Love” and berates himself for ever liking it. His shame separates him from the LGBTQIA+ community.

“Late some nights, when the growing unwanted desire stopped me from sleeping, I would yield to its current. I would let the hidden fantasies sweep me away, listen to their murmur, of the boys and their bodies, the hard forms of their whiteness, the smell of sweat and musk and skin.”

Though Ludwik does his best to hide and repress his sexuality, he cannot do it constantly or forever. Growing up, he often succumbs to his desire and lets it wash over him, enjoying the fantasies he believes are wrong. This is only an outlet, however, and in between these fantasies, he represses his desire.

“I never wanted to relapse, to come near the sordid temptation again. I never wanted to be like him. My greatest terror was ending up alone. Yet part of me was sure that’s how I would end up, and that it was the worst thing that could happen to someone.”

After meeting Marian in the park, Ludwik commits himself to not being gay and to never being with a man again. Marian convinces him that to be gay is to be alone, and Ludwik never wants to be alone. His relationship with his sexuality is therefore further damaged by the belief that gay men cannot live loving lives with partners in a repressive society.

“‘Ultimately, we’ve got to work with what we have. It’s as easy as that.’ You smiled and looked at me. ‘See it as a game—everyone knows the rules. And if you can’t change them, there’s no point in worrying.’”

Janusz and Ludwik often argue over topics related to communism and the government of Poland, with Ludwik disapproving of both and eventually wanting to leave. Janusz, on the other hand, is a supporter and hopes to stay and gain access to a good life. He believes in circumventing the rules for his own gain and even believes that this is a part of the system.

“And I moved into your circle. All the way to your waiting body and your calm, open face and the drops on your lips. Your arms closed around me. Hard. And then we were one single body floating in the lake, weightless, never touching the ground.”

At the lake, Ludwik has his first positive experience with another man and finds himself drawn in by the gravity of Janusz. They are free, floating in the water, and Ludwik is unable to resist Janusz’s strength and confidence. This power Janusz has influences Ludwik over the course of the novel, and this is just the first instance of many in which Ludwik is comfortable with him. The fact that this happens while swimming is significant, as swimming comes to symbolize freedom from repression and inhabiting his true identity to Ludwik.

“And every time I swam I experienced the same elation I’d felt the first time I stepped into the lake, devoid of a struggle, a feeling of weightlessness I hadn’t thought I could feel. During these days the shame inside me melted like a mint on my tongue, hardness releasing sweetness.”

Ludwik and Janusz’s trip is a fresh start for Ludwik as he realizes that he can have love with another man and that the privacy the lake offers allows him to live with Janusz without shame. He feels the shame that has lived with him for years dissipate, and this feeling is reflected by his feelings of freedom every time he swims. The association between swimming and freedom intensifies.

“I guess you believed what they told us in school, that the Soviets were our liberators. That they were the good ones. Our allies. Sometimes I wish I could have been as light as you. Our allies. Because I didn’t enjoy those nights in my mother’s room, those terrible truth-spills.”

Once again, Ludwik questions how different Janusz’s upbringing was from his own. While Ludwik learns the real history of WWII and Poland and the aftermath of the Soviet occupation, he suspects that Janusz only ever learned the approved Soviet version. He credits Janusz’s belief in the Party with belief in the Soviet version of history, and with a lack of knowledge on their true role as abusers. In contrast, Ludwik’s knowledge of the truth puts him at odds with the society he lives in.

“You lived in Praga, one of the few neighborhoods that had made it almost unscathed through the war, where the Russians had waited and watched the destruction of the city by the Germans, where they had looked on without firing a bullet as the Germans destroyed Wola. As they quietly and clearheadedly decimated the Old Town, the museums, the libraries, the archives, allowing a whole world to burn into oblivion.”

Janusz’s apartment and neighborhood are reflective of his political leanings and support for the Party that Ludwik opposes. He lives on the side of the city where the Russians watched the Nazis destroy the rest of the city. The Russians did not intervene and made no effort to help the people suffering so close by. Ludwik often thinks of the Party in a similar way, as if they enjoy life while watching the rest of the nation suffer.

“It was the first time I’d seen you after you’d started work, and you told me that your boss liked you. That he’d already given you texts to read: books awaiting permission to be published. It was your job to examine them, to find criticism of the Party or anything unsuitable for the public.”

Ludwik does not approve of Janusz’s job not only because it is an essential position in the Party’s pursuit of total control over the people but also because of his personal connection to books. Ludwik depends on books for an escape, and through books like Giovanni’s Room, he learns more about himself. He believes that Poland needs more books, with new and exciting ideas, and sees Janusz as one of the main hurdles to that.

“But most remarkable: the poster that hung above the tank, ‘Apocalypse Now’ in bloody red type, the new film by Coppola. For a moment the absurdity of it filled my throat, threatened to suffocate me. All these years they’d let us watch foreign films, allowing us glimpses of the world across the Wall, of freedoms we didn’t have. Did they really think we’d be still forever?”

As Ludwik watches Poland resist Soviet rule from the US, he is struck by how the allowance of Western media in Poland led to such uprisings. Even though the government censors media, any glimpses of the West, whether it be on the screen or the page, give the people an example of a different life, and Ludwik sees this as a crucial error by the Party.

“I think it was despair that killed her. Having done only things she didn’t believe in, she must have been dead inside for years before her body finally gave up too.”

Ludwik believes that his mother dies in part because of her inability to live out her true beliefs. Despite her many oppositional stances toward the Party, she never acts on them or publicly believes in them, turning her life into one long lie. He sees her as a victim of The Impact of Repressive Society on Personal Identity: Her sense of self was obliterated by the need to hide her true beliefs, leading to fatal despair.

“‘You need to hold on to what you have,’ she murmured, more to herself than to me, her veiny hands clasped around a cup of tea. ‘You never know when you’ll lose what you hold dearest.’”

Pani Kolecka’s advice to Ludwik foreshadows his split from Janusz. Pani Kolecka speaks to Ludwik about the fragility and unpredictability of life and tells him not to take anything, including love, for granted. However, his split from Janusz is inevitable as Ludwik’s growing desire to leave Poland is met by Janusz’s increasing faith in the Party.

“I had never been to a house like this. It was a splendid kamienica, an apartment building from before the war, one of the few that had survived. The entrance hall was high and vaulted, the ceiling covered in stucco flowers. A carpet led toward another set of doors, revealing a staircase, old and curved, with iron railings.”

When Janusz introduces Ludwik to Hania and Maksio, Ludwik notices how the riches in their lives, like their house, demonstrate how Party connections can change someone’s life. These twins are rich, with access to superior housing, superior clothes, and superior food. They escape the suffering of the people, exploiting the system for their own gain.

“‘Everyone is leading someone on,’ you continued, your eyes narrowed. ‘Isn’t that what you say? That the country is mismanaged, that everything is unfair? So what’s wrong with taking things into your own hands and not letting yourself go under? Huh?’”

During this argument between Ludwik and Janusz over the Party and its system, Janusz attempts to convince Ludwik that his exploitation of the Party is morally acceptable because of how exploitative the Party is of the people. He attempts to agree with Ludwik’s view of their country, but his own commitment to fighting corruption with more corruption is not an approach Ludwik can accept.

“The people were the sort one never saw walking in the street, and so one would have been excused for thinking they didn’t exist: women with large wavy hair, heavy bright necklaces and fox collars, and men in well-cut suits and serious, clean faces, smoke dancing up from their American cigarettes more slowly and more preciously than in the outside world.”

When Ludwik goes to dinner with Janusz, Hania, and Maksio, he is introduced to an entirely different society than the one he knows. In this restaurant, the people are glamorous, with high-quality accessories, haircuts, and clothes. They even smoke American cigarettes, demonstrating their hypocrisy when it comes to the West. Ludwik thinks of how he never sees these people on the street, and therefore it is no surprise that they are like a secret society.

“I was afraid she’d warn me against asking for favors one couldn’t return. The last thing I wanted right then was to be warned.”

After Ludwik convinces himself that he must ask for Hania’s help in being accepted for a PhD, he avoids Karolina, knowing that she will try to stop him. He knows what he plans to do is wrong, and that Karolina, of a similar mind, will challenge his own hypocrisy. Ludwik also understands that if she does, he likely will not go forward with his plan.

“The same man who’d looked down on me from countless banners and posters during the parades, the country’s so-called savior. The one who’d ordered the price increases. I thought of the empty shops across the country, of Pani Kolecka, of the lives spent queuing for little or nothing—and then these smiles, fat and self-indulgent.”

When Ludwik finds the picture of Hania’s father with the leader of Poland, he confronts his hatred for the Party and their scheming and amoral approach to leading the country. He then must contend with his own intentions to act like them and use connections to get ahead in life.

“I thought I was too proud to even begin to speak, that I would not beg for anything, that I had no reason to feel sorry. But looking at you softened me—despite your new hardness, or because of it. It hurt to see you like that, to have nothing pass between us.”

Janusz’s influence over Ludwik is strong enough that even though Ludwik comes to his apartment in anger and pain over their trip with Maksio and Hania, the look of Janusz in pain softens him. Ludwik does not enjoy feeling disconnected from Janusz and his immediate instinct is to open back up and comfort the boy he loves.

“The world did not tumble. Her face remained calm [...] I felt as if something dead and heavy inside had been expelled, as if I’d been carrying a leaden ghost within me all that time.”

When Ludwik tells Hania that he is gay, it is the first time that he openly admits it to anyone other than Janusz or Marian. The terrible secret that eats away at him for years is not met by condemnation, however, nor does the sky crumble. With his sexuality finally out in the open, Ludwik feels a great weight lifted off of him, and he takes his first steps into a new life. He begins to release his shame.