Disclaimer: all characters appearing in this little story are fictitious. Only the dress is real.

Dress

The dress was a gift from a Dutch friend who bought it for me in a hard currency shop, which in itself made it special. We were spending Easter vacation in Zakopane, a well-known resort town at the foot of the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland; it was Spring and the snow was melting fast. To waterproof our shoes we needed to buy shoe polish; easier said than done: shoe polish proved to be one of the many almost-unattainable things in my country. When searching in all possible stores came to nothing, I decided to try a duty-free hard currency shop, and bingo! They did sell shoe polish, along with American jeans and corduroy pants, American cigarettes, French cognacs and French perfumes. For a “rich Western man”, as my Dutch friend liked to call himself, everything in this store seemed cheaper than dirt, so he did not content himself with a box of shoe polish; he also bought a good supply of pants for himself and a corduroy shirt-dress for me. The dress was in my favorite color of burgundy, and it matched my burgundy high-heeled boots as well as my fashionable quilted jacket, which was black on one side and burgundy on the other. From this time on I almost lived in this outfit: I wore it every day to work, washing the dress and drying it on a line over the tub in my bathroom every Saturday evening. Over the months, the dress gradually changed color from burgundy to raspberry, then to pink; then the buttonholes begun to fray. Once in a while a troubling thought came to me: “What shall I wear when this one turns to rags?” But I trusted that when the time came, I would find some solution to this issue. Until then I could sleep peacefully.

          Then something terrible happened. One weekend, the central heating in my flat broke, and the dress did not dry. On Monday morning it was so damp that even pressing it with a hot iron did not help. I panicked: what would I wear?! Completing the alternative outfit (which consisted of a black pencil skirt, a gray shirt and a black cardigan), took me something like an hour, in a state of hysteria, so I must have arrived late to work. Normally, it would not matter much, but it was Monday, and Mondays started with important meetings or lectures. That fateful Monday, the lecturer was the director of my department at Institute of Nuclear Research. I was not one of his favorite employees, that much I knew. Scared of interrupting him and exposing myself to a reprimand, I could not make myself open that door and go in. To my relief some other lagger arrived a few minutes later, and without the slightest embarrassment or hesitation, entered the room. I took my chance and slipped in quietly behind him, hoping that nobody would notice. I could not have been more wrong: not only did the director stop his lecture in mid-sentence to bow to me in an ironic gesture of welcome, with all faces turned in my direction, but also a good friend of mine asked aloud with false concern: “Monika! What happened? Has someone broken into your house and stolen your dress?” Some of the audience snickered, and some laughed out loud. I wanted to sink into the ground or die on the spot. I wished I had never been born. I do not recall how I got to my chair nor how I survived the rest of that day. One thing I remember for sure: I never wore that shirt-dress again.