I sit on a ledge on the long open square just west of Stary Rynek (Old Town Square). A flower bed is to my left, well-managed green grass surrounding rows of red and white petunias that form a large fleur-de-lis. I sit facing the Raczynski Library, enjoying my sandwich while gazing up to the second floor balcony, behind the large white Corinthian columns and notice immediately the single set of doors that stand open. Behind the doors I can make out stacks of books and shelves and, if she were to happen to walk past, the young librarian who has helped me find my volumes today, and has been so patient with my clumsy Polish. Her desk is located just inside the balcony doors to the right, and my work table is directly in front of the doors, through which I hear the sounds of traffic and feel the ample summer breeze I so consciously enjoy while working. How many libraries or archives look like this building, I ask myself. Granted, surely some older American universities have library buildings that themselves are such architectural relics. But of those, none is located in such a historical and attractive place at the center of an old European city, with an open door at my desk, leading to a balcony, where I’m free to step out on during a short break while working, gazing down on the square below.
I finish my sandwich and pull the sliced nectarine out of its baggie, my legs crossed, watching the people walk past me toward and away from the main square just down the hill. A young man takes photographs of the library, the square and of the statue of Hygeia, goddess of health, sitting gracefully in front of the library. A stream of water trickles out of the base of the statue into a basin, providing a place for people to rinse their hands or splash a bit of water on their face for refreshment on a warm afternoon. The young man is presumably a tourist, carrying only his small, gray camera and a black backpack. He’s probably a student – from Italy or Germany, Hungary or Denmark, struck by the beauty of this city on his first visit here. He can’t wait to go home to his parents, his friends, his girlfriend, and try to convince them through his photographs of Poznan’s charm. He wishes they were here now. He wishes his girlfriend could see Plac Wolności (Freedom Square) and the ivory-colored library façade. It would just be so much easier for her to see in person than having to rely on his photographs. He hopes to convince her to come back with him next summer, or during winter break, but she barely humors him when he talks of his travels.
He snaps a sixth picture, and a seventh. Another of the steady stream of water falling from the base of the allegory. He struggles to make art. He wishes she were just here with him, so he could point things out verbally. That would be so much more convincing than all these photographs.
Nonetheless, he persists, handling the camera deftly, as one experienced in photography. Backing up for a wider angle of the square, he snaps another photograph. I’m in this one – caught glaring at him intently while taking a huge bite of a nectarine. I’m caught with that expression on his photograph forever, I think to myself while chewing the sweet, ripe fruit. This afternoon I’m merely on his 4 gigabyte SID card, but later tonight will be copied to his portable hard drive, perhaps even a CD. Multiple copies of the image, and while I’ve long finished my nectarine and moved on to the trail mix, I’ll have the same ridiculous expression, my jaw wide open ready to bite, my eyes fixed on the photographer, unable to look down or away in modesty. In a week he’ll be home in suburban Copenhagen or Stuttgart or Genoa, going through his album excitedly with his girlfriend, computer sitting open on her lap, explaining each shot and what he was thinking at the time and how he missed her so. She’ll be incredibly bored after forty minutes and 150 photos when she comes to this one, and will lose track of what he’s explaining about the square and how it looked and what happened there in history, and that the library was built in the neoclassical style. She won’t care that the allegory was a nineteenth-century gift to the city by Edward Raczynski, the library’s founder, meant to provide citizens with a convenient place to come for fresh water. Instead, her eyes will be drawn to the young man in the beige shirt with burnt orange horizontal stripes, enjoying his lunch on the ledge with his legs crossed, looking directly at her, thoughtfully, with a certain curiosity, and while taking an enormous bite out of a handsome nectarine.
