On Wide Sidewalks and Narrow Houses

This is what happens when your favorite paving stone is in Ramat Gan, and your creative partner is in Warsaw | Fiction | Fresh Soup

In my first conversation with Jakub Szczesny, he impressed me as being both clever and crazy. In our second conversation, I realized he was clever and creative, it’s just that his ideas were impossible to implement. By the third meeting, at the opening of Keret House in Warsaw, I finally understood that apart from being clever and creative, he is also extraordinarily stubborn and resourceful.

In the decade since Szczesny finished building Keret House, the narrowest house in the world, I’ve been patiently anticipating our next collaboration. Deep down, I knew that if I kept waiting for Kuba to design another crazy structure inspired by me, it could take forever. So, as a compromise, I suggested collaborating on a newsletter project. In addition to being an architect and a writer, Kuba works in half a dozen other creative fields, and you can now enjoy his illustrations for one of my first stories, which has never been published in English before.

Illustration by Jakub Szczesny

There’s a paving stone on the corner of Feinberg Street and Dekalim Boulevard. It’s very easy to recognize. There’s a small reddish-brown stain on it and it’s slightly higher than the others. That’s why, when you’re standing on it, you feel a little taller than you did before, and sometimes that’s exactly the little that was missing. But I’m doing that paving stone an injustice when I only talk about its external properties. It has a lot more. It’s the paving stone I was standing on the only time in my childhood when I felt like a real man. And believe me, a paving stone that makes a scared, wimpy kid like me act brave has got to be something special.

Illustration by Jakub Szczesny

I remember the minute I stepped on it, the way I changed all at once. I felt its power rise from my feet and spread through the rest of my body. All my fear vanished. I knew that as long as I was standing on it, everything I did and said was bound to succeed. It all happened in a fraction of a second, but so much changed in me. Even my squeaky voice sounded different, deeper, more authoritative, confidence-inspiring. I like to think it was a special moment for the stone, too. I’m sure a lot of people were bold and fearless when they stood on that piece of pavement, but I can’t believe they changed as drastically as I did. To this day, I thank fate for choosing that moment to stand me on that particular paving stone; I don’t even want to try to imagine what might have happened if I’d been standing on a different one, say the one to the left of it.

I suppose a lot of people who saw what happened thought my sudden courage was related to a particular instant in time. A miraculous moment that came and went. A magical moment that could never be recreated. If only I thought that. Maybe then this nagging sense of frustration would disappear. Except it’s hard not to get angry when you’re absolutely sure that all the failed tests, the botched job interviews, the unreciprocated declarations of love, might have turned out totally differently if only you could’ve done them while you were standing on that paving stone. But who the hell would I ever bump into on the corner of Feinberg Street and Dekalim Boulevard?

Illustration by Jakub Szczesny

Translated by Sondra Silverston