Pink Ostrich Feathers
In 2009, Krall published Pink Ostrich Feathers / Różowe strusie pióra – a story about the things people have told and written to her over the past 50 years. This book is also kind of a self-portrait.
The book consists of notes which the reporter’s daughter would leave on the table when running off to participate in a student strike; of a telegram from Krall’s husband sailing on a trawler along the coast of Africa on the day that Khrushchev fell from his pedestal; a letter from a hospital written by Michał Radgowski (‘Urban wrote that he would like to give Radgowski the courtesy of participating in Radgowski’s funeral’); a letter from Santa Monica written by Jan Kott before an operation (‘There’s a 20% chance that I won’t live through it and God is powerless when it comes to statistics’); a letter from 1969 from Wierszyna in the Irkutsk Oblast which was written by Natalia J., the hero of the reportage A Piece of Bread / Kawałek chleba (‘The kholkhoz members of Wierszyna have even better lives now’); a written record of a conversation with Włodzimierz Lubański, who was a striker for the Polish national football team; a written record of a conversation with Jan C., a former land owner, who lost all his assets after the agricultural reform.
A strong impression is made by a conversation with a certain elderly lady about the reporter’s grandson, his girlfriend and the couple’s planned wedding. Thanks to Hanna Krall every sentence of this conversation is surprising. She captured the rhythm of old-timers’ storytelling. She placed the accents in such a way that words and silence became equally important. A text about love was created, in which images of a non-existent world were called upon, a shadow of a loved one appears, memories come back to life.
In Pink Ostrich Feathers, the reporter’s friends appear, including Marek Edelman, Father Adam Boniecki and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The latter said that ‘it is important to take the side of those who are sad because they have lost something and those who are sad even because they haven’t lost anything’.
The reporter took those words to heart.
Krzysztof Kieślowski is an important character also when it comes to Biała Maria / White Maria, publihed in 2011. In the 1970s Krall told him and Krzysztof Piesiewicz a story which they turned into the eighth part of the famous Decalogue. Many years later the author decided to tell the story as it was, not through a linear narrative, but a series of leaps in time and space. Przemysław Czapliński wrote: