by Jerzy Pilch
He still could have saved himself, he still could have gone to the all-night store, he still could have called one of his current women, he still could have summoned an ambulance; but he must no longer have wanted to. He turned off the television and sat in the kitchen, smoking. I know that he was afraid, and I know that he was in pain. Maybe he searched his medicine cabinet for diazepam or aspirin? It was bare; there was nothing but an empty packet of Rutinacea tablets and two Vitamin C capsules, insufficient medication for the purposes of a resurrection. He drank cold tap water, that much is certain; he turned the faucet on, drank greedily, and wiped his mouth. Maybe he felt hungry? But in the refrigerator there were only three bone-dry chicken stock cubes and a single (though almost untouched) jar of strawberry jam. Maybe he suddenly believed? Yes, he believed that if he drank a mug of nutritious bouillon and replenished his reserves of mineral salts, he would feel better. Yes, he believed that gradually, spoonful by spoonful, he would eat the jar of strawberry jam, and the sugar and glucose and vitamins would bring back his strength. And he put out his cigarette and set about preparing his last supper, and the people who broke down the door found him like that: lying on the floor, his mouth stopped up with a white-and-strawberry seal.
Chapter 21
Thursday July 6, 2000
THE SUGAR KING—in civilian life a wealthy businessman—had announced to the alcos gathered in the smoking room that in the emotional journal he kept he had included the emotion of relief he had experienced at passing a stool. This confession caused great consternation among the female alcos in particular. Male snickers of recognition mingled with female murmurs of indignation.
“We’re supposed to keep a journal of our emotions, and you can’t argue with that,” the Sugar King said in self-defense. “In our journals we’re supposed to be completely honest, and you can’t argue with that. We do it so as to relearn how to name our emotions, something we are no longer able to do as a result of our abuse of intoxicating liquor, and we do it so as to learn how to have control over our emotions, an ability we’ve also lost, and that too is perfectly—”
“But describing the state of your soul after passing a stool seems to me inappropriate,” Fanny Kapelmeister, in civilian life a history teacher, interrupted him without conviction.
“Fanny, you should be made to start your therapy again from the beginning”—the Sugar King’s voice was filled with mockery and venom—“since you’re incapable of distinguishing the spiritual sphere from the emotional sphere. And all this after Dr. Granada, and Nurse Viola, and the therapist Moses alias I Alcohol, along with all his she-therapists, have repeated to you time and again that these are two different spheres. I’m afraid I’m going to have to present your case at the evening meeting.”
“All right”—Fanny raised her head, and by this single gesture she was transformed from the wasted fifty-year-old dwarf she resembled, into the tall and imperious thirty-year-old brunette she actually was—“all right, but start by saying, start by announcing at the evening meeting that today, Thursday, July 6, in the year of our Lord two thousand, you took a crap and it made you feel better.”
“I don’t need to say it, because I wrote it down,” replied the Sugar King, and he added a powerful comment that put me painfully in mind of the next world: “When something is written down it doesn’t need to be talked about. At the meeting there’s something else I’m going to bring up,” he added ominously.
But in the evening, when we all gathered in the cafeteria, as we did every day to take account of our lives, the Sugar King did not take the floor, and did not say a word; neither on that day, nor any other, were we able to resolve the question of whether the state of one’s soul after passing a stool was or was not worthy of being recorded in one’s emotional journal. The one debate to occur that evening was a debate over the telephone (if such a feeble exchange of opinions can even be called a debate). Fanny Kapelmeister, who was unusually animated that day—perhaps she was consumed by a terrible thirst for vodka, perhaps she was trying to avoid an embarrassing discussion on the matter alluded to above, perhaps she was afraid of the Sugar King, or perhaps she had been upset by some inadvisable contact with the outside world—in any case Fanny Kapelmeister, who was unusually animated that day, put up her hand.
“I came to understand,” she said, “after a time I came to understand why we can’t watch television, listen to the radio, play dominoes or other games, this I came to understand after a time. But why the telephone is switched off after 9 P.M. I cannot understand.”
“The telephone is switched off after 9 P.M. for the good of the patients.” Sister Viola responded to Fanny Kapelmeister’s unintentionally teacher-like tone with the deliberately intensified tone of a ward sister. “At that time some of the patients want to be asleep, and others want to use the quiet to work and write—”
“How can you talk about quiet”—Fanny Kapelmeister had undergone yet another transformation, this time metamorphosing from patient to tsarina, from supplicant to she-eagle—“how can you talk about quiet and about sleeping, when at 10 P.M. they start cleaning the hallway, with all the accompanying clatter, and then at 10:30 we all have to go to the nurses’ station with our personal mouthpieces to take a breathalyzer test. How can you talk about quiet—”
Fanny Kapelmeister suddenly fell silent and stiffened; for a moment it looked like a classic early sign of an epileptic fit, but no, Fanny Kapelmeister had fallen silent in astonishment because she had suddenly grasped the absolute essence of her fate. What does a person feel when, every evening, they stand in line with several dozen other people—personal mouthpiece in hand—in order to take a breathalyzer test? What does that person feel? That person feels nothing in particular, especially if they’ve not drunk anything beforehand, that person feels nothing in particular, unless they did have something to drink—then they feel afraid. Fine, but what does a person feel when they suddenly become aware that they stand in line every evening with several dozen alcos so as to walk up and blow into a breathalyzer? Well then, such a person—like Fanny Kapelmeister—may succumb to astonishment; they may turn into a pillar of salt. Fanny’s skull was filled with a crowd of alcos. They stood obediently one behind the other and blew into the breathalyzer with such force that they seemed to drive every thought from her head. Fanny spoke no more and slowly sat down, though that sitting down was more an involuntary slide into her chair than actually sitting down. Simultaneously, like the other half of a set of scales, as Fanny descended the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol rose at the other end of the table.
Fanny Kapelmeister seemed to fall silent a second time, and this time she turned to stone. She may have wanted to add something; she may have wanted to say how important even a minute-long phone conversation can be for an alco; she may have wanted to refer to the relevant clause in the patient’s bill of rights; she may have wished to remind everyone of something that could have been the punch-line of this chapter: namely, that the sole telephone accessible to the alcos on this ward only took tokens, which had been unavailable for years, in consequence of which hardly anyone ever actually used it; she may have had other arguments, but probably not, and, in fact, most certainly not. There was nothing in her head except the crowd of alcos waiting in line for the breathalyzer.
Fanny could clearly see her own specter standing in this line, and it occurred to her that perhaps a person whose evening ritual involves blowing into a breathalyzer should indeed have no other right than the right to blow into a breathalyzer every evening. In the meantime, the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol was already on his feet and said very quietly:
“According to the regulations the telephone ought to be available to all you alcoholics between the hours of 7 A.M. and 9 P.M. That is how it has been and that is how it will be, or maybe not, because I can see we need to think about removing the telephone from the ward entirely. This is not a question”—he gave a slight bow in Sister Viola’s direction—“this is not a question of q
uiet in what I might call its audible or inaudible aspect. You are all supposed to quiet down inwardly, you’re supposed to compose yourselves. You’re supposed to calm your frayed nerves—not so as to go to sleep, but so as to lead a tranquil life in the future. And anything that comes from the outside world, even a telephone call, can upset you. Telephone calls, especially telephone calls I would say, can upset a person; I personally know how upsetting some telephone calls can be. So then, as I said: from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. After that there is curfew, the telephone’s switched off, and you all work on yourselves, on quieting yourselves. You quiet yourselves indefinitely with the goal of quieting yourselves absolutely. That’s right, quiet yourselves, quiet yourselves, because if you do not, I, alcohol”—the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol continued to speak very quietly, but he spread his arms wide to give himself a dragon-like appearance—“if you do not quiet yourselves, I, alcohol, will destroy you.”
•
Quieting ourselves was the goal of our lives; it was our prayer and our God (or alternatively, in the local lingo: our higher power, however we chose to understand that). Quieting ourselves was our Promised Land, toward which we were guided by our she-therapists, under the leadership of the therapist Moses alias I Alcohol. Dr. Granada engaged us in philosophical debates about life and death. Nurse Viola and the other nurses did what nurses do: they administered drips, gave injections, and distributed vitamins and sedatives and mineral complexes for our thoroughly depleted bodies; whereas the therapists guided us toward the Promised Land of quiet. All the therapists had themselves long ago become exceptionally quiet; they were professionally quiet, they were virtuosos of quietness. They could tell at a single glance the extent of our quietness, so as to determine, to an inch, the distance that still separated us from the Promised Land of absolute quiet. The therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol (the first part of his name came from his role as a leader, not from his faith) was perceptive to a god-like degree. The therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol had undoubtedly met with the God of quiet on the mountaintop, and the Almighty had imparted to him all there is to know on the subject of quieting oneself. The therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol looked at a person who had not sufficiently quieted himself and said to the insufficiently quieted person: “Quiet yourself!” And the person immediately quieted himself.
I remember as if it were yesterday the precise day of my face-to-face meeting with the therapist Moses alias I Alcohol. It was on Thursday, July 6, 2000 precisely. I remember precisely that it was on that very day I had written the first paragraphs in the emotional journal of the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, in civilian life a long-haul truck driver who transported fruit to countries east of us. The Most Wanted Terrorist in the World had given me an exceedingly cursory account of his life story; he had spoken disjointedly and it was impossible to follow. Dictation, even subconscious dictation, was in this case out of the question, as was the notion that he himself should write anything. I hesitated to take on the task of writing for him in the fullest sense, both mechanically and mentally; I was reluctant to assume the character of the narrator—a long-haul truck driver transporting fruit to countries east of us. I hesitated, but the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World offered me a small bottle of Polo Sport cologne, and I could not resist the temptation. All colognes and deodorants were strictly forbidden on the alco ward, but I was obsessed during this particular stay of mine by the idea that my whole body, and my whole expensive track suit, were permeated with the odor of madmen’s pajamas.
All around the alco ward were the brick-built residences of the insane, set amid untended, overgrown gardens. At the height of noon these gardens would fill with noisy throngs of schizophrenics and suicides clad in striped pajamas; dense yellowish-gray clouds of odor from the blue-and-white pajamas and the farinaceous bodies they contained drifted over the gardens; I was unable to rid myself of the notion that one of these clouds had encircled me and soaked into me.
I accepted the small bottle of Polo Sport cologne from the shaking hands of the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World; I promised myself I would use it discreetly, in any case in such a way as to evade the matchless sense of smell of Nurse Viola, who from a distance of several dozen yards (and, I repeat, by smell alone) was capable of determining what kind of alcohol, consumable or non-consumable, a person had had (internal or external) contact with. I accepted the small bottle, hiding it in a hiding place the whereabouts of which I will not reveal, and in return I undertook to keep a journal of someone else’s emotions.
On July 6th, at four-thirty in the morning, I sat down at the table in the writing room, and in the upper left-hand corner of a blank sheet of A4 paper I wrote the date: 7/6/2000.
“I’ve come to the end of the first week of my stay. It’s half past five in the morning. It’s raining. In half an hour the wake-up bell will ring. I’m sitting in the quiet room and writing my emotional journal. At the moment in my heart I’m feeling despair. What is the state of soul of a person who wakes up at the beginning of July on an alco ward, knowing he has to spend the whole summer here? The rain outside the window depresses me and at the same time it’s a relief. It depresses me because if it keeps raining till Sunday, then on Sunday when my girlfriend comes to visit I won’t know where to go with her. The rain is a relief because if the weather were hot I’d regret even more the vacation I already paid for but wasted because of my drinking rampage. I’d always be imagining my girlfriend and me lying on the beach, and my despair would be even greater.
“Yesterday at the evening community meeting we said goodbye to the people who were leaving. I was jealous and I wanted to be one of them. Homeless Czesław, who was supposed to give the last farewell speech, read a poem he had written instead of giving a speech. When he finished, Nurse Viola told him he would have to repeat the whole cure from the beginning. It’s just as well I don’t know how to write poetry.”
I felt suddenly tired. I felt that writing alcos’ confessions, assignments, and emotional journals exhausted me in general, while in particular I felt that writing the counterfeit journal of the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World was beyond my strength. For some time I had suspected, and at this moment I became certain, that the unending labor of reproducing the crude style of the alcos was having an impact on my own exquisite turn of phrase. Further hours of struggle over the composition of further syntactically challenged simple sentences would be harmful to my work, and in addition, as I already said, I no longer had the heart for it. True, I could have raised the price of my writing services, but then the alcos, who were poor as church mice as it was, would be completely wiped out, and when all was said and done the payment they offered in the form of five-zloty coins, or cigarettes, or other sorts of fees, was my only source of income. I chose a more honorable way out: I decided to write freely, I decided not to put a stranglehold on my own song and not to hold back with my own personal éclat; at the very end, though, I planned to edit the text by filtering out its stylistic elegance and erudite references in such a way as to make it look like a genuine alco manuscript scribbled laboriously by a trembling hand.
“By profession I am a truck driver. The last few years I worked for a company that delivers fruit to countries east of us. The work was dangerous but paid well. You also had to do a lot of drinking in all kinds of places. A truck carrying fruit can’t wait for too long. A truck carrying fruit can’t just stand for a week either when it’s being loaded up, or on the way, or at the border. To move things along, to get things going, to allow my truck with its fruit to be on its way, I’d have to buy vodka for the loaders, the warehouse men, the policemen, and the customs officials. I drank with the Poles, and I drank with the Russkies. My boss—the head of shipping for the company that delivers fruit to countries east of us—would reimburse me for the money I had to spend on vodka so as to clear my way. He was a good man, though he didn’t drink at all. So I feel all the worse about what I did. And what I did was, the last time I came back from Russia I was c
ompletely drunk. Actually, that in itself was nothing special, things like that had happened to me before. But this time, when I came back from Russia in a state of intoxication, I had a yen (right away! right away!) to have a chat with my boss, I had a yen to clear my head a little in the aura of amiable sobriety that surrounded the man, and I knocked on the door of the head of shipping, and I went in, and sat down, and began a conversation that I don’t remember. My boss saw the condition I was in and gave me coffee. I downed the coffee in one go and suddenly felt sick. An important fact was that outside there was a severe frost, while in my boss’s office it was very hot; the change of temperature must have had a debilitating effect on me. My boss spoke to me in an amiable manner, yet I, ignoring the likelihood that my behavior would be construed as impolite, rose from my seat because I thought I would make it. Unfortunately I did not make it. As I stood up I felt myself gripped by a fearful inner spasm, and a frothy stream of puke issued forth from me, and I threw up all over a map of the Polish-Russian border that was lying on my boss’s desk. My boss watched in dismay as brown trickles of my puke traversed the River Bug, speeding like long-haul trucks over the border crossings at Brześć and Medyka and Terespol, sneaking like masterful smugglers across the unpatrolled sectors of the frontier, engulfing the watchtowers and the contrabandists’ hideaways, streaming into the outskirts of Sokółka, flooding the market square in Bobrowniki, and flowing through Siemiatycze.
