For a moment he fought the pain tearing at his stomach, then fell on the bed and sobbed briefly, without tears. Then he was calm. He quickly took what he needed, knelt on his suitcase to close it, and locked it. Someone came in. Nosilewska. She carried a briefcase. She handed Stefan a long, white object: a sheaf of papers.
“I found this in the hallway,” she said. When she saw that Stefan did not understand, she added, “Sekułowski lost it. I thought that since you took care of him… It’s—it was his.”
Stefan stood with his arms at his sides.
“Was?” he said. “Yes, it was.”
“It’s better not to think about it now. Don’t,” said Nosilewska, in a physician’s tone. He picked up his suitcase, took the papers, hesitated, and finally slid them into his pocket.
“We’re going, aren’t we?” she asked. “Rygier and Pajączkowski are staying overnight. Your friend is with them. They’re leaving in the morning. The Germans promised to take their things to the train.”
“What about Kauters?” asked Stefan without looking up.
“Von Kauters, you mean?” Nosilewska replied slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe he’ll stay here.”
When he looked at her, puzzled, she added, “This is going to be an SS hospital. I heard him talking about it with Thiessdorff.”
“Ah, yes,” said Stefan. His head was starting to hurt, from temples to forehead.
“Do you want to stay? Because I’m going.”
“I admire your composure.”
“There’s not much left. It’s just about used up. I have to leave. I have to get out of here,” she repeated.
“I’ll come with you,” he said suddenly, feeling that he too would be unable to touch equipment still warm from the touch of those now dead, or to inhale air in which their breath seemed still to hang.
“Let’s go through the woods,” she said. “It’s shorter. And Hutka told me the Ukrainians are patrolling the roads. I’d rather not run into them.”
When they reached the ground floor, Stefan hesitated. “What about the others?”
She understood what he meant. “It might be easier for us, and for them too. All of us need different people now, different surroundings.”
They walked toward the gate: above them dark trees soughed like the surface of a cold sea. There was no moon. A large dark shape suddenly loomed in front of them.
“Who goes there?” a voice asked in German.
The white beam of a flashlight fell on them. In the reflection from the leaves they recognized Hutka. He was patrolling the yard.
“Go,” he said, waving them on.
They passed him in silence.
“Hey!” he called.
They stopped.
“Your first and only obligation now is to keep silent. Understand?” His voice held a threat. Maybe it was because of the glaring, shadow-sliced light, but he seemed somehow tragic walking in the long coat that fell to his boots, a seam of teeth showing in his face.
Much later, Stefan spoke: “How can they do such things and live?”
They were on the damp road, past the stone arch with the faded inscription black against the sky, when light shined around them again. Hutka was waving farewell with wide swings of the flashlight. Then all was blackness.
They veered off the road at the second bend and slogged laboriously through the mud, heading for the forest. Trees, ever denser and taller, surrounded them. Their feet sank into dry leaves that babbled like water at a ford. They walked for a long time.
Stefan looked at his watch. By then they should have been at the edge of the woods, from which they would be able to see the railroad station. But he said nothing. They walked on and on, bumping into each other; the suitcase felt heavier. The forest sighed steadily. Through the branches they caught rare glimpses of a ghostly night cloud. They stopped and spoke in front of a great spreading sycamore.
“We’ve lost our way.”
“So it seems.”
“We should have taken the road.”
They tried in vain to figure out where they were. It had gotten darker.
Clouds covered the sky, forming a low backdrop to the leafless branches that stirred in the wind. The breeze rattled the twigs. Then rain began to fall, and dripped down their faces.
When they stopped to rest, they noticed a squat shape nearby: some sort of barn or cottage. The trees thinned out and they walked into an open space.
“This is Wietrzniki,” Stefan said slowly. “We’re nine kilometers from the road, eleven from town.”
They had walked in a broad arc in the wrong direction.
“We’ll never get to the train in time. Unless we find horses.”
Stefan did not answer: it seemed impossible. The people were long gone. A few days ago the Germans had burned the neighboring village to the ground, and everyone had fled.
They climbed over a low fence and tapped at the windows and door. Dead silence. A dog barked, then another, and finally waves of steady barking rang through the area. An isolated cottage stood on a little hill above the village. A glow appeared in one of the windows.
Stefan hammered on the door until he shook. He was about to lose hope when it opened to reveal a tall, rumpled peasant, the whites of his eyes shining in his dark face. A white unbuttoned shirt peeked out under the jacket he had thrown on.
“We’re… we’re doctors from the hospital in Bierzyniec, and we’re lost. We need a place to sleep, please,” Stefan began, sensing that he was saying the wrong thing. But anything he said would be wrong. He knew peasants.
The man stood immobile, blocking the entrance.
“All we’re asking for is a place to sleep,” Nosilewska said, quiet as a distant echo.
The peasant did not move.
“We’ll pay,” Stefan tried.
The peasant still did not speak. He stood there. Stefan took his wallet out of an inside pocket.
“I don’t need your money,” the peasant said suddenly. “What people like you need is a bullet.”
“What do you mean? The Germans let us leave. We got lost, we were trying to make the train.”
“They shoot, bum, beat,” the peasant continued in a monotone, stepping out across the threshold. He pulled the door shut behind him and stood, tall, in the open. The rain was coming down harder.
“What can you do?” he said finally, shrugging.
He walked away from the house. Stefan and Nosilewska followed. There was a thatched shed in the yard. The man turned the simple latch on the door. The inside smelled of old hay and aromatic dust that tickled the nose.
“Here,” said the peasant. He paused for a moment and added, “You can sleep on the hay. But don’t crush the bundles.”
“Thank you very much,” said Stefan. “Will you take something after all?”
He tried to press a banknote into the peasant’s hand.
“That won’t stop a bullet,” the peasant said dryly. “What can you do?” he said again, more quietly.
“Thank you,” Stefan repeated helplessly.
The peasant stood there for another moment, then said, “Good night.” He left, turning the latch.
Stefan was standing just inside the door. He stretched out a hand like a blind man: he always had trouble finding his way in darkness. Nosilewska shuffled about on the straw. He took off the cold, heavy jacket that had stuck to his back; water dripped off it. He would have liked to have taken off his trousers too. He bumped into some sort of pole and almost fell over, but steadied himself on his suitcase. Then he remembered that he had a flashlight inside. He pawed at the lock. Along with the flashlight he found a piece of chocolate. Setting the light on the ground, he looked in his pockets for Sekułowski’s papers. Nosilewska scattered straw on the dirt floor and covered it with a blanket. Stefan sat down on the blanket’s edge and unrolled the sheets of paper. The first one contained several words. The handwriting fluttered between the ruled lines as if caught in a net. At the top was Sekułowski’s name, and belo
w it the title; “My World.” Stefan turned the sheet over. It was blank. So was the next one. White and empty every one.
“Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing.”
A fear so powerful came over him that he sought Nosilewska’s gaze. She sat bent over, the plaid blanket draped over her. From under it she tossed out her blouse, skirt, and underwear, all heavy with moisture.
“Empty,” Stefan repeated. He wanted to say something, but it came out a hoarse groan.
“Come here.”
He looked at her. Her hands brushed back the dark waves of her hair.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t think. That boy. But Sekułowski… It was Staszek who…”
“Come here,” she repeated, gently, almost sleepily. He looked at her in wonder. Extending her arms from under the blanket, she stroked him like a child. He leaned against her.
“I’m bankrupt,” he said. “Like my father.”
She held him and stroked his head.
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered. “Don’t think about anything.”
He felt her breasts and her hands against his face. The only light came from the flicker of the fading flashlight, which had rolled into the hay. Shadows laced its feeble illumination. He could hear the slow, peaceful rhythm of her heart, which spoke to him in the old language, the language he understood best. He was still wondering at that when softly, without breathing, she kissed him on the mouth.
Darkness covered them. Hay crunched under the fuzzy blanket and the woman gave him pleasure, but not in the usual way. At every instant she controlled herself and she controlled him. Later, exhausted, holding her beautiful body without a trace of passion but with all the force of despair, he cried on her breast. When he calmed down, he saw that she was lying on her back, slightly above him, and her face, too, was so calm in the last light. He dared not ask if she loved him. To offer yourself was like giving a stranger your last bit of food: it was more than love. It suddenly occurred to him that he knew nothing about her; he could not even remember her first name.
“Listen,” he whispered quietly.
But she put her hand over his mouth, gently yet decisively. She picked up the edge of the blanket and wiped away his tears, kissing him lightly on the cheek.
Then even his curiosity faded, and in the arms of this unfamiliar woman he became, for an instant, as empty and blank as at the moment of his birth.
Kraków, September 1948
Books by Stanislaw Lem available in Harvest/HBJ paperback editions from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
The Chain of Chance
The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age
Fiasco
The Futurological Congress
His Master’s Voice
Hospital of the Transfiguration
Imaginary Magnitude
The Investigation
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy
Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy
More Tales of Pirx the Pilot
One Human Minute
A Perfect Vacuum
Return from the Stars
Solaris
The Star Diaries
Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by Stanislaw Lem
English translation copyright © 1988
by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Orlando, Florida 32887.
Library of Congress Catalaging-in-Publication Data
Lem, Stanislaw.
[Szpital przemienienia. English]
Hospital of the Transfiguration/Stanislaw Lem; translated from the Polish by William Brand.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Translation of: Szpital przemienienia.
“A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
ISBN 0-15-642176-3 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PG7158.LL39S913 1988
891.8’537-dc19 87-33659
Designed by Beth Tondreau Design
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest/HBJ edition 1991
A B C D E
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