by Jerzy Pilch
In a more and more powerful and spasmodic clench, like a couple of avant-garde performers, or wrestlers of equal strength, they sailed through the hallway and rolled into the bedroom. The door, as if touched by an invisible force, closed behind them. For a moment you could still hear the lashing of frankfurters, then silence set in, then the lights went out.
The scene of the auditioning stripper had passed irrevocably. There wasn’t any point in comforting myself with the thought that, when I grew up, in addition to being a famous soccer player, I would also be the manager of a strip joint. I had to accept the more tragic truth: namely, that I would die without seeing a naked woman. That not even on the screen of a Nefryt television set would it be given unto me to verify whether there was even a grain of sense in Pastor Kalinowski’s exceptionally enchanting biblical metaphor of the roe-deer twins that feedeth amongst the lilies.****
I did my best to bypass the warpath marked out by the shreds of frankfurters, pancakes, cutlets, and other minerals that formed the rock of our house. Once, twice, maybe three times, I made the leap back and forth, but I wasn’t drawn by this new Olympic discipline. There wasn’t any call for it, but in the face of the final prospect I made my way to the bathroom. I didn’t have a particularly keen awareness that I was washing a body that, in a few hours, would become the body of a corpse, but it could be that I was genetically burdened with that sort of awareness.
For ages, Grandma Pech had been a well known Wisła virtuoso in the art of washing and dressing corpses. Tens, or perhaps hundreds, of the deceased passed through her hands in the strict sense of the phrase. In the next to last year of the First World War—when her mother and three of her brothers died from the Spanish flu almost simultaneously—my eleven-year-old Grandma was initiated into the arcana of the lightning-fast washing and dressing of corpses before they could grow stiff. For years and decades thereafter people sent for her from households with suddenly closed drapes. She never refused, she was always ready. She would get up in the middle of the night, put on the gray-black dress that was like her service uniform, pack a kitchen apron, a supply of flannel, cotton wool, and a bottle of rectified spirits into an oilcloth bag, and, either on foot or with the horses sent for her, she would hasten to the house surrounded by a different light, and she would wash and comb the bodies as they were losing softness, and wipe the faces with spirits. She would plait the tresses of the deceased women, and hundreds of times she would hear and see the signs left by the departing souls.
The atavistic nature of the thing forced me to repeat her motions. I glided the sponge over my shoulders with the same solicitude with which she touched the deceased Lutherans with cotton wool soaked in spirits. I was finally ready. I opened the sofa, made my bed, lay down. I kept constant vigil. I didn’t fall asleep. Time passed slowly, but it passed, and after at least two, and perhaps three penultimate hours, the final hour rang. I got up cautiously, brought the chair over, got on it, and began to move hook after hook to perfection. After moving the seventh, when in the first drape I had only four hooks left to the end, the light went on in my folks’ room. The door there opened abruptly, Father flashed through the hallway like a shot, then he fell into the bathroom like an exploding artillery shell, and immediately there resounded from that direction the sonorous rumble of bestial hurling.
I jumped down off the chair, put it back in its place, and returned to bed. I heard Mother’s delicate steps. She came into my room; she smelled of raw meat; from under half-shut eyes I saw that smile of hers, bizarre and not of this world. A streak of food, rubbed to a tawny mucous, cut across her cheek. She went up to the window in absolute somnambulistic absence and mechanically closed the drapes.
Only now do I understand that the history of my first suicide is also a story about how alcohol, for the first time in my life, deprived me of my freedom. I mean, of course, the alcohol that was making its presence known in my old man’s entrails. The poor guy puked almost to the break of dawn. He had a weak head.
****There isn’t.
All the Stories
I
In the environs of the little Austro-Hungarian town in which we performed our Socialist Student Workers’ Traineeship there prowled a Silesian vampire, and from the very beginning the girls from the local Dressmakers’ Technical College looked upon us with fear. They would turn tail, pick up the pace, respond badly to even the most sophisticated attempts at striking up a conversation. And we really knew how to strike up a conversation—not all of us, of course; not all of our five-man brigade knew how to strike up a conversation—but Wittenberg and I had an innate expertise. We strove for the maximal effect, elaborated on the plenitude of possibilities, turned cartwheels to construct tempting persuasions—all for nothing. The splendidly dressed misses from the clothiers’ school wouldn’t even pretend that they were making a date, that they would come for coffee, that they would say yes to an invitation to the dance. Not even as a form of good riddance would they say that they would see, they would make an effort, they would give it a try, and if they could find a moment, they would drop by.
Every day, after knocking off work, we would go to the local dive called Europa and one of seven indistinguishable local alcoholics would tell us the next in the series of stories about the vampire; we would each drink two beers and then go over to the Technical College building, which was beautifully situated in the depths of a park that had run wild. These expeditions were conducted in vain. Almost all the windows were closed, in spite of the September heat wave; the massive crowns of the oaks, and the equally massive clouds were reflected in the panes—and not a living soul.
Out back, on the playing field, there was no one; in the residential wing—no one; in the quite visible corridors—no one. Not a trace of a figure running by, not a shadow of shoulders, hair, feet. No billowing frock, cast off scarf, brooch, bracelet, ribbon. There was the barely perceptible scent of perfume—but even this might have been a pious wish. No song, no laughter, no giggles. Once, it seemed to us that we heard the murmur of a hair dryer; but this could just as well have been the distant drone of a biplane flying south. Other than that, neither hide nor hair. A complete void, wilderness, and, what follows from this, the complete absence of civilized customs.
It goes without saying, Poland at that time—anno Domini 1971—was under the Muscovite yoke, but regardless of the yoke, and regardless of the political system, it is accepted in all of human civilization that when, outside a woman’s boarding house, school, dormitory, workers’ hotel, convent, or even, for that matter, prison, there stands a group of starving men, and even if they are not granted entrance, they will at least receive an answer. Sooner or later, a window is cracked, and at first in the cracked window, and later in the wide open window, the boldest of the inhabitants (usually the chorus leader of middling looks) appears, and the exciting dialogue—although usually full of every sort of idiocy—begins.
“Are the gentlemen seeking something? Have they perhaps lost something?”
“We haven’t lost anything, but we are seeking.”
“If you haven’t lost anything, you can’t be seeking it.”
“We are seeking in order to find it.”
“I wonder what that could be? What do you wish to find?”
“We can’t say it out loud.”
“If you can’t say it out loud, you can’t say it at all.”
“If you can’t say it quietly, you don’t say it out loud.”
“Too bad. Either out loud, or not at all.”
“OK. In that case, we’ll say what we are seeking.”
“But we no longer care about that. We are no longer interested in what you are seeking. Seek and ye shall find. Farewell.”
“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
“Well my, my! Which of you is so pious?”
“We are all pious.”
“Girls! We have a group of pilgrims under our windows!”
“Don’t ridicule our faith, sister. We have
among us one who has felt the calling and intends to enter the seminary.”
“Girls! We have pilgrims under our windows! With a future clergyman!”
“Sisters! Receive the weary wayfarers under your roof!”
“We can’t today, because we already have a group of pilgrims spending the night with us. But give it a try again tomorrow. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. But not on the first try.” Etc., etc.
Wittenberg and I were experts at such dialogues. We had tens, and perhaps hundreds of balcony scenes under our belts. We had spent tens, and perhaps hundreds of hours under the walls of castles conducting unending conversations with imprisoned virgins. We knew how to put on performances like these and how to play them out. With the virtuosity of old actors, making skillful pauses for applause, we foresaw at what moment more and more numerous giggles would begin to emerge from within, gradually turning into generalized laughter; and after which line beautiful little girls’ heads would begin to appear in the windows—at first bashfully, but then more and more boldly and en masse. It was always obvious, more or less, when other voices would join the voice of the leader of the chorus, and when we could begin to establish eye contact with the chosen beauties who would relentlessly stand in the windows. (The rule is this: you must establish eye contact with those who disappear every little bit and return after a moment; it is common knowledge that they disappear to put their hair in order, remove their glasses, throw a flattering shawl over their shoulders. This is the group from which the final recruitment will be made.) Even then we had all this knowledge at our fingertips, and every day, with dull stubbornness—like a person doggedly turning a broken television set on and off in the hope that it will repair itself—we would traipse over to the deserted Dressmakers’ Technical School, expecting that finally a window would be cracked, the saucy leader would appear, and the ritual spectacle would begin. And yet, day after day, nothing, nothing, nothing. It seemed that the Silesian vampire had indeed murdered all the girl students, or as if, in a total panic, they had all fled into the depths of the forest, into which the park was gradually being transformed.
II
Personally, I didn’t make a tragedy of the thing, nor did I even complain very much. I was madly in love. To be sure, I traipsed over to the Technical School with full conviction, and—with deep faith—I looked for a miracle. When some young lady would make an appearance in the Austro-Hungarian lanes—thereby irrefutably proving that they nonetheless are, that they live, that they exist—or rather a couple young ladies from the clothiers’ school (they always went to town in groups of no less than two), with eager enthusiasm, by myself or with our entire five-person brigade, I would set off following her, and I would attempt to strike up a conversation—masterfully, although fruitlessly. I reacted intensely to the strong bodies of the four female bricklayer’s assistants who worked with us, hidden though they were under overalls stiffened from lime. Thousands of temptations and licentious scenes swarmed in my head. The most important, however, was Gocha.
Our love had erupted in the second year of the lyceum, lasted through the third and fourth, and now, after the matura and the entrance exams (Gocha had passed the exam for the school of dentistry), it not only lasted and lasted, but it exploded more and more forcefully, with a volcanic force unknown in our latitudes. Gocha. Gocha of Gochas. Gocha like the Lausanne Lyrics! Gocha like a flowering poem! Gocha like the Duino Elegies! Gocha like The Shadowy Drink! Almost every day I wrote letters full of quotations, plagiarisms, and every sort of amatory graphomania, and every weekend I rode up into the mountains to see her. Those trips, like everything in life, required me to deceive my folks.
III
Anno Domini 1971 was the nineteenth year of my life, and, in that year, telling my forty-year-old Mother and my forty-five-year-old Father that I went to see a girl on Saturdays and Sundays was out of the question. Even worse, I had to head off an attack on their part. For a few months by that time, my folks had been in possession of the first and—as it would later turn out—only car of their lives, and there was a permanent threat that they would drop by and make an unexpected visit. My old man was the worst driver in the world, but his pathological pride wouldn’t allow him to turn the driving over to Mother, to say nothing of me. By taking thousands of additional lessons, by paying thousands of złotys extra, and by practicing changing gears for hours at a time with dry runs, he passed the driving exam with the greatest difficulty. He hated driving, and he hated the car—a Fiat 125 purchased, with difficulty, using money borrowed from Pastor Kalinowski—and, it goes without saying, he drove with heroic perserverence. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life. Every trip was an inhuman torture and humiliation. In addition, every trip had to have some definite and edifying geographical goal. The possibility that one might drive a car solely for the purpose of improving their driving technique, and without a destinational, geographical, or, best of all, geo-historical reason, didn’t come into consideration. A Lutheran—even if he is driving solely for the purpose of perfecting his driving technique—must drive somewhere. And not just somewhere, but to some fundamental, or at any rate useful, place. To drive who knows where, to take who knows what turn—this is impossible. There is no such thing as a sudden hankering for a left or a right turn. Sudden, and unfounded hankerings are beyond the Lutheran anatomy.
Before every training excursion, my old man pored over the road map of the Krakow environs, and he scrupulously laid out the route so that it would contain as many cognitively useful monuments as possible—ruins, churches, castles, or, at worst, factories, bridges, or tributaries of rivers. A drive to the little Austro-Hungarian town in which we were performing our Workers’ Traineeship was a dream route: on the numerous straight sections he had perfect opportunities to practice changing lanes; he could bring me the cake that Mother had baked; he could take my dirty laundry back home; and above all, he could propose to at least part of the brigade—all of them, unfortunately, would not fit—a drive around the environs.
“Gentlemen, I propose a small expedition around the environs. I am at your service in the role of free driver and guide. And not entirely free, for if, after the trip, we make a rest stop at a certain well-known local confectioner’s, I will be counting on a large ice cream! Ha! Ha! Ha! I know that the gentlemen would prefer a large beer, but nothing doing today. We set forth without delay! Contrary to appearances, there are several things in the vicinity worth seeing! A young man, especially a freshly minted student of Polish literature, in other words, a man of letters in spe, should constantly be looking around in the world! You are certainly aware that the great Polish writer, the Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont, had a photographic memory! Whatever he saw was fixed in the head of that writer of realist epics, and with all the details! He had a great gift! And more importantly, he constantly perfected and developed it! Every gift, every talent must be perfected! Even the greatest perfect their gifts! Reymont perfected his! He instructed his memory and his gaze! We will take a trip together through the environs, and we will train the realism of our gazes! Reproofs of instruction are the way of life!”
The closer the weekend came, the more severe the nightmare became, the more distinctly I heard the bombastic voice of my old man. Quite often I didn’t so much imagine as see, with terrifying realism, how he would barge into our billet, which was full of empty bottles and reeked of cigarettes; how he would pale and stand stock still from horror, but not betray any of this; how, full of pride in the art of self-control, which he had mastered to perfection, he would smother the spirit of fury, summon the spirit of gentlemanly courtesy and Lutheran humility, and get down to putting things in order; how he would hold a manly conversation with our landlady and request—categorically request—that she keep him up to date about everything that is going on, and to this end, he would leave certain funds to cover the costs of telephone calls. And I saw how he would return and get down to making the beds, to a highly ostentatious—like in the army—making
of the beds, and I heard Wittenberg’s laugh, which was full of savage derision, and I saw the spirits of humility and courtesy evaporate like steam from Father, who became stupefied and as pale as paste, and I saw him attack my best friend with orgiastic relief, subject to the black spirit of a white-hot rage, and I saw Wittenberg, strong as a tiger and a judo expert, grab my old man and either first break his back and then smash his head against the wall, or the other way around. I couldn’t let it come to this. Before every weekend, I called home, and I said that I had an obligatory excursion to the dam in Porąbka, to the camp in Auschwitz, or to the Błędów Desert.
IV
When, not long ago at all, on the occasion of my folks’ sixtieth wedding anniversary, I delivered an embarrassing speech, into which—who knows why, probably at the instigation of the devil—I wove in those old lies, both of them, Mother and Father, stiffened.
