by Jerzy Pilch
But for that fraction of a second, as they looked at each other, they managed to ask themselves silently: Which one? Which one of them would soon die? They both knew the secret alphabets of death. The lot fell to Mila. She was a large, stout woman, and she had always had heart troubles. In half a year she would begin to feel sick. Not so very sick—she wouldn’t even lose consciousness—but still, sick enough that the ambulance would come, they would take her to the hospital, and basically no one knew what would come next. The kitchen was full of people, everyone was waiting for news, uncanny Pospiszil was calmly reckoning whether Mama—in my parts, to this day, men have the fatal habit of calling their wives “Mamas”—would return home for the holidays. Of course she would return, what do you mean for the holidays, what’s the date today? The tenth of December! What do you mean for the holidays! Mama will return well before the holidays! And even if! Even if, God forbid, there were some complications, because a person has to be prepared for everything, even so, they will certainly discharge her just in time for the holidays! They will discharge her for the holidays. They always discharge almost everybody for the holidays. How could this be: the holidays without Mama?
And here, for a good hour already, life without Mama had been going on. They couldn’t get through on the telephone from the hospital, what was the hurry with this news after all. Finally, Grandma will take the telephone call, and right away—despair, sudden lament, the first steps of the funeral dance. Mama has died! Mama has died! She was with us even yesterday, and today she is gone! Grandma will run in from the hallway, where the telephone on the wall, fastened to a special pedestal made of black metal, was now like an altar of evil. She will glide with a quick but at the same time solemn step, she will rush to uncanny Pospiszil, grasp him by the head, embrace him, and shout like in the circus: Mama has died! Mama has died!
The sudden expressions of despair were the most difficult to understand. After all, she well knew at whom the shot under the kitchen stove had been aimed. So what shock are we talking about? What surprise? She knew that it was about Mila, not about her.
This didn’t happen in my sleep. It was in the early morning of a certain winter day. All of Wisła was buried in snow up to the rooftops, and it must have been twenty below zero. Somebody was sitting then on the round stool at the sewing machine. She had recently gotten up, was walking about the room and braiding the plait that she never cut, and she wasn’t afraid, and she wasn’t ashamed, because she sensed that that someone could be a messanger—frozen, dusty, dead tired, but from over there. Perhaps even the same one who once had visited Abraham, or the one who had dissuaded Joseph from leaving Mary, or the one we sang about in the Christmas carol: “On earth are the earthly, in heaven, the angels.” You couldn’t see his wings, but it all fit. Can you see birds’ wings when they sit on branches? Has anyone ever seen a sparrow sitting with its wings spread? Or a titmouse? Or a blackbird? Birds spread their wings in flight; it must be the same with angels. True, on the lithograph that was hanging over the bed you could see the spread wings growing out of the angel’s back, but every time she looked at that picture, the thought came to her that the picture was painted nicely, but that the painter had probably never seen even a partridge in the grass, to say nothing of an angel. The one who was sitting on the round stool at the sewing machine must have had his wings folded. An angel with folded wings. A strange expression, but she liked it a lot. And he had just said—the stranger with the folded wings—that she would still, for many years, see signs and hear voices. It flitted through her mind to ask about Gustaw. Just how was he doing? Had his cracked skull grown back together? Did he remember her? But she let it go, since this might displease him. She has been with her second husband for a long time now, three children with him, grandchildren, and there she goes asking about the other one. God didn’t take him so that she could long for him. She didn’t ask.
Grandma Pech outwitted death by her eternal readiness for it. That was how she lived to be ninety. For as long as I could remember, she had been saying that it was time to leave this world, that she had just one desire, to fall asleep in the evening and not wake up in the morning, and she always wore black. Even when she wasn’t entirely in black, she always wore something funereal, even if it was only a scarf with black roses. In other words, she was ready for death every day, she had the angel’s assurance that she would live to see a thing or two, she had been forewarned about God’s decisions. She was doubly, or perhaps even repeatedly, fortified; she had been expecting Mila’s death for half a year. But in that case, what was the reason for her race from the hallway to the kitchen, feverish and stately, like an up-tempo cortège? Why, and for whom, that grabbing of uncanny Pospiszil by his gray mane? Why, and for whom, those theatrics?
For the Lord God. For half a year, day after day, Grandma Pech had awaited Mila’s death with a heavy heart, but also for half a year she had been gearing up for her performance on the occasion of that death. She couldn’t foresee all the circumstances, but it turned out almost ideally. Grandma Pech was the Lord God’s dancer. She didn’t have the slightest doubt that He never took His eye off her, and that in important moments He scrutinized her carefully. Her faith was pure and steadfast, but it plunged her into an aesthetic of despair, because it seemed to her that the Lord God, the angels, and, in general, all the inhabitants of heaven were the audience before which she was performing. She did her best, but she didn’t know the duplicitous art of solemn gestures. She couldn’t even feign sorrow over someone’s death very well. And when she thought about herself, she went numb with fear. Just how would that be? Through one’s whole life, a person hadn’t been anywhere, hadn’t traveled, hadn’t met anyone. A person hadn’t even been to Warsaw, and now you have to exchange a few words with Lord Jesus, greet the archangels from up close. God! How will this be? My Grandma Zuzanna, née Trzmielowska, primo voto Branna, secundo voto Pech, wasn’t afraid of death—she was afraid of leaving Wisła.
II
She died in long drawn-out agonies. I saw her for the last time two weeks before her death. For the previous nine years, ever since Grandpa Pech had died, she had lived alone. For the last year, she lay in bed in the small room. I sat on the round stool at the sewing machine. She told stories about the church fair, about gingerbread, and about the taste of freshly pickled cucumbers. I realized that she was talking about the taste of cucumbers from the year 1912. Twenty years later she fell in love with the young butcher Gustaw Branny. A dark, almost indecipherable photo from their wedding party was hanging over the little chess table. Today it is easy to say that clouds were gathering over the young couple. If you stare at the background, you can see more than clouds, and more than the black trunks of pine trees—you can see corpse-white lightning bolts slashing through the darkness.
To the left of the groom sits his sister Mila, with uncanny Pospiszil. Pospiszil’s uncanniness, in my mind from back then, was based on three circumstances. First: he had a twin brother. Second: a year after my aunt’s death, the devils carted him off to hell, and he cursed horribly, horribly. Third: he was an enthusiastic phillumenist.
He showed me his collection once. Oh, the varieties and origins of matchbox covers he had there! Egypt, The Congo, Bechuana, Tanganyika, Laos, Oran, Siam—God knows what else. Everything the same size, poor pictures, wretched paper, zero serration. In those days, I collected stamps, and Pospiszil’s phillumenalia made a gloomy impression. It seemed to me that he, too, really wished to collect stamps, but, as some sort of punishment, he was only allowed this pathetic stuff. Or that those were stamps, but that the devil cut the edges at night and spilled acid on them, which made the colors fade, the paper get thin, and the glue come off the back. Pospiszil was amazingly proud of his collection. He presented it with the superiority of the magician initiated in who knows what sort of arcana. With the proficiency of the old pedant (before the war he had taught at the conservatory), he tested me to see whether I was reacting with the proper humility, and I felt as
hamed of him with the terrible shame of the child who is ashamed of adults. To make matters worse, the Pospiszils’ house in Wierchy was huge and unfurnished. All the rooms were painted yellow, and there was not even a stool in a single one. In the living room, there was a piano covered with a shiny violet dust sheet—and that was that. Maybe they lived on the second floor, maybe they were remodeling just then, painting, changing the stoves—the explanation wouldn’t be complicated, but in my mind there remained the yellow light of the walls, the empty rooms, and Pospiszil showing me, with pomp and solemnity, the most pathetic little scraps of paper in the world.
When he died a year after Mila’s death, his identical twin brother came to the funeral. I suppose they didn’t get along, because I had never seen the twin before. Supposedly he lived in Gdynia. Or on some other moon. Actually, I don’t have to elaborate on the images and circumstances. Just imagine the funeral of a twin, which is attended by the other twin. Maybe you have been at such a funeral? It is obvious what sort of irresistible thoughts one has then. And what is more, I was seeing the other Pospiszil for the first time in my life, and I didn’t really know that he was—perhaps didn’t even really know what it was: twinness. My Aunt from Wąwóz had twins, but they weren’t similar. And here you had the identical voice, the identical motions, height, gait, hair, even clothing—all identical. It couldn’t be anything other than that the corpse had crawled out of the coffin and was standing over its own grave. Years later I feel like laughing, but then? Horror! And there were the amazing stories: that the deceased—if he was deceased, if the coffin wasn’t empty—had died horribly, how he howled, cursed, blasphemed. Horror! Fear, genuine, piercing to the marrow like frost. Fear that somewhere here, over the cemetery on Gróniczek Hill, emissaries of hell were circulating, that, granted, Father Kalinowski conducted the right services, that we sing and pray, but that the devil already has everything in his care. Years later—when Father died and over his grave a black, July downpour broke out—I recalled a shadow of that fear.
III
On the photo hanging over the little chess table, black clouds and the black branches of pine trees bend over the wedding guests. Black pine needles rain down upon my Grandma’s bonnet, but she doesn’t know about it. Leaning on the distinctive shoulder of the young butcher, she has before her yet a year of faith in love, a year of faith in the world’s sense, a year of faith in God’s goodness. In nine months, she would give birth to a son. In twelve months, on a sunny September afternoon, someone would drive up in front of the house on a motorcycle. Someone with dark folded wings? Most likely yes, although this isn’t all that important. What is important is the motorcycle—a DKW Sport 500, the 1929 model. A black, shining spider, which could reach the unprecedented speed of seventy-five miles per hour.
As late as the fifties, when some stranger from Katowice left a Junak in the courtyard, the neighbors gathered, and the Nikandy boys, by some miracle (to tell the truth, by using a common nail), got it started and made laps, there was a great spectacle. And twenty years earlier? Before the war? Almost ten years before the arrival, with an infernal clatter, of motorized Wehrmacht troops through the Kubalonka Pass? In the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty-two? At that time, the good citizens of Wisła didn’t gather out of curiosity at the sound of an approaching motorcycle. They locked themselves in their houses, maybe they even barricaded themselves. They definitely prayed.
O unhappy Gustaw Branny! Why didn’t you hide in the back room? Why did you allow yourself to be tempted by the devil on the motorcycle? Why did you want to go for a ride? O master butcher, who obtained all those licenses from the Butchers’ Association in Skoczów! Granted, if you had hidden and not set off on your last ride, I wouldn’t be singing you this little song, because neither I nor my Mother would be in this world, but Grandma would be happy. Was that the reason almighty God, or the devil on a motorcycle, smashed your skull—so that my life might be possible? And it is possible only because I defend myself from its anguish by writing? Are those the sorts of pranks you have in Your head, Lord God?
For half her life, Grandma told the story of the scene of his departure. Gustaw sat on the motorcycle, they set off in the direction of Oasis, he turned back, waved, and that was that. I heard this sentence a thousand, a billion times. Nothing more. Gustaw sat on the motorcycle, they set off in the direction of Oasis, he turned back, waved, and that was that. Her story about the tragedy was a single sentence. Never a single word about who came running with the news. Never a single word about how she flew to that bend in the road. Never a single word about the stump that Gustaw’s unhappy head hit. Never a single word about how he looked in the coffin. Never a single word about washing and dressing the corpse. Never a single word about the funeral. I hear her wailing in the ice-cold house of Wisła butchers, and she recalls the wailing that was the omen of his death. She was sure that it had been caterwauling. The windows of the back room look out on a garden full of wild apple trees, tomcats from the entire Principality of Cieszyn constantly prowl there, and often, in their amatory frenzies, bawl their heads off precisely like year-old infants. Six weeks before Gustaw was killed, you could hear the screaming cry of a child in the back room. She was certain that it was tomcats’ laments, although something didn’t fit. Only when she went in there on the evening after the wake did she recall her own anxiety.
In the back room stands a stove made of cornflower blue tiles, a gigantic armchair, a pear wood wardrobe, a double bed, a small table covered with a lace table cloth. On the wall hangs an image of a Guardian Angel and a Becker clock. You couldn’t hear it ticking. It is quiet, dreadfully quiet. My twenty-five-year-old Grandma looks through the double window at the outline of Jarzębata Mountain. Never would she put it this way, but her skin is dead, her soul is in ruins, her heart is burnt to ashes. Not only is the Jarzębata beyond the double window. The entire world is beyond the double window. She herself is beyond the double window. Her legs, her arms, her head—they have been separated from her; she walks, sits, moves her arms, sees, and hears only because, with her last reserves of strength, she commands her legs and arms to move, her eyes to see, and her ears to hear. And now there is quiet over the entire field, now it is quiet like in Gustaw’s coffin. Even the tomcats have fallen silent, they aren’t in the garden, the child isn’t crying.
Suddenly, it was as if a windowpane had shattered, as if the band at a fair had started to play. Suddenly she hears that cry, suddenly she hears the cry from six weeks before and recalls that it hadn’t come from the garden, but as if from behind the armchair, and the armchair doesn’t even stand under the window. And she recalls that her heart shuddered then, because that sound was not only unusually loud, it was also horribly distinct; it was full of syllables, as if a crying baby were saying something, shouting something, as if it wished to say, to shout out some word. And with all her strength, she recreates that meowing, that whimpering, which was not meowing and was not whimpering. God, it is good that You give me signs, but why are they so unclear? Grandma Zuzanna listens intently and with a sort of tension, as if she were praying for Gustaw’s resurrection and had a chance at it. She listens and suddenly hears, suddenly she hears precisely and runs through the entire house, and just as she was standing there in her Silesian attire, which she hadn’t yet changed after the funeral and after the wake, she runs to the stable, leads Fuks out, harnesses him to the britzka, which is standing by the shed, opens the gate, and off she goes! Giddy-up! Giddy-up! Fuks! Giddy-up to Wierchy!
I’m not able to describe her life as I would wish. I don’t know how to recreate it day by day, page by page. Isolated images flare up, and I approach them, but I, too, am helpless. The lonely ride of Grandma Zuzanna at dusk through a lifeless prewar Wisła is like a Handel aria. A few hours after the funeral of her beloved, a young woman stands on the rushing carriage, turns onto the bridge, drives into the dark valley, a gust ripped the scarf from her shoulders and unbraids her plait. Fuks gallops lightly,
the wheels rattle, the river flows toward them, and above them, in the dark blue sky, an angel sings: Lascia ch’io pianga mia cruda sorte, e che sospiri la libertà.
At the Pospiszils’, the lights are shining in the windows, Grandma walks through the yellow rooms, no one is surprised. It was almost as if Mila had been waiting for her. First they embrace, then they look at each other for a long time. They sit in the living room. There is no question of eating, but a sip of pepper vodka can’t hurt. Mila’s famous pepper vodka. Old Roth buys it all the time and does great business with it. He served it at the wake. After two rounds, the hubbub of voices was louder and louder. Lord Jesus, let me wake up. Lord God, wake me up. After the funeral, they asked to go to Roth’s, because—where else? She didn’t really know where she was. A year ago she hadn’t believed that she was at her own wedding party. Now she is supposed to believe that she is at the wake after Gustaw’s funeral? She drank about three glasses, but she didn’t feel a thing, not even the fiery taste.
“Mrs. Professor, Mrs. Professor,” old Roth bowed and scraped to Mila, “Mrs. Professor. When Mrs. Professor makes her pepper vodka from Wierchy, it is paradise mixed with hell! It is as if you were drinking fire mixed with sky. It is as if a cloud pierced by lightning had passed through your throat! Mr. Professor,” he addressed Pospiszil. “Mr. Professor, you have a genuine Eden in your cellar!” “Eden in the cellar, hell on the ground floor,” responded Pospiszil, who was well known for his splendid ripostes, and the laugh of the funeral-goers rose to the heavens.
