by Jerzy Pilch
“I’m not a little girl,” I answered hundreds of times with a well-tested, maximally cold voice.
“But you look like a little girl. And if you look like a little girl, then you are a little girl, at least a bit. And if someone is a bit of a little girl, that means that he is in general a little girl,” the leader of the quartet of black Hanulas glanced at the three remaining ones and added significantly, “it is impossible to be slightly a little girl. It’s just that we had bad luck.”
And they began to laugh horribly, they roared with laughter, to this day I haven’t heard such laughter, nor have I seen such wallowing in laughter. All of a sudden, out of the blue, they stopped, and, as if they had practiced it a thousand times, with one melodious motion they slipped the undone scarfs from their heads.
“For now, we are undressing for you, a bit little boy, a bit little girl,” the whole time one of them did the talking, the others nodded their heads in agreement and looked at her with affectionate admiration and gratitude for expressing herself so beautifully in their names. “For now, we are undressing for you, but we don’t know what will come next. We prefer not to know. We prefer to pretend that we don’t know.”
The second and third Hanulas were blondes; the fourth was the most beautiful brunette in the world, and when she stood up and opened the little door to the stove and began, in the glow falling upon her, to add wood to the fire, she became so inhumanly beautiful that I got the shivers.
“Why are you so feverish, little girl?” the leader of the Hanulas came closer; she was the ugliest of them, and it wasn’t clear whether her plait, red in the light of the fire, was really red. “Why are you so feverish? You take care of yourself! Feverish little girls have to take special care of themselves. Don’t dance immoderately.”
The music came from all sides. Both the comb trio and the bottle quartet walked through all the halls and stairways. They walked in the direction of the courtyard and played like the possessed. The Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia were still having another shot, they were still puffing on their cigarettes, but they, too, began to look around for their instruments, for stools. Janek the tailor, on trumpet, the most talented of them all, was already climbing the podium, following him Władek the carpenter, on trombone, then Jurek the roofer, on clarinet, then Józef the bricklayer, on second trumpet, then Andrzej the stove-fitter, on accordion, then Master Sztwiertnia, on percussion, finally, old man Potulnik, on bass. The bottles and combs against the wall on the other side were already providing the melody, setting the tone; the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia were gazing at them attentively and listening closely; with the greatest attention, they prepared to enter upon the appropriate chord. Everything I have learned about the seriousness of art I owe to the musicians of Wisła. The Potulnik brothers with their instruments, with sheet music and music stands, dressed in white shirts and black vests were like members of the Philharmonic (all, except for Janek the tailor, on trumpet, had taken off their sports jackets to play). And those who were playing on bottles and combs were street musicians without elegant tailcoats and instruments, because, finally, what sort of instrument is that: a piece of parchment applied to a comb or to a bottle with the bottom broken off. But the music was one, the perfect pitch was the same, and the same the respect for the craft. And a faithful memory—for the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia had perfect memories of weddings from times gone by, festivities at which they had accompanied on bottles and combs the orchestra of old Nogowczyk, all of which has long turned to dust; and those members of the Philharmonic leaned down over their droning just the same way from the heights of the podium and played with them just the same. That’s right: they played with them. The music came from all sides. Master Sztwiertnia, the brothers Potulnik, all the Wisła musicians with the talents of Mozart: we can hear you. We hear your music. The grass rises on Gróniczek Cemetery Hill, and the heavens part over Czantoria.
About a month ago, I bought a CD: Mozart, Prague, Les dernières vendanges. A group called “Le Trio di Bassetto et ses invités” plays little pieces of Mozart and little pieces of little known or entirely unknown Czech composers of his era. My God! It isn’t any “Trio di Bassetto,” it’s the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia who are playing! The spirits of the brothers Potulnik have been incarnated in that “Trio di Bassetto!” Even more! One of the “invités”—the percussionist—that isn’t the spirit of Master Sztwiertnia! That is Master Sztwiertnia, flesh and blood! I recognize him without the shadow of a doubt! Only he had that incomprehensibly rhythmic and at the same time thoroughly free, delicate, and exceptionally strong beat on the drum.
There are thirty-one seconds of music on that CD composed by an anonymous contemporary of Mozart’s, and those thirty-one seconds are my life, my childhood, my literature, and my music. My eternity lasts thirty-one seconds. Play that over my grave, but four times. Let me be granted a fourfold eternity. Let me be granted a whole one hundred and twenty-four seconds. I’ll have clay in my ears, but I will hear. That is the music that the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia played at young Trzmielowski’s wedding. This is music that was recorded then and there. God already had the suitable equipment in the fifties of the twentieth century. That is the music to the accompaniment of which funerals walked and wedding parties drove through the streets of Wisła; this is the music to which floods, snows, and heat waves descended upon us. Our sky brightened and darkened to this music. Andrzej Wantuła would visit us to this music, to this music we would sit down to the Christmas Eve table, this music was playing when Grandpa would light the fire in the hearth at dawn, and when anyone entered our gigantic kitchen. This music was there when, one fine day, an angel with folded wings stood in the middle of our courtyard that was paved with river stones.
The brothers Potulnik and Master Sztwiertnia played their hearts out, time after time and with variations, langsam und trübe. The four black Hanulas suddenly began to crowd before the mirror. I again looked into all the rooms, but they were all empty. There weren’t even the miners from the American gold mine dressed up in uniforms. “Aria! Aria!” I called as if in my sleep, “Aria, where are you?” She was the first and the greatest love of my life. God sent me many fantastic women. I have been with completely dazzling women; I loved them, and they loved me, but however often I think of Aria in a gray skirt sewn from an old coat turned inside out, whenever I think of that little girl, older than me by three or maybe four years, I am always certain that she was meant for me. She would have kept watch over me, at her side I would have had a good life, we would have set up house together in an old house, eternally covered with snow. Every Sunday we would have gone to the main church service, in the evenings we would have played dominoes and drunk tea with chokeberry syrup. Sometimes, when she would have gone on some larger shopping errand to Cieszyn, and if the couple hours without her were unbearable, I would have taken a thick notebook with green covers and attempted to continue the story about chess or about my first love, which I had begun long ago. But always, before I could compose even one sentence, I would hear her opening the gate and walking across the yard, and I would leave my writing and go out to meet her and relieve her of the heaviest bag with the books, wine, and bread, and we would sit in the kitchen, and she would tell me the news. This would have been a thousand times better than the fulfillment that is granted to me now: when, after constructing the hundredth, or even the thousandth sentence, no one opens the gate, no one goes through the yard, and no one tells me the news. I have what I wanted: I can compose sentences to the bitter end.
Aria! Aria! Aria! Aria in my dreams. Emma Lunatyczka in reality. My hands passed along the icy skin, raised the nightshirt stiff from the cold; touch took me once and for all into its animal possession. Touch and betrayal. In the very middle of the darkness, I would get out of bed. Somewhere under its frame stood the chamber pot, against which I had a psychological block, unlike, incidentally, Emma, who—no matter whether conscious or unconsc
ious, in a lunatic march or with entirely deliberate shamelessness—if she felt the need, would sit down and fire away with a sharp, and at the same time delicate, stream. I couldn’t do it. I had to pull on my shoes, put on a shirt, sweater, whatever was handy, and fight my way through the ever colder circles to the can in the courtyard. I never had yellow fever or malaria, but from those times I knew what malarial or yellow-fever shivers meant. At times the courtyard looked like a golden meadow. The curtains of the next frosts hovered above, and on the snow were impressed countless stamps of constellations. I ran over them with the lightness of a ballet dancer. The can was always the beginning of the abyss. The devil is caked with shit. Death smells of the rust that has settled on the scythe. The four black Hanulas danced until they dropped; they ought to dance to the last black thread; they ought—almost naked, emaciated, dead tired—to freeze in their dance, as soon as the first Sunday of Advent comes. But the smell of rust came earlier.
Two days before the death of old man Trzmielowski, Uncle Paweł got up, lay down, walked, flew like a madman. One impulse after another. One spasm after another. Not a moment of rest, violent and anxious sleep, his face blackened, dried froth in the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t so much that the bottle was always at hand, as that it was always in his hand. The last one, and almost empty. An absolutely full moon hangs over the courtyard and gilds the path to the can. I returned to an empty bed. Emma—whenever it took hold of her especially forcefully—would scoop up the featherbed. She would carry it before her in her errorless wanderings, and she slept on it as if on a cloud. Everything makes sense. Death would arrive any minute. Uncle Paweł would catch sight of it two days earlier. He would come to, and he would see, from the depths of the hallway, Death riding on a cloud. It keeps on riding, but instead of making the turn, it bypasses the door behind which the old man was waiting for it. It rides further. Rides further, rides straight on. It is closer and closer. It’s right around the corner. The smell of rust already fills nostrils fossilized from hooch. “Wrong address! Wrong address! Reverse! Back!” Uncle’s shout rises to the heavens, although he himself isn’t certain that he is saying any words. “Wrong address! Reverse gear! Back up! Back and to the left! Wrong address!” He shouted so loudly that the cloud that was preceding Death retreated and completely melted away. The wrestling of the delirious with the lunatic was like the wrestling of Jacob with the Angel. The brownish sweat of the alcoholic against the icy sweat of the lunatic. Real death came two days later. You couldn’t hear its footsteps, no one saw the scythe resting on the headboard. Although the mistake had been definitively explained, Uncle Paweł still didn’t really believe in miraculous survivals. All the less did he believe that there was nothing left to drink. For the time being, since there would be this and that at the wake, and they would need quite a lot of it. But no way would he wait for the wake. When would the smugglers come down the mountains? When would the little church bells of their Czech half-quart bottles ring in the backpacks? When? The old man lay belly up, the old lady was wiping his aquiline and yellow profile with pure spirits. With each wipe the old man’s profile took on aquilinity, yellowness, aquilinity, yellowness. The bottle stood on the stool, more than half was left. Snow was piling up on the roof, someone shouted in the depths of the house, Emma laughed bizarrely in the kitchen, something fluttered in the attic, something struck—like a lightning bolt, but a weak one. The old lady left the old man, who was now almost completely ready for the coffin, flew through the hallway, through the courtyard, and back again. How long was she gone? Five minutes? Not even five minutes! And there wasn’t a drop of the spirits left! The bottle was empty! It looked like the deceased had come to for a moment, looked around, found it, took a goodly chug, and fallen asleep for all time. “It was stronger than me,” old lady Mary would say later on, “it was stronger than me. For a fraction of a second, a terrible suspicion crept into my heart: he arouse from the dead, drank it off, and died for good.”
The history of the evaporation of the spirits for wiping the skin of the deceased has no explanation, nor even a continuation. The gods of understanding and elegance celebrate. They clink glasses, who cares for what. Uncle Paweł tells the story to the end of his life—about how Death got the wrong address. I look around, where is that little black whore heading! Where? Heading for me! Precisely for me! You’ve got the wrong address, you little black whore! Reverse and turn left! But she stumbles onto me like an avalanche from beyond the grave! This is the end, so I think! And so it has come now! But never, no, not ever, we will never surrender! With what is left of my strength I part the black dunes, and I look, and the beast has Emma’s head, Emma’s nightshirt, Emma’s ass, and Emma’s tits! And if it has the head, nightshirt, ass, and tits of Emma, then it is Emma. I’m alive, I haven’t died.
After the old man’s funeral, the Christmas holidays came at a gallop, after the holidays—hog slaughtering time. Hogs possessed by demons and dripping blood ran through the courtyard, fell into the snow, hid themselves in the drifts, fought and squealed, as if their further life were important. Drifts and specters. Half-naked butchers surrounded them in an ever tighter circle. Tables continued to pass through the rooms, the fat flowed through them. Ice blocks as large as the pyramids, cut out under the bridge, glided by on carts. After the hog-slaughtering, Aria departed forever. I don’t know whether she is still alive. If she is, then she will be pushing sixty. Wedding, funeral, holidays, hog-slaughtering. Flu, scarlet fever, whooping cough, pneumonia. One hundred and twenty-four seconds of eternity. During the Christmas Eve supper, Sister Ewelina impulsively sneezed, and the candle on the table went out. The impulsiveness spoke clearly: of all of those gathered here, you will die first, Sister Ewelina. There was no help now. The sleigh was already setting off to dig the hole. By sleigh to the hospital in Cieszyn. The feverish head on the massive thighs of Emma Lunatyczka. Aria! Aria! Aria! Where is our life?
Author Bio
Jerzy Pilch is one of Poland’s most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland’s prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel. His books have been translated into numerous languages, and his novels A Thousand Peaceful Cities—chosen as a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2010 book—and The Mighty Angel are also available in English translation from Open Letter.
Translator Bio
David Frick is a Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. He won a Northern California Book Award for his translation of Pilch’s A Thousand Peaceful Cities.
About Open Letter
Open Letter—the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.
Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.
Current and forthcoming titles from Open Letter include works from Argentina, Bulgaria, Catalonia, China, Germany, Iceland, Poland, and many other countries.
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