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Father Pastor Potraffke raised up his arms and said, or rather, shouting over the singing Czechs who were deaf to everything but their own song, he cried out:
“It was as it was, but one always somehow muddled through; but for us Protestants it was sometimes neither the one way nor the other. More precisely, it often is neither the one way or the other for us. On the one hand, in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, we find the pertinent commentary concerning absolute civic obedience toward the higher authority. On the other hand, it isn’t true that Protestants haven’t ever taken part in assassinations . . .”
“The Apostle Paul writes about authority that comes from God. If Gomułka’s authority comes from God, I fear I’ll lose my faith,” said Sexton Messerschmidt acidly.
“In the first place, the apostle says that every authority comes from God,” Father Pastor Potraffke interrupted him, and with a gesture of his hand he quieted the polemicists who were ready with immediate ripostes. “I agree. I agree, that it is doubtless a matter here of true authority, and that the false, usurpatory authority of the brother Communists does not come from God. But the Fifth Commandment, brothers and sisters, does come from God, and there are no exceptions to it.”
“Maybe you don’t make any exceptions, but we do. This is the basis of our superiority over you. The Catholic Church is the Church of elastic intellectuals, and your Lutheran Church is the Church of dogmatic doctrinalists,” Station Master Ujejski smiled venomously.
“People, hold me back, or I’ll have to remind him of the Second Schmalkaldic War,” cried out Sexton Messerschmidt.
“He who lacks arguments resorts to fisticuffs,” said Station Master Ujejski in a voice that vibrated with rage, though it was still rather calm. After a moment, however, fury took possession of him entirely. He leaned out in the direction of the Sexton and began to hiss hatefully: “The Battle of White Mountain didn’t teach you a thing, it didn’t teach you a thing! St. Bartholomew’s Night didn’t teach you a thing . . .”
“Brothers, calm yourselves!” cried out Father Pastor Potraffke. “Let the spirit of peace reign between you!”
And after a moment, as if wishing to reinforce the spirit of peace with the sprit of sobriety, he turned to Station Master Ujejski:
“What sorts of exceptions do you have in mind? What exceptions can there be to the Fifth Commandment?”
“Thomas Aquinas answers the question whether it is possible to grant dispensation from the Ten Commandments in the affirmative: it is possible to grant dispensation,” replied Station Master Ujejski, now with a calmer tone, “because the Commandments belong to natural law, and natural law is sometimes fallible, and thus it is possible to grant dispensation.”
“The Commandments are established by God, thus I think only God could grant dispensation from them,” said the Pastor’s Wife, shrugging her shoulders.
“God works with the hands of men.” The Station Master was quite clearly passing from arousal to apathy.
“Does Thomas Aquinas speak in so many words about granting dispensation from the prohibition against killing?” Grand Master Swaczyna asked.
“Yes, in so many words,” Station Master Ujejski barely moved his lips. “He says that people are given dispensation from the prohibition against killing since, according to human law, it is permitted to kill people—for instance criminals or enemies.”
“Absolutely right, as far as I’m concerned,” threw in Commandant Jeremiah. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m for the death penalty. It will be better for more than one scoundrel if he is buried before it is too late.”
“I could say,” Mr. Trąba said with a somewhat forced smile, “I could say that all the arguments mentioned suit my dying intentions well. Dispensation from the Fifth Commandment suits me. Permission to kill an enemy and a criminal suits me. The existence of capital punishment suits me. Incidentally, as far as the medieval opinion on the licitness of tyrannicide is concerned—I’m speaking to you, Mr. Station Master, but you’re sleeping,” and indeed the Station Master’s eyes were closed, and his head had fallen onto his chest, “—as far as the medieval opinion on tyrannicide is concerned, this was partially revoked by the Council of Constance. But of course we Lutherans—maybe it is better that you’re sleeping, Mr. Station Master—we Lutherans don’t care about either Thomas Aquinas or some council from the mists of history. We Lutherans care about Luther. And Luther—although he does not allow tyrannicide—allows punishment. ‘Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful,’ he cites Scripture, but it does not follow from this, he adds, that there shouldn’t be punishment at all. There must be punishment, and it is the superior authorities who are to punish. If injustices should not cease, make report about this, says Luther, to your superior authority, your father or whomever is placed over you to exercise office: it is their task to punish according to righteousness. Yes,” Mr. Trąba sighed deeply, “I think it is clear to all that in the current situation, here and now, the Reformer’s recommended legalism is a troublesome utopia, and it is necessary to take matters into our own hands. Gomułka’s superior authority is Khrushchev, and if I wanted to abide strictly by the counsel of Doctor Martin Luther, I would have to direct my complaint against Gomułka to Khrushchev. Which is absurd.”
“It’s only slightly less absurd than killing Gomułka.” Commandant Jeremiah persisted in his increasingly peculiar commonsense argumentation.
“No, a hundred times no,” Mr. Trąba raised his voice. “I’ve worked the problem out theoretically without a hitch, just as I hope to hit him in the heart without a hitch. I name myself, in the name of historical righteousness, the superior authority of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, and as the superior power I will mete out the death penalty to him.”
“And thereby you ennoble him, Mr. Trąba. You will join the ranks of the great assassins of mankind, but you also add Gomułka to the ranks of the great tyrants of mankind. Doesn’t that bother you?” asked Grand Master Swaczyna.
“This pains me, but unfortunately there are no ideal solutions,” Mr. Trąba replied, and he turned to Father Pastor Potraffke:
“I’m terribly sorry, but whom did you have in mind? What Protestants took part in assassination attempts upon the highest power?”
“Not searching too far afield, a certain Lutheran, Bogumił Frankemberg, a locksmith from Cybulice, took part in the famous, although fortunately failed, attempt on the life of the last king of the Commonwealth.”
“You are thinking of the disgraceful abduction of Stanisław August Poniatowski that ended with the retreat of the conspirators, with the exception of one who, seeing what was happening, went over to the side of the king? Do you have in mind the famous coup that ended with the rescue of our last crowned head by an accidental miller in Marymont?” Mr. Trąba was making certain he’d understood correctly.
“Your coup will end up just the same, a fiasco, everything will come to nothing, you’ll wander around, you’ll get lost, you’ll end up, if not in a mill in Marymont, then in the police station on Marszałkowska Street, you’ll get drunk as swine.” Commandant Jeremiah had clearly lost what was left of his patience. “By the way, why aren’t you drinking, Mr. Trąba? After all, you were supposed to be dying of drink, and for that reason you intend to commit a crime. And what do I see here? You’re not drinking?”
“You go too far, Commandant.” Mr. Trąba grew pale, and his hands began to shake. “Those arguments are below the belt. Moreover, in a plan of elementary logic you confuse causes with effects.”
“Brothers, calm yourselves,” Pastor Potraffke once again appealed for peace. “And what if,” he continued in a tone of somewhat too studied conciliation, “what if you were to tie this not to the idea of real regicide, since it is indeed difficult to find an example of that in our history, but to the idea of symbolic regicide?”
“Just what do you have in mind?” Father asked.
“There are known cases
of attempts not upon the person of the ruler but upon his image. For example, Prince Józef Jabłonowski, enraged at that same unfortunate Stanisław August Poniatowski, ordered a portrait of the king hung in his private dungeon, and he placed guards by that imprisoned image. Likewise the portrait of King Jan III Sobieski fell victim to an assassin’s attempt. A certain nobleman, whose name I don’t remember, simply hacked the likeness of the king to pieces with his saber, for which, moreover, he paid with his neck.”
“Don’t be angry with me, Pastor, but the idea that I should let fly from my crossbow at a photograph of Władysław Gomułka cut out of The People’s Tribune—well that sort of idea is humiliating.” Mr. Trąba’s hands continued to shake, and his gaze strayed time and again in the direction of the bottles that were standing on the table.
“You must be aware,” Commandant Jeremiah’s tone seemed to reveal that perhaps he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the irreversible course of events, “you must be aware that, in addition to everything else, the crossbow isn’t the weapon of knights but of servants. Gentlemen despise the crossbow. For example, the use by the British of massive units armed with crossbows in the famous Battle of Crécy was recognized as dishonorable by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, which, in itself, invalidated the result of the battle. The use of the crossbow is a foul.”
“I don’t intend to foul Gomułka. I intend to kill him,” Mr. Trąba retorted dully. “The crossbow is the only weapon I know that can be effective at a distance of 150 to 200 yards. On the other side of Frascati Street, across from the windows of the first secretary’s apartment, there stretches a small park, and precisely from that spot, from behind the cover of darkness and leafless shrubs, I intend to send forth a single, and I hope lethal, shot. I choose the crossbow because, as I have mentioned many times, I simply don’t know how to use firearms. Obviously, I know perfectly well about the course of the Battle of Crécy, and I know that in Europe that weapon never enjoyed great esteem. But as always, excessive Eurocentrism is what destroys us Europeans. As some of you may know, the crossbow was invented in China, and at a time when bears were strolling back and forth across today’s Frascati Street. The trigger mechanisms of Chinese crossbows were produced with the precision of a grain of rice, and their level of complication, as experts claim, is comparable to that of bullet chambers in contemporary automatic rifles. You can find breathtaking descriptions of these constructions (handmade, although on an industrial scale) in old Chinese tracts, for example in The Art of War of Master Sun or in Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lu. I have the impression that both texts stem from the times when our ancestors, who later despised the weapon as unworthy of gentlemen, were still frightening wild animals with their ghastly dialect. The Huns, who battled with the Chinese, feared the crossbow, but if, by some miracle, they came into possession of one, they were unable to assemble or copy it. They weren’t even able to make use of the arrows, since they were too short for their long bows. Thus the invention and use of the crossbow is a flight of human thought and technology, a rebuff to barbarity. The fact that, one thousand years after the Chinese, servants in Europe used crossbows to set fire to barns is rather a measure of the demise, and not a manifestation of the exquisite manners, of the warriors of Mitteleuropa. So you see, it was no coincidence,” Mr. Trąba glanced in the direction of Grand Master Swaczyna, “no coincidence at all that I chose the Chinese model, since just like the ancient Chinese, I intend to rout the Huns. Even more, I intend to kill the very leader of the Huns.”
“As I said,” Grand Master Swaczyna reached into his breast pocket and extracted a folded piece of office paper, “as I said, the idea of killing, whether it’s a communist leader or any other sort of leader, is, in my opinion, an idea for students, but a commission remains a commission. ‘The customer is our master,’ as the latest slogan of socialized services proclaims. Here’s the project.”
Grand Master Swaczyna smoothed out the paper, and we all caught sight of a scrupulously drawn image of a beautiful object, shaded with a soft pencil, like an old illustration.
“The bed is approximately thirty, and precisely thirty-three and one half inches in length, and will be produced from beech wood, buffalo horn, and ram’s tendons,” Grand Master Swaczyna explained. “The inlay: little circles and rosettes of ivory. It all worked out well—I recently imported a little ivory from Kenya at a small profit. The bowstring will be of horse hair, the trigger lever of brass. Whereas for the bail, that is to say the bow, we will employ a spring from a Citroën model 1938. Only yesterday I paid a visit to one of my workshops and personally inspected the death-dealing metal. It has already been cleaned of rust and petrified mud. I can tell you all that truly murderous powers lurk in its wings glistening with olive intensity. As the man from whom I bought the spring assured me, that very Citroën model 1938 was in its time the property of the legendary murderer Mazurkiewicz. There remains the questions of shots, that is to say arrows . . .”
“One arrow will be enough,” Mr. Trąba studied the details of the project carefully. “One arrow will be enough, made, as I told you, from a bicycle spoke and wooden ailerons, whereas the tip is to be made from a silver ball filed off of Mrs. Chief’s souvenir sugar bowl.” Mr. Trąba bowed slightly in the direction of Mother, who was sitting motionless.
“And the silver blade will pierce his bowels, and his belly, and the dirt shall come out. Poland, Poland,” resounded Father Pastor Potraffke’s hoarsely distorted voice.
Once again he raised up his arms, but now it might seem that he lifted on them a huge, invisible weight, and his face grew pale as paper, he panted heavily, his dark, fiery pupils fled time and again into the depths of his skull. The Pastor’s Wife jumped up from her place, but neither she nor any of us, who were seized with sudden fear, knew what to do. Pastor Potraffke now raised up his arms and the weight resting on them (all the heavier for the fact that it was invisible), and now he himself rose up from his place, and apoplectic blotches began to appear on his face, which gave the impression that he was slowly returning to life and consciousness. And indeed, he lowered one hand and extracted a Bible from his jacket pocket. He opened it with a mechanical, though seemingly infallible, gesture, and with a somewhat calmer, though still sufficiently apoplectic voice, he began to speak, read, and comment:
“I ask you, beloved brothers and beloved sisters, how many years have passed since the end of the war until today, until the year of our Lord 1963? Eighteen years. Eighteen. Listen, then, to what the Book of Judges has to say: ‘And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. So the children of Israel,’ listen carefully brothers and sisters, ‘the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for eighteen years.’ Just as we,” the pastor raised up his head and immediately let it drop again, “just as we have been serving the king of the Huns for eighteen years. Scripture speaks in this passage, the Book of Judges, chapter three, verse fourteen, about precisely eighteen years of bondage: ‘But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a man who did not use his right hand: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment on his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And Ehud came unto him and put forth his left hand and took the dagger forth from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. So that the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.’ That’s right. Dirt. Poland.”
Father Pastor Potraffke finished his furious, though ever quieter and ever calmer, reading from the Book of Judges, sat down heavily, and cast his careful gaze with unwaning fury across everyone sitting at the table, and then he said out of the blue:
“Nothing in the world, nothing will bring me to grant you confirmation. Dirt. Dirt. Poland. Poland.”
“Poland,” Mr. Trąba repeated after him as if an echo.
“Poland,” Grand Master Swaczyna repeated as if it were the response to a password.
“Poland, goal,” said Father.
“Poland, Poland, Poland,” said Mother, the Pastor’s Wife, and Małgosia Snyperek.
“Poland, Poland, Poland,” we began to repeat, one after another, to chant in unison “Poland, Poland,” like fans sitting in the same section of a stadium.
And the choralists, who were still standing on the podium and were still singing Czech songs to the accompaniment of the missionary orchestra, finally heard our “Poland, Poland,” for they finally fell silent for a moment, and not at all surprised, not even directing astounded glances in our direction, they immediately sang in Polish, with that same strong voice:
“Time to go home, it’s time. They already call us.
The bell from the tower to devotions,
Mother from the doorway to supper.
They already call, it’s time to go home, time.”
And we had to admit, and we always admitted later, and with genuine fervor, that the the morphinistes’ Czech boyfriends sang that old Polish song so skillfully that none of us heard even a hint of a foreign accent in their singing.
Chapter VII
I FELT THE ROCKING of the assassins’ postal ambulance car as it glided slowly along the tracks through the muddy plains. I awoke and fell asleep, again and again. I breathed in the smell of packing paper, hemp twine, and wax seals. In the darkness I saw pyramids of packages and parcels. Mr. Trąba, Father, and the postal guards sat in the middle of those pyramids. I heard the murmur of their conversations. They spoke of women: love stories, like the dark fields, stations, and lights we passed along the way, followed one after the other.
Jerzy Pilch Page 11