Jerzy Pilch

by A Thousand Peaceful Cities

  Someone said:

  “It won’t be long now. You can see the Palace of Culture.”

  “You can’t see anything yet. It’s still dark. We have almost a whole hour to go,” said someone else, who yawned terribly and fell asleep. And this time, toward the end of the journey, I fell into a deep sleep, like a man sleeping for eternity in a Dutch painting, or like an apparatchik of sleep. And then, when I awoke, I heard Father’s voice, or perhaps it was still in my sleep that I heard Father’s whisper, as he told the story of the man who was particularly excited by women who spoke foreign languages. Father made up stories as if he were possessed, narrated about this man as if he were talking about himself. He invented and lied fantastically. This didn’t surprise me either asleep or awake. In the dark-blue depths of the postal ambulance, gliding slowly through the muddy plains, all of them invented things. After all, the story about the woman with fluent mastery of the pen was invented and entirely fictitious, and so was the one about the beauty standing on the curb on Wiślna Street, and even the one who told the story about the deadly, overworked widow with the three children made everything up. The invention of stories about oneself is the duty and irresistible temptation of the true man. The made-up story is the song of his life and death. The story of the loser, the invented story of the loser, is the sign of the winner.

  “I don’t know any foreign languages,” Father’s voice said in the darkness. “I don’t speak languages, and maybe that is why I want to be—not so much exclusively as especially—with women who speak languages. But I also wish to state most emphatically that there wasn’t any simple equation here; the more the better: one language—good; two languages—very good; three languages—very, and I mean very, exciting; and with a polyglot you have a genuine orgy. No. Unbridled symmetry arouses my resistance. I prefer restrained symmetry. One language and one woman were enough for me. After all, and finally, there is one woman,” Father lied to the very faces of the guards and Mr. Trąba, although they were plunged in darkness.

  And he continued his story about some completely made-up love of his who spoke dazzling French. Supposedly Father’s nonexistent mistress especially liked to speak indecent sentences in French, for example: Fouts-moi à mort. Et puis ecris sur ma tombe que j’ai pris mon pied, she would tenderly whisper in his ear. With odd relish, that dark-haired Romanist supposedly also repeated, time and again, three words that sounded like a magic spell: mille, villes, tranquilles, mille, villes, tranquilles, she supposedly said time and again, and tens of times, in every situation.

  “I loved her,” Father lied. “We wanted to flee together to the ends of the earth. We imagined that some day, some sweltering year, we would drive with all we possessed into a city full of ginger-haired dogs, grimy children, and mysterious women wrapped in veils and turbans (with whom, after several years—such is life, gentlemen—I would doubtless betray her), and an outdoor festival, Mille villes tranquilles, would be in progress there. She will speak with rapture, with amazement, and we will live in a house with a view of the ocean, or with a view of meadows, or with a view of a girls’ dormitory, and we will live there forever, and every night we will dream of a thousand white architectural constructions, a thousand downtown commons, a thousand sleeping streetcar sheds, and a thousand rivers crossing downtowns that are as crusty and dark as rye bread.”

  Everything in Father’s story was invented, even the dreams were invented, which isn’t so bad—dreams are always invented. But he lied even at the very beginning of this imagined romance. He even lied when he said that he didn’t speak any languages. Father already knew French before the war. In those unfortunate papers he left behind, in addition to Petitions, Appeals, Pleas, Verdicts, and Accusations, there is also his Postal Practicant’s Certificate, which is brittle and yellow like his buried bones: 4 May 1933, having passed the examination before the Commission of the Head Office of the Post and Telegraphs in Katowice, he received the following grades: Postal Transport—good; Postal Service—good; Bookkeeping Regulations—good; French, Speaking and Writing—very good. Mille. Villes. Tranquilles.

  Chapter VIII

  “ALL THE SAME,” Mr. Trąba said, “we have to kill him and go back home. The holidays are coming in a month.”

  A light rain was falling. The sky over Warsaw brightened. The first snows were lurking in the heavens. My head was adorned with a colorful headdress. I labored under the weight of the crossbow. I had a Finnish knife in my belt. On my breast sparkled a plastic sheriff’s star. We wandered past prospect after prospect, we went from one end of Marszałkowska to the other, Nowy Świat, Aleje Jerozolimskie, we rode up to the top floor of the Palace of Culture. And not a soul looked at us even once.

  “I hadn’t realized the extent of the slavery. It’s different at home in Silesia, after all.” Mr. Trąba didn’t bother to hide his distaste.

  The tension rose. What I saw as the fiasco of our operation drew near with giant steps.

  “The innocent child disguised as an Indian, and only roughly disguised at that,” Mr. Trąba patted me on the headdress, “this innocent child, even this innocent child arouses fear. Why, Jerzyk looks like a colorful magic bird, like a firebird that has flown out of the pages of a fairytale onto the grey streets of this wolfish city—people should be spellbound. And here you have the opposite. Instead of slowing down, passersby speed up. Instead of casting friendly smiles, they become gloomy. Instead of nodding their heads amicably, they turn away with repugnance.”

  “What a hypocrite you are, Mr. Trąba. And it’s likely you’re entirely wrong in your social diagnosis.” Father was peculiarly relaxed. “Why, this innocent child is taking part in the penultimate phase of an assassination attempt on the life of a Communist satrap, and perhaps our nation senses this with its characteristic historical intuition . . .”

  “Chief!” Mr. Trąba cast a withering glance at Father. “I call you to order. Please adhere to the official version of events, even in your thoughts. After all, it’s clear that in this city not only the walls have ears; this city is one giant ear . . .”

  “Once again, you are guilty of moral incaution,” Father laughed, “moral incaution plus desecration. Warsaw isn’t a city of snitches. Warsaw is a city of heroes.”

  “A city of heroes has to be, at the same time, a city of informers,” Mr. Trąba impatiently waved Father off. “And besides, you know, Chief, that if it were indeed as you say, that is, if our nation indeed sensed our intent with its characteristic historical intuition, it would certainly join us . . .”

  “It doesn’t join us. On the contrary, it scurries away, because it also senses the grotesque nature of the entire undertaking . . .”

  “The grotesque doesn’t exclude the spilling of blood,” Mr. Trąba venomously measured out maxim after maxim. “The grotesque doesn’t exclude death, the grotesque doesn’t exclude shooting Władysław Gomułka with an arrow from a Chinese crossbow. On the contrary: it is precisely the grotesque that offers such a chance for reality in its entire fullness. The nation knows this . . .”

  “The nation knows this from childhood, Mr. Trąba.” It seemed for a moment that Father was seized by a sudden and fundamental rage, but his good humor didn’t abandon him. “The nation learns, by heart, from childhood ‘Get away from me! I am the murderer of tsars!’ and similar thoroughly grotesque hogwash. ‘It’s time for me to kill . . . someone holds me by a hair.’ Or even better:

  ‘Pale, silent phantoms, weak of heart,

  Like a hundred-eyed peacock sentry

  They watch the door behind which lies

  The sleeping Tsar in his bedroom . . .

  Tell me, do you want to know

  The color of his blood? . . .’”

  “I agree with you, Chief, that, as far as our Romantics were concerned—well, that was, for the most part, a gang of hundred-eyed peacocks, which is to say unpunished graphomaniacs endowed with the useless art of rhyme. I exclude Adam Mickiewicz, of course. But let’s not go too deeply into lit
erature, it always condemns one to intellectual sterility. I want to ask you about something else.” Mr. Trąba was terribly anxious. “Just why are you in such good spirits?”

  “I like to travel,” replied Father. “In fact, I’m in a pretty decent mood because I like to travel. Traveling soothes me. That’s in the first place. And in the second place—don’t be angry, Mr. Trąba—but in the second place, I’m in a good mood because I am awaiting the inexorably approaching moment when we finally throw in the towel. Strictly speaking, I’m waiting for the moment when you finally rip the Red Army flask out of your breast pocket, the one that you’ve been warming there from the beginning, take a healthy snort, treat me to a sip, and maybe Jerzyk too, and then all of us, relaxed, will set off for the mythical Kameralna bar, for example, in order to have a small banquet before the return trip.”

  “I don’t feel like moving my head, so allow me once again to limit myself to waving it off.” Mr. Trąba raised his arm and executed the elegant gesture of negation with nothing but his hand. “There’s no turning back, Chief,” he said with a voice that was horrifying, because it was absolutely credible in its helplessness. “There’s no turning back, and as you know there’s only one penalty for desertion. I hope Mrs. Chief didn’t file the little ball off of the souvenir sugar bowl, and Grand Master Swaczyna’s people didn’t use their lathe to make of it a death-dealing dart, just so that I will now have to sink that piece of silver into your skeptical brain.”

  Father silently observed Mr. Trąba. For a moment, perhaps, he still wondered whether there were some way to turn everything into a joke. I began to feel afraid. Terror, true terror, came upon me. A tallowy half-moon rose in the empty prospect of Nowy Świat Street. As usual in those situations, I sought solace in guessing what was about to be said. I concentrated and strained, and I came to the conclusion that Father would remain silent for the time being, and that Mr. Trąba would soon say: “a cream pastry, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Rain was falling harder and harder, and it seemed that not only the passersby, but even the architecture was scurrying away before us. Some sort of houses ran along on both sides, but almost nothing was visible. It was as if we were walking along some barely marked road through the rainy plains.

  “And since we are talking about the esteemed Mrs. Chief, I remind you that we promised to dispatch a postcard. True, my bosom buddy from my student days, the most reverend Father Bishop, sends her postcards from around the world, but Warsaw is quite clearly missing from the collection.” Mr. Trąba squinted and looked, in vain, for a human dwelling in the absolute emptiness. He breathed in, searching for the smell of chimney smoke with his nostrils.

  •

  Indeed, the bishop did send postcards from around the world. Mostly he wrote from mythical lands in which there were only Protestants. From the panoramas I composed complete images of Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. I knew the most secret corners of Geneva, corners that were unknown even to the native Swiss, by heart. If need be, I could check the time on the famous l’horloge fleurie. The water-hewn shape of the fantastic fountain on the shores of Lake Geneva had already bored me to death. Just like the Swiss stamps with their monumental Helvetia, Helvetia, Helvetia.

  Mother didn’t allow me to unglue the stamps. To tell the truth, she didn’t like it when anyone touched the cards from the bishop. I got the impression that she didn’t even much like it when anyone looked at them. It often seemed that our very glances contained some sort of venomous, damaging powers. Once, Christ Almighty, I just couldn’t resist the temptation and unglued three stamps—they were as dazzling as the Pastor’s Wife’s complexion—from the postcard the bishop had sent from Tanzania! I couldn’t resist. I had to succumb. The skies on each of those stamps had a different color. On the first, negro shepherds tended cattle in grassy valleys, and the sky over them was orange. On the second, negro fishermen pulled nets full of fish out of the sea, and the sky over them was green. On the third, negro lumberjacks worked in the jungle, and dark-blue clouds floated just above their frizzy heads. I steamed those stamps loose. The bishop’s writing—he always wrote with a fountain pen—became blurred. All you could read was the sentence: “Yesterday I preached a sermon to a congregation that was as black as coal.” Mother cried. And then she hid the card I had mutilated somewhere. (She re-glued the stamps of the three skies with vegetable glue.)

  I used to sneak in when she was away and open the chest. I would take out the little box—it smelled of rose oil and had once held Swiss Toblerone chocolates—in which she kept the postcards. I surveyed state after state, city after city—Edinburgh, Nairobi, Berlin, Athens, Amsterdam, Helsinki, America, England, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark. Tanzania was nowhere to be found. I would rummage through all the nooks of the chest. I soaked up the rose oil like a sponge. I even reached sacrilegiously into the pocket of her Sunday jacket. I opened her holiday purse. I surveyed page after page of Protestant Homiletics, Crumbs from the Lord’s Table, and other of the bishop’s writings—but the card with the three cloud-capped stamps had disappeared for all eternity.

  •

  From behind streams of rain loomed a Ruch kiosk filled with good things. The kiosk owner, with an unusually inhospitable facial expression, was the first person in this city who finally examined me attentively. To tell the truth, he didn’t let me out of his sight. He stared at me hatefully. Father bought The People’s Tribune and The Catholic Weekly. Mr. Trąba pondered which view of the Palace of Culture to choose. The kiosk owner stuck his head through the little window and shouted in an attack of insane fury:

  “Carolers! St. Nicholases! Horned Beasts! People, the holidays aren’t until next month, and here they are already going about caroling! Hoofed devils! Winged angels!”

  I was certain that Mr. Trąba would silence him with some world-class riposte, that he would extinguish the old fart with one well-aimed phrase, but suddenly Mr. Trąba’s hands started shaking. He was barely able to pay, barely able to hold the postcard in his hands. We walked off a few steps. You could still hear the sensational shouting of the kiosk owner. The rain lashed with redoubled force.

  “You’re absolutely right, Chief.” Mr. Trąba, as pale as death, breathed heavily. He held himself up with his open palm on his heart. Or perhaps he was touching the protuberance, right at the height of his heart, that you could see through his autumn coat. In any case, one way or the other, he was propping himself up. “You’re absolutely right. Crises come. Doubts grow. The closer the hour of execution, the greater my hunger for alcohol. You’re absolutely right, and you foresaw all this well. The matter is, however, that I also foresaw this. Drinking, true drinking in anticipation of death, is an intensive course in self-knowledge, and I would truly be a pathetic fool if I hadn’t taken into account the following inevitable eventuality: that my shattered nervous system would go into complete disarray a few hours before the event and demand elemental consolation. And so, I repeat, that unforeseeable—although otherwise absolutely foreseeable—circumstance was carefully considered in my plans. Gentlemen, don’t look at me in such a panicked way. Talking soothes me. I haven’t gone completely mad at the last moment. Talking soothes me, and what is more, since I feel the irresistible desire to have a drink, I intend to assuage that desire by discoursing about drinking. Like it or not, you, Chief, and you, Jerzyk, will spend this afternoon listening to my comprehensive, definitive, and testamentary lecture on the artistry of form and the tragedy of content that is the art of drinking. And you will forgive me, gentlemen, but, in spite of the circumstances, I won’t invite you for this purpose to the mythical restaurant Kameralna. I invite you instead to the most exquisite, that’s right, the most exquisite confectioner’s shop in Eastern Europe. My treat. We’re near, it’s just two steps from here.”

  And in a few minutes we crossed the threshold of the most exquisite confectioner’s shop in Eastern Europe, and we left our wet raincoats and the Chinese crossbow and arrow in the coat check room (the distingu
ished coat check attendant didn’t even bat an eyelid), and we sat down at a little table in a cozy bay window, and the most beautiful waitress in Eastern Europe, perhaps the most beautiful waitress in the world, brought us coffee, lemon squash, and cream pastries time and again, right up until the evening.

  If I say that since that afternoon, since that rainy afternoon, when we whiled away the final hours before killing Gomułka by consuming monstrous quantities of cream pastries, washing it down with coffee and lemon squash, in short, if I say that from that time, my organism harbors a sort of animosity toward cream pastries, if I say this—it won’t be a surprise. And so, I will say this: in spite of the fact that I am a greedy glutton for every kind of gumdrop, in spite of the fact that I can’t imagine an evening without a bar of milk chocolate, in spite of the fact that, for a middle-aged person, I nourish an excessive cult of the sweet, in spite of the fact that, for a man who, with the fierce shamelessness of the forty-something, now, in the middle of the nineties, still chases after angels who have been freed from the Muscovite yoke, in spite of the fact that I am able, with simply unmanly greediness, to gorge on sweets of every shape and color—to this day I won’t touch a cream pastry.

  Mr. Trąba placed the postcard with the view of the Palace of Culture on the tablecloth. He pulled an ink pencil out of his breast pocket, and, internally tense and externally trembling, he attempted to write the address with his dithering hand.

  “Did you see the waitress?” Father asked. “A real cul du siècle. Just look at her neck. You’ll feel better right away. One hunger should be cancelled out with another.”