by Jerzy Pilch
Thus, I was not a writer creating fictions which were then signed with other people’s names. I was the secretary of their minds. Both Joanna and Marianna had dictated their nightmares to me, while I—of this I am certain—had transcribed both nightmares literally. And I am also certain that Marianna had spoken with great feeling, with great certainty, and still with great fear of the fifty-zloty bill she had taken from her husband’s pocket.
Chapter 5
Prolegomena to Ideal Order
IT’S SAID THAT AN excessive fondness for order indicates a poor condition of the nerves, and in my case this is in fact true: I have an excessive fondness for order and my nerves are in a state of utter disintegration. Physical objects are continually on the offensive, and they need to be opposed. Sooner or later this battle turns into a futile tilting at windmills, but for a while, in the modest confines of five hundred and twenty square feet (two rooms and a kitchen), objects can be tamed. In addition, a person quite simply forgets, forgets where things were put. In saying this I am not presenting some smug argumentation, I’m not puffing myself up like a third-rate thespian and announcing that for a mind preoccupied with inquiries of the greatest significance it is harmful to be thinking constantly of trivialities—this I am not saying, though it may be the truth, this I am not saying, though it almost certainly is not the truth. Take the apple that fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head—was it or was it not a triviality? A cosmic triviality? There is no other kind of triviality than the cosmic kind. But, by a hundred thousand truckloads of beer! There’s no need to invoke the principles of the universe in defense of perpetually disappearing cigarette lighters, coin purses, documents, fountain pens and ball-point pens, manuscripts, typescripts, books, socks, ashtrays, scarves, gloves, et cetera. Just as there is no need to adduce in this matter, the matter of the disarray of objects, an argument concerning “inquiries of the greatest significance.” Constant attention to trivialities needn’t always disturb “inquiries of the greatest significance,” it’s enough for it to disturb everyday inquiries, and it does disturb them, it disturbs them calamitously, if one conducts one’s inquiries in complete sentences. I, for example, conduct my inquiries in complete sentences. More: with desperate obstinacy I keep myself alive by thinking in complete sentences. And this is no graphomaniac literary workout, though thinking in whole sentences is of prime significance for literature. It is with an acute sense of distress that I imagine the moment when the last paragraphs, sentences, and fragments of sentences will vanish from my head and the only thing left there will be illegible manuscripts, phantoms of names, specters, nothing more. The heroic-comic choice between dementia and death does not amuse me in the slightest.
When one thinks in whole sentences, then, however isolated, simple, and underdeveloped they may be, it is quite impossible to be thinking constantly about trivialities, about where one put one’s keys. One’s keys should always be where they are supposed to be. It may be that the constant formulation of sentences about lost keys would constitute a remarkable form of literature for the chosen few, but remarkable forms of literature for the chosen few need to be produced in moderation. Keys should be where they’re supposed to be. Keys should be where they’re supposed to be? Dear Lord, dear Lord, you who do everything for me, dear Lord, it that the reason I’m composing this treatise on my despair? Is it for this that I fritter away hours of my time with pen in hand? So my addled brain can discover the Newtonian truth that keys should be where they’re supposed to be? It’s for such a truth that I’ve wasted my life? It’s for such a truth that my hands shake and my liver horripilates? It’s for such a truth that I’ve descended to the bottom of the abyss? On the other hand, keys should be where they’re supposed to be. If Joanna Catastrophe had kept her keys where they were supposed to be, I would have loved her, she would have been the love of my life, the love of the evening of my life; we would have been together.
Chapter 6
Joanna Catastrophe
JOANNA CATASTROPHE WAS beautiful, wise, and tall. Nothing but pluses. Besides—something that for me is of first-rate importance—she wore first-rate clothes and used first-rate cosmetics. But Joanna Catastrophe would come into my apartment and plop down her coat, plop down her pumps, and plop down her handbag. After fifteen minutes of Joanna Catastrophe on my territory (the territory she herself inhabited—her girlhood room in a suburban dwelling—is beyond description), my territory would start to resemble . . . My first instinct was to write: the apocalypse, but no. First of all, to my ear that would sound too comical: the apocalypse after the arrival of the catastrophe; second, it would not be the truth, since it was not the beginning of an apocalypse but the beginning of a carnival, which incidentally was a hundred times worse than an apocalypse—after an apocalypse there would be little left to tidy up, whereas after Joanna Catastrophe I and the objects that belonged to me took the longest time to regain our composure.
Plop went the muffler, plop went the headscarf, plop went the coffee cup, plop went the blouse, plop went the newspaper, plop went the book, plop went the skirt. “Joanna,” I explained patiently, “freedom isn’t about leaving your best moccasins in the middle of the room.”
Had this disorder simply been a token of voracious sensuality, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. Our bodies fling themselves on one another hungrily, tear off their clothing, and, like in a French or American romantic movie, shoes, dress, panty hose, shirt, black jeans, frilly undies, and boxer shorts form a path across the thick emerald-green carpet to the Hollwoodesque bed. Joanna, however, didn’t create chaos around herself only on the way to bed. On the way to bed, as it happened, she (we) created the least chaos; our sensuality was indeed voracious, but we were both familiar with the principles of the art and in the interests of intensifying its sensuality we moderated its voracity (principle number one: never hurry). In any case, for the whole of the day, that is to say the whole of eternity, Joanna’s best moccasins would lie in the middle of the room. Along with a buckle, an ashtray, an antique milk bottle, a pen, a bottle of Palmolive shampoo, yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza, an empty Milka chocolate bar wrapper, an empty packet of potato chips, empty packets of everything, and every other object imaginable.
Oh, Joanna Catastrophe was far from stupid, and she was well aware that freedom was not a matter of leaving one’s best moccasins in the middle of the room. With Joanna one could have long and fascinating conversations about the concept of freedom, and about other concepts too. Joanna was studying economics and fine arts, and she came from a very good home. Her father was the principal of an elite grammar school; he possessed a degree in history and, as it transpired after the fall of communism, a number of apartment buildings and acreages of land. Her mother was a dentist with a long-standing practice in the heart of the old town, a sophisticated, well-groomed lady who was oppressively enticing in her over-ripeness.
I did not have a clean conscience during my one and only Sunday lunch at the suburban residence of the Catastrophe family. What am I saying: it was not that I did not have a clean conscience, it was that I had a thoroughly unclean conscience; I was unclean as a hog, and I was hungry as a wolf. I wolfed down my food and stared wolfishly at my future never-to-be mother-in-law. She was clad in a flowing yellow gown, and yellow gowns always bring me to my knees. I ate meatballs in broth, veal tongue in jelly, veal roast game style, fruit salad, and ice cream; I ate and at the same time restrained the debauched song that was springing up within me. At the time I was in excellent form. I wasn’t drinking at all; I drank nothing but non-carbonated mineral water (under communism there was no non-carbonated mineral water), I didn’t drink so much as a drop of wine over lunch, I didn’t drink so much as a thimbleful of liqueur over dessert, I didn’t even wet my lips on the brandy served with the coffee, and later in the afternoon, it goes without saying, I also did not drink the glass of Jack Daniel’s offered me by the man of the house. I didn’t drink at all and not drinking did not bother me in the slightest. I was on top
form; I listened, I spoke, and I held in check the detailed story-line of the pornographic tale that was forming in my head about enjoying both mother and daughter at the same time—I didn’t hold it so firmly in check that it would be completely suppressed, only so it would not dominate and merely smoldered in the background. I took an active part in the conversation and listened with genuine curiosity to the hosts’ divagations on the subject of their literary tastes, which as it happens were rather broad. For Mr. Catastrophe it was German-language literature, with a special interest in Austrian writers of the twentieth century; Mrs. Catastrophe liked Latin American literature, with no particular special interest; with Joanna it was Russian and American literature, with a special interest in Vladimir Nabokov. I listened, I spoke, and on the subject of Nabokov I delivered the daring (given my situation) opinion that he was a writer whose dark, infernal inquisitiveness and precise mastery of icy form predestined him perfectly to write a novel that was a study in addiction. “Alas,” I added with flippant erudition, “the rumors of the author’s profound alcoholism proved untrue.” I listened, I spoke, I confessed my own literary tastes, and then at dusk I found myself in Joanna’s girlhood room.
“Look how nicely I tidied up,” whispered Joanna. “I did it for you, I cleaned it for you.”
Indeed, the room was marked by a disquieting symmetry which was at odds not only with Joanna’s nature but with human nature in general; one could see at first glance that what had been introduced here was a superficial, Potemkinesque monument to perfect order that could come crashing down at any moment.
“Joanna, I love you in chaos, I love you among all your scattered things.”
But Joanna, evidently given wings by the newly discovered art of the harmonious arrangement of objects, paid no attention, perhaps failing to comprehend the poetic depths of my declaration.
“Even my keys,” she whispered with childlike enthusiasm, “now I even put my keys where they’re supposed to be. And this morning, can you imagine, I couldn’t find them, I couldn’t find my keys, because I’d forgotten I put them where they’re supposed to be.”
I could feel my throat stiffening with emotion; I was moved by the sudden certainty that I would spend the rest of my life with Joanna Catastrophe.
“I love you,” I repeated, “I love you regardless of where you put your keys.”
“Come with me,” said Joanna, and she took me by the hand, and led me up the stairs to the upper floor of the residence, and brought me down a long hallway, and at the end of the hallway she opened a door. I beheld an as yet unfurnished room with white walls; it was well lit and cosy. Outside the window was a view that would have been the dream of any scribbler. Down below was the cooling city; over it, masses of hot air were gathering, while the China grass of darkness was taking over the alleyways and the first lights were coming on in the distant windows.
“You’ll have your own armchair here, your bookcases, your books, and your desk, you’ll be able to write here,” said Joanna, while I realized that the great irrevocable change I had waited for for so many years and whose arrival after all those years I had begun to doubt—that this change had finally come after all. I realized that my life would change and improve, and gently, as if I were embracing a soul that was giving me new life, gently I took Joanna in my arms.
•
And then, very late in the evening, when all the grownups were long asleep, and many lights on our part of Earth had already been turned out, I phoned for a cab (under communism it wasn’t possible to phone for a cab). Joanna yawned sweetly as she walked me across the garden; at the gate the promised white Mercedes was already waiting, sleep well, Joanna. The taxi drove through the dark outskirts of the city, empty fields on either side, fragile walls of houses; I was filled with an appreciation of the entire world, and I even liked the fact that the cab that had come for me was a white Mercedes.
I sprawled comfortably on the back seat and looked for lighted windows. I’d always been struck by windows which are lit up late at night—someone was reading the book of their life all night long, someone was dying, someone was coughing so hard they choked, someone was waking with a cry from a nightmare, someone was taking someone else in their arms, someone was taking something to calm their nerves, someone was weeping from longing, someone was going to the bathroom. I looked at my watch; it was 3 A.M., and the constellations overhead moved like shifting sands. We stopped for a moment by an all-night store, and a moment later we were again driving down a deserted parkway. In my dark building no one was up, no one was dying, no one was reading an enthralling book, but these were the last moments in which everybody would be asleep—in a short while a light would come on on the twelfth floor. And a light came on on the twelfth floor, and it stayed on without a break for forty days and nights; for forty days and nights I drank without a break. The light bulb shone above my insensate body; dawns rose and evenings fell, my insensate hand reached for the bottle and poured vodka into my insensate throat, my bedding and my skin acquired a corneous exoskeleton of dried puke, destruction followed destruction across my apartment. Dear Lord, the mess that Joanna Catastrophe created was exemplary order compared with what I left behind me when I writhed about on all fours in search of the bottle that had been hidden away for a rainy day (and had long ago been consumed by my numbed innards, as the rainy day had long since come and gone, and all the days that followed were also rainy, each one rainier than the next), or when, in a viscous glimmer of lucidity, I crawled to the telephone to phone in my ritual shopping order: Two bottles of Premium peach-favored vodka and a liter of Coke, please. I give the address. Under communism there was no shopping by phone.
Chapter 7
The Very Beginning
THE BEGINNING, THE very beginning, the beginning told in such huge close-up that the image becomes grainy, the beginning of this or, truth be told, any other drinking bout, the beginning, then, of the universal drinking bout, the beginning of the timeless drinking bout, the beginning of the total drinking bout, the beginning of the Book of Genesis of drinking is then as follows: The earth was without form and the spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and I paid the cab driver, and I got out of the cab, and I checked whether my bag was safely on my shoulder a hundred times on the way to the elevator, and I took the elevator to the twelfth floor, and I turned the key in the lock, and I flipped on the light. According to the clock on the wall it was seventeen minutes past three. All at once I quickened my pace, that’s right, I crossed the two rooms with kitchen at a rapid walk. I was in a great haste and all my movements were rapid; it was not that there was little time, there was enough time, but in a visible and suffocating way my hesitation was intensifying. I won’t enhance the visual impact of the story with an effect that is not far from the truth, I will not say that demons of hesitation were crawling out of the corners, no, things weren’t quite that bad, but all around it was undeniably denser, darker, and also somehow more yellow, yes, all around it was denser, darker, and yellower; after all even abstainers know the term “a stifling aura,” after all even abstainers sometimes get short of air and start to hyperventilate, performing spasmodic motions, as if they were trying to break out of a noose that was tightening around them, as if they were trying to gather their failing powers of concentration. In the final seconds of my not-drinking something analogous occurred, but a thousand times more painful. I was not short of breath, but actually choking. I did not perform sudden and panic-stricken movements—I thrashed about like a madman. Though even that is inaccurate. I acted logically; in my madness there was cold, calculated method; the speed of all my movements was mad, I acted with the rapidity of a madman, nevertheless I placed my bag on the desk with scrupulous care, opening it and removing what was inside, I prepared glasses and an ashtray, I changed swiftly into a warm and comfortable track suit—still, still at this moment it would have been possible to douse the fire, which was already burning strongly, still it would have been possible to pour the two bottles
I’d purchased in the all-night store down the drain, throw them into the trash chute, or even fling them out of the window, and it was this very possibility, the shadow of this possibility, that lent unutterable drama to the situation, for it was not a matter of there still existing a genuine choice between drinking and not drinking, no, such a choice had ceased to exist long ago (frankly speaking, such a choice had not existed for at least twenty years), yet it was still possible to pretend that the choice existed, to put on a poorly acted show of indecision, to not waver between drinking and not drinking, but to nevertheless self-sacrificially prolong, knowing that in essence I had stopped not drinking, the road to drinking. I thrashed about, and, truly, I thought about not drinking like a man who in the absolute certainty that he will not commit suicide thinks about suicide: the vividness of the imagination has nothing to do with reality. You can think often about suicide, you can see all kinds of details clearly, you can relentlessly picture your own corpse hanging from a roof beam, yet in the depths of your heart you know you won’t go through with it. That’s how things are. In the depths of my heart I knew I would not go through with it. If I had, if, God forfend, I had poured both bottles I’d purchased at the all-night store down the drain or thrown them out of the window, what outcome could I have achieved by this illicit and hypocritical act? None whatsoever. I would have had to take off the warm and comfortable track suit, I would have had to get dressed again, put back on the shoes and the fancy clothes I had worn to the Catastrophes’, return on foot or by cab to the all-night store or to another one, and from then on things would have been even worse. Out of rage at myself, out of rage at having been carried away by my illicit and hypocritical act, and as a consequence having become embroiled in spurious goings-on, out of rage at the mendacity surrounding me on every side, I would have bought not two but four bottles of vodka, and then, checking a hundred times to make sure that my bag, now twice as heavy, was safely on my shoulder, I would have gone back home on foot or by cab, taken the elevator to the twelfth floor, turned the key in the lock, and flipped on the light. The game of possibilities that were seemingly multiple yet in fact absolutely precluded could have gone on into infinity; now I might have poured all four bottles down the drain or thrown them out of the window and repeated the entire sequence step by step, and again, and once again. This nightmarish asininity had to be finally brought to a stop, the truth had to be looked manfully in the eye, and the truth was not pouring vodka down the drain or throwing bottles out of the window; the truth was drinking. I moved with uncommon swiftness because it was a question of pouring the first dose of truth into myself as swiftly as possible and terminating the exhausting rhetoric. It was necessary to put an end to the conscious literature of perpetual doubts as swiftly as possible and to choose unwavering, insensate life.