The Mighty Angel

by Jerzy Pilch

  “And the organic smell of my puke filled the office, and my body, choked by the puke, the stench, and the shame, fell at my boss’s feet.

  “Why did this occur? Why did it happen to me, of all people? What explains the fact that I was trying to show my boss how very much I appreciated his goodwill, yet I ended up showing him the shameful contents of my bowels? More generally, the problem is as follows: how can the depths of the drunken soul be reconciled with the shallows of the drunken body? How can these things be explained and how can they be squared? How can the loftiest flights of the soul ever be equated with a fearful barfing? What black thread can join a fantastical and creative lightness with the next day’s sheets, soaked black with sweat? What is the connection between the boldness and panache of the evening and the fear and trembling of the morning? Am I, in civilian life a simple truck driver for a company delivering fruit to countries east of us, am I, a simple driver, who because of his penchant for military attire is known to his pals as the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, am I not by any chance posing trivial questions that can be answered by any doctor, and even by any first-year medical student? I feel embarrassed to give vent so openly to my own pride, yet the answer is: no. I am asking questions of a higher order. I’m writing this novelistic treatise about addiction not to provide answers but to pose questions. And it so far-reachingly happens that I’m writing the last chapters of this treatise on an alco ward. Because my boss, seeing my puke-smothered corpse lying at his feet, immediately brought me here—”

  Suddenly (suddenly! suddenly!) I felt the gentle touch of someone’s hand on my shoulder, and I experienced such a ghastly fright that not only did I break off from my writing, I didn’t even put a period at the end of the last sentence. I knew everything was up; I knew that all my counterfeit creative work had come to light. I knew it was the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder. I knew that he was looking over my shoulder, that for some time now he had been following the course of my pen and had been reading what I was writing. I turned in my chair and saw his broad, congenial countenance, and I did not dare look into his eyes. I quaked like jello; I could feel, I could tangibly feel, all the symptoms of withdrawal coming back to me out of nowhere: anxiety, excessive perspiration, nausea, insomnia, hallucinations. The therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol gazed at me attentively, glanced back at the written page, which I did not even attempt to cover up, then looked at me, and said:

  “I can see you’ve quieted yourself; I can see you’re working on yourself and trying to quiet yourself. That’s very good. Quieting yourself, absolute quiet, that’s the basis for everything.”

  With a warm yet quiet gesture he patted me on the shoulder and, just as he had come in, he moved soundlessly out of the writing room. Automatically, with the movements of a golem, I stood up, took my cigarettes out of my pocket, left the quiet room, and headed for the other end of the hallway. As I opened the door of the smoking room I caught the last sentences of an age-long debate about the existence and nature of the relationship between physiology and the soul.

  Chapter 22

  Fuchs the Chestnut Mare

  IT’S A FROSTY WINTER before the war. Mid-January 1932 or 1933. In the part of the world where my grandfather, Old Kubica, is right now drinking another glass of Baczewski vodka, the frosts and snows will last a long time yet. Old Kubica’s immense sheepskin coat has slipped from his shoulders; he’s wearing a white shirt with an upright collar, and a black vest. He’s hot, his blood is circulating vigorously in his veins, yet pain is radiating from somewhere. Over his heart or under his lungs is an intramuscular or intercostal gap—a wound that cannot be healed.

  At the Blackbird pub darkness prevails: there’s only a faint shaft of light from an oil lamp on the bar, only the red-hot iron door of the tiled stove glowing like the insignia of the god of war, only a distant white brightness gleaming through the window. The proprietor, who is stacking glasses on the shelves of a dresser, glances into a dark corner. Old Kubica is sitting motionless; that is to say, he sits motionless for a quarter of an hour, then after a quarter of an hour a faint movement of the arm can be seen, there is a soft chink of glass, and his head tips back. My grandfather Old Kubica is drinking and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s fighting off thoughts of his debts, his farm, Grandmother Zofia, his children. He doesn’t even think about his favorite chestnut mare, who has the male name of Fuchs. He’s thinking rather that in the early morning he’s going to have to kill the merchant from Ustroń to whom, earlier today, he sold the chestnut mare called Fuchs.

  “I tell you, Mr. Kubica, it’s the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the most beautiful horse in the world,” the merchant has been repeating to him for more than six months. “Mr. Kubica, Marshal Piłsudski’s chestnut mare can’t hold a candle to your chestnut mare. Name your price; for what I pay you, you’ll be able to build a new house.”

  Old Kubica would smile, stroke the horse’s mane, and listen to it stamping its feet, snorting, neighing; his head was raised like an orchestral conductor listening to perfectly played music, like a drunkard drinking his glass of delight.

  Early this morning his hands had been trembling and his heart pounding irregularly, while his brow was bathed in sweat, and insistent thoughts roared in his head: everything is lost, everything is gone, all is wasted. The bailiff will come, and he’ll have to take his woman and his child and move out.

  In the room where he slept it was perhaps thirty, perhaps twenty-five degrees fahrenheit. He was standing at the window; waves of heat and cold struck him in turn. He rested his forehead on the frost-covered pane, gazing at the empty yard in front of the house, gazing at the path that my ten-year-old father had diligently swept clean of snow, down which the merchant was approaching.

  “He must have gotten up early,” Old Kubica whispered to himself, and for a moment he thought about how people who get up early, wash in ice-cold water, eat scrambled eggs and bacon, drink hot coffee, then hitch their horses to a sleigh, cover themselves in blankets, and ride in absolute silence and whiteness the whole six miles from Ustroń to Wisła—that such people must be happy, that they must not feel pain. Maybe he himself should hitch up and head out for nowhere in particular? My proud grandfather grimaced in disgust and was annoyed at himself for entertaining such women’s notions. “Head out for nowhere in particular? Where on earth would I go?” He gave a sour smile. “Except to the pub.”

  “Right,” he murmured, “the furthest I’d get would be the pub in Ustroń.”

  The merchant was standing in the doorway, his hands spread in a half-hearted gesture, a smile of collusion on his face.

  “Mr. Kubica . . .”

  “All right,” grandfather interrupted him. “What you said, and another twenty zloties.”

  The other man immediately reached for his wallet.

  “And one more thing.” The merchant’s smooth hand paused amid the folds of his warm jacket. “The money today, the horse tomorrow. Come back tomorrow at the same time.”

  The merchant was about to say something, but the expression on my grandfather’s face must have been such that he said nothing. He dug around much less briskly in his pockets, and eventually pulled out a wad of banknotes.

  “I’ll bring the extra twenty tomorrow,” he said in a voice so wan it seemed the longed-for transaction that was finally taking place had suddenly ceased to interest him. “I trust you, Mr. Kubica—everyone hereabouts knows you to be a man of his word.”

  “Till tomorrow then,” said Kubica, and, paying no more attention to the merchant, he left the house first.

  Out in front he stooped down, took a handful of snow, and wiped his face. The merchant saw him standing motionless in the middle of the yard; he saw his snow-covered eyebrows and forehead. He didn’t go up to him, and even strayed a little from the cleared path. Once he was sure the other man was at a safe remove he said:

  “Goodbye, see you tomor
row.”

  Old Kubica saw nothing and heard nothing. He did not hear the bells of the merchant’s sleigh fading into the distance, and he did not see the children on their way to school. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses, the sound of wood being chopped came from somewhere far off, and in the forest on Ochodzita Mountain someone was calling: “Come on, come on.” An almost completely black cat was cautiously crossing the yard at a diagonal.

  “Something has to be done, but what?” grandfather was saying to himself. “Something has to be done . . .”

  He gazed about distractedly, though not so distractedly as to look at the gate leading to the stable. At the far end of the farmyard he saw a fir tree leaning against the wall; just two weeks earlier it had been decorated with apples and candies. Christmas had come and gone, though it would have been better if it hadn’t come at all.

  He had been in no state to say prayers, or to sing carols. At the Christmas Eve supper hardly anyone had spoken; the children were tearful. His heart had been like a stone exploding in the fire. Grandma Zofia served undercooked cabbage. The white-enameled serving dish of barely warm food tipped the scales toward the evil spirits; one of them entered into him. He leaned across the table, took the ill-fated vessel in his hands, and hurled it against the opposite wall, on which there hung a likeness of Martin Luther after the portrait by Cranach; the candle on the table went out, and the portrait of our reformer fell to the ground. Everyone ran away—my father always told stories about running away from Old Kubica—everyone hurried, they fled down the hallway and across the unlit yard, put the ladder against the trapdoor to the loft in the barn, and agilely climbed up one after another, like a well-trained fire brigade. Old Kubica was knocking over chairs, knocking over the table, knocking over the dresser. He took his shotgun down from the wall and summoned my ten-year-old father. They crossed the farmyard together; grandfather had the gun slung over his shoulder and a bottle in his hand, and he was singing carols:

  God grant a merry eve and night.

  God grant a merry eve and night.

  First to the farmer on his farm.

  First to the farmer on his farm.

  Then to the farmer’s wife so fine.

  Then to the farmer’s wife so fine.

  And to his farmhands, good men all.

  And to his farmhands, good men all.

  He drank from the bottle, and his splendid voice carried across the valleys. My father tried to sing too, but he was seized by a fear stronger than the twenty-below frost—the shadow of that fear would remain with him forever. At that time, on Christmas Eve in the winter of 1932 or 1933, my nine- or ten-year-old father was afraid that an angel hurrying to Bethlehem would pop out from behind one of the buildings. He was afraid that somewhere very close there was an angel who had gone astray or had decided to take a brief rest on its flight. On the night of Christmas Eve the sky was crisscrossed with angels flying in swooping arcs like swallows; on this night angels stopped in fields and flew over roofs, and a person could sometimes hear the sound of their wings and their choral singing. My father was afraid because he was convinced that Old Kubica would shoot at the angel. They’d come round the corner of the house; a white-winged creature would be standing before them under a snow-covered apple tree, and without hesitation my grandfather would take the gun from his shoulder and fire almost without taking aim, and he would hit the angel. And on its wing there would appear a single drop of blood, and that single drop would have such power that if it fell to the ground, everything would catch fire and everything would burn. Everything would catch fire, even the snow. But they made it all the way across the yard and through the orchard behind the house, and nothing happened; the fear slowly dissipated, Old Kubica’s movements became ever more sluggish. He had stopped singing and had stopped looking for the one responsible for the evil, who needed to be killed. He went back to his freezing room, stood the bottle on the floor by the iron bed, and fell asleep.

  “Something needs to be done, but what?” thinks my grandfather; he gazes at the Christmas tree leaning against the wall, and he remembers the promissory note he signed right after the holiday, and he remembers the moment of hesitation before he appended his signature. Him! Him, who never hesitated, who never had doubts—he had not only had a moment of doubt before appending his desperate signature, but furthermore he had not stopped, had not drawn any inferences from his doubts. It was nothing but the devil addling his brain; nothing but the Lord God punishing him for flinging a dish of lukewarm cabbage against the wall instead of sitting quietly and praying at Christmas Eve supper. The whole farm for a single dish of cabbage, and a cold one into the bargain? What sort of accounting is that, Lord? he had asked without conviction, and the Lord with all the conviction in the world answered nothing, and in his soul Old Kubica had accepted the divine reckoning; the dish of cold cabbage was evidently the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back of his irascibility.

  He goes into the woodshed and with both hands seizes the axe that next morning he may use to kill the merchant from Ustroń. How exactly he’ll kill him he doesn’t yet know, but he knows he’ll kill him. Details have never interested him and at the present moment they interest him even less. He doesn’t think about whether he’ll use a shotgun or an axe or a hammer; he’ll use whatever is at hand, because he always uses whatever is at hand, and if there isn’t anything at hand, he’ll do it with his bare hands. What will he do with the body of the murdered merchant? How will he do it? He won’t do anything. He’ll leave the stiff where it is and go to the pub. He’ll sit at the pub like he does every morning, except on this particular day he’ll wait there till the police come for him. When they come, he’ll go with them. Old Kubica grips the axe in his hands, and at the thought that around noon tomorrow the police will take him away, he finally feels a sense of relief.

  “Yes, the police,” he whispers to himself, and unaware he is paraphrasing an as yet unknown poem, adds: “the police is always some kind of solution.”

  My grandfather now hacks the branches off the fir, already knowing what he’s going to do that morning. He finds a piece of glass, some sandpaper, and a small handsaw. He’s going to carve objects out of the fir wood. Above all, he’ll make at least four rogulas. The fir is beautifully branched, like a star, and the rogulas, which resemble miniature ski poles, and which Grandma Zofia will use to stir food in the blue enameled pots, will be perfect. For an hour, or perhaps two, grandfather works with pleasure; he handles the resinous wood, the smell of the fir calms his jangling nerves, and his hands are steady. He gently removes the bark from a fir branch and, at first discordantly, like an orchestra tuning up, then more and more harmoniously, like musicians playing an overture for a grand ball, he begins to sing. After two weeks of silence my grandfather begins to sing again, and now it’s as if he were adding his voice to our choir, the choir of the alcoholics.

  •

  In the hallways of the ward all the voices and all the melodies of the world join together, and sometimes in the plaintive polyphony I can distinctly hear the highland tune that Old Kubica sang decades ago in the snow-covered yard. The melody is the same but the words are different; he’s bent over the slippery barkless trunk of the fir tree and, inspired it would seem, sings whatever comes into his head:

  You’re not here, you’re not here, you’ll always be gone.

  On the lake, on the lake, there swims a white swan.

  Is my grandfather singing a song for the death of the merchant from Ustroń, who he is going to kill the next morning? Or for the departure of Fuchs the chestnut mare? Or for his own departure in the company of the police? Is he singing about me? Is he singing about you? You’re not here, you’re not here, you’ll always be gone. No, you’re here. I am here. I’m here because I do not choose death. Old Kubica, given a choice between the lack of a bottle at his bedside or death, would have chosen death. I choose life, and Old Kubica drinks to my health in the heavenly pub, where an angel tops up his glass.
Grandfather, I say to him, drunken father of my drunken father, grandfather, I was in the same snow-covered yard; a bottle stood at my bedside, the same black perspiration poured from me, my heart quaked and my hands shook. But I choose life. At my side there is a love that is as strong as your singing; it brings me salvation. Our addiction, which killed you, drops from me as the skin of the snake drops from the snake; I am victorious, and I’m sharing my victory with you. I’m writing about you and I’m writing about myself not only to show that true alcoholic prose does not end in death; it ends in life, and who knows how life will end.

  After an hour, or perhaps two, of work Old Kubica suddenly jumps up. Maybe he’s decided to do immediately what he was going to do the next day; maybe he’ll hitch the horses to the sleigh and gallop off amid billowing snows to Ustroń, the axe at his feet. But no, Old Kubica jumps up because what always happens to us is happening to him: the time comes when a person has to have a drink. And my grandfather, already possessed of the knowledge and certainty that he would soon be having a drink, and mightily relieved by this fact, throws his immense sheepskin coat round his shoulders and goes to the pub. He sits in the furthest corner and orders Baczewski, the most expensive vodka. He pays for successive bottles, but to all those who during the day, and also now after dark, want to come and sit with him, he says: