I often observe animals, I simply enjoy it. But the zoo is the worst of all options because it’s a walk through a world that is more dead than that on the other side of the fence. The zoo is deprived of everything; nothing but plaques, descriptions, order. And even if the resemblance between the zoo and some natural habitat is striking, there is a bus waiting outside, home is right around the corner. Boredom and artificiality is the zoo’s nature. There’s no hope for a pang of fear; here, they remove dead bodies at night. The zoo comes to life after dark, when people finally leave, in the evening, or when there’s a flood and you can no longer camouflage the cages. The water revealed, just like heat reveals a message written in invisible ink, the true nature of the zoo—iron bars, prison, and the hippopotamus’s final resting place.
This is a journey through the cold, divided between all the seasons of the year; a journey through trouble, deep snow, and black waters. It’s not really a journey, more an escape from my family’s fate, from being anchored down. My legs get sucked in by the mud until a shoe or a galosh stays behind and I continue barefoot. With envy I think of my predecessors, tourists of the early days, true travelers who knew how to stay upbeat on the endlessly rough path. They had to sneak over borders, ask bankers for money every single time, exchange vouchers, present letters of recommendation. They had to visit the representatives’ offices, spend days in the antechambers of consulates until someone made an appointment for them; until someone found mercy or the police decided they weren’t bandits after all—and the police of all eras tend to be suspicious. And yet, I envy them. Although I’m not sure of what exactly, I guess I envy the fact that they were gambling with madness, with finality, while we are left with hygienic travels by car or a plane. There is nothing finite about those travels; coming back is always an option. Nobody awaits you with an ax, the journey doesn’t last for too long, and it is for pleasure. I read about those who traveled before me, who like me were running away, hitting an actual road or one only in their heads, about those who didn’t make it because they were sucked in by the swamps; about journeys without the promise of return.
“Hospitalization card. Holy Ghost Hospital—Mental Ward.” These are excerpts from papers found in attics, pulled out of the trash, or bought at the flea market, my favorite shopping place in my home city, which digests everything that the previous generation had already chewed on. Nothing disappears here, and if it does, it’s only for a brief moment. This is my city, it takes pride in its excrements, fossils straight from the dump site. “You want it? You got it! My fellow citizens! If you kept those documents, take them back with humility.”
“Date of admission: 07/02/1875. Name of disease: [left blank, maybe they were waiting for the nature of this madness to reveal itself].” “Name of patient: Kazimierz Brykowski.” The fields for “age, religion, civil status” are empty. “Occupation: cook,” farther down something was crossed out. It used to say: “Count’s cook,” but the source of the employer’s embarrassment, his servant’s mental illness, was quickly removed; and thank God the doctor didn’t manage to write down the Count’s name. So, “cook” will have to do. The subsequent fields, as is usually the case in this type of document, have been omitted. Who would measure the “diameter of chest” of a nutcase, who would decide on the “heredity” if the name of the illness is not known? “Doctor’s report—course of the disease—current condition,” these are transcribed from a different hospital, from the Nervous Disease Ward at St. Lazarus in the same city, or town, rather, if we were to measure it by today’s standards, because how many citizens could Krakow have back in those days? Merely fifty thousand, but it needed at least two wards to accommodate its patients; it was proud of and famous for its nuts, crazies, weirdoes, and alcoholics and that’s how it is today too, amen. “Well until 6/26, led a proper life—extremely pious,” that’s how this description of life and the beginnings of death starts, because we already know what direction this patient card is headed. You don’t omit the essentials, you don’t grant only a name, last name, and occupation to a patient, just to have him released and taken back in again soon after. Many of them, as I was going to learn in the course of reading card after card, would return to the ward, go mad time after time, be sent back by the police or a family that was going through hell on earth with them. And so it would go until the very last trip back, when nothing could help anymore. Then they would drink themselves to death in some murky inn or apartment, or else would disappear for good. When there was hope for their return, the card had to be filled in thoroughly to remind everyone who the patient used to be.
There were two sides to the life of the Count’s cook: first, immaculate sainthood and freedom from faults of character; he wasn’t tempted by the bottle or the skirt, most likely didn’t catch syphilis, and his access to the pantry key didn’t ruin him either—he must’ve been a flawless man. It must’ve been the Count’s testimony, the same Count who was quick enough to stop the doctor’s fountain pen before it recorded his name, thus making him present in the psychiatric register only as a witness. Or maybe it was the cook’s wife or his coworkers who spoke for him. Someone had to testify on his behalf because he didn’t talk much back then, I imagine. “He was extremely pious—it was only later that he grew restless—he dressed and undressed over and over again and always kept to himself—he didn’t answer questions; he would suddenly throw himself on the ground and lay with his arms splayed out to the sides, all strained, his pulse low.” On the following pages, in the field titled “Course of disease, treatment, diet” are the following episodes of the cook’s struggle with fate, parts of it hard to decipher, written shakily in an ink that turned brown, demanding a better reader than myself, a Benedictine monk trained in the calligraphy of a different era: “7/4, from time to time he arches his entire body and lies as if frozen—pulse 72—didn’t sleep the whole night, hasn’t eaten this entire time—he does not answer questions, forehead is hot. He sleeps in the morning—pulse 68 etc. etc.” “Forehead hot, I let some blood from his right arm” (at this point I recall that, in his memoirs, Jakub Sobieski, father of the king, complained in the chapter about his own sickness that some medic, an Irish man, performed blood-letting on him some thirty odd times and wanted to do more, not really worried about the patient’s condition, because “the Poles are temperamental people and have a lot of fluids.”); and after treatment the cook-reject is “conscious, answers all questions and promises to stay in bed calmly and permit application of cold compresses,” as if he was a scolded child promising to be better. What difference does it make, cook, if already the next morning “[he] was submitted to electroshock with a direct current for 5 minutes.” That shows how interesting the days of the Count’s cook’s convalescence were for the world of medicine: they were still letting his blood, or practiced phlebotomy—which will become outdated very soon—and at the same time used shock therapy, just as ineffective, but more technologically advanced. A note appears under the date, July 7th, claiming that “the cook has not eaten for the last two days—was fed with a probe.” Maybe he was disgusted by the hospital food, maybe they didn’t consider that. I experience that same disgust today, because the hospital food is usually pig slop served as punishment. Where food is concerned, the modern hospital is identical with its nineteenth century predecessor. The history of hospitals is the history of shaming, of locking up, coercion at all times, deprivation of privacy, various and often confusing procedures: colon wash, electroshock, bloodletting, very often a straightjacket—for the safety of the patient himself, for the safety and convenience of others—and finally the food, like scraps for a dog. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ex-cook couldn’t handle the food. After all he could’ve been good at his job, possibly, before he went crazy, maybe he even liked his job a little bit. So he walked up and down the corridor, shuffling his feet in what, exactly? Slippers? Shoes? I bet on shoes. He wandered, ever more angry. From that point on it was straightforward: “the cook wants to go home . . .” (he
must’ve sensed that nothing good would come of his treatment) “. . . in order to resume working.” Another entry: “high pulse rate, pain in the chest, spit the color of rust,”—it doesn’t look like a symptom of madness, so there’s a quick examination: “wheezing sound in the right lung, stabbing pain during deep breaths.” And so, on July 19th, 1875—“swallowing impeded, neck veins tense, pain in the side, quinine, short breath, bloated stomach,” “. . . bulging eyes. He died with symptoms of pneumothorax at 10 P.M.—no post-mortem,” and the doctor’s signature, a Hancock, only partially legible, a self-assured confirmation of an undeniable fact: they were treating him for his head, he died because of his lungs.
I have a whole pile of stories like that, written on yellowish and damp paper smelling of mold; someone wanted to sell it so some of the pages are trimmed, so they don’t turn away potential buyers with their crumbling edges. And yet, the efforts of a street vendor, a trash diver, possibly the most colorful person on the entire square, to make those papers more attractive were pointless. He always sits by the very entrance, from 4 to 5 A.M. in the summer, and a little later in the winter—always on a camping stool since he can barely walk. He used to smell of vodka and be surrounded by a cloud of smoke, but now, since the doctors threatened him with the possibility of leg amputation, and even sudden death, he’s sober much more often and virtually a non-smoker; more often absent in thought and somewhat quieter. This merchant of mine, a member of the clan of my trusted first-rate liars, storytellers, bullshit pushers, calling his clients fuckers and dumbasses, on a first-name basis with everyone (and those youngsters reading glossy magazines about fashion call him “sir” and are afraid of him, and pay whatever he tells them to pay); he’s covered in sagging tattoos, ones that you can’t get in a tattoo parlor—they cost him a prison sentence. As he managed to add up one lazy Sunday, he spent over twelve years in different prisons. His skin was a work of a lifetime. He sits on his camping stool, all twisted from drinking and surgeries, deformed, practically useless, croaking dramatically as if ready to turn silent forever any moment now, but exposes his skin proudly; he has nothing else left. Because what else is there, anyway? Junk for sale ravaged from basements and garages, his woman, as drunk as himself, a life companion and vengeful servant, and this—his collection of tattoos like the Bayeux Tapestry—his own history inked into his skin by the bored hands of his cellmates. He was the one who trimmed the edges of the hospital records, who tried to give them some antique allure, tried to change trash into an object of desire. He didn’t foresee, however, or maybe he did but didn’t care in the end, that the stench of mold and the stories described in the papers themselves might be discouraging to buyers. That’s how I intercepted them, and now I can’t break free.
So I keep reading. Ferdynand Budryński, thirty years old, admitted to the hospital for the third time. According to his card, he was a citizen of Myślenice: “height 173 cm, weight 57 kg.” This patient was described more thoroughly because it wasn’t his first visit. “Occupation: ex-tutor. Name of disease: stupefaction of the mind.” The year was 1880, and the disease common to a point where anyone could be admitted from time to time. “Face is swollen. Talks to himself. Holds his head. Restless.” At the end of July, somebody from Myślenice takes him away, but in October the ex-tutor comes back. “Doesn’t do anything. Calm,” state the subsequent assessments. At the beginning of the 1881, nothing changes: “Sits, doesn’t do anything, holds his head in his hands.” Later again, “is sad—won’t eat—tongue swollen—laxative prescribed. He continues to read—when asked about his reading, he doesn’t answer.” So they keep on going, “laxatives for the swollen tongue.” After that, his appetite came back and the patient “asked for a cigar.” This improvement doesn’t last for long: “frowning again.” In 1882, “is calm, reads books, eager to smoke a cigar—has good appetite.” Finally, after years of entries made in shaky handwriting, there appear tiny, unsettlingly legible letters written in a violet ink. Only four entries, nothing special. “5/26, silent, keeps staring at the floor, sometimes will pinch or pull at the staff, sometimes paces down the corridor, most often sits solemnly, staring at the ground; 6/21, condition is the same; 7/14, provides short answers to questions, recognizes prof. Blumenstock and talks to him; So far: head low, eyes on the ground—sometimes he will lie down on the ground, arms spread out to the sides; 8/28, transferred to Kulparkowo as incurable, but harmful.”
That’s how I lose track of the ex-tutor forever.
But others replace him. “Wincenty Śleńdziński, age: 39, religion: catholic, marital status: bachelor, occupation: painter,” who had lived temporarily in Krakow, and who had been admitted to the Holy Ghost Hospital in 1875 for “disease: delirium tremens”—and I wonder what back roads the disease took on its way. After severe epileptic seizures, he was “prescribed thirteen leeches: six on his temples; seven on the neck”—an alternative way of bloodletting, as opposed to the classic one. His seizures continued, however weakened. Six days after being admitted, Sleńdziński “is more lucid—he says that during his seizures he feels as if he is being bound by chains and led into the unknown”; and that’s probably how it was, his body locked up there, his mind blown to pieces. Ten days after being admitted, on “6/20, patient leaves hospital cured,” and the same signature, illegible, found earlier on the cook’s card. Cured of madness, I imagine, because there are no other entries for Sleńdziński, and it’s a shame, since he was probably the best-known patient who got lost among the stories of mental disease. It’s even more interesting to me since he was an artist involved with photography, although indirectly, along with others in his family. So I’ll stretch this story, a little to the sides; it’s roomy, and will easily accommodate more details. Sleńdziński’s father, Aleksander, who was a painter himself (Ludomir, Wincenty’s son, will become a painter—and the most famous one among the three), painted in the Count Benedykt Tyszkiewicz’s residence outside of Vilnius, a photographer whose magnitude we can judge only by the reprints published in the artistic periodicals of the era, some pictures preserved in the private album, and several individual photos that have survived. Not too many left for such a busy life, but there’s a simple explanation for that: Count’s Parisian atelier burned down, and after that he never went back to photography. Wincenty Sleńdziński, Aleksander’s son, learned how to paint from his father, but later, when he was in exile in Moscow—Krakow seemed like one of many stops on his twisted way back. In the end, he went back to his home town of Vilnius. I’m not sure if he was finally at peace, or still tormented by demons, or maybe felt the cold of metal wrapped around his chest. I don’t know and never will. Only one thing is certain: after he came back, he married Anna Czechowicz, the widow of Józef Czechowicz, a famous photographer whose pictures of Vilnius and surrounding areas—taken during the period when Sleńdziński was at the Holy Ghost Psychiatric Hospital in Krakow struggling against bed restraints—always take me far away whenever I take them out of the box. Anna, now Sleńdzińska, kept running the studio inherited from her first husband, who thus lived on in balance with her second husband, ever present by her side, ever reprinted from the salvaged negatives, because Józef Czechowicz’s career (and he deserved it) was not impeded by his death.
Czechowicz’s studio, later owned by his widow, was located in a wooden house in the park, under Castle Mountain, today known as Giedymin’s Mountain. Behind it flows the Neris River. From the east, the park is enclosed by the Vilnia River, behind which the Three Crosses Mountain begins. That’s where Wincenty and Anna used to work and now, both in the winter and in the summer, soldiers go walking there with girls, even though it’s hard to find some privacy. Mothers push baby carriages, fathers take pictures, and on the other side of the black water, beyond the Vilnia River—a laughably narrow river with ducks on the ice pack; a river that will drop into the Neris River in a couple hundred meters and disappear forever—someone is just getting on the trail leading to the top of Three Crosses Mountain. There is
no atelier for Mrs. Sleńdziński, only tennis courts covered with snow and girls with cigarettes. I was walking there one winter, talking to myself, “you wanted winter, now you’ve got one,” wrapped in the thickest coat I had, and with only one glove, the left one, because I lost the right one somewhere in the countryside. The sensation of temporariness that I get when I travel, the feeling of being alien, is expressed even in those smallest gestures: I won’t buy new gloves, I’m not even looking for a new pair. Instead, I’ll keep freezing my right hand, an angry red from the cold, for the whole day, and then I’ll just start freezing both my hands off, because it looks stupid to walk around with one glove on. You buy things when you’re home.
Salki Page 6