B008GRP3XS EBOK

by Wiesiek Powaga

  "Christ the Lord!" I cried half alive, "But Love, Charity, Beauty, prisoners, cripples, emaciated ex-schoolmistresses."

  "We remember them, we do," said the countess laughing, and cold sweat ran down my neck. "Those poor, dear schoolmistresses."

  "We remember," the old marquise reassured me.

  "We remember," repeated Baron de Apfelbaum. "We remember"(I was petrified) "those good old prisoners."

  They weren't looking at me but somewhere at the ceiling, turning up their heads as if that were the only way they could constrain the violent spasms of their cheek muscles. Ha! I had no doubt left, I understood in the end where I was and my jaw started trembling uncontrollably. And the rain was still lashing against the window panes like a thin whip.

  "But God, God does exist ..." I stuttered in the end, my strength leaving me, desperately looking for some refuge. "God exists," I added in a lower voice, for the name of God sounded so out of place that in the ensuing silence I could see on their faces all the inauspicious signs confirming my faux pas. I was only waiting for the moment when they would show me the door.

  "Gold?" responded Baron de Apfelbaum after a while, crushing me with his incomparable tact, "Gold? Of course it exists. I deal in gold."

  Who could reply to this? Who wouldn't, as they say, forget the tongue in his mouth? I shut up. The marquise sat at the piano while the baron began dancing with the countess, and from their every move there flowed so much good taste and elegance that - oh - I wanted to escape. But how to leave without saying goodbye? And how to say goodbye while they were still dancing? I was watching them from the corner and - on my word! - never, never had I dreamt of such wanton abandon. No, I can't go against my nature and describe what happened. No, no one can demand that from me. Suffice it to say that when the countess put forward her little foot the baron withdrew his, many, many times, and all this while their faces showed inexhaustible dignity, bearing such an expression as if this dance were - phew! - an ordinary tango; with the marquise churning out trills and arpeggios on the piano! But I knew by then what it was, they had forced it down my throat - it was the dance of cannibals! The dance of cannibals! All done with daintiness, good taste and elegance. I was only looking around for a heathen god, a primeval monster with a square skull, turned out lips, round cheeks and squashed nose, presiding over the bacchanalia from somewhere above. And turning my eyes towards the window I saw something just like that: a round, childish face, with a squashed nose, with raised eyebrows, sticking out ears, skinny and feverish, staring with the cosmic idiocy of a savage divinity, with such unearthly enchantment that for an hour or two I sat as if hypnotised, unable to tear my eyes away from the buttons of my waistcoat.

  And when at dawn, I finally sneaked out, down the slippery steps into the grey drizzle, I noticed in the flower bed under the window, a body among the dried irises. It was of course a corpse, the corpse of an eight-year-old boy, blond hair, round nose, wasted to such a degree that one could say it was completely devoured. Only here and there, under the dirty skin remained a little flesh. Ha, so poor Bolek Cauliflower had managed to wander as far as here, tempted by the light of the windows, visible from the distant, muddy fields. And as I was running out of the gate the cook, Philip, appeared out of nowhere - white, in a round cap, with ginger hair and squinting eyes, skinny but grand with the grandeur of a master of culinary art who first slaughters a chicken in order to serve it later on the table in a ragout. Cringing, bowing and wagging his tail he said in a servile tone of voice:

  "I hope your lordship enjoyed his lenten fare ..."

  The end of winter that year stood under the sign of particularly opportune astronomical arrangements. The colourful predictions of the calendar blossomed red in the snowy outskirts of mornings, and the glow of red Sundays and holidays spread over into the next week, giving the coming days a cold gleam of false and short-lived fire. Deluded hearts beat a little faster for a while, dazzled by the heralding redness which proclaimed nothing and was but a mere red herring, a colourful calendar humbug vermilioned on the week's cover. Beginning at Epiphany we sat night after night over the white pageantry of the table shining with silver and candlesticks, playing an unending game of patience. With each hour the night behind the window grew brighter and brighter, all sugar-frosted and glistening, full of sprouting almonds and ever-spreading ices. The moon, that inexhaustible transformist, wholly engrossed in her late lunar practices, celebrated her subsequent phases, becoming more and more luminous, laying herself out in all the preference' figures, doubling all the suits. Even during daytime she could often be seen standing by, ready in advance, brassy and lacklustre - the melancholy Queen of Clubs - awaiting her turn. Meanwhile, whole skyfuls of lambs passed through her lonely profile in a quiet, white and vast migration, covering her thinly with iridescent scales the colour of mother-of-pearl, which, near evening, set over the entire colourful firmament.

  Later, one merely turned the leaves of empty days. The wind passed over the roofs with a heavy rumble, blowing down the cold chimneys right to their hearths, building imaginary scaffolds and walls above the town, only to pull down those air-built structures amidst the crash of beams and rafters. Sometimes a fire would break out on the far outskirts of town. The chimney-sweeps would scud around the roofs and galleries under the torn, copper-rust sky. Moving from one patch to another, high up as weather-cocks, they would be dreaming in this vaulting perspective that the wind might open up the lids of the roofs to reveal for a moment the girls' attics, and slam them shut again over the grand, effervescent book of the town - that intoxicating tale which could be read for many days and nights.

  Later, exhausted, the winds died out. In our shop-window the shop assistants hung out the spring-time selection of cloth, and soon, from the soft colours of the wool, the weather became milder, tinged itself with lavender and blossomed in pale reseda. The snow shrank, puckered into babyish fleece. It was soaked up dry into the air, drunk by the cobalt breezes, absorbed back into the vast, concave sky without sun or clouds. Here and there in people's houses oleanders had already come into bloom, the windows were flung open and in the dumb reverie of the blue day the mindless twittering of sparrows filled the rooms. Over the clean squares there were violent fleeting clashes of coal-tits and chaffinches, who swooped with a terrifying chirp and dispersed in all directions, swept away by a gust of wind, blotted out, annihilated by the empty azure. For a moment all that was left were colourful specks floating in the eye, a fistful of confetti thrown blindly into the bright space, which then melted away into the neutral sky-blue.

  The premature spring season was on. Young articled clerks wore high, stiff collars and their moustaches twirled up into spirals; they were the epitome of chic and elegance. During the days washed over by the gales as if by a flood, when the winds rumbled high above the town, the clerks would greet from afar ladies of their acquaintance, raising their colourful bowler-hats. Leaning their backs against the wind, their coats flapping about, stiff and discreet, they would then turn their gaze away so as not to expose their lady-friends to gossip. The ladies would momentarily lose the ground under their feet, crying out in fright, their frocks flaring up, but regaining their composure they would respond with a smile.

  Sometimes, on an afternoon when the wind calmed down, Adela would be out on the porch cleaning huge, copper pots which purred with a metallic rasp under her hand. The sky would stand still over the shingle-roofs, holding its breath, branching out into blue avenues. A breeze would bring the lost refrain of a distant hurdy-gurdy. The shop assistants, sent out on an errand, would stop next to her by the kitchen door, leaning against the porch, drunk with the day's long wind, their heads full of the deafening chirp of the sparrows. One could not hear the quiet words formed under their breath, accompanied by innocent faces and a false nonchalance, words which in fact were aimed at shocking Adela. Touched to the quick, she would react violently, cursing them in a rage, hackles up, and her face, grey and cloudy from spring daydreaming, would
redden with anger and pleasure. They would lower their eyes with abject devotion and the wicked satisfaction that they had succeeded in making her lose her temper. Mornings and afternoons passed by. They floated in the everyday hubbub of the town seen from our porch, above the labyrinth of roofs and houses lambent with the turbid radiance of those grey weeks. The tinkers ran around shouting out their services, sometimes Shloma's powerful sneeze enriched the town's remote, scattered din like a witty aside. In a secluded square the madwoman Tluya, driven to despair by taunting children, began to dance her wild sarabande, raising high her skirts to the delight of the crowd. All those outbursts were flattened, smoothed out into a grey monotonous clatter by a gentle breeze which spread it evenly throughout the smoky, milky afternoon air above the sea of shingle-roofs. Adela, leaning on the porch balustrade, bent over the far heaving hum of the town, fished out of it all the louder accents and, smiling, put those strayed syllables together, trying to make some sense of the huge, grey monotony of the day as it rose and fell.

  It was the epoch of mechanics and electricity. A whole bundle of inventions had fallen out from under the wings of human genius. In the homes of the middle classes appeared a new range of cigar sets equipped with electric lighters - one turn of a switch and a swarm of electric sparks lit up a wick soaked in petrol. It all stirred hopes which would not be denied. A music box in the shape of a Chinese pagoda, when wound up, would immediately start playing a miniature rondo, turning around like a carousel, the bells would ring out in trills, the wings of little doors would open out revealing the spinning barrel-organ heart churning out a snuff-box triolet. All the houses had electric bells installed and domestic life stood under the sign of galvanism; a coil of insulated wire was the symbol of the times. In the salons young dandies who demonstrated Galvani's effect received the admiring gazes of the ladies. The electric conductor opened the way to women's hearts. When the experiment succeeded the heroes of the day sent kisses amidst the applause of the salons. We did not have to wait long before the town filled with velocipedes of all shapes and sizes. The philosophical outlook on life was de rigueur. Whoever accepted the idea of progress had also to accept the consequences and mount a velocipede. Naturally, the first were the articled clerks, that avant-garde of new ideas. With their twirled up moustaches and colourful bowler-hats, the hope and flower of our youth, pushing aside the rowdy onlookers they rode into the crowd on their enormous bicycles and tricycles, rattling the wire spokes. Resting their hands on the broad handlebars, manoeuvring the giant hoops of the wheels from their dicky-seats they cut a winding, wavy line into the merry multitude. Some were overcome by a missionary zeal and rising on their rattling pedals, as in stirrups, spoke to the people from on high, prophesying a new, happy era for Mankind - redemption through the bicycle ... And rode on through the applause bowing in all directions.

  And yet, there was something pitifully compromising in those splendid, triumphal parades, a grinding, jarring note, harsh and painful, which even at the height of their triumph made them sway unsteadily on the brink of parody. The riders must have felt it themselves as they hung on their intricate apparatus like spiders, straddle-legged on the pedals like giant hopping frogs, waddling on the widely rolling rims. They were only one small step away from ridicule and they were taking that step with despair, bending over the handlebars and doubling their speed - a gyrating web of jerky acrobats taking a wild tumble. No wonder. Man, on the strength of an illicit joke, was entering a province of unbelievable facilities gained too cheaply, below cost, practically gratis, and this disproportion between profit and investment, this obvious swindling of Nature and the excessive payment for a trick - even a brilliant one - had to be balanced with self-parody. So they rode through the impetuous bursts of laughter, pitiful victors, martyrs of their genius. Such was the comic power of those marvels of technology.

  When my brother brought an electromagnet from school for the first time, when we all experienced with trembling souls and fingers the secretly vibrant life locked in an electric circuit, my father smiled in superiority. A far-reaching idea was taking shape in his head, he concentrated, closing a chain of long-entertained suspicions. Why was father smiling to himself? Why were his eyes turning up, watering, in mocking devotion? Who can tell? Did he suspect a hoax, a base intrigue, a transparent machination behind the startling manifestations of secret power? From that moment dates father's conversion to laboratory experiments.

  Father's laboratory was simple: a few coils of wire, a couple of jars of acid, zinc, lead and carbon - that constituted the entire workshop of this extraordinary esoterist. "Matter," he would pronounce with muffled snorts, lowering his eyes coyly, "matter, my dear sirs . . ." He would never finish his sentence, leaving us to guess that he was on the trail of some fat trick, that we were all wholly and truly duped. With his eyes lowered father would scoff at this eternal fetish. - Panta rei! - he would cry out, describing with his hands the eternal circulation of substance. For a long time he had wanted to mobilise its latent powers, to render its rigid mass in a flux, to pave the way for its universal penetration, transfusion, for otnnicirculation - its only true state of being. "Principium individuationis - tinker's cuss," he would say, and with that he would express his unbridled contempt for this greatest of First Principles. He would let it slip out in passing, running along the wire and with his eyes shut, touching delicately various points of the circuit, trying to feel minute differences in potential. Bent over the wire he made small incisions in it, listening intently, and in the blink of an eye he was ten paces away repeating the procedure. He seemed to have ten hands and twenty senses. His scattered attention was working in a hundred places at the same time. No point of space was free of his suspicion. Jabbing at the wire in one place he would suddenly spring like a cat aiming at another spot, missing it in embarrassment. "Excuse me," he would say, turning to a surprised observer of his manipulations, "excuse me, I am particularly interested in this point of space currently occupied by your body. Would you mind moving for a moment?" And in a flash he would be taking his rapid measurements again, quick and nimble like a canary, hopping dextrously in the pulsating throb of his finely tuned nerves.

  The metals, dipped in acidic solutions, salty and patinous in this painful bath, began their transmission in the dark. Awoken from their numb deadness they hummed a monotonous, metallic song, emitting an intermolecular radiance into the perpetual twilight of those late, mournful days. The poles swelled with an invisible charge which seeped into the swirling darkness. A barely felt tickle, blind tingling currents ran through the space polarised into concentric power lines, falling into rotating spirals of magnetic fields. Now and again, the instruments would signal to each other from a deep sleep, breaking their lethargic slumber, sending delayed, belated communications in hapless monosyllables - dash, dot, dash ... Father stood in the middle of those migrating currents with a painful smile, shaken by this stammering articulation, this wretched life locked up for ever and without a way out, which sent feeble messages in crippled half-syllables from the fettered depths.

  As a result of his researches father reached astounding conclusions. For instance, he demonstrated that an electric bell, operating on the principle of Neeff s hammer, was a mere hoax. It was not Man who was breaking into Nature's laboratory, but Nature Herself who was drawing him into Her own machinations, and through his experiments pursuing Her own goals, which led no one knew where. At dinner-time my father would touch his thumbnail with the handle of the spoon sticking out of the soup, and suddenly the lamp would start ringing with Neeff's hammer. The whole apparatus was simply superfluous, it had nothing to do with the matter in hand. Neeff's hammer was a point of convergence for the impulses of matter feeling its way through the human wit. Nature willed and worked; Man was merely an oscillating needle, a shuttle shooting up and down the loom according to Her will. He himself was just one of the components, a part of Neeff's hammer.

  Someone dropped into the conversation the word "mesmerism" an
d father readily picked it up. He had found the last link needed to lock the chain of his theory. According to it Man was only a transit station, a momentary knot of mesmeric currents tangling hither and thither in the womb of eternal matter. All the inventions in which He triumphed were traps set up by Nature, the snares of the unknown. Father's experiments began to take on the character of magic, they smacked of a conjurer's juggling tricks. I shall omit the numerous experiments with pigeons which, in the course of manipulation with his magic wand, were conjured forth into two, three, or ten, and then gradually, and with effort, manipulated back into the wand. He would raise his hat and out they would fly, all of them, returning to reality and fluttering down on the table in an undulating, cooing and bustling flock. Sometimes he would interrupt himself unexpectedly in the middle of an experiment. For a moment he stood undecided, with his eyes closed, and then ran out in a trot into the hallway and stuck his head into the chimney flue. The soot-padded darkness wrapped it in blissful silence, snug like a womb of nothingness, soothing it with a flow of warm currents. Shutting his eyes father stood for a while in this warm, dark void. We all felt that this incident was not part of the demonstration, that it was all taking place, as it were, behind the scenes. We would turn a blind eye to this marginal fact, which indeed belonged to another order of things.

  My father had in his repertoire really perturbing tricks, which overwhelmed with true melancholy. The chairs in our dining-room had tall, beautifully carved backs. They depicted garlands of leaves and flowers carved in a realistic manner, but with one flick of father's hand they would suddenly assume the indefinable, yet witty, pointedness of a grotesque physiognomy. The visage began to blink and wink meaningfully and it was all too embarrassing for words, almost unbearable, until, with an invincible inevitability, the winks began to take a quite definite direction and some of those present would cry out: "Auntie Wendy! Good God, auntie Wendy!" The ladies would start screaming for it was auntie Wendy true to life, nay, her very self was here in person on a visit, sitting and carrying on her interminable discourse without letting anybody get a word in edgeways. Father's miracles were collapsing under their own weight, for the presence of the real auntie Wendy in all her usual ordinariness and earthiness precluded any thought of miracles.