by Marek Hlasko
“That’s how it’s got to be,” Franciszek said. “No man can endure knowledge. He’s got no right to ask for it. It’s mythology, not knowledge, that holds societies together.”
“Well, then,” the painter said, “go ahead, create a new idea. Any Christ will be useful to mankind. Up to the point of crucifixion, everything is fine, speaking of great ideas. But resurrection is madness. It’s too bad, but I keep repeating myself. Besides, today Christ would be given the psychological treatment. That’s a sign of progress. I drink to the crumbling Cross. Hurrah.”
“Hurrah.”
Their heads were spinning now, and the glare became still more intense. They were in the middle of the city; in the heart of the dying night with its dirty puddles. They were surrounded and nailed by the dead stares of dozens of eyes. Franciszek suddenly had the feeling that he had never seen any face but this one rigidly smiling face, and that he, the painter, Elzbieta, the boy squealing in the corridor, and all people struggling on this earth looked exactly alike. That was how man looked, and his problem, too—the special problem of this unfortunate creature, the question of loyalty and conscience which God, Satan, or Nature foisted upon man to make his life even more precarious, anxious, and difficult than it would normally be.
“No,” he said, “that’s not the worst of it. If I go on living, it means that I accept all this, and I have no right to squawk. A man can live through any hell, survive any tyranny, get out of any swamp and any oppression, if he has at least a crumb of certainty, or at least hope, that there is somewhere another man who walks and breathes like him; who suffers, seeks, or fights like him, preserving his purity. Among us, none can have this hope. Here, among us, the heart of the world has died. Here the great myth of the poor gave up the ghost. Not somewhere else, but here; in this place, toward which the eyes of all the unfortunate and oppressed are turned. Here died the world’s faith. All the words. All the ideas. All the dreams of man’s emancipation. You are right: this is a graveyard. This is the worst. Where can we find strength?”
“What do you mean, where?” the painter said. “In our certainty that there will always be idiots. That’s the worst of it. Are you looking for comfort?”
“Yes,” Franciszek said. “I want to be comforted.”
“There is no comfort,” the painter said. “If there was anything more idiotic, piggish, and useless than human life, it might be a comfort. Unfortunately, no such thing has ever been discovered, but mankind is waiting for its great day. For the time being they have invented eternity, the one with a dung heap of rotten corpses. Try to get there if it amuses you. After all, we’re all going there, and in the face of eternity man always assumes the position of somebody who has been kicked in the ass. Such is the meaning of glory and fame.”
“And if,” Franciszek said, “if I could find at least one man from among our companions who thinks differently?” He looked at the painter with burning eyes. “And Jerzy?” he asked gently.
“What about Jerzy?”
“Does he think the same way?”
Both fell silent; and suddenly the stillness was solemn. Outside the window, invisible, the city hummed in the darkness, like an enormous insect. Shadows and lights darted across the ceiling; the stove creaked monotonously; and both of them, Franciszek and the painter, suddenly felt the presence of something great, something that was true and solemn; it was as though Eternity had come closer with its indifferent face that no one has ever fully seen.
“Yes,” the painter said at last. He bent his enormous head, staring at his paint-corroded hands that lay folded on his knees. “Maybe he is different. Men like him do not perish.” He raised his head abruptly. “Listen,” he said. “Go to see him. Go right away; don’t wait. He alone can help you. He was the best of us. The purest. He’s the only man you can trust. Go.”
“Come with me,” Franciszek said. He looked at him searchingly, and saw a sudden gleam in the other’s eyes, brief as the beat of a wing. Then again his eyes were like those of a statue.
“No,” he said, “I’ll never go …” He pointed to the gleaming busts. “I have commissions; I must work. This is the only hope.”
“What is?”
“To wait,” the painter said, “to wait in the hope that I’ll live to see the day when people smash my masterpieces openly. That’s the only thing. Adieu.”
“What shall I tell him about you?”
“About me? A message from me?”
“Well?”
“That’s easy, Franciszek,” the painter said. “That’s easy. The same as about all of us. That I am dead. Goodbye. Come back someday for a cup of tea.”
Franciszek left. Again he walked down the dark corridor; cats and dogs were squealing; he tottered in the dust and darkness, pulling the cuffs of his trousers out of the grasp of one child’s hands after another’s.
XV
“IS TODAY SUNDAY?” FRANCISZEK ASKED.
“No,” Elzbieta said, “only Friday.”
He put down his shaving things, and turned away from the mirror. “Then why don’t you go to your courses?” he asked.
She was silent, her head bowed. Her eyes were swollen, ringed with blue circles; in the last few days her face had become strangely small and gray, and the corners of her mouth drooped. He came over to her and stood helpless, waiting for her to give some sign of life; but she sat motionless, with a hostile expression she had never shown before. “Well,” he said.
“I have no courses today,” she said. “Neither today nor tomorrow …”
She tried to rise, but he held her down. “My little girl,” he began.
She pushed him away with unexpected force, as though this pet name were particularly repulsive to her. “Go away.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” she cried. “Why should anything happen? Just leave me alone.”
He went out without breakfast, hungry, badly shaved. Still no sign of spring; for weeks now it had been raining and sleeting; for weeks the city had been drenched. The dampness was of a special kind, dirty, loathsome, unbearable, for the branches of the anemic trees remained hard and dry. The fat eye of the sun blinked in the gray sky—its presence was pointless and only made one angry. “What’s the matter with this spring?” he thought, as he walked along staring at the sky. “Have I ever lived through such a spring?” At the corner he saw a telephone booth; there was no one behind the glass door. He entered, dialed, and once again heard the same woman’s voice.
“May I speak to Jerzy?”
“Who is it?”
“Kowalski,” he said. “Franciszek Kowalski … So Jerzy is back?”
“Please hold on a minute,” the woman said, and put down the receiver. He waited with a pounding heart. Finally she came back. “Jerzy is a bit unwell,” she said. “Can you come this afternoon?”
“Yes,” he said, “of course. I’ll come straight from work. Goodbye.”
“Hullo,” the woman said in a hushed voice. “Just a second. Can you hear me? Jerzy is a bit unwell. Jerzy doesn’t feel well. Please remember that. You do understand me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said; “it’s no wonder in this weather. Goodbye.
I’ll come right after work.”
He hung up and walked out; again he hurried to work through crowds of peevish people cursing one another, trampling on one another’s toes. Someone loudly threatened to report the conductor, who barked back from the other end of the car, “You make it hard for people to work.” “Oh, stick it up …” “Go f— yourself.” Franciszek looked at the damp gray walls passing outside the window, and thought, “Spring, spring …” “You’re a tramp!” a fat man shouted, waving his brief case over the passengers’ heads. “Do you hear me?” “And you, you’re a Soviet scientist.” The passengers crowding the platform squealed timidly with joy. “What’s the matter?” a brisk, familiar voice said suddenly. “Someone here that doesn’t like it? Tell the truth; do you like it or don’t you?” “Here yo
u are,” Franciszek thought. “Here you are; I’ve been waiting for your voice. You had to come …” The car stopped; Franciszek stood on his toes, and looked out; the policeman was marching a group of arrested men down the street.
Several hours later the siren howled; he could hardly wait for its second howl, the one that marked the end of the working day; and when finally he heard it he was the first to run across the courtyard, deafened by the sound of his own heart, which did not stop pounding even when he stood in front of Jerzy’s door. He stood with his arms dangling, without the strength to ring the bell. He was silent, paralyzed before the last door of this city. He was silent even when the lady of the house helped him with his overcoat, and he heard nothing of what she said to him as she led him through the entrance hall—it was strangely long, somehow old-fashioned, dark, full of cabinets, chests, and infernal rugs that made walking hazardous. At last he entered the living room. “Jerzy,” he said, “Jerzy.”
Tears veiled his eyes, and he could not see the man standing before him, saying something in a loud voice and vigorously shaking his hand. He was not ashamed of his tears and his stammering. He knew that he had finally reached some sort of destination, that he had come to the end of his wanderings, and that he had achieved peace; he did not know what kind of peace, but it was peace. At last he recovered himself, and looked at the other. Before him stood a miserable skeleton with sunken cheeks and completely lusterless eyes, in a suit pitifully too large for him—his thin arms protruded ludicrously from the baggy sleeves. This was Jerzy; nothing else was important. They sat down, stammering and patting each other’s knees.
“Well, Franciszek,” Jerzy said. “What’s new with you?”
“Jerzy,” Franciszek said. “This won’t sound clever. I don’t even know how to say it. I only know my reason for coming here. Give me again what you gave me once before. Once, in the woods. Once when I was near the end.”
“What is it, Skinny?”
They smiled at each other, looking straight into each other’s eyes. Franciszek started: the skeleton sitting before him had smiled, uncovering the toothless gums of an old man.
“What is it, Skinny?” the former commander repeated.
“Faith. Faith in something, anything. If only in the fact that you haven’t changed.”
“I have not changed,” Jerzy said. He said it too quickly. Franciszek saw fear in his eyes. Or perhaps it was not fear; but whatever it was, it was not faith. He smiled, and said, “You have changed.”
“Faith,” Jerzy said. He rose and approached Franciszek, and put his emaciated hands on his shoulders. “Where is your faith, Franciszek?” he said, looking at him sternly. “Where is your faith? Don’t you see anything?”
“I do see,” Franciszek said. “Wherever I turn I see things against which a man must stand up and fight. Is there still any fight and any meaning left?”
“I see something else,” Jerzy said, staring into a corner of the room. Then he began to speak very fast, choking on his own saliva. “I see emancipated man. Man who was victorious over himself and renounced himself. There is no other victory. This is the ultimate purpose: not to think of yourself in victory. Every conqueror must first kill himself …” He turned away, and Franciszek saw with horror that tears were rolling down his sunken cheeks. “Man,” Jerzy stammered, raising his fists above his head, and shaking them helplessly. “Man, man was everywhere. At the ends of the earth, on mountain peaks, and in the ocean depths. He invented the multiplication table and the atomic pile, motion pictures and radio, the steam engine and penicillin; he was in concentration camps and in crematoria, and yet he lives, is reborn, multiplies. There is life for you; there is victory. And you ask about faith. Where is your faith, you brute?” he cried wildly. “Where is your faith? I haven’t changed; I was, I am, and I will be as you have known me to be. Once again you don’t trust me. Once again you are sending your spies to my house.” He stretched out his arm in a theatrical gesture and pointed to the door. “Get out!” he cried. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to see anyone. I have done what you asked of me, and now let me alone …” He stood silent as a statue for a while, and then threw himself on his knees before Franciszek: “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I know a great deal. I know everything; I can be useful. I know what people think—all of them, all, all. We’ll get into every thought, every action, every corner of the human brain, even where thoughts are born. But that’s not true,” he cried. “There are no bad thoughts. It’s possible to think only the way we want, or not to think at all. Other thoughts are useless. We’ve had enough thoughts that lead to nothing. Now we must conquer.” He kissed Franciszek’s hand with his slobbering mouth. “We’ll conquer,” he squeaked. “We’ll conquer everything. Only some things must be changed. We’ll conquer even dreams; stupid dreams can also lead to deviations. We must conquer dreams!” he shouted with ferocious strength, pinching Franciszek’s arms with his bony fingers. “That will be our task. And now, sing.”
He sang shrilly, staring at Franciszek with murky eyes: “This is the fi-nal …”
His arms were twitching convulsively; tears seeped through his fingers with which he had covered his decrepit face. He looked hideous; his gray head shook pitifully on his thin red neck. Franciszek sat rigid and half unconscious from horror. Someone jerked his arm.
“Go now,” the woman said. “Please, go now.”
He silently put on his overcoat.
“Didn’t you know?” she said.
“I didn’t.”
“He was arrested,” she said. “They kept him two years. They questioned him in their own way. He won’t tell me, even me, how it was. Every time a visitor comes, he thinks it’s someone sent from there. That’s why he has those terrible fits …” She came close to him. “You really didn’t know that he is …” She hesitated.
“He’s not the only one,” Franciszek said. “Everybody is. Please, never mention me to him.”
“He doesn’t understand anyhow,” she said.
“So much the better for him. Good night.”
XVI
HE WAS ABOUT TO CLIMB THE STAIRS IN HIS apartment house, when someone called after him, “Hey, Citizen Kowalski.”
He stopped. It was the janitor, a miserable-looking fellow in a shoddy blue jacket. They stood silent, looking at each other; the janitor’s expression betrayed embarrassment. A few floors up on the staircase, two men were carrying something large and heavy; they were noisy, and one kept crying to the other, “Stefan, take it sideways …”
“What’s the matter?” Franciszek asked. And when the other did not answer, he repeated: “What’s the matter, Citizen Superintendent?”
The janitor stared a few more moments with doglike eyes, then turned on his heel and went back to his room. Franciszek shrugged and began to climb the stairs. He was surprised: despite the late hour tenants were standing outside almost every door—women in wrappers, men with their suspenders hanging, some old men, some students; even a drunken soldier had strayed in from somewhere. All of them were whispering and gesticulating feverishly; their eyes betrayed great excitement; but when Franciszek passed them, the whispers ceased, and the people retreated into the shadows. On one landing, an elderly man was trying to open his window; he tugged vainly at the brass handle, repeating angrily, “The young, the young …” “Where are these people from?” Franciszek thought sleepily. “Why are there so many people in this house?” He kept bumping into them, forcing his way through them: he lived on one of the upper floors, and walked very slowly; he was tired, so tired that he became aware of the sweetish smell of gas only when he reached the dark corridor leading to his door—his door which was bashed in and hung crookedly on one hinge. Out stepped a man in a rubber apron, with a mask on his face.
Elzbieta was lying on her side, curled and strangely twisted like a bird that has been shot down. The veins in both her arms had been opened in two places, below the elbows and above the wrists. The doctor had finished packing his
case; two male nurses stood beside him, holding their masks. The blood had already coagulated and hardened; the wind blew through the smashed window, tearing at the curtain. The doctor looked at Franciszek and said, “About two hours ago.”
Franciszek nodded. With firm steps he walked to the table, took the envelope and opened it. “Forgive me,” she had written, “but this is the best thing for me to do. You were expelled from the party and Mikołaj left home; Mikołaj left home and I was expelled from the university—children of people expelled from the party have no right to study. I broke with Roman because of a statement he voluntarily made and signed—that it was wrong of him to live with the daughter of a man like you. I don’t want this chain of events to reach my child, and it is too late to prevent it in any other way. The money is in the cupboard. The laundress will come on Tuesday. Farewell.”
The doctor asked: “Will you come with us to the morgue?”
“To the morgue?” Franciszek said with surprise. “No.”
“Can I do anything for you? Shall I give you a sedative?”
“Oh,” said Franciszek, annoyed, “leave me alone …” He walked to the bed and looked at Elzbieta’s rigid face. The bed stood near the window, and whenever the wind lifted the curtain a red glow flickered in Elzbieta’s milky eyes. “Where does this light come from?” Franciszek murmured. He turned to the doctor. “Are you sure?”
“Try to get some sleep,” the doctor said. “Tomorrow you’ll have to attend to the formalities.”
“All right,” Franciszek said. “But tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
One of the nurses said, “We had to smash a window,” and waved the mask he was holding. The other said: “There is a glazier across the street. I live there. Shall I write down his address for you?”
“Thanks,” Franciszek said. “I’ll remember. Across the street, you said?”