by Jerzy Pilch
And suddenly, there you have it! A complete change of situation! A sudden and unforeseen turn in a plot that had been foreseen to the last iota. Not one, but two shadows glide to her light! And those are not shadows in miniskirts or summer dresses! Those aren’t shadows at all! Two flesh-and-blood guys approach her, greet her, make certain that they have come to the right person, take a seat, and immediately begin the conversation. Two guys of flesh and blood, and especially one of them. Although it is not easy to determine definitively which one of them was of flesh and blood, and which one less so. They seemed to be a couple: director and vice-director. Supervisor and the supervisor’s deputy. Manager and the manager’s assistant. Boss and his—for want of anything better—bodyguard. The boss, at first glance, gave the impression of being the guy of flesh and blood, everything in him was strong and distinctive: the solarium skin, the black shiny hair, the dark sports jacket, the gray slacks, the shirt with white and blue stripes, the appropriate tie, the impressive height, the beefy shoulders—in a word, a classic imitation of the Mediterranean lout. Whereas the other was grayish, slovenly, badly composed; it seemed that he was wearing a suit, but perhaps he didn’t have a suit at all; his hair was somehow combed, or maybe not, maybe he was even bald; it was as if he held a stuffed briefcase tightly under his arm, but maybe that was an illusion. He was there, but perhaps he didn’t exist at all. The first was distinctive in the extreme, the second extremely indistinct. Hence the doubt: which one was of flesh and blood?
The first spoke incessantly; as if persuasively and politely, but you had the feeling that this was the infamous “tone that does not tolerate objection.” She listened, as if attentively and with interest, but you had the feeling that she was in an obedient, or even submissive pose.
The sudden presence of the bizarre—or stereotypical—couple didn’t change Anka’s situation in the least. The blonde remained beyond her reach and beyond her designs. She didn’t even stop to ponder whether she had now become, more or less, attainable. She continued not to invest any hopes in this, but she became all the more attentive an observer. More and more attentive. More and more alert. More and more anxious. For something bizarre and morbid was beginning to happen in a corner of Yellow Dream. Some sort of deviltry was arising there, something viscous was flowing, something reptilian was slithering, an almost visible, yellowish and hideous aura began to engulf the entire trio.
“Do you understand? Have you ever had such situations? Seemingly nothing is happening, and yet an intangible filth is gathering? I’m not saying that it began to look like the boss of a brothel and his chief pimp were establishing conditions with a newly hired girl, but, to tell the truth, little was lacking for it. There was contempt in those guys, they were contemptuous in every gesture and inch of their bodies; even the fact that they didn’t order anything was contemptuous, that they took care of business coldly and dryly, without even a mineral water. And no matter what sort of business this was: whether they were hiring her, or she them, whether she was borrowing money from them or they from her, whether, as a result of this conversation, she was to go to the bottom or they to jail, whether they were offering her a lucrative trip to the Canary Islands, whether she was their last chance, whether they were proposing a role in a TV series to her, whether she was recruiting them for a sect—no matter what the arrangement was: in them, there was contempt; in her, humility. Nothing more occurred. The fake Mediterranean lout finished his speech; she raised her head, asked about something; he answered, perfunctorily and while looking at his watch; she wanted to say something more, but they weren’t listening, they were already getting up, already leaving.”
IX
A helicopter flew over the city, the clock on the Palace of Culture showed a quarter past six. The light of dusk was as it was a thousand years ago, when, after a long trip, I got off the train, and I ran into Janek Nikandy at the station in Wisła. The black towers of the Palace soared into the rust-colored sky. The slender, long-haired blonde in the dirty-russet blouse opened up a copy of Home and Interior and read absorbedly. There wasn’t any sign that the recent conversation had left a mark on her. She drank her tea slowly; all indications were that she would sit there who knows how much longer. I saw her precisely. Anka was right: I had been there. I, too, was there indeed, drank the wine and the mead. Suddenly the curtain disintegrated, and I saw everything: the badly dressed girl tapping out SMSes, the busty woman in the brick-red dress, the blonde in the dirty-russet blouse, the boss and his body guard, the throngs of passersby, the cars driving up Marszałkowska, the masses of scorching air. I saw, and I remembered, point for point, the entire July afternoon, all the intangible events and all the characters. All except for Anka Chow Chow. She wasn’t there. She was right, but she wasn’t there. Ever. I never met her at any match. Of course not. Columns of light over the stadium and suffocating downdrafts of ether on the Commons. The return to the hotel. The pot of coffee and letter paper. The station at dawn. The empty compartment for smokers. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a thing. I haven’t left the house for a long time. I haven’t left my room for who knows how long. For years I haven’t ventured outside of my own skull. No one is here. It will soon be six. All of this is divine punishment for aversion to ambiguity. I tread very ambiguously. Step by step. Cautiously, and on the other side of Marszałkowska. Fluidly, as happens in the most fluid of dreams. As that time when we climbed up the railway embankment, and from the heights you could see everything as if it was on the palm of your hand: the cart crossing the bridge, Pastor Kalinowski leaving the parish house, the biplane over Jarzębata. I look from afar. From on high. The sky is ever darker. The coal-black light of your hair dies away. I am alone. I regain pain.
Snow for Two-Thirds of a Day and Night
“Snow for two-thirds of a day and night,
and one-third in a dream?”
—Stanisław Barańczak
Old man Trzmielowski was dying in the next room; Emma the lunatic wandered about the entire house; old lady Mary prayed in the kitchen; and Uncle Paweł, instead of keeping watch, snored dreadfully. I wasn’t afraid of anything. What is more, the gale was such that—so it seemed—the frozen mountains would budge from the spot. The gigantic wooden house rocked like Magellan’s ship, the roof creaked ever more loudly and distinctly; any moment its gibberish would become language; I think you could already hear individual words. Objects glided from place to place, the shadows of the hands that raised them were at times quite distinct—but I did nothing. I calmly waited for the moment when, in the next room, the footsteps of death would reverberate, when the old man would cease breathing, when the old lady would cease praying, when Uncle would awaken with a dreadful scream, when there would reverberate the crackle of matches lighting the funeral candle, and when finally, worn out by her lunatic wanderings, Emma, frenzied, pale like a corpse and covered with icy sweat, would return to my bed. I was seven years old, and I had begun to sleep with her before I fell in love with her. Worse: I slept with the one, but I loved the other. Every night I stuck to Emma’s cold sweat, and every day I played dominoes with Aria, Sister Ewelina’s ward. Right after young Trzmielowski’s wedding, it was still November, the snows of Greenland came tumbling down, we had a cold wave the likes of which the world has never seen, and for weeks on end it wasn’t possible to budge from the spot. Illnesses, on the other hand, came with great ease and in single file: tonsillitis, flu, scarlet fever; I was suffocating and losing consciousness; Emma Lunatyczka’s damp bedclothes weren’t bad for that.
We travelled to the wedding party in britzkas; Pastor Kalinowski in a VW bug; wedding revelers who lived high up came down from the mountains on foot, and now you couldn’t even get through on sleighs, now you couldn’t even dig out the sleighs themselves. Quite another matter that the air, for November, was supposedly too mild. Old man Trzmielowski looked around anxiously and said that it didn’t bode well. It ought to be fiery, but it is too warm. At that time he hadn’t yet begun dying, he c
irculated, dressed in black, among the revelers, ate ravenously, drank aggressively, smiled sheepishly. All the local old men—whenever they encounter anything that does not have to do with carpentry, mowing, or some other sort of labor—smile sheepishly. He was such an expert on the air that predicts a harsh winter. But walls doubled to that extent?—beyond the walls of the house, walls of snow, walls of winter, load-bearing walls of ice, and the whole way through the yard to the can was like breaking through one wall after another. I felt their weight, their pressure, their red-hot plaster.
“Do you remember a winter like this? Was it ever like this? Maybe in the emperor’s time? Maybe before with war with Japan?” Uncle Paweł awoke with the shakes, dug himself out from under pelts and sheepskins, and although he had something completely different in mind, led by some mysterious instinct of politeness, he engaged the dying great-great-great-, however many times great-grandfather in conversation. He didn’t look in the direction of the dark bed, he didn’t check to see whether the old man was sleeping or waking, but he showered him with words.
“You must remember such a winter, at least one. Because if you don’t remember such a winter, this means that there has never been such a winter, that it is happening for the first time. And if this is for the first time, I will have to talk differently with Mother.”
Uncle put on high boots, threw the sheepskin coat over his shoulders, which less than a quarter hour ago had covered him like a blanket, and disappeared out the door. After a moment, from the depths of the house, there reverberated raised voices; doubled steps went across the attic; someone cleared a way through the courtyard; horses snorted in the stable; some ancestor resting on a pile of cornflower blue pillows began in a whisper to tell some story from before the times of narration. The door opened, and Pastor Kalinowski—changed beyond recognition, in a flannel shirt, with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand—entered and pulled up a stool and sat at the head of the bed; at the spot where, any moment now, a six-foot black scythe would appear.
Sometimes, from the snowed-under center of town, you could hear bells. Had the sexton climbed the tower as usual? Did he see the tufts of smoke over the snowed-under environs? How did he manage with ropes that were frozen solid? Did shadows in hoods help him? My fever jumped, I wasn’t seeing phantoms, phantoms were my fervent dream. Some sort of connections existed. Tunnels carved out by animals, perhaps on the surface, and in the other direction you had to drag yourself to the road to Polana. Sometimes Pastor Kalinowski would disappear for a day, two days; the little room over the stairs, in which he lived, was locked up tight. Maybe he broke his way through by some miracle and was conducting a funeral in the labyrinths at the cemetery or a service in the icy church? Not likely, but who knows?
From time to time, everybody kept getting lost. Most often it was Uncle Paweł, but at least with him the matter was clear; it was known to one and all what he was looking for. He had been drinking since the wedding, which is to say, for four months now, and he still had something to drink. He must have been distilling it from the snow. Besides, there could still be reserves frozen in the cellars for all time. The Trzmielowskis prepared for the wedding party as if they knew that it would last half a year. Seven bridesmaids alone, of whom three were identically pregnant. All of them in the eighth month, and all called Hanula. All had dresses, veils, and sulfuric acid prepared, in order to disfigure, as soon as she left the church, the most beautiful of them, the one whom the groom would choose. The four other Hanulas finally gave up, dressed in black, wound black scarfs around their heads, and sat in the same pew. Young Trzmielowski had spent a May night with each of them, but God hadn’t been on their side. He didn’t stop the blood. He didn’t send them an appetite for herrings and pickles, and He didn’t cause their bellies to grow. For what sins?—nobody really knows. Their lives are over. One of them will throw herself under a train in three years; the second will still be living today, if she lives, in black; the third will emigrate, and they will say of her that she became a popular waitress in a Roman café; about the fourth, absolutely no news would be heard. Four fewer, but two were still in play. Two, because the prettiest is already standing at the altar. But those others in unstarched dresses, with veils aslant, with pots, from which a yellowish-brown smoke belches forth, are somewhere in the vicinity. They descend from the mountains, they are already at the station, they walk around the ski jump, and perhaps they are already circling the church.
There are people everywhere, even in the balconies, but no one is capable of concentrating on the bride and groom standing at the altar. Even the masters of ceremonies are looking around apprehensively. Old lady Mary, the bravest of them all, stands up from the pew time and again, goes out, comes back. Nothing gets better. The organist plunks away, but no one knows wedding hymns. In the hymnal, there are three wedding hymns for every hundred funeral dirges. Three pathetic hymns to the matrimonial altar for a hundred fantastic ones to the coffin. At burials and in cemeteries, everyone sings in top form. At weddings, no one can be bothered with pious ditties. And now? No point in wishing for better! The sulfur is about to flow, the terrible scream of the scalded bride is about to soar above the steeple. Finally, the organist plays When the morning stars are rising… but this causes an even greater muddle, because some are singing: “When the morning stars are rising/ Earth and sea Thy glories praising/ Join all nature’s voice in singing/ Praise to Thee, Oh God, we’re bringing,” and the rest, from out of the blue, although to that same melody: “In the path of Christ the Lord/ Let us sing with one accord/ For Christ this way did bring/ After eating songs to sing.” It was as if a swarm of buzzing hornets was flying under the church’s ceiling—such tension, and then suddenly quiet, a calm as after a storm. As then, when I stand in the window and gaze at the steaming stones of the Wisła courtyard, at Chowderhead the cat, walking cautiously between the puddles. Peace and quiet, as if there were no God and all his ghosts. Brethren, silence your hearts. Supposedly the four black Hanulas got up and left, and that was a guarantee that nothing would happen. But as soon as they moved away from the altar, the organist—he must have been completely out of it by now—started in on: For he’s a jolly good fellow… Only now did old lady Mary fly up the stairs to the organ like a jet plane; the sudden relief gave her more strength. But before she got there, he had started in on He that dwelleth… and it came out so well that people were sorry to leave the church steeple behind. The horses were washed, their manes plaited, to the britzkas, my damsels, to the britzkas. Through the ill-boding November air, around Czantoria, around Jarzębata and Kamienny, and up the serpentine road to Kubalonka, and to the station, and just a bit past the station. Seven barriers along the way. Dirty sheepskins on the left, ram’s fur, coal on the faces. We get past a few Beelzebubs and a barrier! A barrier on all three bridges. A barrier at Jurzyków, a barrier in Jawornik, a barrier in Gościejów, and, just before the house, yet another barrier. Paper money and combustible schnapps. Bread and salt. The musicians walk out into the courtyard and sit down on stools, and at first it is quiet, as if the celebration were coming from far off, but then ever louder and ever stronger, as if we were closer and closer to the meadow on which the first couples are dancing, as if I saw more and more, as if—only then—I was everywhere and saw everything, and as if—only then—I could tell of everything.
It was God’s doing that I sat at the table next to Emma Lunatyczka; that was a miracle, because the wedding guests came in a horde, and there were probably twenty-five tables, through all the rooms, like a white path through a labyrinth. Emma Lunatyczka was wearing an incomplete Silesian costume, and this—fuck it—killed me. In two weeks I was going to come down with whooping cough, scarlet fever, an infection of the inner ear, flu, tonsillitis, everything. In two week, unconscious, with a 104-degree temperature, I was to find myself in her bed. But now, on the spot, I came down with a bad case of incomplete Silesian costume, and later on it would be a bad case of any incomplete costume in general. Incurably
, and for the rest of my life. Emma was wearing a heavy velvet skirt with a navy blue edging at the bottom, but a blouse of quite a different sort. The incredible blouses of delicate linen, and with the open shoulders and the small mandarin collar—the young girls would be wearing them half a century later. Christ the Lord! What a combination this was! A carnival bottom and white linen top. She looked as if, not yet ready, while searching for a sash or a bonnet, she had gotten mixed up with the wedding revelers, or like a mad procession of dancers had barged into her dressing room and swept her up just as she was standing there. The young girls, who were blind to her charms, comforted her in the corners: Don’t worry, we’ll find the whole costume for you for the next wedding! For sure! Emma thanked them humbly, but her gray and sparkling eyes betrayed her—she knew that she was the queen.
I wandered around the whole house: in the first room, those who were playing on combs prepared for their performance; in the second, those who were playing on bottles; in the third, miners from an American gold mine were changing into full regalia. The hallway was high, dark, and cold, like in a knight’s castle, all the doors black and tall, behind the fifth were reserve food supplies, behind the sixth a fire burned in the stove, around which sat the four black Hanulas. I was sure that they were crying; they had cried the whole time in the church, and it looked like they would go on crying until the ends of the lives—but no way! Heated, flushed, with black scarfs already undone, though not yet removed from their heads, they were as happy as clams, as if the decision had been for them after all.
“Join us, little girl,” said the one seated farthest away.