The brothers Potulnik and Master Sztwiertnia played their hearts out, time after time and with variations, langsam und trübe. The four black Hanulas suddenly began to crowd before the mirror. I again looked into all the rooms, but they were all empty. There weren’t even the miners from the American gold mine dressed up in uniforms. “Aria! Aria!” I called as if in my sleep, “Aria, where are you?” She was the first and the greatest love of my life. God sent me many fantastic women. I have been with completely dazzling women; I loved them, and they loved me, but however often I think of Aria in a gray skirt sewn from an old coat turned inside out, whenever I think of that little girl, older than me by three or maybe four years, I am always certain that she was meant for me. She would have kept watch over me, at her side I would have had a good life, we would have set up house together in an old house, eternally covered with snow. Every Sunday we would have gone to the main church service, in the evenings we would have played dominoes and drunk tea with chokeberry syrup. Sometimes, when she would have gone on some larger shopping errand to Cieszyn, and if the couple hours without her were unbearable, I would have taken a thick notebook with green covers and attempted to continue the story about chess or about my first love, which I had begun long ago. But always, before I could compose even one sentence, I would hear her opening the gate and walking across the yard, and I would leave my writing and go out to meet her and relieve her of the heaviest bag with the books, wine, and bread, and we would sit in the kitchen, and she would tell me the news. This would have been a thousand times better than the fulfillment that is granted to me now: when, after constructing the hundredth, or even the thousandth sentence, no one opens the gate, no one goes through the yard, and no one tells me the news. I have what I wanted: I can compose sentences to the bitter end.
Aria! Aria! Aria! Aria in my dreams. Emma Lunatyczka in reality. My hands passed along the icy skin, raised the nightshirt stiff from the cold; touch took me once and for all into its animal possession. Touch and betrayal. In the very middle of the darkness, I would get out of bed. Somewhere under its frame stood the chamber pot, against which I had a psychological block, unlike, incidentally, Emma, who — no matter whether conscious or unconscious, in a lunatic march or with entirely deliberate shamelessness — if she felt the need, would sit down and fire away with a sharp, and at the same time delicate, stream. I couldn’t do it. I had to pull on my shoes, put on a shirt, sweater, whatever was handy, and fight my way through the ever colder circles to the can in the courtyard. I never had yellow fever or malaria, but from those times I knew what malarial or yellow-fever shivers meant. At times the courtyard looked like a golden meadow. The curtains of the next frosts hovered above, and on the snow were impressed countless stamps of constellations. I ran over them with the lightness of a ballet dancer. The can was always the beginning of the abyss. The devil is caked with shit. Death smells of the rust that has settled on the scythe. The four black Hanulas danced until they dropped; they ought to dance to the last black thread; they ought — almost naked, emaciated, dead tired — to freeze in their dance, as soon as the first Sunday of Advent comes. But the smell of rust came earlier.
Two days before the death of old man Trzmielowski, Uncle Paweł got up, lay down, walked, flew like a madman. One impulse after another. One spasm after another. Not a moment of rest, violent and anxious sleep, his face blackened, dried froth in the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t so much that the bottle was always at hand, as that it was always in his hand. The last one, and almost empty. An absolutely full moon hangs over the courtyard and gilds the path to the can. I returned to an empty bed. Emma — whenever it took hold of her especially forcefully — would scoop up the featherbed. She would carry it before her in her errorless wanderings, and she slept on it as if on a cloud. Everything makes sense. Death would arrive any minute. Uncle Paweł would catch sight of it two days earlier. He would come to, and he would see, from the depths of the hallway, Death riding on a cloud. It keeps on riding, but instead of making the turn, it bypasses the door behind which the old man was waiting for it. It rides further. Rides further, rides straight on. It is closer and closer. It’s right around the corner. The smell of rust already fills nostrils fossilized from hooch. “Wrong address! Wrong address! Reverse! Back!” Uncle’s shout rises to the heavens, although he himself isn’t certain that he is saying any words. “Wrong address! Reverse gear! Back up! Back and to the left! Wrong address!” He shouted so loudly that the cloud that was preceding Death retreated and completely melted away. The wrestling of the delirious with the lunatic was like the wrestling of Jacob with the Angel. The brownish sweat of the alcoholic against the icy sweat of the lunatic. Real death came two days later. You couldn’t hear its footsteps, no one saw the scythe resting on the headboard. Although the mistake had been definitively explained, Uncle Paweł still didn’t really believe in miraculous survivals. All the less did he believe that there was nothing left to drink. For the time being, since there would be this and that at the wake, and they would need quite a lot of it. But no way would he wait for the wake. When would the smugglers come down the mountains? When would the little church bells of their Czech half-quart bottles ring in the backpacks? When? The old man lay belly up, the old lady was wiping his aquiline and yellow profile with pure spirits. With each wipe the old man’s profile took on aquilinity, yellowness, aquilinity, yellowness. The bottle stood on the stool, more than half was left. Snow was piling up on the roof, someone shouted in the depths of the house, Emma laughed bizarrely in the kitchen, something fluttered in the attic, something struck — like a lightning bolt, but a weak one. The old lady left the old man, who was now almost completely ready for the coffin, flew through the hallway, through the courtyard, and back again. How long was she gone? Five minutes? Not even five minutes! And there wasn’t a drop of the spirits left! The bottle was empty! It looked like the deceased had come to for a moment, looked around, found it, took a goodly chug, and fallen asleep for all time. “It was stronger than me,” old lady Mary would say later on, “it was stronger than me. For a fraction of a second, a terrible suspicion crept into my heart: he arouse from the dead, drank it off, and died for good.”
The history of the evaporation of the spirits for wiping the skin of the deceased has no explanation, nor even a continuation. The gods of understanding and elegance celebrate. They clink glasses, who cares for what. Uncle Paweł tells the story to the end of his life — about how Death got the wrong address. I look around, where is that little black whore heading! Where? Heading for me! Precisely for me! You’ve got the wrong address, you little black whore! Reverse and turn left! But she stumbles onto me like an avalanche from beyond the grave! This is the end, so I think! And so it has come now! But never, no, not ever, we will never surrender! With what is left of my strength I part the black dunes, and I look, and the beast has Emma’s head, Emma’s nightshirt, Emma’s ass, and Emma’s tits! And if it has the head, nightshirt, ass, and tits of Emma, then it is Emma. I’m alive, I haven’t died.