“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know, or rather, I know a thousand answers. None of them is entirely true and each of them contains a grain of truth. But nor can it be said that together they comprise some single whole great truth. I drink because I drink. I drink because I like to. I drink because I’m afraid. I drink because I’m genetically predisposed to. All my progenitors drank. My great-grandparents and grandparents drank, my father drank and my mother drank. I have no sisters or brothers, but I’m certain that if I did, all my sisters would drink and all my brothers would drink too. I drink because I have a weak character. I drink because there’s something wrong with my head. I drink because I’m too quiet and I’m trying to be more lively. I drink because I’m the nervous type and I’m trying to calm my nerves. I drink because I’m sad and I’m trying to raise my spirits. I drink when I’m happily in love. I drink because I’m searching for love in vain. I drink because I’m too normal and I need a little craziness. I drink when I’m in pain and I need to ease the pain. I drink out of longing for someone. I drink from an excess of fulfillment when I’m with someone. I drink when I listen to Mozart and when I read Leibnitz. I drink out of sensual pleasure and I drink out of sexual hunger. I drink when I finish my first glass and I drink when I finish my last glass; at such times I drink all the more, because I’ve never yet drunk my last glass.”
“Listen,” said Ala-Alberta with visible impatience, “are there any moments at all when you don’t drink?”
“I guess I don’t drink when I’m so terribly drunk that I don’t have the strength to drink, though truth be told, I always find the strength to continue drinking; or I don’t drink when I’m having a terrible drunken dream, though who knows, maybe at those times I drink too. I guess I drink both asleep and awake.”
“Maybe you should just get treatment. I mean, the doctors could help you, they’d help you to find the answer. Maybe you should go see someone who knows more about these things.”
“I do see doctors. Dr. Granada is like a father to me. Eighteen times I’ve been on the alco ward and listened to the reasons why my brothers in addiction drank. They all drank for the same reasons, though sometimes for different ones too. They drank because their father was too hard on them, and they drank because their mother was too soft on them. They drank because everyone around them was drinking. They drank because they came from families of drunkards, and they drank because they came from families whose lips had not touched a drop in generations. They drank because Poland was under the Muscovite yoke, and they drank out of euphoria when it was liberated. They drank because a Polish man became Pope, and they drank because a Polish man won the Nobel Prize, and they drank because a Polish woman won the Nobel Prize. They drank the health of the interned, and with their drinking they honored the memory of the murdered. They drank when they were alone and they drank whenever anyone appeared next to them. They drank when the Polish team won, and they drank when the Polish team lost. And Dr. Granada would listen to all these answers with superhuman patience, shake his head, and say what I said at the beginning: ‘You drink because you drink.’”
“Snap out of it, wake up.” Maybe Alberta was speaking in a general sense, or maybe in a specific sense, or maybe, in the course of the long sleep I had been immersed in for years, I had additionally dozed off. Alberta was shaking my arm gently: “Wake up.”
“Why should I wake up when in the waking world things are even worse? The waking world is one immense reason to drink.”
“If you drink when you’re asleep and also when you’re awake, then actually you’ve no idea what the waking world is like.”
“Look, if I’d been sober back on that July afternoon I never would have spotted you by the ATM, I never would have thought that you are wise and beautiful, it never would have occurred to me that you’re the greatest love of my life, I never would have run after you, I never would have experienced such ecstasy. .”
I was unable to go on, because I was filled with emotion. Seeing that my eyes were glazing over and I was about to break down in tears, Alberta poured a dose that in her view was the right amount, and in mine was insufficient. But I didn’t insist on being topped up, the missing amount being in any case minimal, because I could see she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart, and out of obedience to the gangsters who had brought her here, but also because she wanted to keep on talking with me.
“Fine,” she said, “you experienced a fiery ecstasy, in connection with me furthermore, which is always agreeable for a woman. But tell me, how did it end? Tell me, if you remember that is.”
“It ended on the alco ward,” I said after a moment of inevitable silence.
“Exactly. In my view fiery ecstasies that end on the alco ward aren’t worth very much. Truth be told, they’re not worth shit. You have to get out of it.”
“The thing is, Ala, do you know what the alcos talk about the whole time on the alco ward? Do you know the principal subject of their most serious conversations?”
“You said yourself a moment ago that they’re constantly talking about drinking and their reasons for drinking.”
“That too, of course, they speak constantly about how they drank and why they drank; but their first topic of conversation is getting out. They deliver lengthy treatises on the art of getting out. They’re constantly going on about getting out. They’re constantly asking: When will we get out of here? I wonder when they’ll let us out? I wonder when a person will get out? In a month, or maybe two? Maybe tomorrow? Tomorrow no, because tomorrow is Sunday, and on Sunday there are no discharges. But Monday for sure. On Monday for sure we’ll get out.”
Alberta looked at me with the kind of tenderness with which a woman looks at a man who is by nature more foolish than she is.
“I’m not talking about getting out of the hospital, I’m talking about getting out of the addiction.”
“Let me tell you, Ala: only the naïve think that there are different kinds of getting out. The wise and the experienced know: every kind of getting out is the same.”
“Wise and experienced drunkards, maybe.”
“I’m tempted to reply that there are no wiser or more experienced people than wise and experienced drunkards, but that would be a typical drunken aphorism, and of late I’ve been avoiding drunken aphorisms. You get out of the hospital, in other words you get out of your illness, and re-enter the world, which itself is one big illness. Do you see?”
The room was slowly growing darker; evening was evidently coming, though it may equally have been morning that was slowly coming, it may have been entirely dark for a long time, and it may just have seemed to me that it was only now getting darker. I had no idea what time of day it was, and I was embarrassed to ask. I remembered a story the Hero of Socialist Labor told about losing track of time, one of a hundred thousand drunken parables about losing track of time.
The Hero of Socialist Labor started work at the Sendzimir (formerly Lenin) Steel Mill at six in the morning. The incident he was recounting, that is to say, his great drinking bout, took place in the winter, when, as is common knowledge, at six in the morning and six in the evening it is equally dark. The Hero of Socialist Labor woke up in the dark; it was half past five. With all the usual drunken melodrama he realized he would barely make it to work. Fortunately he still had something left in the bottle; he knocked back a restorative hair of the dog, and on the way to the bus stop he went in to the store and drank a beer as well. He was a little surprised at the store being open at such an early hour, since it usually opened at seven, but there it was, open before six. . Then at the bus stop something was wrong too, the people waiting were not the usual ones, and on top of that they were too numerous and animated for an early winter’s morning. . A terrible suspicion finally formed in the Hero of Socialist Labor’s heart, but he was embarrassed to ask anyone; he began to search the crowd for a fellow tribesperson, which, incidentally, did not take long. In the appropriate place, right on the curb, there was a person swaying on his feet in the appropriate manner. His swaying was extremely appropriate, it was in fact slight and barely perceptible; this person, though he was swaying on his feet, was also sure to know what time of day it was. The Hero of Socialist Labor went up to him and asked: