“Excuse me, it’s coming up for six, but is that six in the morning or six in the evening?”
“Six noon,” replied the other man, and it’s for the beauty of that reply I tell the story, not for the time mix-up, which is obvious from the beginning.
In any case, the room was dark and it was probably evening after all. Alberta stood up, turned on the desk lamp, and came back to me.
“I don’t think that’s particularly hard to understand either.” At this point I had no idea what Alberta was saying, I had completely forgotten what we’d been speaking about a moment before. In the light of the lamp her yellow dress and her arms seemed to have taken on a moonlit glow.
“I don’t think that’s particularly hard to understand either,” she repeated, as if knowing that I needed a repetition. “Those people, your dire comrades in arms, shouldn’t talk about getting out, they shouldn’t look forward so desperately to getting out. They should sit there or lie there patiently and stay put till they’re cured.”
“Ala,” I replied, the way Dr. Granada would have said it, “Ala, you have the mind of a child. It’s true they shouldn’t be talking about getting out, because they shouldn’t ever get out. I don’t mean the alco ward should be some kind of life sentence, though it’s also true that life in general is a life sentence. I simply mean that for alcos the alco ward is the right place. Let me tell you in confidence, Ala: I’ve often felt I could live there forever. My comrades in arms are constantly telling war stories, there’s always talk of greater or lesser but always interesting adventures, the meals are regular and reasonably nutritious, the lack of radio, television, and games encourages juvenile but inspirational stratagems, the dominant mood there is a stifling melancholy, reflection decidedly prevails over any kind of activity — in a word, it’s an ideal atmosphere for an intellectual. .”
“Dear, dear Lord, how awfully ill you are. You’re saying unbelievable things. Are you in some kind of permanent delirium or something? Did you really — when you saw me that time at the ATM, if you actually saw me there, and if it really was me — did you actually run after me, or did you just think you did?”
“What about now,” I asked; my voice was once again quavering and unsure, as if the fortifying Becherovka was not yet running through my veins—“are you here now? Are you sitting next to me?”
“Yes, now I’m here, I’m sitting here and talking to you.”
“I love you, Ala,” I said, “I love you like I’ve never loved anyone else before.”
“You know what, sweetheart?” Ala chucked me under the chin and may even have stroked my cheek under its covering of drunken stubble. “You know what, my sweetest one, I know you’re deliriously drunk, I know you’re seeing things, I know that your head is all messed up, but setting all that aside, out of pure curiosity let me ask: how many women have you already said that to? How many times, you bastard, have you repeated your famous: ‘I love you more than life itself’?”
“I’ve only ever said it to you, that is, I’ve only said it to you in such a true and such an intense way. I may happen to have uttered similar or even identical phrases before, but that was just cynical rhetoric. I feigned love, like any male who’s hungry for copulation.”
“And they believed you? Did any one of them actually believe you? Who were these women? What kind of gullible idiots were they? Was every girl you met a pervert turned on by the smell of badly digested Żołądkowa Gorzka, or what?”
“Do you want to know the truth?”
“Yes, I do.”
“All right, but you should be aware that if I tell you the truth you may be put off me. . You may even be physically repulsed by me,” I added playfully.
“I have the feeling that so far I’m not especially enthralled by your quaking person. Of course, I liked the fact that you seemed enchanted by my poems, but even that may just have been drunken euphoria.”
“Let me ask you again: do you want to know the truth?”
“Yes, I do.”
“The truth?”
“Not only have I never met such an inveterate drunkard as you, I’ve also never met such a tiresome one.”
“Then listen, Ala-Alberta, to my shamefully true confession: my women ran individual drying-out facilities just for me. I treated my women like the managers of my own personal detox units. As a drunkard, I had a private network of drying-out facilities that were run by my successive or concurrent girlfriends. Whenever I needed to I’d call up and go there, and if I was in no state to do so alone, they’d come for me and take my corpse back to their place, and minister to it solicitously.
“The Seductive Movie Star ran a private drying-out facility for me, the Uruguayan Center Forward always had a fancy convalescent home for my exclusive use, and Joanna Scourge of the Asylum kept a similar institution for me, and Barb the Broker waited for me with a permanently available bed, and vitamins, and juice, and even an IV drip, and the Utterly Irresponsible Minx was also the director of my personal, extremely respectable detoxification center; I list only the most important names, for there was also a considerable number of short-lived temporary helpers.
“I also had she-angels who would fly down to me, or rather to my by now absolutely immovable cadaver, and would transform the room in which we presently find ourselves into an intensive care unit. It goes without saying that these unfortunate women possessed differing kinds of resources, from the sophisticated equipment, up-to-date medications, and practically unlimited financial reserves available to Barb the Broker, to the complete disorganization and lack of qualifications that marked Joanna Catastrophe, whom I have not yet mentioned in this regard.”
“You know what,” said Alberta, interrupting me just in time, “I’m wondering what is more terrible: the fact that you’re incapable of living normally, or the fact that you’re incapable of talking normally. I mean, your tongue is swollen from the booze and your throat is sore. You’re talking in this stilted way. Where did all those names come from? Talk normally, start to live normally why don’t you.”
“Where and when and by whom was it said”—a venomous note appeared in my voice and intensified—“where and when and by whom was it said, where and when and by whom was it written that I’m supposed to lead a normal life?”
“What sort of life are you supposed to lead? An abnormal one? An exceptional one? A brilliant one? A sick one?”
“Ala, I’m supposed to lead an exceptionally unhappy life.”
“Get a grip on yourself and start to live in moderation but happily.”
“In moderation but happily? That in itself is a contradiction in terms.”
“It’s not a contradiction in terms. When you understand that you’ll stop drinking.”
“Alberta-Ala, Alberta Lulaj, author of captivating poems, at first I thought you were the greatest love of my life, all the greater and more tragic because you disappeared for good round the corner of Jana Pawła and Pańska; then I thought you were a member of a band of mysterious gangsters, then, that you were an unworldly apparition; then during our conversation I thought you were the person closest to me in the whole world; but now I see you’re just the most ordinary inquisitive she-therapist, yes, you’re a she-wolf therapist, a chick therapist. .”