“Something needs to be done, but what?” thinks my grandfather; he gazes at the Christmas tree leaning against the wall, and he remembers the promissory note he signed right after the holiday, and he remembers the moment of hesitation before he appended his signature. Him! Him, who never hesitated, who never had doubts — he had not only had a moment of doubt before appending his desperate signature, but furthermore he had not stopped, had not drawn any inferences from his doubts. It was nothing but the devil addling his brain; nothing but the Lord God punishing him for flinging a dish of lukewarm cabbage against the wall instead of sitting quietly and praying at Christmas Eve supper. The whole farm for a single dish of cabbage, and a cold one into the bargain? What sort of accounting is that, Lord? he had asked without conviction, and the Lord with all the conviction in the world answered nothing, and in his soul Old Kubica had accepted the divine reckoning; the dish of cold cabbage was evidently the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back of his irascibility.
He goes into the woodshed and with both hands seizes the axe that next morning he may use to kill the merchant from Ustroń. How exactly he’ll kill him he doesn’t yet know, but he knows he’ll kill him. Details have never interested him and at the present moment they interest him even less. He doesn’t think about whether he’ll use a shotgun or an axe or a hammer; he’ll use whatever is at hand, because he always uses whatever is at hand, and if there isn’t anything at hand, he’ll do it with his bare hands. What will he do with the body of the murdered merchant? How will he do it? He won’t do anything. He’ll leave the stiff where it is and go to the pub. He’ll sit at the pub like he does every morning, except on this particular day he’ll wait there till the police come for him. When they come, he’ll go with them. Old Kubica grips the axe in his hands, and at the thought that around noon tomorrow the police will take him away, he finally feels a sense of relief.
“Yes, the police,” he whispers to himself, and unaware he is paraphrasing an as yet unknown poem, adds: “the police is always some kind of solution.”
My grandfather now hacks the branches off the fir, already knowing what he’s going to do that morning. He finds a piece of glass, some sandpaper, and a small handsaw. He’s going to carve objects out of the fir wood. Above all, he’ll make at least four rogulas. The fir is beautifully branched, like a star, and the rogulas, which resemble miniature ski poles, and which Grandma Zofia will use to stir food in the blue enameled pots, will be perfect. For an hour, or perhaps two, grandfather works with pleasure; he handles the resinous wood, the smell of the fir calms his jangling nerves, and his hands are steady. He gently removes the bark from a fir branch and, at first discordantly, like an orchestra tuning up, then more and more harmoniously, like musicians playing an overture for a grand ball, he begins to sing. After two weeks of silence my grandfather begins to sing again, and now it’s as if he were adding his voice to our choir, the choir of the alcoholics.
•
In the hallways of the ward all the voices and all the melodies of the world join together, and sometimes in the plaintive polyphony I can distinctly hear the highland tune that Old Kubica sang decades ago in the snow-covered yard. The melody is the same but the words are different; he’s bent over the slippery barkless trunk of the fir tree and, inspired it would seem, sings whatever comes into his head:
You’re not here, you’re not here, you’ll always be gone.On the lake, on the lake, there swims a white swan.
Is my grandfather singing a song for the death of the merchant from Ustroń, who he is going to kill the next morning? Or for the departure of Fuchs the chestnut mare? Or for his own departure in the company of the police? Is he singing about me? Is he singing about you? You’re not here, you’re not here, you’ll always be gone. No, you’re here. I am here. I’m here because I do not choose death. Old Kubica, given a choice between the lack of a bottle at his bedside or death, would have chosen death. I choose life, and Old Kubica drinks to my health in the heavenly pub, where an angel tops up his glass. Grandfather, I say to him, drunken father of my drunken father, grandfather, I was in the same snow-covered yard; a bottle stood at my bedside, the same black perspiration poured from me, my heart quaked and my hands shook. But I choose life. At my side there is a love that is as strong as your singing; it brings me salvation. Our addiction, which killed you, drops from me as the skin of the snake drops from the snake; I am victorious, and I’m sharing my victory with you. I’m writing about you and I’m writing about myself not only to show that true alcoholic prose does not end in death; it ends in life, and who knows how life will end.
After an hour, or perhaps two, of work Old Kubica suddenly jumps up. Maybe he’s decided to do immediately what he was going to do the next day; maybe he’ll hitch the horses to the sleigh and gallop off amid billowing snows to Ustroń, the axe at his feet. But no, Old Kubica jumps up because what always happens to us is happening to him: the time comes when a person has to have a drink. And my grandfather, already possessed of the knowledge and certainty that he would soon be having a drink, and mightily relieved by this fact, throws his immense sheepskin coat round his shoulders and goes to the pub. He sits in the furthest corner and orders Baczewski, the most expensive vodka. He pays for successive bottles, but to all those who during the day, and also now after dark, want to come and sit with him, he says:
“Don’t sit with me today. Sit somewhere else.”
Today the only person who can put his glass next to Old Kubica’s glass is Dr. Swobodziczka. The doctor comes into the pub in the late evening; he’s on his way back from visiting someone whose aches he has eased (early tomorrow the pain will pass, in three days the temperature will be gone, in four days you’ll start to feel weak, in five days I’ll come again), he’s on his way back from visiting someone whose pre-mortal or perhaps life-giving sufferings he has eased. First he shakes Old Kubica’s hand without a word, then he sits down and gazes at him intently.
“You’ve lost everything,” he says, half stating, half asking.
Old Kubica says nothing.
“Property’s just something to be bought. In a year you’ll get it all back, in two years you’ll have even more.”
Old Kubica says nothing; he picks up the bottle with a smooth motion, but the doctor places his hand over his own glass.
“It occurred to me not to drink,” he says in a tone that is striving not to be apologetic.
Grandfather turns to him with great difficulty, his face altered, his features drained of expression.
“How long for?” he asks in a voice not his own. “How long for? A month? Till Easter? A year?”
“It occurred to me not to drink at all,” the doctor now says with relief; the guilty note is gone from his voice. “I woke up this morning and decided not to drink, but I didn’t have anyone to tell, because no one would believe me anyway. Since, as you know full well, Paweł, one drunkard can only be fully understood by another drunkard, I tried to tell my fellows in addiction, but they were all already drunk. So I came to the conclusion that a drunkard who’s decided to say goodbye to booze can only be understood by another drunkard who’s also decided to say goodbye to booze. Unfortunately, all day long I’ve not been able to find anyone like that in our neck of the woods. I see that I’ve come to you too late as well, Paweł.” The doctor slightly raised the hand that was covering the empty glass. “And it’s a great, great pity. I’m convinced it’s a fine idea — the only way. After that a third drunkard would be found who also wanted to say goodbye to booze, then a fourth, a fifth, a hundredth, a ten thousandth. There’d be a whole army of drunkards supporting each other in not drinking. If you’d not had a drink today, Paweł, we’d go down in history as the founders of a worldwide movement. I really feel sorry. .”