“Sorry for what?” asks Grandfather Kubica, still in a voice that isn’t his own. Not everything the doctor has said has gotten through to him, and what has gotten through is utterly staggering.
“Sorry for Poland,” says the doctor bitterly. “Sorry most of all for Poland. Poland could have been the first, but this way America’s going to get there before us yet again.”
“America,” grandfather repeats mechanically, and he thinks of America, from where he returned ten years ago, and he thinks of green-eyed Jennifer, the pastor’s daughter, with whom he twice went for a walk. They strolled down a path between two endless fields of corn; on the horizon was the Mississippi River, vast as an ocean. My grandfather didn’t understand what the green-eyed daughter of the pastor was saying to him, but he longed for her to confide in him about her intense emotions, to try and persuade him to stay for good, to tell him about the log cabin they would share, from the windows of which they would be able to see the great flowing Mississippi.
“I feel sorry for Poland,” repeated the doctor. “Sorry for life, sorry for us.”
“Either way, here or there, in Poland or in America, either way we’re going to die,” says my grandfather, and he sees the doctor’s hand not only capitulate and cease guarding the empty glass, but even, in an eloquent gesture, push it toward the almost full bottle of Baczewski.
And grandfather fills the doctor’s glass, and both of them drink, and both of them say:
“Good health, good health!”
The scale tips again, this time not in the direction of evil spirits: this time the scale tips in the direction of hell. The last glassful fills the measure and exceeds the measure. Old Kubica feels the vodka bursting his skull open.
“America, America,” he sputters; flecks of foam appear in the corners of his mouth. Yet he stands up with unexpected ease and walks toward the exit with an even tread. He forgets his sheepskin coat, which is draped over a chair like a shepherd’s hut that has been demolished by a gale. My grandfather walks through the snow towards home in his black vest and his white shirt with the upright collar. The frost fills the measure and the frost exceeds the measure, and Old Kubica starts to shout, he starts to howl; terrible, terrible is his howling, he howls the way I howled when the mafiosi appeared in my apartment along with the dark-complexioned poetess Alberta Lulaj.
•
When was this? It was never. Literature doesn’t exist, because that past does not exist and those stories do not exist. There’s only the present — a late evening in January 1932 or 1933. My grandfather reels and howls like an animal being killed. They hear his howling from a long way off. They run down the hallway and across the unlit yard, place the ladder against the trapdoor to the loft, and agilely climb up, one after another, like a well-drilled fire brigade. When Old Kubica lurches into the yard, not even their breathing can be heard; he himself falls silent and starts to come to his senses. He’s standing in the same place he stood in the morning; he’s standing in the same place, even though it’s impossible to stand in the same place twice. Old Kubica must be reading what I’m writing, because he says, as if he were repeating after me:
“It’s impossible to rub your face in the same snow twice. It’s impossible, but maybe, goddammit, it is possible!”
He stands in the same place, and sets off down the same swept path toward the woodshed, and with the same movement he takes hold of the ax. The wooden door of the stable opens and closes, and now there is a terrifying silence. A minute, two, three, five minutes of terrifying silence and then, maybe close by or maybe far away, there comes a single dull thud, perhaps a horse’s hoof striking the ground, perhaps a pine tree splitting open on the distant slope of Ochodzita Mountain. More silence, several more seconds of silence, then immediately there comes a diabolic percussion and the stable door opens, a drum-roll sounds, someone tries to play an out-of-tune violin, someone hammers iron on iron, there is mad laughter and howling, and a cry from my grandfather, Old Kubica. He’s standing in the door of the stable; his white shirt and black vest are covered in blood. In one hand he grasps a torch; the other, raised to his shoulder, is holding up the severed head of Fuchs the chestnut mare. And he sets off walking; his pace quickens, he’s walking ever faster, he runs, he stumbles as he is running, and traces of blood and fire mark his faltering steps. Then all that can be seen is the flickering light of the torch climbing ever higher up the steep hillside. The wood must be burned, and the snow must be burned, and the world must be burned. And a moment later a fire, a great fire is upon the snow-covered mountains, it’s as if a single drop of blood has fallen from an angel’s wing. You’re not here, you’re not here, you’ll always be gone. On the lake, on the lake, there swims a white swan.
Chapter 23. Intense Emotions by the Utrata River
SHIVERS ZIGZAG THROUGH our bodies. We’re sitting on a stone bench by the Utrata River. I say: The Mill on the Utrata; you say: The Mill on the Lutynia. The pair of us are lifted straight from a pastoral eclogue. It’s muggy; every hour there are violent downpours. We stand up and enter ever deeper into the dark woods. You visit on Sundays. Around eleven I wait by the hospital gates; you step out of the local train and run down the platform. (She’s here.) A sandy path between the dormitories of the insane leads down to the Utrata. I place thick layers of the week’s Gazeta Wyborczas on the bench; we have our whole life before us, a whole seven hours, and a whole life can’t be spent on bare stone.
The last addiction from my previous sojourn on this earth is that I buy Gazeta Wyborcza every day, at the kiosk outside the ward, and read it, or rather leaf through it impatiently. What’s going on in the outside world? Nothing is going on. People are dying.
The dead are strolling through the untended gardens. Their tongue is inhuman and their movements too; only their white-and-blue hospital pajamas give them a semblance of personhood. We walk along the fence; from the other side one of the dead approaches, jerkily proffers his hand through the iron railings, and exclaims in English:
“How do you do?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I respond automatically.
His face suddenly lights up; the cadaverous expression of a man who has died from excessive pain gives way to the animated, intelligent physiognomy of an emeritus professor of physics or genetics.
“Tell me, please,” says the resurrected one in a clear and bright voice, “What’s been happening in Poland? What’s been happening in the world? What’s the latest news?”
“Nothing in particular,” I reply, embarrassed, as is natural in my position. “I don’t know much, just what’s in the papers.” I show him my pile of Gazeta Wyborczas. “What’s the latest news? I’ve no idea what you’re interested in. . France won the European Championship, a big passenger plane crashed, Wałęsa doesn’t stand a chance in the elections. .”