On Sunday, around eleven in the morning, I stand by the hospital gates. Rolled up safe in the voluminous pockets of my expensive track suit is another chapter; I’m sort of able to write here, and sort of not.
“How does your writing about drinking affect your drinking,” Kasia the she-therapist asked during one of my first sessions.
“It doesn’t affect it at all, because when I drink I don’t write, and when I write I don’t drink. They’re two separate things.”
“No, they’re not two separate things. Don’t pretend you don’t understand the question.”
“I understand the question and I’m answering it. The author isn’t the narrator and the narrator isn’t the author. They teach you this at the highest levels of initiation into the study of literature, and they’re right. If I construct a character, even if the character is based on me, even if he drinks like me, and even if his name is Jerzy, the character still isn’t me, for goodness sake!”
“I disagree. The narrator is always you; he arises from your thoughts and comes into being in your mind.”
I wanted to say that not everything that comes into being in my mind is associated with me; I wanted to quote once again (I must have quoted it a thousand times) the line from Kafka: “I have nothing in common with myself.” I wanted quite simply to fend off the prohibition on personal creativity that was forming in the head of that charming she-therapist in glasses; but I decided not to. As everyone knows, prohibitions breed resistance, and resistance can often be highly creative.
“Apparently you’re writing a book about drinking while you’re here,” said Kasia, unnecessarily delaying her arrival at the inevitable conclusion.
“For some time now I’ve been writing about love.”
“In any case, don’t write about drinking for the moment. Leave that for later. Because you know, Jerzy, later you won’t feel like writing about it. Later, who knows, you may not feel like writing at all. I mean, in life you can’t just be a writer; you also have to be a friend, acquaintance, worker, father, lover, vacationer, goodness knows what else.”
“Goodness knows,” I said and fell silent again, and remained silent, because what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to answer like a true graphomaniac that if I won’t feel like writing, I won’t feel like living? So I was silent for a good while; eventually, though, I forced myself to break the silence and say:
“When I write I don’t drink, and if I wrote every day, then every day I wouldn’t drink. That’s all it’s about, that’s the purpose of this therapy; as the Sugar King would say, you can’t argue with that.”
“Listen, Jerzy, you belong to the category of difficult patients. Difficult patients are patients who possess exceptional ability in some domain, and when they find themselves in here, not only are they incapable of relinquishing their ability, they actually make use of it to defend their alcoholism. I once had an alco who was a lawyer in civilian life, and in defense of his alcoholism he presented such well-constructed, convincing, beautiful arguments that he almost convinced me. I wept in admiration at the case he made, and it was extremely hard for me to repeat to myself over and again that this person met all the conditions to the letter, that I shouldn’t be misled by his protestations of innocence, because he was displaying as plain as day the six core symptoms of alcoholism. Another alco who passed through here a few years ago, in civilian life a urologist, instead of concentrating on treating himself for his alcoholism and leaving it at that, busied himself with the other alcos and treated them for urological problems, or at the very least offered urological advice.”
I was sorely tempted to say in a superior tone of voice, with scant regard for the truth, that urological advice was not the same thing as literature, but I restrained myself. It wasn’t right, either for respectable polemical purposes, or in defense of one’s métier, or even in self-defense, to speak an untruth: urological advice was capable of being great literature.
Besides, in one sense Kasia was right: I no longer wanted to be only a writer, now I wanted to be only with you. But since no one, neither Kasia, nor the therapist Moses alias I Alcohol, nor Dr. Granada, nor the Lord God himself has forced me to choose between you and literature, I’m still writing, though now I do it discreetly. If on the other hand the Lord God had spoken to me through the mouth of Kasia the she-therapist and He had been the one forcing me to choose between alcoholism and literature, between treating alcoholism or writing a book, I would have curled up in humility, but I would have said: “Lord, you’ve chosen too frail a messenger, too frail a messenger to convince such a hardened toper as myself.”
Kasia the she-therapist looked at me searchingly, but I withstood her gaze. As the time passed she relaxed visibly, while I relaxed invisibly (though the reverse ought to have been the case). I raised my head and she lowered her head and said in an extremely quieted voice:
“In any case, neither I nor anyone else is going to check your manuscripts.”
About that I had no worries. When the posse of she-therapists conducted a spot check of some alco’s bedside table it was exclusively in search of spirit in a toothpaste tube, Żołądkowa Gorzka in a shampoo bottle, valium hidden in a shoe. Anti-alcoholism books and brochures, questionnaires, written assignments, confessions and emotional journals flew through the air; the alcoholics’ tattered notebooks, which contained not a single drop of alcohol, were of no interest to anyone. But of course the very fact that anyone at all should presume to speak of checking or not checking my papers aroused my utmost disgust, and I decided to pursue my writing with discretion.
Then, when in the course of a group session on the topic “How I have explained and justified my drinking,” when in the course of this session one of the she-therapists (never mind her name) snatched my notebook from me and started peering at what I had written, I decided — just in case — to go completely underground. I intensified my time-consuming discretion to the point where it took on a conspiratorial quality.
I get up at four in the morning. Mist is rising from the gardens of the insane; I slip surreptitiously into the quiet room and surreptitiously begin to write. On Sunday, the completed manuscript under my arm, I wait by the hospital gates. Around eleven o’clock you run down the platform; we walk along our path and sit on the stone bench by the Utrata River. In the late afternoon you smuggle my latest chapter safely past the guards minding the gates. You get into a local WKD train and ride to Centralny Station; there you transfer to an InterCity express, there you are safe already. (Years ago, or maybe only a few months ago, I almost sensed it: you were two hundred miles from here.) Now it’s evening; darkness enfolds the alco wing. I sit on my bed in the five-person room and read your letters. You sit in your compartment, and were it not for the fact that you’re very close, I would say sentimentally: you’re further and further away. But no: she’s there. She’s sitting by the window, watching the distant flat plain passing by; on her lap (her green summer slacks are almost completely dry now) she smoothes out the poor-quality squared notepaper and reads with ease the shaky handwriting: “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. .”
Chapter 24. Simon’s Undescribed Escape
NIGHT HAS FALLEN over the alco ward. The routed army lies side by side, the hallway lit by a single bulb; they are sleeping. (One of them, however, is not sleeping; he sees freedom beyond the mist.) Simon Pure Goodness wakes from a shallow, vigilant doze, gets up, takes a canvas bag from under his bed and soundlessly, so as not to rouse his sleeping roommate, starts to pack. Simon Pure Goodness does not like his sleeping roommate. He struggles with this feeling, constantly repeating “love thine enemy” to himself, constantly reminding himself of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous; but hostility is in his heart. His sleeping roommate snores, and Simon cannot sleep at nights. Simon’s sleeping roommate borrowed ten zloties from him, and Simon knows he will never see the money again, though now especially, when he has decided to escape, every penny would be worth its weight in gold. Simon’s sleeping roommate uses Simon’s cigarette lighter and pen without asking, and Simon lacks the inner strength to bring this up with him. The other man, however, has no qualms about reminding Simon to close his cabinet and to sweep the room properly when it’s his turn. At such moments Simon not only has hostility in his heart, he becomes the very embodiment of hostility.