A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Chapter III

“Why are you so troubled, Mrs. Chief? The Lord promised that He wouldn’t send a flood upon the earth again.”

Mother didn’t pay any attention to Mr. Trąba’s unremitting arguments. She threw an oilcloth cape over her shoulders and ran out to the bridge, under which brown waters were gathering. I held her by the hand; the massive planks and stone spans shook beneath our feet. St. John’s rains had come crashing down a few days earlier. We glanced up, in the direction of the first bridge by the cemetery, and down, in the direction of the third bridge by the swimming pool. The world was the same in all directions. The swimming pool was missing, as was the cemetery. The waters had no top and no bottom. The waters were everywhere. The house a few hundred meters away rested in the depths, at the bottom of a grey ocean. We returned, conquering the elements. We removed our thoroughly wet cloaks in the entryway. Streams of water flowed from Mother’s cape. Mr. Trąba’s voice came from behind the door; he was finishing who knows how long a citation: “. . neither shall all flesh, Chief, be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. .”

•

Mr. Trąba was almost always sitting at our huge kitchen table, but when the heavy rains, snow storms, and floods came, his presence became truly permanent.

“The time of natural disasters is your time, Mr. Trąba,” Father would say. And indeed, our eternal guest did seem to bestow a peculiar honor upon the elements that locked him beneath our roof and chained him to our table. From morning to evening he would sit on the wide wooden bench. When it came time to sleep, he made himself a pallet there, and, covered with blankets or sheepskins, he lay down to sleep, or rather he slipped away into semi-consciousness and listened to the undying gales with an enigmatic smile.

Mother mechanically combed her wet hair with her fingers, approached the window, and stared at Buffalo Mountain, which was barely visible beyond the wall of rain.

“It’s quite another matter, however, that the Lord’s promise applies to the entire globe. The Lord God promised our first father that He would never again take the globe, overflowing with iniquity, into His Fatherly hand and submerge it in the abyss, that He wouldn’t submerge it even for a day, to say nothing of forty days. Nonetheless, there have been lesser deluges, I have to admit, and there still are. And — however objectively we look at the matter — we do live in a valley.”

“Of course, of course,” said Mother, glancing irritably at Father, “we are at the bottom, at the very bottom.”

“What are you talking about, Ewa?” responded Father. “My ancestors didn’t build this house, yours did.”

“That was all that was missing,” Mother unexpectedly erupted in elemental despair, “that was all that was missing — for me to have moved in with my parents-in-law, may the earth rest lightly upon them.”

“It was what it was.” I heard a sinister note in Father’s voice; this was rare for him. “It was what it was, but it was high up.”

“High, but at the same time low,” Mother hissed.

“That’s just it, my dears,” Mr. Trąba sought to mollify them. “High, but at the same time low. That’s just it. Let’s not forget about the relativistic character of reality. After all, in our lowland country we are relatively high up, but at the same time, in relation to the same local altitudes, we are low, which still gives us a chance of salvation. .”

“What chance of salvation? What are you talking about?” Father asked in an unbearably official tone.

“Oh, the chance of salvation, Chief, that when the bell tolls, and the waters rise, we will gather the most necessary things, and we will clamber up Mare Mountain, or Goat Mountain, to say nothing of Buffalo Mountain.”

“You, Mr. Trąba,” Mother exploded, “you, Mr. Trąba, certainly will not make the ascent. Instead, you will float to Mare Mountain or Goat Mountain. Yes, you will float. In the best case scenario, straddling that unsinkable bench of yours, first you will rise lightly with the level of the water, and then you will reach your goal, rowing with your vodka bottle.”

For a moment, all you could hear was the roar of the rain and the din of the river overflowing its bounds.

“I’ve lost track of time,” said Mr. Trąba, looking at his watch nonchalantly. “Time for me to go,” he said, and he lifted himself from his spot for the first time in time immemorial.

Mother’s face suddenly brightened with a radiance that was full of compassionate pity. She shook her head, not exactly with acceptance, nor with rebuke. And with the tone of the loved-one amusing herself with a wooer who is suffering agonies, fully conscious of her allure, she said:

“You know, Józef, that if you leave now, I will never speak to you again?” And she repeated it, pausing distinctly between every word: “If — you — leave — now — I–will — never — speak — to — you — again.”

Beyond the windows a stocky figure, protecting himself with a colorful ladies’ umbrella, flitted by. Knocks resounded at the door, and in the doorway stood Commandant Jeremiah, changed beyond recognition — his uniform had been altered by the rain storm into the uniform of some unknown unit. I hoped that his monstrous Bernardine, Bryś the Man-Eater, would slip into the kitchen with him. I hoped just for the sweetness of my own fear, but the Commandant was alone.

“By a billion barrels of beer!” Mr. Trąba roared as if with amicable triumph, but in the final analysis it was ecstatic triumph in his voice. “By a billion barrels of beer! An officer, on duty, with a ladies’ umbrella in his hand!”

“It’s raining, Comrade Trąba,” said Commandant Jeremiah with stoic calm. He took off his cap and placed his umbrella in the corner. It looked peculiar indeed in his hands — they were as big as loaves of bread.

“Atmospheric disturbances are no reason for an on-duty officer to outfit himself with such homo accessories!” said Mr. Trąba, continuing to play the strict commander rebuking the insubordination of an inferior. Moreover, Mother’s recent tenderness had truly inspired his performance. Unfortunately, and as usual, he played his role alone.

It was obvious that Commandant Jeremiah had no desire to enter into a discussion of the regulatory appropriateness of a ladies’ umbrella. He brought up a stool, sat down on it heavily, and, after a good moment, he said:

“I greet you, madame comrade and comrades.”

“Cheerio, cheerio,” replied Father and Mr. Trąba, one after the other, while Mother, in a carefully studied gesture, raised her head and eyes, turned away from the window, and glanced at the green-tiled kitchen stove.

“You are most welcome, Commandant.” (I had only recently realized that Mother, in her ascetic role, was a much greater artist than Mr. Trąba, who didn’t shy away from the occasional buffoonery.) “You are most welcome, Commandant. Will you stay for dinner? Of course you’ll stay, won’t you? I was just about to fry some potato pancakes.”

Only my masterfully penetrative and unprejudiced gaze noticed that Mother was not a woman who was concerned exclusively with cooking; rather, she was a captive who, in order to survive, pretended to be a woman who was concerned exclusively with cooking.

“Comrades,” said Commandant Jeremiah, without a hint of emotion in his voice, “comrades, allow me to get right down to business. I have heard, comrades, that you are preparing to direct a pronouncement against the First Secretary of the Central Committee.”

The Commandant stopped for a moment and gestured like a stump orator — indicating his essential approval, although with certain doubts and reservations.

“Very good, comrades, very good. Criticism is always necessary to our Party. Criticism strengthens the power of our Party, cleanses its ranks. But you must—we must — remember, comrades, that it must be constructive criticism, that is to say, criticism that is, of course, criticizing, but, generally, approving. .”

The Commandant began to get tangled up. You could see with the naked eye that he wasn’t an expert in dialectical argument, nor did he possess sufficient agitational fervor.

I was curious what polemical phrase Mr. Trąba would employ and how it would be constructed. “Complete approval,” I recorded in a flash in my notebook, for, according to my predictions, Mr. Trąba’s argument should conclude with precisely this phrase. But Mr. Trąba didn’t conclude his oration with the expression “complete approval,” nor with any other expression. He didn’t conclude his oration because he didn’t even begin it. He remained melancholy and silent the entire time.

“I understand, Commandant,” Father spoke up unexpectedly, “I understand, Commandant, that news spreads like wild fire, but, as you know, speed is not always accompanied by precision. You see, I’m not certain whether our intentions were properly understood.”

“Precisely,” said the Commandant, “precisely. Let me explain.”

He extracted a small Orbis Travel Agency datebook from the side pocket of his uniform, and he began phlegmatically turning the empty pages, which contained only printed dates, saints’ names, and names of the days of the week. He finally reached a place where there were some illegible hieroglyphs and secret ciphers, which only functionaries of the secret services could decode — although I was looking over his shoulder, I couldn’t make out a thing. Jeremiah meditated for some time over the secret code, but then he began to mutter, as if to himself, and, slowly measuring out his words, he said:

“Yes sir, this is all correct; a pronouncement directed against Comrade First Secretary, yes sir.”

He energetically closed the datebook and covered it with his large hand, as if he wished to smother the fuses that were smoldering there, as if he wished to extinguish the gathering rebellion before it could flare up.

“Comrades,” he said distinctly, “I have received a report that you comrades are planning an attempt on the life of Comrade First Secretary Władysław Gomułka.”

I no longer remember whether Mother froze in the process of scouring the stovetop, or grating potatoes, or perhaps with a match in her hand over the hearth. Today I see her frozen in a succession of these poses. Father and Mr. Trąba exchanged the all-betraying glance of inept conspirators. In the meantime, I thought it might be worth my while to check out the room in the attic again; the morphinistes had abandoned it, and I wanted to see whether they had by any chance left anything else there, besides a ribbon, a mirror, and a nail file.

“The comrades will excuse me, but since the report seemed to me — how should I put it? — only moderately plausible, I set to work in a roundabout manner. If the comrades do indeed harbor treacherous designs upon the head of state, then please, how to put it, forgive me that I subjected to doubt their, your, so to say, qualifications in this matter, but. .”

“Gomułka isn’t head of state,” Mr. Trąba, sounding bored, interrupted Jeremiah.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, Gomułka isn’t head of state. Gomułka is only the chief of the Party. The head of state is Zawadzki.”

“So is it true after all?” he said almost triumphantly. “So is it true after all? No, no, no,” he reigned himself in. “Comrades, we have known each other for a long time. We have drunk an ocean of alcohol together. We have pronounced more than one risky opinion together. I can safely — both doing myself the honor, and telling the truth — I can safely call you comrades my tried-and-true friends, and meanwhile what do I hear? Meanwhile I discover that my tried-and-true friends are making an attempt, are ready to make an attempt, at a crime against majesty. .

“Please tell me,” the Commandant’s voice became slightly, though noticeably, more concentrated and icy, “please tell me what, in the name of God the Father, am I supposed to do with this sort of information? Please,” the Commandant suddenly pleaded, “please tell me what I am supposed to do? I’ve come here to see — to see to what extent this matter belongs to the realm of fiction, and to what extent to the realm of reality.”

“I wish, I wish very much that my death might belong to the realm of fiction,” Mr. Trąba spoke up, “but those, I fear, are highly pious wishes.”

“But after all, isn’t it finally a question not of your death, but of fatal harm to Comrade Gomułka?”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Commandant,” replied Mr. Trąba, “setting all my vanity aside, I must put my own person in the foreground and assure you that, above all, it is a question of me.” And Mr. Trąba expounded upon his deathbed ambitions in a few sentences, hiding nothing.

Commandant Jeremiah listened carefully to Mr. Trąba’s implacably logical arguments.

“If I understood you correctly, comrade, you expect a quick departure from this world, but in fact, what reason do you have to expect this departure?”

“One general and seven particular reasons,” retorted Mr. Trąba, and he began to count on his fingers. “First, cirrhosis of the liver; second, a bursting pancreas; third, severe inefficiency of the kidneys; fourth, a weakening heart; fifth, stomach ulcers; sixth, delirium tremens; seventh, and the simplest, choking on my own vomit. These are seven good reasons, not subject to falsification, each of which individually, and all of them together, are identically effective, and all of them,” Mr. Trąba raised his index finger decisively in the air, “are already prepared. The seven beasts are already in readiness, seven chimeras already lie waiting to jump. Yes,” he bellowed suddenly, “the seven pillars of my death have already been erected!”

“St. John of Damascus divides anger into gall, mania, and fury, and you, Comrade Trąba, you are most clearly in the phase of fury,” said Commandant Jeremiah, leaning backwards as if to avoid immediate danger.

“I didn’t know they covered St. John of Damascus’s typology of anger in Marxism night-school. I approve. I approve, and I congratulate you. I, however — and now I will allow myself a polemical interpolation ad vocem—I am not in the phase of fury according to St. John of Damascus; rather, I am in the phase of anger with voice, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory of Nyssa, as you know perfectly well, divides anger into anger without voice, anger with voice, and anger expressed in voice. One way or another I am — I often find myself — in the pre-delirious phase. Vodka-induced psychosis is already knocking with a finger that’s as transparent as a vodka glass; it’s already knocking on the brittle walls of my brain.”

Mother placed the first portions of potato dough on the stove top. The fire roaring below and the streams of darkness beyond the window transported us beyond climates and beyond seasons. We sat in the circle of light, separated from what was further on, and further on were ice and darkness. The Commandant’s uniform steamed slowly. Jeremiah dried and glimmered, like a prodigal deserter returning to the ranks of his home unit.

“And what would you think,” he said slowly, “what would you think about stopping and giving it up?. . About reducing the volumetric reckoning a little. You’ve already drunk your life’s quota.”

“Stop drinking?” Mr. Trąba neither quite asked, nor quite asserted, his voice colorless as water. “Stop drinking? Out of the question. Already in ’45 I said to myself: ‘Perhaps you will die of vodka, Józef Trąba, but if you don’t have a drink from time to time, you will certainly die.’ But now, after not quite twenty years, that paradoxical supposition has taken on a completed form. You know, Commandant,” Mr. Trąba came to life, clearly gathering narrational verve, “a man has only one good reason to stop drinking: namely, when he notices that as a result of drinking he is going stupid. Let me put it another way. A true man can die from drinking, but he doesn’t dare go stupid.”

“In that case,” the Commandant spoke most carefully, “in that case, why do you put your lofty mind at risk, Comrade Trąba?”

“You insult me, Commandant,” said Mr. Trąba with dignity. “Just why should a man live in stupidity?”

“And carrying Gomułka off with you, carrying Gomułka off with you to the grave,” Jeremiah suddenly got angry, “and carrying First Secretary Gomułka off with you to the grave — this isn’t stupidity? This is colossal stupidity! Stupidity that is pointless and historically barren. Stupidity that leads nowhere and is intellectually empty.”

“Terror is not the realm of speculation; terror is the realm of shock,” Mr. Trąba said gloomily.

“What terror? What terror? What terror?” the Commandant roared with the greatest contempt.

“Maybe our terror is not a great terror,” Mr. Trąba flared up, “but it’s still terror. Better that than nothing. Better a sparrow in the hand than Mao Tse-tung on the roof. Yes, OK, I intended to do something for humanity, but after all, if I do something for Poland, I will have done it for humanity too. Of course I would prefer a great deed on a global scale. Of course I would prefer, as I explained to you,” Mr. Trąba raised his shoulders, “of course I would prefer to tighten my tyrannicidal fingers around the neck of Mao Tse-tung. A person would get to see a little of China in the process. But we don’t have the resources for such a long journey,” Mr. Trąba sighed regretfully, “and a short trip is out of the question for reasons of ambition. You can’t expect me to humiliate myself with quasi-foreign trips around the block of the People’s Democracies. Oh no, not that, no. I certainly won’t go to Sofia to lie in ambush for Comrade Zhivkov. Nor to East Germany in order to administer justice to Walter Ulbricht. Please don’t even try to persuade me.”

“And what about Khrushchev?” Mother unexpectedly spoke up, neither asking nor quite proposing, from above an already considerable stack of potato pancakes. “Have you considered Khrushchev?”

“Khrushchev,” Mr. Trąba seemed to ignore the absolute astonishment with which Father and Commandant Jeremiah looked at Mother, “Khrushchev may be removed at any moment. It isn’t worth the effort. I go to Moscow, which, however you look at it, is also a good hike, and on the spot I discover that changes have just then taken place at the highest level of the CC CPSU, and I’ll look like a boob.”

“And if, Comrade Trąba,” Comrade Jeremiah’s voice suddenly became warmer, “and if. . of course these are absolutely not our methods,” he suddenly stipulated in a panic, “and if, and if it could be, we could even, not so much help, that’s too strong a word, but, let’s say, we could not know about certain things, uh, even a passport, any time — and if it could be the Bloody Dictator of Fascist Spain?”

“Caudillo Bahamonde Franco is one of Europe’s greatest statesmen,” Mr. Trąba said with distinct pity. “I remind you: I wish to do something for humanity, not against it.”

It might have seemed that it was not steam that was departing from the Commandant’s drying uniform, rather it was the furies departing from the man himself.

“Never. We will never,” he panted heavily, “we will never come to terms, Comrade Trąba. Be my guest — kill, kill whomever you wish. Yes,” the Commandant suddenly seemed to discern a deeper meaning in what he was saying, “yes, kill whomever you wish. Kill anybody at all. After all, that too will bring the decline of your life into order. Go out into the street, kill whomever, and you’ll see in just what implacably logical scheme of events you’ll find yourself. You won’t do much for humanity, but you will do something for yourself. And after all, if you do something for yourself, it’s as if you’d also done something for humanity. Don’t you agree?”

“What do you do for yourself by killing just anyone?” Father asked in a strangely high voice.

“One’s life becomes definitively ordered, especially the disorderly life, and your life, comrade,” the Commandant stretched out his hand to Mr. Trąba in what was almost a welcoming gesture, “is an unusually disorderly life. A person kills, becomes a murderer, and by being a murderer he disperses doubts and does away with choices. Being a murderer is the guarantee of a highly stable identity. First, if you should decide to go into hiding, comrade, you’d be a murderer in hiding. Then, if they should arrest you, you’d be an arrested murderer, then a judged one, then a condemned one, and then,” the Commandant suddenly stopped, as if he had realized that he was about to say something tactless. He finished in a more peaceful voice, although it still vibrated with rage: “Let’s save our breath. Be my guest. Go ahead and kill, comrade, kill whomever you like.”

“This is painful, painful to listen to,” Mr. Trąba said with a sadness that tore your heart to pieces. “Please, Mr. Commandant, don’t make me into the posthumous child of existentialism’s precursors. I wouldn’t even consider killing just anyone. I haven’t the least intention of joining that godless philosophical current. I intend to join the murky circle of the great tyrannicides of human history: Peter Pahlen, Gavrilo Princip, François Ravaillac, Jeronimo Caserio, Józef Trąba. . Not a bad list of names,” he said, falling into dreaminess, but he immediately roused himself again.

“And besides, what do you mean by ‘whomever?’ There aren’t any whomevers here. Whom am I supposed to kill? Małgosia Snyperek? Grand Master Swaczyna? Mrs. Rychter? Perhaps I’m supposed to raise my sacrilegious hand against Pastor Potraffke, or Station Master Ujejski? Sexton Messerschmidt? There aren’t any ‘whomevers’ here. There aren’t any accidental passersby here. Everybody knows each other here, and knows each other as intimately as, if I may say so, you and I, Commandant. .”

“In that case, why don’t you choose someone by lottery, or even better,” an almost genuine note of sudden desperation and readiness to bear the greatest sacrifices sounded in the Commandant’s voice, “or even better, why not me? Yes, why don’t you kill me?”

“You? Absolutely not.”

“Why? Why absolutely not me?” The Commandant was not able to check the reflexive disappointment and almost injured ambition in his voice. “Why absolutely not me?”

“Because I don’t intend to acquire the reputation of an anti-Semite in my old age.”

“Mr. Trąba. .” The Commandant’s voice suddenly broke. Everything was now clear. It was as clear as day who would remain standing, who was already the victor in this seemingly evenly matched duel. Everything was so unyielding that I didn’t even feel like recording the final word, which would be declared any minute. I only formulated it in my thoughts.

“Mr. Trąba, I’m an atheist.” The Commandant was as pale as ashes, and drops of oily and icy sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Fine.” Mr. Trąba danced around his staggering opponent with the murderous lightness of a triumphant heavyweight boxer. “Fine. Just utter this one phrase without hesitation: ‘I’m not a Jew, I’m an atheist.’ Say it, toss out this stylistic pearl, and I will answer you, just as the Chief sometimes answers me.” Mr. Trąba bowed in Father’s direction. “Then I will answer you: ‘A beautiful phrase and worthy of reward.’”

Father, like a golem set in motion by a magic spell, stood up from behind the table, went up to the cabinet, and did what he always did: he extracted a bottle and glasses. Mother was carrying a tureen full of potato pancakes in sour cream. Thunder resounded, and black rains came crashing down with redoubled might. Mr. Trąba grew gentle and glanced thankfully to the heavens. Father continued filling glasses with juniper berry vodka in the fever of his robotic motions.

“Basically,” Mr. Trąba now continued in a conciliatory and almost amicable tone, “basically, it’s not a question of whether you deny it or not, Commandant. Don’t be angry, but, putting it in other terms, whether you had denied it or not — this is a trifle. Too many ties, ties of another sort, link us. As you correctly say, we are old friends, and I wouldn’t be wrong if I said that a step here, a move there, one gesture and you would join the conspiracy.” Mr. Trąba lifted up his hand and, without superfluous words, stilled the Commandant’s silent and, to tell the truth, none-too-distinct resistance. “Yes, you would join us, but that’s not the issue, nor is it a question of your Jewishness or of your Communism: don’t be angry, but, to tell the truth, those Jews and those Communists were quite different from you, Commandant. It is a question of general, as well as universal, truths. Of what Jews sensu largo are up to, and just what Jews they are!”

Mr. Trąba suddenly began to search his pockets, and after a moment he extracted a carefully folded newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket; straightened it out; nailed it to the table, which was covered with sky-blue oilcloth, with his index finger; bent over it; and began to read distinctly: “The world renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, during his tournée of Israel, paid a visit to Prime Minister Ben Gurion. In the course of an informal conversation, both the artist and the politician stood on their heads, since both practice yoga. .” Mr. Trąba panted hard, and apoplectic spots covered his face and neck.

“Chief, Commandant, gentlemen. A Christian cannot stand indifferent in the face of such things. Yoga, yes, OK, it can lead to salvation, but among the Mosaic prophets there isn’t a peep about yoga.” Mr. Trąba fell silent for a moment, and then he suddenly bellowed with a terrifying voice: “Convert them! Evangelize them! Show them the road to salvation!”

“Proselytism,” Commandant Jeremiah growled scornfully. “Common proselytism.”

“What proselytism, Commandant, what proselytism!” Mr. Trąba said with unexpected calm. “I swear on my nine prewar semesters of theology that there isn’t any question of proselytism here. It’s a question of the Biblical plan of salvation. If David Ben Gurion, who came fifteen years ago to stand at the head of the state of Israel, now stands on his head, this means one thing: a flaw has arisen in the Biblical plan of salvation, and we Christians, and especially we Lutherans, must hurry to the rescue.”

Mother placed the steaming tureen on the table and removed plates, knives, and forks from the cupboard. Sitting next to me, Commandant Jeremiah — in whose breathing, agitated gestures, and nervous huffing and puffing I sensed the firm desire for immediate departure — suddenly capitulated and cheered up. Father raised an empty vodka glass. It looked as if he wished to perform a pantomime entitled “The Flight of the Vodka Glass to the Light,” but the Commandant interrupted the performance with an imperial gesture, put the date book, which was still lying on the table before him, away in his pocket, and pointed to the sacred place on the oilcloth where the vessel, already taken down from the heights, but still shot through with spherical radiance, ought to stand. And it came to pass: Father placed the vodka glass before Commandant Jeremiah and filled it.

“If a miracle should happen, if the heavens should open up,” Mr. Trąba declaimed, “and if the Lord of Hosts should look upon my downfall and ask: ‘What can I do for you, Józef Trąba?’ If that should happen, with my certain death as my witness, I would say: ‘Lord, raise up my friend Jakub Lełlich from the dead, fashion him back again from the clay into which he has been transformed, breath life into him, and cause that we could at least once more have a chat about the superiority of the Jewish-Lutheran alliance to all other alliances.’”

Mr. Trąba chattered away indefatigably, but neither Mother, nor Father, nor Commandant Jeremiah paid much attention to him. They must have heard this story too, like the majority of his stories, many times over, but the great ideas of the Biblical plan of salvation were reaching my consciousness for the first time.

“It is irrefutable, irrefutable, that the rise of Israel was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Zachariah and other prophecies. The Lord of Hosts foretold two-and-a-half-thousand years ago that he would deliver his people and lead them to Jerusalem. And this came to pass, and it must be so until the very. . the very conversion itself.”

Mr. Trąba broke off for a moment, swallowed a significant piece of potato pancake, which had been amply sopped in sour cream, and continued, with a zeal that proved he had reached the very heart of his argument:

“This will come to pass, but it’s not the pagan path of yogists that leads here, rather the path of Jewish orthodoxy. Jews came to Jerusalem not in order to stand on their heads there, but in order to be confirmed in their Judaism. After all, only Jews confirmed in their Judaism can attain salvation. As the Scripture says: ‘For an Israelite to become a Christian, he must first eat his fill of his Israelitism.’”

“There isn’t anything like that in Scripture,” Commandant Jeremiah wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nowhere is it so written.”

“Not directly,” Mr. Trąba became impatient, “not directly, but it’s in the subtext, or rather in innumerable subtexts. Just recall carefully, Commandant, Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, not to mention Hebrews. And the prophet Isaiah, chapter eleven, verse twelve, and your namesake, the prophet Jeremiah, touches upon this topic in the sixteenth, and in the twenty-forth, and in the thirty-first chapter. Ezechiel!” shouted Mr. Trąba. “Ezechiel! Above all the prophet Ezechiel and the famous prophecy about the field of bones slowly taking on life!”

“I’ll investigate,” said Commandant Jeremiah in an unexpectedly police tone. “I’ll investigate.”

“I assure you that you can believe a person established in his faith and trained in Scripture. Yes,” Mr. Trąba suddenly fell into a dreamy mood, “that would be a worthy act, that would be an act worthy of my dying ambitions — the deed of conversion. But unfortunately there is little time, and this is the work of decades at least, and not within the abilities of one lonely Lutheran who’s caught in the clutches of addiction. Yes,” he repeated in a voice marked by strategic deliberation, “let them come to full bloom, even to the first signs of wilting. Let them people the streets and markets. Let us hear the murmur of conversations and the rustle of gabardines. Let synagogues be erected. Let the Sabbaths, Pesach, the Feast of Tabernacles, and Purim be celebrated.”

“Á propos,” Commandant Jeremiah interrupted Mr. Trąba’s visionary trance, “á propos Purim, did you, comrade, recently visit Mrs. Rychter and offer her and her numerous relatives help in preparation for the celebration of Purim?”

“I won’t deny it. I tried in my small way to do what I could in order to aid in the realization of God’s plans, but they didn’t avail themselves of my offer.”

“There’s nothing strange there. An old German family has absolutely no reason to celebrate Purim. And, by the way, I don’t wish to trivialize your motives,” said the Commandant, “I don’t wish to trivialize, but I must note that, in the course of celebrating Purim, excessive consumption of alcohol is practically a religious obligation.”

“You don’t wish to trivialize, but you do trivialize!” shouted Mr. Trąba. “You do trivialize!”

“It’s you, Comrade Trąba, who trivializes. You trivialize both the Scripture and God’s designs.”

“But what’s at stake here, what’s at stake if not salvation? After all, as the eventual assassin of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, I have no choice but to concern myself with the question of salvation. Of course, I would prefer not to murder him, and, instead of troubling myself with the question of my own salvation, help someone else to salvation. For example, the Jewish people. They who have been dispersed will be gathered in. They will regain their identity. They will be strengthened in their identity, and they will develop diversely in their Judaism. They will be converted. They will convert to Catholicism. And then, without fail, having become disgusted by Rome, they will convert to our Lutheran faith. What’s at stake? What more is at stake here? And I would undertake this deed as my dying act. I would truly do this for humanity. Truly. But, I repeat, it’s a question of time. And I don’t have time. I need something quick, something quick like the flash of a knife, like the flight of an arrow.”

“You know what, Comrade Trąba,” Commandant Jeremiah said with a phlegmatic, well-fed voice, “you know what? If you really do intend to convert the Jews to the Lutheran faith, of the two evils it would be better that you whack somebody, comrades.”

The Commandant raised his glass.

“Drink up, comrades.”

And when the men had inclined their heads, and then raised them up again, the Commandant said with dignity:

“For at least the last hour I have been off duty, but in spite of everything I want you, comrades, to be forewarned. I made a request of Comrade Station Master Ujejski. I made a request that he let me know if you comrades should suddenly wish to buy tickets. For instance, for the night train to Warsaw. I want you to know about this, comrades.”