A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Chapter V

When I finally understood my role in the attempt on the life of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, black flames of betrayal and shame flared up within me. It was a sultry August morning. Through the open window you could hear the missionary orchestra. I put on my Sunday clothing in a fury. I hurried. I intended to become a turncoat before the worship service started. I slipped out of the house furtively, with the slippery step of the traitor.

“My beautiful Jesus! Shining King of the world!” the members of the women’s chorus sang in the garden by the church, and they glanced at me with contempt. The missionary musicians pulled their trombones from their mouths and, looking in my direction in reproof, began to whisper something to each other.

“Hallucinations, Jerzyk, those are hallucinations. Hallucinations caused by your panicky fear,” I whispered to myself. I crouched, my steps became heavier and heavier, the black foam of fear rocked in my entrails more and more dangerously, and right by the Lutheran church I had to stop. For the first time in my life I understood that if I weren’t given wings, I wouldn’t be able to go a step further. Later on that conviction was to become more and more frequent. The number of actions I was unable to carry out without wings grew. Finally, I was unable to do anything in life without wings. Even now I must constantly give myself wings in order to write this story.

I looked around me, and although the selection was considerable for the beginning of the sixties, and although all the taverns — Piast and The House of the Spa and Café Orbis — all of them were already open, and although all three were within sight, the fact that I was a minor was an insurmountable obstacle. Manly shoulders are one thing, a manly voice is one thing, but there wasn’t the least chance that one of the three waitresses — that Helenka Morcinkówna (Piast), Krysia Kotulanka (The House of the Spa), or Marysia Jasiczek (Café Orbis) — would offer me schnapps. And so, led by something other than my own will, I turned left and hastened my step, and shortly after passing the Market Square I knocked at the gate of Mr. Trąba’s house, which was hidden in the shadow of the ski jump. No one answered. I pressed the door handle. The door gave way. From the depths, from the dark vestibule, came individual words stifled by feverish spasmodic breathing.

Mr. Trąba lay on an iron bed, which was standing in the middle of a huge chamber that was even larger than our kitchen. Except for the bed, and the bottle that was standing by the bed, there were no pieces of furniture or any other objects, nothing. Just the numbed vastness of the waters, the castaway adrift in the middle, and a bottle full of disastrous news. Blood oozed from Mr. Trąba’s cut forehead. Saliva flowed from his lips as they parted again and again. The green army pants he wore were completely soaked. The room was in the grip of the deathbed odor of a body that was passively floating in all its substances, although it was, in fact, filled with only one substance. Mr. Trąba said something, whispered, gibbered nonsense, but at first I wasn’t able to catch even a single word, not even one intelligible sound. Still, I strained. I mobilized my secret talent for guessing words that had not yet been spoken, and after a moment — to tell the truth, after a very long moment — I knew more or less what it was about. The key word in Mr. Trąba’s delirious narration was the word “tea,” and the entire narration was about love. It was the sentimental complaint of a man lamenting the fact that he couldn’t drink tea at the side of his beloved, since she was drinking tea at the side of another. The whole thing abounded in innumerable digressions, unintentional interjections, and unintelligible ornaments. Perhaps the general thrust of the lament — that drinking tea at the side of one’s beloved was the single dream in the life of a man — was a too-incessantly-repeated refrain, but, taking Mr. Trąba’s state into consideration, everything came out amazingly fluently. After all, it was as it always was with him: the sense of his story was the basic, and perhaps the only, tie linking him with the world. The beloved’s name didn’t come up even once. Perhaps I wasn’t able to guess it, or perhaps I didn’t want to guess it. I produced a white handkerchief from the pocket of my Sunday clothes. I poured a little vodka on it from the bottle standing by the bed. I applied the dressing made in this fashion to Mr. Trąba’s forehead, and I wiped the slowly drying blood.

He fell silent for a moment. He opened his lips wider. A stream of tawny saliva flowed down over the gray growth on his cheek. He sighed and raised his lowered eyelids. He looked at me with an unconscious glance, and he half-whispered, half-wheezed:

“You shouldn’t see me like this, Jerzyk. I am in both moral and physical decay.”

And he reached out his trembling hand for the bottle I was still holding, and I bent over him. I carefully placed the bottle on his lips, and he drank. Then, having pulled himself together somewhat, he looked at me. In fact, you would have to say that he examined my intent most carefully. In a flash he understood the elementary goal of my visit, and he said:

“Drink to my return to health, Jerzyk. Do this as quickly as possible, since I am expecting the arrival of the sister of mercy at any minute.”

And indeed, the dose I drank didn’t even have time to reach my spiritual parts, when the massive figure of Mrs. Rychter — the widow of old Mr. Rychter, the owner of the department store — suddenly appeared in the room, as if out of thin air, dressed in a beautiful flowery dress.

“Good day, good day,” she shouted, accenting the word “good” extravagantly and enunciating it theatrically. She immediately began to run around Mr. Trąba’s bed. She ran, waved her arms, and shouted “Good! Good! Good! Gut! Gut! Sehr Gut! Good life! Good life! To good life!”

She ran, and time and again she raised and dropped her hands. She clasped and unclasped her hands. She thrashed the air with her arms. She also performed knee bends, full of unexpected stateliness and at full speed. She was like a mad gymnast who had decided to commit suicide by performing all the sequences of exercises known to her to her last breath.

“Positive thinking! Positive thinking!” she roared at the top of her voice. “A well-disposed attitude to the world!” she screamed like a buffalo with its throat cut. “A well-disposed attitude toward the world works wonders. In the monthly America I read an interview with a man who, thanks to his well-disposed attitude toward the world, came back from prostate cancer! Prostate cancer!”

•

For a good while I had been withdrawing step by step. I had already crossed the dark entryway, and finally I felt warmth and light upon my manly shoulders. If it were not for the fact that I well remembered Mr. Trąba’s indubitable arguments about warmth and light as the indispensable attributes of Satan, perhaps it would have seemed to me that I was returning from hell to the earth. But since I remembered and — what is more — believed, I surveyed the demon-filled world without any illusions.

Grand Master Swaczyna glided with a decisive gait through the empty and cleanly swept Market Square, dressed in a faultlessly tailored light-blue suit. I had received wings, and I was already prepared to commit an act of betrayal, but my enlightened mind now began to play for time and to consider the fundamental question of whether there was any need for committing an act of betrayal. I was enveloped by the smell of the world’s most expensive eau-de-cologne. I bowed. Grand Master Swaczyna politely returned my bow.

“A beautiful day, Jerzy, my good man, as beautiful as, excuse the expression, five hundred new złotys,” he began the conversation with his perfect low voice.

“The dearest day in the world,” I responded.

Grand Master Swaczyna looked at me with his splendid blue eyes — to match them he chose the most expensive blue shirts and the most expensive blue suits in the world — and he sighed in relief.

“Conversation with you, sir, my good Jerzy, is a true pleasure. If you don’t mind, if you have a little time, let’s look in on my shooting-gallery for a moment.”

Grand Master Swaczyna winked perfectly, smiled dazzlingly, and added playfully:

“My shooting-gallery worth all the money in the world. After you, sir,” and he offered his hand.

I turned around, and I caught sight of a spanking-new Citroën in the shadow of an old spreading willow tree. The sky-blue body had in it the intensity of the heavens of August.

“I brought it here from Warsaw yesterday. I crawled along all day long. I was afraid I would destroy the engine. I sold the Moskwicz for a small profit.”

Grand Master Swaczyna jingled the keys. He opened the windows and doors. He wiped invisible dust from the dashboard with a chamois. He started the engine, and, with his head thrown back, like a director listening to the first notes of an orchestra, he listened to the music of the first revolutions. The interior of the car smelled of the eternal odor of nothingness delimited by matter. It was the odor of the most expensive bars, exclusive clubs, and elegant apartments, the odor of costly hotels, rare substances, and harmonious objects.

We drove along the river. The first vacationers were taking off their dresses, rubbing suntan lotion onto their shoulders, and carefully spreading out gray blankets on the grassy banks. Grand Master Swaczyna nervously adjusted the collar of his deluxe shirt time and again.

“More than one body worthy of attention will be brought to the light of day today. More than one, Jerzy.” His intonation misled me. I was certain that immediately thereafter he would add the necessary conclusion, or that he would offer me unambiguous advice about life. But he unexpectedly fell silent, and having lost my concentration and irritated at myself, I was no longer able to guess where he was headed, what he had in mind.

“Is it true what people say about you?” I asked after a while.

“It depends which of the numerous legends that circulate about me you mean. Just what do they say?”

“They say,” I started stammering, although I had sworn that I wouldn’t stammer, “they say, that you are the richest man in the world.”

Grand Master Swaczyna waved it off scornfully.

“What do you mean?” he said with distaste and irritation. “What do you mean? Don’t believe every rumor you hear. The richest man in the world! That’s a good one!” Grand Master Swaczyna was enjoying his own scorn and irritation. “The richest man in the world! I’m not even in the top ten!” Now he spoke quickly and forcefully, with the bitter sarcasm of a man who was conscious of his defeats in life. “Come on, I’m not even in the top ten. It isn’t enough that I’m not there, I’m falling. To put it bluntly, I’m falling on my face. Last year I was number fifteen, but today I’m seventeen. That, among other things, was precisely what I wanted to check on in Warsaw. Do you realize, Jerzy, what it means to be number seventeen!? It means not to exist at all.”

•

Flakes of green paint were falling off the brittle walls of the shooting gallery. Through the crevices in the crooked boards and battered sheet metal arose straight streams of light. In the depths, in the thick green shadow, stood rows of glass tubes, paper flowers, and matches. Cigarettes hung on invisible threads. Black-and-white photos of film stars, petrified candies, above that shields full of shots, in the corner a monstrous doll no one could win — you had to have seventy-two points from six free-hand shots in order to win it, a result that even an Olympic champion could never achieve.

Małgosia Snyperek sat on a stool outside that rickety pavilion, which, it seemed, would collapse with the least puff of air. She exposed her freckled little face to the sun. She had rolled up her sad little dress, which was sewn together from various mismatched fabrics, and you could see her paper-white thighs. She was startled at the sight of us, and putting her sackcloth gown and her indifferent hairstyle in order, she fled inside and attempted to lend an expression of business-like readiness to her happenstance features.

“How’s business, Miss Małgorzata? How’s business today?” Mr. Swaczyna asked in a friendly, but at the same time thoroughly official, tone.

“There hasn’t been anyone yet. There hasn’t been a single client.”

“That’s not good.” Grand Master Swaczyna became concerned, and he put on such an air, executed such gestures, and spoke such that there was no way around it: Małgosia had no choice but to feel guilty. Even I felt guilty.

“Maybe this afternoon,” I said without conviction, “maybe things will pick up a bit this afternoon, when people start to go to the summer festival.”

“That’s not good.” Grand Master Swaczyna, immersed in his supposedly immense calculations, seemed to have heard nothing. “That’s not good. That’s not good at all. If things continue like this, I’ll be reduced to begging. In short, I don’t know what to do.” He suddenly turned to me and spoke as if he expected real advice. “In short, I don’t know what to do. Whether to sell the firm for a modest gain, or to remodel, or to lower prices. . I don’t know. . I’ll have to think about it. Today is not a day for final decisions.”

In very carefully choreographed reverie, Grand Master Swaczyna slowly began to take off his jacket. He took it off, methodically folded it, and delicately placed it on a counter that had been worn shiny by the elbows of generations of shooters. Then, with equal calm, he began to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. He rolled them up, and he said with studied politeness:

“Miss Małgorzata, a weapon and ammunition, if you please.”

And when Małgosia Snyperek handed him an air-rifle and placed a can full of shot before him, he stood for a long time with the gun in his hand, with the barrel turned upwards, and with hateful reflection he examined the un-hittable army of matches, sticks, and glass tubes that paraded in the depths of the shooting gallery. And then, with uncanny accuracy, he began to decimate the rickety-legged detachments. Splinters and pieces of glass, scraps of paper floated about in the air. After each shot, Grand Master Swaczyna raised up the weapon with a melodious motion and shouted triumphantly:

“Dress!

“Blouse!

“Skirt!

“Slip!

“Bra!

“Panties!

“Left sandal!

“Right sandal!

“Left earring!”

Małgosia Snyperek laughed like mad. She lost consciousness from laughing. She bent over spasmodically. Her skull dangerously crossed the line of fire time and again. She hysterically pressed her extended palms to her breasts and to her belly as if she were afraid that the unceasing gunfire would indeed tear her clothes from her. After a good while, and, as usual, with a delay — as usual, in such situations, only with a delay — I understood the perverse sense of this game, and I glimpsed what those two must have been seeing for a long time. I glimpsed how Małgosia Snyperek’s dress floated from her body, how her underwear and jewelry abandoned her, and all the cheap silver and the exceedingly limp parts of her wardrobe, hit time and again by the mercilessly accurate shots of Grand Master Swaczyna, fell to the ground, and Małgosia stood there naked as the Lord created her, and I stared at her for all I was worth. Liquid lightning bolts ran through my body, and the tantalizing conviction that Lutheran girls, contrary to the eternally suntanned Catholic girls, have paper-white skin became fixed for all time in the depths of my profoundly flustered heart.

“I’ll be late to church,” I said with a weak voice.

“Right away.” Grand Master Swaczyna hurriedly put on his jacket. “I’ll take you there right away. Miss Malgorzata, I’ll be right back. I’ll take Jerzy, and I’ll be right back. I’ll not be attending church, unfortunately.”

When we got into the car I realized that all the time I had been waiting for him to make some allusion to snipers, that more or less consciously I was expecting Grand Master Swaczyna to compare one of his accurate shots to some very famous assassin’s shot. I was expecting that he would perhaps mention at a certain moment the name of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, that in general, in some manner or another, he would make it known to me that he knows. But Grand Master Swaczyna majestically changed gears. With fantastic nonchalance he stuck his elbow through the open window and lazily explained to me the reasons why he had stopped going to church.

“The matter is not that I have lost faith, Jerzy. On the contrary. I have kept my faith. What is more, I have kept my childhood faith. It still seems to me, I am still certain, that the Lord God, the Thundering Old Man with the Gray Beard, never takes His eye off me for a minute. Of course, I maintain close contacts with the atheists who currently rule this country. They are such close contacts that some might say: Grand Master Swaczyna quite simply belongs to the circle of atheists who currently rule this country. But you know, Jerzy, the atheists will pass, whereas I, Grand Master Swaczyna, will not pass. Religious fundamentalists will start to rule this country, and I will maintain close ties with the religious fundamentalists. If the Czechs come here,” he extended his hand in the direction of the border running along the peaks of the mountains, “I’ll do business with the Czechs. If the Germans return, be my guest. When the Russkies notice that their empire is beginning to creak like a breaking ice floe, and when the Russkies begin to strengthen their power, spasmodically and in their death throes, I don’t see any obstacles — we will make alliances even with the dying Bolsheviks. I tell you, Jerzy, let the Hottentots come here: I will also occupy a seat in their Hottentot High Council. The Lord God sees this, and the Lord God understands. The Lord God entrusted the visible world to man so that he might take it under his control and do business with everyone. The Lord God doesn’t let me out of His sight for a minute, and the Lord God understands perfectly well why I don’t attend our church. After all, for the love of God, the Lord God can’t like it much either that the Apostle Paul depicted in our stained-glass window is deceptively similar to Vladimir Lenin. Did you notice that ominous similarity, Jerzy? Take a careful look — although, on the other hand, there is no need here for careful examination: the thing is glaringly obvious. As you know perfectly well, the patrons of our church, the Apostles Peter and Paul, are depicted in the stained-glass window. As far as the Apostle Peter is concerned, everything is in perfect order: a handsome, mature man of Levantine looks, a fisherman’s net on his shoulder, the raised right hand points to the lamb entangled in thorns, fine. But Paul, my favorite Biblical writer. . His raiment, fine. The pilgrim’s staff in his hand, fine. The other hand raised in the direction of the cross, fine. Everything is fine, with the exception of the head. For the figure of the Apostle Paul is crowned with a head that looks for all the world like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And that, Jerzy, is troublesome. Who cares about the identical bald pate? After all, all bald men look alike. But here we have the same features, the same slanted Asiatic eyes, the same cheekbones, the same cut of the beard. . Come on!. . You know, Jerzy, at first I thought this might mean something. .”

The Grand Master fell silent for a moment. With lifeless attention he stared at three unusually comely women tourists running down the steep bank to the water.

“I thought this might mean something, for there was a calamitous period in my life when it seemed to me that art meant something. I’ve read a lot in my time, and the Fine Arts have also excited my curiosity. Not entirely disinterestedly, to tell the truth. It seemed to me, for example, that who knows whether the furious rhythm of the inflow and the outflow of money isn’t recorded in works of art, in those works that, so it seemed to me, were inspired, that outpaced reality. Incidentally, that rhythm has certainly been noted in the most outstanding works, for example, in The Magic Mountain or Ship of Fools, but be that as it may. It’s impossible that this was a coincidence, that’s what I think: that distinctively enlarged skull of the leader of the revolution on prominent display in the Evangelical stained-glass window — that can’t be a coincidence. Especially since the artist and glass-painter, may his name be forgotten for all time, created his work in the thirties. If only that was some sort of cretin, a petty fiddler with a narrow specialization. Nothing of the sort! This was a man of wide horizons and broad interests. He painted, sculpted, wrote. And I, poor sucker, began to ask myself what that man wanted to express through his audacious aesthetic conception. I began to investigate the matter. It seemed to me, for example, that the Asiatic-Leninist head of the Apostle Paul might be some sort of allusion to Luther. For you know, Jerzy, not to take anything away from our Reformer — but the old boy wasn’t a looker. Have you read The Magic Mountain?”

I shook my head.

“Read it. That is reading matter for which it is never too early or too late. When you read it, you will come upon a fragment in which Mr. Settembrini says the following to Hans Castorp. I know the passage by heart. And so, Mr. Settembrini says the following: ‘Look at him, this Luther! Observe the portraits we have, in early and later life. What sort of cranial formation is that, what cheek bones, what a singular emplacement of the eye! My friend, that is Asia!’ Yes, Jerzy, take a good look at Luther. That’s a powerful piece, a powerful fragment, considering that Thomas Mann was a Lutheran. Although one ought rather to say that there was, that there lived in this world, a Lutheran who was Thomas Mann. I doubt that this was good for Lutheranism. In any case, I followed that Asiatic trail, I investigated, I studied, I made enquiries, I interpreted, and do you know what? It turned out that the likeness of the Apostle Paul with the head of Lenin that you can see in our church is the result of chance, ignorance — although, for all that, no less shameful! The guy simply didn’t know what Lenin looked like! And not only that, in the year of our Lord one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-thirty-two the guy had no idea that, just a few hundred kilometers from here, the Bolshevik Revolution had taken place! Not a clue about God’s good earth, nothing but high art. Botticelli, Rubens, and Rembrandt; Chopin, Schubert, and Schumann. Which is a good thing. But I think, Jerzy, that if someone doesn’t know what Lenin looks like, he shouldn’t get it into his head to paint the Apostle Paul. That’s what I think.”

“But by what miracle did he paint it, granted not where he ought to have, and yet, he painted it — Lenin’s head. By what miracle did he do that, if he had never seen Lenin’s head?” I was amazed by my own shrewdness.

“Oh, by some sort of diabolical miracle, by some connective tissue in the painter’s subconscious. If you don’t want to paint Lenin, you have to know what Lenin looked like, because otherwise an unpleasant surprise may come your way. That’s right, Jerzy. In any case, this is the fundamental reason why I stopped going to our church. You know, I spend too much time in rooms adorned with portraits of Ilyich to have to experience it in church too, such — let’s be clear about this — such mixed feelings. When once or twice a year I feel the irresistible urge to visit the House of God, I drive to Ustroń and fertig. And besides, I’ve clearly become disgusted by art. I’ll say more: I despise art. I know that this sounds quite barbaric, but I’ve come to the conclusion that guys who don’t know the current prices of basic articles of consumption, as well as the current exchange rate of the dollar, are not in a position to tell me anything about the world, not in their poetry, not in their painting, not in their music. It is possible that an unearthly spirit speaks through them, but, because of their earthly laziness, they are not prepared to fully understand the language of that spirit. I repeat. I’m aware that this is unfair, but I, Grand Master Swaczyna, adhere to this rule: three times a year I drive to the church in Ustroń, and once a year I read The Magic Mountain, and that is nourishment sufficient unto my soul. Amen, amen, Jerzy. Run along now, the service is just starting. Run, and pray. Praise the Lord with your singing of Psalms, and don’t glance too frequently in the direction of the stained-glass window.”

I was already getting out of the car, already the missionary music was enveloping me. Female choralists were singing, the Wittenberg bells were ringing, Protestants were gathering. I was just about to cross the cold shadow of the high church walls when Grand Master Swaczyna leaned out of his car and called to me once again:

“Jerzy, I beg your pardon, but I almost completely forgot about a most urgent matter. Please be so kind as to relate to your father, the Chief, that the object about which we spoke, your father will know what it is about — you, too, after all — please tell your father that I ordered a prototype made in one of my workshops.”

The Grand Master examined me carefully. He measured me with his glance from head to foot, and he added with deadly gravity:

“Don’t worry, Jerzy. You’ll look fantastic with a crossbow on your shoulder.”

•

I didn’t sing the Psalms, I didn’t listen to the sermon, not once did I look in the direction of the front wall, which was almost entirely covered with the watery colors of the stained-glass window. I sat with lowered head. I prayed, and I definitively drove away the chimera of betrayal. In passing, and perhaps not at all in passing, Grand Master Swaczyna had said the decisive thing; he gave name unceremoniously to the hope that was vaguely sprouting in me: that, striding through the streets of Warsaw with a crossbow on my shoulders, I might indeed attract the attention of women.

“Women and men, children and old geezers. Everybody,” Mr. Trąba had sought to convince me, and to the extent that, on that first occasion, I listened to his arguments in our darkened kitchen with growing animosity and an ever stronger will to betrayal, now I repeated those same arguments to myself, word for word, in a spirit of meekness and understanding. Even then I was incredibly keen about my own seductiveness.

“I know one green tree, beautiful the olive tree. There the nightingale sweetly sings to our beloved psaltry,” sang the women’s chorus. I raised my head slightly. I stared at them just as shamelessly as I had at Małgosia Snyperek a few moments before. The second from the left was alluring like a Canaanite woman. “Or I will hasten away into the first faint light with a Canaanite woman, To search through the land of Galilee for the grace of heaven,” I sang together with her, and together with the tempting Samaritan woman, fifth from the left, and together with the raven-haired Philistine woman in the middle, and I humbled myself before the Thundering God, the Old Man with the Gray Beard, and the words of the hymns got mixed up in my head with the words of Mr. Trąba. “Or I will go with that Samaritan woman at midday joyfully, Where over Jacob’s well the nightingale warbles wondrously.” I will go at midday joyfully, Gomułka to kill wondrously, I joked, and I sang in spirit, and the specter of betrayal vanished definitively, and I came to understand in the process that the harmonizing of rhyme and truth in poetry is not an easy thing: after all, the death-bearing shaft was to pierce the heart of the First Secretary not at midday but in the evening.

According to Mr. Trąba’s plan, we were going to wander boldly around the streets for the entire day, taking in the sights of the capital; we were going to climb to the top floor of the Palace of Culture quite openly, go to the Old Town, and ride to “Decade of Socialism” stadium; we were going to move about with ostentatious openness and absolute freedom; we were going to proceed this way, since, so Mr. Trąba was assuming, no one would remember us anyway, since no one would look at us anyway, since, anyway, all would be examining me, Jerzyk, and not even so much me, Jerzyk, as my peculiar plaything, the crossbow strapped to my shoulder. And even if someone should glance at me, he wouldn’t for the world be able to identify me the next day, because I will be distinctly and unrecognizably disguised. My cheeks will be covered with venomous war paints, on my head I’ll have a luxuriant headdress, I’ll be wearing a broad caftan that will alter my silhouette and at the same time draw attention with its gaudy colors.

“Gentlemen, it’s perfect!” Mr. Trąba choked on his own saliva. “There’s no gap in this plan, not a crack. This isn’t some sort of extravagance in the plotline. It’s just clear-sighted rationalism and strict adaptation to the requirements of the circumstances. We have to go to Warsaw on the night train that leaves here at 10:17 in the evening and has a scheduled arrival of around 7:00 in the morning. We have to — yes or no?”

Only now did I realize that Mr. Trąba’s “yes or no,” so imperious and impervious to dissent, was riddled with desperate uncertainty.

“Other more circuitous itineraries, with a number of different trains, don’t come into question, since a journey like that would last a few days and maybe even a week. Yes or no? In order to avoid problems with Station Master Ujejski we will force our way into the postal ambulance car, and we will ride in the company of the guards, who until recently were serving under your command, Chief, and who are now your friends. Yes or no? Yes.”

Such were the assumptions that defined the time and conditions of our expedition to the capital. From these assumptions arose — irrefutably, in Mr. Trąba’s opinion — the following conclusions. Even if our train were to reach Warsaw Main Station punctually, that would all the same be the time when Comrade Gomułka, seated in the rear of a black Volga, accompanied by his personal secretary, Józef Tejchma, and with a motorcycle escort of militiamen armed to the teeth, would be making his way along the following streets: Prus, Konopnicka, Wiejska, and Nowy Świat, in the direction of the headquarters of the Central Committee. Even if we were to take up the absurd and suicidal idea of attacking the armed convoy, we simply wouldn’t make it on time. It goes without saying that no one in his right mind would make an attack upon the Central Committee itself. Ergo, we will have to spend the entire day in Warsaw. Theoretically, we could hide in the apartment of one of his numerous—so Mr. Trąba assured us — Warsaw acquaintances, hide and wait the dozen hours, but from the psychological point of view this would be a cardinal error. Mr. Trąba referred to the many testimonies and memoirs of old terrorists that he claimed to have studied carefully. It followed from them irrefutably, so he claimed, that the worst and most calamitous thing for assassins was inactive waiting around for the zero hour. If they waited too long, they became demoralized and lost their concentration. Their nerves went on the fritz. Mr. Trąba also made it known in a circuitous but still sufficiently clear fashion that, in his case, the unbearable vacuum of some dozen hours of waiting could be filled and made to pass quickly only in a manner that was — although typical for him — undesirable.

“We can’t risk any sort of inefficiency. As it is, there are too many improvised elements in our whole enterprise, and we are not going to repeat the historic errors of old assassins. We will spend the final hours before we kill Gomułka touring the city.” Mr. Trąba emphasized this aspect many times, and I, Jerzyk, now listening raptly to the words and melody of old Lutheran Psalms, not only agreed with him, but I also admired his unshakable logic.

“When once I erred around the forest unhappy, suddenly I heard a voice from the thick branches of the olive tree. When I rested in its shade, and began to ponder that song in my heart, I arose refreshed,” sang the choir of Canaanite, Samaritan, and Philistine women. And indeed, in my simplicity, refreshed by the assent to everything that had filled me, I raised my head even higher, and above the divine coifs of the women’s chorus, I glanced at the stained-glass window, filled with undulating light, at the figures of the apostles looming from the exploding radiance, and there was in me no bitterness, distaste, or disappointment. My transaction with Grand Master Swaczyna was ultimately a spiritual transaction, and what is more I, Jerzyk, knew the rules of that transaction well. After all, I well knew, and had known for a long time, that neither in the figure depicted on the glass, nor in the shape of the head, nor in the likeness of the countenance of the Apostle Paul was there the least hint of similarity to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.