A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Chapter VI

Elżunia Baptystka knew the answer to every question. She knew how many crosses there were in our church and what adorned and crowned the pulpit; what the first miracle performed by Lord Jesus was and when the Descent of the Holy Sprit took place. She was even able to give the precise number of all the books of the Bible and the date of Pastor Potraffke’s ordination. Dressed in white stockings and a green woolen frock, Elżunia won the church trivia contest year after year. She would confidently ascend the podium and resolutely answer the questions posed by the presbyters. The Pastor’s Wife would kiss her on both cheeks and present her with edifying literature. I hated Elżunia Baptystka. And I lusted after the Pastor’s Wife.

Then it was my turn. I stepped through the high October grass on trembling legs. I climbed the podium that had been cobbled together out of pine planks, breathed in the scent of the shiny wood, glanced at the festive crowd seated below, at the giant rock by which the Lutherans of old used to gather in times of persecution. I glanced at the beech forest surrounding the glade, and I felt on my palate the watery taste of disaster. The Curator of the Church Grange glanced playfully at the Pastor’s Wife, then with pretended reflection he fixed his gaze upon me and said:

“And now, a question from the field of the life of our parish. Please tell us the style and color of the Pastor’s Wife’s favorite hat!”

Of course I knew perfectly well that the Pastor’s Wife’s favorite hat was a red and black toque with a pompom on the side. I knew the Pastor’s Wife’s wardrobe inside and out. I knew what her favorite skirts, frocks, and blouses were. I knew how she dressed for every time of the day and season of the year. I even knew how many pairs of flat-heeled pumps she had. I knew everything, but, of course, I remained silent. I didn’t yet have a clue how one ought to behave in the presence of women after whom one lusted, but my instinct, as blind and as powerful as my lust, whispered to me that, in any case, you ought not to hold forth about their wardrobe in their presence. I remained silent. The Pastor’s Wife looked at me with ostentatious coldness and indifference. Her gaze went through me as if I weren’t there. Suddenly I understood that her glance was too cold, too indifferent, that she looked at me as if I weren’t there because I was. . Jesus Christ, she loves me! I experienced a sudden revelation, and the apparently disparate elements — every glance, chance meeting, and meaningless phrase — arranged themselves, in the twinkling of an eye, into a complete whole. “The Pastor’s Wife is madly and unhappily in love with me,” I slowly and thoughtfully repeated this sentence to myself — just like vodka, it lent me wings, and indeed I felt myself take wing, that I could answer. What was more, I would answer each question exhaustively and ornately.

I hadn’t a clue how to act in the presence of a woman who was madly in love with me, and I fell subject to the thoroughly male delusion that, in the presence of a woman who was madly in love with you, you can allow yourself everything.

“In that case,” the Curator again looked playfully at the Pastor’s Wife and again with feigned reflection fixed his gaze upon me, “in that case, the next question from the same field. This one is more difficult. When the Pastor’s Wife directs our choir, what characteristic gesture — in no way connected with directing — does she make, especially at rehearsals?”

I glanced at her. Mercilessly, I sought out her panicked, fleeing glance, and I spoke slowly, luxuriating in my own omniscience:

“Before she begins to direct — although some times, sporadically, it happens after the choir has performed the first hymn — the Pastor’s Wife takes three silver bracelets off her left hand and she places them on the director’s side-table next to the music stand. She always places them in the same fashion, such that the intersecting circles of the bracelets divide the surface of the side-table into eight separate regions. At the end of rehearsal, the Pastor’s Wife puts the bracelets back on, reversing the order in which she had taken them off. This means that first she puts on the bracelet that’s on the very bottom, the one with the small ruby on the clasp, next the one with the black Aztec design, and finally the chain-form wristlet. .”

There was a moment of utter silence. The birds fell quiet. Nature came to a standstill. Not even the shadow of the simple thought that maybe I had gone a bit far passed through the limited brain of this class genius. I luxuriated in my infallibly A+ answer. I also luxuriated in the fact that only I, her wise beloved, could see the imperceptible blush that was slowly covering her dark cheeks. The Pastor’s Wife’s complexion was not white like paper; it was dusky like the Rose of Zion, like the shoulders of King Solomon’s betrothed. The Pastor’s Wife was dark like the consort of a Brazilian soccer player. Thunderous applause erupted, rousing a black grouse at the edge of the forest to a fluttering run. Everyone who was sitting at the table, made of the same pine planks as the podium, clapped. Father, Mother, and Mr. Trąba clapped — admittedly, with a peculiar reserve; but the rest, with the exception of Father Pastor Potraffke — I don’t know how he clapped because, of course, I didn’t dare to look at him — all the rest, Grand Master Swaczyna, Małgosia Snyperek, Sexton Messerschmidt, Mrs. Rychter, Commandant Jeremiah, and even Elżunia Baptystka, and all the confirmation students sitting below at a table of their own, all clapped as was proper.

I sat down among them, placed the edifying literature in front of me, and drank a sip of soda pop that was green like the Orinoco.

“Brothers and sisters,” said Father Pastor Potraffke, “let us return to the subject of our dispute.”

“Which one?” Mr. Trąba asked. “Killing Gomułka?”

“The killing of tyrants in general,” replied Father Pastor Potraffke with impatience in his voice. “If it is a question of killing Gomułka, then why, basically, do you need to kill him, since Communism will collapse sooner or later anyway?”

“If the comrades kill the Comrade First Secretary, the system will collapse later, and perhaps it won’t collapse at all,” Commandant Jeremiah’s voice thundered ominously and menacingly. “Comrades, you wish to speed history up, but with your irresponsible escapade — incidentally, I don’t believe in its realization, and that’s the only reason why I take part in this academic discussion — with your irresponsible escapade you will slow history down. That is inconsistent with the spirit of revolution.”

“I don’t intend either to speed history up or to slow it down,” Mr. Trąba spoke more quietly than everyone else, as if led even now by the modesty that ought to characterize the Chief Assassin. “I don’t intend either to speed it up or to slow down. I intend to lend it a definitive character. Or rather to make society aware of the inevitability of history. Perhaps the Communists, deprived of their leader, will not disperse but will close ranks instead, causing the system to last a little longer, but the inevitability of the end will be all the more evident.”

“Personally, it seems to me,” the television announcer’s voice of Grand Master Swaczyna resounded, “personally, it seems to me that the role of doing away with scoundrels is not for a serious person who has other, more serious things to do in this world. It should be left to frustrated and penniless students. Let them throw bombs at the feet of tyrants.”

“We are all Protestants,” said the Curator of the Church Grange, “and Protestants are supposed to shine by example.”

“I am,” Mr. Trąba slowly measured out every word, “I am, in a certain sense, a frustrated student without a penny to my name, and I have nothing more serious to do in this world. I am also a Protestant, and I wish to shine by example.”

Sexton Messerschmidt had been fidgeting for a good while.

“Be that as it may,” he said with irritation, “be that as it may, it’s getting time to begin the second part of the banquet. It’s getting cold.”

Grand Master Swaczyna bowed, with unusual politesse, in Sexton Messerschmidt’s direction, and he said soothingly:

“A moment of patience, a moment of patience. I placed a suitable order, and it will certainly be delivered any moment.”

“Protestants have never taken part in assassinations.” The Pastor’s wife descended from the podium and sat down at the end of the table, as far away from me as possible.

“Protestants never took part in anything at all,” Father muttered sullenly. “Not taking part is the chief characteristic of Protestants, especially in Poland.”

“I’ve told you a thousand times,” Mr. Trąba chimed in even more quietly and with even greater forbearance, “I’ve told you a thousand times that if someone doesn’t exist at all, it’s hard for him to take part in anything.”

“But comrade, you intend to take part in the killing of Gomułka, and an active part at that,” Commandant Jeremiah shouted triumphantly.

“Active and definitive. As a Protestant, who doesn’t exist, I can kill without hesitation, since the act will remain in the realm of nothingness. If, as some say, Poland is a Catholic country, then, there you have it! It follows clearly from this that, if lèse-majesté is perpetrated in a Catholic country by a non-Catholic, that is by nobody, or by a foreigner, then the good name of our holy fatherland, the holy mother of all fatherlands, to whom the tradition of assassinating kings is foreign, will remain unsullied, and at the same time she will gain the name of the one who, as the first of the oppressed, raised her hand against the usurper. You don’t appreciate the precipitous dialectic of my patriotism.”

“Once again it’s the Catholics who are to be blamed for everything.” Pity struggled for supremacy with barely suppressed fury in Station Master Ujejski’s voice. “Once again it’s the Catholics who are to be blamed for everything. I swear, every time I accept your heretical invitation to an allegedly ecumenical vodka-bibbery, I always discover that it’s the Catholics who are to be blamed for everything, and as a Catholic — a sorry example, but still a Catholic — and yet, as the Catholic, I end up looking like an ass. It’s inconceivable that in a Catholic country a tiny handful of apostate brethren should make a fool out of any Catholic, even me. We aren’t to blame; you’re to blame. You shouldn’t have made a schism.”

“Mr. Ujejski,” Sexton Messerschmidt raised his voice, “you shouldn’t have brought about the crisis of the papacy in the Middle Ages. You shouldn’t have dealt in indulgences.”

“If you really think,” the Station Master replied coldly, “if you really think that I, Tomasz Ujejski, son of Tomasz, brought about the crisis of the papacy in the fifteenth century, as well as dealt in indulgences, then you, Mr. Messerschmidt, were right to reform the Christian Church.”

“Of course I was right,” the Sexton shouted.

“You’re always right, because your ‘right,’ all of your heretical ‘right,’ is by definition greater than logic,” said the Station Master dismissively.

“It all comes from an improper diet and a lack of optimism.” Mrs. Rychter’s tone seemed to herald an extensive lecture on the topic of healthy food and a positive attitude, but Sexton Messerschmidt, clearly subject to the changing mood, interrupted her with unexpected enthusiasm:

“Very well said. I’d like to consume something that would give me optimism. Business is business, but optimism is optimism.”

“Brothers and sisters,” said Pastor Potraffke, and he raised up his arms.

In the depth of the forest a car horn resounded. Grand Master Swaczyna glanced at his watch. A rapturous smile lit up Sexton Messerschmidt’s face. The grimace of a painful contraction flitted across Mr. Trąba’s countenance. An army jeep appeared at the end of the forest road, and, rocking on the ruts, it slowly drove up to the middle of the glade.

“Permit me to propose a modest repast,” said Grand Master Swaczyna. He stood up from his place and moved in the direction of the vehicle, stopped for a moment, and, turning back in Station Master Ujejski’s direction, added: “A modest ecumenical repast.”

•

It was never like that again. White planets began to glide along the darkening horizon, stars were falling just behind our backs. The missionary musicians ascended the podium, and they began to play old Austrian marches and waltzes. Waiters in white coats with gold buttons carried chains of hunters’ sausage on silver platters. They placed before us bottles of Żywiec, Pilsner, and vodka, mustard in great jars, and home-baked bread on wicker trays. Four bonfires burned in the four cardinal directions. Light flowed through beer mugs and prewar chalices made of massive glass. The Pastor’s Wife pretended she didn’t see me. Elżunia Baptystka didn’t let me out of her sight.

“Elżunia,” I said to her, “I’m not in love with you.”

“Oh, love!” retorted Elżunia. “That doesn’t really happen.”

“It happened to me.”

“The blonde? The married woman who rented a room from Mrs. Rychter on the fifth floor? Little boys often think they’re in love with grown women, but even if it’s their first love, it usually isn’t true love.”

“This is true love. When I grow up, I’m going to marry her.”

“Jerzyk, first she would have to divorce her husband.”

“She will do it,” I said with absolutely charming certainty.

Elżunia giggled, but almost immediately her slightly asymmetrical features, ones that foretold incredible beauty, went into disarray. At that time, I didn’t yet know that speaking with a woman with whom you are not in love about another woman with whom you are in love is a deadly transgression, but I remembered the expression on Elżunia Baptystka’s face forever. It was not an expression of despair, or pain, or even of distaste. It was an expression of slowly mastered vulnerability. It was the look of the helpless woman who is trying to come to terms with male thoughtlessness, since there is nothing else to be done. Elżunia Baptystka got the better of my thoughtlessness and said:

“Before she divorces her husband for you, before you grow up, at least visit her. When you go to Warsaw in November with your father and Mr. Trąba to kill Gomułka, drop by and see her, while you have the opportunity.”

She looked me in the eyes and added:

“You’re very amorous, Jerzyk. Grow up as quickly as possible. Amorousness combined with erotic illiteracy is a deadly combination.”

I was certain that she would say something about the Pastor’s Wife just then. I was so irrefutably certain of it that I was feverishly working on a ruthless and brutal answer that would strike her to the quick, but Elżunia pointed to the edge of the glade and said:

“There they are, Jerzyk. They have returned, because they can’t live without you.”

As narrators of old used to say, I rubbed my eyes in amazement. At the edge of the forest, on the outskirts of the glade, on the border between radiance and darkness — there stood the morphinistes. They had lightened their hair and let it grow out. They were not wrestling with their Babylonian blanket. They had thrown broad men’s jackets made of quilted nylon over their shoulders. They were thus, especially to my unskilled eye, changed beyond recognition. But there they were.

“Yes, it’s them,” Elżunia Baptystka dispersed the shadows of my doubts, “it’s them, the morphinistes, otherwise known as Anka and Danka. Of course they aren’t morphine addicts. They are psychology students, and shortly they’ll begin to write their master’s theses. One of them will write about the psychology of a woman who is waiting for a man, and the other about the psychology of a man who is waiting for a woman. Run to them as fast as you can, my sweet lover boy.”

I had the irresistible urge to do so, but something beyond the sensory realm told me that if I set off in an ecstatic rush, I would make an utter fool of myself in front of Elżunia. I had all the greater urge for that mad, welcoming rush, since everyone had noticed them now, and everyone (strictly speaking — all the men) was already running in their direction. Even Father, even Father ran nimbly through the high, dark-blue grass. Or if he wasn’t running, he was walking with a very hurried step. Mother, the Pastor’s Wife, and Małgosia Snyperek stood up from their places and observed the welcoming ovations with gloomy faces, but I took Elżunia by the hand, and, with a dim presentiment that occupying the last place in the popular game of appearances wasn’t a bad thing, I said:

“Come on, Elżunia, let’s go greet them.”

She looked at me with a suddenly brightened gaze and whispered:

“Well, you learn quickly. That’s comforting.”

•

We embraced them, kneeled before them, squeezed their divine hands. They were beautiful. In their faces, slimmer now and flogged by Lutheran winds, there wasn’t a trace of the old defects. They were beautiful, but oddly abashed. They kept looking around, whispering something, exchanging knowing glances, behaving as if they were waiting for something or someone. And indeed, when, after a short while — so short that no form of their further being had had time to emerge after the chaotic greeting — male choral singing resounded in the nearby thickets, they smiled with obvious relief.

“Our boyfriends,” said one of them.

“Our Czech boyfriends are drawing near and singing,” added the other.

The singing became louder and louder, the words of the songs more and more distinct: “Yesterday I was at the dance, at the dance all day,” the invisible Czech boyfriends of the morphinistes sang, and when they became visible, it didn’t surprise any of us that there were five of them; five choristers, handsome as Czech hockey players, came out into the glade and sang: “My blue-eyed girl, I didn’t grind, I didn’t grind, the water took our mill;” then they sang “To a Circle, a Circle” and “Slavonice Polka.” They sang beautifully and sonorously in five beautiful and sonorous voices, and they didn’t interrupt their singing of the old Czech songs for even a moment. They sang “Beer Barrel Polka” and “Wedding Ring” and “Treacherous Hošíček.” We invited them to join us at the table. Grand Master Swaczyna delivered a welcome address that was filled with heartfelt internationalism, and the inspired singers, dressed in dark-green track suits, walked across the meadow and sang: “Shepherdess Annie, You Don’t Have a Fiddle at Home” and “My Charlie,” and they sat down at the table and sang “We Won’t Get Up in the Morning on Time” and “The Time has Long Passed.” And then they sang, “Where beer is brewed, there we prosper. Where beer is drunk, there we thrive. Let us go there and drink” until the foggy autumn dawn, and our unending dialogue about killing was conducted throughout that sweltering and holy night to the lively accompaniment of their singing. “I planted a convally, but a lily grew.”

•

Father Pastor Potraffke raised up his arms and said, or rather, shouting over the singing Czechs who were deaf to everything but their own song, he cried out:

“It was as it was, but one always somehow muddled through; but for us Protestants it was sometimes neither the one way nor the other. More precisely, it often is neither the one way or the other for us. On the one hand, in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, we find the pertinent commentary concerning absolute civic obedience toward the higher authority. On the other hand, it isn’t true that Protestants haven’t ever taken part in assassinations. .”

“The Apostle Paul writes about authority that comes from God. If Gomułka’s authority comes from God, I fear I’ll lose my faith,” said Sexton Messerschmidt acidly.

“In the first place, the apostle says that every authority comes from God,” Father Pastor Potraffke interrupted him, and with a gesture of his hand he quieted the polemicists who were ready with immediate ripostes. “I agree. I agree, that it is doubtless a matter here of true authority, and that the false, usurpatory authority of the brother Communists does not come from God. But the Fifth Commandment, brothers and sisters, does come from God, and there are no exceptions to it.”

“Maybe you don’t make any exceptions, but we do. This is the basis of our superiority over you. The Catholic Church is the Church of elastic intellectuals, and your Lutheran Church is the Church of dogmatic doctrinalists,” Station Master Ujejski smiled venomously.

“People, hold me back, or I’ll have to remind him of the Second Schmalkaldic War,” cried out Sexton Messerschmidt.

“He who lacks arguments resorts to fisticuffs,” said Station Master Ujejski in a voice that vibrated with rage, though it was still rather calm. After a moment, however, fury took possession of him entirely. He leaned out in the direction of the Sexton and began to hiss hatefully: “The Battle of White Mountain didn’t teach you a thing, it didn’t teach you a thing! St. Bartholomew’s Night didn’t teach you a thing. .”

“Brothers, calm yourselves!” cried out Father Pastor Potraffke. “Let the spirit of peace reign between you!”

And after a moment, as if wishing to reinforce the spirit of peace with the sprit of sobriety, he turned to Station Master Ujejski:

“What sorts of exceptions do you have in mind? What exceptions can there be to the Fifth Commandment?”

“Thomas Aquinas answers the question whether it is possible to grant dispensation from the Ten Commandments in the affirmative: it is possible to grant dispensation,” replied Station Master Ujejski, now with a calmer tone, “because the Commandments belong to natural law, and natural law is sometimes fallible, and thus it is possible to grant dispensation.”

“The Commandments are established by God, thus I think only God could grant dispensation from them,” said the Pastor’s Wife, shrugging her shoulders.

“God works with the hands of men.” The Station Master was quite clearly passing from arousal to apathy.

“Does Thomas Aquinas speak in so many words about granting dispensation from the prohibition against killing?” Grand Master Swaczyna asked.

“Yes, in so many words,” Station Master Ujejski barely moved his lips. “He says that people are given dispensation from the prohibition against killing since, according to human law, it is permitted to kill people — for instance criminals or enemies.”

“Absolutely right, as far as I’m concerned,” threw in Commandant Jeremiah. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m for the death penalty. It will be better for more than one scoundrel if he is buried before it is too late.”

“I could say,” Mr. Trąba said with a somewhat forced smile, “I could say that all the arguments mentioned suit my dying intentions well. Dispensation from the Fifth Commandment suits me. Permission to kill an enemy and a criminal suits me. The existence of capital punishment suits me. Incidentally, as far as the medieval opinion on the licitness of tyrannicide is concerned — I’m speaking to you, Mr. Station Master, but you’re sleeping,” and indeed the Station Master’s eyes were closed, and his head had fallen onto his chest, “—as far as the medieval opinion on tyrannicide is concerned, this was partially revoked by the Council of Constance. But of course we Lutherans — maybe it is better that you’re sleeping, Mr. Station Master — we Lutherans don’t care about either Thomas Aquinas or some council from the mists of history. We Lutherans care about Luther. And Luther — although he does not allow tyrannicide — allows punishment. ‘Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful,’ he cites Scripture, but it does not follow from this, he adds, that there shouldn’t be punishment at all. There must be punishment, and it is the superior authorities who are to punish. If injustices should not cease, make report about this, says Luther, to your superior authority, your father or whomever is placed over you to exercise office: it is their task to punish according to righteousness. Yes,” Mr. Trąba sighed deeply, “I think it is clear to all that in the current situation, here and now, the Reformer’s recommended legalism is a troublesome utopia, and it is necessary to take matters into our own hands. Gomułka’s superior authority is Khrushchev, and if I wanted to abide strictly by the counsel of Doctor Martin Luther, I would have to direct my complaint against Gomułka to Khrushchev. Which is absurd.”

“It’s only slightly less absurd than killing Gomułka.” Commandant Jeremiah persisted in his increasingly peculiar commonsense argumentation.

“No, a hundred times no,” Mr. Trąba raised his voice. “I’ve worked the problem out theoretically without a hitch, just as I hope to hit him in the heart without a hitch. I name myself, in the name of historical righteousness, the superior authority of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, and as the superior power I will mete out the death penalty to him.”

“And thereby you ennoble him, Mr. Trąba. You will join the ranks of the great assassins of mankind, but you also add Gomułka to the ranks of the great tyrants of mankind. Doesn’t that bother you?” asked Grand Master Swaczyna.

“This pains me, but unfortunately there are no ideal solutions,” Mr. Trąba replied, and he turned to Father Pastor Potraffke:

“I’m terribly sorry, but whom did you have in mind? What Protestants took part in assassination attempts upon the highest power?”

“Not searching too far afield, a certain Lutheran, Bogumił Frankemberg, a locksmith from Cybulice, took part in the famous, although fortunately failed, attempt on the life of the last king of the Commonwealth.”

“You are thinking of the disgraceful abduction of Stanisław August Poniatowski that ended with the retreat of the conspirators, with the exception of one who, seeing what was happening, went over to the side of the king? Do you have in mind the famous coup that ended with the rescue of our last crowned head by an accidental miller in Marymont?” Mr. Trąba was making certain he’d understood correctly.

“Your coup will end up just the same, a fiasco, everything will come to nothing, you’ll wander around, you’ll get lost, you’ll end up, if not in a mill in Marymont, then in the police station on Marszałkowska Street, you’ll get drunk as swine.” Commandant Jeremiah had clearly lost what was left of his patience. “By the way, why aren’t you drinking, Mr. Trąba? After all, you were supposed to be dying of drink, and for that reason you intend to commit a crime. And what do I see here? You’re not drinking?”

“You go too far, Commandant.” Mr. Trąba grew pale, and his hands began to shake. “Those arguments are below the belt. Moreover, in a plan of elementary logic you confuse causes with effects.”

“Brothers, calm yourselves,” Pastor Potraffke once again appealed for peace. “And what if,” he continued in a tone of somewhat too studied conciliation, “what if you were to tie this not to the idea of real regicide, since it is indeed difficult to find an example of that in our history, but to the idea of symbolic regicide?”

“Just what do you have in mind?” Father asked.

“There are known cases of attempts not upon the person of the ruler but upon his image. For example, Prince Józef Jabłonowski, enraged at that same unfortunate Stanisław August Poniatowski, ordered a portrait of the king hung in his private dungeon, and he placed guards by that imprisoned image. Likewise the portrait of King Jan III Sobieski fell victim to an assassin’s attempt. A certain nobleman, whose name I don’t remember, simply hacked the likeness of the king to pieces with his saber, for which, moreover, he paid with his neck.”

“Don’t be angry with me, Pastor, but the idea that I should let fly from my crossbow at a photograph of Władysław Gomułka cut out of The People’s Tribune—well that sort of idea is humiliating.” Mr. Trąba’s hands continued to shake, and his gaze strayed time and again in the direction of the bottles that were standing on the table.

“You must be aware,” Commandant Jeremiah’s tone seemed to reveal that perhaps he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the irreversible course of events, “you must be aware that, in addition to everything else, the crossbow isn’t the weapon of knights but of servants. Gentlemen despise the crossbow. For example, the use by the British of massive units armed with crossbows in the famous Battle of Crécy was recognized as dishonorable by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, which, in itself, invalidated the result of the battle. The use of the crossbow is a foul.”

“I don’t intend to foul Gomułka. I intend to kill him,” Mr. Trąba retorted dully. “The crossbow is the only weapon I know that can be effective at a distance of 150 to 200 yards. On the other side of Frascati Street, across from the windows of the first secretary’s apartment, there stretches a small park, and precisely from that spot, from behind the cover of darkness and leafless shrubs, I intend to send forth a single, and I hope lethal, shot. I choose the crossbow because, as I have mentioned many times, I simply don’t know how to use firearms. Obviously, I know perfectly well about the course of the Battle of Crécy, and I know that in Europe that weapon never enjoyed great esteem. But as always, excessive Eurocentrism is what destroys us Europeans. As some of you may know, the crossbow was invented in China, and at a time when bears were strolling back and forth across today’s Frascati Street. The trigger mechanisms of Chinese crossbows were produced with the precision of a grain of rice, and their level of complication, as experts claim, is comparable to that of bullet chambers in contemporary automatic rifles. You can find breathtaking descriptions of these constructions (handmade, although on an industrial scale) in old Chinese tracts, for example in The Art of War of Master Sun or in Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lu. I have the impression that both texts stem from the times when our ancestors, who later despised the weapon as unworthy of gentlemen, were still frightening wild animals with their ghastly dialect. The Huns, who battled with the Chinese, feared the crossbow, but if, by some miracle, they came into possession of one, they were unable to assemble or copy it. They weren’t even able to make use of the arrows, since they were too short for their long bows. Thus the invention and use of the crossbow is a flight of human thought and technology, a rebuff to barbarity. The fact that, one thousand years after the Chinese, servants in Europe used crossbows to set fire to barns is rather a measure of the demise, and not a manifestation of the exquisite manners, of the warriors of Mitteleuropa. So you see, it was no coincidence,” Mr. Trąba glanced in the direction of Grand Master Swaczyna, “no coincidence at all that I chose the Chinese model, since just like the ancient Chinese, I intend to rout the Huns. Even more, I intend to kill the very leader of the Huns.”

“As I said,” Grand Master Swaczyna reached into his breast pocket and extracted a folded piece of office paper, “as I said, the idea of killing, whether it’s a communist leader or any other sort of leader, is, in my opinion, an idea for students, but a commission remains a commission. ‘The customer is our master,’ as the latest slogan of socialized services proclaims. Here’s the project.”

Grand Master Swaczyna smoothed out the paper, and we all caught sight of a scrupulously drawn image of a beautiful object, shaded with a soft pencil, like an old illustration.

“The bed is approximately thirty, and precisely thirty-three and one half inches in length, and will be produced from beech wood, buffalo horn, and ram’s tendons,” Grand Master Swaczyna explained. “The inlay: little circles and rosettes of ivory. It all worked out well — I recently imported a little ivory from Kenya at a small profit. The bowstring will be of horse hair, the trigger lever of brass. Whereas for the bail, that is to say the bow, we will employ a spring from a Citroën model 1938. Only yesterday I paid a visit to one of my workshops and personally inspected the death-dealing metal. It has already been cleaned of rust and petrified mud. I can tell you all that truly murderous powers lurk in its wings glistening with olive intensity. As the man from whom I bought the spring assured me, that very Citroën model 1938 was in its time the property of the legendary murderer Mazurkiewicz. There remains the questions of shots, that is to say arrows. .”

“One arrow will be enough,” Mr. Trąba studied the details of the project carefully. “One arrow will be enough, made, as I told you, from a bicycle spoke and wooden ailerons, whereas the tip is to be made from a silver ball filed off of Mrs. Chief’s souvenir sugar bowl.” Mr. Trąba bowed slightly in the direction of Mother, who was sitting motionless.

“And the silver blade will pierce his bowels, and his belly, and the dirt shall come out. Poland, Poland,” resounded Father Pastor Potraffke’s hoarsely distorted voice.

Once again he raised up his arms, but now it might seem that he lifted on them a huge, invisible weight, and his face grew pale as paper, he panted heavily, his dark, fiery pupils fled time and again into the depths of his skull. The Pastor’s Wife jumped up from her place, but neither she nor any of us, who were seized with sudden fear, knew what to do. Pastor Potraffke now raised up his arms and the weight resting on them (all the heavier for the fact that it was invisible), and now he himself rose up from his place, and apoplectic blotches began to appear on his face, which gave the impression that he was slowly returning to life and consciousness. And indeed, he lowered one hand and extracted a Bible from his jacket pocket. He opened it with a mechanical, though seemingly infallible, gesture, and with a somewhat calmer, though still sufficiently apoplectic voice, he began to speak, read, and comment:

“I ask you, beloved brothers and beloved sisters, how many years have passed since the end of the war until today, until the year of our Lord 1963? Eighteen years. Eighteen. Listen, then, to what the Book of Judges has to say: ‘And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. So the children of Israel,’ listen carefully brothers and sisters, ‘the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for eighteen years.’ Just as we,” the pastor raised up his head and immediately let it drop again, “just as we have been serving the king of the Huns for eighteen years. Scripture speaks in this passage, the Book of Judges, chapter three, verse fourteen, about precisely eighteen years of bondage: ‘But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a man who did not use his right hand: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment on his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And Ehud came unto him and put forth his left hand and took the dagger forth from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. So that the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.’ That’s right. Dirt. Poland.”

Father Pastor Potraffke finished his furious, though ever quieter and ever calmer, reading from the Book of Judges, sat down heavily, and cast his careful gaze with unwaning fury across everyone sitting at the table, and then he said out of the blue:

“Nothing in the world, nothing will bring me to grant you confirmation. Dirt. Dirt. Poland. Poland.”

“Poland,” Mr. Trąba repeated after him as if an echo.

“Poland,” Grand Master Swaczyna repeated as if it were the response to a password.

“Poland, goal,” said Father.

“Poland, Poland, Poland,” said Mother, the Pastor’s Wife, and Małgosia Snyperek.

“Poland, Poland, Poland,” we began to repeat, one after another, to chant in unison “Poland, Poland,” like fans sitting in the same section of a stadium.

And the choralists, who were still standing on the podium and were still singing Czech songs to the accompaniment of the missionary orchestra, finally heard our “Poland, Poland,” for they finally fell silent for a moment, and not at all surprised, not even directing astounded glances in our direction, they immediately sang in Polish, with that same strong voice:

“Time to go home, it’s time. They already call us.

The bell from the tower to devotions,

Mother from the doorway to supper.

They already call, it’s time to go home, time.”

And we had to admit, and we always admitted later, and with genuine fervor, that the the morphinistes’ Czech boyfriends sang that old Polish song so skillfully that none of us heard even a hint of a foreign accent in their singing.