Snow for Two-Thirds of a Day and Night

“Snow for two-thirds of a day and night,

and one-third in a dream?”

— Stanisław Barańczak

Old man Trzmielowski was dying in the next room; Emma the lunatic wandered about the entire house; old lady Mary prayed in the kitchen; and Uncle Paweł, instead of keeping watch, snored dreadfully. I wasn’t afraid of anything. What is more, the gale was such that — so it seemed — the frozen mountains would budge from the spot. The gigantic wooden house rocked like Magellan’s ship, the roof creaked ever more loudly and distinctly; any moment its gibberish would become language; I think you could already hear individual words. Objects glided from place to place, the shadows of the hands that raised them were at times quite distinct — but I did nothing. I calmly waited for the moment when, in the next room, the footsteps of death would reverberate, when the old man would cease breathing, when the old lady would cease praying, when Uncle would awaken with a dreadful scream, when there would reverberate the crackle of matches lighting the funeral candle, and when finally, worn out by her lunatic wanderings, Emma, frenzied, pale like a corpse and covered with icy sweat, would return to my bed. I was seven years old, and I had begun to sleep with her before I fell in love with her. Worse: I slept with the one, but I loved the other. Every night I stuck to Emma’s cold sweat, and every day I played dominoes with Aria, Sister Ewelina’s ward. Right after young Trzmielowski’s wedding, it was still November, the snows of Greenland came tumbling down, we had a cold wave the likes of which the world has never seen, and for weeks on end it wasn’t possible to budge from the spot. Illnesses, on the other hand, came with great ease and in single file: tonsillitis, flu, scarlet fever; I was suffocating and losing consciousness; Emma Lunatyczka’s damp bedclothes weren’t bad for that.

We travelled to the wedding party in britzkas; Pastor Kalinowski in a VW bug; wedding revelers who lived high up came down from the mountains on foot, and now you couldn’t even get through on sleighs, now you couldn’t even dig out the sleighs themselves. Quite another matter that the air, for November, was supposedly too mild. Old man Trzmielowski looked around anxiously and said that it didn’t bode well. It ought to be fiery, but it is too warm. At that time he hadn’t yet begun dying, he circulated, dressed in black, among the revelers, ate ravenously, drank aggressively, smiled sheepishly. All the local old men — whenever they encounter anything that does not have to do with carpentry, mowing, or some other sort of labor — smile sheepishly. He was such an expert on the air that predicts a harsh winter. But walls doubled to that extent? — beyond the walls of the house, walls of snow, walls of winter, load-bearing walls of ice, and the whole way through the yard to the can was like breaking through one wall after another. I felt their weight, their pressure, their red-hot plaster.

“Do you remember a winter like this? Was it ever like this? Maybe in the emperor’s time? Maybe before with war with Japan?” Uncle Paweł awoke with the shakes, dug himself out from under pelts and sheepskins, and although he had something completely different in mind, led by some mysterious instinct of politeness, he engaged the dying great-great-great-, however many times great-grandfather in conversation. He didn’t look in the direction of the dark bed, he didn’t check to see whether the old man was sleeping or waking, but he showered him with words.

“You must remember such a winter, at least one. Because if you don’t remember such a winter, this means that there has never been such a winter, that it is happening for the first time. And if this is for the first time, I will have to talk differently with Mother.”

Uncle put on high boots, threw the sheepskin coat over his shoulders, which less than a quarter hour ago had covered him like a blanket, and disappeared out the door. After a moment, from the depths of the house, there reverberated raised voices; doubled steps went across the attic; someone cleared a way through the courtyard; horses snorted in the stable; some ancestor resting on a pile of cornflower blue pillows began in a whisper to tell some story from before the times of narration. The door opened, and Pastor Kalinowski — changed beyond recognition, in a flannel shirt, with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand — entered and pulled up a stool and sat at the head of the bed; at the spot where, any moment now, a six-foot black scythe would appear.

Sometimes, from the snowed-under center of town, you could hear bells. Had the sexton climbed the tower as usual? Did he see the tufts of smoke over the snowed-under environs? How did he manage with ropes that were frozen solid? Did shadows in hoods help him? My fever jumped, I wasn’t seeing phantoms, phantoms were my fervent dream. Some sort of connections existed. Tunnels carved out by animals, perhaps on the surface, and in the other direction you had to drag yourself to the road to Polana. Sometimes Pastor Kalinowski would disappear for a day, two days; the little room over the stairs, in which he lived, was locked up tight. Maybe he broke his way through by some miracle and was conducting a funeral in the labyrinths at the cemetery or a service in the icy church? Not likely, but who knows?

From time to time, everybody kept getting lost. Most often it was Uncle Paweł, but at least with him the matter was clear; it was known to one and all what he was looking for. He had been drinking since the wedding, which is to say, for four months now, and he still had something to drink. He must have been distilling it from the snow. Besides, there could still be reserves frozen in the cellars for all time. The Trzmielowskis prepared for the wedding party as if they knew that it would last half a year. Seven bridesmaids alone, of whom three were identically pregnant. All of them in the eighth month, and all called Hanula. All had dresses, veils, and sulfuric acid prepared, in order to disfigure, as soon as she left the church, the most beautiful of them, the one whom the groom would choose. The four other Hanulas finally gave up, dressed in black, wound black scarfs around their heads, and sat in the same pew. Young Trzmielowski had spent a May night with each of them, but God hadn’t been on their side. He didn’t stop the blood. He didn’t send them an appetite for herrings and pickles, and He didn’t cause their bellies to grow. For what sins? — nobody really knows. Their lives are over. One of them will throw herself under a train in three years; the second will still be living today, if she lives, in black; the third will emigrate, and they will say of her that she became a popular waitress in a Roman café; about the fourth, absolutely no news would be heard. Four fewer, but two were still in play. Two, because the prettiest is already standing at the altar. But those others in unstarched dresses, with veils aslant, with pots, from which a yellowish-brown smoke belches forth, are somewhere in the vicinity. They descend from the mountains, they are already at the station, they walk around the ski jump, and perhaps they are already circling the church.

There are people everywhere, even in the balconies, but no one is capable of concentrating on the bride and groom standing at the altar. Even the masters of ceremonies are looking around apprehensively. Old lady Mary, the bravest of them all, stands up from the pew time and again, goes out, comes back. Nothing gets better. The organist plunks away, but no one knows wedding hymns. In the hymnal, there are three wedding hymns for every hundred funeral dirges. Three pathetic hymns to the matrimonial altar for a hundred fantastic ones to the coffin. At burials and in cemeteries, everyone sings in top form. At weddings, no one can be bothered with pious ditties. And now? No point in wishing for better! The sulfur is about to flow, the terrible scream of the scalded bride is about to soar above the steeple. Finally, the organist plays When the morning stars are rising… but this causes an even greater muddle, because some are singing: “When the morning stars are rising/ Earth and sea Thy glories praising/ Join all nature’s voice in singing/ Praise to Thee, Oh God, we’re bringing,” and the rest, from out of the blue, although to that same melody: “In the path of Christ the Lord/ Let us sing with one accord/ For Christ this way did bring/ After eating songs to sing.” It was as if a swarm of buzzing hornets was flying under the church’s ceiling — such tension, and then suddenly quiet, a calm as after a storm. As then, when I stand in the window and gaze at the steaming stones of the Wisła courtyard, at Chowderhead the cat, walking cautiously between the puddles. Peace and quiet, as if there were no God and all his ghosts. Brethren, silence your hearts. Supposedly the four black Hanulas got up and left, and that was a guarantee that nothing would happen. But as soon as they moved away from the altar, the organist — he must have been completely out of it by now — started in on: For he’s a jolly good fellow… Only now did old lady Mary fly up the stairs to the organ like a jet plane; the sudden relief gave her more strength. But before she got there, he had started in on He that dwelleth… and it came out so well that people were sorry to leave the church steeple behind. The horses were washed, their manes plaited, to the britzkas, my damsels, to the britzkas. Through the ill-boding November air, around Czantoria, around Jarzębata and Kamienny, and up the serpentine road to Kubalonka, and to the station, and just a bit past the station. Seven barriers along the way. Dirty sheepskins on the left, ram’s fur, coal on the faces. We get past a few Beelzebubs and a barrier! A barrier on all three bridges. A barrier at Jurzyków, a barrier in Jawornik, a barrier in Gościejów, and, just before the house, yet another barrier. Paper money and combustible schnapps. Bread and salt. The musicians walk out into the courtyard and sit down on stools, and at first it is quiet, as if the celebration were coming from far off, but then ever louder and ever stronger, as if we were closer and closer to the meadow on which the first couples are dancing, as if I saw more and more, as if — only then — I was everywhere and saw everything, and as if — only then — I could tell of everything.

It was God’s doing that I sat at the table next to Emma Lunatyczka; that was a miracle, because the wedding guests came in a horde, and there were probably twenty-five tables, through all the rooms, like a white path through a labyrinth. Emma Lunatyczka was wearing an incomplete Silesian costume, and this — fuck it — killed me. In two weeks I was going to come down with whooping cough, scarlet fever, an infection of the inner ear, flu, tonsillitis, everything. In two week, unconscious, with a 104-degree temperature, I was to find myself in her bed. But now, on the spot, I came down with a bad case of incomplete Silesian costume, and later on it would be a bad case of any incomplete costume in general. Incurably, and for the rest of my life. Emma was wearing a heavy velvet skirt with a navy blue edging at the bottom, but a blouse of quite a different sort. The incredible blouses of delicate linen, and with the open shoulders and the small mandarin collar — the young girls would be wearing them half a century later. Christ the Lord! What a combination this was! A carnival bottom and white linen top. She looked as if, not yet ready, while searching for a sash or a bonnet, she had gotten mixed up with the wedding revelers, or like a mad procession of dancers had barged into her dressing room and swept her up just as she was standing there. The young girls, who were blind to her charms, comforted her in the corners: Don’t worry, we’ll find the whole costume for you for the next wedding! For sure! Emma thanked them humbly, but her gray and sparkling eyes betrayed her — she knew that she was the queen.

I wandered around the whole house: in the first room, those who were playing on combs prepared for their performance; in the second, those who were playing on bottles; in the third, miners from an American gold mine were changing into full regalia. The hallway was high, dark, and cold, like in a knight’s castle, all the doors black and tall, behind the fifth were reserve food supplies, behind the sixth a fire burned in the stove, around which sat the four black Hanulas. I was sure that they were crying; they had cried the whole time in the church, and it looked like they would go on crying until the ends of the lives — but no way! Heated, flushed, with black scarfs already undone, though not yet removed from their heads, they were as happy as clams, as if the decision had been for them after all.

“Join us, little girl,” said the one seated farthest away.

“I’m not a little girl,” I answered hundreds of times with a well-tested, maximally cold voice.

“But you look like a little girl. And if you look like a little girl, then you are a little girl, at least a bit. And if someone is a bit of a little girl, that means that he is in general a little girl,” the leader of the quartet of black Hanulas glanced at the three remaining ones and added significantly, “it is impossible to be slightly a little girl. It’s just that we had bad luck.”

And they began to laugh horribly, they roared with laughter, to this day I haven’t heard such laughter, nor have I seen such wallowing in laughter. All of a sudden, out of the blue, they stopped, and, as if they had practiced it a thousand times, with one melodious motion they slipped the undone scarfs from their heads.

“For now, we are undressing for you, a bit little boy, a bit little girl,” the whole time one of them did the talking, the others nodded their heads in agreement and looked at her with affectionate admiration and gratitude for expressing herself so beautifully in their names. “For now, we are undressing for you, but we don’t know what will come next. We prefer not to know. We prefer to pretend that we don’t know.”

The second and third Hanulas were blondes; the fourth was the most beautiful brunette in the world, and when she stood up and opened the little door to the stove and began, in the glow falling upon her, to add wood to the fire, she became so inhumanly beautiful that I got the shivers.

“Why are you so feverish, little girl?” the leader of the Hanulas came closer; she was the ugliest of them, and it wasn’t clear whether her plait, red in the light of the fire, was really red. “Why are you so feverish? You take care of yourself! Feverish little girls have to take special care of themselves. Don’t dance immoderately.”

The music came from all sides. Both the comb trio and the bottle quartet walked through all the halls and stairways. They walked in the direction of the courtyard and played like the possessed. The Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia were still having another shot, they were still puffing on their cigarettes, but they, too, began to look around for their instruments, for stools. Janek the tailor, on trumpet, the most talented of them all, was already climbing the podium, following him Władek the carpenter, on trombone, then Jurek the roofer, on clarinet, then Józef the bricklayer, on second trumpet, then Andrzej the stove-fitter, on accordion, then Master Sztwiertnia, on percussion, finally, old man Potulnik, on bass. The bottles and combs against the wall on the other side were already providing the melody, setting the tone; the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia were gazing at them attentively and listening closely; with the greatest attention, they prepared to enter upon the appropriate chord. Everything I have learned about the seriousness of art I owe to the musicians of Wisła. The Potulnik brothers with their instruments, with sheet music and music stands, dressed in white shirts and black vests were like members of the Philharmonic (all, except for Janek the tailor, on trumpet, had taken off their sports jackets to play). And those who were playing on bottles and combs were street musicians without elegant tailcoats and instruments, because, finally, what sort of instrument is that: a piece of parchment applied to a comb or to a bottle with the bottom broken off. But the music was one, the perfect pitch was the same, and the same the respect for the craft. And a faithful memory — for the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia had perfect memories of weddings from times gone by, festivities at which they had accompanied on bottles and combs the orchestra of old Nogowczyk, all of which has long turned to dust; and those members of the Philharmonic leaned down over their droning just the same way from the heights of the podium and played with them just the same. That’s right: they played with them. The music came from all sides. Master Sztwiertnia, the brothers Potulnik, all the Wisła musicians with the talents of Mozart: we can hear you. We hear your music. The grass rises on Gróniczek Cemetery Hill, and the heavens part over Czantoria.

About a month ago, I bought a CD: Mozart, Prague, Les dernières vendanges. A group called “Le Trio di Bassetto et ses invités” plays little pieces of Mozart and little pieces of little known or entirely unknown Czech composers of his era. My God! It isn’t any “Trio di Bassetto,” it’s the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia who are playing! The spirits of the brothers Potulnik have been incarnated in that “Trio di Bassetto!” Even more! One of the “invités”—the percussionist — that isn’t the spirit of Master Sztwiertnia! That is Master Sztwiertnia, flesh and blood! I recognize him without the shadow of a doubt! Only he had that incomprehensibly rhythmic and at the same time thoroughly free, delicate, and exceptionally strong beat on the drum.

There are thirty-one seconds of music on that CD composed by an anonymous contemporary of Mozart’s, and those thirty-one seconds are my life, my childhood, my literature, and my music. My eternity lasts thirty-one seconds. Play that over my grave, but four times. Let me be granted a fourfold eternity. Let me be granted a whole one hundred and twenty-four seconds. I’ll have clay in my ears, but I will hear. That is the music that the Potulnik brothers and Master Sztwiertnia played at young Trzmielowski’s wedding. This is music that was recorded then and there. God already had the suitable equipment in the fifties of the twentieth century. That is the music to the accompaniment of which funerals walked and wedding parties drove through the streets of Wisła; this is the music to which floods, snows, and heat waves descended upon us. Our sky brightened and darkened to this music. Andrzej Wantuła would visit us to this music, to this music we would sit down to the Christmas Eve table, this music was playing when Grandpa would light the fire in the hearth at dawn, and when anyone entered our gigantic kitchen. This music was there when, one fine day, an angel with folded wings stood in the middle of our courtyard that was paved with river stones.

The brothers Potulnik and Master Sztwiertnia played their hearts out, time after time and with variations, langsam und trübe. The four black Hanulas suddenly began to crowd before the mirror. I again looked into all the rooms, but they were all empty. There weren’t even the miners from the American gold mine dressed up in uniforms. “Aria! Aria!” I called as if in my sleep, “Aria, where are you?” She was the first and the greatest love of my life. God sent me many fantastic women. I have been with completely dazzling women; I loved them, and they loved me, but however often I think of Aria in a gray skirt sewn from an old coat turned inside out, whenever I think of that little girl, older than me by three or maybe four years, I am always certain that she was meant for me. She would have kept watch over me, at her side I would have had a good life, we would have set up house together in an old house, eternally covered with snow. Every Sunday we would have gone to the main church service, in the evenings we would have played dominoes and drunk tea with chokeberry syrup. Sometimes, when she would have gone on some larger shopping errand to Cieszyn, and if the couple hours without her were unbearable, I would have taken a thick notebook with green covers and attempted to continue the story about chess or about my first love, which I had begun long ago. But always, before I could compose even one sentence, I would hear her opening the gate and walking across the yard, and I would leave my writing and go out to meet her and relieve her of the heaviest bag with the books, wine, and bread, and we would sit in the kitchen, and she would tell me the news. This would have been a thousand times better than the fulfillment that is granted to me now: when, after constructing the hundredth, or even the thousandth sentence, no one opens the gate, no one goes through the yard, and no one tells me the news. I have what I wanted: I can compose sentences to the bitter end.

Aria! Aria! Aria! Aria in my dreams. Emma Lunatyczka in reality. My hands passed along the icy skin, raised the nightshirt stiff from the cold; touch took me once and for all into its animal possession. Touch and betrayal. In the very middle of the darkness, I would get out of bed. Somewhere under its frame stood the chamber pot, against which I had a psychological block, unlike, incidentally, Emma, who — no matter whether conscious or unconscious, in a lunatic march or with entirely deliberate shamelessness — if she felt the need, would sit down and fire away with a sharp, and at the same time delicate, stream. I couldn’t do it. I had to pull on my shoes, put on a shirt, sweater, whatever was handy, and fight my way through the ever colder circles to the can in the courtyard. I never had yellow fever or malaria, but from those times I knew what malarial or yellow-fever shivers meant. At times the courtyard looked like a golden meadow. The curtains of the next frosts hovered above, and on the snow were impressed countless stamps of constellations. I ran over them with the lightness of a ballet dancer. The can was always the beginning of the abyss. The devil is caked with shit. Death smells of the rust that has settled on the scythe. The four black Hanulas danced until they dropped; they ought to dance to the last black thread; they ought — almost naked, emaciated, dead tired — to freeze in their dance, as soon as the first Sunday of Advent comes. But the smell of rust came earlier.

Two days before the death of old man Trzmielowski, Uncle Paweł got up, lay down, walked, flew like a madman. One impulse after another. One spasm after another. Not a moment of rest, violent and anxious sleep, his face blackened, dried froth in the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t so much that the bottle was always at hand, as that it was always in his hand. The last one, and almost empty. An absolutely full moon hangs over the courtyard and gilds the path to the can. I returned to an empty bed. Emma — whenever it took hold of her especially forcefully — would scoop up the featherbed. She would carry it before her in her errorless wanderings, and she slept on it as if on a cloud. Everything makes sense. Death would arrive any minute. Uncle Paweł would catch sight of it two days earlier. He would come to, and he would see, from the depths of the hallway, Death riding on a cloud. It keeps on riding, but instead of making the turn, it bypasses the door behind which the old man was waiting for it. It rides further. Rides further, rides straight on. It is closer and closer. It’s right around the corner. The smell of rust already fills nostrils fossilized from hooch. “Wrong address! Wrong address! Reverse! Back!” Uncle’s shout rises to the heavens, although he himself isn’t certain that he is saying any words. “Wrong address! Reverse gear! Back up! Back and to the left! Wrong address!” He shouted so loudly that the cloud that was preceding Death retreated and completely melted away. The wrestling of the delirious with the lunatic was like the wrestling of Jacob with the Angel. The brownish sweat of the alcoholic against the icy sweat of the lunatic. Real death came two days later. You couldn’t hear its footsteps, no one saw the scythe resting on the headboard. Although the mistake had been definitively explained, Uncle Paweł still didn’t really believe in miraculous survivals. All the less did he believe that there was nothing left to drink. For the time being, since there would be this and that at the wake, and they would need quite a lot of it. But no way would he wait for the wake. When would the smugglers come down the mountains? When would the little church bells of their Czech half-quart bottles ring in the backpacks? When? The old man lay belly up, the old lady was wiping his aquiline and yellow profile with pure spirits. With each wipe the old man’s profile took on aquilinity, yellowness, aquilinity, yellowness. The bottle stood on the stool, more than half was left. Snow was piling up on the roof, someone shouted in the depths of the house, Emma laughed bizarrely in the kitchen, something fluttered in the attic, something struck — like a lightning bolt, but a weak one. The old lady left the old man, who was now almost completely ready for the coffin, flew through the hallway, through the courtyard, and back again. How long was she gone? Five minutes? Not even five minutes! And there wasn’t a drop of the spirits left! The bottle was empty! It looked like the deceased had come to for a moment, looked around, found it, took a goodly chug, and fallen asleep for all time. “It was stronger than me,” old lady Mary would say later on, “it was stronger than me. For a fraction of a second, a terrible suspicion crept into my heart: he arouse from the dead, drank it off, and died for good.”

The history of the evaporation of the spirits for wiping the skin of the deceased has no explanation, nor even a continuation. The gods of understanding and elegance celebrate. They clink glasses, who cares for what. Uncle Paweł tells the story to the end of his life — about how Death got the wrong address. I look around, where is that little black whore heading! Where? Heading for me! Precisely for me! You’ve got the wrong address, you little black whore! Reverse and turn left! But she stumbles onto me like an avalanche from beyond the grave! This is the end, so I think! And so it has come now! But never, no, not ever, we will never surrender! With what is left of my strength I part the black dunes, and I look, and the beast has Emma’s head, Emma’s nightshirt, Emma’s ass, and Emma’s tits! And if it has the head, nightshirt, ass, and tits of Emma, then it is Emma. I’m alive, I haven’t died.

After the old man’s funeral, the Christmas holidays came at a gallop, after the holidays — hog slaughtering time. Hogs possessed by demons and dripping blood ran through the courtyard, fell into the snow, hid themselves in the drifts, fought and squealed, as if their further life were important. Drifts and specters. Half-naked butchers surrounded them in an ever tighter circle. Tables continued to pass through the rooms, the fat flowed through them. Ice blocks as large as the pyramids, cut out under the bridge, glided by on carts. After the hog-slaughtering, Aria departed forever. I don’t know whether she is still alive. If she is, then she will be pushing sixty. Wedding, funeral, holidays, hog-slaughtering. Flu, scarlet fever, whooping cough, pneumonia. One hundred and twenty-four seconds of eternity. During the Christmas Eve supper, Sister Ewelina impulsively sneezed, and the candle on the table went out. The impulsiveness spoke clearly: of all of those gathered here, you will die first, Sister Ewelina. There was no help now. The sleigh was already setting off to dig the hole. By sleigh to the hospital in Cieszyn. The feverish head on the massive thighs of Emma Lunatyczka. Aria! Aria! Aria! Where is our life?

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