My First Suicide

The Spirit of Miraculous Discoveries

I

The bizarrely dressed female vacationer was Mother’s age, or perhaps even older. We pursued her, but we were unable to focus on her. She traversed the center of town and the neighboring valleys by paths just as bizarre as her outfits. She would suddenly emerge from beyond the bend; it wasn’t clear whether the dark colorations on her fantastic dresses were a pattern or a sweat stain; but it was clear that it was necessary to drop everything and set off after her. Sometimes, when we were playing soccer, her tall and dreadfully thin silhouette would appear on the road to Almira, which ran above the playing field; something would then force us to interrupt the match; in panicky haste we would wash in the stream, get dressed, and rush around. Janek always slowed everything down, because, first, he wanted to keep playing, and then, he would wash as if he were going to the ball. He would pull the faded baggy pants from his hips, jump into the deepest part of the stream, and swim endlessly in the dark green water. He would climb out, comb his hair with inordinate care, drowsily put on his black pants and white shirt — he made a point of getting on our nerves.

The bizarrely dressed vacationer constantly turned back, and here was the entire hope and terror of the chase: we were on the trail of a specter that would suddenly cease to flee, turn back around, and vengefully set off in our direction. She would arrive at some place known only to her and turn around; she would suddenly back up, suddenly make violent and panicky reversals, as if lava from Etna or Vesuvius were flowing from the spot she had touched with her foot. Then there was no way out: we had to trudge on; she would approach relentlessly; we would have much preferred to turn tail and run, but, in the first place, we had our honor, and in the second, we were drawn to the high voltage. No two ways about it — the gamble was out of this world — it always seemed to us that, at the moment we passed, she would do something uncanny, scream or lunge at our necks with her long, carmine nails. Nothing of the sort ever happened, although always, when she was right there, we got the shivers. Janek would shake like jello.

She seemingly didn’t do anything terrible, but all the same, what she did was sufficiently terrible. Always, when we were face to face, and when we cast furtive glances in her direction, she would bite her lips in a theatrical manner, make bizarre faces, as if she were choking with laughter. As if, by force of will, she were suppressing an attack of hysterical weeping or tubercular coughing. Her eyes were popping out of her head, her face flushed, her lips unnaturally twisted — it looked like she knew everything. Like she understood perfectly well that she was constantly being followed, and like she constantly laughed at the fact. This was disconcerting and horrifying in the extreme; we swore that, seeing that the old tart has such a high opinion of herself, we would not even glance in her direction again. But there was no escape from her fatal magnetism — after a couple days the rituals would begin anew.

In any case, it soon turned out that she was making bizarre faces the whole time, that, for the entire length of her walks, she fought back spasmodic laughter, weeping, coughs. Contrary to appearances, this mitigated the terror — it is always better when someone has some sort of permanent attack, and not only at our sight.

The most bizarre were her dresses, inappropriate for either the time of day or the season of the year. Some sort of sophisticated creations with long sleeves, made of heavy materials like brocade, mandarin collars under the neck, lace collars, some sort of gigantic embroideries, cream-colored on green, orange on dark blue — by that time, even then, nobody dressed like that, not for any occasion. Today, I think that Janek Nikandy — always in black pants and always in a white shirt — suited her perfectly.

II

He played soccer as if he were composing music to accompany his runs along the length of the field, to accompany the smell of the grass, the ball darkening from the dampness, always falling upon his foot as if from heaven. He swam in the deepest part of the river as if he were composing music to accompany swimming in the deepest part. He collected stamps as if he were composing music to accompany stamp collecting. He read everything he came upon, as if he heard song in everything that had been written. He would raise a mug of beer, throw back his head, and drink, just as the greatest composers in the world must have drunk.

He examined the girls at the swimming pool, and it was clear that he knew everything about them. We set our sights on the middling ones, he scorned even the best. He was waiting for the most beautiful one among the most beautiful; but even she couldn’t be certain that she would be accepted. This didn’t surprise anyone. It was clear to everyone that Janek could have any woman in the world at any moment, that he would go far: that he would complete the entire blacksmith’s training course in a year, two at most; that he would then, likewise in a flash, complete a few majors, go abroad, go through Oxford, Harvard, fly into the cosmos, win the Chopin competition, be the first Pole to buy Real Madrid, discover new stars, construct an everlasting battery for a flashlight, discover a vaccination for cancer, or do other miracles.

Janek had everything: stacks of books in the attic; collections of incredible objects in the drawers; a one-eyed father who forbade him nothing; a mother as beautiful as an Egyptian priestess; two unbearable sisters; three dissolute brothers, who could fix anything; a mentally ill grandmother, who never left her room; and a grandfather, who had been dying for years, and who barely spoke Polish. Supposedly before one of the old wars he had had a different name and had been a famous Viennese tailor. It is uncertain whether Robert Musil had his suits sewn by him, whether Hermann Broch had his pants shortened, but it is possible.

III

The Nikandys didn’t go to church, they held their religious services at home. The entire family sat at the table every day, the one-eyed father read from the Bible, prayed with concentration, then he spoke about the presence of God in our lives and about various spirits, mostly about the Spirit of Light and the Spirit of Darkness.

I feared the God of the Nikandys — He was too near. The Spirit of Light would show himself and disappear, the Spirit of Darkness lurked in every corner. In our Church, God was at a safe distance, and there weren’t any spirits at all.

But much worse than the Spirit of Light, than the Spirit of Darkness, than all the other spirits known to Janek, was the Spirit of Miraculous Discoveries. I think he kept it under his collar, I think it sat on his shoulder and whispered where he should look. Janek happened upon everything. I would be walking next to him on the banks of the same river, treading the same earth, but it was he who would bend down and pick up parts of Stalin-era motorbikes, feathers from Caribbean birds, cogwheels on quartz pivots, silver keys to God knows what safes. It was he who would pull out from the bottom of the deepest part of the river washed out dials from submerged clocks, fish skeletons coated with phosphorus, stones as symmetrical as octagons, brittle teacups without a single crack, bracelets of thick glass shining like green stars, Austrian, German, Russian, and even Swiss coins. I came upon nothing but unremarkable things: a tin cup, a smashed thermos, a penknife covered with rust, a fork with the inscription “Silesian Gastronomy.” Nothing worth talking about.

You could beat him at soccer sometimes, especially when he had too many bush leaguers on his team. I swam almost as well as he did. I had the same sort of household, maybe even a gaudier mixture. I was definitely better at chess — except that this remained somewhat in the realm of theory, since, once he realized that he couldn’t beat me, he ceased playing entirely. In any event, I had no complexes, I didn’t suffer. I was in his shadow, but I rather admired than envied him. The harmony full of perfect lights that he had within him aroused my adoration, not my envy.

But whenever he found the next remarkable object, whenever he would bend down, and, the next time, pull out, literally from under my shoe, the moveable fragment of some sort of phenomenal mechanism, or the brass buckle from a Red Army belt, or a retort overgrown with moss, which a group of wandering alchemists must have lost on this spot centuries ago — then I hated him with all my heart. There was an abyss between us in the art of observation: he was a master, I an abject loser. I always lost that match and always by a score of something to zero. I lost for a time. Not so much until the time of my desired victory as until the time of the final disaster. Until the time of the disaster of disasters.

Janek would receive his discoveries with manly self-restraint: no leaps or euphoria — it was just the norm; and, in fact, it was the norm that he always found something. But one day, when we had traversed the length and breadth of Wisła in pursuit of the vacationer in brocade dresses; once we had accompanied her practically to the very doors of Villa Almira and then run back down and descended, next to the swimming pool, to the water of the river, warm after the sultry day, and we set off along its twists and turns toward the reddish-brown sky over Czantoria Mountain, and when, under the third bridge, Janek bent down and dug something up from the river’s stone chippings — this time even he shouted, even he lifted his arms in victory. He held something very nondescript in his hand and waved it feverishly in my direction. I was in no hurry to celebrate his most recent triumph. I pretended that the water was offering greater resistance than it did. I approached slowly, but still — even when I was already quite near — I couldn’t recognize what he had come upon this time. Finally, seeing that I still didn’t get it, he put the thing to his eyes, and I understood that this was a pair of binoculars left behind by the Germans, similar to a fossilized crab, overgrown with gravel and algae. (And anyway, the number of binoculars left during the war by the retreating Wehrmacht is shocking. Sometimes it is impossible not to think that our earth, saturated with the blood of heroes and filled with the ashes of martyrs, is also overgrown with the lenses of Carl Zeiss.)

We began to scrub it while we were still in the water, then on the shore, then in our neighboring courtyards, and the more its original shape emerged out of the chaos, the higher my heart soared. And when, finally, it was entirely restored — that is, when, through one of its tubes, you could see some sort of image that was foggy, but brought nearer all the same — I became triumphally certain: this time I would be better. I didn’t even need to summon the Spirit of Miraculous Discoveries. I knew where to look.

IV

I searched the back room inch by inch. I looked under both beds. I dug out everything that was under the beds, and there was quite a lot of it. I looked into each and every shoe. I checked the straw mattresses. Night stands — so filled with objects that they were practically inflated — took me a lot of time. Then I checked the interior of the clock, the hearth under the stove, the ash pan under the hearth, and finally I stood before Grandma Pech’s wardrobe, heavy, deep, and dark as the ocean.

To say that no one but her had access to that wardrobe is to say nothing. Grandma herself seldom opened that wardrobe, and always with some sort of uncertainty or fear. She would then close the doors behind her; she would chase away anyone who just then happened to look in on the back room and ask her about something; just like in a film — she would block out the wardrobe with her own body, so that no one could even glance into it.

All the domestic furniture made themselves known: the table creaked, the stools were falling apart, the upholstery on the armchairs was tearing, the sideboard was headed for collapse, the stoves smoked — there was constant talk about pieces of equipment that were falling to pieces. We talked about them, and we talked to them; it was as if constant conversation with the dying objects was supposed to keep their spirits up. We talked especially frequently about all the cupboards: what to put in which one, what to bring from which one, in which one hymnals stand on the shelves, in which one Grandpa’s postal uniform was hanging, in which one there was a box of winter socks, in which one the bottom was falling out, in which one the locks needed to be oiled, in which one mice had danced the night before; this, that, and the other thing. All the cupboards were constantly on our tongues. But about the wardrobe in the back room — never even a single word. As if it didn’t exist, or rather, as if it were a wall-less specter, as if it didn’t have hinges, as if no one knew what was in it. As if demons with unpronounceable names lived in it, or as if the path to the abyss opened up in the wall behind it.

I stood before that wardrobe as before the gates to a forbidden city; there was a terrible silence in the entire house. The spirits of the world’s leading burglars sat on my shoulders and whispered advice about what I should do. My hands glided over the dark pear wood and correctly felt out the weak places. I guessed the most secret codes; invisible keys slipped into locks that had been oiled just a moment before; the tree rings in the wood were like a legible map leading straight to the treasure. The wardrobe in the back room, brittle like a decayed cork, or perhaps heavy like lead, opened slowly. I smelled the scent of silk blouses from the twenties. On hangers hung patterned and light dresses from those times — one with a deep décolletage in the back, a second made of pleated yellow crêpe de Chine; two satin jackets (one matte, the other shiny), a raincoat with circus designs, a jersey bathing suit — no ghosts, no werewolves: the spirit of a young girl lived in this wardrobe. The spirit of the young body of Grandma Pech, sprinkled with naphthalene as if with slaked lime, was imprisoned there. This was its kingdom, this was what was guarding — as if they were precious jewels — the brown suit and the green hunting outfit, which were hanging there on the other side; the yellowed curtains, which were lying on the shelves, and which, in their time, had hung in the windows; it watched over the bed linens, which fell apart in your hands; it dusted the stack of books from the bordeaux-colored series entitled Library of Masterpieces, which was hidden away in the depths; it was the spirit that looked through the album, wrapped in brittle oilcloth, with photographs from her first wedding; it had in its care all the ties, hats, neckerchiefs, scarfs; it was what hovered over the boxes that stood on the floor of the wardrobe.

I took into my hands object after object, opened box after box. In the first were tangles of fossilized yarn and a million buttons. In the second, promissory notes, bills, postcards. In the third, daguerreotypes — fragile as emigration — of old man Trzmielowski and old lady Mary, with Humphrey the cat in her hands; they stand, smiling broadly, before an iron gate leading to a gold mine in Nevada. No wonder they are laughing. They would return to Wisła soon thereafter, and, in addition to the eccentric custom of giving Anglo-Saxon names to the household animals, they would bring with them so many dollars that there would be enough for satin jackets and dresses with décolletage for Zuza. The fourth box was full of burned out prewar light bulbs. A collection that was not sorrowful or comical, but lofty and romantic. Who among you women has loved like this? What woman in the world got the idea of saving the light bulbs that had shined during the lifetime of her beloved? As a memento of that by-gone light over their heads; as a memento of those moments when they were gently extinguished over their bed?

A pair of hunting binoculars, which were older than World War II and had belonged to Grandma’s first husband, were in the fifth box. I knew about their existence, because, from time to time, whenever unique astronomical phenomena occurred — when bizarre air vehicles glided over the mountains, or on a summer night something unusual happened in the sky: the Big Dipper made such a big dip that its handle cracked, or the North Star shined ever more strongly from minute to minute, as if it were flying straight toward our yard — whenever such spectacles occurred in the cosmos over our heads, Grandma Pech went to the back room, meticulously shut the door behind her, and returned after a moment with the binoculars.

Once, we observed a biplane circling over Wisła; once, a comet over Czantoria Mountain. The biplane circled desperately and in vain and couldn’t find a way to straighten out its flight or make the decision to land; it looked tragic to the naked eye, but entirely different with the binoculars. The plates of the fuselage were about to drop off, its flight was about to end, but through the binoculars we saw the plane soaring calmly in the sky, the solid riveting of the wings, the equally shining dials on the control panels. Janek was even able to catch sight of the pilot’s face. Supposedly he wasn’t in a panic at all, supposedly — quite the opposite — he was in sovereign control of the rudders, and this was most likely accurate, for suddenly, after one of the circlings, he stepped hard on the gas and disappeared over Jarzębata Mountain. The motors fell silent; we were sure that he had landed on the peak. We rushed up there as if on wings, in an absolutely full sprint. Usually it takes at least an hour to walk to the peak of the Jarzębata — we were there in a few minutes. I will never forget the sudden silence of our thudding hearts and the yellow meadow, in the middle of which the biplane ought to have stood, its propeller still revolving, and yet there wasn’t a trace — only the great calm of the Beskid peak, the warm breath of the sun, the gentle ocean of the blue sky, and a partridge suddenly shooting upward.

From a distance, the comet over Czantoria Mountain looked like normal fire, except that it was slowly floating through the air; but from up close, it looked like a red-hot bulldozer driving in first gear. The binoculars brought everything close: the pieces that were incessantly falling off the humming machinery, the meteors that were constantly revolving — as in a cauldron — in its very center, the blizzards of snow creating an ideal fan, the spotlights wandering across the peaks of the mixed forest.

V

I carefully erased the traces of a plundering expedition that had been crowned with complete success. I arranged all the boxes and all the objects in their proper places. Then, with the treasure hidden under my shirt, I flitted through the house; then, along the steep path up the railway embankment. I was the happiest person in the world: I was running toward certain victory; Janek didn’t have a chance.

An image that was foggy, but nonetheless brought nearer? I had exaggerated in the first euphoric moment. The binoculars found on the river bottom didn’t bring anything nearer, literally not a thing. They were suitable for placing on an altar. For the very peak of the old bureau, in which Janek kept all his discoveries. That is where he put it, and there — like the crown of miraculous discoveries — he worshipped it. I had a hard time believing it, but a few times I caught him casting glances that seemed uncanny to me, because I didn’t know that they were tender. I swear. I was jealous of his love for the old German binoculars, and I offered him — I know that this will sound terrible — much more attractive goods. All of this took place blindly and in the dark, but I simply agreed that he could love his, while using mine. Blindly and in the dark, I attempted to convince him to commit infidelity. Everything I did, I did instinctively. He — as it would turn out — not only knew everything; he also knew how to give everything a name.

We stood on the embankment, and we turned in all directions, and we saw right in front of our noses the clock on the church tower, a swimmer jumping from the diving platform into the pool, the border patrols walking along the border on the top of Stożek Mountain, women sprinters practicing in the stadium, clouds on Ram Mountain, perhaps even the tower of the Cieszyn Castle. We saw everything! Everything at every moment could be brought near! Every meadow, every courtyard, every car, every swimming suit, every head, all the legs, all the shoulders. The carnival of unbridled close-up peeping had begun! Everything! With details! The unprecedented season of bringing near all that is far had begun!

It had begun, but we didn’t give a damn. The binoculars, which were as rare as the comet over Czantoria Mountain, brought everything probably a thousand times nearer, but we were interested in bringing only one thing nearer. Only one. No couples disappearing into the woods, no girls changing clothes on the river bank, no women’s dressing rooms at the swimming pool, no female athletes standing under the showers after practice, no rooms in which God knows who was doing what! No mythological meadows near Bukowa, on which nymphs from Gliwice danced with Chorzów satyrs! No wide open windows in the tourist hotels! None of them!

None — except for one! You smile, because you know right off the bat — just like us — what window we’re talking about here. You smile, because — just like us — you don’t know what sort of tragedy would immediately follow! That’s right! The unprecedented season of looking at everything from up close basically never even got started. Or rather, strictly speaking, it ended before it could get started! That’s right. It ended before we understood that it had dawned.

It goes without saying: among all those wide open Wisła windows, among all the wide open windows of the Principality of Cieszyn, among all the wide open windows in the world — only one window came into play. You guessed it. Her window. Under the very roof of the Almira, on the left side, a window that was open round the clock — even when summer downpours came — and lit up every evening with a thick, yellow luster, which didn’t go out until late in the night. The window of the bizarrely dressed female vacationer. Who knows what sorts of secrets would finally be revealed! Finally, we would discover what that freak did in the evening! What she was up to! What her life consisted of! How many more dresses — and just how bizarre — did she still have in her wardrobe!

I was overflowing with repeated waves of pride. Not only had I had enough courage and skill to break into a dresser that was, perhaps, inhabited by evil spirits. Not only did the discovery extracted from there slightly trump Janek’s discovery. Not only did it give the gift of bringing everything near. Not only did it bestow the overwhelming power that all the peeping toms of the world savor. It was also the key to a fundamental secret. It allowed us to solve the greatest mystery of that summer! Janek could just go ahead and keep that optical ruin of his on the top of the dresser, he could venerate it, worship it like the golden calf. But just let him attempt to climb up the diving platform at the swimming pool, and just let him attempt to see from there into the depths of the yellow light under the roof of the Almira. Lord God! What preeminence You have finally given me supremacy over my always prevailing friend! Of what pride have You given me to drink! You have even permitted me to see humility — let’s say: a certain humility — in his eyes and in his motions. For it was with humility, with the humility of the subordinate that Janek Nikandy climbed up the diving tower at the swimming pool that evening.

Granted, it was he who, one fine day, drew an ideal line in the air, connecting the top of the tower to the window in question; granted, it was he who forced me to climb that Mount Everest and pointed out the distant rectangle, entirely dark in the blinding sun; granted, it was under his leadership that we sneaked over to the swimming pool one evening and, trembling in the darkness, which was lit up by the leaden surface of the water, climbed up to the highest platform of our observatory and stared at the yellow light as if at a distant, motionless star; granted, it was he who said at that time: If only we had a telescope, or at least the pair of binoculars; granted, it was he who, about a week later, dug up from the bottom of the river his treasure of treasures; granted, granted, granted! All of it granted! But now, at the decisive moment, now, at the threshold of the night that was to settle everything; now — under my leadership — we climbed the tower! Now I had slung over my shoulder a set of Carl Zeiss lenses of the highest, prewar quality, which would allow us to see into — and this was no time for modesty — the fundamental mystery of existence.

I was the leader, and I knew that I was the leader, and I knew what sort of leader I wanted to be. Magnanimity — as befitted the greatest leaders of humanity — never left my heart. When we found ourselves at the top, when the delicate, dark blue breeze embraced our heads. And when we had turned our faces toward the yellow light, I took Gustaw Branny’s hunting binoculars off my shoulder, and I passed them to Janek. He, in turn, took them without a word, lifted them to his eyes, and looked for a long time. A long time. A very long time. For an inordinately long time, he scrutinized the unfathomable lighthouse pulsating with yellow splendor. For a long time, he sought out the mysterious lighthouse keeper in brocade dresses who was living there. For a long time. A very long time. For a long time, he stared at the peak of Olympus covered with a yellow cloud, and for a long time, he waited for the figure of the goddess to emerge from the clouds of glory. For a long time. A very long time. An exceptionally long time.

“What, for fuck’s sake? What do you see?” My nerves got the better of me, and I lost the dignity of the leader.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“Well, fucking nothing.”

“What nothing?

“Nothing.”

“You have to see something. Do you see her?”

“I do.”

“So why are you bullshitting me that you’re not seeing anything?”

“I’m not bullshitting. I’m not seeing anything.”

“What do you mean you’re not seeing anything, when you are?”

“I’m not seeing anything.”

“Do you see her?

“I do.”

“So what is she doing?

“Nothing, fuck it, she isn’t doing anything. She’s sitting at a table and writing.”

I couldn’t stand any more tension; my nerves were completely shot. I fell out of not only the role of leader, but out of all roles and all functions. And with some incomprehensible sorrow in my heart; with some sort of desperate grievance toward the world, that it doesn’t have any mysteries; or perhaps with the terrible suspicion that my friend was lying, that he was deceiving me and didn’t want to tell about the unprecedented things that he was seeing — with a sudden and violent motion, I reached for the binoculars. Too suddenly and too violently, a thousand times too suddenly and a thousand times too violently, because not only did I not manage to grasp them, lift them to my eyes; not only did I not manage to catch sight, dumbfounded, of the bizarrely dressed female vacationer sitting at the desk and writing; but I didn’t manage to do anything. I didn’t manage to do anything, because, suddenly, everything was over. Suddenly everything — speaking both metaphorically and literally — came crashing down. With a precise and strong blow — which, if I had really wanted to inflict it, I would never have been able to do with such precision and strength — with an unprecedented, and unintentional, simple boxer’s punch, or perhaps a volleyball player’s spike, I dislodged the binoculars from Janek Nikandy’s hands, and they, like a flighty, nocturnal creature slipping through our fingers, flew to the ground. Unfortunately, this was not the desperate leap of the escapee attempting to regain his freedom, it was not the liberating leap into the water: it was a suicidal leap onto the cement.

I wasn’t certain whether I was hearing the crack of the bursting casing, the crunching of the lenses as they were ground to dust, or Janek’s diabolical snicker. Sometimes, in the famous least appropriate moments, a strange laughter came over him. Once, with precisely that same sort of snicker, he told us that one of his sisters, fourteen-year-old Regina, was pregnant, and that his father would probably kill her; or that May First was no holiday at all, but an invention of the Communists; or that his mother, Mrs. Nikandy, beautiful as a Grecian goddess, goes to the WC at night completely naked — in none of these stories was there anything comic. Nor was there even a hint of consolation over the smashed binoculars lying below the diving platform. I was too innocent and too young for the phrase—“it’s so terrible that it’s funny”; Janek, too — except that he laughed. He didn’t know that it was so tragic that it was funny; but he had already been blessed by the household deity of the Nikandys with the gift of laughter that surpasses consciousness. And tragicomic events now followed with unprecedented speed, and one after another. First, in the glowing yellow window of the Almira there appeared — fear had sharpened our senses, for we could see it even without the binoculars — a dreadfully tall and thin silhouette, and right away thereafter, as if it had God knows what sort of volatility, it began, like a skier schussing in the darkness, to fly in our direction. Before we managed to climb down, on entirely wobbly legs, she was already there, shining a flashlight thin as a pencil, and gathering the glassy gravel, to which the binoculars had been reduced, into a plastic bag.

At first, we thought it wasn’t her, that it was one of the female sprinters, who were at their training camp Start. For the bizarrely dressed female vacationer was not dressed bizarrely at all this time. She wasn’t wearing any brocade dresses with incredible patterns, but a dark green sweatsuit, which made her look a hundred years younger. On her head — no curls, buns, or bouffants, instead her hair was drawn into a pony tail. From time to time, a lively beam of the flashlight illuminated her face, and then it became clear what beautiful, what expressive, and what — I have no better word for it — quick features she was hiding on a daily basis under vulgar make-up.

My God, how miraculous it would have been to have made all these discoveries through the binoculars! To peep at her every evening! To discover, every evening, a different secret — now the secret of the dress, now the secret of the hairdo, now the secret of the make-up! And You, Lord God, knocked the binoculars from my fingers, You commanded the bizarre angel, with make-up rinsed off and her hair combed out for sleep, to fly directly down to us. You commanded us to experience all the epiphanies at once. You commanded us to stare at her from right up close, without the binoculars. And You condemned — me at least — to a life-long mania for distinctively beautiful female loonies that are slightly past thirty!

We stood completely motionless, like a couple of complete dunces. The phantom in the green sweatsuit seemed not to pay us the least attention, and only once she had finished her work, once she had gathered up the smashed lenses, down to the last speck of dust, then she stood up straight and came up to us, and one by one she took first me, then Janek by the chin, and then shined the flashlight, first in our eyes, and then in her own — as if she were performing some sort of shamanist presentation — and she said, Bandits, complete bandits, with some sort of stifled and passionate voice. To this day, I remember that flash of light in her grey pupils, and I remember the intensity of those pupils, and I remember the dark hieroglyphs in their depths, and I am absolutely positive that in those signs were recorded the beginnings of all my amorous prayers.

“Now one of you bandits will follow me. I will give him the address in Katowice at which, after a certain time, the binoculars, like new, will be ready for pick-up. Whole and like new. Precisely the same. He, from whom you took them, he, from whom you borrowed them, and he, to whom you will return them, won’t notice a thing.”

She saved us, perhaps she even saved our lives, but — for the saving of life — she had a voice that was inappropriate. “Which of the bandits will follow me? Oh, of course, the more dangerous one. You’ll come,” she took Janek by the hand, “you’re the dangerous one, perhaps even menacing. You’ve got an evil look in your eyes. And you,” she turned to me, “you will wait here for your friend like a good boy. It won’t take long.”

With a fear that I didn’t know how to name — it certainly wasn’t fear for the smashed binoculars — I watched as the doubled shadow, hers and Janek’s, receded from me, as it climbed the steep slope in the direction of the Almira, as it vanished among other shades — then a completely dark and very long night ensued. Someone ran, or perhaps fled, through the center of Wisła, you could hear his panicky foot patter; then someone’s cry resounded, strangely joyous and triumphal; then the 11:23 train to Zawiercie gathered speed on the embankment. Had I fallen asleep? Was it the first time that I dreamed the best dream of my life, that I was walking through a gentle blizzard of butterflies?

I sat at the bridge table made of stone, at which deeply-tanned regulars played for unprecedented stakes, allegedly sometimes even for women. The surface of the water, permeated with suntan oils, gleamed like a roof that has just been tarred, or perhaps like the back of a Leviathan. It got colder and colder, my head kept nodding, and suddenly Janek stood next to me like a specter. I didn’t know whether half the night had passed, or half an hour; most certainly less than half the night, but more than half an hour. At The House of the Spa the dance was still going on, but it seemed to be drawing to a close. You could hear a slightly relaxed version of Rossini’s Tarantella—always toward the end, and always, when they were slightly relaxed, the Potulnik brothers played classical pieces from memory. Without a word, we set off home. When we were on the bridge, I asked:

“Do you have that address? When are we supposed to go there? To Katowice? Right?”

Janek remained silent; out of the corner of my eye I noticed the quick motion of his hand and a scrap of paper flying over the railing.

“Let it sail to the seas and the oceans?” I made sure I was understanding what he had done.

“Sail to all the seas of the world. To the Black Sea, the Yellow Sea, the White Sea, and the Red Sea,” he pronounced the colors like incantations.

Suddenly I felt an incomprehensible feeling of relief. It was as if a warm, Caribbean sea current had passed over me from head to foot. Nothing bad had happened, my God! The world was now missing one object — granted, it was exceptional — but what of it? Nothing! My God, that is nothing! It wasn’t certain whether Grandma would even notice the loss, whether she would ever look into the box where the binoculars were kept. She looks into the wardrobe in the back room two, three times a year, but into the box? When? I knew when. When a comet appears over Czantoria Mountain, or when the Big Dipper flies to pieces in the heavens. When would that be? Perhaps in twenty years, and perhaps never. Not only Grandma, not only we, but perhaps not even anyone in the whole world would live to see the next comet fly across the sky like a red-hot bulldozer.

“Did you fuck her?” I asked, when we were saying goodbye in front of our houses, and the question itself was proof of what soaring euphoria had seized me, and what mad boldness. I knew perfectly well that my friend couldn’t stand intimate questions. “Did you fuck her?”

“I didn’t feel like it,” Janek Nikandy replied, and he disappeared behind the gate to the dark gardens surrounding our houses.

VI

Last night, after several decades, I again dreamed of the butterfly blizzard. Back then they were yellow, today’s were white; this time my daughter Magda was with me in the dream, she held my hand, and I think she was coming to my rescue, because the number of butterflies was increasing, and they slowly began to suffocate me, but, all the same, it looked like it was going to be a beautiful death. All the more beautiful in that, just before dawn, in a flash of half-consciousness, it suddenly occurred to me that I am someone who understands the terrible randomness of the world. I suddenly saw that the world is a great field full of asymmetrically laid out campfires; you have to go incessantly from fire to fire; extinguish and kindle; go through the darkness, go through the light; someone tells of dangerous charges that could explode any moment. Suddenly it dawned on me that I knew how to write about — and how to take account of — the randomness, because other than that, there is nothing; how to show the campfires and the paths between them, and how to remember about the force of the charges planted everywhere, and how to liberate oneself from life for the sake of the spasm of love. I awoke slowly. The entire irrefutable transparency of the argument was vanishing. Grandma Pech was standing over my bed and saying something. She was repeating a sentence over and over that, at first, was completely indistinct, but then became more and more distinct. She said something, asked about something. It was almost half a century ago when I awoke for good, got dressed, traipsed into the kitchen. Nobody was there. I was tempted to run right over to Janek’s place without breakfast, but my hunger was stronger, and in those days the preparation of scrambled eggs didn’t drive me into such an abysmal depression as it does now. I got a frying pan covered with an eternal layer of grease from the pantry. I began to consider whether I would eat seven, or only five eggs. Grandma Pech was walking across the fieldstone-paved courtyard. Two steps behind her, Janek. Suddenly both of them — as if they were back in my dream — appeared in the kitchen.

“I wonder whatever could have happened to those binoculars?” Grandma asked in an amazingly cheerful tone.

“They fell into the river on us and got wrecked. Completely wrecked… It took us a long time to find them.” Janek produced the binoculars we had found under the bridge from inside his jacket, and at first he made a motion as if he wished to place them on the table, but then, with sudden desperation, he handed his greatest treasure to Grandma. Everything fell into place. I had stolen out of love for him, he was giving up his treasure out of love for me. Everything fell into place. Everything except for Grandma Pech’s reaction. She turned the old German ruin over in her fingers, and it was absolutely impossible that she would be taken in, that she would believe that this wreck, which had been lying in the water close to twenty years, had once belonged to Gustaw. This was completely out of the question, she was infallible in much more difficult matters, she infallibly recognized much more difficult objects, she couldn’t be taken in by such crude frauds. And yet. And yet, without a single word, or perhaps even with an almost inaudible sigh of relief, she turned on her heels and moved off into the depths of the house, and after a moment there reverberated the sound of the doors to the back room being opened and closed.

VII

After we moved to Krakow, I lost contact with Janek, and the bits of news about him that reached us were most strange. Supposedly, he didn’t study at all before his entrance exam to the blacksmiths’ technical college. This, in itself, wasn’t so strange. Janek generally knew everything even without studying, or he would catch up in a flash at the last minute — but this time he even let the “last minute” slide. The whole night before the exam, he sat in the attic and read old Cross Sections. It was incredibly stuffy; not even the night, not even the air over the gardens, which were going to seed, was cooler. In the morning, he went to take the exam, pale and as if in a fever, and — in short — he didn’t pass. Janek Nikandy didn’t get into the Blacksmiths’ Technical College in Ustroń! A gigantic sensation, perhaps even cosmic, but, finally, transitory, justifiable on account of health problems, although — to be honest — even confined to his bed he ought to beat all the healthy ones hands down. But after all, there’s luck in leisure. Everyone knew that he would pass the exam in a year, wherever he felt like it, and that he would make up for the year of delay whenever he felt like it. Except that in a year he didn’t take the exam anywhere, and he didn’t make up for any lost time, nor did he intend to make up for it. It was then I saw him for the last time in my life. We got off the Krakow train; there was a fantastic, rust-colored sunset, Janek stood on the platform. At first I thought he was waiting for someone, that perhaps by some miracle he had found out when I would be arriving with my folks, and that he had come out to the station. But he wasn’t waiting for me, or for anyone. He stood on the platform, and he was looking at the train that was just about to set off further toward Głębce. What’s new? Nothing. Playing soccer? No. Nothing — a russet sky over Czantoria Mountain.

Supposedly, a year later, maybe two, he began to study the Bible under the tutelage of one-eyed Mr. Nikandy, and it was announced that he would study theology and become a pastor in their Church. But before they managed to go into the details of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, Mrs. Nikandy, as beautiful as an Italian actress, fled the house with a certain wandering preacher, who was lacking any principles whatsoever, and both father and son lost, for some time, their zeal for studying the Bible. Some time—as it often happens — became time eternal. One-eyed Mr. Nikandy died of a heart attack less than a year later. After some time, Janek got a professional driver’s license, and he became a driver in a quarry. He drank. He had an accident in which someone died. He landed in prison for a few years. When he got out he didn’t really have any place to go; his sisters had found husbands, his brothers wives, and harboring a criminal under their roofs wasn’t to their liking. He wandered a bit here and there. Then he disappeared. Supposedly he moved to Silesia, supposedly he found work there and married a woman who was much older. Supposedly as long as she was alive, things were OK. But when she died — a total decline. The last two years spent in rats’ nests, under a sky of denatured spirits, over reptilian sewers. Basically, I don’t even know whether he froze on the street that year, or the carbon monoxide in a makeshift mine shaft suffocated him. People say various things.