The Mighty Angel

Chapter 19. The Daughters of the Queen

AFTER THE NEWSPAPERS I would tidy the books. In the course of my diligent and ecstatic reading of newspapers I occasionally felt pangs of intellectual conscience at wasting my time on superficial things, and filling my brain with newspaper pulp. At such moments, between sips I would reach for classics of every hue; for instance, I would open Gottfried Wilhelm Liebnitz’s A Philosopher’s Creed to a random page and read drunkenly, and I would have the drunken impression that I understood it all. I would drunkenly read Moby-Dick or The Magic Mountain and my intoxicated enthusiasm, like my intoxicated illumination, was deep and boundless. I would read Babel or Mickiewicz and in my drunkenness would hear every phrase so perfectly that I was all set to write, in my drunkenness, sequels to the short stories, and to compose additional stanzas of the epic poems.

The classics, as usual, would be right at the bottom of the wreckage. I would pick up the Summa Theologica, Resurrection, and an anthology of English and American poetry from where they lay on the floor; I would pick them up, straighten the covers, and even iron any creased pages; I would pick them up, dust them off, smooth them down and replace them on the shelf. After I had removed the newspapers and tidied the books I would continue to clean up, emptying the ashtrays, washing the dishes, changing my bed, then stooping over the bathtub and washing my clothes as fiercely as if I were trying to punish myself for the lack of an automatic washing machine, as if with the quality of my hand-washing I were striving to surpass the automatic washing machine, as if I were striving to prove once again the eternal truth that a human being is better than the very best washing machine, not only the automatic kind, but even the latest generation of computerized washing machines, that humans are in general better than the best computer possible. True, computers are capable of surpassing humans in many domains. For example — as I read in between my erstwhile losses of consciousness — for example at some point a computer beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov at chess, and humankind, or at least a significant portion of humankind, was thereby plunged into pessimism; the computer’s victory at chess was supposedly a harbinger of further victories by machines, successive inexorable and ever more all-encompassing and humiliating defeats of humankind in the battle with machines, and it may be that that is indeed the case, it may be that in numerous disciplines computers will bring numerous grandmasters to their knees, but in my humble drunkard’s opinion, until they invent the computer that can drink more than a person, humankind has no need to feel that its essence is under threat. By all means — I, the master, I, the grandmaster take up the gauntlet! By all means, I the master, I the grandmaster accept the challenge! Show me the ingeniously constructed machine, show me a computer of unheard-of intelligence — let it be of infinite capacity, let its halogen lights shine with the power of a thousand suns, let it be as vast as a pre-war apartment building, let it be programmed for fathomless quantities of drinking, let it be resistant to addiction, let it possess a perpetual tolerance for moonshine, let it have special subsystems allowing it to control the situation in its entirety, let it have a brain as mighty as an open-hearth furnace, and let it have the choice of liquor. And place between us a crate of the liquor it chooses, and let the starter give the signal, and right away you will see the triumph of the human race and of humanism. How long will it drink shoulder to shoulder with me: a month, two months, half a year? Sooner or later, at the next pale dawn, sooner or later, after yet another redemptive hair of the dog, before the liquor has dispersed through my bones, before I’ve had time to rise, warm up, regain my color and express my first inspired thought, it will falter, fail, lose consciousness, and puke up its entire hard drive.

Then I would go onto the balcony and hang out all the clothes that had been washed more thoroughly than in an automatic washing machine, and I would hang them out equally thoroughly, because the more thoroughly laundry is hung out, the less work it is later to iron it. After hanging out the laundry I would vacuum the carpets, change the lace curtains, polish the floors, take out the trash, throw out the bottles, meticulously recheck every corner to make sure no eloquent traces of my humiliations remained, but no, order reigned everywhere. I would air all the rooms thoroughly, light a candle, light an incense stick, light a cigarette, sit in the armchair, feel the sweet firmness of my tired muscles, bask in the accomplished deed, pour myself a goodly measure of vodka — I deserved it, after my hard work I had the right to a little holiday — I would pour the vodka and drink thirstily, and lose consciousness, and regain consciousness on the alco ward. I would be standing by the sink listening to Don Juan the Rib tell stories about women.

Don Juan the Rib, in civilian life a hairdresser, and, additionally, a musician, loved to demonstrate how to use scissors in a professional fashion. He did indeed snip away with extraordinary dexterity; at first glance we couldn’t tell what was magic about his art, and it was only after a period of intense observation, and impatient hints from the man himself, that the unpracticed eye spotted it: the divine fingers of the master set in motion only one of the scissor blades, while the other remained still. Even Dr. Granada was unable to reproduce this trick, and Don Juan the Rib, filled with pride, would not reveal the secret.

Never without his scissors, which were tucked discreetly into the pocket of his pajamas (the pajama top extravagantly unbuttoned, with a neck-scarf tied fancifully round his neck), he was forever prowling the ward and offering his hairdressing services to all the female patients and all the nurses. The nurses refused — Nurse Viola in particular refused most sternly — but the Queen of Kent and Fanny Kapelmeister frequently paraded about with elegantly trimmed locks. Don Juan the Rib’s professional abilities were truly deserving of respect; even the Queen of Kent’s four daughters, who visited her every day, expressed their genuine admiration for their mother’s new hairstyle.

All four of the Queen of Kent’s daughters were genuine princesses. They were beautiful young women, 24, 25, 27, and 30 years old respectively, smartly dressed, fragrant with the respective narcotic scents of Dune, Poème, Organza, and Dolce Vita; all four drove to the hospital in their own cars, a Ford Mondeo, a Renault Laguna, a Volkswagen Golf, and a Nissan Almera respectively, and all four always had their hair gorgeously done by expert stylists from Jean-Louis David salons. Don Juan the Rib swooned at the very sight of these four lovelies. While I can say with a reasonably clear conscience that I was in thrall to women, Don Juan the Rib was in utter, slavish, cocaine-and-morphine thrall to women. At the sight of anything whatsoever that was loosely associated with femininity he would perk up and at the same time swoon; any female voice at all, even if it was the rasping, aggressive baritone of Mrs. Poniatowska the nurse’s aide, would tear him from his bed — he would jump to his feet, nervously straighten his neck-scarf, splash himself with copious amounts of cologne, and dash off toward the siren song that was calling him.

Yet the four beauties who came to see their mother day after day also intimidated him. While he knew every woman who had ever set foot in the alco ward, and had struck up an unembarrassed familiarity with all the wives, daughters, and girlfriends who visited us, and while he hit on the nurses relentlessly (though without success), with the four princesses he would merely sneak looks in their direction, edging past them, greeting them awkwardly and not even attempting to engage them in conversation. Evidently, not one of his famous come-on lines, as majestic as they were viscous (“I swear to God I’ve never seen a woman with such pedigree fetlocks,” he would say for example to a speechless Mrs. Poniatowska, who incidentally wore ankle-high orthopedic shoes) — not one of his legendary flirtatious advances, then, could evidently pass his lips in this case, and he would merely give an awkward and lopsided smile, creep warily down the hallway, enter the ward and hurry back out, lie on his bed then immediately jump back up. He was in the grip of contradictory desires. On the one hand, with all his heart and all his unbridled lust he wanted the four incarnations of female perfection to stay as long as possible, wishing for the visit to last and last with all his soul; on the other hand, he wanted with all his soul for the visit to end immediately. For invariably, the moment all the visitors had left, and especially after the departure of the four princesses, Don Juan, glowing from the beauty he had enjoyed from afar, in high spirits and filled with vigor, Don Juan then would ply the Queen Mother with questions. Through the mother he sought to draw closer to the daughters; he would ask in detail about their lives, their childhood pastimes, their favorite games and dolls, what they were like growing up, what they were like at school; he asked about their husbands (all four were married), whether these husbands were wealthy and dependable, and whether none of them happened to be overly fond of a tipple; he asked if her daughters were happy, where they lived, why they had the names they had and not some other names (they were Katarzyna, Magdalena, Ewelina, and Anna respectively), and whether he might call the “young ladies” on the appropriate day to wish them a happy name-day, and how the good mother of “such a charming foursome” might advise him to proceed should he make the call and hear, not the bewitching voice of the lady of the hour, but an unfriendly masculine baritone.

“If that happens you should hang up without saying a word,” the Queen of Kent would always answer in her hollow voice, and that would be all she said.

Because the Queen of Kent, the Queen Mother, was a walking handful of ash. When it came down to it, nothing concrete could be said even about her appearance; she may once have been just as beautiful as her daughters, but now her face, her eyes, hair, arms, hands, and legs, all had turned to ash. The traces of her former beauty had been buried under ash, her fiery gaze had been extinguished, her skin was gray, and she had lost all feeling.

The Queen of Kent (in civilian life a qualified pharmacist) was a person of unimaginable shyness. She was unimaginably shy as an infant, she was unimaginably shy in elementary school and high school, and she was unimaginably shy at college. Her father, an authoritarian pharmacist inclined to tyranny, who was first the owner of a private pharmacy and then the manager of a state-owned one, aggravated his daughter’s shyness with his pharmaceutical authoritarianism. Whether that shyness had other causes I do not know and never will. My subject is the method for overcoming that shyness with which both the Queen of Kent and I were familiar — which is to say, mint-flavored liqueur.

The Queen of Kent’s future husband was a fellow student of pharmacology; he fell in love with her alluring restraint at first sight, or maybe third. She avoided him, refused to take his phone calls, and in his presence she was as silent as if she were under a magic spell. Yet despite all this he was entrapped beyond reach in the net of her stolen glances, in the aura of her virginal scent, in the storm of her dark hair.

After graduating she worked in her father’s pharmacy; her enamored former classmate moved heaven and earth to be close to her. Her father (the Old King of Kent) sensed what was up and sent the young man packing. The latter, moreover, had the worst luck, appearing in the pharmacy at least six times in a row at the very moment when its former proprietor was suffering agonies of frustration at the fact that he was no longer the proprietor of his own property. It was only at the seventh attempt that he happened upon a moment when the old chemist had succumbed uncritically to the illusion that everything was as it used to be, and he looked favorably upon the world, and favorably upon the ill-starred suitor.

“The two of you can do whatever you like,” he said, and immersed himself once again in his delusions of privatization.

The old man did not regret his decision. His future son-in-law proved to be a capable pharmacist, and the mint liqueur that he made with surgical spirit, according to an old recipe, was a real treat. When the Queen of Kent drank a glass on her name-day (the first glass of alcohol she had ever consumed in her life), the stifling mesh of shyness was removed, and her eternal fear of nothing in particular vanished.

•

He proposed; she drank a glass of mint liqueur and said yes. They made love for the first time on the small pharmacy sofa during the night shift; she had drunk a glass of liqueur before. After, it was also always before: after, whenever they made love she would drink a glass of liqueur before. A year later she would also drink a glass of liqueur when they did not make love; two years later she would drink a glass of liqueur on any occasion, and three years later she was drinking liqueur in every free moment. After four years he stopped making the liqueur according to the old recipe. This made little difference to her; for some time now she had preferred straight spirit.

They had gotten married two years earlier (during the phase in which she drank liqueur on any occasion). As she went on drinking surgical spirit she gave birth to four daughters; he still loved her. He was tender and solicitous; he did better and better, importing hard-to-get foreign medications. When his father-in-law died he took over as manager of the pharmacy, and after the fall of communism he became its owner. He looked after his daughters and when they grew up he provided them with handsome dowries; besides which, all four married very well.

The Queen of Kent drank pure spirit; one day her shyness returned. Yet this was no longer the former frail mesh of bashfulness but rusty iron bars. In the early morning she would look in the mirror, but she was so far away she could not even see herself; she could not make out the storm of dark hair that had turned to ash.

“If that happens you should hang up without saying a word,” she would answer, brushing off Don Juan the Rib’s insistent questions. The latter would hang his head, go back to his room, lie on his bed, and play wistful melodies on his mouth organ.