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Mr. Trąba was almost always sitting at our huge kitchen table, but when the heavy rains, snow storms, and floods came, his presence became truly permanent.
“The time of natural disasters is your time, Mr. Trąba,” Father would say. And indeed, our eternal guest did seem to bestow a peculiar honor upon the elements that locked him beneath our roof and chained him to our table. From morning to evening he would sit on the wide wooden bench. When it came time to sleep, he made himself a pallet there, and, covered with blankets or sheepskins, he lay down to sleep, or rather he slipped away into semi-consciousness and listened to the undying gales with an enigmatic smile.
Mother mechanically combed her wet hair with her fingers, approached the window, and stared at Buffalo Mountain, which was barely visible beyond the wall of rain.
“It’s quite another matter, however, that the Lord’s promise applies to the entire globe. The Lord God promised our first father that He would never again take the globe, overflowing with iniquity, into His Fatherly hand and submerge it in the abyss, that He wouldn’t submerge it even for a day, to say nothing of forty days. Nonetheless, there have been lesser deluges, I have to admit, and there still are. And — however objectively we look at the matter — we do live in a valley.”
“Of course, of course,” said Mother, glancing irritably at Father, “we are at the bottom, at the very bottom.”
“What are you talking about, Ewa?” responded Father. “My ancestors didn’t build this house, yours did.”
“That was all that was missing,” Mother unexpectedly erupted in elemental despair, “that was all that was missing — for me to have moved in with my parents-in-law, may the earth rest lightly upon them.”
“It was what it was.” I heard a sinister note in Father’s voice; this was rare for him. “It was what it was, but it was high up.”
“High, but at the same time low,” Mother hissed.
“That’s just it, my dears,” Mr. Trąba sought to mollify them. “High, but at the same time low. That’s just it. Let’s not forget about the relativistic character of reality. After all, in our lowland country we are relatively high up, but at the same time, in relation to the same local altitudes, we are low, which still gives us a chance of salvation. .”
“What chance of salvation? What are you talking about?” Father asked in an unbearably official tone.
“Oh, the chance of salvation, Chief, that when the bell tolls, and the waters rise, we will gather the most necessary things, and we will clamber up Mare Mountain, or Goat Mountain, to say nothing of Buffalo Mountain.”
“You, Mr. Trąba,” Mother exploded, “you, Mr. Trąba, certainly will not make the ascent. Instead, you will float to Mare Mountain or Goat Mountain. Yes, you will float. In the best case scenario, straddling that unsinkable bench of yours, first you will rise lightly with the level of the water, and then you will reach your goal, rowing with your vodka bottle.”
For a moment, all you could hear was the roar of the rain and the din of the river overflowing its bounds.
“I’ve lost track of time,” said Mr. Trąba, looking at his watch nonchalantly. “Time for me to go,” he said, and he lifted himself from his spot for the first time in time immemorial.
Mother’s face suddenly brightened with a radiance that was full of compassionate pity. She shook her head, not exactly with acceptance, nor with rebuke. And with the tone of the loved-one amusing herself with a wooer who is suffering agonies, fully conscious of her allure, she said:
“You know, Józef, that if you leave now, I will never speak to you again?” And she repeated it, pausing distinctly between every word: “If — you — leave — now — I–will — never — speak — to — you — again.”
Beyond the windows a stocky figure, protecting himself with a colorful ladies’ umbrella, flitted by. Knocks resounded at the door, and in the doorway stood Commandant Jeremiah, changed beyond recognition — his uniform had been altered by the rain storm into the uniform of some unknown unit. I hoped that his monstrous Bernardine, Bryś the Man-Eater, would slip into the kitchen with him. I hoped just for the sweetness of my own fear, but the Commandant was alone.
“By a billion barrels of beer!” Mr. Trąba roared as if with amicable triumph, but in the final analysis it was ecstatic triumph in his voice. “By a billion barrels of beer! An officer, on duty, with a ladies’ umbrella in his hand!”
“It’s raining, Comrade Trąba,” said Commandant Jeremiah with stoic calm. He took off his cap and placed his umbrella in the corner. It looked peculiar indeed in his hands — they were as big as loaves of bread.
“Atmospheric disturbances are no reason for an on-duty officer to outfit himself with such homo accessories!” said Mr. Trąba, continuing to play the strict commander rebuking the insubordination of an inferior. Moreover, Mother’s recent tenderness had truly inspired his performance. Unfortunately, and as usual, he played his role alone.
It was obvious that Commandant Jeremiah had no desire to enter into a discussion of the regulatory appropriateness of a ladies’ umbrella. He brought up a stool, sat down on it heavily, and, after a good moment, he said:
“I greet you, madame comrade and comrades.”
“Cheerio, cheerio,” replied Father and Mr. Trąba, one after the other, while Mother, in a carefully studied gesture, raised her head and eyes, turned away from the window, and glanced at the green-tiled kitchen stove.
“You are most welcome, Commandant.” (I had only recently realized that Mother, in her ascetic role, was a much greater artist than Mr. Trąba, who didn’t shy away from the occasional buffoonery.) “You are most welcome, Commandant. Will you stay for dinner? Of course you’ll stay, won’t you? I was just about to fry some potato pancakes.”
Only my masterfully penetrative and unprejudiced gaze noticed that Mother was not a woman who was concerned exclusively with cooking; rather, she was a captive who, in order to survive, pretended to be a woman who was concerned exclusively with cooking.
“Comrades,” said Commandant Jeremiah, without a hint of emotion in his voice, “comrades, allow me to get right down to business. I have heard, comrades, that you are preparing to direct a pronouncement against the First Secretary of the Central Committee.”
The Commandant stopped for a moment and gestured like a stump orator — indicating his essential approval, although with certain doubts and reservations.
“Very good, comrades, very good. Criticism is always necessary to our Party. Criticism strengthens the power of our Party, cleanses its ranks. But you must—we must — remember, comrades, that it must be constructive criticism, that is to say, criticism that is, of course, criticizing, but, generally, approving. .”
The Commandant began to get tangled up. You could see with the naked eye that he wasn’t an expert in dialectical argument, nor did he possess sufficient agitational fervor.
I was curious what polemical phrase Mr. Trąba would employ and how it would be constructed. “Complete approval,” I recorded in a flash in my notebook, for, according to my predictions, Mr. Trąba’s argument should conclude with precisely this phrase. But Mr. Trąba didn’t conclude his oration with the expression “complete approval,” nor with any other expression. He didn’t conclude his oration because he didn’t even begin it. He remained melancholy and silent the entire time.
“I understand, Commandant,” Father spoke up unexpectedly, “I understand, Commandant, that news spreads like wild fire, but, as you know, speed is not always accompanied by precision. You see, I’m not certain whether our intentions were properly understood.”