“Precisely,” said the Commandant, “precisely. Let me explain.”
He extracted a small Orbis Travel Agency datebook from the side pocket of his uniform, and he began phlegmatically turning the empty pages, which contained only printed dates, saints’ names, and names of the days of the week. He finally reached a place where there were some illegible hieroglyphs and secret ciphers, which only functionaries of the secret services could decode — although I was looking over his shoulder, I couldn’t make out a thing. Jeremiah meditated for some time over the secret code, but then he began to mutter, as if to himself, and, slowly measuring out his words, he said:
“Yes sir, this is all correct; a pronouncement directed against Comrade First Secretary, yes sir.”
He energetically closed the datebook and covered it with his large hand, as if he wished to smother the fuses that were smoldering there, as if he wished to extinguish the gathering rebellion before it could flare up.
“Comrades,” he said distinctly, “I have received a report that you comrades are planning an attempt on the life of Comrade First Secretary Władysław Gomułka.”
I no longer remember whether Mother froze in the process of scouring the stovetop, or grating potatoes, or perhaps with a match in her hand over the hearth. Today I see her frozen in a succession of these poses. Father and Mr. Trąba exchanged the all-betraying glance of inept conspirators. In the meantime, I thought it might be worth my while to check out the room in the attic again; the morphinistes had abandoned it, and I wanted to see whether they had by any chance left anything else there, besides a ribbon, a mirror, and a nail file.
“The comrades will excuse me, but since the report seemed to me — how should I put it? — only moderately plausible, I set to work in a roundabout manner. If the comrades do indeed harbor treacherous designs upon the head of state, then please, how to put it, forgive me that I subjected to doubt their, your, so to say, qualifications in this matter, but. .”
“Gomułka isn’t head of state,” Mr. Trąba, sounding bored, interrupted Jeremiah.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, Gomułka isn’t head of state. Gomułka is only the chief of the Party. The head of state is Zawadzki.”
“So is it true after all?” he said almost triumphantly. “So is it true after all? No, no, no,” he reigned himself in. “Comrades, we have known each other for a long time. We have drunk an ocean of alcohol together. We have pronounced more than one risky opinion together. I can safely — both doing myself the honor, and telling the truth — I can safely call you comrades my tried-and-true friends, and meanwhile what do I hear? Meanwhile I discover that my tried-and-true friends are making an attempt, are ready to make an attempt, at a crime against majesty. .
“Please tell me,” the Commandant’s voice became slightly, though noticeably, more concentrated and icy, “please tell me what, in the name of God the Father, am I supposed to do with this sort of information? Please,” the Commandant suddenly pleaded, “please tell me what I am supposed to do? I’ve come here to see — to see to what extent this matter belongs to the realm of fiction, and to what extent to the realm of reality.”
“I wish, I wish very much that my death might belong to the realm of fiction,” Mr. Trąba spoke up, “but those, I fear, are highly pious wishes.”
“But after all, isn’t it finally a question not of your death, but of fatal harm to Comrade Gomułka?”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Commandant,” replied Mr. Trąba, “setting all my vanity aside, I must put my own person in the foreground and assure you that, above all, it is a question of me.” And Mr. Trąba expounded upon his deathbed ambitions in a few sentences, hiding nothing.
Commandant Jeremiah listened carefully to Mr. Trąba’s implacably logical arguments.
“If I understood you correctly, comrade, you expect a quick departure from this world, but in fact, what reason do you have to expect this departure?”
“One general and seven particular reasons,” retorted Mr. Trąba, and he began to count on his fingers. “First, cirrhosis of the liver; second, a bursting pancreas; third, severe inefficiency of the kidneys; fourth, a weakening heart; fifth, stomach ulcers; sixth, delirium tremens; seventh, and the simplest, choking on my own vomit. These are seven good reasons, not subject to falsification, each of which individually, and all of them together, are identically effective, and all of them,” Mr. Trąba raised his index finger decisively in the air, “are already prepared. The seven beasts are already in readiness, seven chimeras already lie waiting to jump. Yes,” he bellowed suddenly, “the seven pillars of my death have already been erected!”
“St. John of Damascus divides anger into gall, mania, and fury, and you, Comrade Trąba, you are most clearly in the phase of fury,” said Commandant Jeremiah, leaning backwards as if to avoid immediate danger.
“I didn’t know they covered St. John of Damascus’s typology of anger in Marxism night-school. I approve. I approve, and I congratulate you. I, however — and now I will allow myself a polemical interpolation ad vocem—I am not in the phase of fury according to St. John of Damascus; rather, I am in the phase of anger with voice, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory of Nyssa, as you know perfectly well, divides anger into anger without voice, anger with voice, and anger expressed in voice. One way or another I am — I often find myself — in the pre-delirious phase. Vodka-induced psychosis is already knocking with a finger that’s as transparent as a vodka glass; it’s already knocking on the brittle walls of my brain.”
Mother placed the first portions of potato dough on the stove top. The fire roaring below and the streams of darkness beyond the window transported us beyond climates and beyond seasons. We sat in the circle of light, separated from what was further on, and further on were ice and darkness. The Commandant’s uniform steamed slowly. Jeremiah dried and glimmered, like a prodigal deserter returning to the ranks of his home unit.
“And what would you think,” he said slowly, “what would you think about stopping and giving it up?. . About reducing the volumetric reckoning a little. You’ve already drunk your life’s quota.”
“Stop drinking?” Mr. Trąba neither quite asked, nor quite asserted, his voice colorless as water. “Stop drinking? Out of the question. Already in ’45 I said to myself: ‘Perhaps you will die of vodka, Józef Trąba, but if you don’t have a drink from time to time, you will certainly die.’ But now, after not quite twenty years, that paradoxical supposition has taken on a completed form. You know, Commandant,” Mr. Trąba came to life, clearly gathering narrational verve, “a man has only one good reason to stop drinking: namely, when he notices that as a result of drinking he is going stupid. Let me put it another way. A true man can die from drinking, but he doesn’t dare go stupid.”
“In that case,” the Commandant spoke most carefully, “in that case, why do you put your lofty mind at risk, Comrade Trąba?”
“You insult me, Commandant,” said Mr. Trąba with dignity. “Just why should a man live in stupidity?”
“And carrying Gomułka off with you, carrying Gomułka off with you to the grave,” Jeremiah suddenly got angry, “and carrying First Secretary Gomułka off with you to the grave — this isn’t stupidity? This is colossal stupidity! Stupidity that is pointless and historically barren. Stupidity that leads nowhere and is intellectually empty.”
“Terror is not the realm of speculation; terror is the realm of shock,” Mr. Trąba said gloomily.
“What terror? What terror? What terror?” the Commandant roared with the greatest contempt.