“You know what, Comrade Trąba,” Commandant Jeremiah said with a phlegmatic, well-fed voice, “you know what? If you really do intend to convert the Jews to the Lutheran faith, of the two evils it would be better that you whack somebody, comrades.”
The Commandant raised his glass.
“Drink up, comrades.”
And when the men had inclined their heads, and then raised them up again, the Commandant said with dignity:
“For at least the last hour I have been off duty, but in spite of everything I want you, comrades, to be forewarned. I made a request of Comrade Station Master Ujejski. I made a request that he let me know if you comrades should suddenly wish to buy tickets. For instance, for the night train to Warsaw. I want you to know about this, comrades.”
Chapter IV
The parchment map of the sky slowly took on life. Streams of deep blue air flowed across it. Golden sand poured from the planets. Within the large constellations you could hear music. I awoke in the middle of the night, and in the dark, gropingly, I recorded the word “occupation” in my notebook — in a moment someone would whisper it in the depths of the sleeping house.
In those days I was never parted from my pencil and notebook. The desire, stronger than anything else, to record words and sentences that had just been uttered, or would be in a moment, directed my every step, waking and sleeping. I would place the notebook and pencil on the nightstand, and when the golden-black grandfather clock in the entryway rang out the most terrible of hours, 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, when the Antichrist himself touched my featherbed with a wet wing, when during every season of the year an infernal silence reigned, I would reach for notebook and pencil and record the word or sentence that brought relief. “Occupation,” I wrote, but I didn’t feel relief or consolation. Noises unusual for that hour were coming from the kitchen. Someone was moving a chair. Someone knocked delicately, probably at the window, since the panes rattled. Someone said something. Somebody answered. I lit the lamp, and Mr. Trąba’s voice became more distinct, as if intensified by the light. To this day I am absolutely certain that, throughout my entire childhood, I was awakened from sleep either by Mr. Trąba’s voice or by the sound of the Wittenberg bells in the church tower.
A few minutes before 6:00 in the morning, Sexton Messerschmidt would climb the wooden steps, and in the gray dawn of the fall, in the winter darkness, or with the summer radiance piercing the shutters, the cast-iron caps would begin to move more and more forcefully. In the morning, the sound of the bells was delicate like the slowly rising eyelid of a Lutheran confirmation-class girl. At noon, it possessed the fullness of a fire roaring under Evangelical stovetops. And at twilight, it was mannerly and pliable like the mixed forests on Buffalo Mountain.
•
Sexton Messerschmidt knew how to pull the ropes such that he could achieve all those effects at will — the effect of the eyelid, the fire, and the mixed forest.
“You’ve got to have it here,” he pointed to his palms. “You’ve got to have the divine spark here. The divine azure spark,” he added with an enigmatic smile. “Without the divine spark, azure like a gas flame, no bell will ring.”
We would leave our packs in the sacristy. The church smelled of the Sunday clothes of Protestants. Sexton Messerschmidt carefully examined our hands.
“Not a single divine spark, not a trace of ability, to say nothing of talent,” he would say with disapproval. “Oh well. Cripples have the right to praise the Lord too. Come unto me. Only the pious, only the most pious, will attain the grace of entry to the tower today. You, Chmiel, you, Sikora, you, Błaszczyk. Today it shall be given unto you. You won’t even have to put your hands over your ears, since, anyway. . you are all deaf as posts.”
We followed him up the wooden stairs. Then with all our might we squeezed ropes that were fatter than our arms. The sweltering noon slowly began to smolder.
“Let the littlest bell sing,” cried Sexton Messerschmidt at the top of his voice, and he looked ironically upon our pathetic efforts. With seeming nonchalance he grasped the rope we had been straining at so ineffectually. “You gentlemen lack not only artistic talent but also physical strength. You are an absolutely worthless generation. When you grow up you will bring not only the Lutheran Church but also People’s Poland to ruin — which, after all, who knows, may be for the better.
“This is how it’s done. With your entire being, not just with your hands. We are in a holy place, therefore you gentlemen will magnanimously forgive me if I don’t suggest just what you can do for yourselves with nothing but your hands. In the profession — in the vocation—of the bell-ringer the hand is not an upper extremity but the extension of the soul. Let the littlest bell sing,” cried Sexton Messerschmidt, and at his call the littlest bell moved. “Tym’s bell-foundry in Warsaw,” Messerschmidt outshouted the first heartbeats, “Tym’s bell-foundry in Warsaw, bronze practically in statu crudi, bronze without alloy, which is why it has a pure sound, even if it doesn’t carry. As the story goes, this bell was cast by order of the enlightened protector of the Reformation, Mikołaj Radziwiłł the Black. It was hung by our Calvinist brethren in the church tower in Kiejdany. It served them faithfully, and with its pure voice it sustained them in the faith, which, although perfect, is after all also the correct one. Henryk Sienkiewicz mentions the church in Kiejdany in his Trilogy. Unfortunately, Sienkiewicz’s pen did not describe the sound of our bell, and it’s a pity, a pity. You, gentlemen, of course, haven’t yet read the Trilogy.”
“I’ve read it, I’ve already read With Fire and Sword, and The Deluge, and Pan Wołodyjowski. I’ve read it,” I wanted to call out, but I restrained myself and bit my tongue. My psychological instinct, not yet perfected, but already in place, whispered to me that demonstrating any sort of ability in the presence of Sexton Messerschmidt wasn’t a good thing. He was without a doubt a virtuoso, a virtuoso bell-ringer. Perhaps he was also a virtuoso in other arts, but above all else, he was the sort of virtuoso who feels like a fish in water among ignoramuses.
“But alas, alas, alas,” you could tell that Messerschmidt had perfected every intonational nuance of the story he was telling, “Mikołaj Radziwiłł dies too soon, and a few decades later the brother Catholics take away from the brother Calvinists their, that is to say, our church. Truth be told, they regain it, but from the great perspective of history, minor historical details are unimportant. What happens now, however, is a minor historical detail that creates great history, not only history in the historical sense, but also history in the epic sense. What happens now, gentlemen?”
Sexton Messerschmidt tore his hands away from the rope for a moment. Snatched upward by the swinging Radziwiłł rhythm, it danced above us its desperate, violently jerky dance.
“What happens, gentlemen? Well, one dark Kiejdany night four gentry-men — history hasn’t recorded their names, we only know that they were three Calvinists and one Lutheran — one gloomy night that heretical foursome takes Mikołaj Radziwiłł’s bell down from the Kiejdany town church. They load it on a sleigh, cover it with hay and pieces of straw, and off they go. The team of six horses sets off into the depths of the dark and icy Commonwealth. Although they couldn’t have measured it back then, the heavy frost is well below zero, and it causes the sleigh to glide nimbly over the Kiejdany high road. A seventeenth-century full moon, black forests, and white fields. Gentlemen, the history of that expedition awaits its epic poet. But — there is no reason to hide the fact — this would have to be a man at least as linguistically talented as Henryk Sienkiewicz. Just think, gentlemen, and above all try to give free rein to your completely Bolshevized imaginations. Four Protestants, four riders, not of the Apocalypse, rather four riders of the Gospel carry the Protestant bell on their sleigh across the frozen century. They don’t know where to go. Maybe to Warsaw? To Leszno? To Lublin? Or maybe to Prussia, to Königsberg? They don’t know the way, they have no destination, they know only that they must protect the sacred object. And all around them is darkness, cut-throats, Cossacks, Tatars, Turks, Swedes, riffraff, and savages. At the speed of lightning the news spreads along the route that our musketeers are carrying royal treasures. Ambuscades. Skirmishes. Adventures. In the course of one of them, one of the Calvinist brethren is mortally wounded. The mythical dramaturgy of this journey lies in the fact that its participants slowly peel away. The next Calvinist is an ecstatic enthusiast of aquavit. He swills, you should excuse the expression, like Mr. Trąba, only he swills more desperately. One night, his extremities warmed to excess, having imprudently fallen asleep, he freezes to death. The remaining duo takes part in the scene of fatal initiation described so many times elsewhere. Flakes of morning snow settle on the eyelids of their inertly lying comrade. They don’t melt. His face becomes covered with a white scale, and no one will ever know whether our erstwhile comrade in faith and comrade in arms had brown eyes or blue eyes, or whether in his breast pocket rustled a letter jotted down in someone’s very tiny hand, for whom he longed and from whom he had fled.”