‘Who, yet an infant, crushed the serpent’s brow,
In youth will choke the centaur’s breath,
Snatch victims forth from hell below,
And win heaven’s laurels after death!’”
Mr. Trąba recited carefully, placing each accent and pause in its appropriate place. “Whether in your further life you skillfully exploit the opportunity given you, that is, whether you will choke, snatch, and win what you ought — that, Jerzyk, is your business. We are giving you the sort of opportunity that none of your cohort has. But now, raise your glass, Jerzyk.” From the beginning of his oration, Mr. Trąba had held his glass behind the safe enclosure of his fingers. “And now, raise your glass and drink. We all know, gentlemen,” Mr. Trąba arose and we with him, “what the first sip of alcohol means in the life of a man. Jerzyk, in order to avoid choking like a debutant, an image so favored in second-rate literature, proceed according to the following method: just before drinking, take in a modest amount of air — in other words, inhalation; then, drink up in one gulp, not breathing out, of course — in other words, non-halation; then, delicately but decidedly release the air — in other words, exhalation. This is the point: after drinking schnapps you must release the air from the body in order to make room there for more of it. Gentlemen — Jerzy, Stanisław,” Mr. Trąba clinked glasses with us, and Father and I did the same, we clinked our glasses, “gentlemen, let the head of the tyrant fall. To our health and to the health of all our tyrannicidal colleagues, living and dead.”
And we drank. And I drank. And it went as smoothly as could be. The transparent cloud of juniper berry vodka threaded its way among the shadows of my entrails, and there were upon it signs and prophecies, and there were in this first sip of mine the prefigurations of all my future sips. Recorded in it were all my future falls, bouts of drunkenness, bottles, glasses, retchings, all my future delirious dreams, all my gutters, counters, tables, bars, all the cities on the pavement of which my corpse would once repose. There were all the waitresses with whom I would place orders in my life. You could hear in it my incoherent babble, and in it my hands shook. Even my death, shrouded in a cloak made of nothing but bottle labels, sat there and laughed terribly, but I wasn’t afraid in the least. And so I drank. The first power entered into me, and together with it came the first great bestowal of wings. I was able to do everything now. With one action I was able to solve a thousand complicated equations. With one motion I was able to summon a thousand protective angels. With one kick I could kick a thousand goals. With one gesture of my powerful hand, with one finger, I could grind Władysław Gomułka to dust. I glanced at the faces of Father and Mr. Trąba, masked with a light-blue glow, and I knew that the same mask graced my face, that on my hands (just as on theirs) were the light-blue gloves of the conspirator. I recalled Sexton Messerschmidt telling the story of divine sparks, light-blue like a gas flame. I looked with rapture at my hands, which were now not only the hands of the born bell-ringer, but also the hands of the hired murderer, mercenary, marksman.
“And if by some miracle I should succeed,” Mr. Trąba’s voice returned a feeling of duty to me, “even if by some miracle I should succeed, and if I should manage to get into his immediate proximity, I wouldn’t be able to do it from close quarters anyway. I wouldn’t strike him down with a stiletto, to say nothing of doing it with my bare hands. The physical repugnance that I feel for Comrade Wiesław would certainly paralyze me. With my bare hands I could destroy Comrade Mao. Gomułka — absolutely not. And besides, it’s easier to kill from a distance. .”
“It’s easier to kill from a distance from the moral point of view, harder from a technical point of view.” Father very rarely formulated such general maxims.
“Chief,” Mr. Trąba shouted enthusiastically, “I am madly envious of the accuracy of that formulation. I’m madly envious, and at the same time I reward you.”
Mr. Trąba filled the glasses — mine, however, he filled only half way, which hurt me terribly. The venomous thought of desertion and betrayal immediately flashed through my mind.
“One way or another, the operation will have to involve a sniper,” said Mr. Trąba. “Unfortunately the use of firearms is out of the question. It’s out of the question for a thousand various reasons, among which, however, one seems sufficient to me: namely, I don’t know how to use a firearm. Yes,” Mr. Trąba became gloomy, “on the list of my numerous inabilities, you will find this inability as well. . And even if,” he continued, full of melancholy disgust for himself, “even if, by some miracle we were able to acquire, let’s say, a shotgun, all the same there’s too little time for me to master the art of marksmanship with the required precision. In a word, gentlemen,” Mr. Trąba’s voice again became the voice of the seasoned field officer, “in a word, gentlemen, there remains. .”
“In a word, gentlemen, there remains the bow.” Father’s voice vibrated with mad fury. “Mr Trąba, enough of these jokes. If this is what you want, I can say that I refuse obedience as of this moment, I leave the detachment, I refuse to carry out any orders whatsoever, I leave the army, I join civilian ranks. I can utter any one of these scurrilous formulas. And I utter,” it seemed to me that the light-blue glow on Father’s face lightened even further on account of his deathly paleness, “and I utter this formula, and I utter all these buffoonish formulas at once, and at the same time,” Father grabbed the bottle from the table, “I suspend in perpetuity all rewards for even the most breathtaking phrases. . You go beyond the bounds of taste.” Father spoke a bit more quietly, but he didn’t calm down at all. On the contrary, the fury constantly growing in him now seemed to stifle his voice. “The very idea of an assassination attempt, the very idea of an assassination attempt is a risky one. This whole story constantly questions itself. But now we have the nail in the coffin of all plausibility. . You, Mr. Trąba, offend this whole unhappy nation. . Don’t you know how debased people are? Don’t you know that it really is necessary to kill him? And you? If you intend to kill him at all, before you get around to killing him, you’ll talk yourself to death. Don’t you understand this, or what?”
“I understand it, I understand it well,” Mr. Trąba said with a hollow voice.
“Since you understand it, why in the world do you mock us with your toys? By a billion barrels of beer! An assassin with a bow! A policeman with a ladies’ umbrella! Meanwhile people are being carted off to Siberia. Hi diddly dee, the bowman’s life for me.” Dots of foam appeared in the corners of Father’s mouth. “With a bow! Or how about a sling-shot! Or how about just like that!”
And gathering monstrous momentum, Father threw the bottle with all his might. Whether the ostentatious gesture was inversely proportional to his strength, or whether the power of Mr. Trąba’s hypnotic and redeeming gaze, which never left the bottle, was so great, or whether this was a rare conjunction of various coincidences — whatever it was, nothing happened. If there was a target, the projectile missed its target. The bottle made a short and remarkably slow flight in the direction of the window. The blanket blacking out the window deadened the blow. Like a plane on approach, it slipped down along the gray surface and, bouncing off the bench under the window, landed safely on the ground, and it drowsily, with its final impulses, rolled in the direction of my feet. For a moment we stared at it in silence, perhaps in fear that at any moment it would explode all the same and be blown to pieces, flow away in glass mixed with juniper vodka; or perhaps in the hope that some sort of energy or force would enter into it and that, as if turned by someone’s invisible hand, it would twirl roguishly and illicitly? But nothing happened. It was quiet, and the bottle, filled with the feverish and silent tussling of light-blue lights, rested at my feet.