“Brothers, calm yourselves!” cried out Father Pastor Potraffke. “Let the spirit of peace reign between you!”
And after a moment, as if wishing to reinforce the spirit of peace with the sprit of sobriety, he turned to Station Master Ujejski:
“What sorts of exceptions do you have in mind? What exceptions can there be to the Fifth Commandment?”
“Thomas Aquinas answers the question whether it is possible to grant dispensation from the Ten Commandments in the affirmative: it is possible to grant dispensation,” replied Station Master Ujejski, now with a calmer tone, “because the Commandments belong to natural law, and natural law is sometimes fallible, and thus it is possible to grant dispensation.”
“The Commandments are established by God, thus I think only God could grant dispensation from them,” said the Pastor’s Wife, shrugging her shoulders.
“God works with the hands of men.” The Station Master was quite clearly passing from arousal to apathy.
“Does Thomas Aquinas speak in so many words about granting dispensation from the prohibition against killing?” Grand Master Swaczyna asked.
“Yes, in so many words,” Station Master Ujejski barely moved his lips. “He says that people are given dispensation from the prohibition against killing since, according to human law, it is permitted to kill people — for instance criminals or enemies.”
“Absolutely right, as far as I’m concerned,” threw in Commandant Jeremiah. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m for the death penalty. It will be better for more than one scoundrel if he is buried before it is too late.”
“I could say,” Mr. Trąba said with a somewhat forced smile, “I could say that all the arguments mentioned suit my dying intentions well. Dispensation from the Fifth Commandment suits me. Permission to kill an enemy and a criminal suits me. The existence of capital punishment suits me. Incidentally, as far as the medieval opinion on the licitness of tyrannicide is concerned — I’m speaking to you, Mr. Station Master, but you’re sleeping,” and indeed the Station Master’s eyes were closed, and his head had fallen onto his chest, “—as far as the medieval opinion on tyrannicide is concerned, this was partially revoked by the Council of Constance. But of course we Lutherans — maybe it is better that you’re sleeping, Mr. Station Master — we Lutherans don’t care about either Thomas Aquinas or some council from the mists of history. We Lutherans care about Luther. And Luther — although he does not allow tyrannicide — allows punishment. ‘Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful,’ he cites Scripture, but it does not follow from this, he adds, that there shouldn’t be punishment at all. There must be punishment, and it is the superior authorities who are to punish. If injustices should not cease, make report about this, says Luther, to your superior authority, your father or whomever is placed over you to exercise office: it is their task to punish according to righteousness. Yes,” Mr. Trąba sighed deeply, “I think it is clear to all that in the current situation, here and now, the Reformer’s recommended legalism is a troublesome utopia, and it is necessary to take matters into our own hands. Gomułka’s superior authority is Khrushchev, and if I wanted to abide strictly by the counsel of Doctor Martin Luther, I would have to direct my complaint against Gomułka to Khrushchev. Which is absurd.”
“It’s only slightly less absurd than killing Gomułka.” Commandant Jeremiah persisted in his increasingly peculiar commonsense argumentation.
“No, a hundred times no,” Mr. Trąba raised his voice. “I’ve worked the problem out theoretically without a hitch, just as I hope to hit him in the heart without a hitch. I name myself, in the name of historical righteousness, the superior authority of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka, and as the superior power I will mete out the death penalty to him.”
“And thereby you ennoble him, Mr. Trąba. You will join the ranks of the great assassins of mankind, but you also add Gomułka to the ranks of the great tyrants of mankind. Doesn’t that bother you?” asked Grand Master Swaczyna.
“This pains me, but unfortunately there are no ideal solutions,” Mr. Trąba replied, and he turned to Father Pastor Potraffke:
“I’m terribly sorry, but whom did you have in mind? What Protestants took part in assassination attempts upon the highest power?”
“Not searching too far afield, a certain Lutheran, Bogumił Frankemberg, a locksmith from Cybulice, took part in the famous, although fortunately failed, attempt on the life of the last king of the Commonwealth.”
“You are thinking of the disgraceful abduction of Stanisław August Poniatowski that ended with the retreat of the conspirators, with the exception of one who, seeing what was happening, went over to the side of the king? Do you have in mind the famous coup that ended with the rescue of our last crowned head by an accidental miller in Marymont?” Mr. Trąba was making certain he’d understood correctly.
“Your coup will end up just the same, a fiasco, everything will come to nothing, you’ll wander around, you’ll get lost, you’ll end up, if not in a mill in Marymont, then in the police station on Marszałkowska Street, you’ll get drunk as swine.” Commandant Jeremiah had clearly lost what was left of his patience. “By the way, why aren’t you drinking, Mr. Trąba? After all, you were supposed to be dying of drink, and for that reason you intend to commit a crime. And what do I see here? You’re not drinking?”
“You go too far, Commandant.” Mr. Trąba grew pale, and his hands began to shake. “Those arguments are below the belt. Moreover, in a plan of elementary logic you confuse causes with effects.”
“Brothers, calm yourselves,” Pastor Potraffke once again appealed for peace. “And what if,” he continued in a tone of somewhat too studied conciliation, “what if you were to tie this not to the idea of real regicide, since it is indeed difficult to find an example of that in our history, but to the idea of symbolic regicide?”
“Just what do you have in mind?” Father asked.
“There are known cases of attempts not upon the person of the ruler but upon his image. For example, Prince Józef Jabłonowski, enraged at that same unfortunate Stanisław August Poniatowski, ordered a portrait of the king hung in his private dungeon, and he placed guards by that imprisoned image. Likewise the portrait of King Jan III Sobieski fell victim to an assassin’s attempt. A certain nobleman, whose name I don’t remember, simply hacked the likeness of the king to pieces with his saber, for which, moreover, he paid with his neck.”
“Don’t be angry with me, Pastor, but the idea that I should let fly from my crossbow at a photograph of Władysław Gomułka cut out of The People’s Tribune—well that sort of idea is humiliating.” Mr. Trąba’s hands continued to shake, and his gaze strayed time and again in the direction of the bottles that were standing on the table.
“You must be aware,” Commandant Jeremiah’s tone seemed to reveal that perhaps he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the irreversible course of events, “you must be aware that, in addition to everything else, the crossbow isn’t the weapon of knights but of servants. Gentlemen despise the crossbow. For example, the use by the British of massive units armed with crossbows in the famous Battle of Crécy was recognized as dishonorable by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, which, in itself, invalidated the result of the battle. The use of the crossbow is a foul.”
“I don’t intend to foul Gomułka. I intend to kill him,” Mr. Trąba retorted dully. “The crossbow is the only weapon I know that can be effective at a distance of 150 to 200 yards. On the other side of Frascati Street, across from the windows of the first secretary’s apartment, there stretches a small park, and precisely from that spot, from behind the cover of darkness and leafless shrubs, I intend to send forth a single, and I hope lethal, shot. I choose the crossbow because, as I have mentioned many times, I simply don’t know how to use firearms. Obviously, I know perfectly well about the course of the Battle of Crécy, and I know that in Europe that weapon never enjoyed great esteem. But as always, excessive Eurocentrism is what destroys us Europeans. As some of you may know, the crossbow was invented in China, and at a time when bears were strolling back and forth across today’s Frascati Street. The trigger mechanisms of Chinese crossbows were produced with the precision of a grain of rice, and their level of complication, as experts claim, is comparable to that of bullet chambers in contemporary automatic rifles. You can find breathtaking descriptions of these constructions (handmade, although on an industrial scale) in old Chinese tracts, for example in The Art of War of Master Sun or in Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lu. I have the impression that both texts stem from the times when our ancestors, who later despised the weapon as unworthy of gentlemen, were still frightening wild animals with their ghastly dialect. The Huns, who battled with the Chinese, feared the crossbow, but if, by some miracle, they came into possession of one, they were unable to assemble or copy it. They weren’t even able to make use of the arrows, since they were too short for their long bows. Thus the invention and use of the crossbow is a flight of human thought and technology, a rebuff to barbarity. The fact that, one thousand years after the Chinese, servants in Europe used crossbows to set fire to barns is rather a measure of the demise, and not a manifestation of the exquisite manners, of the warriors of Mitteleuropa. So you see, it was no coincidence,” Mr. Trąba glanced in the direction of Grand Master Swaczyna, “no coincidence at all that I chose the Chinese model, since just like the ancient Chinese, I intend to rout the Huns. Even more, I intend to kill the very leader of the Huns.”