“As I said,” Grand Master Swaczyna reached into his breast pocket and extracted a folded piece of office paper, “as I said, the idea of killing, whether it’s a communist leader or any other sort of leader, is, in my opinion, an idea for students, but a commission remains a commission. ‘The customer is our master,’ as the latest slogan of socialized services proclaims. Here’s the project.”
Grand Master Swaczyna smoothed out the paper, and we all caught sight of a scrupulously drawn image of a beautiful object, shaded with a soft pencil, like an old illustration.
“The bed is approximately thirty, and precisely thirty-three and one half inches in length, and will be produced from beech wood, buffalo horn, and ram’s tendons,” Grand Master Swaczyna explained. “The inlay: little circles and rosettes of ivory. It all worked out well — I recently imported a little ivory from Kenya at a small profit. The bowstring will be of horse hair, the trigger lever of brass. Whereas for the bail, that is to say the bow, we will employ a spring from a Citroën model 1938. Only yesterday I paid a visit to one of my workshops and personally inspected the death-dealing metal. It has already been cleaned of rust and petrified mud. I can tell you all that truly murderous powers lurk in its wings glistening with olive intensity. As the man from whom I bought the spring assured me, that very Citroën model 1938 was in its time the property of the legendary murderer Mazurkiewicz. There remains the questions of shots, that is to say arrows. .”
“One arrow will be enough,” Mr. Trąba studied the details of the project carefully. “One arrow will be enough, made, as I told you, from a bicycle spoke and wooden ailerons, whereas the tip is to be made from a silver ball filed off of Mrs. Chief’s souvenir sugar bowl.” Mr. Trąba bowed slightly in the direction of Mother, who was sitting motionless.
“And the silver blade will pierce his bowels, and his belly, and the dirt shall come out. Poland, Poland,” resounded Father Pastor Potraffke’s hoarsely distorted voice.
Once again he raised up his arms, but now it might seem that he lifted on them a huge, invisible weight, and his face grew pale as paper, he panted heavily, his dark, fiery pupils fled time and again into the depths of his skull. The Pastor’s Wife jumped up from her place, but neither she nor any of us, who were seized with sudden fear, knew what to do. Pastor Potraffke now raised up his arms and the weight resting on them (all the heavier for the fact that it was invisible), and now he himself rose up from his place, and apoplectic blotches began to appear on his face, which gave the impression that he was slowly returning to life and consciousness. And indeed, he lowered one hand and extracted a Bible from his jacket pocket. He opened it with a mechanical, though seemingly infallible, gesture, and with a somewhat calmer, though still sufficiently apoplectic voice, he began to speak, read, and comment:
“I ask you, beloved brothers and beloved sisters, how many years have passed since the end of the war until today, until the year of our Lord 1963? Eighteen years. Eighteen. Listen, then, to what the Book of Judges has to say: ‘And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. So the children of Israel,’ listen carefully brothers and sisters, ‘the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for eighteen years.’ Just as we,” the pastor raised up his head and immediately let it drop again, “just as we have been serving the king of the Huns for eighteen years. Scripture speaks in this passage, the Book of Judges, chapter three, verse fourteen, about precisely eighteen years of bondage: ‘But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a man who did not use his right hand: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment on his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And Ehud came unto him and put forth his left hand and took the dagger forth from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. So that the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.’ That’s right. Dirt. Poland.”
Father Pastor Potraffke finished his furious, though ever quieter and ever calmer, reading from the Book of Judges, sat down heavily, and cast his careful gaze with unwaning fury across everyone sitting at the table, and then he said out of the blue:
“Nothing in the world, nothing will bring me to grant you confirmation. Dirt. Dirt. Poland. Poland.”
“Poland,” Mr. Trąba repeated after him as if an echo.
“Poland,” Grand Master Swaczyna repeated as if it were the response to a password.
“Poland, goal,” said Father.
“Poland, Poland, Poland,” said Mother, the Pastor’s Wife, and Małgosia Snyperek.
“Poland, Poland, Poland,” we began to repeat, one after another, to chant in unison “Poland, Poland,” like fans sitting in the same section of a stadium.
And the choralists, who were still standing on the podium and were still singing Czech songs to the accompaniment of the missionary orchestra, finally heard our “Poland, Poland,” for they finally fell silent for a moment, and not at all surprised, not even directing astounded glances in our direction, they immediately sang in Polish, with that same strong voice:
“Time to go home, it’s time. They already call us.
The bell from the tower to devotions,