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“From heaven high I come to you,
I bring you tidings good and new;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing:
To you this night is born a child,
Of Mary, chosen virgin mild;
This little child, of lowly birth,
Shall be the joy of all the earth.”
Pastor Potraffke stood against the backdrop of a plush curtain that covered the stage of the Protestant Hall. He descended from the heavens and sang. The Pastor’s Wife, beautiful and dark-complexioned like the Brazilian actress Maria Félix, leaned lower and lower over the keyboard. Snow was falling beyond the high windows. The church tower rose beyond the moveable wall of snow.
“To you this night is born a child,
Of Mary, chosen virgin mild. .”
Father Pastor Potraffke finally stood on the lowest level of the ladder with fireworks shooting from every step. He touched the earth with his foot, and he suddenly fell silent, as if struck by a subterranean thunderbolt that came from the depths of the globe, from the basement of the Protestant Hall. The Pastor’s Wife played a moment longer, glanced once, twice in the direction of her husband, played a few chords more loudly and distinctly, as if wishing to persuade him to sing further, glanced once again with reflection and attention, and her divine shoulders, covered with a cashmere shawl, shook, her fragile fingers tore themselves suddenly from the keyboard, a blush covered her indescribable face.
“A child is born to you this night!” Pastor Potraffke suddenly bellowed. “Heathens! A child is born to you this night!” Apoplectic patches appeared on his chubby-cheeked face, and his eyes burned with an apostolic radiance. “Sons of philistines,” he shrieked at the boys sitting at the window, “sons of philistines! A child is born to you this night! And you,” in a fury he turned his face to the girls sitting by the door, “and you, daughters. .” he hesitated for a moment, “and you, daughters of Bolsheviks! A child is born to you this night!” he finished as if with a sort of relief. “Nothing in the world,” he wheezed, drowning in the ocean of his own impotence, “nothing, verily I say unto you, nothing will bring me to grant you confirmation. For the next time, that will be after the holidays, for the next time, six verses, not six, seven verses, by heart, of ‘From Heaven High I Come to You,’ seven verses of that festive hymn, which. . who composed it? Well, who?” Potraffke looked around the Protestant Hall with what seemed a more conscious glance. “Błaszczyk, let Błaszczyk tell us: who composed the festive hymn ‘From Heaven High I Come to You?’”
Straw-haired Joey stood up uncertainly, glanced at the thicker and thicker snow beyond the windows, at the white cross on the wall, at the Pastor’s Wife, who, with an exquisite motion of her head, was indicating the portrait of Martin Luther hanging on the wall, and at father Pastor Potraffke, who was blocking his view of that portrait, and he said, not quite asking, not quite answering:
“Father Pastor?”
“No, not me, you mutton-brain.” The furies left Pastor Potraffke, and he spoke with an almost normal, only slightly stifled, voice. “No, not me, mutton-head. It was our Reformer, Doctor Martin Luther. Yes, verily I say unto you, our Reformer, Doctor Martin Luther, composed that hymn on Christmas Eve in the year of our Lord 1534 in his home in Wittenberg. Sit down, Błaszczyk. I understand that the Lord receives various people at His table, but every time I look at you, Błaszczyk, I wonder. Verily, I say unto you, Błaszczyk,” Pastor Potraffke again raised his voice, “verily, I say unto you, Błaszczyk, I wonder whether someone like you can sit down to the Lord’s table.”
The Pastor’s Wife suddenly struck the keyboard, and we all eagerly sang the hymn which ended the lessons and services:
“Amen, Amen, Amen,
Jesus Christ is Lord. .”
We quickly recited the prayer, and we set off for houses that smelled of apples, poppyseed strudels, and floor polish.
Dressed in his old postal uniform, Father chopped huge beach logs in the courtyard.
“And what did you learn today?” he asked with a skepticism that was rare with him and, paradoxically, foretold a good mood.
“Nothing yet. I am only now going to go learn it. The pastor told us to learn seven verses of ‘From Heaven High I Come to You’ by heart. For the holidays,” I added with emphasis and hope.
For it now and then happened that Father, adhering to all of the principles formulated in Scripture, and subject, at the same time, to uncontrollable fancies, came to the conclusion that a contradiction had arisen between the commandments of the Bible and my homework assignments, and he would forbid me from doing them. “You aren’t going to solve any equations on Sunday,” he would say now and then. “You must keep the Sabbath holy.”
But this time it was different.
“Seven verses of ‘From Heaven High I Come to You.’” He struck with precision in just the right place, and the beach trunk was split asunder, revealing its almost brick-red interior against the background of the all-encompassing snow. “If I were you,” he said with his characteristic, non-binding tone, “if I were you, I’d learn all twelve verses. A person ought to strive for perfection. ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’”
•
I placed the hymnals on the table cloth with numbing symmetry. “Be ye perfect, even as the hand that places you is perfect,” I whispered. Mother sliced the bread that Mrs. Wantuła had baked in Goje. She sliced for a long time and attentively, and when she had finished, she first glanced at the table, then at Father, and she said with an indulgence that turned inexorably in the course of speaking into impatience:
“We’re missing apples, nuts, and Mr. Trąba.”
Then she went up to the window, moved the yellow curtain aside, and stared for a long time into the windy labyrinths of the Christmas Eve night, which was thickening from the constantly falling snow.
“The Baptists went to bed long ago. The lights are turned out, but we haven’t even sat down at the table yet,” she said, tearing her forehead away from the dark-blue windowpane.
Father, dressed in a white shirt, smelling of cognac and still inflamed from the afternoon fish-slaughter, stood by the table, took coins and banknotes from his wallet, and slid them under the tablecloth. The heretical habits of the Baptists didn’t make much of an impression, either on him or on us.