Moreover, the Master was not inclined to attempt to salvage it. He didn’t like this story. He examined the suspiciously even break — it looked as if it had been made by a scroll saw — he studied it precisely, and he shook his head with a sense of the absolutely unfathomable. He glanced at the sky, as if only up there could there be saws that cut so diabolically.
He agreed to take it back with him, he brought it back, but that was that — it is no problem to fit a little chess table into a terrain vehicle. Especially in two pieces. He brought it back, but he didn’t take it to his workshop. He didn’t hasten to start gluing or to make any other repair. He most clearly didn’t wish to engage the forces that could work so thunderously. He brought it back and placed it on a spot next to the shed, next to the specter of an ancient coach. Wait, wait a minute. Now’s not a good time for me. I’ll take it and repair it when the right moment comes. Nine years later, Master Sztwiertnia died. The great funeral procession went through all of Wisła, from the church to Gróniczek. Over the grave we sang to him of eternal light: “Dear light, dear light, that scatters the malevolent blight…” We sang beautifully, and from the depths of our hearts, for it was clear that Master Sztwiertnia was in God’s lights.
The little table leaning against the wall slowly turned into who knows what. Over the next decades it became overgrown with a crust of bird excrement, woody roots, and fossilized dust. Anyone who didn’t know would never guess the sense of its formlessness.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I see the great Star turning into the dark field. The tarp on it is burning, and in the yellow glow Father is setting up chess pieces on the most beautiful chessboard in the world. He begins to play with someone, but I don’t know with whom, because the other one is in darkness.
XII
After writing this story, I couldn’t resist giving in to sentimentalism: I collected the remains that had been consumed by heat waves, frosts, and bark beetles; I brought them to Warsaw, and I took them for renovation to famous masters from the gallery of old furniture on Ząbkowska Street. Last week — once the construction had regained its former radiance and splendor, once it had again become beautiful like music (more beautiful, because music ages beautifully), and once I had placed it with great pomp in the large room on Sienna Street — I discovered two pawns in the drawer, one white and one black. I was certain that they hadn’t been there. I call the masters: “Where’d the pawns come from. They certainly weren’t there before.” “They were there, but immovable and almost invisible, sunk into the mass of the wood, overgrown with fossilized cobweb.”
Two dead pawns. The beginning of every chess match. The beginning of every match in the world. The beginning of Lev Tolstoy’s match with his son-in-law. In the photograph you can clearly see that they had just begun. They have behind them the first exchange of pawns. The white pawn in the drawer, and the black pawn in the drawer. From here on, everything is possible. The game can go in any direction.
*****It is little, but it is intense. If you know Zweig’s Chess Story, and you must know it, you will understand: I always was, and am, on the side of Czentowic.
Manuscripts of a Person from My Parts
In the name of the Most Holy Trinity — Amen. If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness? Once fanatical prophets start writing you, the ball is over. Once gloomy psychopaths start writing, it begins to be unpleasant. For the last two, maybe three years I have been receiving more and more letters that are — to put it delicately — odd. Supposedly, this is a sign and the price of genuine popularity. The measure of genuine fame is not the number of female admirers and fans. The measure of genuine fame is the number of enemies and the presence of loonies. As soon as a dragnet of hate-filled people begins observing your every move, and as soon as even a small cortège of hebephreniacs begins to follow you, only then do you mean something — or so a certain, now deceased, but highly insightful friend used to say. Without a doubt, he knew what he was talking about: for quite a few years he was famous, even very famous. Psychopaths conducted copious correspondence with him. I don’t know. I’m unable to assess my own situation. Just today I see the following aphorism on the wall calendar: “Popularity — the punishment that looks like an award” (Ingmar Bergman). It seems that hundreds of similar aphorisms have been composed on this topic. Basically, it’s a trifle. But I realize that Bergman’s old man was a pastor, and I begin to feel a little awkward. Within reasonable limits, it goes without saying. Let’s not go overboard here about any sort of psychoses, obsessions, fears. I’m not saying that now I cut open each envelope with my heart in my mouth, but the time of envelopes containing nothing but letters from enraptured owners of yellow dresses; from passionate male and female admirers of cats; from faithful fans who, although they have regard for me, will still never be able to understand how I could move from magical Krakow to soulless Warsaw; and even the time of incoherent epistles from failed poets with whom I supposedly once drank vodka — all this has past. The time has dawned for bloody exhibitionists who are fond of paradoxes: “Do you know that if I stick my tampon in too shallowly, it presses on the notorious G spot, and I wander about aroused all day long, although I basically don’t realize it?” The time has dawned for bigoted aunties who are imbued with a will for converting people to faith in Jesus: “Do you know what Jesus gives to man? Wouldn’t you like to taste how good Jesus is? Jesus tastes better than all the cutlets in the world! Jesus tastes better than all the cheesecakes, poppy-seed cakes, and tortes of this Earth!” The time has dawned for female gymnasium students who insightfully analyze domestic toxicities: “I interrupt my writing for today. Father has just thrown me out of the room, because he suddenly felt like screwing Mother. Believe me, nothing so discourages me from sex as my folks. I understand perfectly well that my folks are not there to encourage me to have sex, but mine don’t spare me their sexuality. In our two rooms, they are in a difficult situation, all the more reason they shouldn’t approach the matter frivolously and routinely.” The time has dawned for risk-taking historiosophists who don’t shun blackmaiclass="underline" “Perhaps someone in Poland could finally show some courage and praise the Partitions? After all, the Partitions were a splendid time — the economy was developing, we spoke foreign languages fluently, and our literature produced the greatest masterpieces of its history, and that was not just in the Emigration, but also precisely here at home. I am thinking, of course, of Bolesław Prus’s unsurpassable The Doll.” The time has dawned for metaphysical fundamentalists, who are truly worthy of considerable attention: “The single task of the writer, my dear sir, is to conduct a fictional proof for the existence of God; and what is more — only the writer (not the mathematician or the philosopher) can be effective here.” The time has dawned for troublesome mistresses sending sepia photographs from the seventies, which they provide with tender dedications. The time has dawned for detox clinic brethren who live in their imaginations, and the time for Lutheran co-confessionals with liberated minds. The time for murky propositions, the time for troublesome requests, and the time for heavy insults. The time for madmen has dawned, wild like never-mown yellow grass. “Every normal person feels like killing someone once in a while. In my case that normalcy went further: in a special notebook, I keep a running list of persons whom I would be happy to kill,” writes a guy who — as he assures me — is connected to me by a million bonds. Supposedly he comes from my parts, supposedly he is a Lutheran, supposedly my age. Sometimes he says that he is the omniscient Protestant narrator, and this does not seem to be a rhetorical device, but genuine mania. Sometimes he pretends to be a woman. Using feminine personal forms is one of the ritual dodges of internauts. I don’t know whether he belongs to that tribe. His correspondence arrives by normal mail. The bulky envelopes contain constantly updated Xerox copies of lists of persons he would like to kill, as well as extensive, pathological “justifications of sentences,” full of diverse digressions. The disgustingly familiar tone, full of pledges of brotherhood, is insufferable.****** Just like you, I like to have a drink, and I’m crazy about the girls. Just like you, I was battered by my sainted, I supposed accursed, family home, and in the best moments of life I am, at best, a female convalescent. “The father’s home is a true paradise?” Did I hit the bull’s eye? “Even if you were to travel the entire world, you won’t find one more beautiful.” You don’t have to write back, we both know that I hit the bull’s eye. We both know what we have in our minds. We wake up at the same time, and we get up at the same time. Do I exaggerate? Even if I exaggerate, it isn’t by much. When did we get up last Thursday? I got up at seven past seven. I woke at seven past seven, and until half past seven, in other words for twenty-three whole minutes, I listened raptly to the solitude of my kidneys, my liver, and my heart. The previous evening, the spiritually twisted daughter of an organist from our parts had been at my place. The dusky body of a thirty-something discus thrower with an epic genotype. Even dressed, it took your breath away with its vastnesses; undressed, it drove you mad. My lonely and desolate hands are feverish even now. At half past seven, I drew back the Australian Merino bed cover and impulsively arranged the objects lying on the other side of the couch: a pencil, a notebook, the Bible, a box of chocolate-covered marshmallows, a pack of cigarettes (Davidoff Light), a cigarette lighter, a can of beer (Żywiec), a watch (Omega), a book (