Stanislaw Lem - Hospital of the Transfiguration

Neurotics could be idiots too, he thought, angry because it sounded almost like an admission: That’s what I am.

The girl would often sit in the bathroom, because there was a mirror there. Driven out, she would hang around near the door, stretch her hands out, and beg everyone who opened it to let her look at her own reflection. She tried to see herself in all the chrome fittings.

For some time Stefan had been suffering from insomnia. He would lie in bed reading, waiting for sleep, but it never seemed to come, and when it finally did, he thought he could feel someone standing motionless in the dark room. He knew there was no one, but he would wake up. Only when the first birdsong greeted the dawn could he doze off.

On the night of September 29, the sky sparkling with stars, he fell asleep earlier than usual. But he woke up terrified. A bright light flashed in the window. He got up in his underwear and looked out. Two big cars painted in irregular-shaped patches growled on the winding road, illuminated by the glare of their own headlights reflected off the hospital wall. Germans in dark helmets stood near the door. Several officers came out from under the small roof over the entrance. One of them shouted something. The motors roared, the officers got in, and soldiers jumped onto the running boards. The headlights swept the flower beds, and for an instant the beams of the second car fell on the one ahead. They lit up the passengers’ heads, and Stefan saw one bare head among the helmets. He recognized it. The headlights glared against the main gate, where the porter stood blinded, cap in hand. Then the motors roared louder as the cars turned onto the road. On a curve, the headlights picked out a clump of trees, a wreath of leaves, a trunk, and finally the white spine of a birch. Then it was quiet again, the chirping of crickets like a pulse in an enormous ear. Stefan grabbed his coat off the hook, squirmed into it unthinkingly, and ran barefoot down the hall.

All the doctors were gathered on the second floor, and the crossfire of questions was so chaotic that it seemed impossible to understand. The story emerged gradually. The soldiers were from an SS patrol group now stationed at Owsiany. They had arrested a worker at the electricity substation and were looking for others. Marglewski said loudly that no one should go into the woods, because the SS were searching the area, and there was no joking with them.

The soldiers had not searched the hospital, just walked through the wards and talked to Pajączkowski. “The officer had a riding crop, and he struck the table in front of me,” said Pajączkowski, pale, his eyes wide. Everyone gradually drifted away as the excitement died down. As he passed Stefan, Marglewski stopped as if to say something, but only nodded maliciously and disappeared down the corridor.

Stefan lay awake until morning. He was upset; he kept closing his eyes and reliving the brief nocturnal scene again and again. He could no longer pretend, as he had at first, that the man arrested was someone other than Woch. That large, square head was unmistakable. He groaned under the burden of responsibility he felt. He had to tell someone, had to confess the guilt that was tormenting him, so he went to see Sekułowski. It was early morning.

But the poet would not let him open his mouth. “Can’t you see I’m writing? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? ‘Take a stand’ again? Everyone does what he can. What a poet does is suffer beautifully. What about you? Are you waiting for the war to end so every Achilles in the woods can become a Cato? You’re as bad as the Furies—at least they make sense, they’re women! Leave me alone for a change!”

Brushed off, Stefan thought as he left. He wondered if it would do any good to go take a look at the substation. If there was still electricity in the hospital, somebody had to be working there. And that someone might know what had happened to Woch.

Seeking shelter from his own thoughts, Stefan walked to the farthest comer of the men’s ward. Some red spots on the floor caught his eye, but as he came closer, he saw that they were not blood.

A young schizophrenic was making a statue out of clay. Stefan watched him for a long time. The boy’s face betrayed nothing. His profile was sharply cut, yellowish, and slightly crooked, like a mobile mask. Sometimes he would close his eyes so peacefully that his eyelashes did not move, and raise his head as his fingertips fluttered like sparrows over the surface of the clay. There was a serenity to his downturned mouth. The demons had stopped tormenting him, sentences died on his lips, he could no longer communicate with strangers: he was absent. That supreme indifference which exists only in crowds or among the unconscious enabled the boy to work in solitude, as if he were in a desert. A tall angel rose from the mound of clay on the round table before him. Its wings, wide as a stricken bird’s, were somehow threatening. The long gothic face was beautiful and composed. The hands, held low as if in fear, were wringing a small child’s neck.

“What’s it called?” asked Stefan.

The boy did not answer. He wiped clay from his fingertips. Joseph spoke up from the corner; a patient was supposed to answer when a doctor talked to him.

“Go ahead and tell the doctor,” said Joseph, stepping heavily forward.

Joseph never backed down with patients—they got out of his way. But this boy did not move.

“I know you can talk. Say something or I’ll take care of that doll for you.” He moved as if he was going to tip the figure over. The boy did not flinch.

“No,” said Stefan, confused. “There’s no need for that. Joseph, please go to the supply room and fetch a tray of syringes and two ampules of scophetal. The nurse needs them.”

He wanted to make it up to the boy for the humiliation. “You know,” he said, “it’s very strange and beautiful.”

The patient stood with his shoulders hunched, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. A shadow of contempt gathered under his lower lip.

“I don’t understand it, but maybe you’ll explain it to me someday,” said Stefan, slowly shedding his role of psychiatrist.

The boy stared glassy-eyed at his clay-stained fingers.

Then, helplessly, Stefan extended his hand in the simplest of gestures.

The boy seemed terrified: he moved to the other side of the table and hid his hands behind his back. Ashamed, Stefan looked around to make sure there were no staff members in the room. Then the boy reached out suddenly and awkwardly, almost knocking over the statue, and took hold of Stefan’s hand. He let go as if it burned him. Then he turned back to the figure and took no further notice of the doctor.

Joseph came up to Stefan during rounds the next day. “Doctor, do you know what that clay is called?”

“No, what?”

“Strangling Angel.”

“What?”

Joseph repeated the name.

“Interesting,” said Stefan.

“Very interesting. Besides which, the bastard bites,” said Joseph, displaying red marks on his large hand. Stefan was awed. He knew all the orderlies’ practiced throws. Their motto was: Break a patient’s arm before you let him put a scratch on you. The boy must really have been “acting up.” And he must have got a good beating too. Despite innumerable orders and reprimands, the orderlies applied a policy of revenge behind the doctors’ backs, and patients who made nuisances of themselves were beaten peasant-style, close-in, with the most deliberately painful blows. They were hit through blankets or in the bath, so no marks would show. Stefan knew all this and wanted to order a strict ban on any mistreatment of the boy, but he could not: his authority did not extend to officially forbidden “methods.”