Stanislaw Lem - Hospital of the Transfiguration

“Good-hearted?” Stefan laughed. “Me? That is a compliment I have usually been spared, Father.”

“I do hope that you will come on Sunday. It only remains for you to give me your recommendation as to which of the patients should be allowed to take part in the Mass. On the one hand I would like as many of them as possible to be there, since it has been so many years, while on the other…” He hesitated.

“I understand,” said Stefan. “In my view, however, the plan is inadvisable.”

“Inadvisable?” The priest was visibly disheartened. “Don’t you think that…”

“I think there are times when even God could compromise Himself.”

The priest looked down. “Indeed. Unfortunately, I know full well that I will be unable to find the right words, because I am just an ordinary village priest. I admit that when I was in school I dreamed of meeting an unbelieving but powerful spirit. So that I could harness it and lead it…”

“Harness it? That sounds strange, Father.”

“I was thinking of harnessing it with love, but that was a sin. I only realized that later: the sin of pride. Then I discovered that living among people teaches us many other things. I know very well how little I am worth. Every one of you doctors has a whole battery of arguments that could demolish my priestly wisdom.”

Stefan was annoyed by the priest’s mawkish tone. He looked around.

The patients were walking along the paths to the building; it was dinner time.

“Let’s keep this between us,” Stefan said, starting to leave. “And you know, Father, our bond of secrecy is as strict as yours, leaving heaven out of it. But tell me something. Have you ever had doubts, Father?”

“What kind of answer do you want, doctor?”

“I would like to hear the truth.”

“Forgive me: it seems that you seldom open the Gospels. Please take a look at chapters 27 and 46 of Saint Matthew. More than once, those have been my words,”

The priest left. The yard was almost empty. The cherry-colored robes moved so evenly that an unseen force might have been combing them out of the gold-tinged gardens. Last of all came an orderly smoking a cigarette. As Stefan walked past a bare lilac bush, he saw someone crouching behind it. He wanted to call the orderly, but stopped himself. The patient, bent low, was clumsily stroking the silvery grass with a stiff hand.

Stefan was coming back from a walk. Fluffy gold filled the roadside ditches, as if Ali Baba’s mule had passed, spilling sequins from an open sack. A chestnut tree burned against the gray sky like an abandoned suit of armor. In the distance, the forest seemed to be rusting. As Stefan walked, the leaves thickly layered underfoot were alternately yellow and brown, like musical variations on a red theme. Twilight smoldered orange at the end of the path. Faraway orchards faded against the horizon. Leaves blown into a hissing cloud raced among a herd of tree trunks. Stefan was still dazzled by the colors when he entered the library to pick up a book he had left there.

Pajpak was standing at the telephone on the wall, pressing the receiver so hard that his ear had turned white. He was hardly saying anything, just mumbling, “Yes… yes… yes.” Then he said, “Thank you,” and replaced the receiver with both hands.

He stood there, still holding the telephone, and Stefan hurried over.

“My dear, dear colleague,” Pajączkowski whispered, and Stefan’s heart went out to him.

“Are you feeling weak, professor? Do you want some coramin? I’ll run to the medicine room,”

“No, it’s not that. I mean it’s not me,” the old man mumbled. He stood up straight and guided himself along the wall like a blind man until he reached the window.

The autumn red, laden with the smell of mold and speckled yellow among the leaves, broke against the window like a flood tide.

“It’s the end,” he said abruptly, then repeated: “The end.”

He lowered his gray head.

“I’ll see the dean. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. What time is it?”

“Five.”

“Then he’s sure to be… home.”

The dean was always home.

Turning as if he had just noticed Stefan, he said, “And you’re coming with me.”

“What’s going on, professor?”

“Nothing so far. And God will not allow it. No, He will not let it happen. But we’ll… You come with me as a witness. It’ll be easier for me that way, safer to talk, because you know how His Excellency is.”

A spark of Pajpak’s humor shined in his use of the dean’s ceremonial title, then disappeared.

Going to a doctor’s apartment was one thing, but going to the dean’s was another. The door was plain and white, like all the others. Pajączkowski tapped too softly to be heard inside.

He waited and tried again, louder. Stefan was about to knock himself, but the director skittishly pushed him away: You don’t know how to do it, you’ll screw it up.

“Come in!”

A powerful voice. It was still reverberating as they entered.

Stefan had seen the room before, but it looked different in the sunset light. The white walls had taken on a fiery color. It looked like a lion’s den. The old gold on the spines of the books seemed like some exotic inlay. The sun tinged the veneer of the sideboard and shelves with a deep mahogany. Pools of light shimmered in the grain of the wood; sparks glinted in the dean’s hair. He was behind his desk as always, leaning over a thick book, staring at Pajpak and Stefan.

Pajączkowski stammered through his introduction. He apologized, he knew they were interrupting, but vis maior —for the general good. Then he came to the point.

“I just had a telephone call, Excellency, from Kocierba, the pharmacist in Bierzyniec. At eight o’clock this morning a company of Germans and Cossack police—Ukrainians—arrived in the village. They were ordered to be silent, but somebody talked. They have come to liquidate our asylum.”

Pajpak seemed somehow diminished. Only his crooked nose moved. He was through.

The dean, as befits a man of science, questioned the reliability of the pharmacist’s information. Pajączkowski spoke in his defense.

“He is a solid man, Excellency. He has been here for thirty years. He remembers you from the times of the servant Olgierd. You wouldn’t know him, because he is a little man”—Pajączkowski measured out a modest height above the floor—“but he is honest.”

He took a breath and said, “Excellency, this news is so terrible that I would prefer not to believe it. But it is our—I mean, it is my obligation to believe it.” Now came the hardest part of his speech. However humble and unsure of himself, he realized how cold their reception had been: the dean had not even invited them to sit down. Two chairs by the desk stood empty, shadowed in the gold reflection of the setting sun. The dean sat waiting, his large, veined hand resting on his book. This meant that the entire scene was an interlude, an interruption of more important business beyond the ken of his guests.

“I have learned, Excellency, that these soldiers are commanded by a German psychiatrist. In other words, a colleague of ours. A Doctor Thiessdorff,”

He paused. The dean was silent. He merely raised his gray eyebrows as if to say: I don’t know the name.

“Yes. A young man. Member of the SS. And though I realize what a thankless undertaking it is—what else can we do? We must go see him in Bierzyniec today, Excellency, because tomorrow…” His voice failed. “The Germans have notified Mr. Pietrzykowski, the mayor, that they need forty people for a labor detail tomorrow morning.”

“This news is not entirely unexpected,” the dean said quickly. It was strange that such a big man could speak so quietly. “I have anticipated it, though perhaps not in this form, ever since Rosegger’s article. Surely you remember it.”