Stanislaw Lem: Hospital of the Transfiguration

“What was all that about?” Nosilewska, her eyes more beautiful than usual, stood before him, flushed from excitement and from running. She was not wearing her medical smock. Confused, Stefan explained that he did not know himself—a German had wanted to look around the hospital. Apparently they were scouring the woods for partisans, so he had come here.

He was careful not to mention Pajpak.

Nosilewska had been sent by Rygier and Marglewski, who, though they had watched from an upstairs window as the vehicle left, did not want to come out. Nor had they let her come downstairs earlier: they were playing it safe.

Leaving her rather impolitely, Stefan started back down the path.

He looked at his watch: seven. It would be getting dark soon. The German had spent almost half an hour there. Pajpak should be back soon. Everything seemed strange, alien in the gloom. He looked at the asylum. The dark contours of the buildings rose against clouds which, backlighted by the moon, looked as if they had lamps in them.

He had gone several hundred steps when he heard someone coming toward him through the leaves on the opposite side of the road. It was dark; the clouds obscured the moon. Stefan, guiding himself by sound, crossed the road, and recognized the director only when they were just three steps apart. “There was a German at the hospital, sir,” he began, but broke off.

Pajączkowski said nothing. Stefan walked beside him, now a little ahead, now slightly behind. They reached the gate and went to Pajpak’s office. “This is it,” the professor finally said, unlocking the door and going in. Although they both knew where the furniture was and the switch, they bumped into each other three times before turning on the light. Then Stefan, who had been burning with questions, stepped back in fear.

Pajączkowski looked yellow and parched. His pupils were as wide as buttons.

“Professor,” whispered Stefan. And then louder: “Professor.”

Pajączkowski walked to the cabinet and took out a small bottle with a worn cork —spiritus vini concentratus. He splashed some into a tumbler, because there was no proper glass, drank it, and choked. Then he sat down in an armchair and held his head in his hands.

“The whole way there,” he said, “I kept going over what I would say. If he told me the deranged were useless, I was going to appeal to the work of two deranged Germans, Bleuler and Moebius. If he talked about the Nuremberg legislation, I would explain that we were an occupied country and our legal status would not be clarified until a peace treaty was signed. If he demanded that we turn over the incurables, I would say that in medicine there is no such thing as a hopeless case. You never rule out the unknown: that is one of the obligations of a doctor. If he said that this was an enemy country and he was a German, I would remind him that he was a doctor above all else.”

“Please, professor,” whispered Stefan, pleading.

“Yes, I know you don’t want to hear this. When I got there, I don’t know if I said three words. I was slapped in the face.”

“What?” croaked Stefan.

“The Ukrainian on duty told me that Obersturmführer Hutka had gone to the asylum to check on the population and work out the tactical plan. That’s how he put it. I hope you gave false numbers.”

“No, I… I mean, he saw them himself.”

“Yes, I see. Yes, yes.”

Pajpak poured himself some bromine with luminal from a second bottle, drank it, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he asked Stefan to summon all the doctors to the library.

“The dean too?”

“What? Yes. Well, maybe not. No.”

The lights were already on in the library when Stefan entered with Nosilewska and Rygier. Then Kauters, Marglewski, and Staszek appeared. Pajączkowski waited until they were all seated. Tersely and without the usual digressions he announced that the German and Ukrainian unit that had pacified—in other words, burned and slaughtered—the village of Owsiany planned to exterminate the patients of the asylum. The Germans had organized a labor gang for next morning, since they had learned from experience that mental patients—unlike peasants, who would usually dig their own graves—were incapable of organized tasks. He had learned all he needed to know from his attempt to approach Doctor Thiessdorff.

“Barely had I informed him of the purpose of my call when he slapped me. I wanted to believe that he was outraged at my slanderous suggestion of his intentions, but the Ukrainian duty officer informed me that they had already received orders: they are getting extra ammunition today. This duty officer seemed honest enough, if that word has any meaning under the circumstances.”

Pajączkowski concluded by explaining the true purpose of Obersturmführer Hutka’s afternoon visit.

“I would like you, ladies and gentlemen, to think all this over, to make certain decisions, and take steps… I am the director, but I am simply… simply not man enough to…”

His voice failed.

“We could release the patients into the woods and let them get away by themselves. There’s a local train to Warsaw at two in the morning,” Stefan began, but stopped when he met dead silence.

Pajpak shrugged. “I thought of that. But it seems unlikely to work. The patients would be rounded up easily. And they would never survive in the forest anyway. It would be the simplest thing, but it’s not a solution.”

“I believe,” said Marglewski, his tone categorical, “that we have to yield to superior force. Like Archimedes. We should leave, just leave the hospital.”

“With the patients?”

“Just leave.”

“In other words, escape. That, of course, is one way out,” the old man said softly, strangely patient. “The Germans can hit me in the face, throw us out of here, do whatever they like. But I am not just the director of this institution. I am a doctor. As are all of you.”

“Nonsense,” Marglewski muttered, resting his chin on his hand.

“Haven’t you tried… any other method?” asked Kauters. Everyone looked at him.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, some sort of appeasement.”

Pajączkowski finally caught on. “A bribe?”

“When will they be here?”

“Between seven and eight in the morning.”

Marglewski, who had been squirming strangely, suddenly pushed his chair back, leaned forward, his hands spread wide on the table, and said, “I regard it as my duty to preserve the scholarly work that is the common property of everyone, not only mine. I see no other course open to me. Farewell, ladies and gentlemen.”

Head high, he walked out without looking at anyone.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Staszek.

Pajączkowski made a gesture of helplessness. They all looked at the door.

“So,” Pajpak said in a fragile voice. “He works here for twenty years, and now this. I didn’t know, I never would have supposed—I, a psychologist, a specialist in personalities…”

Then he screamed, “We must not think of ourselves! We must think of them!” He struck the table with his fist, and began to weep, coughing and shaking.

Nosilewska led him to a chair, and he sat down reluctantly. The light struck her hair in golden streaks as she bent over the old man and discreetly held his wrist to check his pulse. She hurried back to her chair.

Suddenly everyone began talking at once.

“It’s still not certain.”

“I’m going to call the pharmacist.”

“In any case we have to hide Sekułowski.” (That was Stefan.)

“And the priest too.”

“But wasn’t he discharged?”

“No, that’s the point.”

“Well, let’s go to the office.”

“The Germans have already checked the numbers,” said Stefan dully. “And made me—I mean all of us—responsible.”