Stanislaw Lem: Hospital of the Transfiguration

“Come here,” she repeated, gently, almost sleepily. He looked at her in wonder. Extending her arms from under the blanket, she stroked him like a child. He leaned against her.

“I’m bankrupt,” he said. “Like my father.”

She held him and stroked his head.

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered. “Don’t think about anything.”

He felt her breasts and her hands against his face. The only light came from the flicker of the fading flashlight, which had rolled into the hay. Shadows laced its feeble illumination. He could hear the slow, peaceful rhythm of her heart, which spoke to him in the old language, the language he understood best. He was still wondering at that when softly, without breathing, she kissed him on the mouth.

Darkness covered them. Hay crunched under the fuzzy blanket and the woman gave him pleasure, but not in the usual way. At every instant she controlled herself and she controlled him. Later, exhausted, holding her beautiful body without a trace of passion but with all the force of despair, he cried on her breast. When he calmed down, he saw that she was lying on her back, slightly above him, and her face, too, was so calm in the last light. He dared not ask if she loved him. To offer yourself was like giving a stranger your last bit of food: it was more than love. It suddenly occurred to him that he knew nothing about her; he could not even remember her first name.

“Listen,” he whispered quietly.

But she put her hand over his mouth, gently yet decisively. She picked up the edge of the blanket and wiped away his tears, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

Then even his curiosity faded, and in the arms of this unfamiliar woman he became, for an instant, as empty and blank as at the moment of his birth.

Kraków, September 1948

The Chain of Chance

The Cyberiad : Fables for the Cybernetic Age

Fiasco

The Futurological Congress

His Master’s Voice

Hospital of the Transfiguration

Imaginary Magnitude

The Investigation

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Memoirs of a Space Traveler : Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

Microworlds : Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy

More Tales of Pirx the Pilot

One Human Minute

A Perfect Vacuum

Return from the Stars

Solaris

The Star Diaries

Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Copyright © 1982 by Stanislaw Lem

English translation copyright © 1988

by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Orlando, Florida 32887.

Library of Congress Catalaging-in-Publication Data

Lem, Stanislaw.

[Szpital przemienienia. English]

Hospital of the Transfiguration/Stanislaw Lem; translated from the Polish by William Brand.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Translation of: Szpital przemienienia.

“A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”

ISBN 0-15-642176-3 (pbk.)

I. Title.

PG7158.LL39S913 1988

891.8’537-dc19 87-33659

Designed by Beth Tondreau Design

Printed in the United States of America

First Harvest/HBJ edition 1991

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