Stanislaw Lem: Hospital of the Transfiguration

“Carcinoma scirrhosum,” Stefan said quietly, though he had no idea why. The Latin term for cancer was like an exorcism, a scientific spell that removed the uncertainty, the dread, the trembling, giving it the precision and tranquility of the inevitable.

“A textbook case,” Uncle Ksawery mumbled as he shaved the same spot on his cheek over and over. Stefan stood motionless at the door, wrapped in the short bathrobe, his trousers in his hand. What else could he do? He listened.

“Did you know he almost became a doctor? You didn’t? Well, he quit after the fourth year of medical school. He’d been an intern for a couple of years. We even started medical school at the same time, because I frittered away a couple of years after high school graduation. All because of a… well, never mind. Anyway, when he watched me examine him, he knew what it was. And I knew it was too late to operate, but when you’re a doctor the only other place you can send somebody is the undertaker’s. It’s never too late for that. What the hell, I thought, God knows what kind of pain he’s got. He agreed right off. I went to Hrubiński. A son of a bitch, but hands of gold. He agreed to operate but for dollars, because things were so uncertain and the złoty might go to hell. When he looked at the X rays he refused point-blank, but I begged him.”

Ksawery turned to Stefan, looked at him as if he were holding back a laugh, and asked, “Have you ever got down on your knees to anybody, Stefan?” He quickly added, “I don’t mean in church.”

“No.”

“Well, that’s what I did. Got down on my knees. You don’t believe it? Well I did, I’m telling you. Hrubiński operated on September twelfth. The German tanks were already in Topolów. The oats in the field were burning. The nurses had fled, so I was his assistant. The first time in years. He opened him up, sewed him up, and left. He was furious. I wasn’t surprised. But he cursed me. Everything was absurd that whole September, everywhere, and Poland, well…”

Ksawery began sharpening his straight-razor on a belt, deliberately, slower and slower, and without stopping he said, “Right before the operation, after the scopolamine, Leszek said, ‘This is the end, isn’t it?’ So naturally I started talking the way you talk to a patient. But he meant Poland, he wasn’t talking about himself. I should go to his grave and tell him that Poland will rise again. A dreamer he was. But who knows how to die anyway? When he woke up after the operation, I was with him and he asked what time it was. Like an idiot I told him the truth. I should have set the clock ahead, because with his medical training he knew that a radical operation has to last an hour at the very least, and this was all over in fifteen minutes. So he knew…”

“What happened then?” Stefan asked, not really wanting to know, just to fill a menacing silence.

“Afterward I took him to Anzelm’s, that’s where he wanted to go. I didn’t see him for three months, not until December. But that’s something I never understood.” Uncle Ksawery, moving slowly, blindly, put the razor down and, standing next to Stefan, stared as if seeing something unusual at his feet. “He was in bed, he looked like a skeleton. He could barely swallow milk, his voice was frail, a blind man could see the state he was in, but he… how can I put it? He was completely confident. He explained away everything, and I mean everything. He rationalized. The operation had been a success, he was getting stronger every day, he was getting better, soon he would be up and around again. He had his hands and legs massaged. Every morning he told Aniela how he felt, and she wrote it down for the doctor so he could treat him properly. Meanwhile, the tumor was the size of a loaf of bread. But he told them to keep his belly bandaged so he couldn’t touch it, as if to protect the scar. The illness he didn’t talk about, except to say that it had been just a minor thing, or even that there was nothing wrong with him anymore.”

“Do you think he was… abnormal?” Stefan asked in a whisper.

“Normal! Abnormal! What does that have to do with it? He was a normal dying man! He couldn’t tear the cancer out of his body, so he tore it out of his memory. Maybe he was lying, maybe he really believed it, maybe he just wanted others to believe. How should I know which? He said that he was feeling better and better, and cried more and more often.”

“He cried?” Stefan asked with childlike fear, remembering how strong Uncle Leszek looked on horseback, holding a double-barreled shotgun pointed at the ground.

“Yes. And do you know why? They prescribed morphine suppositories for the pain, and he was putting them in himself. But when the nurse had to, he broke down. ‘I can’t do anything myself,’ he said, ‘except put that suppository in, and now they take that away.’ He couldn’t get up, but he said he didn’t want to. When they gave him milk, he’d say it wasn’t worth waking up for, that it would be different if it was broth, but when they gave him broth, he didn’t want that either. God, being with him then, talking to him! He’d hold his hands up, they looked like twigs, and he’d say, ‘Look, I’m putting on weight.’ He got incredibly suspicious. ‘What are you whispering about?’ ‘What did the doctor really say?’ Finally, Aunt Skoczyńska got the priest. He showed up with the oil for extreme unction and I thought, oh no, what now, but Leszek took it in perfect calm. Except that later the same night he started whispering. I thought he was talking in his sleep, so I didn’t answer. But he whispered louder: ‘Ksaw, do something.’ I went closer, and again: ‘Ksaw, do something.’ You’re a doctor, Stefan, aren’t you? So you know I had the morphine all ready, just in case he wanted… I had the right dose with me, you know, carried it in my shirt pocket all the time. That night, I thought he wanted me to… you understand. But when I looked into his eyes, I realized that he wanted to live. So I didn’t do anything, and he said it again: ‘Ksaw, do something.’ The same thing over and over, until dawn. He didn’t say anything else, and then I had to leave. Well, yesterday Aniela told me that on the last night she went to take a nap and when she came back to see him, he was dead. But he was lying the wrong way.”

“What do you mean, the wrong way?” Stefan whispered in uncomprehending dread.

“The wrong way. With his feet at the head. Why? I have no idea. I guess he wanted to do something, something to stay alive.”

Standing there in his wrinkled pants, his shirt open at the chest and traces of soap on his face, Uncle Ksawery slowly lowered his head. Then he looked at Stefan. His quick black eyes were sharp and hot.

“I’m telling you this because you’re a doctor. It’s something you should know! I don’t know why, but I almost prayed. Unbelievable what a man can be driven to!”

Water dripped off the mirror and onto the floor. They both jerked when the drawing-room clock struck, loud, majestic, and deliberate.

Uncle Ksawery turned back to the basin and began splashing water on his face and neck, spitting loudly, snorting water out his nostrils. Stefan dressed hurriedly and somehow furtively, then slipped out of the bathroom without a word.

In the dining room the table was already set. Blue icicles outside the window absorbed the day’s brightness and sent golden flashes through the panes and onto the glass of the grandfather clock, breaking into rainbows on the cut-glass carafe on the table. Uncle Anzelm, Trzyniecki from Kielce with his daughter, Great-aunt Skoczyńska, and Aunt Aniela came in one by one.

There was a big pot of coffee on the table, a loaf of bread, pats of butter, honey. They ate in near-silence, everyone somehow subdued, looking at the sunny window and exchanging monosyllables. Stefan was careful to avoid getting the skin of the milk in his coffee. He hated that. Uncle Anzelm was thoughtful and gruff. Nothing really happened, but it took an effort to sit at the table. Stefan glanced once or twice at Uncle Ksawery, the last to appear, with no tie, his black jacket unbuttoned. Stefan felt that a secret covenant had been concluded between them, but his uncle ignored his meaningful glances, rolled pieces of bread into little balls and dropped them on the table. Then one of the village women who was helping out came in and announced loudly to the entire room, “A gentleman is here to see the younger Mr. Trzyniecki.”