Stanislaw Lem - Hospital of the Transfiguration

Hastily crunching through puddles still frozen in shady spots, they reached the gate. A fat, bearded porter let them in. Staszek went into feverish but subdued action. He ordered Stefan to wait in an empty room on the ground floor while he looked for the head doctor. Stefan paced the flagstone floor staring vacantly at the patterns of a fresco partly covered by plaster; there was a sort of pale gold halo and, just where the blue plaster began, a mouth opened as if to scream or sing. He turned around when he heard steps. Staszek, already wearing a long white smock with cuffs beginning to fray from too much laundering, had returned sooner than he expected. He looked taller and thinner in the smock, and his round face beamed with satisfaction.

“Perfect,” he said, taking Stefan by the arm. “I’ve already talked everything over with Pajpak. He’s our boss. His name is Pajączkowski, but he stutters, so… but you must be hungry, admit it! Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything right away.”

The doctors roomed in a separate building, attractive, cozy and bright. Comfort of a high order was the rule. In the room Staszek brought him to, Stefan found hot running water and a sink, a bed with something clinical about it, light, somewhat austere furniture, and even three snowdrops in a glass on the table. But the most important thing was the absence of the smell of iodine or any other hospital odors. As Staszek chattered on without stopping to take a breath, Stefan tried the spigots, inspected the bathroom, tested the delightfully roaring shower, came back into the room, drank coffee with milk, smeared something yellow and salty on a roll and ate it—all out of friendship, so that Staszek could savor the fruits of his provident care.

“Well? What do you think?” Staszek asked when Stefan had finally examined everything and finished eating.

“Of what?”

“Of everything. The world.”

“Is that an invitation to philosophize?” Stefan said, unable to hold back his laughter.

“What do you mean, philosophize? The world—these days, that means the Germans. Everybody says they’ll get it in the end, but I’m not so sure, I’m sorry to say. They’re already talking about management changes—apparently a Pole can’t be director. But nothing’s settled yet. Anyway, first of all you have to get to know the place. Then you can choose a department. There’s no hurry. Take a good look first.”

It occurred to Stefan that Staszek sounded just like Aunt Skoczyńska, but he only asked, “Where are… they?”

Through the window he could see misty flower beds, indistinct pavilions, and a tower in the distance, Turkish or Moorish, he wasn’t sure which.

“You’ll see them, don’t worry. They’re all over. But relax. You won’t be going on the wards today. I’ll explain it all to you, so you won’t get lost. This, my friend, is a madhouse.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do. You took a psychiatry course and observed one patient, a neurological case, true?”

“Yes.”

“So you see. Therapy? Nothing to it. Under the age of forty, a lunatic has dementia praecox. Cold baths, bromine, and scopolamine. Over forty, dementia senilis. Scopolamine, bromine, and cold showers. And electroshock. That’s all there is to psychiatry. But here we are just a tiny island in a really weird sea. Pm telling you, if it wasn’t for the personnel… Anyway, you’ll pick it up soon enough. It would be worth it to spend your life here. And not necessarily as a doctor.”

“As a patient, you mean?”

“As a guest. We have guests too. You can meet some eminent people here. Don’t laugh, I’m serious.”

“Such as?”

“Sekułowski.”

“The poet? The one who…”

“Yes, he’s here with us, more or less. That is, how should I put it? A drug addict. Morphine, cocaine, peyote even, but he’s off that now. He’s staying here, as if he was on vacation. Hiding from the Germans, in other words. He writes all day, and not poems either. Philosophical thunderbolts. You’ll see! Look, I have evening rounds now. I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Staszek left. Stefan stood at the window for a while, then walked around his new quarters again. He was somehow taking everything in, not by consciously focusing on objects, but just by standing there, passive. He felt a new layer of sensations settling over the experiences of the past few days, a geology of memory taking shape, a sunken lower stratum made of dreams, and an upper stratum, more fluid, susceptible to the influences of the outside world.

He stood in front of the mirror, looking intently at his own face. His forehead could have been higher, he thought, and his hair more definite, either completely blond or brown. Only his beard was really dark, making him look as though he always needed a shave. Then there were his eyes—some people called them chestnut, others brown. He was indeterminate. Except for the nose he had inherited from his father; sharp and hooked, “a greedy nose,” his mother called it. He relaxed and then tensed his face so that his features looked more noble. One grimace led to another, and he made face after face until finally he spun away and walked to the window.

“If I could just stop aping myself!” he thought angrily, “I should become a pragmatist. Action, action, action.” He remembered something his father used to say: “A man who has no goal in life must create one for himself.” It was better to have a whole set of goals, short- and long-term. Not vague ones like “be brave” or “be good,” but things like “fix the toilet.” He longed intensely for the lot of a simple person.

“God! If only I could plow, sow, reap, and plow again. Or hammer stools together or weave baskets and carry them to market.” The career of a village sculptor whittling saints or of a potter baking a red-glazed rooster struck him as the pinnacle of happiness. Peace. Simplicity. A tree would be a tree, period. None of that idiotic, pointless, exhausting thinking: Why the hell does it grow, what does it mean that it’s alive, why are there plants, why is it what it is and not something else, is the soul made of atoms? Just to be able to stop for once! He started pacing, getting more and more annoyed. Luckily, Staszek came back from his rounds. Stefan suspected that Staszek felt confident in this hospital, like a one-eyed man among the blind. He was a gentle lunatic, a lunatic on a small scale, and so must seem uncommonly well-adjusted in this background of raving madness.

The doctors’ dining room was on the top floor next to a large billiards room and a smaller room with what looked like card tables.

The food wasn’t bad: ground meat and grits with bean salad, followed by crisp bliny. Jugs of coffee at the end.

“War, my friend, à la guerre comme à la guerre’’ said Stefan’s neighbor to his left. Stefan observed the company. As usual when he saw new faces, they seemed undifferentiated, interchangeable, devoid of character.

The man who had made the crack about war—Doctor Dygier or Rygier, he had introduced himself unclearly—was short, with a big nose, dark face, and a deep scar in his forehead. He wore a small pince-nez with a golden frame, which kept slipping. He adjusted it with an automatic gesture that began to get on Stefan’s nerves. They spoke in low murmurs about indifferent subjects: whether winter had ended, whether they would run out of coal, whether there would be a lot of work, how much they were being paid. Doctor Rygier (not Dygier) took tiny sips of coffee, chose the most well-done bliny, and spoke through his nose, saying little of interest. As they spoke, they both watched Professor Pajączkowski. The old man, who looked like a dove chick with his sparse, feathery beard through which the pink skin underneath was visible, was tiny, had wrinkled hands with a slight tremor, stuttered occasionally, slurped his coffee, and shook his head when he began to speak.