Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

And what would it be like tomorrow morning! Not just one youngster from the traffic patrol, but a few higher officers from the criminal division would put the old man through the paces! And it would not be on account of neglecting to use the turn signal that they would put the screws to him, but on account of the corpse of a child! As God is my witness, it was a pity to kill yourself and not be around to watch the old man die of fear! But then again, to put this all in play, you had to kill yourself. One paradox, you might say, after another.

After my suicide — my mood was getting better and better — my old man would have the biggest mess of it. Everybody would blame him. Mother would accuse him to the end of his days of tormenting me with biblical sayings, of forcing me to learn German and gymnastics, of barking at me, of tyrannizing me with the copying of notebooks, and of placing bans on watching television.

Grandpa and Grandma would tell everyone to the end of their lives that it was all on account of him, that he was responsible, because he had insisted on moving to Krakow. Because he had forced, that’s right, forced Mother and me to abandon our Lutheran parts and move to Babylon! That’s right, Babylon! Krakow is Babylon! It’s even worse, because, in the biblical Babylon, they didn’t use gas to heat the stoves and the baths, but in Krakow they do! In Krakow, at any moment everything might be blown sky high! They had warned, and they had cautioned! A thousand times they warned and cautioned! And the other dangers? Did they not caution against them? Did they not warn about the numerous cars, under which I could fall at any moment? About the bandits and murderers who could attack me at any moment? About the Catholics, who at any moment could plant confusion in my head? They cautioned and warned about a thousand — what thousand? a million! — yes, about a million other dangers that threatened me, the very potential presence of which my mind had most clearly been incapable of withstanding. Not bad. After my death, the world will not look bad at all.

As was always the case when my old man was late, Mother cranked up various domestic chores to full blast: she baked, she put wash into the washing machine, she got out the vacuum cleaner. The point was so that the old man, when he finally did come home, would find her in full domestic fervor and have even greater feelings of guilt over the fact that he was late, and drunk, and that there was so much to be done at home, and it was all on her shoulders. The complete innovation, the original embellishment, the genuine pearl of my suicide, was the thought that, this time, Mother would also be harshly punished for preying on my old man’s sense of guilt. After all, when I kill myself she, too, will have a terrible sense of guilt. All the more terrible in that it would begin with the simplest question in the world: How could she not have woken up? How could she not have woken up when I got up from the sofa bed at night? How could she not have woken up when I pulled back the drapes? How could she not have woken up when I went out onto the balcony in nothing but my pajamas? In nothing — during such a cold spell — but my pajamas! I am not saying that Mother, like the figure of a mother taken from a derisive autobiography, would have been significantly more horrified by my possibly taking cold than by the suicide I had committed. No. I am describing the situation in her categories. And in her categories, my going out onto the balcony in pajamas was the height of everything: recklessness, stupidity, crime, and nonsense. My jump from the balcony was beyond her categories, and even beyond her language.

I knew that she probably would not try to discover — because she would be incapable of doing it — why I had killed myself; but she would try, to her last breath, to discover why she hadn’t woken up. And that the question why she hadn’t woken up would be repeated many times, and answered in a thousand ways, so that the question why I had committed suicide could be pushed aside, and the answer to it hidden from sight. It was also certain that the odium would again fall upon my old man, for after all, if he had returned earlier, then he would have helped her out a little, and she would not have been so tired, and she would not have gone to sleep on her last legs, and she would not have slept the sleep of the dead, so exhausted and unconscious that she didn’t hear a thing.

When my old man, devastated and up to his neck in guilt, had roused a little and begun to come around, he would surely begin to console her with the prospect of another child. Maybe not from the first moment, maybe not on the day of my death, nor on the day of my funeral, but sooner or later — yes, he would do it. You didn’t have to be a prophet, or even a writer possessed of the ability to compose in someone else’s voice, to be able to hear that it is difficult, a terrible tragedy, that they would have to bear its burden all their lives, but that it cannot put a veil on life, for life goes on, and, after all, both are still young and strong, and they could still, and probably they even ought to, try to have a child…

On the merits, and given their ages, it was possible. When I was born, Mother was twenty years old, and when I decided to kill myself the first time — it is easy to calculate — she had barely turned thirty. Thus, if I had succeeded that time in committing suicide, and if they had decided to have a new baby soon thereafter, there would not have been any contraindications.

And yet, for Mother, driving my old man to guilt was a narcotic without which she did not know how to live. Her instinct to harass the poor wretch — who, as it was, lived with a constant feeling of guilt — was stronger than all her other instincts. In this, she had the diabolical gift of making exceptionally surprising and venomous retorts. I was certain that she would hear out the old man’s procreational arguments — in silence, and even with feigned goodwill — and then, with studied calm, making numerous and excessive pauses, she would say that this is all fine and good, but she is very curious about one thing, she is very curious, namely, whether, when they get a baby, she is exceedingly curious whether, when that baby grows up a bit, when it reaches the twelfth, or perhaps even the tenth year of its life, well, she is exceedingly curious whether Father would again drive it to commit suicide? Whether once again — by his habit of returning home late — he would kill it? She is very curious. Very.

It was getting later and later. Mother bustled about the kitchen more and more zealously. The old man still wasn’t home, and now it wasn’t about his feeling of guilt, in any event, not only about his feeling guilty. Now it was already so late that all of life slipped through one’s hands and scattered to the winds. And Mother cooked, and she fried, and she baked everything that formed the rock upon which our house was built: mushroom soup with homemade noodles, breaded veal cutlets, Christmas Eve cabbage, potato pancakes, apple dumplings, vanilla pudding, crêpes with cheese. A house erected on a rock is lasting, but a house erected on a rock composed of Mother’s dishes will outlast everything. The crêpes were indeed timeless. Not even my imminent suicide was able to diminish their quality. I think I ate about eight of them. Then I didn’t wash — with absolute impunity — didn’t undress, didn’t go to bed. Running amuck in my freedom, I sat in the armchair and stared at the television. I could do whatever my heart desired. I could play shove halfpenny on the windowsill, I could take out the copy of The Biology of Love , which was hidden at the bottom of the cupboard, I could stare through binoculars at the neighboring apartment block. On television, a film for adults called The Small World of Sammy Lee was starting, and I had a good chance of seeing something forbidden before I died. Mother was in the kitchen getting ready to bake a three-layer cheesecake with icing, and she was pretending that she didn’t notice my debauchery. Everything, it goes without saying, within the framework of that same vengeful strategy. Everything so that she would be able to rebuke the old man, once he had returned, for leaving me prey to forbidden obscenities on television, when she doesn’t have the strength, she truly doesn’t have the strength, to look after everything, absolutely everything.