Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

He had reminded me of someone the entire time, but this was — so to say — a side uncertainty. An ornamental uncertainty. And so, taken as a whole, the picture was troubling from A to Z, and in it — on top of all that — someone reminds me of somebody. But the fact that he reminds me of someone seems unimportant: it is too ostentatious, it is too much on the surface, and it also looks like a mysterious, although trite, addendum. The main hieroglyphs were almost certainly registered on the chessboard; the match, which had barely begun, might go in any direction, and hundreds of possible combinations could be puzzles and their solutions. Thousands of pages and stories recorded by the brilliant writer might contain entries and exits from the labyrinths. In the end, probably it is in them that we will find the beautiful and intricate crux of the matter, and not in the fact that someone here resembles someone else. Someone always resembles someone else; and when you set off from a small town into the great world, you constantly come upon people in this world who are doubles of people who lived in the neighborhood, and — outside of anatomic pranks — there are no secrets here. I could write a whole book about the doubles of old citizens of Wisła I have met in the world, and it would be a superficial work. Even the similarity of old Lazar to Winston Churchill or of Szarzec from Partecznik to Paul VI is of little significance, to say nothing of the lesser cases of similarity.

It appears that I myself am disappointed with my own solution. Yes and no. I am, because it turned out that the key to the mystery is to be found in the addendum to the mystery that was lying on the very surface. And I’m not disappointed, because the principle that a good horror contains answers to fundamental questions — the nature of evil, the devil, and the other world — proved true as gold in my own thriller.

III

The landed gentryman playing chess with Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy reminded me of a certain driver from the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy. We saw him a total of one time, and although both Mother and I, and the other members of the household, well remembered his feats, his face and external appearance were completely erased. And here you have it, after staring at the photograph for three years, on its surface appeared that same — the spitting image of that — good-natured, but essentially hypocritical smile; that same high forehead passing over into a bald spot; that same slovenly and disheveled beard. I had found it. The truth lay on the surface. It was darkest under the lantern. I had for the telling one of the basic and, for a short time, frequently recalled family stories. What is more, a thoroughly family chess story. Recalled frequently, but for a short time, for it soon turned out that all of us preferred to forget these not entirely understandable events from — today it will already be — more than forty years ago.

For an engineer at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Father disappeared without a trace decidedly too frequently. He always returned, however, and there is no point in hiding it: these were sorry returns. Always sozzled, always the worse for wear, and always with that same old story: namely, that he had been playing ping-pong with his colleagues until the break of dawn.

When he got lost during the move to Krakow, however, the matter looked ominous. For the first time, we were certain that he was no longer alive.

It was a sweltering August in the year 1962. I was ten years old, and I was at the apogee of all possibilities. After some dozen months of incessant soccer playing, I had become a consummate forward. In a thick journal with a green binding, which I had received for my birthday, I was writing a detective/romance novel. In the expectation of God knows what sort of mystery, I traipsed around after a certain oddly dressed female vacationer. Almost every night, I dreamed of great flights over the Earth and breath-taking landings in yellow grass. I was in love with Claudia Cardinale and — as befitted a true man — I didn’t care in the least about reciprocity on her part. Beginning in the fall, we were to be living in Krakow, and each day of that summer had the taste of final things.

Father placed an order with Master Sztwertnia for bookshelves that were to occupy one whole wall in the Krakow apartment, a hanging kitchen cabinet, and a special little table for playing chess.

“What do you mean, a little table for playing chess?” Mother wrung her hands. “A little table for chess? It’s a disgrace to order something like that. Master Sztwertnia is a serious craftsman! He isn’t going to make any absurdities! What’s the point of a little chess table!” Mother screamed. “Can’t you play on a normal table?”

“No,” Father responded dully.

“You are Newton!” Mother raised her gaze to the heavens. “You are the great scientist Isaac Newton!”

Probably for the hundredth time, for there was no lack of opportunities, she cited the anecdote about Sir Isaac Newton, who, so they say, weary of constantly opening the door for the cat and her kittens as they sauntered back and forth, ordered two openings to be cut over the threshold — a large one for the cat and a smaller one for the kittens—“as if,” she choked, “as if the small cats couldn’t manage to pass through the large hole! Newton! A genuine Isaac Newton! And besides, when are you going to play that chess? When? Since you are never home.”

“On Sunday,” Father answered arrogantly, and Mother capitulated and glanced in the direction of Grandma Pech, as if seeking comfort and understanding. Every time Grandma heard about the little chess table, she would shudder, as if it were a matter of deviltry in the strict sense; she didn’t cross herself, she didn’t make the sign of the cross, since we don’t do that on a daily basis; but she would wave it off in despair and immediately, from the spot where she happened to be standing at the moment, rush off, as if she were rushing into panicky flight that would take her as far as the eye could see, and after a few steps she would suddenly halt and glance furtively at the old man to see whether he had come to his senses, and seeing that he hadn’t come to his senses, she would lend her features an expression that said: Get thee hence, Satan!

Grandpa gave a faint smile, chuckled quietly, laughed in the depths of his soul. It wasn’t so much the little chess table that delighted him as the panic into which the women fell on account of this piece of equipment. But even he, after a certain time, lost his composure, became morose, drew Father aside, and tried to reason with him:

“Think this over, Józef. Just think it over. I myself, as you know, adore chess, but why go overboard? We play chess, but we aren’t real chess players. All of us, almost all of us in this house, play chess, but our house is not a house of real chess players. To say nothing of a house of chess playing professionals, chess playing gamblers, or chess playing addicts. We play the way the Lord God commanded: on Sunday afternoons, on long winter evenings, on holidays. And we play with the sort of chess set He commanded, and on the sort of chess board that is pleasing to Him. Why do you want more, Józef? Why do you need this little chess table?”

“In order to play chess on it,” Father answered dully. “In order to play chess on it in Krakow. On Sunday afternoons. On long winter evenings and on holidays.”

“On holidays,” Grandpa responded, “I hope you will come visit us. And then we will play as we always have. I don’t understand you, Józef. Take, for example, beds. We all sleep in normal beds, all people in general sleep in normal beds: wooden, with straw pallets and mattresses, and under eiderdown. And that is how it should be. But you, Józef, with that little chess table of yours, you are behaving as if, for unknown reasons, you wished for yourself who knows what sort of bed. Air mattresses like at the swimming pool, silk bedspreads like in a brothel, and bamboo frames like in the Congo. Think this over, Józef. After all, this is, basically, deviltry.”