Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

Supposedly, a year later, maybe two, he began to study the Bible under the tutelage of one-eyed Mr. Nikandy, and it was announced that he would study theology and become a pastor in their Church. But before they managed to go into the details of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, Mrs. Nikandy, as beautiful as an Italian actress, fled the house with a certain wandering preacher, who was lacking any principles whatsoever, and both father and son lost, for some time, their zeal for studying the Bible. Some time —as it often happens — became time eternal. One-eyed Mr. Nikandy died of a heart attack less than a year later. After some time , Janek got a professional driver’s license, and he became a driver in a quarry. He drank. He had an accident in which someone died. He landed in prison for a few years. When he got out he didn’t really have any place to go; his sisters had found husbands, his brothers wives, and harboring a criminal under their roofs wasn’t to their liking. He wandered a bit here and there. Then he disappeared. Supposedly he moved to Silesia, supposedly he found work there and married a woman who was much older. Supposedly as long as she was alive, things were OK. But when she died — a total decline. The last two years spent in rats’ nests, under a sky of denatured spirits, over reptilian sewers. Basically, I don’t even know whether he froze on the street that year, or the carbon monoxide in a makeshift mine shaft suffocated him. People say various things.

I go to book signings less and less frequently, because I am less and less able to tolerate nights spent in hotels. Not so much even the nights themselves, as the returns to the room in the evenings. Once a person has finally fallen asleep, it basically makes no difference where he is. But the empty evenings, during which, theoretically, anything might happen, but nothing ever does happen, are unbearable.

I don’t know whether there exists a monograph entitled Hotels and Suicide , or even better: A Baedeker for the Hotels of Suicides . I don’t know whether such books exist. Probably they do exist. All books already exist, so probably there is also a Guide to Hotels in Which the Greatest Number of Suicides Were Committed . But without even reading it, I know what is written there. The chapter about individual steps in the hallway. The chapter about the decrepit television. The chapter about the view from the window overlooking the wall of the neighboring building. The chapter about the light left on in the bathroom. The chapter about empty drawers. The chapter about the semi-darkness. The chapter about the figure sitting motionless on the bed. I know those works by heart. I know those climates through and through. No one comes, no one knocks on the door, the telephone remains silent. You yourself don’t feel like calling, besides there isn’t really much of anyone to call. It is impossible to read; absolutely nothing is possible.

Every evening spent in a hotel is ghastly, but an evening spent in a hotel after a book signing is especially ghastly. In addition, there is the famous feeling of contrast — embarrassing in its superficiality, but for that reason all the more painful. An hour ago you were signing books, chatting with gusto, shining as never before. Lyceum students who secretly write poetry were asking for tips about writing, flushed female readers asked about the place of love in life with burning glances. Fifteen minutes ago, I was the incarnation of freedom and courage. Fifteen minutes ago, I was in the crowd, I was the soul of the crowd — now I sit here lonesome as the night is long. Basically, the more successful the event, the worse it is later.

None of the readers standing patiently in line for an autograph would ever come up with the daring idea of inviting the esteemed author for a vodka. It doesn’t occur to them that this stranger from Warsaw, who practically drove off the intruders, is so afraid of returning to the hotel by himself that he would have had a drink with anyone. Never did a one of the ardently staring girls broaden the bravado of her gaze or make even a tender sign with an eyelid. Zero perceptiveness. Not a hint of the intuition that a person will desperately ponder from time to time whether to propose supper to the moderately alluring organizer, who is just then adding up the costs of the trip. In the end everybody scatters, and the moderately alluring organizers remain. Someone has to remain. Someone has to remain, so that someone doesn’t kill himself.

I go to book signings less and less frequently, but when I get an invitation to make an appearance in my parts — on the whole — I don’t refuse. Sentimentalism and Lutheran phantoms are stronger than the fear of spending the night in a hotel. When Lutherans from Cieszyn Silesia invite me, the phantom of duty engulfs me.

Last year, in the middle of November, I traveled to K. Everything took place as usual, or even worse still. In my parts, even moderately alluring organizers are out of the question. In my parts, the crossbar of piety is placed high. At meetings with my brethren, I deftly play the bard of the Cieszyn land, bound with the blessed fetters of Protestantism and well versed in the Bible. It goes without saying that I always have the insane temptation to blurt out some pieces of filth, which — especially in such situations — multiply in my head like mutant rabbits, but at least for the time being, Lutheran style is stronger than the deviltry.

In any case, in my parts even the most illusory illusions that some reader might propose a symbolic snack, or that some female Lutheran reader might wink at me wantonly, drop away to the nth degree and from the very beginning. To the nth degree squared, and from the beginning of beginnings. Of course, after the evening I will have to lend my features the expression of the weary pilgrim, take my leave of even the most alluring organizers, and, at a slow pace, and in a humble pose, cross the Market Square and sink into the abysses of the hotel At the Sign of the Falcon —leaving to the citizens of K., who watch me depart, at most the vague uncertainty whether I will spend the evening reading the works of Melanchthon, or those of Zwingli instead.

In the middle of November last year this was precisely how everything went, jot for jot, tittle for tittle. I took my leave, cut across the Market Square, got the key from the clearly already thoroughly potted receptionist; in the room I turned on the TV, took Zweig’s The World of Yesterday from my bag, and sat motionless on the bed. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I could take a long shower, and then, once I had checked whether there was some detective show on television, I could begin to read. More than that. I could delay for an endlessly long time the taking of an endlessly long shower. I could check for an endlessly long time whether on the five foggy channels there definitely wasn’t a detective show. Maybe there isn’t one at the moment, but perhaps in fifteen minutes there will be. Fifteen times sixty equals nine hundred. If you count only a second per channel, that is enough to press each of the five buttons one hundred eighty times, but if you count two seconds, then it is enough to look at each of the five channels only ninety times, and if you allow three seconds per channel — which is just enough to get a sense of what they are offering on each channel — then it is enough to press each of the five buttons forty-five times. That’s nothing. One, two, one, two, and the quarter of an hour is over. In addition to this, I could — which in the onslaught of sudden possibilities I had almost overlooked — prepare for an endlessly long time to read the book, which, it is not out of the question, I could read endlessly. Upon my word, quite a decent and peaceful evening was shaping up.