Jerzy Pilch - My First Suicide

“Luckily, I’m a drunk, and we all know what a drunk does when he sobers up, especially when he sobers up in tragic fashion. Yes, sir: he starts drinking all over again. So I poured myself a drink then. The massively built, gloomy young lady from the suburbs didn’t refuse the refreshment. We sat, and we chatted about life. We went on living. The nightmares didn’t stay long. They came in through the window, they went out the door. It wasn’t bad. It already wasn’t bad. A pleasant chat with a Warsaw whore as a means for saving one’s life, and perhaps even a means for living. It goes without saying that I didn’t question her whether there wasn’t perhaps among her colleagues a certain failed actress named Wiktoria. I didn’t proceed to such shamelessness, but also — judging by her bored expression — there wasn’t any great innovation in my questions. I asked her why she did what she did for a living, when she had decided to do it, how it was the first time, etc. Supposedly, all her clients posed the same questions. Oh, why should I have been original? I didn’t worry in this case about my lack of originality. All the less did I worry about the fact that it was she who turned out to be the original. I would say, very original. ‘Why do you do this?’ ‘For the money. I need the money. I need quite a lot.’ ‘Do you have some serious expenses? Debts?’ ‘Debts, no, but expenses, yes. I have to put on my daughter’s First Communion in May. You need money for a good First Communion.’ Yes. The story is reaching its end. As you can see, my new acquaintance was not only not Wiktoria — she wasn’t even a Lutheran. In a sentimental reflex, I paid her a couple grosz more, and the next day I returned to K. From that time, which is to say, for the last two years, I haven’t budged from the spot.

“In a fundamental sense, nothing has changed here. The latest local news says that Wiktoria completed her degree with distinction, that she has accepted a role in an unusually popular series, and soon all of K. will be sitting down before their television sets in order to marvel at the pearl that our land has produced. Sometimes I think that if this had been true, I would have the punchline of all punchlines. A punchline that is light, edifying, comic, and surprising. But this is not very likely. Back then, two years ago, on the next morning, I dropped by the acting school on Miodowa Street on my way out of town. Besides, this was not far at all from the Hotel Europejski. For Warsaw — very near by. A person named Wiktoria Złotnica had never studied there, nor had anyone by that name been accepted in the program. We have few, desperately few surprises in life. Time for bed. You especially deserve it. Please forgive the intrusion. In any case, we have spent a pleasant evening, a remarkably pleasant evening. And now — however this might sound — I vanish without a trace.”

I awoke in quite good shape. I felt ill treated — it goes without saying — by the story I had listened to; with pathological clarity, I recalled my guest’s every word and every gesture, but I was not threatened with any interruption in my life’s story. I ate breakfast, packed, and turned in the key at the reception desk. Emil was also already moving about, barely, but still — he was moving. I didn’t ask about anything. I knew perfectly well that if I were to ask about the retired teacher in a brown suit, who knew the history, geography, and substance of every local square inch inside and out, I would discover that he was either an absolute lunatic, or a complete drunk, or both.

I

Grandma Pech’s spirit doesn’t visit me. Nor do any other spirits. When I dream of the old house in the center of Wisła, it is always empty and lit. I walk through the swept courtyard, through the hallway, through the rooms. There isn’t anyone anywhere, but I hear someone’s steps ahead of me. I enter the kitchen, and sometimes someone is there. From time to time I see her. She sits at the enormous table covered with a sky blue oilcloth. On her head she has a carefully tied scarf with a pattern of black roses, on her shoulders a brown Silesian jacket. She sits at the table, but she is dressed as if she were going somewhere right away. Somewhere far. Not to Wojnar’s to go shopping, not even to the market. Somewhere far, and at an unusual time. In my dream, it is always a late hour. The majolica clock over the door to the hallway says that it is almost ten, and she is setting off somewhere. Someone is supposed to come for her. The gate is wide open, you can hear the rattle of a britzka crossing the bridge. The yellow light of the kitchen window makes a regular rectangle on the river stones of the courtyard.

Whenever we came late, and the gate was closed, we would look through the slits to see whether the light was on the stones. It usually was. It always was. We would knock on the window, or we would bang at the front. Grandpa Pech would come through the hallway and open the door. Suddenly the day, which was already over, gained extra hours. The evening, which was already almost night, became early evening. A fire burned anew under the cooled stove. Supper was long past, but we were just sitting down to supper. It was dark all over Wisła, but at our house the lights were on for a long time yet. I loved late arrivals and prolonged evenings — later on, it was never possible to outwit Time so easily.

For years now, the gate has been gone, as is the light on the river stones, the kitchen, the hearth, the table covered with the sky blue oilcloth. All are dead now, and their spirits do not come. They don’t come when I’m awake. They come in my dreams — but that is vanity. The dead came to Grandma Pech, both when she was asleep and awake, both day and night. Now there is complete stagnation — no one comes. Not she herself, or Father, or Uncle Ableger, or Janek Nikandy. They won’t come, although I focus like hell on them and on their other worlds. They don’t come, although I pray that they come. I summon them with biblical demagogy, and I even blaspheme against their memory in the desperate hope that, if in no other way, they would at least drop by to give us a little scare. But nothing. Neither hide nor hair. Is Warsaw too far away for them? A deadly joke, but I don’t cross people off the list for being dead.

Last evening the door bell rang. I was already certain that my old man had finally — exactly ten years after his death — made up his mind, and he was dropping by to pay a spectral visit. Nothing of the sort! The usual street fraud, claiming that supposedly her purse had been stolen and she didn’t have enough money to get home. Even a rather nice looking babe. I gave her five złotys. Not so much out of desire, as anger that it was she, and not the spirit of an ancestor. They don’t come. Although sooner or later someone will come. A destroyed city, an empty apartment, absolute twilight, complete solitude — ideal conditions for the dead. Eventually, they will come. At the worst, they will say of me that I went crazy.

Grandma Pech conversed with the dead. That’s an understatement. Well before someone died she often started to receive signs from the heavens. When Mila from Wierchy died, a half year earlier God struck the kitchen oven so forcefully that the pots almost fell. I was there. They were sitting at the table, drinking tea with rum, and suddenly it sounded like a stone quarry in the stove. They looked at each other for a fraction of a second and right away began to find thousands of reasons: wet coal was crackling in the hearth; a cast iron rib had cracked; the metal plate on one side had become completely bent; the badly positioned stove damper had fallen off; we have to throw away the old tea pot, because it’s going to pieces with a horrible bang; there’s something in the courtyard; something at the Nikandys’; something in the heavens.