Jerzy Pilch - The Mighty Angel

“What in return? What in return?” I interrupted, on the one hand overwhelmed by the excessive number of fairy-tale kindnesses and, on the other hand, terrified at the inner certainty that in my present state I was incapable, utterly incapable, of doing anything whatsoever in return, and would have no way of repaying my unsavory benefactors.

“I’m about to tell you. In return you really don’t have to do very much at all. All you need to do is listen to Alberta’s poems. Naturally I have no wish to influence you in advance, but in my modest opinion Alberta not only writes beautiful poems but also recites them beautifully, it’s as if she were singing; just listening should calm your nerves. After you’ve heard them, you’ll carry out an in-depth analysis and an honest appraisal, after which, making use of your extensive network of contacts, you’ll enable Alberta to publish her work, preferably in the Catholic intellectual weekly Tygodnik Powszechny .”

“But it’s been years since I wrote for Tygodnik Powszechny ,” I said, or rather whined quietly. I whined not because I felt a sudden drunken nostalgia for Tygodnik Powszechny ; I whined because in the depths of my soul I knew that all my reluctance and resistance was a sham. I whined because I knew I’d agree to everything.

“That doesn’t matter, you still have contacts there. Besides, it doesn’t have to be Tygodnik Powszechny , it could be some other influential and prestigious publication, Polityka or Gazeta Wyborcza . Though Tygodnik Powszechny would be best. Do you know why?”

“Yes, I know why,” I muttered unwillingly.

“You know?”

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“I know what I need to know,” I retorted wearily, because in this case I actually did know.

“If you know, then say it”—there was something undeniably childish in his insistence (a lingering vestige of Sunday School?).

“It’s because Tygodnik Powzechny is read by the Pope.”

“Excellent! Bravo!” beamed the alleged companion of my childhood Bible lessons. “I can see I underestimated you. I took you for an unhinged virtuoso of the word, but you’re quite the cunning fox. You understand what it would mean: John Paul II reads Alberta Lulaj’s poetry in Tygodnik Powszechny, the profoundly metaphysical nature of the poems makes a huge impression on the Holy Father, he sends Alberta a momentous letter or even a papal bull, and the world, the whole world is ours. I’m sure you understand that’s the only thing that interests us, only that: playing for the highest stakes. So Tygodnik Powszechny would be best, but if it can’t be done, never mind, it can be done somewhere else. In the end it makes no difference, you know everyone, you’ve drunk with everyone, and when you recover yourself you’ll think of something. The girl deserves to be helped; she writes wonderful things that, because of the intellectual and personal inertia which, as you well know, dominates those circles, don’t get published. Yes, the woman needs to be enabled to publish her work, because having her hopes unjustly thwarted could cause her to take to whoring. When you hear Alberta’s poems you’ll understand that they have to see the light of day. All right, there’s nothing more that needs to be said. You can surely do this much for an old Sunday School friend.”

He had given himself away, he had given himself away beyond the shadow of a doubt — no one who ever attended Sunday School would have called the Pope “Holy Father.” Not even the worst Lutheran would say such a thing. He was unmasked, but since he did not know he was unmasked he went diligently on with his job. He removed the empty glass from my hand, took it into the kitchen, came back, and placed the scarcely touched bottle of Becherovka at my bedside. Then he dug around in the pockets of his leather jacket and took out a small, thick-sided shot glass wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.

“Alberta will measure it out for you,” he said. “Alberta will measure it out for you, and you’ll drink slowly, in small sips, from this glass. Come to your senses, my friend”—his voice took on the tone of a full-scale admonition—“you’re one of the biggest drunkards in the world, and you haven’t had a shot glass in your hand for ten years or more. How on earth can that be?” he said with considered sternness. “How can that be?” he repeated, this time directing the question to himself, and quickly answering it himself: “My question would seem purely rhetorical in nature. You’ve not had a shot glass in your hand for ten years or more because for ten years or more you’ve been swilling vodka exclusively from tumblers or straight from the bottle. The technique of drinking, as Christopher Columbus the Explorer would say, has grown utterly sloppy. Come to your senses, my friend, use a shot glass and listen to the poems. Be well.”

Both gangsters saluted me mockingly and moved toward the door of the apartment, and a moment later the door of the apartment closed behind them.

•

I looked at Alberta. She smiled gently and took the first step in my direction.

“I saw you at the ATM,” I said in a feeble voice. “I stared at you and I was certain you were the last love of my life.”

“At the ATM?” Alberta raised her eyebrows most fetchingly. “That’s entirely possible, I often use ATMs. When was it?”

“I don’t know how many days ago — maybe forty, maybe a hundred and forty, maybe just a few. In any case it was an uncommon July afternoon.”

Alberta came up to me and leaned over me, and I caught sight of the outline of the most beautiful breasts — I was just about to think, the most beautiful breasts in the Warsaw Pact, but the world had changed and I was now looking at the most beautiful breasts in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the most beautiful breasts in the European Union, or rather the most beautiful breasts in the candidate countries in line for membership of the European Union. Alberta leaned over me, placed her hand on my forehead and said, almost in a whisper:

“You can’t possibly have been gone for so long. It’s winter now. Snow is falling, there’s a frost. Christmas is around the corner.”

THE ETERNALLY POSTPONED notion of repairing my old washing machine or buying a new one eventually perished of its own accord, to a large extent independently of my foibles. In my life I’ve drunk away a vast amount of money, I’ve spent a fortune on vodka, but the reprehensible moment of drinking away a sum set aside for the repair of my washing machine has never occurred. I make this confession not with pride in my heart but with a sense of abasement. For the fact that I never drank away a sum of money set aside for the repair of my washing machine arises from the fact that I never set aside any sum of money for the repair of my washing machine in the first place. Before I ever managed to set aside a particular sum for the repair of the washing machine, I drank it away along with all the other sums of money not yet set aside for any special purpose. I drank away the money before I’d had time to set it aside for something else; therefore I can say, seemingly contradicting myself (yet only seemingly, for in the former case there was only a small quantifier, while in this case there is a large one), I can say then that in fact I did drink away the money for the repair of the washing machine. I drank away the money for a whole series of repairs, I drank away the money for all possible repairs. What am I saying, repairs? I drank away the money for an entire new washing machine, I drank away a whole series of new washing machines, I drank away a thousand new washing machines, I drank away a million new automatic washing machines, I drank away a billion state-of-the-art washing machines. I drank away all the washing machines in the world.