Jerzy Pilch - The Mighty Angel

— Vladimir Nabokov

My soul is among lions. .

— Psalm 57

Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians.

— James Joyce

While I was in the helicopter whopping over Manhattan, viewing New York as if I were passing in a glass-bottomed boat over a tropical reef, Humboldt was probably groping among his bottles for a drop of juice to mix with his morning gin.

— Saul Bellow

Life is possible only as a result of discontinuities.

— E. M. Cioran

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam

And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.

Also well-chilled vodka.

— Czesław Miłosz

If it weren’t for the thought of suicide, I’d have killed myself long ago.

— E. M. Cioran

They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song of the drunkards.

— Psalm 69

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.

— Psalm 77

And now help me decide: what should I drink?

— Venedikt Erofeev

LOVELY, LOVELY AS a dream were the poems of Alberta. Light, or perhaps shadow, a ray of light, or the shadow of a child, a mysterious and unclear little soul moved through those poems from line to line. It abided in the old homestead, and in a husky soprano it sang a song for all the objects and furnishings that had ever belonged there. Alberta recited a poem about a tin kettle on the stove top that had once been used to boil water; she recited a poem about the water of yesteryear, about the stove top itself, about the candle on the Christmas table; she recited a beautiful love poem about the woolen cap of a boy who passed beneath her window every day on his way to school.

How long it lasted I couldn’t say; how long Alberta’s recitation went on I couldn’t really say; it was shorter rather than longer and I’m pretty sure that during this time I did not lapse into a shorter or longer admiration-filled nap. In any case she recited her poems standing in the center of the room as if in the center of a stage, and everything suggested then and suggests now that it ought to have been ridiculous, whereas in fact it was not only not ridiculous, it made the experience even more affecting. I listened to the poems of Alberta as she stood there on the linoleum like a statue, and I felt I was reclining on a cloud.

Afterwards she sat on the edge of the cloud, which had now gone back to being the alluring edge of the mattress, and she placed her warm hand on my icy-cold hand, and she asked me the question I had heard a thousand times before, she asked me the question I have been asked by thousands, millions of people, she asked me the question I’ve been asked by Europeans, Asians, Americans, Africans, Australians, and possibly even Eskimos, she asked me the question that at this point only the Lord God may never have asked me.

“Why do you drink?” asked Alberta.

“Alberta,” I replied, choking up, “if I’d met you twenty years ago I wouldn’t drink at all.”

“First of all, twenty years ago I was four years old and if you’d actually met me then, then you’d really have knocked it back, you’d have knocked it back two times or a hundred times more,” she responded. “But call me Ala, I prefer it. Why do you drink?” she repeated.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know, or rather, I know a thousand answers. None of them is entirely true and each of them contains a grain of truth. But nor can it be said that together they comprise some single whole great truth. I drink because I drink. I drink because I like to. I drink because I’m afraid. I drink because I’m genetically predisposed to. All my progenitors drank. My great-grandparents and grandparents drank, my father drank and my mother drank. I have no sisters or brothers, but I’m certain that if I did, all my sisters would drink and all my brothers would drink too. I drink because I have a weak character. I drink because there’s something wrong with my head. I drink because I’m too quiet and I’m trying to be more lively. I drink because I’m the nervous type and I’m trying to calm my nerves. I drink because I’m sad and I’m trying to raise my spirits. I drink when I’m happily in love. I drink because I’m searching for love in vain. I drink because I’m too normal and I need a little craziness. I drink when I’m in pain and I need to ease the pain. I drink out of longing for someone. I drink from an excess of fulfillment when I’m with someone. I drink when I listen to Mozart and when I read Leibnitz. I drink out of sensual pleasure and I drink out of sexual hunger. I drink when I finish my first glass and I drink when I finish my last glass; at such times I drink all the more, because I’ve never yet drunk my last glass.”

“Listen,” said Ala-Alberta with visible impatience, “are there any moments at all when you don’t drink?”

“I guess I don’t drink when I’m so terribly drunk that I don’t have the strength to drink, though truth be told, I always find the strength to continue drinking; or I don’t drink when I’m having a terrible drunken dream, though who knows, maybe at those times I drink too. I guess I drink both asleep and awake.”

“Maybe you should just get treatment. I mean, the doctors could help you, they’d help you to find the answer. Maybe you should go see someone who knows more about these things.”

“I do see doctors. Dr. Granada is like a father to me. Eighteen times I’ve been on the alco ward and listened to the reasons why my brothers in addiction drank. They all drank for the same reasons, though sometimes for different ones too. They drank because their father was too hard on them, and they drank because their mother was too soft on them. They drank because everyone around them was drinking. They drank because they came from families of drunkards, and they drank because they came from families whose lips had not touched a drop in generations. They drank because Poland was under the Muscovite yoke, and they drank out of euphoria when it was liberated. They drank because a Polish man became Pope, and they drank because a Polish man won the Nobel Prize, and they drank because a Polish woman won the Nobel Prize. They drank the health of the interned, and with their drinking they honored the memory of the murdered. They drank when they were alone and they drank whenever anyone appeared next to them. They drank when the Polish team won, and they drank when the Polish team lost. And Dr. Granada would listen to all these answers with superhuman patience, shake his head, and say what I said at the beginning: ‘You drink because you drink.’”

“Snap out of it, wake up.” Maybe Alberta was speaking in a general sense, or maybe in a specific sense, or maybe, in the course of the long sleep I had been immersed in for years, I had additionally dozed off. Alberta was shaking my arm gently: “Wake up.”

“Why should I wake up when in the waking world things are even worse? The waking world is one immense reason to drink.”

“If you drink when you’re asleep and also when you’re awake, then actually you’ve no idea what the waking world is like.”

“Look, if I’d been sober back on that July afternoon I never would have spotted you by the ATM, I never would have thought that you are wise and beautiful, it never would have occurred to me that you’re the greatest love of my life, I never would have run after you, I never would have experienced such ecstasy. .”

I was unable to go on, because I was filled with emotion. Seeing that my eyes were glazing over and I was about to break down in tears, Alberta poured a dose that in her view was the right amount, and in mine was insufficient. But I didn’t insist on being topped up, the missing amount being in any case minimal, because I could see she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart, and out of obedience to the gangsters who had brought her here, but also because she wanted to keep on talking with me.