Jerzy Pilch - The Mighty Angel

“Fine,” she said, “you experienced a fiery ecstasy, in connection with me furthermore, which is always agreeable for a woman. But tell me, how did it end? Tell me, if you remember that is.”

“It ended on the alco ward,” I said after a moment of inevitable silence.

“Exactly. In my view fiery ecstasies that end on the alco ward aren’t worth very much. Truth be told, they’re not worth shit. You have to get out of it.”

“The thing is, Ala, do you know what the alcos talk about the whole time on the alco ward? Do you know the principal subject of their most serious conversations?”

“You said yourself a moment ago that they’re constantly talking about drinking and their reasons for drinking.”

“That too, of course, they speak constantly about how they drank and why they drank; but their first topic of conversation is getting out. They deliver lengthy treatises on the art of getting out. They’re constantly going on about getting out. They’re constantly asking: When will we get out of here? I wonder when they’ll let us out? I wonder when a person will get out? In a month, or maybe two? Maybe tomorrow? Tomorrow no, because tomorrow is Sunday, and on Sunday there are no discharges. But Monday for sure. On Monday for sure we’ll get out.”

Alberta looked at me with the kind of tenderness with which a woman looks at a man who is by nature more foolish than she is.

“I’m not talking about getting out of the hospital, I’m talking about getting out of the addiction.”

“Let me tell you, Ala: only the naïve think that there are different kinds of getting out. The wise and the experienced know: every kind of getting out is the same.”

“Wise and experienced drunkards, maybe.”

“I’m tempted to reply that there are no wiser or more experienced people than wise and experienced drunkards, but that would be a typical drunken aphorism, and of late I’ve been avoiding drunken aphorisms. You get out of the hospital, in other words you get out of your illness, and re-enter the world, which itself is one big illness. Do you see?”

The room was slowly growing darker; evening was evidently coming, though it may equally have been morning that was slowly coming, it may have been entirely dark for a long time, and it may just have seemed to me that it was only now getting darker. I had no idea what time of day it was, and I was embarrassed to ask. I remembered a story the Hero of Socialist Labor told about losing track of time, one of a hundred thousand drunken parables about losing track of time.

The Hero of Socialist Labor started work at the Sendzimir (formerly Lenin) Steel Mill at six in the morning. The incident he was recounting, that is to say, his great drinking bout, took place in the winter, when, as is common knowledge, at six in the morning and six in the evening it is equally dark. The Hero of Socialist Labor woke up in the dark; it was half past five. With all the usual drunken melodrama he realized he would barely make it to work. Fortunately he still had something left in the bottle; he knocked back a restorative hair of the dog, and on the way to the bus stop he went in to the store and drank a beer as well. He was a little surprised at the store being open at such an early hour, since it usually opened at seven, but there it was, open before six. . Then at the bus stop something was wrong too, the people waiting were not the usual ones, and on top of that they were too numerous and animated for an early winter’s morning. . A terrible suspicion finally formed in the Hero of Socialist Labor’s heart, but he was embarrassed to ask anyone; he began to search the crowd for a fellow tribesperson, which, incidentally, did not take long. In the appropriate place, right on the curb, there was a person swaying on his feet in the appropriate manner. His swaying was extremely appropriate, it was in fact slight and barely perceptible; this person, though he was swaying on his feet, was also sure to know what time of day it was. The Hero of Socialist Labor went up to him and asked:

“Excuse me, it’s coming up for six, but is that six in the morning or six in the evening?”

“Six noon,” replied the other man, and it’s for the beauty of that reply I tell the story, not for the time mix-up, which is obvious from the beginning.

In any case, the room was dark and it was probably evening after all. Alberta stood up, turned on the desk lamp, and came back to me.

“I don’t think that’s particularly hard to understand either.” At this point I had no idea what Alberta was saying, I had completely forgotten what we’d been speaking about a moment before. In the light of the lamp her yellow dress and her arms seemed to have taken on a moonlit glow.

“I don’t think that’s particularly hard to understand either,” she repeated, as if knowing that I needed a repetition. “Those people, your dire comrades in arms, shouldn’t talk about getting out, they shouldn’t look forward so desperately to getting out. They should sit there or lie there patiently and stay put till they’re cured.”

“Ala,” I replied, the way Dr. Granada would have said it, “Ala, you have the mind of a child. It’s true they shouldn’t be talking about getting out, because they shouldn’t ever get out. I don’t mean the alco ward should be some kind of life sentence, though it’s also true that life in general is a life sentence. I simply mean that for alcos the alco ward is the right place. Let me tell you in confidence, Ala: I’ve often felt I could live there forever. My comrades in arms are constantly telling war stories, there’s always talk of greater or lesser but always interesting adventures, the meals are regular and reasonably nutritious, the lack of radio, television, and games encourages juvenile but inspirational stratagems, the dominant mood there is a stifling melancholy, reflection decidedly prevails over any kind of activity — in a word, it’s an ideal atmosphere for an intellectual. .”

“Dear, dear Lord, how awfully ill you are. You’re saying unbelievable things. Are you in some kind of permanent delirium or something? Did you really — when you saw me that time at the ATM, if you actually saw me there, and if it really was me — did you actually run after me, or did you just think you did?”

“What about now,” I asked; my voice was once again quavering and unsure, as if the fortifying Becherovka was not yet running through my veins—“are you here now? Are you sitting next to me?”

“Yes, now I’m here, I’m sitting here and talking to you.”

“I love you, Ala,” I said, “I love you like I’ve never loved anyone else before.”

“You know what, sweetheart?” Ala chucked me under the chin and may even have stroked my cheek under its covering of drunken stubble. “You know what, my sweetest one, I know you’re deliriously drunk, I know you’re seeing things, I know that your head is all messed up, but setting all that aside, out of pure curiosity let me ask: how many women have you already said that to? How many times, you bastard, have you repeated your famous: ‘I love you more than life itself’?”

“I’ve only ever said it to you, that is, I’ve only said it to you in such a true and such an intense way. I may happen to have uttered similar or even identical phrases before, but that was just cynical rhetoric. I feigned love, like any male who’s hungry for copulation.”

“And they believed you? Did any one of them actually believe you? Who were these women? What kind of gullible idiots were they? Was every girl you met a pervert turned on by the smell of badly digested Żołądkowa Gorzka, or what?”

“Do you want to know the truth?”

“Yes, I do.”

“All right, but you should be aware that if I tell you the truth you may be put off me. . You may even be physically repulsed by me,” I added playfully.