Jerzy Pilch - The Mighty Angel

“We’re supposed to keep a journal of our emotions, and you can’t argue with that,” the Sugar King said in self-defense. “In our journals we’re supposed to be completely honest, and you can’t argue with that. We do it so as to relearn how to name our emotions, something we are no longer able to do as a result of our abuse of intoxicating liquor, and we do it so as to learn how to have control over our emotions, an ability we’ve also lost, and that too is perfectly—”

“But describing the state of your soul after passing a stool seems to me inappropriate,” Fanny Kapelmeister, in civilian life a history teacher, interrupted him without conviction.

“Fanny, you should be made to start your therapy again from the beginning”—the Sugar King’s voice was filled with mockery and venom—“since you’re incapable of distinguishing the spiritual sphere from the emotional sphere. And all this after Dr. Granada, and Nurse Viola, and the therapist Moses alias I Alcohol, along with all his she-therapists, have repeated to you time and again that these are two different spheres. I’m afraid I’m going to have to present your case at the evening meeting.”

“All right”—Fanny raised her head, and by this single gesture she was transformed from the wasted fifty-year-old dwarf she resembled, into the tall and imperious thirty-year-old brunette she actually was—“all right, but start by saying, start by announcing at the evening meeting that today, Thursday, July 6, in the year of our Lord two thousand, you took a crap and it made you feel better.”

“I don’t need to say it, because I wrote it down,” replied the Sugar King, and he added a powerful comment that put me painfully in mind of the next world: “When something is written down it doesn’t need to be talked about. At the meeting there’s something else I’m going to bring up,” he added ominously.

But in the evening, when we all gathered in the cafeteria, as we did every day to take account of our lives, the Sugar King did not take the floor, and did not say a word; neither on that day, nor any other, were we able to resolve the question of whether the state of one’s soul after passing a stool was or was not worthy of being recorded in one’s emotional journal. The one debate to occur that evening was a debate over the telephone (if such a feeble exchange of opinions can even be called a debate). Fanny Kapelmeister, who was unusually animated that day — perhaps she was consumed by a terrible thirst for vodka, perhaps she was trying to avoid an embarrassing discussion on the matter alluded to above, perhaps she was afraid of the Sugar King, or perhaps she had been upset by some inadvisable contact with the outside world — in any case Fanny Kapelmeister, who was unusually animated that day, put up her hand.

“I came to understand,” she said, “after a time I came to understand why we can’t watch television, listen to the radio, play dominoes or other games, this I came to understand after a time. But why the telephone is switched off after 9 P.M. I cannot understand.”

“The telephone is switched off after 9 P.M. for the good of the patients.” Sister Viola responded to Fanny Kapelmeister’s unintentionally teacher-like tone with the deliberately intensified tone of a ward sister. “At that time some of the patients want to be asleep, and others want to use the quiet to work and write—”

“How can you talk about quiet”—Fanny Kapelmeister had undergone yet another transformation, this time metamorphosing from patient to tsarina, from supplicant to she-eagle—“how can you talk about quiet and about sleeping, when at 10 P.M. they start cleaning the hallway, with all the accompanying clatter, and then at 10:30 we all have to go to the nurses’ station with our personal mouthpieces to take a breathalyzer test. How can you talk about quiet—”

Fanny Kapelmeister suddenly fell silent and stiffened; for a moment it looked like a classic early sign of an epileptic fit, but no, Fanny Kapelmeister had fallen silent in astonishment because she had suddenly grasped the absolute essence of her fate. What does a person feel when, every evening, they stand in line with several dozen other people — personal mouthpiece in hand — in order to take a breathalyzer test? What does that person feel? That person feels nothing in particular, especially if they’ve not drunk anything beforehand, that person feels nothing in particular, unless they did have something to drink — then they feel afraid. Fine, but what does a person feel when they suddenly become aware that they stand in line every evening with several dozen alcos so as to walk up and blow into a breathalyzer? Well then, such a person — like Fanny Kapelmeister — may succumb to astonishment; they may turn into a pillar of salt. Fanny’s skull was filled with a crowd of alcos. They stood obediently one behind the other and blew into the breathalyzer with such force that they seemed to drive every thought from her head. Fanny spoke no more and slowly sat down, though that sitting down was more an involuntary slide into her chair than actually sitting down. Simultaneously, like the other half of a set of scales, as Fanny descended the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol rose at the other end of the table.

Fanny Kapelmeister seemed to fall silent a second time, and this time she turned to stone. She may have wanted to add something; she may have wanted to say how important even a minute-long phone conversation can be for an alco; she may have wanted to refer to the relevant clause in the patient’s bill of rights; she may have wished to remind everyone of something that could have been the punch-line of this chapter: namely, that the sole telephone accessible to the alcos on this ward only took tokens, which had been unavailable for years, in consequence of which hardly anyone ever actually used it; she may have had other arguments, but probably not, and, in fact, most certainly not. There was nothing in her head except the crowd of alcos waiting in line for the breathalyzer.

Fanny could clearly see her own specter standing in this line, and it occurred to her that perhaps a person whose evening ritual involves blowing into a breathalyzer should indeed have no other right than the right to blow into a breathalyzer every evening. In the meantime, the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol was already on his feet and said very quietly:

“According to the regulations the telephone ought to be available to all you alcoholics between the hours of 7 A.M. and 9 P.M. That is how it has been and that is how it will be, or maybe not, because I can see we need to think about removing the telephone from the ward entirely. This is not a question”—he gave a slight bow in Sister Viola’s direction—“this is not a question of quiet in what I might call its audible or inaudible aspect. You are all supposed to quiet down inwardly, you’re supposed to compose yourselves. You’re supposed to calm your frayed nerves — not so as to go to sleep, but so as to lead a tranquil life in the future. And anything that comes from the outside world, even a telephone call, can upset you. Telephone calls, especially telephone calls I would say, can upset a person; I personally know how upsetting some telephone calls can be. So then, as I said: from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. After that there is curfew, the telephone’s switched off, and you all work on yourselves, on quieting yourselves. You quiet yourselves indefinitely with the goal of quieting yourselves absolutely. That’s right, quiet yourselves, quiet yourselves, because if you do not, I, alcohol”—the therapist Quasi Moses alias I Alcohol continued to speak very quietly, but he spread his arms wide to give himself a dragon-like appearance—“if you do not quiet yourselves, I, alcohol, will destroy you.”