Jerzy Pilch: The Mighty Angel

“YOU KNOW, MR. J., I’m a hundred percent certain that not one of the several dozen eagles presently on my ward, nor any one of the handful of she-eagles, will ever rise into the air again. None of you will recover, none of you will stop drinking. Not your roommate Christopher Columbus the Explorer, not Simon Pure Goodness, nor Don Juan the Rib, nor the Sugar King, nor the Hero of Socialist Labor, whose living corpse returned to our establishment as recently as yesterday, nor the Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, nor the Queen of Kent, nor Fanny Kapelmeister, nor Joanna, nor Marianna; it’s quite certain that none of you will stop drinking. Although it’s hardly necessary to speak of the venerable hall of fame whose names I just listed. Debutants have no chance here either, though even those who come to me for the first time are no longer debutants, they’re mostly seasoned artists; the real debutants, who right now are cracking open their first bottle on the little square outside their apartment building, never even imagine that one day they’ll become acknowledged masters.”

Dr. Granada gazed at the world through one eye; his second eye (or maybe his first? Which eye is first, and which second? Behold a classic example of a drunken concern; its every aspect can be explored with exceeding nicety as one drinks), his second, or perhaps his first eye, was covered with a leukoma, a problem that was rather superficial and could easily have been removed by some surgical colleague of his. Yet the Doctor rightly chose not only not to eradicate his one-eyedness, but, on the contrary, to cultivate it. It made him a charismatic leader: memories of childhood books about pirates stirred in our addled minds, while the nurses reacted to their director’s cyclopism swooningly — I have long observed that a distinct asymmetry in the male physique enhances the languishing receptivity of women. The mystery of this aberration cannot be unlocked, however, without drunken hypotheses, and for the moment I set it aside.

Dr. Granada reminded me of Dr. Swobodziczka of the town of Wisła: the same scent of archaic eau de cologne, a similarity in physical appearance, the palpable analogy of memorable last names, a similarly supercilious attitude to the world (“I speak to you from on high”), a similar, perhaps even identical, resonant, stentorian voice, a shared fondness for florid yet, at the same time, pointed paradoxes, an identical one-eyedness. The left eye of one was covered with a white film, while the other had a glass prosthesis in his right socket. I’m delirious, though I don’t know what it means to be delirious. I have a terrible fever. I’m lying in my parents’ bed, which is as vast as a transatlantic liner; the bedside lamp goes on and off, and the one-eyed doctor is leaning over me.

•

“But there is within them a sort of delusion; some of them, at any rate, surrender with all their might to the power of their own hallucinations.” The blue in Dr. Granada’s one eye intensified, like frozen Absolut. “Even now they believe they won’t drink any more; they are profoundly convinced they’ll never drink another glass in their lives. They promise themselves this in all honesty. Naturally they’re incapable of it; sooner or later the talons of the addiction tighten around their thirsty throats. Now, after their treatment, they’re total abstainers, or at least let’s say quasi-abstainers; they’re fully aware that it is good not to drink, and if they don’t die the first time they go on a bender again, for a time at least they’ll remember how they were sober in the hospital and for a short while after they got out. They’ll struggle, they’ll struggle in vain between drinking and not drinking, but at least that futile battle will be the sign of a fight, even when it ends in defeat; it’ll indicate some kind of movement. They’ll be whipped, but they’ll go out onto the playing field. While you, Mr. J., will no longer go out onto the playing field. You’re immobile; you’ve come to a stop in the bottle like a fly in amber. You’re all burned out inside. You’re filled with cinders, and they are cold cinders. The fire has been thoroughly extinguished by torrential rains. It would seem that you’re sitting here in my office, that you’re saying something; one might even at moments have the erroneous impression that you’re saying something sensible. You’re still wearing hospital pajamas, but in reality you’re no longer here: you’re already elegantly dressed in your street clothes, sitting on a high stool — you’re already drinking, Mr. J. Toward the end of the week you’ll walk out of here in fine shape, pumped full of vitamins and with your magnesium deficiency more or less replenished, fortified with fortifying substances and tranquilized with tranquilizing medicines, you’ll walk out of here on your own two feet, because we have put you for the umpteenth time back on your feet, and where will you, unerringly, direct your steps? Do I need to ask? Do I have to bother with an interrogative intonation? You will head with all speed for the nearest pub or the nearest liquor store.”

Dr. Granada was absolutely correct. Always, after I left the alco ward I would direct my steps to the nearest pub or the nearest liquor store. To be exact, I would first head for the pub; in the interests of further exactitude I must state that it was not the nearest pub, or rather, it was the pub nearest my apartment, which my wives had abandoned, on the ONZ Circle. That’s right, I would leave the alco ward, head for the nearest cab stand, and take a cab to the immediate vicinity of my apartment building. I probably felt safer in my own neighborhood; anywhere is good, but there’s no place like home. And I would enter the pub called “The Mighty Angel” and with the goal of putting my experiences in order I would drink four double shots. Then, in the nearby store I would buy a bottle of vodka and go and face up to the hurly-burly of physical objects. For in a state of sobriety I was incapable of dealing with the disarray that constantly accumulated in the apartment my wives had abandoned, though I did so tenaciously — I have an exceedingly pedantic nature.

IN THE ALCO WARD a dispute had broken out over plagiarism. Incidentally, when I arrived there for the first time I did not have the slightest notion that I was crossing the threshold of a creative writing program, that I was entering a community of people of the pen, of writers who were incessantly creating their alcoholic autobiographies, recording their innermost feelings in cheap sixty-page notebooks that were called emotional journals, laboriously assembling their drunkards’ confessions. In the early and late mornings the alcos either wrote or, awaiting inspiration, for hours on end roamed the hallways with their manuscripts, which grew ever thicker during the course of their stay in the clinic, tucked under their arms. In the afternoon they had therapeutic conversations with the she-therapists, with Dr. Granada, or with the male therapist Moses Alias I Alcohol, and they listened to talks and took part in discussion groups. In the evenings they attended public readings, after which fierce debates erupted. During one such exchange the sizeable gathering put before the alco Marianna the charge that the drinking confession she had just presented to them was eerily reminiscent of the confession of the alco Joanna they had listened to the week before. Since both sides defended themselves with the aid of mutual accusations, the matter of whether the alco Marianna had copied the description of her drunken night from the alco Joanna or vice versa could not easily be resolved. The community of alcos unanimously insisted that the next day there be a showdown in which the two women would read their work; after, there would be a discussion, followed by a vote, in which a verdict would be determined.