Jerzy Pilch: The Mighty Angel

“Give me a goddam break with that loser! That escape of his is pure kitsch, it’s lousy writing! Why escape in the night when he could just as easily do it in the daytime? Why through the window when the door and the gates are open the whole time? And why through the window of the smoking room in particular, when there are other rooms without bars on the windows? I mean, there’s no need to escape from here at all, you can just walk out of the place. At any time of the day or night you can sling your kit on your back, say bye-bye at the nurses’ station, and it really is bye-bye. No one will even ask where you’re going or why. And if someone really is weak in spirit, and passing publicly through the open doors of the alco ward is beyond them, they can just go into town, walk into the first bar they find, knock back a beer and one or two doubles, come back, and blow boldly into the breathalyzer. There you are — you’re at 1.5, you have fifteen minutes to pack your things. Bye-bye. Why creep out in the night when no one’s guarding you to begin with? Why wrap yourself in the garb of a great fugitive, when no one is giving chase? And why’s he running away anyway? What’s his motivation? Because his sleeping roommate snores? Because the fugitive has an overpowering thirst for booze? Because he’s fleeing in panic back to his former incarnation? Because all of the above? He’s running away, and he’s going to do what? Take a cab to “The Mighty Angel”? To the all-night store? Brace himself with a couple of doubles, take the elevator to the twelfth floor, open the door and wonder who’s been staying in his place while the owner was away? Who was here while I was gone? And, as he drinks, he’ll clear up the mess? He’ll put his keys, his books, his records, his pencils, his photographs, and his drinking glasses where they belong? He’ll vacuum the floor, change the bed, take down the lace curtains and gather the laundry? He’ll pour an over-generous quantity of Omo-Color washing powder into the bathtub? He’ll wash his filthy clothing and carefully hang it out to dry on the balcony, ever so carefully, because the more care you put into hanging out the washing, the less work it is to iron it later? And when his labors are done he’ll pour himself a goodly shot of Żołądkowa Gorzka, and drink it, and fall asleep, and wake up on the alco ward? I, your green-winged angel, cannot keep up with such an intense tempo, and I tell you — this is not good. Simon’s escape is highly artificial and irritating. If you have even a little bit of an instinct, stay away from such artificiality and don’t describe it. Listen to me finally; I’m not tempting you now, I’m giving you a friendly piece of advice: don’t describe Simon’s escape. Don’t do it. And don’t go overboard either with that childlike faith in recovered time; lost time, and especially lost money, can never be recovered, especially by means of literature. You yourself calculated that in the course of the last twenty years you’d drunk two thousand three hundred and eighty bottles of vodka, two thousand two hundred and twenty bottles of wine, and two thousand two hundred and fifty bottles of beer, when the latter two are converted to vodka (the ratio being: half a liter of vodka equals two bottles of wine, equals ten beers), and so, counting in vodka, in the course of the last twenty years you’d drunk three thousand six hundred bottles of vodka, and converting to today’s prices you figured out that you’d drunk a good deal more than seventy thousand zloties. And on top of that you have to add the cab rides, the tips, the snacks, and the lost wallets, bags, scarves, jackets, gloves, documents, the fees for home treatments and stays in drying-out facilities, the monstrous bills for drunken phone conversations, the interest, the fines, the penalties, and the paid women. And you need to add at least two more years of drinking, because you, Jerzy, didn’t start drinking in the Year of our Lord 1980, when Solidarity was founded, you, Jerzy, began drinking in earnest in the Year of our Lord 1978, when a Pole ascended to the Throne of St. Peter, which, incidentally, even taking into consideration your Protestantism, is nothing but a superficial coincidence. So that at a conservative estimate alone, Jerzy, you drank away a billion old zloties, a hundred thousand new ones, a sum of money that a chump like yourself, filled with hypocritical humility, is unlikely ever to get back. To get it back, the epic poem whose parts I’m dictating to you right now would have to earn you that billion old zloties. Though if you really listened to me, if you wrote everything down faithfully, that seemingly unattainable amount would not have to be imaginary. If you put your mind to it, you could earn it, you could sell our co-authored work at a good price, you could make a packet and — think about it — you could carry on drinking. But don’t write on your own. Don’t write on your own, Jerzy. I’m begging you: don’t write. Leave Simon’s artificial escape undescribed.”

•

Simon Pure Goodness walks down the hallway that is lit by a single bulb. He opens the door to the smoking room, goes up to the unbarred window, and tosses his duffle bag out onto the grass at the foot of the wall, then he climbs onto the window ledge and jumps down lightly. It’s a warm August night; a plane is coming in to land at Okęcie, and there’s a smell of cornflowers, camomile, and mimosa. Simon Pure Goodness passes between the brick-built dormitories. He sees an orange glow and hears the rumble of the local train. An almost completely black cat runs across the grass. Behind Simon, a green-winged angel treads at a slow pace; behind the angel come the shades of the dead in blue and white pajamas. They follow behind him; there are more and more of them. Tempt me not, Satan.

AND MY ADDICTION was dropping from me the way the snake’s skin drops from the snake; the last shadows of tangible specters fell across the wall. She was with me, holding my hand, and I felt within myself a spring-like renewal of strength. Only six months before I’d been preparing for a different ending; in the quiet of my heart I was certain that I would finish writing the somber chronicle of my addiction, I’d inscribe the last period on the damp paper, and with the aid of a few modest, truly modest doses of Żołądkowa Gorzka I’d dispatch myself to the next world. I had calculated that to reach the finishing line I needed at the very most five bottles, two and a half liters to my last breath; of this I was absolutely certain. Aside from anything else, aside from this not approximate but precise calculation, there was an additional possibility and hope: it was not out of the question, it was entirely conceivable, that I would give up the ghost after only three bottles. (In such an eventuality I would bequeath the remaining two bottles to the mourners attending my wake.)

But now (now, meaning when? now! now, when you’re running toward me in your black blouse and green slacks), now there was no quiet in my heart; now my heart was churning like the greatest waterfall in the world.

I’ve so often wanted to write the story of someone bringing themselves back from ruin, so often, such an untold number of times, that when finally, by an incomprehensible coincidence I myself was bringing myself back from ruin, when I myself was being brought back from ruin, when someone’s visible or invisible hand was lifting me out of that cavernous pit, I could not keep pace with my own recovery. I’m not capable of describing my own liberation as a series of plausible events; I lack the ability to convey the evolutionary history of my own resurrection — I present only these epiphanic stanzas, though my resurrection too was like an epiphany, like a haiku; it was like a single line of poetry, unerring as lightning.