Jerzy Pilch - A Thousand Peaceful Cities

“Don’t be angry with me, Pastor, but the idea that I should let fly from my crossbow at a photograph of Władysław Gomułka cut out of The People’s Tribune —well that sort of idea is humiliating.” Mr. Trąba’s hands continued to shake, and his gaze strayed time and again in the direction of the bottles that were standing on the table.

“You must be aware,” Commandant Jeremiah’s tone seemed to reveal that perhaps he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the irreversible course of events, “you must be aware that, in addition to everything else, the crossbow isn’t the weapon of knights but of servants. Gentlemen despise the crossbow. For example, the use by the British of massive units armed with crossbows in the famous Battle of Crécy was recognized as dishonorable by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, which, in itself, invalidated the result of the battle. The use of the crossbow is a foul.”

“I don’t intend to foul Gomułka. I intend to kill him,” Mr. Trąba retorted dully. “The crossbow is the only weapon I know that can be effective at a distance of 150 to 200 yards. On the other side of Frascati Street, across from the windows of the first secretary’s apartment, there stretches a small park, and precisely from that spot, from behind the cover of darkness and leafless shrubs, I intend to send forth a single, and I hope lethal, shot. I choose the crossbow because, as I have mentioned many times, I simply don’t know how to use firearms. Obviously, I know perfectly well about the course of the Battle of Crécy, and I know that in Europe that weapon never enjoyed great esteem. But as always, excessive Eurocentrism is what destroys us Europeans. As some of you may know, the crossbow was invented in China, and at a time when bears were strolling back and forth across today’s Frascati Street. The trigger mechanisms of Chinese crossbows were produced with the precision of a grain of rice, and their level of complication, as experts claim, is comparable to that of bullet chambers in contemporary automatic rifles. You can find breathtaking descriptions of these constructions (handmade, although on an industrial scale) in old Chinese tracts, for example in The Art of War of Master Sun or in Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lu . I have the impression that both texts stem from the times when our ancestors, who later despised the weapon as unworthy of gentlemen, were still frightening wild animals with their ghastly dialect. The Huns, who battled with the Chinese, feared the crossbow, but if, by some miracle, they came into possession of one, they were unable to assemble or copy it. They weren’t even able to make use of the arrows, since they were too short for their long bows. Thus the invention and use of the crossbow is a flight of human thought and technology, a rebuff to barbarity. The fact that, one thousand years after the Chinese, servants in Europe used crossbows to set fire to barns is rather a measure of the demise, and not a manifestation of the exquisite manners, of the warriors of Mitteleuropa . So you see, it was no coincidence,” Mr. Trąba glanced in the direction of Grand Master Swaczyna, “no coincidence at all that I chose the Chinese model, since just like the ancient Chinese, I intend to rout the Huns. Even more, I intend to kill the very leader of the Huns.”

“As I said,” Grand Master Swaczyna reached into his breast pocket and extracted a folded piece of office paper, “as I said, the idea of killing, whether it’s a communist leader or any other sort of leader, is, in my opinion, an idea for students, but a commission remains a commission. ‘The customer is our master,’ as the latest slogan of socialized services proclaims. Here’s the project.”

Grand Master Swaczyna smoothed out the paper, and we all caught sight of a scrupulously drawn image of a beautiful object, shaded with a soft pencil, like an old illustration.

“The bed is approximately thirty, and precisely thirty-three and one half inches in length, and will be produced from beech wood, buffalo horn, and ram’s tendons,” Grand Master Swaczyna explained. “The inlay: little circles and rosettes of ivory. It all worked out well — I recently imported a little ivory from Kenya at a small profit. The bowstring will be of horse hair, the trigger lever of brass. Whereas for the bail, that is to say the bow, we will employ a spring from a Citroën model 1938. Only yesterday I paid a visit to one of my workshops and personally inspected the death-dealing metal. It has already been cleaned of rust and petrified mud. I can tell you all that truly murderous powers lurk in its wings glistening with olive intensity. As the man from whom I bought the spring assured me, that very Citroën model 1938 was in its time the property of the legendary murderer Mazurkiewicz. There remains the questions of shots, that is to say arrows. .”

“One arrow will be enough,” Mr. Trąba studied the details of the project carefully. “One arrow will be enough, made, as I told you, from a bicycle spoke and wooden ailerons, whereas the tip is to be made from a silver ball filed off of Mrs. Chief’s souvenir sugar bowl.” Mr. Trąba bowed slightly in the direction of Mother, who was sitting motionless.

“And the silver blade will pierce his bowels, and his belly, and the dirt shall come out. Poland, Poland,” resounded Father Pastor Potraffke’s hoarsely distorted voice.

Once again he raised up his arms, but now it might seem that he lifted on them a huge, invisible weight, and his face grew pale as paper, he panted heavily, his dark, fiery pupils fled time and again into the depths of his skull. The Pastor’s Wife jumped up from her place, but neither she nor any of us, who were seized with sudden fear, knew what to do. Pastor Potraffke now raised up his arms and the weight resting on them (all the heavier for the fact that it was invisible), and now he himself rose up from his place, and apoplectic blotches began to appear on his face, which gave the impression that he was slowly returning to life and consciousness. And indeed, he lowered one hand and extracted a Bible from his jacket pocket. He opened it with a mechanical, though seemingly infallible, gesture, and with a somewhat calmer, though still sufficiently apoplectic voice, he began to speak, read, and comment:

“I ask you, beloved brothers and beloved sisters, how many years have passed since the end of the war until today, until the year of our Lord 1963? Eighteen years. Eighteen. Listen, then, to what the Book of Judges has to say: ‘And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. So the children of Israel,’ listen carefully brothers and sisters, ‘the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for eighteen years.’ Just as we,” the pastor raised up his head and immediately let it drop again, “just as we have been serving the king of the Huns for eighteen years. Scripture speaks in this passage, the Book of Judges, chapter three, verse fourteen, about precisely eighteen years of bondage: ‘But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a man who did not use his right hand: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment on his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And Ehud came unto him and put forth his left hand and took the dagger forth from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. So that the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.’ That’s right. Dirt. Poland.”