Jerzy Pilch - A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Mr. Trąba placed the postcard with the view of the Palace of Culture on the tablecloth. He pulled an ink pencil out of his breast pocket, and, internally tense and externally trembling, he attempted to write the address with his dithering hand.

“Did you see the waitress?” Father asked. “A real cul du siècle . Just look at her neck. You’ll feel better right away. One hunger should be cancelled out with another.”

“For the moment I can’t even look. For the moment I don’t even know how to see. The swallows, the barn swallows are flitting about me like mad.” Mr. Trąba was the embodiment of black despair. “I must at least apply an energy blockade. Praise God, she’s coming. .”

Dressed in a black skirt and a white blouse, the most beautiful waitress in the world approached from the depths of a dark hall that smelled of powdered sugar. When she placed the cream pastries (three of them) before Mr. Trąba, he immediately gobbled them down, one after the other. Those were gargantuan moments, since, unaware of his panicky movements, he smashed the pastries with his fingers. Whipped cream flowed down his chin, crumbs were falling everywhere, but I have to admit that the more he ate, the faster the black flames of death in his eyes burned out, and after the last, largish bite, they went out completely.

“Better,” said Mr. Trąba, “significantly better. An energy blockade is only a provisional solution, but at least it’s some sort of solution.”

Then he wiped his mouth with a checkered handkerchief, shook off the crumbs, licked the ink pencil, and began to write. And as he wrote he sounded out what he wrote:

“Esteemed and dear Mrs. Chief. We arrived, thanks be to God, in good form. In a few hours we will do what we must do, and what the Chief still doesn’t believe we will do. I hope that everything will go according to plan, and that what must happen will finally happen. I will then flee, but the Chief will be apprehended and shackled and locked up in an underground cell for many long years. Then, dearest Mrs. Chief, we can finally link our fates. The Chief, on the other hand, will have an opportunity to cure his incurable skepticism and to be forcibly convinced that what is isn’t fiction but truth. Jerzyk is completely safe and has a good appetite. We will tell you about all our other impressions, of which there are a great many, after our return. .”

“Mr. Trąba, Mr. Trąba,” Father smiled sourly, “the Fatherland is in need. In a few hours we are supposed to kill Moscow’s vice-regent with our own hands, and you’ve got romance on your mind. .”

“Not romance, but love of life. Please finally be convinced that I don’t operate with literary constructions, but with existential phenomena.”

“Here’s an existential phenomenon for you.” Father summoned the most beautiful waitress in the world, and craftily — with a quiet voice, so that she would have to bend over them — he ordered the next round of cream pastries.

“Verily, you were right.” Mr. Trąba stared shamelessly. “Now I see. Now I know how to see. I beg your pardon most humbly, but what is your name?”

“Zosia,” the most beautiful waitress in the world replied with dignity. “Zosia, vintage 1939.”

“We’re very pleased to meet you, Miss Zosia, vintage 1939,” Mr. Trąba bowed, “very pleased to meet you. We are unknown partisans from Wisła.”

“Partisans don’t eat pastry,” Zosia vintage 1939 burst out laughing.

“Oh, Miss Zosia, you’ve obviously had very little to do with partisans in your life. And what does your esteemed boyfriend do?”

“He plays soccer for Legia,” she said without enthusiasm, and she added after a moment, “but he isn’t my boyfriend. I don’t love him. I beg the gentlemen partisans’ pardon, but the chef is calling me.”

And indeed, in the open doors, gleaming with golden radiance like the Gates of Heaven and leading to the kitchen and back rooms, there appeared an incredible cook in an incredible cap, and Zosia vintage 1939 turned on her heel and, like a gazelle, ran in his direction.

“Indeed, the star of the beauty standing on the curb on Wiślna Street is beginning to fade,” said Mr. Trąba, casting nostalgic glances. “But you have to admit, Chief, a white blouse and a black skirt are the absolute peak of perfection in a woman’s wardrobe. Never, nowhere, can any woman put on a more perfect vestment than a white blouse and a black skirt. That’s right. A white blouse and a black skirt. Accessories worthy of the deepest analysis. We will have something to debate on the return trip. But now,” Mr. Trąba drank a sip of lemon squash and sat more comfortably in his chair, “but now, gentlemen, you will permit me to occupy your attention with more fundamental questions.”

•

“When you, Chief, announced that traveling relaxes you, I also realized that I felt some relief on account of leaving, even for a short while, the Cieszyn region, that chosen land of home-grown philosophers. But in addition to relief, fear began to well up in my heart, uncertainty, and a horrible craving for you know what. I thought to myself: the thing we are attempting is contradictory to our natures to such an extent that there is no way that it could succeed, because it won’t succeed. The demon of capitulation made itself at home in my heart. For our drama, Chief, is based upon the fact that, by reason of birth, upbringing, confession, nature, and psychophysical predisposition, we are unquestionably not assassins. We are rather, for all the above-mentioned reasons, and a thousand other causes, born negotiators. After all, in the depths of my soul I would rather negotiate with him than kill him. Instead of initiating and, what is worse, definitively embodying my grand plan in the face of death, I would rather, I would rather a hundred times over, that we go to that Gomułka of theirs and say: ‘It’s like this and like that, comrade, in a word, it would be better if you went away, it would be better if you went away, you Polish Genghis Khan.’ We could even dazzle him with an ambiguous compliment, drink a glass with him, and take care of the whole matter amicably.”

“Our cause has utterly failed, Comrade Secretary. You are going away, we remain,” said Father.

Mr. Trąba was so delighted that he snorted, choked on his own saliva, and got up from his place.

“A masterpiece, simply a masterpiece. I have to say, you rarely speak up, but when you do, it’s a masterpiece.”

“As usual, I was quoting The People’s Tribune ,” Father smiled gloomily.

“The good use of a quotation is often worth more than an original thought, but the use of any quotation from The People’s Tribune —in such a way that it makes sense —heightens its sense and makes it an original thought. . One way or the other, those are fantasies,” Mr. Trąba continued after a moment of silence, “one way or the other. Perhaps we are born negotiators, but we assassins in spe are also just plain good and gentle people. And even if we were to reach him, and even if we were to explain our reasons to him — we are staying, you are going away, and so on — well, he would begin to drown us in his ironsmith-Leninist logorrhea. He would begin to convince us. Mrs. Gomułka would extract a bottle of French cognac from the sideboard and serve us home-baked cake. . That’s right, Chief, she cooks and bakes at home. In this sense, our emperor lives modestly.

“There are testimonies of the members of the Central Committee who, in 1956, visited Gomułka at home for the purpose of transferring power over this country to him. So this was the scene: the coronation ceremony was going on in the dining room, and an unceasing and horrible racket in the kitchen kept interrupting them. It was Mrs. Gomułka pounding pork cutlets on the cutting board. . And at this point the aura of domesticity would doubtless seduce us too. From word to word, slowly, slowly, we would begin to nod our approval. From up close, the tyrant would begin to seem less and less deadly, less and less bloody, and in the end, convinced and defeated, we would go away with nothing, while he would remain, and, what is more, he would be strengthened in his power. There’s nothing to be done for it,” Mr. Trąba sighed, “nothing to be done for it. We have to kill him.”