Jerzy Pilch - A Thousand Peaceful Cities

Mr. Trąba tore the crossbow off his shoulder for a moment, bowed, placed it back in a flash, and, almost without aiming, drew the trigger. I heard the whistle of the arrow, the shattering of the windowpane. An absolute quiet ensued; even the crows fell silent. After a moment, a woman’s desperate cry resounded, a dog began to bark, we heard footsteps, someone was running in our direction.

“Got him. Let’s split up,” Mr. Trąba spoke with an incredibly calm, almost sleepy voice. Jerzyk will run to his woman friend. We, Chief, will head in the direction of the station, but by different paths. To the glory of the Fatherland, gentlemen.” Mr. Trąba reached back broadly and fluidly and hurled the crossbow into the crown of the tree. The crows took flight. The Chinese crossbow hung in the invisible heights.

•

I ran through the dark little streets, and I swallowed tears. I don’t know why. Maybe I was sorry to lose the crossbow that had burdened me so unbearably all day. I was sorry to lose the irrevocably lost toy, and even today, whenever I am in Warsaw, whenever I am in this wolfish city, which is now like a Biblical emporium, every time, I stand under that poplar and, with head thrown back, strain to catch sight of the shape of a Chinese crossbow that has become one for all eternity with the branches and boughs, has been covered over by generations of leaves. I ran through the little streets, and I fell into the dark gate, and I climbed the dark stairs, and the angel of my first love, not changed in the least, in that same mid-thigh sweater, opened the door to me, and, just as I had supposed, she showed no sign of surprise upon seeing me. And the entire evening I sat at the table, and I played chess with her husband. She changed dresses in the depths of the apartment, combed her hair before a mirror, and gave me secret and tender signs from time to time. And so I played with him, and I waited for the moment — the moment that the gestures of her incredible fingers had foretold — to arrive. I waited until, sooner or later, he would fall asleep over the chessboard, but he didn’t show any signs of falling asleep. He meditated for hours over the simplest move. It was rather I who was falling off to sleep, and in the first half-sleep I heard her delicate steps. She walked up to the television. A cadaverous light fell over the chessboard. Then serious music resounded, and an announcer in an incredible jacket pronounced the words that I had long known would be pronounced in every home that evening. He pronounced the word “death,” and the word “attempt,” and the word “assassination.” And then there appeared on the screen skyscrapers and automobiles of a sort I had never seen on the road, and yet on the blurry close-up you could see how the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, sitting in the open limousine, grabbed his pierced neck, how someone jumped to his rescue, but there wasn’t any possibility of rescue, for the shot was on target and unerring, like snow falling from a bamboo leaf.

Very late in the night, the angel of my first love came to me. She sat on the edge of the bed and held my hand. On the other side of the wall snored her unhappy husband, who, granted, had beaten me at chess, but whom she had never loved. My first dream began, and through its first spaces, over snow-capped mountains, flew an arrow with a silver tip. It circled the world like a Russky sputnik, and the slashed air immediately sealed over it, and there wasn’t a trace of its passing.

I breathed in deeply, and unexpectedly I caught the smell of freshly mown grass. Perhaps the desert thread of a tropical atmospheric front had slipped over the icy valley. Or perhaps the clear well of a thaw was slowly opening up among the dark, murky heavens.

“Jesus Christ is born,” said Mr. Trąba. He reeled and leaned on my shoulder. “Jesus Christ is born, and although this happens every year, and although He is born every year, although every year Reverend Father Pastor Potraffke tells of this in sermons that become more and more formally perfect, you can never get to the bottom of this story or investigate it completely. .”

You could hear the far-off drone of an engine. In a gray cloud stirred up by tires, a truck loaded with bushy spruce trees drove down from Buffalo Mountain.

“That’s a fine thing,” Mr. Trąba grumbled, glancing at his watch. “It’s already almost 10:00, it’s 9:47 to be precise. In two hours Sexton Messerschmidt, and with him all the bell-ringers in all the basilicas in the world, will pull on the ropes, organists will strike their keyboards, songs praising the advent of the Lord will reverberate, and these laggards are still cutting down a stand of trees.”

And Mr. Trąba, realizing his own tardiness, shakily hastened his step. It wasn’t far now. We passed by the Baptists, who were already plunged in darkness, and Rychter Department Store buzzed with the flames of huge candles and the hubbub of conversations. For a moment, a cyclone of snow, smelling of gasoline, embraced us. In its eye a lost truck swam slowly. A huge dog ran after it like a specter and barked like mad. It seemed to me that, above its barking and above the Latin carols sung by shepherds and angels, I heard the stormy signal of Radio Free Europe. It was ten o’clock, and every day, Christmas Eve or not, without fail, with desperate vengeance in his eyes, Father turned the radio up full blast.

Indeed, you could never get to the bottom of that story, nor investigate it completely. Every year the mixed forests on Buffalo Mountain froze. Every year Caesar Augustus called for all the world to be taxed. Every year Mr. Trąba was late for Christmas Eve.

•

Mother was covering the table with a cloth. In the middle she put salt, garlic, and communion wafers. She placed a candle stick and a tea cup with honey. The smell of milk, fish, and cabbage came from the kitchen. I brought hymnals and set them out at the places on the table. I knew the hymns by heart. I knew “Time of Joy,” number 139 in the hymnal of Father Heczko, and “Praise Be to Thee, Jesus Christ,” number 127, and all twelve verses of “From Heaven High I Come to You.” Everybody — Father, Mother, Mr. Trąba, Elżunia Baptystka, and Grand Master Swaczyna — everybody in our parts, even Małgosia Snyperek, even Commandant Jeremiah, everybody knew the hymns by heart, although they glanced at the hymnals while singing, as if renewing a covenant with the old books. They glanced at the words of the hymns, even though they didn’t read them. It was rather that, by singing, they brought them to life, praised them through their singing, strengthened the fading print by singing, and reinforced the crumbling pages by singing. Everybody knew the hymns by heart, but I don’t think anyone but me knew all twelve verses of “From Heaven High I Come to You.” No one but me — and Father Pastor Potraffke. Even today I am still ready to recite or sing that entire festive hymn, and — no doubt when I say this I am consumed by Evangelical-Augsburg pride — I am ready to say or even to sing all twelve verses, and verily I say unto you, I will do it just as well as, more than thirty years ago, Father Pastor Potraffke did it in the Protestant Hall.

•

“From heaven high I come to you,

I bring you tidings good and new;

Glad tidings of great joy I bring,

Whereof I now will say and sing:

To you this night is born a child,

Of Mary, chosen virgin mild;

This little child, of lowly birth,

Shall be the joy of all the earth.”

Pastor Potraffke stood against the backdrop of a plush curtain that covered the stage of the Protestant Hall. He descended from the heavens and sang. The Pastor’s Wife, beautiful and dark-complexioned like the Brazilian actress Maria Félix, leaned lower and lower over the keyboard. Snow was falling beyond the high windows. The church tower rose beyond the moveable wall of snow.