Jerzy Pilch - A Thousand Peaceful Cities

The angel of my first love closed the album and stood up clumsily from the bench, and we set off back home through the park and through the playing field that was overgrown with white Asiatic grass. And when, after a few minutes, we stood again before the display window of the footwear section that was screened by a massive green grate, what ought to have happened didn’t happen. The angel of my first love didn’t take me by the hand, didn’t embrace me, nor did she say: “Come, Jerzyk. Come. I too am basically very, very lazy.” I was certain that was just how it would happen, but that is not how it happened. The angel of my first love once again extracted the album from under her arm and once again began to turn over sheet after sheet. At first I thought she wished to investigate the secret she hadn’t fully unravelled further, that suddenly some idea had come to her mind, and now she knew on what sort of expedition her infirm and dying parents had wished to embark. But this supposition was false too. My first love with the undiminutizable first name extracted a small scrap of paper from among the sheets of the album, and she handed it to me and said:

“Here’s my address, Jerzyk: Warsaw, 20 Francesco Nullo Street, apartment 23. You haven’t been to Warsaw yet, but some day you finally will be there, and then you must drop by, you must visit me. I’m giving you this address now because I’m afraid that the day after tomorrow you won’t feel like playing chess with my husband. And after that we are leaving. We are leaving, you stay — somebody said that to me, I don’t remember who. Farewell, Jerzyk. See you on Francesco Nullo.” And she turned her back and disappeared, and I also turned my back and disappeared. I disappeared because, after all, no one saw me. No one saw me put the piece of paper with the address into my pocket and look toward the morphinistes’ window. And no one heard the Biblical sentence: knock, and it shall be opened unto you; ask, and it shall be given unto you. Even I myself didn’t hear how loudly that immortal verse resounded in me, and I didn’t know on what distant false paths it would lead me.

“Why are you so troubled, Mrs. Chief? The Lord promised that He wouldn’t send a flood upon the earth again.”

Mother didn’t pay any attention to Mr. Trąba’s unremitting arguments. She threw an oilcloth cape over her shoulders and ran out to the bridge, under which brown waters were gathering. I held her by the hand; the massive planks and stone spans shook beneath our feet. St. John’s rains had come crashing down a few days earlier. We glanced up, in the direction of the first bridge by the cemetery, and down, in the direction of the third bridge by the swimming pool. The world was the same in all directions. The swimming pool was missing, as was the cemetery. The waters had no top and no bottom. The waters were everywhere. The house a few hundred meters away rested in the depths, at the bottom of a grey ocean. We returned, conquering the elements. We removed our thoroughly wet cloaks in the entryway. Streams of water flowed from Mother’s cape. Mr. Trąba’s voice came from behind the door; he was finishing who knows how long a citation: “. . neither shall all flesh, Chief, be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. .”

•

Mr. Trąba was almost always sitting at our huge kitchen table, but when the heavy rains, snow storms, and floods came, his presence became truly permanent.

“The time of natural disasters is your time, Mr. Trąba,” Father would say. And indeed, our eternal guest did seem to bestow a peculiar honor upon the elements that locked him beneath our roof and chained him to our table. From morning to evening he would sit on the wide wooden bench. When it came time to sleep, he made himself a pallet there, and, covered with blankets or sheepskins, he lay down to sleep, or rather he slipped away into semi-consciousness and listened to the undying gales with an enigmatic smile.

Mother mechanically combed her wet hair with her fingers, approached the window, and stared at Buffalo Mountain, which was barely visible beyond the wall of rain.

“It’s quite another matter, however, that the Lord’s promise applies to the entire globe. The Lord God promised our first father that He would never again take the globe, overflowing with iniquity, into His Fatherly hand and submerge it in the abyss, that He wouldn’t submerge it even for a day, to say nothing of forty days. Nonetheless, there have been lesser deluges, I have to admit, and there still are. And — however objectively we look at the matter — we do live in a valley.”

“Of course, of course,” said Mother, glancing irritably at Father, “we are at the bottom, at the very bottom.”

“What are you talking about, Ewa?” responded Father. “My ancestors didn’t build this house, yours did.”

“That was all that was missing,” Mother unexpectedly erupted in elemental despair, “that was all that was missing — for me to have moved in with my parents-in-law, may the earth rest lightly upon them.”

“It was what it was.” I heard a sinister note in Father’s voice; this was rare for him. “It was what it was, but it was high up.”

“High, but at the same time low ,” Mother hissed.

“That’s just it, my dears,” Mr. Trąba sought to mollify them. “High, but at the same time low. That’s just it. Let’s not forget about the relativistic character of reality. After all, in our lowland country we are relatively high up, but at the same time, in relation to the same local altitudes, we are low, which still gives us a chance of salvation. .”

“What chance of salvation? What are you talking about?” Father asked in an unbearably official tone.

“Oh, the chance of salvation, Chief, that when the bell tolls, and the waters rise, we will gather the most necessary things, and we will clamber up Mare Mountain, or Goat Mountain, to say nothing of Buffalo Mountain.”

“You, Mr. Trąba,” Mother exploded, “you, Mr. Trąba, certainly will not make the ascent. Instead, you will float to Mare Mountain or Goat Mountain. Yes, you will float. In the best case scenario, straddling that unsinkable bench of yours, first you will rise lightly with the level of the water, and then you will reach your goal, rowing with your vodka bottle.”

For a moment, all you could hear was the roar of the rain and the din of the river overflowing its bounds.

“I’ve lost track of time,” said Mr. Trąba, looking at his watch nonchalantly. “Time for me to go,” he said, and he lifted himself from his spot for the first time in time immemorial.

Mother’s face suddenly brightened with a radiance that was full of compassionate pity. She shook her head, not exactly with acceptance, nor with rebuke. And with the tone of the loved-one amusing herself with a wooer who is suffering agonies, fully conscious of her allure, she said:

“You know, Józef, that if you leave now, I will never speak to you again?” And she repeated it, pausing distinctly between every word: “If — you — leave — now — I–will — never — speak — to — you — again.”

Beyond the windows a stocky figure, protecting himself with a colorful ladies’ umbrella, flitted by. Knocks resounded at the door, and in the doorway stood Commandant Jeremiah, changed beyond recognition — his uniform had been altered by the rain storm into the uniform of some unknown unit. I hoped that his monstrous Bernardine, Bryś the Man-Eater, would slip into the kitchen with him. I hoped just for the sweetness of my own fear, but the Commandant was alone.

“By a billion barrels of beer!” Mr. Trąba roared as if with amicable triumph, but in the final analysis it was ecstatic triumph in his voice. “By a billion barrels of beer! An officer, on duty, with a ladies’ umbrella in his hand!”