A Thousand Peaceful Cities. Jerzy Pilch
the last day of your childhood. Until then you didn’t exist,” went the next truth, unshakable in its arbitrariness. To this day I don’t know who the authors of these immortal maxims were. I don’t even recall where I read them or where I heard them. Their author could just as well have been King Solomon as Mr. Trąba, a forgotten classic or a chance traveling companion, the author of school texts or a young poet whose verses no one wanted to print. Even today it is a question without significance. But then, more than thirty years ago, when the angel of my first love led me through the very middle of the land of my childhood, it was absolutely without significance. At that time, not only didn’t I know who wrote the aphorisms that described my situation, I didn’t even know that there were any aphorisms that described my situation. At that time, some indistinct creature, the winged reptile of fear and lust, began to move slowly in the depths of my entrails and in the depths of my soul. I was happy then that I didn’t have to say anything, since she, the angel of my first love, talked incessantly.
•
“I saw you seven times,” she said in a stifled voice that constantly seemed to herald an outburst of heartfelt laughter. “I saw you seven times. Yes, Jerzyk—you man, you—I saw you seven times. You see, I even know your name. But I won’t tell you my name. OK, OK, don’t get your feelings hurt, don’t go away, don’t leave me, don’t break off so suddenly a romance that has barely begun. OK, I’ll tell you my name. But in a moment. The first time, I saw you in front of the Ruch kiosk. To tell the truth, I was standing in line just behind you, and your shoulders, shamefully clothed in a white shirt, captivated me. Don’t be angry, Jerzyk, but by that white shirt, I recognized that—how should I say this to you so that you won’t fly into a rage again—well, by that white shirt, I recognized that you don’t spend vacations here; you spend life here. OK, in general, you dress very well, but here and there one could improve this and that. In any case, I, a poor sleeping beauty, lulled to erotic sleep for seven years, living in amatory lethargy for seven years, saw before me a teenage boy with very manly shoulders, and I felt that I was waking up. Well, maybe I shouldn’t exaggerate that bit about waking up. In any case, I strained to hear the sound of your voice with great anxiety, Jerzyk. I was afraid that you would speak with the macabre tone of a boy whose voice was changing. I was afraid that I would get over it immediately, but my fears were premature. ‘I’d like a copy of The People’s Tribune and The Catholic Weekly,’ you said in a calm voice that was low and just as harmoniously shaped as your shoulders.
“The second time I saw you, you were hot on the trail of the two bodies who rent a room in your attic. Oh, Jerzyk, Jerzyk, I don’t like those two bodies at all. You mustn’t take any interest in them, Jerzyk. Why do you spy on them? Why did you go creeping after them? If you absolutely must, why not just climb the stairs to the second floor, today even—knock, and it shall be opened unto you; ask, and it shall be given unto you. I’m not at all worried about the lawlessness of those two. After all, they aren’t all that lawless. For instance, the absurd rumors everyone repeats about the morphine. Come on, come on. Those bodies are too lazy to get morphine. They’re too languid to figure out how to use a hypodermic needle. They’re not buoyant enough for even morphine to give them wings. Jerzyk, you are wrong,” said the angel of my first love, and, with all her strength, she painfully dug her fingers into my shoulder and stopped talking.
Although at first I greeted the sudden silence with relief, I won’t attempt to hide the fact that, on the whole and in the long run, it didn’t suit me. I was completely under the spell of her frenzied and omniscient narration. Even if I had brought along my saving props—a notebook and pencil—I wouldn’t have been able to record a thing, to say nothing of predicting the final word. Besides, none of her words gave the impression of being the last. Her mind moved with alarming speed and in all directions. It was faster than sound and at least as fast as light, for just like light it reached everywhere. I listened to her avidly, losing myself in the listening, and then I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say, how to interrupt a silence that was becoming more and more troublesome in its profundity.
“I’m sorry,” I said, just to be on the safe side.
“No need to tell me you’re sorry. I just don’t want you to imagine God knows what. Don’t imagine that I’m jealous over you, you snot-nosed kid,” she said flaring up, but then her voice grew milder, and she began to speak as before, rapidly and with gentle persuasion in her voice. “Jerzyk, it isn’t that those are two lascivious bodies—it’s that those are two lazy bodies. It mustn’t be, Jerzyk, that on the threshold of life you chance upon a lazy body, or indeed, horror and perversion, two whole lazy bodies. Look in the mirror, my transgressive boy.”
The angel of my first love grasped me by the chin, brought her face to my face, touched my forehead with her forehead, and stared into my eyes with incredible intensity, something between that of a hypnotist and an optometrist.
“In the depths of your green eyes, Jerzyk, you loafer, I can clearly see the land of laziness. I can see golden hills where you will bask. I can see the sofas of your many-houred snoozes. I can see heaps of notebooks you will never cover with writing. I can see the thousand peaceful cities where you will live from day to day, a thousand peaceful white cities of phlegmatic architecture and friendly climate. Torrid heat reigns from early morning. A streetcar, open on both sides, is making its way through green pastures. Oh, how sweet it will be, Jerzyk, to live in the heart of that life that is slowly waking but always nodding off again before the final awakening. Open windows, dark apartments, the somnolent dramas of the residents, an oval table covered with a cloth, the remains of banquets that never end, hammocks, easy chairs, old architecture, a thousand gentle rivers under a thousand old bridges, lazy girls going for walks along grassy shores . . .
“My dear boy, I’m afraid it’s already too late. If you have the misfortune to chance upon a lazy body at the very beginning of your youth, you’ll be lost for life. Your innate tendency toward laziness will be awakened and set for all time, and you’ll spend your entire life searching for the promised land of laziness. You’ll pass through a thousand peaceful cities. All your life you’ll hunger for lazy arms. You won’t live; you’ll sleep instead. You’ll sleep your entire life away. To live, or to sleep, that, of course, is the question. But ultimately, as a believing Protestant you should adhere to Scripture, and in Scripture it is written that everything has its time, there’s a time to live and a time to sleep. Don’t you understand? Those two bodies sleep constantly. They are just two eternally sleeping sisters who sleep walking, and sleep eating, and sleep standing, and sleep sitting. Can’t any of you understand that’s why they drag their Babylonian blanket into the depths of the forest? Because they always have to have the saving, magical prop of sleep with them? But suit yourself, Jerzyk.
“The third time I saw you was when, in the company of your Mom, Dad, and your eternally drunken house friend, you were walking to services at your church on a Sunday. I followed you, driven not only by the curiosity of the tourist. I sat in a pew at the back under the bell tower. I like the fact that in your Church you don’t have to kneel. But I didn’t like the sermon at all. The sermon was absolutely horrifying. I don’t wish to offend your religious feelings, but your local father pastor gives the impression of believing much more strongly in the devil than in God. Strictly speaking, he believes in the devil without question; whether he believes in God, however, remains undecided. If I’m not mistaken, Martin Luther had that same problem. Ultimately there’s no surprise here: either you make a schism, or you play tiddlywinks.
“The fourth time I saw you in the swimming pool. Jerzyk, you swim badly. You play soccer, however, like a Brazilian. Last week I stood on the road that runs above the playing field, and then I saw you for the fifth time. You dribbled the ball faultlessly. But that time, when you set out from almost the middle of the field, and in a sprint you passed two defenders, you faked out a third, and then, one on one with the goalie, with a crafty feint you laid him flat in one corner of the goal, and with a delicate grazing of your foot you placed the ball in the opposite corner—oh, Jerzyk, that was so beautiful that my hands brought themselves together in applause of their own volition.
“The sixth time—anyway, it’s not important where it was; I saw you for a sixth time . . . And the seventh and perhaps thousandth time I saw you in your room, where you