The Mighty Angel. Jerzy Pilch
could turn back the brunette, who in all probability had reached the corner of Pańska and Żelazna. All that was left was suffering, pain, and the bitterness of parting from her dusky flesh enwrapped in the yellow dress. Yet I could not fail to notice that the pain and bitterness of parting intensified the beauty of all that was around me. Feliks Slovák’s tenor sax still sounded piercing and plaintive, perhaps even more piercing and more plaintive than it had before. I raised my eyes. A streetcar was passing through grass so high it could have hidden a horse along with its rider; closer by, in the imposing office buildings that overlooked the ONZ Circle, two uniformed security guards were moving from room to room, switching on the lights, switching them off again, and gazing at me through the Venetian blinds. A white cloud sailed over the rooftops and the antennas; it was a splendid day at the height of summer. It was the kind of day a person waits for all year, or maybe even for years at a stretch, the kind of day on which at any moment a person could give up drinking.
I turned away from the window and looked at the room, which was filled with the sounds of the saxophone. In the bottle that stood on the table there was still a goodly quantity of peach vodka; I went up, poured some out, drank it, and experienced illumination. My Lord, what illumination I experienced, and how it suited the extraordinary character of the day! My innards lit up with an even and benign light, my thoughts immediately formed themselves into ingenious sentences, and my gestures were unerring. I took a shower, washed my hair, dressed, splashed myself with cologne, and, without waiting for the elevator, I ran downstairs and set off on the trail of the beautiful and wise brunette in the yellow dress with spaghetti straps. I was prepared to walk the length of Pańska, Żelazna, Złota, Sienna, of every street, I was prepared to scour the entire city, to look into every entranceway, to ring the bell at every apartment—I knew I would find her. I knew I would find her on earth and not in heaven, in life and not after death, waking and not in dreams.
Chapter 2
The Dark-Skinned Wrestler
I dreamed I was searching for objects on the floor of the ocean; I dreamed that, to the amusement of the rabble, a dark-skinned wrestler took a full mug of beer from under my nose. In the dream I didn’t know that he was a wrestler. I wanted to humiliate him, but in vain, in vain; it was he who humiliated me, and in the dream that had no end, and in the waking that had not begun, I was humiliated. The dreams of a drunkard are separated from the waking hours by a cardboard wall. At night the drunkard dreams of what he has lived through during the day, or rather: at night the drunkard’s daytime hallucinations appear to him. I was wading, swimming, drowning in a sea of 90-proof alcohol. I woke drenched in a brownish sweat. I checked the hour: it was four in the morning, and the face of the clock was steaming with bittersweet Żołądkowa Gorzka herb vodka.
Eighteen times I was on the alco ward; in the end Dr. Granada, in the majesty of his power and in the majesty of his athleticity, ordered that I should no longer be admitted. The fact that I was incurable was neither here nor there—no one is curable (the healthy in particular are incurable)—but I showed no promise, I lacked the will to get better, I did not want to not drink. From the tests, as complex as quantum physics, that the trembling patients were ordered to complete by soft-spoken she-therapists unbreakable in body and soul, it emerged that I had suicidal tendencies.
“Are you trying to drink yourself to death?” asked Dr. Granada.
“I can neither confirm nor deny it,” I responded, since I was incapable under any circumstances of forgoing a well-turned phrase. Too late it was that I came to understand this was not a gift but a curse. Every phone call I made became a novelistic dialogue, every greeting a poetic aphorism, every request for the time a theatrical speech. My tongue, thirsty for superiority, maybe even immortality, ruled me. I was ruled by my tongue. I was ruled by women. I was ruled by alcohol.
“Since you’re trying to drink yourself to death, why do you bother us with your allegedly desperate person? Why do you take up my staff’s time? Why on earth do you attend the talks and the discussion groups? Why on earth do you write drinking confessions and keep an emotional journal? Why the hell does Nurse Viola give you injections in your insect-like veins? For what reason do we pump hectoliters of life-giving drips through your wasted body, since you’re consciously aiming to distance yourself from all that is life-giving?”
“I’m not trying to die.”
“You know what, Mr. J.? That sounds a little too ambitious.”
“I’m not trying to drink myself to death, at least not just yet. To tell the truth, what I’d like most of all is to drink myself to death after a long and happy life.”
“You really do have the mentality of a child, and a rather slow-witted one at that.”
“Doctor, I’m aware, I really am fully aware, that it’s impossible, in my case especially it’s impossible, to live a long and happy life when you drink. But how can you live a long and happy life if you don’t drink?”
Generally speaking I enjoyed my conversations with Dr. Granada, though they occasionally turned into a nightmare of hollow form. The most painful state of reality: symptomless falsehood. Dr. Granada delivered intelligent, fluent, and seemingly convincing speeches worthy of the director of an alco ward, while I eagerly uttered unsophisticated paradoxes, as if I were striving to offer the clearest evidence that a portion of my brain cells had died and been replaced with the inactive connecting tissue known as neuroglia. We both failed to touch the essence of things. We both realized that we were failing to touch the essence of things. We were both tormented by the elusiveness of the essence of things. But a drunkard, and even a drunkard’s doctor, who wishes to touch the essence of things, finds himself in an extremely difficult situation. Shakespeare touched the essence of things. Newton touched the essence of things. Tolstoy touched the essence of things. Einstein touched the essence of things. But a drunkard? It’s always harder for a drunkard.
“How is it possible to live a long and happy life without drinking?” I uttered this sentence, brimming with barroom grandiloquence; my face assumed a roguish expression, and I immediately felt like spitting on the very core of my soul demoralized by booze. Of course I knew full well that it was possible; it was, yes, it was possible to live a long and happy life without drinking. I personally had known people who lived a long and happy life without drinking. And even if I didn’t know any personally (because, come to think of it, I’d never personally known anyone who was happy, and I wouldn’t even want to know them; whenever I heard people say: he’s a happy guy, that fellow’s doing well, he’s had a successful life, I ran away, I avoided such happy folk like the plague), even if I didn’t know any personally, other people did know some, and even if other people didn’t know any, there still have been happy people. There have been and there still are. I mean, let’s not make too much of a thing about drunkards—drunkards comprise a marginal group, the great majority of humanity doesn’t drink. Though when it comes down to it, it’s not really clear why. When it comes down to it, why does the great majority of humanity not drink? What are the reasons? This is one of the famous foundational questions. Knotty questions. Quaffing hard liquor is such a productive subject that at any moment some foundational question can arise. Wherever you turn your visage, whichever of the paths through the quagmire you should choose, in every place you can encounter an angel with a flaming sword, and the angel will speak unto you (and his voice will be as the voice of many waters), and he will ask: why do you not drink, my brother? And if you, my brother, answer that you do not drink because you have no need to, or that you do not drink because you don’t like the taste of vodka, or, God forfend, you answer that you do not drink because you have no need of artificial stimulants, or you say something equally foolish, for example you say that you do not drink because you manage perfectly well without alcohol, if you, you sinner, in your naïvety, yet also in your insolence, should say something like that, then know: a harsh punishment awaits you. As the Scriptures say: the wages of sin is death.
•
Eighteen times I was on the alco ward; faint scars of subcutaneous esperals adorn my body, the way needles adorn a conifer, and my liver possesses the unique smell of a combination of perfume, eau de cologne, and surgical spirit. Yet in my life there was once an unimaginable time when I too would say: I