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Since the envoys had brought news of the arrival of the Emperor, Bolesław’s kingdom had been overwhelmed by an all-encompassing state of commotion. Aside from the settlers living deep within the deepest forests, there was probably no one who did not, in some way or other, (...)
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8
The phones are always going wrong, so my parents aren’t upset when there’s no dialling tone. They’re at the fortieth birthday party of a female friend from their class at high school. They say they’re going downstairs to the phone booth for a (...)
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Aleksander JurewiczAshes and Wind
A few houses further down, on the opposite side of the street, for a second year now Karol W. refuses to get out of bed; he has locked himself in the house and only lets in his daughter and son-in-law, who take care of his most essential needs, such as eating, washing and shaving. There’s a sign on the gate saying “Beware of the dogs” to scare people away, even though there isn’t even a tiny mongrel running round the yard. Even Iza the post lady is not admitted to hand him his monthly pension. The electricity firm has long since cut off his supply. Whenever I happen to pass his house, with its windows draped in old sheets or pillow cases, a wild vine growing over it, a mossy roof full of holes and a crumbling chimney stack, I feel uneasy, as if I were walking past a contaminated site, although, as someone who’s terminally infected with literature, I should really be proud and uplifted to think that here in my native village, in the second county in my life, there’s a local version of Oblomov. I admire this literary side of the choice Karol W. has made, but I repeat, only because of my own bookish flaw. The other side of his choice is hard to understand, although… It’s very hard to imagine such a way of life, day after day, night after night, for two years now, and there’s nothing to indicate that it’ll soon be over. I know from his daughter that there’s nothing wrong with him, he never complains of any pain, he’s mentally active and isn’t averse to a glass of home-made hooch with his son-in-law, though he even conducts this highly male activity, demanding the performance of a time-honoured ritual as you drink, lying down. Truly – so it seems to me, though it is not one-hundred-percent certain – there are few things left on this earth that could surprise me. That is why the case of Karol W. seems worth recording and commemorating, not just because for so many years, on visits to my mother, I made use of his help and services, because he could make and repair absolutely everything. He used to sharpen everyone’s axes for them, fit them with new handles, make birchwood brooms, and if anyone lost a key, he would open the inaccessible door for them in an instant; he could put up a wall and the altars for Corpus Christi, make the flags for national holidays, sweep chimneys, come running to help a calving cow or shoe a horse. Now in many instances the local people are helpless, deprived of assistance, and I’m sure they sometimes curse and damn his peculiar whim. For how can he possibly do that – lie down in bed and never get up again, just disappear from the village scene, though everyone knows he’s still alive? Yet his chief occupation, his star turn and the reason for his fame hereabouts was the pre-Christmas, Easter or wedding pig slaughter, which – with his impressive height of over one metre ninety and his corpulent build – he performed with the charm and grace of a prima ballerina. It seemed to me from childhood Karol W. was an indomitable man, who could do everything and feared nothing. It was really that last element – the fact that he feared nothing and no one – that had decisive significance in my admiration for him; it was a point of both fascination and envy, because a sense of fear has been a constant affliction of mine. And not so long ago I found out about his one and surely only weakness, which I still can’t entirely believe in – I’m so amazed I’m going about feeling stunned, as if everything I believed in had turned out to be complete and utter nonsense, nothing but a grisly deception. When I was told about it, I felt the ground shudder beneath my feet. Apparently the fearless Karol W., who would be a sure bet for the role of the ogre in any horror film, had a ruthless, indomitable fear – of the graveyard. How would I have regarded him if I’d known about it much earlier, when we were on good terms? I don’t know. Would my admiration have been less? Because in my childhood the graveyard, which still only had German graves – the people who died here were buried in the cemetery in town – was our magical place, an enchanted corner of the earth. Once I had cooled down a bit after this absurdly real piece of news, I began to reconstruct the final years of Karol W.’s life before he voluntarily and of his own free will decided to live only and exclusively lying down. Two years ago his wife died of cancer; I have an undying, grateful memory of her, because she was the librarian, so a large part of my childhood and early youth passed in her presence, and an extra plus of spending time in the library was the opportunity to smoke cigarettes – I won’t hide the fact that they were often her cigarettes (there on the bookshelves, when I was still at secondary school, I discovered Hopscotch, and seeing how bewitched I was by Cortazar’s novel, she gave me the library copy which, extremely tatty and almost falling apart, I still have to this day). Karol was not at his wife’s funeral; apparently he stood by the gate and watched the cortege moving away and then disappearing around the corner. And when the family came home from the graveyard after performing their sad rite, he took part in the funeral reception already lying down – and he’s been lying there like that ever since. Karol W. lies in bed, waiting not only and exclusively for death. He lies there in panic-stricken fear of the graveyard, although he must know he’ll end up there one day. He lies there trying to think how to elude that refuge for the departed, and what to do to avoid getting there. He’s not afraid of death, it doesn’t present him with any problem, he’s just afraid that one day they’ll carry him to that place on the edge of the village, which all his life he has given a wide berth, and which for him has been a source of unaccountable fear.
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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