My First Suicide. Jerzy Pilch
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my bed, lay down. I kept constant vigil. I didn’t fall asleep. Time passed slowly, but it passed, and after at least two, and perhaps three penultimate hours, the final hour rang. I got up cautiously, brought the chair over, got on it, and began to move hook after hook to perfection. After moving the seventh, when in the first drape I had only four hooks left to the end, the light went on in my folks’ room. The door there opened abruptly, Father flashed through the hallway like a shot, then he fell into the bathroom like an exploding artillery shell, and immediately there resounded from that direction the sonorous rumble of bestial hurling.
I jumped down off the chair, put it back in its place, and returned to bed. I heard Mother’s delicate steps. She came into my room; she smelled of raw meat; from under half-shut eyes I saw that smile of hers, bizarre and not of this world. A streak of food, rubbed to a tawny mucous, cut across her cheek. She went up to the window in absolute somnambulistic absence and mechanically closed the drapes.
Only now do I understand that the history of my first suicide is also a story about how alcohol, for the first time in my life, deprived me of my freedom. I mean, of course, the alcohol that was making its presence known in my old man’s entrails. The poor guy puked almost to the break of dawn. He had a weak head.
****There isn’t.
All the Stories
I
In the environs of the little Austro-Hungarian town in which we performed our Socialist Student Workers’ Traineeship there prowled a Silesian vampire, and from the very beginning the girls from the local Dressmakers’ Technical College looked upon us with fear. They would turn tail, pick up the pace, respond badly to even the most sophisticated attempts at striking up a conversation. And we really knew how to strike up a conversation—not all of us, of course; not all of our five-man brigade knew how to strike up a conversation—but Wittenberg and I had an innate expertise. We strove for the maximal effect, elaborated on the plenitude of possibilities, turned cartwheels to construct tempting persuasions—all for nothing. The splendidly dressed misses from the clothiers’ school wouldn’t even pretend that they were making a date, that they would come for coffee, that they would say yes to an invitation to the dance. Not even as a form of good riddance would they say that they would see, they would make an effort, they would give it a try, and if they could find a moment, they would drop by.
Every day, after knocking off work, we would go to the local dive called Europa and one of seven indistinguishable local alcoholics would tell us the next in the series of stories about the vampire; we would each drink two beers and then go over to the Technical College building, which was beautifully situated in the depths of a park that had run wild. These expeditions were conducted in vain. Almost all the windows were closed, in spite of the September heat wave; the massive crowns of the oaks, and the equally massive clouds were reflected in the panes—and not a living soul.
Out back, on the playing field, there was no one; in the residential wing—no one; in the quite visible corridors—no one. Not a trace of a figure running by, not a shadow of shoulders, hair, feet. No billowing frock, cast off scarf, brooch, bracelet, ribbon. There was the barely perceptible scent of perfume—but even this might have been a pious wish. No song, no laughter, no giggles. Once, it seemed to us that we heard the murmur of a hair dryer; but this could just as well have been the distant drone of a biplane flying south. Other than that, neither hide nor hair. A complete void, wilderness, and, what follows from this, the complete absence of civilized customs.
It goes without saying, Poland at that time—anno Domini 1971—was under the Muscovite yoke, but regardless of the yoke, and regardless of the political system, it is accepted in all of human civilization that when, outside a woman’s boarding house, school, dormitory, workers’ hotel, convent, or even, for that matter, prison, there stands a group of starving men, and even if they are not granted entrance, they will at least receive an answer. Sooner or later, a window is cracked, and at first in the cracked window, and later in the wide open window, the boldest of the inhabitants (usually the chorus leader of middling looks) appears, and the exciting dialogue—although usually full of every sort of idiocy—begins.
“Are the gentlemen seeking something? Have they perhaps lost something?”
“We haven’t lost anything, but we are seeking.”
“If you haven’t lost anything, you can’t be seeking it.”
“We are seeking in order to find it.”
“I wonder what that could be? What do you wish to find?”
“We can’t say it out loud.”
“If you can’t say it out loud, you can’t say it at all.”
“If you can’t say it quietly, you don’t say it out loud.”
“Too bad. Either out loud, or not at all.”
“OK. In that case, we’ll say what we are seeking.”
“But we no longer care about that. We are no longer interested in what you are seeking. Seek and ye shall find. Farewell.”
“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
“Well my, my! Which of you is so pious?”
“We are all pious.”
“Girls! We have a group of pilgrims under our windows!”
“Don’t ridicule our faith, sister. We have among us one who has felt the calling and intends to enter the seminary.”
“Girls! We have pilgrims under our windows! With a future clergyman!”
“Sisters! Receive the weary wayfarers under your roof!”
“We can’t today, because we already have a group of pilgrims spending the night with us. But give it a try again tomorrow. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. But not on the first try.” Etc., etc.
Wittenberg and I were experts at such dialogues. We had tens, and perhaps hundreds of balcony scenes under our belts. We had spent tens, and perhaps hundreds of hours under the walls of castles conducting unending conversations with imprisoned virgins. We knew how to put on performances like these and how to play them out. With the virtuosity of old actors, making skillful pauses for applause, we foresaw at what moment more and more numerous giggles would begin to emerge from within, gradually turning into generalized laughter; and after which line beautiful little girls’ heads would begin to appear in the windows—at first bashfully, but then more and more boldly and en masse. It was always obvious, more or less, when other voices would join the voice of the leader of the chorus, and when we could begin to establish eye contact with the chosen beauties who would relentlessly stand in the windows. (The rule is this: you must establish eye contact with those who disappear every little bit and return after a moment; it is common knowledge that they disappear to put their hair in order, remove their glasses, throw a flattering shawl over their shoulders. This is the group from which the final recruitment will be made.) Even then we had all this knowledge at our fingertips, and every day, with dull stubbornness—like a person doggedly turning a broken television set on and off in the hope that it will repair itself—we would traipse over to the deserted Dressmakers’ Technical School, expecting that finally a window would be cracked, the saucy leader would appear, and the ritual spectacle would begin. And yet, day after day, nothing, nothing, nothing. It seemed that the Silesian vampire had indeed murdered all the girl students, or as if, in a total panic, they had all fled into the depths of the forest, into which the park was gradually being transformed.
II
Personally, I didn’t make a tragedy of the thing, nor did I even complain very much. I was madly in love. To be sure, I traipsed over to the Technical School with full conviction, and—with deep faith—I looked for a miracle. When some young lady would make an appearance in the Austro-Hungarian lanes—thereby irrefutably proving that they nonetheless are, that they live, that they exist—or rather a couple young ladies from the clothiers’ school (they always went to town