My Father Joins the Fire Brigade
I WAS returning with Mother in the first days of October from a resort situated in a neighbouring district of the country, in the forested river basin of Słotwinka spa with its seeping spring water trickle of a thousand streams. With the rustle of alder groves still ringing in our ears, interwoven with the chirruping of birds, we rode in a great, sturdy old landau with an enormous hood, like an expansive dark inn — crammed in among our bundles in a deeply cushioned alcove, upholstered in velvet, where colourful landscape paintings passed by outside the window as if being slowly shuffled, card after card, from one hand to the other.
Toward evening we reached a great wind-blown plateau, an astonished junction of the country. The sky stood deep and exhausted over that junction, revolving at its zenith with coloured rose petals of wind. This was the country’s furthest flung toll gate, its last turning, beyond which, lower down, an immense and late autumnal landscape opened up. Here was the border, and here stood an old, rotting border post with an erased inscription, rattling in the wind.
The landau’s great wheels grated and became lodged in the sand; the chattering, flickering spokes fell silent, and only the great hood clattered dully, flapped darkly in the crosswinds of the junction, like an ark come aground on those wastes.
Mother payed the toll fee; the bar of the toll gate lifted, creaking, and the landau drove laboriously into autumn.
We drove into the withered tedium of an enormous plain, into discoloured and faded draughts which opened up their blissful and insipid endlessness above the yellow vastness. Some late and enormous eternity interposed, and blew from the faded distances.
The landscape turned its yellowed pages over like an old romance, ever more pale and delicate as if it must end in some great, scattered emptiness. In that scattered nothingness, in that yellow nirvana, we might perhaps have pulled in beyond time and reality and be left now and forever in that landscape, in those warm, sterile draughts, a motionless diligence on great wheels imprisoned amid the clouds on the parchment of the sky, an old illustration, a forgotten woodcut in an antiquated, crumbling romance — when the coachman, with the last of his strength, jerked the reins, pulled the landau out of the sweet lethargy of those winds, and steered into a forest.
We drove into its thick and dry downiness, its tobacco-coloured withering. It soon grew hushed and brown all around, like in a case of Trabucos. In that cedar half-light the tree trunks passed by us, as dry and fragrant as cigars. We drove on and the forest grew darker still, was scented more and more aromatically with snuff, until at last it enclosed us as if in the dry box of a cello, which the wind was dully tuning. The coachman could not light the lanterns; he had no matches. The horses, panting in the darkness, found the path by instinct. The clattering of the spokes slowed and grew quiet; the rims of the wheels ran softly in frangrant conifer needles. Mother fell asleep. Time passed by uncounted, making strange knots, abbreviations of its lapsing. The darkness was impenetrable; the dry sound of the forest was still resounding over the hood as the ground under the horses’ hooves suddenly clotted into a hard pavement; the carriage turned on the spot and drew to a halt. It stopped so close to a wall as to be almost touching it. Next to the little door of the landau Mother could feel the front door of our house. The coachman unloaded our bundles.
We entered the great branching hallway. It was dark there, warm and secluded like in an old, empty bakery at dawn, after the stove has gone out, or in steam baths late at night when the deserted bathtubs and buckets grow cold in the darkness, in silence measured out by the dripping of water. A cricket was patiently unpicking illusory seams of light from the darkness, its faint stitching which illuminated nothing. Groping our way, we found the stairs.
As we reached a creaking landing, Mother said at the corner: ‘Wake up, Józef. You’re dropping off to sleep. There are only a few more steps to go.’ But I, oblivious with tiredness, clung more tightly to her and fell sound asleep.
Afterwards, I could never learn from Mother how much truth there was in what I saw through my closed eyelids that night — overcome by deep sleep, falling headlong into muffled forgetfulness — and how much was the product of my imagination.
My father and mother were engaged in some great dispute with Adela, the protagonist of that scene — a dispute of fundamental significance, as I now suspect. Certain gaps in my memory are to blame if I now try vainly to guess its still elusive meaning — blank smears of sleep which I strive to fill with guesses, suppositions and hypotheses. Languid and listless, I floated away over and over again into muffled unawareness, while a breeze of the starlit night, unbuttoned in the open window, fell upon my closed eyelids. The night breathed in pure pulses, and suddenly it removed its transparent veil of stars and peeked into my dream from on high, with its old, eternal countenance. The ray of a distant star, tangled up in my eyelashes, spread in silver on the blind white of my eye, and through the crevices of my eyelids I saw our sitting room in the light of a candle, embroiled in a knot of golden lines and zigzags.
It may be, after all, that this scene took place at some other time. There is a great deal to suggest that I witnessed it only much later, when Mother, the shop assistants and I had returned home after shutting up the shop.
At the entrance to our apartment, Mother let out a cry of admiration and amazement; bedazzled, the shop assistants stood speechless. In the centre of the room stood a magnificent brass knight, a veritable St George with the thrust out chest of a cuirass, with golden bucklers of brassards and a whole clanking uniform of polished, golden plate. With admiration and joy I recognised my father’s stiff moustache and his bristling beard, protruding from the heavy praetorian helmet. The armour rose and fell on his heaving chest — moth-like, with slits, its segments breathed like the abdomen of some enormous insect. Made enormous by this armour, in the glare of its golden plate metal, he resembled an arch-strategist of the heavenly host.
‘Sadly, Adela,’ said Father, ‘you have never been able to comprehend matters of a higher order. Always and everywhere you have thwarted my actions with your outbursts of mindless animosity. But today, encased in armour, I mock your tickling, by which you once drove a helpless one to despair. Impotent rage has stopped your tongue now, and reduced your chattering to its rightful state of remorse, whose crudeness and unsophistication are mingled with your foolishness. Believe me when I say that it fills me with only sadness and pity now. Bereft of noble flights of fantasy, you burn with unconscious envy toward everything that rises above the commonplace.’
Adela eyed Father up and down with boundless contempt, and turning to Mother, shedding involuntary tears of irritation, she said in a flustered voice: ‘He is taking all of our syrup! He carries from the house all the jars of raspberry syrup we made together this summer! He wants it for those ne’er-do-well firemen to drink. And what’s more, he showers me with impertinences.’ Adela sobbed briefly. ‘Captain of the fire brigade? Captain of scoundrels!’ she cried, looking resentfully at Father. ‘I’ve had enough of the whole lot of them. In the morning when I try to go down for the bread, I can’t open the door. Two of them have gone to sleep in the hallway of course, barring the exit. On the stairway there’s one of them on every step, lying asleep in his brass helmet. They force their way into the kitchen, and through the slit in the doorway they poke their rabbit-like faces in brass cans, and they hold up two fingers like schoolboys in class, moving them like a pair of scissors, and they whine imploringly for: “Sugar, sugar...” They snatch the bucket out of my hand and fly off to fetch water; they dance me around and around; they simper; they practically wag their tails. Time after time they leer with red eyelids, and they lick their lips abominally. It is enough for me to look sharply at one of them and all at once his face, like a turkey’s, swells up with shameless red flesh. And to think of giving our raspberry syrup to that sort..!’
‘Your vulgar nature,’ said Father ‘defiles everything it touches. You have drawn a picture of these Sons of Fire which is worthy only of your own small mind. For myself, all my fondness is for that unhappy race of salamanders, those poor, disinherited fiery creatures. The only fault of that once magnificent race lies in their having given themselves up to the service of mankind, that they sold themselves to humanity for a spoonful of wretched human fare. They have been repaid with contempt. There is no limit to the stupidity of plebeians. Those delicate creatures have been reduced to the deepest ruin, to the ultimate ignominy. Is it any wonder that they find their victuals distasteful, those crude and nauseous victuals prepared by the wife of the local school janitor, for them and for the arrested of the town? Their palates, the delicate and refined palates of fiery spirits, demand noble and dark balsams, aromatic and coloured fluids. This ceremonial night, therefore, when we are sitting festively at white-clothed tables in the town’s great Stauropegion Hall, in that hall with its tall, brightly lit windows casting their glow far out into the autumn night, while the town all around is flooded with a thousand illuminations, we shall all, with the reverence and connoisseurship appropriate to Sons of Fire, dip our bread rolls in cups of raspberry syrup and slowly sip that thick and noble liquor. That is the way to fortify the inner being of firemen, to regenerate the richness of their colours, which these individuals scatter like fireworks, rockets and Bengal lights. My soul is filled with pity for their poverty, their undeserved degradation. If I have accepted the captain’s sabre from their hands, then it is only in the hope that I shall be able to raise up this tribe from its ruin, to lead them out of indignity and unfurl the standard of a new idea above their heads.’
‘You are completely transformed, Jakub,’ said Mother. ‘You are magnificent. But you won’t be going out for the night, after all. Don’t forget, we have not had an opportunity for a good talk together since my return. As for these firemen, however,’ she said, turning to Adela, ‘it seems to me that, when all is said and done, you are misled by prejudice. They are pleasant fellows, ne’er-do-wells notwithstanding. I always look with pleasure upon those slender young men in their neat uniforms, a little too tight in the belt. They have great natural elegance, and it is touching to see the enthusiasm and zeal with which they are ready at any moment to render their service to ladies. How often will my umbrella fall from my hands in the street, or a ribbon come undone on my shoe, and always one of them comes to my aid, full of earnestness and eager readiness. I haven’t the heart to refuse such fervent attentions, and I always wait patiently until he comes running to render his service, which seems to please him immensely. As he walks away, having fulfilled his knightly duty, he is immediately surrounded by a group of his colleagues, excitedly discussing the whole incident with him, while the hero re-enacts in mime how it all happened. In your place, I should gladly take advantage of their gallantry.’
‘I consider them loafers,’ said Teodor, the elder shop assistant. ‘After all, in the light of their childish irresponsibility, we don’t allow them to put out fires. To assess their hare-brained maturity it is enough to see how enviously they always loiter near a group of boys amusing themselves with throws of buttons against a wall. Should you hear a wild shriek of merriment from the street, then, looking out of the window, you are almost certain to catch sight of those lanky individuals, confused and rounded up in the midst of a group of boys, almost frantic in the riotousness of the chase. The sight of fires transports them with joy; they clap their hands and dance like crazy. No, they are no use for putting out fires. We employ chimney sweeps and the municipal police force to do that. This leaves only fairs and folk celebrations to them, at which they are indispensable. On a dark autumn morning for example, at the so-called Storming of the Capitol, they dress up as Carthaginians, and with an infernal din they lay siege to the Basilian Hill. And everyone chants: “Hanibal, Hanibal ante portas.”
‘And what’s more, toward the end of autumn they become languid and sluggish; they fall asleep standing up; and they are hardly ever to be seen when the first snows are falling. A certain old stove-fitter once told me that he discovers them when he is repairing chimneys, wearing their scarlet uniforms and gleaming helmets, clinging to an air duct, lifeless, like pupae. They sleep in this way, standing up, drunk on raspberry syrup, bloated with its sticky sweetness and fire. Then they are dragged out by the ears and led to the barracks, drunk with sleep and oblivious, through the autumn morning streets coloured by the first frosts, while street urchins throw stones at them, and they smile their embarassed smile, full of guilt and bad conscience, and they stagger like drunkards.’
‘Be that as it may,’ said Adela, ‘I shan’t give them any syrup. Not for that did I ruin my complexion at the kitchen stove, boiling it up for those ne’er-do-wells to drink…’
Instead of replying, my Father raised a whistle to his lips and blew it shrilly. As if they had been eavesdropping at the keyhole, four slender young men fell into the room and lined up by the wall. The room was lit up by the glare of their helmets, under which their faces were dark and tanned, while they, striking a military posture, waited to receive an order. At Father’s signal, two of them seized at either side a great jar in a wickerwork basket, full of crimson liquid, and before Adela could stop them they were already clomping down the stairs, carrying their precious loot. The remaining pair, giving a military salute, did likewise.
For a moment, Adela had the look of a dangerous madwoman, such fires perturbed her beautiful eyes. But father did not wait for her outburst of anger. In a single bound, he was standing on the window sill, and he spead out his arms. We ran after him. The market square, sown plentifully with lights, teemed with a colourful crowd. Eight firemen at the side of our house stretched out a large canvas in a circle. Father turned around one last time, shining in all the splendour of his gear and saluting us in silence, and then, as bright as a meteor, his arms spead wide, he jumped out into a night burning with a thousand lights. We all clapped our hands in admiration — it was such a beautiful sight. Even Adela, forgetting her resentment, applauded this leap, executed with such elegance. Meanwhile my Father, his tin shells clattering, nimbly hopped down from the canvas and took up his position at the head of his detachment, which, breaking off by twos, spread into a long column and marched slowly away past the dark row of onlookers, their brass cans of helmets shining.