The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass: -I- -II- (III) -IV- -V-
III
THUS LIFE is lived and time passes in this town. Most of the day is spent in sleeping, and not only in bed. No, they are not too fussy on that point. The people here are ready anywhere and at all hours of the day to take a sound nap — in a restaurant with their head resting on the table, in a droshky, and even standing up by the roadside, or in the hallway of some house, where they drop in to surrender for a moment to their irresistible need for sleep.
Waking up, still befuddled and swaying, we carry on a conversation broken off earlier, we continue along a wearisome path, we press on with a complicated business matter that has no beginning or end. As a result of this, whole periods of time are inadvertently lost somewhere along the way; we lose control over the continuity of the day, and in the end we cease to insist on it — we relinquish without regret the skeleton of incessant chronology whose attentive supervision we had once grown accustomed to, through our addiction to it and its tender, everyday discipline. We have long ago sacrificed that constant readiness to file a receipt for spent time, that scrupulousness in accounting for hours used, down to the last penny — the pride and ambition of our economics. Those cardinal virtues, in which we once knew neither indecision nor infringement — we forsook them long ago.
Let a few examples serve to illustrate this state of affairs. At some hour of day or night — the barely perceptibly altered shade of the sky distinguishes these hours — I awaken by the handrail of the little bridge that leads to the Sanatorium. It is twilight. I must have been wandering for a long time unconsciously all around the town, overcome by sleepiness, before dragging myself to this bridge. I cannot say whether Doctor Gotard has accompanied me the whole time on that journey, but he stands before me now, concluding some long explanation and drawing out reasoned inferences. Carried away by his own eloquence, he even takes me by the arm and leads me behind him. I follow, and before we have crossed the clattering planks of the bridge I am already asleep again. Unclearly, through my closed eyelids, I see the doctor’s pointed gesticulations and the smile deep inside his black beard, and I strive in vain to grasp that splendid logical snare, that ultimate trump card by which — at the height of his argumentation, striking a pose with outstretched arms — he triumphs. I do not know how much longer we walk side by side, talking at cross purposes, before, at a certain moment, I wake up completely. Doctor Gotard is no longer here; it is totally dark, but this is only because my eyes are still closed. I open them and I am in bed, in my room, and I have no idea how I got here.
An even more drastic case:
At lunchtime I enter a restaurant in the town, into its incoherent hubbub and confusion of diners. And whom do I find there, at a table heaving with dishes, at the centre of the room? — Father. All eyes are turned toward him, while he, his diamond tie-pin gleaming, inclines affectedly to all sides in effusive conversation with the entire room at once, ecstatically happy and uncommonly animated. With forced bravado, which I can only look on with the greatest anxiety, he continually orders more dishes, which he stacks high on his table. He gathers them around himself with delight, although he has not even finished eating the first dish that he ordered. Clicking his tongue, chewing and speaking at the same time, he feigns with gestures and mimcry his supreme satisfaction with this feast, and with admiring eyes he follows Adaś, the waiter, and with a smile of infatuation continually gives him new orders. And when the waiter, waving a napkin, runs to fill them, Father appeals to all with an entreating gesture, and calls for everyone to bear witness to the irresistible charm of that Ganymede.
‘A priceless boy,’ he cries with a blissful smile, half closing his eyes. ‘An angelic boy! He is charming — don’t you agree, sirs?’
I back out of the room in disgust, unnoticed by Father. Had he been deliberately placed there by the management, as an advertisement, to enthuse the patrons, he could not have behaved more provocatively and ostentatiously. I stagger along the streets, heading for home, my head fogging with sleepiness. I rest my head on a pillar box for a moment and take a brief siesta. Finally I am scrabbling in the darkness for the entrance to the Sanatorium, and I enter. It is dark in the room. I press the light switch, but the power is off. Cold blows from the window. The bed creaks in the darkness and Father raises his head from the bedclothes. He says: ‘Oh, Józef, Józef! I’ve been lying here for two days now without any attention. The bells are all broken — no one calls in to see me. And even my own son has forsaken me — a seriously ill man — and gads about the town chasing girls. See how my heart is thumping.
How can I reconcile it? Is Father sitting in the restaurant, seized by the unhealthy principle of gluttony, or lying in his room, seriously ill? Are there two Fathers? Nothing of the sort. The rapid disintegration of time is to blame for everything, not being supervised with ceaseless vigilance.
We all know that this undisciplined element is only held in check by pulling on certain reins, by incessant cultivation, solicitous attention and a painstaking regulation and correction of its antics. Bereft of that attention, it is immediately prone to transgressions and wild aberration, to cutting incalculable capers and to shambolic clowning. The incongruence of our individual times was more and more distinctly noticeable. My father’s time and my own no longer fitted together.
By the way, the accusation of moral profligacy laid against me by my Father is a groundless insinuation. So far I have not approached any of the local girls. Reeling like a drunkard from one bout of sleep to the next, I am even in my most wakeful moments hardly able to pay attention to the fair sex here.
Besides, the chronic dusk in the streets does not even allow their faces to be distinguished clearly. All I have been able to observe — being a young man, all the same, and having a certain interest in this topic — is the singular walk those young ladies have.
It is a step along an inexorably straight line, taking no obstacles into account, obedient only to some internal rhythm, some law, which they unwind as if from a ball of that unswerving thread of their gentle trot, full of precision and measured grace.
They each carry with them some other, individual rule, like a wound-up spring.
As they walk in this way, straight ahead, full of concentration and attention, their eyes fixed on that rule, they seem to have but one concern: that they should lose nothing of it, not transgress the exacting rule, not deviate from it even by a milimetre. And then it becomes clear that what they are carrying with them, with such attention and earnestness, is nothing other than an idée fixe of their own perfection, which almost becomes reality by the strength of their conviction. It is an expectation taken on at their own risk, under no one else’s recommendation, an inviolable dogma raised aloof from any misgivings.
What flaws and blemishes, what snub or flattened noses, what freckles and pimples do they not smuggle with bravado under the flag of that fiction! There is no uliness or vulgarity that the flight of that belief can not carry off into those fictional perfect heavens.
Their bodies grow distinctly beautiful under the sanction of that belief, as do their legs, legs shapely indeed and elastic in their irreproachable footwear — their walk is voluble; they eagerly explicate in the fluent, shimmering monologue of their step the richness of that idea which their faces, sealed up with pride, would never disclose. They keep their hands in the pockets of their short, close-fitting jackets. In the café or the theatre they cross their legs, which, exposed to the knees, maintain a meaningful silence. So much for one of the town’s curiosities. I have already mentioned the black vegetation here. A certain species of black fern merits special attention, enormous bunches of which adorn the vases in all the apartments and public premises. It is practically a symbol of mourning, the funereal coat-of-arms of this town.
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