The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass: -I- -II- (III) -IV- -V-
III
THIS IS HOW life is lived in this town, and how the time passes. The best part of the day is spent in sleeping, and not only in bed. No, there is no great fastidiousness over that point. Anywhere at all, at any hour of the day, a native of these parts is ready to take a light nap — in a restaurant with his head resting on the table, in a droshky, or even standing up at the roadside, or in the hallway of some house where he has dropped in for a moment, to succumb to his overwhelming need for sleep.
Upon waking, still befuddled and swaying, we continue a conversation broken off earlier, we set off again down some wearisome path, or we press on with some complicated business matter that has neither beginning nor end. And as a result, 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 renounce without regret its skeleton of unbroken chronology, the watchful supervision of which, habitually and with careful day to day discipline, we were accustomed to in days long past. We long ago sacrificed that constant readiness to file our receipt for time spent, our scrupulousness in accounting down to the last penny for hours used — the pride and ambition of our economics. Those cardinal virtues in which, in days long past, we knew neither indecision nor infringement — we forsook them long ago.
A few examples may serve to illustrate this state of affairs. At some hour of the day, or the night — these periods are only distinguished by a barely perceptible nuance of the sky — I wake up by the handrail of the little bridge that leads to the Sanatorium. It is dusk. I must have been wandering for a long time, unconscious, all around the town, overcome by sleepiness, before finally dragging myself to this bridge. I cannot say whether Doctor Gotard has accompanied me the whole time on my journey, but he stands before me now, concluding some long explanation, drawing out reasoned inferences. Carried away by his own eloquence, he takes me by the arm and leads me with him. I follow, and even before we have crossed the clattering planks of the bridge, I am asleep once more. Unclearly, through my closed eyelids, I see the doctor’s pointed gesticulations, and the smile deep inside his black beard. I strive in vain to grasp that splendid logical snare, that ultimate trump card by which — at the zenith of his argument, striking a pose with outstretched arms — he triumphs. I have no idea how much further we walk, side by side, talking at cross purposes, before at a certain moment, I really do wake up. Doctor Gotard is no longer here. It is extremely dark, but that is only because my eyes are still closed. I open them, and I am lying in bed in our room, with no idea how I got here.
Another, even more drastic case:
At lunchtime, I enter a hotel restaurant in town, into its incoherent hubbub and confusion of diners. And whom do I see at the centre of the room, sitting at a table heaving with dishes? Father. All eyes are turned in his direction, whilst he, in effusive conversation with the whole room, affects a bow to all sides — ecstatically happy, unusually animated, his diamond tie-pin gleaming. With forced bravado, which I can look upon only with the greatest anxiety, he orders dish after dish, stacking them high on his table. He gathers them all up with delight, although he has not even finished eating the first of his orders. Clicking his tongue, speaking and chewing at the same time, he feigns with gestures and mimicry his supreme satisfaction with this feast. And he follows the waiter, Adaś, with admiring eyes, continually calling him back with an infatuated smile, to give him yet another order. And as the waiter, waving a napkin, runs to fill them, Father appeals to all with an entreating gesture, calls for everyone to bear witness to the irresistible charm of that Ganymede.
‘A priceless fellow!’ he cries with a blissful smile, squeezing shut his eyes. ‘An angelic fellow, sirs! Don’t you agree that he is charming!’
I back out of the room in disgust, unnoticed by Father. Had he had been placed there deliberately by the hotel management, as a ruse to motivate the clientele, he could hardly have behaved more provocatively, more ostentatiously. I make my way home with faltering steps, my head foggy with sleepiness. I rest my head for a moment on a pillar box, and take a brief siesta. At length, I am again scrabbling in darkness for the entrance to the Sanatorium. I go inside. Our room is dark. I press the light switch, but the electricity is not working. Cold blows in from the window. The bed creaks in the darkness. Father raises his head from the bedclothes and says, ‘Oh, Józef, Józef! I’ve been lying here for two days now, unattended. The bells are all broken, and no one calls in to see me. And now, even my own son has forsaken me, a seriously ill man, and traipses about the town chasing girls. See how my heart is pounding!’
How can I reconcile this? Is Father sitting in the restaurant, seized by gluttony’s unhealthy ambition, or lying in his room, seriously ill? Are there two Fathers? Nothing of the sort! The rapid disintegration of time, no longer supervised with ceaseless vigilance, is to blame for all of this.
That undisciplined element, as we all know, is held somewhat in check only as a last resort, thanks to incessant cultivation, solicitous attention, and a painstaking regulation and correction of its antics. Bereft of this care, it immediately falls prone to excesses, to wild aberrations, to cutting incalculable capers, to shambolic clowning. The incongruence of our individual times was more and more distinctly noticeable. My father’s time and my own no longer ran in accord.
Incidentally, the accusation of moral profligacy laid against me by my father was a groundless insinuation. I have never yet approached any of the local girls. Reeling like a drunkard from one bout of sleep to the next, I am barely able in my wakeful moments to pay attention to the fairer sex here.
Besides, their faces cannot even be clearly discerned in the chronic dusk in the streets. All I have been able to observe — being a young man, all the same, with a certain interest in these matters — is the singular walk those young ladies have.
It is a step along an inexorably straight line, taking no obstacle into account, obedient only to some internal rhythm, some law which they unwind, as if from a reel, into the unswerving thread of their gentle trot, all precision and measured grace.
Each of them carries with her, like a wound-up spring, some individual rule of her own. As they walk in this way, straight ahead, all concentration and attention, their eyes fixed on that rule, they seem to have but one concern — that they lose nothing of it, that never once do they transgress that exacting regulation, never deviate from it, even by a millimetre. And then it becomes clear that what they are carrying with them, with such earnestness and attention, is nothing other than an idée fixe of their own perfection, which is almost brought true by the power of their conviction. It is an unwarranted expectation, taken on at their own risk — their own inviolable dogma, elevated beyond all doubts.
What flaws, what blemishes, what snub or flattened noses, what freckles and pimples are not smuggled in recklessly under the flag of that fiction! For there is no ugliness, no vulgarity, that they cannot carry off in the flights of that belief, in those fictional heavens of perfection.
Their bodies, as that belief determines, grow distinctly beautiful. Their legs — legs shapely indeed and elastic, in irreproachable footwear — speak with their gait. In the flowing, sparkling monologue of their steps, they willingly explicate the richness of that idea, about which their aloof and closed faces remain silent. They keep their hands in the pockets of their short, close-fitting jackets. When they are sitting in a café or at the theatre, they keep their legs crossed, 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, but a certain species of black fern, enormous bunches of which adorn the vases in every apartment and public premises, merits particular attention. It is practically a symbol of mourning, the funereal coat-of-arms of this town.
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