The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass: -I- -II- -III- (IV) -V-
IV
CONDITIONS in the Sanatorium are growing more insufferable by the day. It is difficult to deny that we have fallen straight into a trap. Since the time of my arrival, when certain appearances of hospitality were displayed before a newcomer, the management of the Sanatorium has not made the slightest effort to provide us with even the illusion of care. We are simply left to our own devices. No one shows any concern about our needs. I realised a long time ago that the wires of the electric bells have been torn out right above all the doors, and lead nowhere. No servants are to be seen. The corridors are engulfed in darkness and silence by day and by night. I have the firm conviction that we are the only guests in this sanatorium, and that the mysterious and discrete manner in which the chambermaid closes the door whenever she enters or leaves a room is mere mystification.
I occasionally feel like throwing those doors open, one after the other, and leaving them gaping wide to unmask the ignominious intrigue that they have drawn us into.
And yet I cannot be entirely certain of my suspicions. Sometimes late at night I see Doctor Gotard in a corridor, hurrying somewhere in his white surgeon’s coat, holding an enema syringe in his hand, the chambermaid going before him. It would be awkward at such moments to detain him, to pin him down with an obstinate enquiry.
Were it not for the restaurant and the confectioner’s shop in town, one might die of hunger here. Thus far, I have been unable to procure a second bed. There is never any mention of fresh bedclothes. I have to admit that I too have begun to succumb to the general laxity in mannerly habits.
It has always been simply unthinkable to me, being a civilised person, to go to bed fully dressed and wearing my shoes. But now I return home late, drunk with tiredness, to the half-light of our room, its curtains swollen by a cold breeze at the window, and I fall listlessly onto the bed, and bury myself in the eiderdown. In this way I sleep through entire irregular expanses of time — for days, for weeks, travelling through empty landscapes of sleep, continually on the move, continually on steep highways of respiration, at times sliding lightly and flexibly down their gentle slopes, or else struggling to clamber up a vertical wall of snoring, where, having reached the summit, I embrace the enormous horizons of that rocky and soundless desert of sleep. At some late hour, somewhere at an unknown, sharp turning point of snoring, I half awaken, and half conscious, I can feel Father’s body with my feet. There he lies, curled up into a ball, as tiny as a kitten. I go back to sleep with my mouth open, and once more the entire enormous panorama of a mountain landscape, undulating and majestic, unfolds unbidden before me.
In the shop, Father vigorously pursues his interests. He makes transactions, exerting all of his volubility in order to persuade his clients. His cheeks are pink with exuberance, and his eyes shine. In the Sanatorium, he lies seriously ill, just as in his final weeks at home. It is difficult to conceal the fact that the process is rapidly approaching its lamentable conclusion. In a weak voice he says to me: ‘You should call in more often at the shop, Józef. The shop assistants are robbing us. You can see, after all, that I am no longer equal to the task. I have lain here for weeks now, sick, whilst the shop goes to ruin, left to the mercies of fate. Has there been no letter from home?’
I am beginning to regret this whole venture. One can hardly call it a good idea that we, seduced by fine sounding advertising, sent Father to this place. Time set back... On the face of it, it sounds wonderful. But what does it really amount to? Is it time at full value, genuine time that passes here — time unwound, as it were, from a new bale, redolent of freshness and dye? Quite the reverse. It is entirely used up time — time that people have worn thin — ragged time, riddled everywhere with holes, as transparent as a sieve.
And no wonder, since it is only a kind of regurgitated time. Understand me plainly, it is second-hand time — God help us!
And then there is all this highly improper manipulation of time, these indecent dealings, sneaking into its mechanism at the back, dangerously tinkering with its precarious secrets! Sometimes one feels like banging on the table and shouting at the top of one’s voice: ‘Enough of this! Keep your hands off time! Time is untouchable! It is forbidden to aggravate time! Space is for man. In space you can go where you please. You can turn somersaults, fall head over heels, leap from star to star... But for the love of God, leave time alone!’
On the other hand, can I really be expected to give notice to Doctor Gotard? However miserable Father’s existence may be, I can, all the same, see him, be with him, talk to him... The truth is, I should be infinitely grateful to Doctor Gotard.
Several times I have wanted to have a frank discussion with him, but Doctor Gotard is never available. ‘He has just gone to the restaurant,’ the chambermaid announces. I am on my way there when she catches up with me, and informs me that she has made a mistake. ‘Doctor Gotard is in the operating theatre.’ I hurry to that floor, wondering just what sort of operations can possibly be performed here, and enter an anteroom, where I am instructed to wait. ‘Doctor Gotard will be out in a moment. He has just finished an operation, and is washing his hands.’ I almost catch a glimpse of him — small, but hurrying with great strides, his coat billowing, through a row of hospital wards. A moment later, what am I told? He was never there at all. No operations have been performed here in years.
Doctor Gotard is asleep in his room, his black beard sticking up into the air. His room fills up with his snoring, like swirls of clouds that rise, heap up, and carry Doctor Gotard and his bed ever higher and higher on their billows — a great, exalted Ascension on waves of snoring and swelling bedclothes.
Even stranger things happen here, things that I keep even from myself, things fantastic precisely because they are so absurd. How many times do I leave my room, and it seems to me that someone has quickly retreated from the door, and sidestepped around a corner? Or that someone walks ahead of me, not turning around. It is not a nurse. I know who it is! ‘Mother!’ I call out, my voice agitated and trembling, and for a moment Mother turns and looks at me with an imploring smile. Where am I? What is happening here? What kind of snare am I caught in?
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