The empusium, p.1
The Empusium, page 1
ALSO BY OLGA TOKARCZUK
TRANSLATED BY ANTONIA LLOYD-JONES
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
TRANSLATED BY JENNIFER CROFT
Flights
The Books of Jacob
Riverhead Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2022 by Olga Tokarczuk
English translation copyright © 2024 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Originally published in Poland as Empuzjon, by Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, in 2022
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, in 2024
First United States edition published by Riverhead, 2024
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This book has been published with the support of the ©POLAND Translation Program.
Images from the collection of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962– author. | Lloyd-Jones, Antonia, translator.
Title: The empusium : a health resort horror story / Olga Tokarczuk ; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Other titles: Empuzjon. English
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2024. | Identifiers: LCCN 2024010569 (print) | LCCN 2024010570 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593712948 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593854082 | ISBN 9780593712962 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tuberculosis—Patients—Fiction. | Sanatoriums—Poland—Sokołowsko—Fiction. | LCGFT: Historical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PG7179.O37 E6713 2024 (print) | LCC PG7179.O37 (ebook) | DDC 891.8/538—dc23/eng/20240525
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024010569
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024010570
International edition ISBN: 9780593854082
Ebook ISBN 9780593712962
Cover design: Lauren Peters-Collaer
Cover images: (skull) Natalia Darmoroz / iStock / Getty Images Plus; (Victorian outfit) NSA Digital Archive / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Book design by Alexis Farabaugh, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_7.0_148197862_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Characters
Chapter 1. The Guesthouse for Gentlemen
Chapter 2. Schwärmerei
Chapter 3. Pheasant Distance
Chapter 4. Chest and Throat Complaints
Chapter 5. Holes in the Ground
Chapter 6. The Patients
Chapter 7. Woe, Woe Is Me!
Chapter 8. A Symphony of Coughing
Chapter 9. The Tuntschi
Chapter 10. The Culmination of Geometry
Chapter 11. White Ribbons, Dark Night
Chapter 12. Mister Jig
Chapter 13. Ghosts
Chapter 14. A Temperature Chart
Chapter 15. The Weakest Spot in the Soul
Chapter 16. A Person in One Shoe
Epilogue
Glossary of Present-Day Place Names
Author’s Note
About the Author
_148197862_
Every day things happen in the world that can’t be explained by any law of things we know. Every day they’re mentioned and forgotten, and the same mystery that brought them takes them away, transforming their secret into oblivion. Such is the law by which things that can’t be explained must be forgotten. The visible world goes on as usual in the broad daylight. Otherness watches us from the shadows.
FERNANDO PESSOA, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD ZENITH
Characters
Mieczysław (Mieczyś) Wojnicz
A student of hydroengineering and sewage systems, from Lwów
Longin Lukas
A Catholic traditionalist, gymnasium teacher, from Königsberg
August August
A socialist-humanist, classical philologist and writer, from Vienna
Walter Frommer
A theosophist and privy counselor, from Breslau
Thilo von Hahn
A student of the Beaux-Arts and connoisseur of the landscape, from Berlin
Dr. Semperweiss
A psychoanalyzing doctor, from Waldenburg
Wilhelm (Willi) Opitz
Proprietor of the Guesthouse for Gentlemen in Görbersdorf, whose uncle served in the Swiss Guard
Raimund
Opitz’s young assistant
György
A philosopher, from Berlin
and
Frau Weber and Frau Brecht
Gliceria
Herri met de Bles
Klara Opitz, wife of Wilhelm
Sydonia Patek
Frau Large Hat
Tomášek
Saint Emerentia
The Tuntschi
Charcoal burners
Nameless inhabitants of the walls, floors and ceilings
1.
THE GUESTHOUSE FOR GENTLEMEN
The view is obscured by clouds of steam from the locomotive that trail along the platform. To see everything we must look beneath them, let ourselves be momentarily blinded by the gray haze, until the vision that emerges after this trial run is sharp, incisive and all-seeing.
Then we shall catch sight of the platform flagstones, squares overgrown with the stalks of feeble little plants—a space trying at any cost to keep order and symmetry.
Soon after, a left shoe appears on them, brown, leather, not brand-new, and is immediately joined by a second, right shoe; this one looks even shabbier—its toe is rather scuffed, and there are some lighter patches on the upper. For a moment the shoes stand still, indecisively, but then the left one advances. This movement briefly exposes a black cotton sock beneath a trouser leg. Black recurs in the tails of an unbuttoned wool coat; the day is warm. A small hand, pale and bloodless, holds a brown leather suitcase; the weight has caused the veins to tense, and now they indicate their source, somewhere deep inside the bowels of the sleeve. Under the coat we glimpse a flannel jacket of rather poor quality, slightly crumpled by the long journey and marked by tiny bright dots of some nonspecific impurity—the world’s chaff. The white collar of a shirt is visible too, the button-on kind, evidently changed quite recently, because its whiteness is fresher than the white of the actual shirt and contrasts with the sallow tone of the traveler’s face. Pale eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes make this face look unhealthy. Against the deep red of the western sky the whole figure gives the unsettling impression of having arrived here, in these melancholy mountains, from the world beyond.
* * *
—
The new arrival walks toward the main hall of the station, surprisingly large for this highland region, along with the other passengers, but unlike them walks unhurriedly, perhaps reluctantly, and is not greeted or met by anyone. Putting the suitcase down on the worn tiled floor, the traveler pulls on a pair of quilted gloves. One of them, on the right hand, is soon curled and put to the mouth to receive a volley of short, dry coughs.
The young person stoops and searches for a pocket handkerchief. The fingers alight on the spot where a passport is hidden beneath the fabric of the coat. If we focus our attention on it, we shall see the fanciful handwriting of a Galician official, who has carefully filled in the fields on the document as follows: Mieczysław Wojnicz, Catholic, student at Lwów Polytechnic, born 1889, eyes blue, height average, face round, hair fair.
The said Wojnicz is now heading for the main station hall in Dittersbach, a small town near Waldenburg. As he walks hesitantly across this tall, gloomy space, where an echo is sure to inhabit the top cornices, he can sense someone’s eyes scrutinizing him from behind the ticket windows in the waiting room. Wojnicz checks the time on a large clock—it is late, his was the last train from Breslau—then, after a moment’s dithering, goes out in front of the station building, where at once he is enfolded in the broad embrace of the ragged mountain horizon.
It is mid-September, but here, as the newcomer notices to his amazement, the summer is already long over and the first fallen leaves are lying on the ground. The past few days must have been rainy, because a light mist still fills most of the landscape, making an exception only for the dark lines of streams. Wojnicz’s lungs feel the high altitude, which is good for his enfeebled body. He stands on the station steps, suspiciously eyeing the thin leather soles of his shoes; he will have to think about winter boots. In Lwów the asters and zinnias are still flowering, and no one has thought about the autumn yet. But here the tall horizon makes it darker
, and the colors seem more garish, almost vulgar. Just then he is overcome by a familiar sense of sadness, typical of those convinced of their own impending death. The world around him feels like stage scenery painted on a paper screen, as if he could stick a finger into this monumental landscape and drill a hole in it leading straight to nothingness. And as if nothingness will start pouring out of there in a flood, and will catch him up too, grab him by the throat. He has to shake his head to be rid of this image. It shatters into droplets and falls onto the leaves. Luckily an ungainly vehicle resembling a britzka comes rolling along the road toward him. In it sits a slim, freckled boy wearing a strange outfit, reminiscent of a military jacket of obscure provenance—not like a Prussian uniform, which would be understandable in this place—and a military forage cap, fancifully tilted on his head. Without a word he stops in front of Wojnicz and, muttering something, takes his luggage.
“How are you, my good fellow?” asks Wojnicz politely in schoolboy German, but he waits in vain for an answer; the boy pulls his cap low and impatiently points to a seat for him in the britzka.
And at once they move off. First through the town over cobblestones, then along a road that in the falling darkness takes them through forest, on a winding track between steep mountain slopes. They are accompanied by the constant murmur of a nearby stream and its smell, which unsettles Wojnicz badly: the odor of damp brush, rotting leaves, eternally wet stones and water. In an attempt to establish contact he asks the driver questions, how long will their journey be, for example, how did he recognize him at the station, what is his name, but the boy remains silent and does not even glance at him. A gas lantern placed on the boy’s right side partly illuminates his face, which in profile resembles the snout of a highland rodent, a marmot, and Wojnicz figures he must be either deaf or insolent.
After about three quarters of an hour, they emerge from the shadow of the forest onto an unexpected plateau between the wooded mountains. The sky is fading, but that tall, imposing horizon, still visible, brings a lump to the throat of any new arrival from the lowlands.
“Görbersdorf,” says the driver suddenly, in an unexpectedly shrill, boyish tone.
But Wojnicz can see nothing beyond a dense wall of darkness that is heedlessly breaking free of the mountainsides in whole sheets. Once his eyes have grown used to it, a viaduct suddenly looms before them, under which they drive into a village; beyond it, the vast bulk of a redbrick edifice comes into sight, followed by other, smaller buildings, a street, and even two gas lamps. The brick edifice proves colossal as it emerges from the darkness, and the motion of the vehicle picks out rows of illuminated windows. The light in them is dingy yellow. Wojnicz cannot tear his eyes from this sudden, triumphal vision, and he looks back at it for a long time, until it sinks into the darkness like a huge steamship.
Now the britzka turns into a narrow side road along the stream and crosses a small bridge, on which the wheels raise a noise like the sound of gunfire. At last it stops outside a sizable wooden building with very strange architecture that brings to mind a matchstick house—there are so many verandas, balconies and terraces. A pleasant light glows in the windows. Under the first-floor windows there is a beautiful sign in Gothic script carved out of thick tin:
Gästehaus für Herren
With relief, Wojnicz alights from the britzka and fills his lungs with a mighty gulp of this new air, which is said to cure the most critical cases. But perhaps he does it too soon, because at once such an acute coughing fit assails him that he must lean against the balustrade of the bridge. As he coughs, he feels a chill and the nasty, slippery texture of rotten wood, and the positive first impression evaporates. Unable to restrain the violent spasms of his diaphragm, he is seized by overwhelming fear—that he is about to choke, that this will be his final attack. He tries to ward off panic, just as Dr. Sokołowski has advised him, by thinking of a meadow full of flowers, of warm sunshine. He makes a great effort, though his eyes are watering and his face is flushed. He thinks he is about to cough up his soul.
But then he feels a grip on his shoulder, and a tall, well-built man with gray-speckled hair offers his hand. Through his tears, Wojnicz sees a pink, healthy face.
“Come along, my fellow. Let’s pull ourselves together,” says the man confidently, with a broad smile that makes the visitor—though worn out by all the coughing—feel like huddling up to him and letting himself be taken off to bed like a child. Oh yes, indeed. A child. To bed. In some confusion, he throws his arms around the man’s neck and lets himself be led through a hallway smelling of spruce smoke and up some stairs softly carpeted with a runner. All this prompts a remote association with wrestling, with a male sport in which hard bodies press against each other, rub and strike one another, though not to do each other harm, but quite the opposite, to show each other tenderness and affection under the guise of combat. He surrenders to the strong hands and allows himself to be guided to a room upstairs, to be seated on the bed and divested of his overcoat and sweater.
Wilhelm Opitz—for so the man introduces himself, pointing a finger at his chest—covers him with a woolen rug, and from hands that appear briefly in the doorway receives a mug of hot, tasty broth. While Wojnicz drinks it in small sips, Wilhelm Opitz raises his finger (Wojnicz is realizing what an essential part of Wilhelm that finger is) and says in soft, slightly comical German: “I wrote to Professor Sokołowski that you should take a break in Breslau. It is too long and tiring a journey. I said so.”
The broth floods Wojnicz’s body with warmth, and the poor boy is unaware of the moment when he falls asleep. We shall keep him company awhile longer, listen to his calm breathing—we are pleased that his lungs have settled down.
Now our attention turns to a streak of light as thin as a blade that falls into the room from the corridor and stops on the porcelain chamber pot underneath the bed. We are drawn to the cracks between the floorboards—and there we disappear.
* * *
At a quarter to seven, Wojnicz was awoken by the sound of a bugle, thanks to which it took him a while to work out where he was. The tune it was playing sounded off-key, which amused him and put him in a good mood. It seemed familiar, in the way that applies to things so simple as to be brilliant—as though they have existed forever, and always will.
* * *
—
Mieczysław Wojnicz was afflicted by various conditions best understood not by him but by his father, January Wojnicz, a retired civil servant and landowner. He managed these disorders with great competence, gravity and tact, treating the property entrusted to him in the figure of his son with great responsibility and—it was plain to see—love, albeit devoid of any sentimentality or any of the “female emotions” that he so abhorred.
One of these afflictions, which had to some extent been shaped by the father, was the son’s exaggerated fear of being spied on. Young Wojnicz devoted much attention to the gaze of others, constantly checking to see if someone’s eyes were following him from around a corner, from an angle, through a window in which a curtain had twitched, or through a keyhole. The father’s caution and suspicion had given rise to the son’s obsession. He felt as if another person’s gaze were something sticky that adhered to him like the soft, hideous oral cavity of a leech. And so, in every room where he was to spend the night, he carefully examined the curtains, blocked the keyhole with a ball of paper, checked for holes in the wall and chinks between the floorboards, even peeked behind the pictures. After all, at guesthouses and hotels peeping was not entirely unlikely—one time, when he and his father had stopped at a hotel during one of their health-related visits to a specialist in Warsaw, the young Wojnicz had discovered a neat hole in the wall, clumsily disguised by the rich pattern of the wallpaper, so naturally he had glued it up with a lump of bread; next morning when he tried to investigate who might be watching the guests and from where, he discovered that the servants’ stairwell, used by hotel staff, was on the other side of the wall. Aha! So he wasn’t being paranoid. People do spy on each other. They love to watch another person while he is unaware of it. They love to judge and compare. Those who are observed in this way are defenseless—unwitting, helpless victims.
