The empusium, p.16
The Empusium, page 16
But it turned out to be a puppet made of moss, sticks, dry pine needles and rotten wood, overgrown with a fine lace of mushroom spawn. The head, quite deftly made spherical, had a face formed from a bracket fungus, with pine cones driven into it for eyes, and an opening drilled into its softer part for a mouth. Thin twigs imitated long hair scattered all around. The figure’s arms and legs were thrown to the sides, and between the legs—instantly attracting an onlooker’s attention—was a dark, narrow hole, a tunnel into the depths of this organic forest body. It also had breasts made of stones, with nipples painted on them in some sort of sap, and wide hips. The belly was coated in soft moss.
Wojnicz felt a sort of inner commotion in his whole being; he was overcome by a strong impression of being outside reality that rose to his throat, forcing him to swallow his saliva several times, though he did not yet know what he was looking at. Raimund laughed hoarsely, and he and Opitz exchanged knowing glances. Wojnicz gazed in fascination at this mid-forest anomaly, at this contravention of the usual order of things. It had taken someone a good deal of time to create this figure, not quite human and not quite vegetable. They must have spent ages considering and preparing the materials. The stones on the chest had been imported from somewhere; they were pebbles, so they must have come from a stream below.
“It’s the charcoal burners. This is their handiwork,” said Willi Opitz. “They wanted to enjoy themselves. Let’s get out of here.”
He picked up the baskets and set off downhill, and Wojnicz followed. Raimund dallied a little longer, looking around, as if to remember the spot, but finally he caught up with them, and fifteen minutes later they were in the village.
Willi was reluctant to answer questions, but by the time they reached the Guesthouse for Gentlemen Wojnicz had managed to extract the entire bizarre story.
The charcoal burners whom he had seen before at the clearing, the men with blackened faces and gloomy expressions who occasionally came down to the village to get drunk, had an ancient custom that they never mentioned, but everyone knew about it anyway. They came to work for the whole season from far away. Deprived of women for such agonizing periods of abstinence (and many of them were not married in the first place), they made themselves these recumbent Puppen, or dolls, to relieve themselves.
The dolls were known as Tuntschi, that’s what people called them, and to soften what he had said, Opitz added that such practices existed wherever there were men, because men need gratification and they cannot wait, or they become sick and dangerous. Male desire must be instantly satisfied, otherwise the world would collapse in chaos. So it was, the world over. Because men’s desire was so strong that it could destroy them, they had to have a means of relief. Anyone should understand this and find it normal. Similar Tuntschi were also made in the Alps, where the shepherds were away in the mountain pastures for the entire season and were thus entitled to seek this form of gratification. But it happened on the distant steppes too, where men tended to herds of animals. And among gold prospectors.
“Wherever men are deprived of women,” cackled Raimund, who had rejoined them.
So the Tuntschi were a part of life, and the fact that Wojnicz had never heard of them meant merely that he was still wet behind the ears and should finally become a man. As he said this, Opitz grabbed him by the shoulder and with a rough gesture shook him, hugging him to his hard, manly chest. Several chanterelles spilled from the young man’s vest.
As Wojnicz was changing for supper, picking pine needles out of his socks, brushing cobwebs off the woolen sleeves of his jacket and combing seeds, bits of twigs and God knows what else out of his hair—everything that the forest leaves on us—he thought about it all. Did he ever feel the sort of desire Opitz had been talking about? Had he ever experienced anything so overwhelming?
When he entered the dining room, everyone turned toward him with curiosity and barely concealed but friendly smiles.
For supper, baked zander was served, and a heap of potatoes with a chanterelle sauce, thickened with cream and sprinkled with parsley. No one failed to ask for a second helping. Wojnicz scrupulously recorded this menu in his diary.
* * *
Everyone talked about how, as soon as a place became free, they would move into the Kurhaus, from which one might assume that they were living at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen temporarily. Wojnicz was intelligent enough to understand that a sort of game was being played that suited each of them, and in which he too had started to take part without even noticing. For in fact nobody believed a place there would ever be vacated. He too refused to believe it. Perhaps he did not really want this mythical place to become free—because then he would have to fulfill his promise and move to the main sanatorium building, and that would be disastrous for his wallet. While at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen one paid a monthly average of 150 marks, at the Kurhaus one had to lay out twice as much. Of course it would be far more convenient to live there, because everything was right at hand, the rooms were more comfortable and the cooking decidedly better; sometimes delicious aromas floated all the way to the park.
When seen on the promenade, the Kurhaus patients looked taller and cleaner, and their shirts were whiter. They were like well-fed poultry, even if they were as sick as others—the women wore the “pigeon breasts” that had been in fashion for several years, a frilly ruffle of cambric or silk on their chests that made it look as if they had just boiled over the top of their tight, narrow skirts, while the men’s heads protruded from stiff collars, as if they were being served on a tray for afternoon tea, and their frock coats were like the plumage of male pigeons. The patients dressed carefully for their walks, as though they were not languishing at a sanatorium but taking part in a national holiday. Heard from afar as they strolled along, their voices were like the cooing of pigeons, and they made little holes in the pavement with the tips of their canes and parasols.
The mere fact of having rooms at the Kurhaus ennobled and gave them a distinct advantage on the promenade—it guaranteed them the right of way and seats on the benches, the upper hand in debates, and priority in telling jokes. The daily walk was part of the triumph they celebrated here, within the sad reality of their illness, merely because by reason of their wealth they managed to be sick in better circumstances and in a more civilized way.
The patients from the guesthouses and rented rooms in villas walked at a different pace, which was hastier, let us even say pragmatic, because it led to a goal, which is always a feature of the lower born. And the poorer patients who lived at the Volksheilstätten-Abteilung strayed about the grounds of the sanatorium, as it were exchanging expensive medical treatments for the simplest and perhaps most effective fresh-air therapy.
Quite often Mieczysław heard Polish being spoken on the promenade. Or during the rest cure, from the other end of the veranda words reached his hearing that seemed rounder, friendlier; they instantly caught his attention, not like ordinary sounds, but complete meaning, which meant they crowded into his brain and refused to leave it. In this calm environment that was supposed to be curing rather than upsetting him, they were like treacherous roots sticking out of a flat surface, easy to trip over.
Wojnicz did his best to avoid encountering his compatriots at all. In the first place, he thought it better to practice his German than waste energy on chitchat. Secondly, the Poles irritated him. He was annoyed by their herdlike way of clinging together in a social clot that shifted this way and that along the promenade, self-absorbed, outwardly self-confident, but in fact full of complexes and a shameful sense of incongruity. They formed a mobile hub of the universe, concerned only with itself, blind to everything around it. Sometimes as they passed him, always in a group, he heard words and phrases that made him feel disconcerted, even though they were perfectly innocent: albeit, Good day, madam, Do forgive me, sir. They took him back to Lwów, when he had managed to get so far away and was almost free. He was annoyed by the Poles’ carefully hidden insecurity, masked in every possible way, poised to shift into bravado rather than let itself show.
Most often he saw three men of a similar age who always walked together, dressed a little carelessly but well. Their accent implied that they could be from Warsaw. The oldest, a slightly corpulent, balding gentleman in spectacles, looked like a teacher, and that was how Wojnicz thought of him. The second—not much older than Mieczysław, emaciated and coughing—could have been anything: a student, a clerk, a poor relation living at a manor house owned by a rich family…And finally the third was a small, bearded man who always leaned on a cane while gesticulating violently with his free hand. Sometimes they were joined by two ladies, both in ugly jackets of a nondescript color, and then the company became noisy, if not truculent. One of the women had a pearly laugh that drew the attention of all the other promenaders. On occasion they were accompanied by an elderly married couple, well dressed and highly dignified, whose trademark was the gold monocle each of them wore, symmetrically placed in the left eye of one and the right eye of the other, as if they used them as a sign of their eternal marital bond instead of wedding rings.
One day the trio approached Wojnicz in the dining room as he was finishing his lunch, scraping the final teaspoonfuls of vanilla pudding out of the cup. They stood over him with a look of triumph on their faces, as though they had just hunted down a rare animal.
“We are pleased to meet a compatriot in foreign parts at last,” said the one with the jovial expression, who went on to introduce himself as engineer Mroczek.
Confused, Wojnicz could not answer because his mouth was full of pudding that he could not swallow. He felt pinned to the wall, hunted down.
“And we thought you were a Kraut,” added the second fellow reproachfully.
Mieczysław put down his napkin and stood up, as if called to an exam. The gentlemen invited him for postprandial coffee at another table, under a large palm. Wojnicz did not know how to refuse, so he headed after them in a cross fire of questions: whence, where, how, et cetera.
They gave him a thorough interrogation, to which Wojnicz replied routinely, if not evasively, which aggravated his questioners. They wanted to know where he was from, what he did, how old he was and whether he was married, what he was studying and who was his professor, and what he had done for a year in Dresden. And why was he so pale, how advanced was his illness and what was his father’s annual income. And what he was planning to do afterward. And whether Dr. Semperweiss offended him too. And finally: Who were his co-residents and what did he think about the prices in the village. How much did his room cost and did he know of cheaper accommodation. Who was Sydonia Patek, did she have a husband or was she perhaps a “maid of Lesbos.” Once they had finished asking questions, and the coffee had been drunk, they moved on to singing their own praises. Engineer Mroczek for example was the ultimate authority on modern threshing machines, while one of the ladies painted on silk. They talked through their noses, lengthening their vowels, while looking over the heads of the seated company as if somewhere over yonder lay the true motherland from which they drew their strength.
So no wonder that as soon as Wojnicz saw them approaching and realized that their paths might cross, he turned aside, onto the nearest little bridge, and crossed the stream, heading for the forest, or went the other way, to the upper village, or even ducked into the patisserie or the post office, just to hide from them. This was the most serious threat he encountered during his walks.
Why was our Mieczysław so afraid of them? Did he fear that they would peel away his carefully constructed image of a person who is on good terms with himself, who feels all right about himself and is sure of his own opinions? That they would take him back to Lwów, to face all those persecutors—at school, in the street, in doctors’ consulting rooms, in his own home? All those physicians who tsk-tsked over him with such concern? That they would drag him into those low, hot kitchens where czernina was constantly being made? Into the cellars where toads sat on piles of potatoes sprouting in the darkness, and his uncle’s boots could be seen through the windows—rapping away, one, two, at a marching step, while his hand squeezed little Mieczyś’s shoulder?
He preferred to belong to this world, which did not yet know him and in whose eyes he still had time to define himself. He would rather take the risk that one day this world too would disappoint him, and he would have to run away again, escape to yet another, more distant location to avoid falling into the arms of that familiar, hopeless state in which one was simply a bother to oneself and others. By this point he had just about adopted the idea that his illness had come upon him at a very good moment in his young life, giving him a chance to reformulate himself, and that he should actually be happy to have ended up here, in this little Silesian health resort, built on the waters of an underground lake.
* * *
Of all the treatments prescribed for him, Wojnicz had an immediate, intense hatred of the Regenbad, a shower at a temperature of six to eight degrees centigrade, to which his half-naked body was subjected for up to a minute, to stimulate the body’s defenses. From the start he did his best to avoid it, complaining to the doctor of a raised temperature or of feeling “weak”; another reason was that the appliance was deployed by Herr Schwartz, an elderly man with a military figure who showered his wretched victims with his sadistic pleasure as the icy water made them shudder. With one hand Wojnicz held on to his bathing drawers, while shielding his tender nipples with the other, as Herr Schwartz passed the hose and showerhead over his poor, shivering body. Herr Schwartz always tried to shame him, shouting as if at a cadet: “Come on, boy, don’t snivel! Steel yourself! Be a man, not an old woman!” And: “Stand to attention, soldier!” Wojnicz also had to submit to treatments known as Strahlendusche, which meant having cold water poured over the back of the head twice a day. The aim of this was to invigorate the skin, to toughen up Wojnicz’s feeble body, and above all to immunize his body against bad weather.
Sometimes Mieczysław would be close to tears, filled with deep loathing for Herr Schwartz. Besides him, there was a Bademeister, known simply as Oskar. Large, fat and muscular, with a clean-shaven head, he was usually placid and reticent. When the frozen Wojnicz was finally released from the grip of the torturer Schwartz, Oskar would rub him hard with a rough towel, knead his poor body like dough and smear warming oil on his back.
At the start of his stay, Wojnicz had complained of mild diarrhea and gastritis. It must have been the effect of switching to a new diet and adjusting to the local climate and water. Dr. Semperweiss had recommended a dose of pepsin to enhance the work of the stomach, and at night, Dover’s powder, which they were very keen on here: it was a mixture consisting of one part opium, one part emetic powder and eight parts milky sugar, which had both a diaphoretic and a soporific effect.
Wojnicz’s favorite place at the Kurhaus was the winter garden, which one entered from the dining room with its six enormous tables that could feed all the patients, in shifts. For Mieczysław, lunches there were quite stressful, and he wondered whether to give up on them and fully rely on Opitz and Raimund’s cooking.
He was served in the final sitting, when the dining hall was already practically deserted and—most important—there were none of those Poles, because they were among the first to eat. He usually sat in the company of an old couple from Switzerland and two elderly Russian women who spoke hardly any language but their own, so he did not have to go out of his way to make conversation. The lunch was always extremely good. For example, today there was fried trout in almond sauce, a local specialty, with baked salsify and potatoes roasted with bacon and plenty of onions. And fried egg too, very yellow, sprinkled with chives. For dessert there were sorbets in several flavors. His favorite was blackberry. Wojnicz had soon learned that after such a large meal it did him good to drink a cup of coffee in the winter garden, at an openwork metal table with a view of the park. He would sit where nobody could accost him, and look through the German newspapers, in which with genuine interest he read the advertisements and articles about fashion.
Some large philodendrons with split leaves grew here, and also palms, trying hard to open the large windows with their splayed fingers and get outside. In the sunniest spot there were some cacti, one of which was more than two meters tall, and beyond them some plants whose names he did not know. There was always more moisture in here than anywhere else, producing a wonderful aroma of aerated soil and something like ozone. The wicker armchair in which he settled comfortably creaked gently with every move—this faint sound reminded him of the good times long ago, when his father and uncle had taken him to Zaleszczyki, where they sat in wicker beach chairs by a cold, shallow river, and his uncle brought ice creams in wafer cones. The taste of it had set the standard for all ice cream forever after.
As he sat in the wicker armchair in the winter garden at the Kurhaus, he was beset by memories. He was unaware of having so many of them; after all, he was a young man, and had never given himself so much thought before. He found himself remembering petty incidents of no importance, such as the time his uncle had given him a few small coins, so he had gone down to the colonial store to buy himself some praline sweets. When he reached the counter, he discovered that there was no money in the pocket where he had put it shortly before. His surprise was immense, he fingered every cranny of his clothing, trying to feel the shape of the coins, but the money was gone. Mr. Mincer, who had already handed him the little bag of sweets, watched him with rising impatience, until finally he lost his temper and asked the next customer to approach the counter.
Little Mieczyś left the shop and burst into tears in the gateway to his home. Later, he carefully searched the entire route from their apartment on the first floor to the little shop on the corner, centimeter by centimeter, but found nothing. To this day he had no idea what could have happened to those coins. But at home he said he had eaten all the sweets, which made his uncle laugh and his father scowl. He had preferred to be suspected of greed than of being such a hopeless loser.
