The empusium, p.2
The Empusium, page 2
Once awake, Wojnicz immediately set about writing a message to his father to reassure him. It was a matter of a few simple words, yet he didn’t find it easy; his forearm felt numb and weak. So he focused all his attention on his hand, as it ran the pencil tip across a sheet of cream-colored paper in a leather-bound notebook. We find this movement fascinating, we like it. It reminds us of the winding lines and spiral flourishes that earthworms bore underground, and that weevils carve into tree trunks. Wojnicz sat in bed, propped up on two mighty pillows. Before him lay a clever piece of furniture, something like a small table with no legs. Its underside consisted of a pillow stuffed with peas, allowing it to rest easily on the knees of the person writing.
First, two figures appeared, forming 13, then a straight line and a cross, IX, and after it another four figures taking shape as 1913. Then from the flourishes the name Görbersdorf appeared, underlined several times. The umlaut was treated with special reverence. The pencil continued to move evenly and persistently across the paper, the graphite creaking as the paper sagged beneath the round shapes of the letters.
The room was modest, but comfortably furnished. Two windows looked onto the street and the stream in front of the house, but the view was obscured by some crocheted curtains. Under one of the windows stood a small round table and two upholstered chairs, comfortable but rather shabby—a cozy corner for reading, if one so wished. To the left of the door stood the bed, with a beautifully carved wooden headboard, and next to it a wardrobe. There was a small dressing table to the right of the door. The walls were covered with fabric paper in broad light blue stripes, which made the room look taller and more spacious than it really was. On the wall hung prints from exotic parts: a down of hares and a pack of hyenas.
Writing in Polish, Wojnicz briefly described his impressions of the journey, converting 1,900 feet into meters (it came out at almost 600), and transferred these figures onto a rough map illustrating his journey from Lwów. His commentaries were mainly about the meals he had eaten on the way. Next to Wrocław/Breslau he wrote: Pumpkin soup, followed by puree with lardons, cabbage and a cutlet exactly like our pork chops. For dessert, a vanilla pudding with meringue and blackberry compote, very tasty. Underneath he added: Price: 5 marks. He had promised his father he would send him a few words each day, preferably about his state of health, but he didn’t really know how he was feeling, so he chose instead to send menus or geographical information.
There was a soft knock at the door, and before he had time to say “Come in,” a leather boot had wedged its way into the gap between the frame and the door, gently opening it; next the black pleats of a skirt appeared, the lacy edge of an apron, and a breakfast tray, which was soon standing on the little table. The boots, lace and apron vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and the bewildered Wojnicz merely managed to pull his rug over himself, stammer a greeting and say thank you. He was so hungry that he was interested only in the food.
He recorded it at once in his jotter: hard-boiled eggs, two, in lovely faience cups, covered with little hen-shaped hats, slices of smoked sheep’s milk cheese garnished with parsley, balls of the yellowest butter served on a horseradish leaf, a small bowl of fragrant lard with a little knife for spreading it, a radish cut into slices, a basket filled with bread rolls of various kinds, light and dark, morello cherry jam in a glass dish, a mug of thick cocoa and a small jug of coffee.
At the end of the next sentence, the notebook banged shut, and Wojnicz delighted in eating everything that was on the tray. Then, invigorated by the meal, he got up. With the rug around his shoulders, he tottered to his suitcase, extracted a neatly folded set of underclothes, and set about his ablutions. As he was drying his face on a towel imbued with the scent of pine that pervaded the guesthouse, a vivid image appeared before his eyes, of his family’s house in the country, and of underclothes drying in the attic in winter, when it was pouring outside and Gliceria took them up there in pails. He could clearly see the attic, always full of dust, and the view from its small windows known as bull’s-eyes—the image of fields and a small park—and the acrid smell of rotting tomato stalks, sweet corn and beans on poles. And by the laws of some inexplicable synesthesia this image changed into a physical sensation: the coarseness of fabric, the stiffness of collars, the angularity of freshly pressed trousers and the pinch of a hard leather belt. And it was there, in the attic, as soon as he could, whenever he was alone and out of the reach of his father’s discipline, that he undressed entirely; he would wrap his naked body in a satin tablecloth edged with a soft fringe and, feeling how blissfully it brushed against his thighs and calves, he would think how wonderful it would be if people could go about in tablecloth tunics, like the ancient Greeks. But now, with the memory of that satin toga, he dressed and was pleased to feel strong and rested at last.
We are witnesses as the clothing appears in layers on his slender body, until finally his figure, entirely different from yesterday’s, coughing and ashen-faced, stands with a hand on the doorknob, eyes closed, imagining how it would appear to the eyes of someone who might now be observing it. It looks good—a slender young man with fair hair and subtle features in formal gray trousers and a brown woolen jacket. Moments later, he resolutely opens the door.
No, we do not regard it as an obsession, at most as innocent oversensitivity. People should get used to the fact that they are being watched.
* * *
At about ten o’clock Wojnicz went downstairs, ahead of his appointment to be examined at the Kurhaus.
The whole house was in semidarkness, because the windows were small and few, as was typical of highland architecture. Here there was an oval table covered with a thick, patterned cloth, a sofa and several chairs, while against the wall stood an upright piano, rarely used, judging by the isolated fingerprints on its glossy lid and the wad of yellowing musical scores. A small shelf hanging beside it was full of books about the region, the local ski trails and sights. In a huge glass-fronted sideboard a beautiful porcelain dinner service was on display, white with sentimental scenes of shepherds and sheep in cobalt blue.
“Gemütlich,” Wojnicz whispered to himself, pleased to have remembered a German word that he particularly liked. That word was missing from his language. Cozy? Nice?
The words of Dr. Sokołowski came back to him too, from the days when he had first treated Wojnicz and started to tackle his apathy—that life should be made appetizing. Yes, appetizing, that was a better word than gemütlich, thought Wojnicz, for it could refer not only to space, but to everything else as well—to someone’s voice, to a way of speaking, of sitting in an armchair, or tying a scarf around one’s neck, to the way cakes were arranged on a plate. He ran a finger over the olive-green velvet tablecloth, and it was some minutes before he noticed, to his horror, a thin man sitting in an armchair by the window. He had distinctive, birdlike features, and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles on his prominent nose. He was wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. In Wojnicz’s confusion, his hand bounced off the velvet as if scalded and vanished in the embrace of its partner. Equally disconcerted by this discovery of his solitude, the man stood and introduced himself quite officially, in German, with a strange Silesian accent: “Walter Frommer. From Breslau.”
Wojnicz slowly and clearly pronounced his own first name and surname, in the hope that the other would remember them: “Mi-etchy-swuff Voy-nitch.” In their brief conversation, Frommer informed him that he was treated in Görbersdorf regularly, and had been there for the better part of three years. He returned to Breslau at intervals, but there his condition immediately worsened.
“You see, the city of Breslau lies on water. In spring, swarms of mosquitoes hover above the buildings, small but extremely venomous, and people suffer from rheumatism. In summer it’s impossible to sit out in the garden, so government officials are posted there for only a few years before they move on to better places. Breslau is a transitional city.” A sorrowful note appeared in his voice, as though he sympathized with the city. “It’s because of the omnipresent water, it creeps in everywhere…I tolerate it poorly.” He began to cough. “Oh, you see, at the very thought of it I cough.”
Wojnicz looked away toward the window, just as a jolly company walked past outside, bursting into occasional laughter. He thought the people were laughing in Polish, though he couldn’t quite explain this impression. From afar their words were inaudible.
“Are you preparing for a transfer to the Kurhaus too?” he asked Frommer.
He thought this question might raise a faint smile on the face of his interlocutor, but the man took it seriously.
“God forbid,” he said, bristling. “There are too many people there. You can’t see anything from there. You won’t find anything out. Life in a crowd is worse than prison.”
So by now Wojnicz had a fairly well-formed opinion on the topic of Walter Frommer—he was an oddball.
He was apparently equally bashful, because they stood facing each other in awkward silence, while each waited for the other to utter some conventional remark. They were saved from this deadlock by Wilhelm Opitz.
“I hope I am not disturbing you in the heat of conversation,” said the proprietor, and Wojnicz wondered briefly if he were mocking them, or if he were quite so unobservant. But Wilhelm took him by the arm with a strong grip and led him toward the exit.
“Excuse me, but I must pass this young person into the attentive care of Dr. Semperweiss. Our guest arrived here in a pitiful state.”
Frommer muttered something indistinct, then went back to the window and sat down in exactly the same position as before, as if he had a permanent job there as a smoking piece of furniture.
“Dr. Frommer is a little odd, but he’s a respectable person. Like everyone at my guesthouse,” said Wilhelm in his dialect, the sound of which Wojnicz found more and more to his liking, once they were standing on the front steps. “Raimund will take you to Dr. Semperweiss. Watch out for him, he doesn’t like people from the East. He doesn’t like people in general. It’s a great loss that there’s no one here like Dr. Brehmer,” he added pensively, at the little bridge.
Wojnicz watched as the mist formed strange streaks and floated upward like smoke.
“Perhaps you know Dr. Sokołowski?” he asked.
Wilhelm’s face brightened and became animated.
“Of course, I knew him as a child. He was friendly with my father, who worked for him. All of us here work for the Kurhaus. How is he keeping?”
Wojnicz did not know how to answer that. All he knew was that Sokołowski worked at a Warsaw clinic and gave occasional lectures in Lwów. His father had taken him for a consultation on one of Sokołowski’s visits to the city. It was thanks to him that Wojnicz had ended up here.
“Is he still as slim?” asked Willi.
Slim? No, he was not. Professor Sokołowski was a stout, stocky man. But Wojnicz did not have to answer this surprising question, because out of the trails of mist emerged yesterday’s teenage coachman, whom Willi greeted with a light cuff on the head, a gesture the boy seemed to take as entirely natural and friendly.
Wojnicz and Raimund walked along the stream toward the center of the village, Raimund eagerly relating something, but in such a strange dialect that Wojnicz understood little. He observed with interest the fine houses along the road, and the laborers who were mending the electrical traction. Raimund asked Wojnicz if he knew what electricity was.
They bowed to two elderly women in wide skirts who were sitting on a bench outside one of the houses.
“Frau Weber and Frau Brecht,” said Raimund with an ironical smile, and this Wojnicz did understand.
Soon the boy proudly pointed at Dr. Brehmer’s sanatorium, the building that Wojnicz had glimpsed the night before, but now it seemed even more impressive, especially as the mist had almost vanished and somewhere high over the valley the September sun was shining lavishly.
Raimund led Wojnicz to a door in a wide corridor, then disappeared. Wojnicz was received by a nurse with red swellings beneath her eyes. A polite smile briefly shielded her large, yellow teeth, which matched the tarnished gold-plated watch on a chain pinned to her apron. Above the breast pocket, her name was embroidered: Sydonia Patek.
Wojnicz had to sit in the waiting room until the doctor came back from his rounds. His fingers reached for the illustrated periodicals provided for the patients, but his eyes found no reassurance in them: They could not focus on the Gothic script. But to his surprise, he found a newssheet in Polish, and his gaze immediately relaxed on seeing words in his mother tongue:
In Prussian Silesia, a quarter of a mile from the Czech border and eleven miles southwest of Breslau, in a long valley stretching from east to west between Riesengebirge and Adlergebirge, located in Waldenburg County on the Stein, we find the charming village of Görbersdorf, famous for decades as a mountain resort for those with chest complaints.
Görbersdorf is situated at 570 meters above sea level, in a zone known to medical science as “consumption free.” The mountains surrounding it reach 900 meters. They shield the village and its medical facilities from the winds; hence in Görbersdorf a stillness of the air prevails that is rare in any valley.
He did not read on, but folded the brochure in half and shoved it into his pocket. Now his attention was drawn by a glass-fronted display case, in which stood a human torso made of wood. With no head, arms or legs, but an open chest and belly, it showed the internal organs painted in different colors. Wojnicz went up to examine its lungs. They were smooth and clean, polished, shining with varnish. They looked like the fleshy petals of an enormous flower, or fungi growing on the bark of a tree. How perfectly they fitted the proportions of the chest, how well their shape harmonized with the rib cage. He took a close look at them, trying to peek under the pointed corners where they joined other, coiled organs in various colors. Perhaps he was hoping to find something that he had not seen before, solutions to the mystery of why he was sick and others were not. If so, he was disappointed.
As he returned to his seat, he was seized by a familiar anxiety, a tension that always stirred the same physical reaction—he broke into a sweat. He would have to undress and expose his body to the gaze of a stranger. And panic: How would he hide his shameful affliction from the doctor? What would he have to say to avoid all those issues that he found so sensitive? How was he to escape? He had practiced it so many times before.
Dr. Semperweiss entered the waiting room at a rapid pace, the tails of his white gown flapping behind him. Without even glancing at Wojnicz, he gestured for him to rise. Almost at a trot, Wojnicz followed him into a large consulting room with an immense window, glass-walled cabinets, all sorts of medical equipment and some strange-looking armchairs. Somehow Wojnicz was not surprised to see a shotgun leaning against the doctor’s desk—a large one, not a hunting rifle but more like a Winchester, with a finely polished butt. Without turning around, the doctor told him to sit down, which made Wojnicz feel safely hidden behind the desk, as in a trench.
He handed the doctor a letter of referral from Professor Sokołowski, but Semperweiss, hardly casting an eye at it, was clearly more interested in the body sitting before him. The young man was discomfited by the way the doctor was looking at him, as if he could not see Mieczysław Wojnicz, a patient from faraway Lwów, but just his body, a mechanical object. First he unabashedly pulled back Wojnicz’s eyelid and inspected the color of the mucous membranes and the eyeball. Then he ran his eyes from chin to temple, and finally told him to strip to the waist so that he could examine his chest. He began to press the patient’s nipples with a finger.
“Slightly enlarged, as are the lymph nodes,” he said. “Is that always the case for you?”
“For several years,” replied Wojnicz, intimidated.
Holding him by the chin, the doctor drew a finger over his feeble, patchy two-day stubble. He scrupulously palpated the lymph nodes, and then his bold fingers percussed the back, extracting a hollow sound, a rumble as if from underground. He did it very carefully, centimeter by centimeter, like a sapper in search of a hidden bomb. All this took half an hour, until finally the doctor sighed and told him to get dressed. Only now did he reach for the letter. Glancing over the metal frames of his glasses, he said: “Phthisis.” It sounded as though he had whistled. “Tuberculosis, consumption, or as it is fashionable to say nowadays: Morbus Koch. You know all this, young man, don’t you?”
As Wojnicz did up his shirt buttons, he nodded in the affirmative.
“Not very advanced, to be clear. Just a touch, a little grain of something. ‘Phthisis’ means decay, did you know?” He pronounced this word, Zerfall, with distinct enjoyment, rolling the r. “But here we can deal with decay.”
“Yes, Dr. Brehmer’s method—” Wojnicz began, but the doctor impatiently stood up and waved a raised hand.
“Oh yes, Brehmer noticed that traveling to Italy with consumption makes no sense at all. Only the mountain air can really cure it. Like the air here. Have you seen?” The doctor went to the window and stood there for a while, lost in thought. “We’re in a basin,” he said, making exaggerated circles with his hand, as if wanting to drive home to his listener the nature of the phenomenon. “Beneath us there’s a large underground lake, thanks to which it’s warmer here than elsewhere. This air is rich in oxygen, but there’s no wind. Lung diseases and epidemics have never been known to the local population, would you believe it? Nobody here has ever had a lung complaint. On top of that, the altitude is within the essential range for treating lung diseases, because it does not unduly accelerate the work of the heart, which happens in places higher than nine hundred meters above sea level. Fir trees grow here, filling the air with ozone, and ozone plays a key role in renewing the blood and the entire organism. Merely breathing will stop the process of decay in your young lungs. Every breath is curative. Just imagine that with every breath you take, pure light flows into your lungs.” The doctor was looking at Wojnicz through his spectacles, which enlarged his dark eyes in an unsettling way. “And we have other attractions too. You simply have to submit, to yield to the treatment regime. Feel as you would in the army.”
