arising out of the multitude of atoms. It was something like one in a trillion. And that those cells should come together in however many billions you need to make up the body of a living human being! Every one of us is a lottery ticket that hit the jackpot: a few dozen years of life, what fun! In a world of superheated gases, nebulae spiraling to whiteness, and the cosmic absolute zero, suddenly a protein pops up, some greasy jelly that immediately tends to decompose into a puff of bacteria and decay. A hundred thousand subterfuges sustain this weird field of energy, which divides matter into order and chaos. A node of space crawls across an empty landscape. And why? Haven’t you ever wondered why there are clouds and trees, golden-brown autumn and gray winter, why the scenery changes through the seasons, why the beauty of it all strikes us like a hammer-blow? Why does it happen that way? By rights we should all be black interstellar dust, shreds of the Magellanic Cloud. The normal state of things is the roaring of the stars, showers of meteors, vacuum, darkness, and death.”
He leaned back on his pillow exhausted and said in a deep, low voice:
Only the dead know the tunes
The live world dances to.
“What does literature mean to you, then?” Stefan dared to ask after a long pause.
“For the reader it is an attempt to escape. For the creator, an attempt at redemption.”
“You’re a mystic…” Stefan was not doing well in this conversation: he couldn’t play his best cards, because Sekulowski would snort and drop down from infinity.
“A mystic? Who told you that? Here in Poland you publish four poems and they pin a little card on you with a label that sticks beyond your death: ‘subtle lyricist,’ ‘stylist,’ ‘vitalist.’ Critics—or critins, as I sometimes call them— are the physicians of literature: they make wrong diagnoses just like you, and in just the same way they know how things ought to be but they can’t do anything. So they’ve mysticized me now, have they? Well, one more weirdness to add to the million others: though possessing brains, they can think with their intestines.”
“This conversation is slightly one-sided,” Stefan said, deciding to rally his forces for a frontal attack to conquer Sekulowski. He had completely forgotten about medicine. “Instead of a dialogue you’re having a double monologue with yourself. I do know your work. Somewhere you propose the existence of a consciousness different from the ‘Consciousness of Being.’ You describe the nonexistent worlds of Riemann. But as you say yourself, the world that surrounds us is interesting enough. Why do you write so little about it?”
“The world that surrounds us? Oh, so you think I dream up worlds? But you have no doubt about the identity of the world that surrounds—for example, the one you’re sitting at the center of, on that white chair?”
Stefan thought and said, “For the most part, no.”
Sekulowski heard only the “no,” which was all he needed.
“I see a different world. Recently Doctor Krzeczotek let me look into a microscope. As he later told me, in it he saw pink buffering epithelia, among which appeared, in a palisade configuration, dark diphtherial corynebacteria of the characteristic spadiceous configuration. Do I have it right?”
Staszek nodded.
“I saw an archipelago of brown islands and coral atolls in a sky-blue sea with pink icebergs drifting on a trembling, stream.”
“Those atolls were the bacteria,” Staszek remarked.
“Yes, but I didn’t see bacteria. So where is our common world? When you look at a book, do you see the same thing as a bookbinder?”
“So you doubt even the possibility of communication with another person?”
“This discussion is too academic. All I will admit is that I do exaggerate certain lines in my sketch of the world, and that the attempt to be consistent can lead to inconsistency. Nothing more.”
“Logical absurdity, in other words? That is a possibility, but I don’t know why…”
“Each of us is a possibility, one of many, that has emerged from necessity,” Sekulowski interrupted, and Stefan recalled an idea that had come to him in solitude one day. He voiced it, thinking it might be impressive.
“Did you ever think, ‘I, who was once one sperm and one egg’?”
“That’s interesting. Do you mind if I make a note of it? Unless, of course, you’re gathering your own literary material?” Sekulowski asked. Stefan said nothing, feeling robbed but unable to make a formal protest. The poet wrote several words in a large, sloping hand on a sheet of paper he took from a book. The book was Joyce’s
“You have been speaking, gentlemen, about consistency and its consequence,” said Staszek, who had been silent until now. “What do you have to say about the Germans? The consequence of their ideology would be the biological annihilation of our nation.”
“Politicians are too stupid for us to be able to predict their actions through reason,” answered Sekulowski as he carefully replaced the cap of his green and amber Pelikan pen. “But in this case your hypothesis cannot be ruled out.”
“What should be done, then?”
“Play the flute, collect butterflies,” retorted Sekulowski, who now seemed bored with the conversation. “We achieve our freedom in various ways. Some do it at the expense of others, which is ugly, but effective. Others try to find cracks in the situation through which they can escape. We should not be afraid of the word ‘madness.’ Let me tell you that I can perform acts that seem mad in order to manifest my freedom.”
“Such as?” asked Stefan, although he thought that Staszek, whom he glimpsed out of the comer of his eye, was making some sort of warning gesture.
“For example,” said Sekulowski amiably, at which he wrinkled his face, opened his eyes wide, and bellowed through distended lips like a cow. Stefan turned red. Staszek glanced off to the side with a grimace that bore the hint of a smile.
“
Stefan suddenly regretted his effort. Why cast these pearls before swine?
“This has nothing to do with genuine madness,” Sekulowski said. “It was only a small demonstration. We should expand our potential, and not only toward the normal. We should also look for ways out of the situation that others don’t notice.”
“How about in front of a firing squad?” Stefan asked drily, but with inward passion.
“There it may be possible to distinguish oneself from the animals in the manner of meeting death. What would you do in such a situation, doctor?”
“Well, I’d… Stefan did not know what to say. Until then he felt that the words had been sliding off his tongue automatically, but now an emptiness filled his mouth. After a long pause he croaked, “It seems to me that we are marginal. This whole hospital—it isn’t a typical phenomenon. The atypical made typical.” His formulation cheered him. “The Germans, the war, the defeat, here it’s all felt very indirectly. At most, as a distant echo.”
“A yard full of wrecks, is that it? While undamaged ships sail the seas,” said Sekulowski, looking up at the ceiling. “You, gentlemen, try to mend the works of the Creator, who has botched more than one immortal soul.”
He got up from the bed and paced the room, loudly clearing his throat several times as though tuning his voice.
“Is there anything else I can demonstrate for you, gracious audience?” he asked, standing in the center of the room with his arms crossed. His face lit up. “It’s coming,” he whispered. He leaned forward slightly, looking up so intently that they all froze, drawn into a vortex of strange anticipation. When the tension became unbearable, the poet began to speak:
Place gently on my grave a ribboned spray
Of pearly worms. Let those worms crawl
Through my skull, a decaying ballet
Of ptomaine, raw flesh whitening, that’s all.
Then he bowed and turned toward the window, as if he could no longer see them.
“I thought I told you…” Staszek began as soon as they left.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You provoked him. You have to speak to him gently, and you put the pedal to the floor right away. You were more concerned with being right than with listening to him.”
“Did you like that poem?”
