“In spite of everything, I have to say I did. God knows how much abnormality there is in genius sometimes, and vice versa.”
“So. Sekulowski the genius!” said Stefan, his feelings hurt as if he were the one being judged.
“I’ll give you his book. You haven’t read
“No.”
“It’ll knock you out.”
At that Staszek left Stefan, who realized that he was standing in front of his own door. He went inside to look for some piramidon in his drawer. He had a pounding headache.
During evening rounds, Stefan tried in vain to avoid the withered blonde. She pounced on him. He took her to Nosilewska’s office.
“Doctor, I want to tell you everything from the beginning,” she said, nervously wringing her emaciated fingers. “I was caught with lard on me. So I acted mad, because I was afraid they’d send me to a camp. But this is worse than a camp. I’m afraid of all these lunatics.”
Stefan asked her a series of questions.
“What’s your name?
“What’s the difference between a priest and a nun?
“What are windows for?
“What do you do in church?”
Her answers suggested that she was indeed completely normal.
“How did you manage to convince them?”
“Well, I have a sister-in-law at John the Divine’s, and I saw and heard. I pretend to talk to somebody who’s not there, I pretend to see him, and then the fun starts.”
“What am I supposed to do with you?”
“Let me out of here.” She reached out her hands to him.
“It’s not that simple, my dear lady. You’ll have to spend some time under observation.”
“How much time, doctor? Oh, why did I do it?”
“You wouldn’t be any better off in a camp.”
“But I can’t stand being with that woman who messes herself, doctor. Please. My husband will show his gratitude.”
“None of that,” Stefan said with professional indignation. Now he had hit upon the right tone. “I’ll have you transferred to the other room, where they’re more peaceful. You can go now.”
“It doesn’t even matter anymore now. They squeal and scream and sing and roll their eyes, and I’m afraid I’ll go crazy too.”
Over the next few days, Stefan got the hang of how to write a case history without thinking about it, stringing a few hackneyed phrases together. Almost everyone else did the same. He also figured Rygier out. The psychiatrist was undoubtedly an educated man, but his intelligence was like a Japanese garden: make-believe bridges and paths, very beautiful but quite narrow and purposeless. His understanding ran in grooves. The elements of his knowledge were cemented to each other so that he could use them only as if they were entries in a textbook.
After a week, Stefan no longer found the ward so revolting. Poor women, he thought, but some of them, especially the maniacs, prided themselves on a familiarity with the saints that went beyond the intent of church dogma.
Pajaczkowski’s nameday fell on Sunday. The boss appeared in a freshly pressed coat, his sparse beard carefully combed. He blinked placidly behind his glasses like an old bird, as a woman schizophrenic from the convalescent wing recited a poem in his honor. Then an alcoholic sang. Last but not least was a choir of psychopaths, but they ruined the festivities by grabbing the old man and tossing him up toward the ceiling, above a net of upraised hands. With some effort, the old man was rescued from the patients. The doctors then formed up into a procession as in a cloister—the abbot at the front, the brothers behind—and went into the men’s ward, where a hypochondriac who was sure he had cancer made a speech, interrupted by three paralytics who suddenly broke into song—“The poor man died in an army hospital”—and could not be convinced to stop. Later there was a modest meal in the attic of the doctors’ building, and Pajpak tried to conclude the evening with a patriotic speech. It did not come off. The little old man’s head started trembling, he cried into his glass, spilled cumin-flavored vodka all over the table, and finally, to everyone’s relief, sat down.
DOCTOR ANGELICUS
Webs of intrigue were spread through the hospital, discreetly awaiting any newcomer’s first misstep. Someone was trying to oust Pajaczkowski, weaving rumors about an imminent change of directors, rejoicing in every conflict, but Stefan observed this landscape of dwarfed personalities like someone staring into an aquarium, interested but detached.
He was drawn to the company of Sekulowski. They always parted amiably, but it annoyed Stefan that the poet felt so at home in his world of phantoms. Sekulowski treated him as no more than a sparring partner, regarding his own mind as the measure of all things.
Reports of mass arrests in Warsaw came in. There were rumors of the hurried creation of ghettos. Filtered through the hospital walls, however, such stories sounded misty and implausible. Many veterans of the September campaign who had temporarily lost their mental bearings during the fighting were now leaving the asylum. This made things slightly roomier; in some of the wards patients had been sleeping two and three to a bed.
But problems with provisions—especially medicines—were growing. Pajpak considered the problem carefully and then issued the most far-reaching measures of economy. Scopolamine, morphine, barbiturates, and even bromine were placed under lock and key. Insulin, which had been used for shock therapy, was replaced by cardiazol, and what was left of that was doled out sparingly. Statistics were vague. No clear trend in the census of the community of the mad had yet emerged from the oscillating figures. Numbers in some classifications shrank, others stagnated or rose. It was a time of indecision.
April arrived. Days of bright rain and greenery were interrupted by snowy spells that seemed to have been borrowed from December. Stefan woke early one Sunday with an emphatic sun dyeing his dreams purple through his eyelids. He looked out the window. The view was like a great painter’s sketch with a broad brush, and new variations of the same sketch followed, each containing fresh color and detail. Fleece-like fog crept through the long valley between ridges like the backs of sleeping animals, and black brushstrokes of branches were covered in the swell. Dark irregular shapes showed through the fog here and there, as if the brush had slipped. Then a trace of gold filtered into the white from above, there was an unsettled moment when white spirals appeared and drifted out to become a cloud on the horizon that soon thinned and receded until day shined through as pure as a bare chestnut.
Stefan went out for a walk. He left the road. Every scrap of ground was covered with green: it seethed in the ditches and spurted from beneath stones; blossoms were bursting, covering the distant trees in delicate celadon clouds. Exposed to the warm breeze, he tramped up a hill and reached its ridge through last year’s dry, rustling grass. The fields lay below like slightly soiled stripes in a peasant costume. Water droplets, blue and white, shimmered on every stalk, each one holding fragments of the image of the world. The distant forest angled toward the horizon like an underwater silver sculpture. The tops of trees on the slope below stood out against the sky, brown constellations of sticky buds. He walked in their direction. A mass of bushes blocked his way, and as he detoured around it, he heard heavy breathing.
He drew close to an entangled thicket. Sekulowski was kneeling inside it. Stefan could barely hear his laugh, but it made his skin crawl.
“Come here, doctor,” the poet said without looking up.
Stefan pushed through the branches. In the middle was a circular clearing. Sekulowski was looking at a small mound of earth where thin files of ants moved around a reddish earthworm.
Stefan said nothing. Sekulowski looked him up and down, then stood up and commented, “This is only a model.”
He took Stefan by the arm and led him out of the thicket. The hospital was gray and small in the distance.
