was no joking with them.
The soldiers had not searched the hospital, just walked through the wards and talked to Pajaczkowski. “The officer had a riding crop, and he struck the table in front of me,” said Pajaczkowski, pale, his eyes wide. Everyone gradually drifted away as the excitement died down. As he passed Stefan, Marglewski stopped as if to say something, but only nodded maliciously and disappeared down the corridor.
Stefan lay awake until morning. He was upset; he kept closing his eyes and reliving the brief nocturnal scene again and again. He could no longer pretend, as he had at first, that the man arrested was someone other than Woch. That large, square head was unmistakable. He groaned under the burden of responsibility he felt. He had to tell someone, had to confess the guilt that was tormenting him, so he went to see Sekulowski. It was early morning.
But the poet would not let him open his mouth. “Can’t you see I’m writing? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? ‘Take a stand’ again? Everyone does what he can. What a poet does is suffer beautifully. What about you? Are you waiting for the war to end so every Achilles in the woods can become a Cato? You’re as bad as the Furies—at least they make sense, they’re women! Leave me alone for a change!”
Brushed off, Stefan thought as he left. He wondered if it would do any good to go take a look at the substation. If there was still electricity in the hospital, somebody had to be working there. And that someone might know what had happened to Woch.
Seeking shelter from his own thoughts, Stefan walked to the farthest comer of the men’s ward. Some red spots on the floor caught his eye, but as he came closer, he saw that they were not blood.
A young schizophrenic was making a statue out of clay. Stefan watched him for a long time. The boy’s face betrayed nothing. His profile was sharply cut, yellowish, and slightly crooked, like a mobile mask. Sometimes he would close his eyes so peacefully that his eyelashes did not move, and raise his head as his fingertips fluttered like sparrows over the surface of the clay. There was a serenity to his downturned mouth. The demons had stopped tormenting him, sentences died on his lips, he could no longer communicate with strangers: he was absent. That supreme indifference which exists only in crowds or among the unconscious enabled the boy to work in solitude, as if he were in a desert. A tall angel rose from the mound of clay on the round table before him. Its wings, wide as a stricken bird’s, were somehow threatening. The long gothic face was beautiful and composed. The hands, held low as if in fear, were wringing a small child’s neck.
“What’s it called?” asked Stefan.
The boy did not answer. He wiped clay from his fingertips. Joseph spoke up from the corner; a patient was supposed to answer when a doctor talked to him.
“Go ahead and tell the doctor,” said Joseph, stepping heavily forward.
Joseph never backed down with patients—they got out of his way. But this boy did not move.
“I know you can talk. Say something or I’ll take care of that doll for you.” He moved as if he was going to tip the figure over. The boy did not flinch.
“No,” said Stefan, confused. “There’s no need for that. Joseph, please go to the supply room and fetch a tray of syringes and two ampules of scophetal. The nurse needs them.”
He wanted to make it up to the boy for the humiliation. “You know,” he said, “it’s very strange and beautiful.”
The patient stood with his shoulders hunched, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. A shadow of contempt gathered under his lower lip.
“I don’t understand it, but maybe you’ll explain it to me someday,” said Stefan, slowly shedding his role of psychiatrist.
The boy stared glassy-eyed at his clay-stained fingers.
Then, helplessly, Stefan extended his hand in the simplest of gestures.
The boy seemed terrified: he moved to the other side of the table and hid his hands behind his back. Ashamed, Stefan looked around to make sure there were no staff members in the room. Then the boy reached out suddenly and awkwardly, almost knocking over the statue, and took hold of Stefan’s hand. He let go as if it burned him. Then he turned back to the figure and took no further notice of the doctor.
Joseph came up to Stefan during rounds the next day. “Doctor, do you know what that clay is called?”
“No, what?”
“Strangling Angel.”
“What?”
Joseph repeated the name.
“Interesting,” said Stefan.
“Very interesting. Besides which, the bastard bites,” said Joseph, displaying red marks on his large hand. Stefan was awed. He knew all the orderlies’ practiced throws. Their motto was: Break a patient’s arm before you let him put a scratch on you. The boy must really have been “acting up.” And he must have got a good beating too. Despite innumerable orders and reprimands, the orderlies applied a policy of revenge behind the doctors’ backs, and patients who made nuisances of themselves were beaten peasant-style, close-in, with the most deliberately painful blows. They were hit through blankets or in the bath, so no marks would show. Stefan knew all this and wanted to order a strict ban on any mistreatment of the boy, but he could not: his authority did not extend to officially forbidden “methods.”
“You know, that boy…”
“The one with the angel?”
“Right. Be careful he doesn’t get hurt.”
Joseph was offended. He said he was careful of all the patients. Stefan took a fifty-zloty note out of his pocket. Joseph softened. He got the point. He was always careful, but now he would be extra-careful.
They were standing in the doorway. Patients wandered nearby, but they might as well have been unattended. As Joseph unobtrusively put the folded banknote away, a determination that surprised him came over Stefan, and in a voice not his own he asked, “Joseph, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the man the Germans arrested that night? You know who I mean.”
They looked at each other. Stefan’s heart pounded. Joseph seemed to be stalling. The flash of interest that had appeared in his eyes was submerged in a servile smile. “The guy missing an ear, who worked on the electricity? Woch? Did you know him, doctor?”
“I knew him,” Stefan said, feeling that he was putting himself in Joseph’s hands. The effort of carrying on the conversation made him feel faint.
An unctuous smile, more and more explicit, crept across Joseph’s stupid-cunning face. His eyes widened. “So you knew him, doctor? They say he wasn’t the one keeping that stuff in the hole. They say it was his godson, Antek. Well, who knows? But he was a fox, I’ll say that. A fox,” he repeated, as if he liked the sound of the word. “He drank with the Germans and made deals with them, until he wouldn’t give a normal person the time of day, he thought he was so important. He figured he had the German all wrapped up, but the German is a fox, too, and came at night and took him away like a chicken! Today a car came from Owsiany, and they had to make two trips, there was so much stuff. It was hidden under the coils, packed in crates like merchandise!”
“Did you see it?”
“Me? How would I see it? But other people did. They saw it, and they knew. But Woch didn’t realize. Everyone else could see it coming.”
“What did they do to him?”
“How should I know? You know the sand pit at Rudzien? Where the lake used to be? If you follow the road through the woods and then go to the right… They give you a shovel and tell you to dig a hole and stand over it. Then they get a peasant from the road to come and fill it in. They don’t like to dirty their hands.”
Even though he had supposed as much—even though he knew it could not have been any other way—Stefan felt such rage, such hatred for Joseph, that he had to close his eyes.
“What about the others?” he asked dully.
“The Posciks? Disappeared like a stone in a lake. Nobody knows anything. They must have escaped into the forest. They won’t be found in the swamps and caves. And all because they were stupid, they didn’t think ahead. They had something there—all that ammunition.” His voice dropped on the last words.
Stefan nodded, turned, and went to his room. With a steady hand he shook out a luminal tablet, thought about it, added another, washed them down with water, and dropped onto his bed with his clothes on.
