Hospital of the Transfiguration

might sound stupid, but I wouldn’t want to go all at once. It’s better to know what’s coming. But this doesn’t make sense.”

Stroking Stefan’s hand, he paused as if confused.

“We didn’t know each other well. I never had the time. Now I see that it doesn’t make any difference. The ones who hurry and the ones who take their time all end up in the same place. Just don’t have any regrets. No regrets.”

He fell silent, then added, “Never regret that you’re in one place and not another. Or that you could have done something but didn’t. Don’t believe it. You didn’t do it because you couldn’t do it. Everything makes sense when it ends. Not before. Always and everywhere, when you come down to it, are the same as never and nowhere. No regrets, remember!”

He was quiet again, breathing more deeply than before.

“That’s not what I really wanted to tell you. But my head won’t obey me anymore.”

“Father, can I get you anything? Are you taking any medicine?”

“They keep sticking me with needles,” his father said. “Don’t worry about it. You regret the life I led, don’t you? Tell me.”

“But Father.”

“It’s too late for lying now. You regretted the life I led, and you still do, I know that. There was never time. We were strangers. The thing is, I never wanted to give you up. Obviously, I didn’t love you, because that would have been… I don’t know. Stefan, are you doing all right?”

Now it was Stefan who could not find words.

“I’m not asking if you’re happy. You know if you’re happy only afterward, when it’s over. Man lives by change. Tell me, do you have a girl? Do you plan to get married?”

Something caught in Stefan’s throat. Here’s a man who’s dying, almost a stranger, and he’s thinking of me. Would I be able to do that? he wondered, but was unable to answer.

“Say something! You have a girl, then?”

Stefan shook his hanging head. His father’s eyes were blue, bloodshot, but most of all tired.

“Well. Advice doesn’t help. But let me tell you this. We Trzynieckis need women. That’s the way we are. We can’t handle things on our own. To live a clean life, a person has to be clean himself. You were always pigheaded —maybe I’m not saying it right, but you never knew how to forgive, and that’s everything. You don’t need to know anything else. I don’t know if you can learn now. But anyway, you don’t have to look for beauty or intelligence in a woman. Just tenderness. Feeling. The rest comes by itself. But without tenderness…”

He closed his eyes.

“Without tenderness it’s worth nothing. And tenderness is so easy.”

Then he added in his old, strong voice, “Forget all this if you want. Don’t listen to my advice. That’s wisdom too. But in that case don’t listen to anybody’s. Now what did I want to tell you? Oh yes, there are three envelopes in the desk.”

Stefan was stunned.

“And in the bottom drawer there’s a roll of paper with a ribbon around it. That’s the blueprint for my pneumomotor. The whole plan. Are you listening? Don’t forget. As soon as the Germans leave, take it to Frackowiak. Someone has to make a model. He’ll know how.”

“But Dad,” said Stefan. “You’re talking like you’re making a will. You’re not feeling that bad, are you?”

“I’m not feeling that good either.” He did not want comforting. “That pneumomotor is worth a fortune. Believe me. I know what I’m talking about. So take it. It would be better if you took it right now.”

With his neck outstretched he whispered, “Aunt Mela is impossible. Absolutely impossible! I can’t trust her any farther than I can throw her. Take it now. I’ll give you the key.”

He almost fell out of bed reaching for his trousers, draped over the chair. In the pocket they found—under a dirty handkerchief, a roll of wire, and a pair of pliers—a bunch of keys. His father held them up to Stefan’s face and looked for a small Wertheim key. He handed it to Stefan, who took it and went to the desk. His father dozed off again.

He woke up when Stefan came back. “Well, did you get it?”

Then he looked at Stefan sharply, as if he had just remembered something. “I was not good to your mother,” he finally said. “She doesn’t even know that I’m… I didn’t want to tell her.”

And he added, “But you, remember! Remember!”

As Stefan got ready to leave, his father asked, “Will you come back?”

“Of course, Dad. I’m not going away. I just have to go into town to take care of a few things. I’ll be back for dinner.”

His father fell back on the pillow.

Doctor Marcinkiewicz had an office of glass and white walls. There was a Solux lamp and three quartz ones, whose presence may have been connected with the resettlement of Jewish doctors in the ghetto. Every third word he said to Stefan was “Doctor,” but Stefan felt nevertheless that he was not being taken seriously. Their dislike was mutual. Marcinkiewicz gave Stefan an unadorned description of his father’s condition: really just a simple case of angina pectoris, except that the pain was weak and not radiating. The changes in coronary circulation, however, were bad news, as bad as could be. He unrolled an electrocardiogram on the polished desktop and began explaining it, but Stefan interrupted him angrily. Only later did he become polite and ask Marcinkiewicz to take good care of his father. Marcinkiewicz declined Stefan’s offer of payment, but so feebly that Stefan put some money on the desk anyway. By the time he left, it had disappeared into the drawer.

When he left the doctor’s office, Stefan went to several bookshops, looking for Gargantua and Pantagruel. It was an old favorite of his, and now that he had some money, he wanted to buy Boy’s translation. But he could not find it anywhere: times were hard for bookshops. He finally got lucky in a secondhand store. Through an old acquaintance he also picked up some textbooks that were sold only to Germans, and got a copy of the latest issue of a German scholarly journal for Pajpak. Since he now had a fairly heavy load, he decided to go home by tram. A grotesquely overcrowded tram stopped; people pressed against the sweaty windows like fish in an aquarium. He grabbed a rail outside the door with his free hand and jumped onto the step. But he felt someone grab his collar from behind and pull him down. He jumped onto the sidewalk to avoid falling, and found himself looking right into the face of a young, smooth-cheeked German who unceremoniously elbowed him out of the way. When Stefan tried to climb up after him, a second German, accompanying the first, pushed him aside even more violently.

“Mein Herr!” Stefan shouted, giving him a shove of his own in return. The second German kicked Stefan in the backside with his polished boot. The bell rang and the car moved off.

Stefan stood on the sidewalk. Several passersby had stopped. He felt terribly confused and walked away, pretending that something across the street had caught his eye. He would not wait for the next tram. The incident left him so depressed that he gave up on his idea of visiting an old friend from school. Instead he walked home through the dry, rustling leaves.

His father was sitting up in bed smacking his lips as he ate curls of scrambled egg from an aluminum pan. Stefan told him what had happened.

“Yes, that’s the way they are,” his father said. “Volk der Dichter. Well, too bad. You see what their young people are like. Until last September I used to correspond with Volliger—you remember, the firm that was interested in my automatic tie presser. Then they just stopped answering. It’s a good thing I didn’t send them the plans. They got vulgar and uncivilized. In the end we’re all getting vulgar and uncivilized.”

He suddenly leaned over and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Melania! Melaniaaa!”

Stefan was amazed, but there was a shuffling of feet and his aunt’s face appeared around the door.

“Give me a little more herring, but more onion this time. What about you, Stefan? Something to eat?”

“No.” He felt disenchanted. When he left Marcinkiewicz, he had been ready to see his father again, had felt more affectionate, but now the old man had ruined his appetite.

“Father, I really have to get back today.” He launched into a complex description of the hospital, making it clear that his responsibilities were enormous.

“Be careful, watch yourself,” said his father, looking around for a piece of herring that had slipped off his plate. He found it, ate it with a big mouthful of bread, and concluded: “Don’t get too wrapped up in things there. I don’t know what to think, after what happened in Koluchow.”