“What happened?” Stefan asked, recognizing the name.
“Haven’t you heard?” asked his father, wiping his plate with bread. “There’s an insane asylum there,” he said, glancing obliquely at his son to make sure he hadn’t offended him.
“Yes, it’s a small private hospital. So what happened?”
“The Germans took it over and turned it into a military hospital. All the lunatics—I mean patients—were deported. To the camps, they say.”
“What are you talking about?” exclaimed Stefan, incredulous. The latest German treatise on therapy for paranoia, printed since the outbreak of the war, was in his briefcase.
“I don’t know, but that’s what they say. Oh, Stefan, I forgot! I meant to tell you right away. Uncle Anzelm is angry at us.”
“So?” Stefan said. He didn’t care.
“He says you’ve been living right there in Ksawery’s backyard for the better part of a year, and you haven’t gone to visit him once.”
“Then Uncle Ksawery ought to be angry, not Anzelm.”
“You know how Anzelm is. Let’s not get him going. You could stop in there someday. Ksawery likes you, he really does.”
“Fine, Father. I will.”
By the time Stefan was ready to leave, his father’s mind was on his latest inventions: soy caviar and cutlets made from leaves.
“Chlorophyll is very healthy. Just think, some trees live for six hundred years. There’s no meat in them at all, but let me tell you, with my extract these cutlets are delicious. Too bad I ate the last ones yesterday. When that stupid Melania sent you the telegram.”
Stefan learned that the telegram had been prompted by a sudden deterioration of relations between his father and his aunt, who had decided to leave. But they made up before Stefan arrived.
“I’ll give you a jar of my caviar. You know how it’s made? First you boil the soy, then color it with carbon
“The same extract as in the cutlets?” asked Stefan, his expression serious.
“Of course not! A different one—special—and you use olive oil for flavor. A Jew was going to get me a whole barrel, but they stuck him in a camp.”
Stefan kissed his father’s hand and was about to leave.
“Wait, wait, I haven’t told you about the cutlets.”
The old man is completely senile, thought Stefan, with some tenderness, but without a trace of the morning’s emotion.
Stefan went to the station to go back to the asylum. But it was impossible: the crowd and the turmoil were horrendous. People crawled like bugs through the cars, while a bearded giant barricaded in a toilet pulled bulging suitcases in one after another. People even clambered on the roof. Stefan was still not used to traveling that way. He tried in vain to get into the car by explaining that he had to get to Bierzyniec. He was told to run along behind the train. He was ready to give up and go home to his father’s when somebody tugged at his sleeve. A stranger in a stained cap and a coat sewn from a plaid blanket. “Are you going to Bierzyniec?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have a platzkart?”
“No.”
“We can go together, but it’ll cost you.”
“Fair enough,” Stefan said. The stranger disappeared into the crowd and returned a moment later clutching a conductor by the elbow.
“You give him a hundred,” he said to Stefan. Stefan paid, and the conductor opened a notebook, adding the banknote to a stack of others. He wet his finger, rubbed his pocket flap, and pulled out a key. They followed him as he crawled under the car to the other side of the train and led them to a tiny compartment. “Have a good trip,” said the conductor politely, stroking his mustache and saluting.
“Thanks very much,” said Stefan, but his traveling companion suddenly lost interest in him and turned to the window. The man’s face was not so much old as desolate, with dark skin and a thin, sunken mouth. When he took off his coat and hung it up, Stefan saw that he had large, heavy hands with fingers that looked as though they were used to gripping angular objects. His fingernails were thick and dark, like pieces of a nutshell. He pulled his cap down over his eyes and sat in the corner. The train began to move. Two more passengers could have fit into their compartment, which did not endear them to the people jammed in the corridor. Their faces were twisted into scowls. Against the glass stood an elegant man with a delicate, plump face that seemed eternally moist. He rattled the handle and knocked loudly several times. Finally he started to shout, and when his voice failed to carry through the glass, he took out a document with a German stamp and pressed it to the glass.
“Open up right now,” he roared.
For a while Stefan’s companion pretended not to hear anything, then he leaped to his feet and pounded back on the glass: “Shut up! This is a crew compartment, asshole!”
The elegant man mouthed something to save face and withdrew. The rest of the trip passed without incident. When they reached the hills approaching Bierzyniec, the stranger stood up and put on his coat. When its folds bumped the wooden partition, they made a hollow sound as if there was metal inside. The train came around the turn to the empty platform and the brakes shrieked. Stefan and the stranger jumped out as the locomotive rounded the bend, huffing to get up steam for the hill. They slipped through a gap in the iron barrier. A sentimental autumn landscape unfolded behind the station. Stefan blinked up at the sun.
The stranger walked along beside him. They went through the town and turned on to the road that ran through the gorge. The stranger seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“Are you going to the asylum?” Stefan asked, curious.
For a moment the stranger did not reply. Then he said, “No, I just want to get some fresh air.”
They walked on for a few hundred meters. At the head of the gorge, where the trees still blocked the view of the little brick building, something occurred to Stefan. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, stopping.
The stranger also stopped and looked at him.
“You wouldn’t by any chance be going to the substation? Don’t say anything, but, well—please don’t go there!”
The stranger watched him warily, neither joking nor disbelieving; the grimace of a half-smile was on his lips and his eyes were wide and unblinking. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move either.
“There are Germans there,” Stefan said quickly, his voice hushed. “Don’t go there. They took Woch away. He was arrested. They probably…” He broke off.
“Who are you?” asked the stranger. His face had turned gray as a stone. He put his hand in his pocket, and the hint of a smile that remained on his face became an empty twist of his mouth.
“I’m a doctor at the asylum. I knew him.” He could not go on.
“There are German at the substation?” asked the stranger. He spoke like a man carrying a heavy weight. “Well, it’s none of my business,” he added slowly. He was clearly mulling something over. Then he gave a start and leaned so close that Stefan could feel his breath. “What about the others?”
“The Posciks?” Stefan caught on eagerly. “They got away. The Germans didn’t get them. They’re in the woods, with the partisans. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
The stranger looked around, grabbed Stefan’s hand and gave it a short painful squeeze, and walked straight ahead.
Before he reached the turn, he climbed the hill alongside the road and disappeared into the trees, Stefan took a deep breath and started up the hill toward the hospital. When he neared the stone arch, he turned his head and looked back, down into the woods, searching for his traveling companion. At first he was fooled by the tree trunks that showed among the bright yellow and reddish leaves. Then he spotted him. The stranger was far away, standing still, black against the background of the landscape. But only for an instant: he vanished among the trees.
Pajaczkowski stood before the door of the men’s wing, a rare sight in the yard. Father Niezgloba was with him. The priest had been feeling well for several weeks and could have returned to his pastoral duties, but his substitute from the diocese would be at his parish until the end of the year. Besides, he admitted that he had no
