the door shut behind him and stood, tall, in the open. The rain was coming down harder.
“What can you do?” he said finally, shrugging.
He walked away from the house. Stefan and Nosilewska followed. There was a thatched shed in the yard. The man turned the simple latch on the door. The inside smelled of old hay and aromatic dust that tickled the nose.
“Here,” said the peasant. He paused for a moment and added, “You can sleep on the hay. But don’t crush the bundles.”
“Thank you very much,” said Stefan. “Will you take something after all?”
He tried to press a banknote into the peasant’s hand.
“That won’t stop a bullet,” the peasant said dryly. “What can you do?” he said again, more quietly.
“Thank you,” Stefan repeated helplessly.
The peasant stood there for another moment, then said, “Good night.” He left, turning the latch.
Stefan was standing just inside the door. He stretched out a hand like a blind man: he always had trouble finding his way in darkness. Nosilewska shuffled about on the straw. He took off the cold, heavy jacket that had stuck to his back; water dripped off it. He would have liked to have taken off his trousers too. He bumped into some sort of pole and almost fell over, but steadied himself on his suitcase. Then he remembered that he had a flashlight inside. He pawed at the lock. Along with the flashlight he found a piece of chocolate. Setting the light on the ground, he looked in his pockets for Sekulowski’s papers. Nosilewska scattered straw on the dirt floor and covered it with a blanket. Stefan sat down on the blanket’s edge and unrolled the sheets of paper. The first one contained several words. The handwriting fluttered between the ruled lines as if caught in a net. At the top was Sekulowski’s name, and below it the title; “My World.” Stefan turned the sheet over. It was blank. So was the next one. White and empty every one.
“Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing.”
A fear so powerful came over him that he sought Nosilewska’s gaze. She sat bent over, the plaid blanket draped over her. From under it she tossed out her blouse, skirt, and underwear, all heavy with moisture.
“Empty,” Stefan repeated. He wanted to say something, but it came out a hoarse groan.
“Come here.”
He looked at her. Her hands brushed back the dark waves of her hair.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t think. That boy. But Sekulowski… It was Staszek who…”
“Come here,” she repeated, gently, almost sleepily. He looked at her in wonder. Extending her arms from under the blanket, she stroked him like a child. He leaned against her.
“I’m bankrupt,” he said. “Like my father.”
She held him and stroked his head.
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered. “Don’t think about anything.”
He felt her breasts and her hands against his face. The only light came from the flicker of the fading flashlight, which had rolled into the hay. Shadows laced its feeble illumination. He could hear the slow, peaceful rhythm of her heart, which spoke to him in the old language, the language he understood best. He was still wondering at that when softly, without breathing, she kissed him on the mouth.
Darkness covered them. Hay crunched under the fuzzy blanket and the woman gave him pleasure, but not in the usual way. At every instant she controlled herself and she controlled him. Later, exhausted, holding her beautiful body without a trace of passion but with all the force of despair, he cried on her breast. When he calmed down, he saw that she was lying on her back, slightly above him, and her face, too, was so calm in the last light. He dared not ask if she loved him. To offer yourself was like giving a stranger your last bit of food: it was more than love. It suddenly occurred to him that he knew nothing about her; he could not even remember her first name.
“Listen,” he whispered quietly.
But she put her hand over his mouth, gently yet decisively. She picked up the edge of the blanket and wiped away his tears, kissing him lightly on the cheek.
Then even his curiosity faded, and in the arms of this unfamiliar woman he became, for an instant, as empty and blank as at the moment of his birth.
Books by Stanislaw Lem available in Harvest/HBJ paperback editions from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by Stanislaw Lem
English translation copyright © 1988
by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Orlando, Florida 32887.
Library of Congress Catalaging-in-Publication Data
Lem, Stanislaw.
[Szpital przemienienia. English]
Hospital of the Transfiguration/Stanislaw Lem; translated from the Polish by William Brand.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Translation of: Szpital przemienienia.
“A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
ISBN 0-15-642176-3 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PG7158.LL39S913 1988
891.8’537-dc19 87-33659
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