Jerzy Pilch - A Thousand Peaceful Cities

When Father and Mr. Trba decided to kill First Secretary Wadysaw Gomuka, we were in the grip of an unending heat wave, the earth was bursting at the seams, and the anguish of my youth was just beginning.

The morphinistes were living in the attic, and there was no way to bring them under control. The stairway creaked; first came the vanguard of the odors, then the odors themselves: cocoa butter and something else that I couldnt identify, but which must have been the odor of morphine and immoderation. Every morning just like everybody else they went out to sunbathe. They took along baskets of food, drinks, air mattresses, sunshades, bathing suits. Were they really no different from us terrestrials? Quite the opposite! They were radically different. Everyone else went to the real beach; everyone headed for pure radiance, grassy banks, and the babbling current. But they went in the other direction, into the depths of the deepest brush, to the very heart of the drought, right to the fuses of the still inactive machinery of conflagration. In short, everyone else went to the swimming pool or to the banks of the Vistula, but they went to the forests on Buffalo Mountain.

Theres really nothing strange here, Mr. Trba rubbed his hands venomously, theres really nothing strange. Its a well known fact that the Prince of Darkness feels A-OK in stuffy copses in the heat of July. Its a well known fact that he is mad about the sulfur hour: twelve noon. A well known fact. . a well known fact. . a well known fact.

Mr. Trba unexpectedly lost the thread of his infallible argument.

We know irrefutably, Chief, he addressed Father, we know irrefutably that they associate with the Antichrist, but we dont know the operational details, and that worries us. Of what use to them, by a billion barrels of beer, of what use to them is that Babylonian blanket?

Nobody knew why the morphinistes needed that truly Babylonian blanket, which they lugged along with them, in addition to their swimsuits, baskets, and air mattresses. The wildest expanses of unbridled speculation opened up in our puritanical heads. The blanket was great and luxuriant, like the canopy of a deployed parachute, crimson on one side, gold on the other. Crimson and gold like the outside and inside of a royal mantle, like the shimmering surfaces of two holy rivers traversing an empire, crimson like blood and gold like a suntan. There was no such princely covering in the entire house, to say nothing of the room they had rented in the attic. None of us had ever even seen such licentious bedding.

No army in the world, Mr. Trbas voice rose to a desperate pitch, no army in the world has ever strapped such monstrous plunder to its saddle. Not even the victorious Red Army. By the way, Chief, do you remember how the victorious Red Army grazed in my yard toward the end of the war? Do you remember in what satins, brocades, and cloths of gold they were wrapped?

I dont remember, Father said coldly, I dont remember, because as a soldier of the Wehrmacht I sat in Russky bondage toward the end of the war in Serpukhov, near Moscow.

Oh, thats right. I always forget, Chief, that you are basically a repatriate. Well, these krasnoarmeytsyby the way, they were an exceptionally cultured detachment; on account of their delicacy, my ward Emilia, God rest her soul, departed this world intacta. Its quite a different matter that the poor girls only chance was the confusion of war or the passage of foreign troops. In peacetime conditions her exterior was a bit too radically conspicuous. To tell the truth, I myself made some effort that she might be granted knowledge of the animal pleasures of touch on this earth. But, as God is my witness, it was impossible to ignore reality to that degree. I suffer because of this, and I reproach myself to this day. Perhaps I should have shown greater generosity, concentrated more, focused on those rare aspects of her corporality that were acceptable. . May the earth be light upon her. Or rather, may it weigh just as much as he whose weight she was never to feel. . So, Chief, those krasnoarmeytsy, who were grazing in my yard, carried off entire armfuls of down comforters, feather beds, and silk bedspreads from the Presidential Castle, but not even they had such a blanket. What would you say, Chief, to the phrase: Not even the victorious Red Army had a blanket like the one the morphinistes have? What would you say?

A good phrase, and worthy of reward, said Father, whose habit it was to reward Mr. Trbas more artful sentences with a shot of blackthorn vodka, and he approached the sideboard, took out a bottle, and poured a shot of blackthorn vodka. Then he raised the overflowing glass, glanced at the swaying phantoms of the addicts who were caught in the oily drink, and said skeptically: But will you like it, will you like it, Mr. Trba?

There is no way, Chief, no way to like it, Mr. Trbas voice broke, melting like an October frost. After all, you know, Chief, that I dont drink because I like it; rather, I drink in order to intensify existence.

Without a word Father gave Mr. Trba the glass, and he poured its contents in one lightning-fast draught into his broadly gaping mouth. Not one muscle trembled in his face, neither eye flickered, no sigh of relief or of delight was heard. In making room in his entrails for the blackthorn vodka, Mr. Trba froze and stood motionless. He became like an object, a vessel, a jug that although it doesnt see, hear, or feel desires to be filled.

Not even the Red Army had a blanket like the one the morphinistes had. But what use did they have for such a lair in 100-degree heat? Why did they take that blanket to the forests on Buffalo Mountain? Probably in order to make a bed with it in a forest clearing, for it was truly as big and as fecund as a forest clearing. Whom did they cover there in the depths of the backwoods? What canopy bed, and whose, stood there among the spruces and the firs? What terrible entanglements must have taken place under that blanket? Or even on top of it?

Father didnt give any major signs, but his gradually growing irascibility revealed that he too was plagued by these fundamental riddles. Mr. Trba dropped by more and more frequently. He seemed inconceivably! not to care about a reward; he didnt apply himself to the declaiming of phrases; he didnt even attempt to maintain a semblance of disinterest. He gaped without embarrassment. His glance constantly ran up and down the stairs over which the morphinistes carried the blanket that blocked out the entire world. Even Mother, eternally occupied with putting her correspondence with the bishop in order, lifted her head from the postcard-strewn desk and, I have to admit, stared without reproach at those two dazzling witches. Their glances burned red-hot, like undying infernos; their venomously twisted mouths were ready to whisper a curse; their sulfurous skin was ready to explode at any moment.

You just wanted one of them to be a blonde, the other a brunette; one short, the other tall; one scrawny, the other massive. You just wanted this sort of fundamental contrast. But no, they were as similar to each other as badly cast actresses: both tall, slender, raw-boned, grey-eyed; both had hair cut short and dyed red in the same fashion; both had skin that was oily to the same degree, but that slight defect was so noticeable in its doubling that it must have given rise to a sort of desperate aggression in their souls.

That summer I was chasing after the angel of my first love, and I didnt really pay much attention to them. I didnt pay attention to much of anything. Still, the mystery of their blanket, unclean like Sodom and Gomorrah, caught even my attention. One day, I set out to follow them. I penetrated through thickets that were as stuffy as the Sahara. I breathed in the smell of the earth, which was as dry as the moon. The crimson-gold panache disappeared from my sight time and again. I parted the branches. I crept through fir-needle brush that was as hot as chicken-noodle soup. But when I surmised, judging by the traces left and the ruts furrowed out, that