Vyhľadávanie
When the sun is setting and the wind is blowing and I can observe, then, no matter where I am, I remember my native village. By the time the sun is setting, decent people have put most of their responsibilities behind them and are getting ready to comfortably nap before they fall asleep. All these people who have put their day’s work behind them are no longer angry as they were in the morning, no longer in rage, and the first star of the East, or maybe the West, releases their metaphysical moods. My father was like that.
Those, whose father did not die, would write the preceding sentence without stopping at the verb was. When I let this sentence run by my ears, it was clear to me right away that I shouldn’t have mentioned my father in this context, since I still think about him with pain, as he died quite recently, not even a year ago.
The sun oppressed and comforted me. From the internal medicine ward of the hospital where I stayed I saw the sun set behind a hill, sinking into the clouds above Mare Mountain. I live behind Mare Mountain, on its northern slope. But I wasn’t too keen to get back to my native village. I felt comfortable in the hospital, warm and good. If I wanted, I could sit on my bed and read, I could go out into the hall and then, if I got tired of it, I could lie down and take a nap. I was really surprised when they told me that I could go home. I did not feel like it. I would have to go back and live and work and quarrel with my family again. But I did not let on that I was disappointed, cleared the paper work, set out for the bus, without even asking if it was all right for me to walk, or wait for the ambulance.
It was the end of October. I was walking through the city that seemed wet and cold, full of bad people and scoundrels.
It’s true that I was comforted by the thought that I was still not ready to work and would be able to rest at home. But as I thought about it more, on my way to the district doctor to whom I had to report, I felt in my mind a tiny, barely perceptible question mark that symbolized my distaste for the home to which I was to return. Included was, to be sure, also my revulsion for the environment that surrounded me—the neighbours who could barely tolerate me and in the wider context also the entire sprawling and muddy village full of unknown newcomers and a dirty pub.
In the doctor’s waiting room I met a few colleagues. One had flu and the other was coming from a hospital. During our conversation, because of the common theme, I felt a bit refreshed and even cheered up a little: my friends had serious health problems. What ailed me seemed nothing to them, they managed to overcome that a long time ago. Maybe I was content also because we chatted in the presence of a new female colleague whom they introduced to me. (She had bad luck. She fell ill with flu just a week after she had started her new job.)
As I walked out of the doctor’s office into the darkness of the cold street, I began to miss sadly my warm hospital, where the nurses were always around and one didn’t have to worry about a thing. Just recently I was unable to appreciate how nice it was that we could sit on our beds, tell each other endless stories and philosophize. My friends from neighbouring beds expressed themselves accordingly: they said they no longer felt like staying in the hospital, because once you break a good room, you won’t get used to a newcomer. (And indeed, as soon as I got dressed, the nurse brought a new patient in. My friends were looking at me sadly, shaking their heads, letting me know that the new guy was probably some sort of a dork.)
At home I sat in the corner, taking a nap. My wife studied a brochure on the Diet for Ulcer Patients, so she could prepare some diet supper. But the book pleased her so much with its theoretical introduction that she completely forgot why it was she picked it up in the first place.
She was surprised when I suddenly polished off a bowl of tripe soup, chased it with a glass of beer and, swallowing a pill, covered myself in bed. I forgot for a while the difficult day. I was happy that I managed to do everything I needed to do. Tomorrow—I said to myself—I would spend the whole day in bed and wouldn’t pay attention to anything. I am still sick and I can’t run around. The soup soon started to put pressure on my stomach, but I decided not to do anything about it. I lay on my left side in a fetal position, trying to think about the pleasant autumnal days I have spent in the hospital looking out of the window. (I had a view of the entire western section of Bratislava, so I could see how the trolley buses left their garage, how the ambulance forced the right of way at the traffic lights with its siren and how, some time later, it appeared below the windows of the hospital. I saw the trains come out of the tunnel, and saw other trains go into the tunnel. And I saw how, closer to the windows, life went on in some other parts of the city.)
The days were warm, dry, and windy in the morning, with a bit of frost that decorated the copper roofs and the parked cars for a few hours with a silver covering. I was getting stronger every day: the level of the corpuscles reached the norm. This made my anxiety and low energy go away. I could read again and talk to other patients. The other patients, heart cases, felt completely differently about their lives and seemed to think that I was too spoiled and not seriously ill at all. Those who inherited a heart problem felt that they were more seriously ill than those who inherited laziness and contemplative frame of mind and therefore were spoiled…
Doctors were telling me that my health was entirely in my hands. That wasn’t completely right. One doesn’t get angry for any reason. I never got angry in the hospital, and if, then only for a little while. (Incidentally, I inherited that anger from my father. He, the poor man, was angry almost till the last minute of his life. His head was clear and fresh and he had a good reason to be angry. He was always surrounded by noise and shouting and nobody believed that he was seriously ill, since only I knew that he had cancer, and so I was the only one who could feel sorry for him. I was afraid to tell the others in case my father would find out. He was certain that his illness was a passing abdominal problem. After all, a few months before coming down with it he unloaded three tons of coal into my barn. He was sixty-nine. After he turned seventy, he suddenly started to lose weight, was operated twice, and finally died on August 29, 1979 at quarter to six on Wednesday morning. We were just about to take him to the hospital where they would give him an infusion, or possibly a transfusion of blood and morphine, and it would give him comfort for a while so maybe he would find it easier to say good-bye to the world. In the hospital I found a piece of paper in a book, Arabian Nights, on a page dealing with two smart alecks who were cheating each other and on this paper were some lottery numbers, then the winning numbers and a note scribbled in my father’s hand: “Assholes.” Apparently he didn’t win. I felt so bad seeing his handwriting and that sigh, that anger at something that prevented him to win. And it didn’t look at all trite—now I see that even when I die many will pardon my failures as I do pardon my father’s. Only those who don’t like me will not pardon me.)
It’s not all in our hands. Why are we kidding ourselves? Is our height in our hands? Oh, I don’t feel like philosophizing…
The day after my return from the hospital, after I had a good sleep, I stepped outside my house in my pajamas to catch a breath of morning wind. The wind was pushing big clouds from the south, uncovering the sun for a while—as it happens in such days—and the sun stood over the Mare Mountain, over the hill that I saw in the hospital from the other side. It was seven degrees Celsius, warming up.
Dogs came out of their doghouse and tried to jump up to lick me. I pushed their heads away, threatening them with my foot not to attempt to jump. Uru moved a step away and jumped in the air, while Shah moved his tail so fast he was wobbling. They were happy, greeting me, they too had a good sleep. I opened the gate and let them into the garden. Then I went in and slowly, constantly thinking of injustice caused to me in the hospital, put on my clothes. My wife was away, in the city, shopping, or window-shopping. In the cupboard I found powder milk with honey. So I mixed two cups of it and looking out of the window, I ate this tasty white mixture. Then I took my two-milligram pill of DIAZEPAM sedative, chased it with water and then, contrite like a thief who stole fruit and suddenly regretted it all, I sat down by my bed. Then I made myself another batch of honeyed powder milk mixture. It was really tasty. And I chased it with water again. I can’t have enough of water ever since I was forbidden to drink (or eat) for three days. When I was washing myself, the nurse at the resuscitation station kept watching lest I take a drink from the washbasin. To prevent that, she let me know that other patients were known to vomit and do all the rest in the washbasin. The washing of the face itself was so beautiful like bathing in nature after a sweltering hot day; it was something awesome.
When I had my fill of nature, I sat down by my electric heater and began to count my money. In my saving book, I had twenty thousand one hundred and twenty five crowns; those hundred and twenty five crowns being the interest. I reflected for a while whether my saving book was well hidden, whether it wouldn’t be shrewd to note the account number somewhere, in case it gets suddenly lost… In my wallet I found three five hundred-crown banknotes and three hundred crown in ten- and twenty-crown notes. In another wallet, a gift of Ewa Maria from Poland (the wallet itself came from China, but was bought in France, where the Pole often traveled), which I fixed when it fell apart, was change: ten ten-haller coins, two five-haller coins and one five-crown coin.
Translation by Peter Petro
