As far as you know, history is a set of fictions giving birth to facts that harden over time

into truths of faith and – by extension – into slaughter. That’s why you never took seriously

the frontline stories, all the secret glosses that erupted years later into drunken brawls

among the veterans, those numb old men sitting on benches outside the apartment block

in piss-soaked pants. And yet, there were moments when you’d sit down in awe, because something suddenly seemed beyond your comprehension, beyond the language of complaints and megalomania, when one man after another suddenly fell silent, unable to shake off

a memory and rejoin the living, like your father, a victim of the past that bore nothing

besides you, a son led by a firm hand straight to the threshold of tomorrow, which, he’d say, needs neither weaklings nor tears. You’re getting better and better at not being one,

but your aloofness and indifference triumph. You leave autarky behind on the bench

and fly onward, longing for the collective. Miracles have happened, when a corpse came

to life, rose from the bench, ran after the bus, and shouted something, shaking his fist

in the air, without telling Nobody.

Your mother’s steadfast faith, which she communicates in morning and evening

communiques, sticks out like a sore thumb in the working-class neighbourhood. You wonder when she actually eats. Abnormal fasting, mortification in every season, despair over

the coal car and the dishes – they begin to take on the straightforward manner with which

she answers every sensitive question about her health. Everything is always fine,

you never hear complaints, it’s only her hunched figure by the altar that betrays

exhaustion. Wearing black flats, she dozes off during the elevation, always a little

short of time, thumbs her missal, clutching a breviary under her right arm. You adore

the delicate pages, vellum as gentle as a zephyr, the force of the words from which she has fashioned herself for every occasion. Friday, fun day. All that’s true accumulates

in her pancreas. The pain becomes more frequent; she feels hyperacidity. She changes colour.

She transforms into a tangerine she’s never eaten. You know all this but do nothing.

Your tiny mother has fallen into a rut, rides on the conveyor belt, departs in a train, slides

silently across the empyrean board, becoming a skat card, a Prussian pattern torn in half.

Having caught the volunteering bug, you join in the construction of a swimming pool.

A small reservoir of great joys. You’ll begin to dip yourself in dreams. You’ll be the first

to jump into the water – the world above left mute. You’ll turn over near the bottom,

and you’ll see the rippling physical forms, the soles of their rubber boots, and the distant

rays piercing the water like twine or some other gossamer entangling you on the surface.

You were born for the water; you practice the butterfly every morning. You jump

the fence and climb the starting block. You notice the cracked concrete, you are light,

the chlorine seeps into your body, your beard undulates gently, cracked corners of your lips

sting mercilessly. You swim up nimbly, throw your arms over the edge, watch the wake

recede and approach its source. Fog incenses your head. You change behind the substation.

Put Lycra and rumpled Wranglers on your wet body, and bite into a fatty slice of bread.

The best part of the day turns into the worst part of the entire time that must pass before

you acknowledge in your ritualistic eccentricities a true disposition to disappear beneath

the surface of life, where you will find in me your voice drowning in agony.

Your dramas create a theory of noncontradiction, perfectly harmonizing with what’s outside,

yet at the same time you find them unique. You try not to listen to the neighborly talk,

echoing in the chimneys, as you lie together in the bathtub, and you rub your wife’s back. Someone in the air vent is listening to Radio Free Europe, someone else is pulling the bed

out of the wall unit. The yapping termite mound begins to shake the apartment block

and paint is peeling from the ceiling. A damp patch grows above you. You feel you’re

about to be swept away by the surf you greeted this summer, when you left footprints

on the beach, walking completely alone toward the lighthouse like the last people shutting

their lives behind them as a couple. A child seemed like a storyline to fill your days,

something to talk about with the others, who were already slogging through daycares.

At dawn, you hear the struggle with matter, and, a moment later, nervous footsteps on the staircase and then the iron door being slammed downstairs. The harder you try, the more

you fail. The reproaches begin. You retreat to your duties, while the stench of words

spoken by foreign lips, which speak, among others, through you, lingers on your lips.

Translated by Piotr Florczyk