My First Suicide. Jerzy Pilch

someone would sit at the side of my couch and try to convince me. In the thickening air there were more and more insects. The indistinctly pronounced arguments were irrefutable. I knew that one of these times their amorphous but inexorable logic would shove me out onto the balcony, and then off the balcony. It excited me. I knew I could do it. I was suicidally gifted. I was crazy about jumping to the cement from the sixth floor. I had a talent for suicide. But you have to work on your talents. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life.

      As King Solomon says: “Reproofs of instruction are the way of life!” As King Solomon says: “Reproofs of instruction are the way of life!” As King Solomon says: “Reproofs of instruction are the way of life!” My old man shouted these words of wisdom so many times a day, and with such solemn dignity, that finally, if he did not become King Solomon in the strict sense, he certainly traded places with him for a bit. Full of majesty and dread, the shadow of the biblical monarch would attack his accounts book, and the thunderous voice would roar upon the heights. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life! This time he didn’t have to tell me twice. I was preparing myself intensely for the final match. Just like, if I may say so, a debutant preparing for the Olympics. Practically every day, when no one was at home, I doggedly practiced the silent opening of the drapes. And also the curtains, an otherwise easier matter. The hooks from which the curtains hung practically didn’t grate at all. After numerous attempts, I had worked out the following technique: you had to place a chair at the balcony window, stand on it, reach out your hand, and, once you had grasped either the hook itself or the drape at the point closest to the hook, you carefully manipulated it and moved it aside, very slowly—this is how it could be done in absolute silence. I was rather tall, even as a teenager, and standing on a stool I could easily reach the ceiling. The drapes parted more quietly each time. Reproofs of instruction were the way of my suicide.

      I regret that first attempt to this day. There was no point in wasting time training for the silent opening of the drapes. I should just have gone out, simply, normally—since they were open during the day, and since my folks weren’t at home—onto the balcony and jumped. There was always plenty of free time between when I came home from school and when Mother returned from work. Even on Thursdays, when I had seven classes, there was always at least an hour. I was a contemplative child, and from my early days I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it in a sudden, lightning-fast impulse, that I would not be able to leap over the balustrade in one bound before someone managed to hold me back. Sure, I wanted to kill myself, and to do it with dispatch, but I also wanted to be present for the act.

      I knew from the teachings of Pastor Kalinowski what the other world would be like. But I hadn’t the faintest clue what the passage, what the passage itself from this world to that, might look like. When I asked Pastor Kalinowski about the path (and also about the time and speed) from earth to heaven, or to hell, he lied his way out with theological hermeticisms. I knew that I wouldn’t get clear and simple answers, but there must have been minor approximations, or some sort of (even the most distant) analogies.

      Is it indiscernible, like the moment of falling asleep? Incomprehensible, like the flight of Sputnik? Breathtaking, like downhill skiing? Painful, like an inner-ear infection? Could it be that painful? Impossible. I had a high pain threshold. Practically nothing ever hurt. Nothing ever—with the exception of my inner ear. When I was five or six years old, my (inner) ear hurt so horribly that, after that time, at least for a year, because of the trauma and fear of it, I never even uttered the word “ear.” Even today, I remember Doctor Granada muttering over my head “inner ear, inner ear.” Even today, whenever I hear “inner ear,” I experience phantom pains, and even today I doubt that anything—even suicide—could cause more pain. Was that what I wanted to test back then? Was it because I had withstood every sort of pain, and I wanted to try out the pain of falling from the sixth floor? Very likely. At that time, I didn’t yet know Kirillov’s famous dictum about the pain that deters people from suicide. I read Demons for the first time in the lyceum, in other words at least three or four years after my first suicide. I was then, and I still am now, a great admirer of that book, but it had no influence whatsoever upon my various subsequent suicide attempts. Dostoevsky’s hero, and perhaps all literary heros in general, make a great fuss over their suicides—I don’t fuss. I just want to have peace and quiet.

      Whatever the case, I wanted to examine everything precisely and calmly. Slowly. Very slowly. I’m phlegmatic by nature. Whatever I do, I do precisely, but slowly. I was one of the best competitors in playground pickup matches and on school teams, and at the same time one of the slowest. You can charge me with what you like, just not quickness. Even on the sports field. And so, as befitted a phlegmatic, I prepared myself phlegmatically for a phlegmatic suicide. I wanted to know at every minute, and even at every second, that I was just then in the process of killing myself.

      The simplest move—going to sleep with the drapes opened—was out of the question. Mother guarded the opening of the drapes in the morning, and their closing in the evening, with Lutheran ferocity. In our parts, houses in which the drapes were closed during the day were the houses of the dead. And the houses in which the drapes were not closed at night were the houses of demons. At the break of dawn, in winter at six at the latest, five at the latest in summer, Grandma Pech would open the drapes, lest anyone should glance at our windows and get the idea that someone had died in the Pech household; or, what is worse, that the Pechs were still sleeping.

      “Get up! Wake up! Don’t bring on a funeral!” She would burst into the back room, in which Uncle Ableger still couldn’t quite wake up after the previous night’s excesses. She would shake him by the shoulder and tear the yellow drapes from the window and, with lightning-fast movements, fold them into perfect squares and place them on the windowsill. “Get up! Don’t lie about! Don’t tempt death!” Uncle would open his puffy eyes, glance in distress at the wall clock that was left over from the Germans, and stiffen in horror—it was already well after seven. He would jump out of bed and begin to look for his clothes in a panic. He, too, knew the sacred principle that windows that were left covered a bit longer, even if only until eight, augured death for the members of the household. And for the citizens of Wisła who were on their way to work, they signified death. One way or the other, you had to close and open the drapes at the appointed times, and with full orthodoxy.

      Mother repeated that custom in Krakow, in a somewhat gentler version—in winter at seven at the latest, and in summer at six. This version was gentler as far as the times were concerned, but in its spirit it was infinitely more the deed of a hero, even that of a martyr. Everywhere around us, in the neighboring apartment blocks and townhouses on Ujejski, Włóczków, Smoleńsk Streets—everywhere, literally everywhere—there lived nothing but Catholics, who didn’t pay the least attention to covered or uncovered windows. During the first mornings I spent in Krakow, I was certain that plague ruled the city. Every day at least half the windows remained covered all the time—a sure sign that the number of victims was growing.

      In our parts, a different light surrounded the house in which someone had died. You could see the covered windows all the more distinctly—even at dusk, even late in the evening, even at a distance. The members of the household who remained among the living would hasten to Pastor Kalinowski, the death notice would be posted at the parish house, and news of the death would pass through the valleys at lightning speed. The deceased would lie in the darkened chamber on a door that had been removed from its hinges and placed on stools. The soul-snatchers from Cieszyn would arrive late with the coffin. In the winter it wasn’t so bad. All you had to do was crack the covered window and make sure that no cat or weasel jumped in. In the summer you had to bring flowers, right away and all the time—as many as you could, whole buckets of them if possible. To this day I don’t like flowers, nor do I keep them at home. To this day, when I smell peonies, lilies-of-the-valley, phlox, dahlias, I catch the scent of deceased Lutherans.

      Whoever, in turn, late in the evening or, God forbid, at night, neglected covering the windows and turning out the lights, did wrong, sinned, exposed himself—and, most certainly, succumbed—to Satan’s temptation. He was reveling, drinking, God knows what he was doing that was even worse. Nothing good, in any event. Working at night? There was no such excuse. He who works at night does wrong, since during the day he is unable to do what is needed.