Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [44]
"I cannot answer for my dreams," I said.
"Yes, you can. I am arresting you in the name of His Majesty the Emperor-and-King!"
I smiled.
"How slow are the mills of justice. The bureaucracy of His Majesty the Emperor-and-King grinds rather slowly. I have outpaced that early dream by actions that are much more dangerous and that I wanted to expiate by taking my own life, yet it is this obsolete dream that has saved my life. ... I am at your disposal."
I saw an approaching column of troops. I stretched out my arms so that I could be handcuffed and turned my head once more. I saw Bianca for the last time. Standing on board the steamship, she was waving her handkerchief. The guard of veterans was saluting me in silence.
A NIGHT IN JULY
DURING THE LONG HOLIDAY of my last year in school I became acquainted for the first time with summer nights. Our house, exposed all day long to the breezes and glares of the hot summer days that entered through the open windows, now contained a new lodger, my sister's small son, a tiny, pouting, whimpering creature. He made our home revert to primitive conditions, he reduced us to the nomadic and harem-like existence of a matriarchal encampment where bedding, diapers, and sheets were forever being washed and dried, where a marked neglect of feminine appearance was accompanied by a predilection for frequent Strippings of a would-be innocent character, an acid aura of infancy and of breasts swelling with milk.
After a very difficult confinement, my sister left to convalesce at a spa, my brother-in-law began to appear only at mealtimes, and my parents stayed in their shop until late at night. The household was ruled by the baby's wet-nurse, whose expansive femininity was further enhanced by her role as mother-provider. That majestic dignity, coupled with her large and weighty presence, impressed a seal of gynecocracy on the whole house. It was a gynecocracy based on the natural advantages of a replete and fully grown carnality shared cleverly between herself and two servant girls, whose activities allowed them to display a whole gamut of feminine self-absorption. The blossoming and ripening of the garden full of rustling leaves, silvery flashes of light, and shadowy meditations was balanced inside the house by an aroma of femininity and maternity that floated over the white linen and the budding flesh. At the hotly glaring hour of noon all the curtains in the wide-open windows rose in fright and all the diapers drying on lines fluttered in a row: through this white avenue of linens and muslins feathery seeds, pollens, and lost petals flowed in; the garden tides of light and shadow, the intermittent rustle and calm slowly entered the rooms as if this hour of Pan had lifted all walls and partitions and allowed an all-embracing unity to rule the whole world.
I spent the evenings of that summer in the town's only cinema, staying there until the end of the last performance.
From the darkness of the cinema hall, with its fleeting lights and shadows, one entered a quiet, bright lobby like the haven of an inn on a stormy night.
After the fantastic adventures of the film, one's beating heart could calm down in the bright waiting room, shut off from the impact of the great pathetic night; in that safe shelter, where time stood still, the light bulbs emitted waves of sterile light in a rhythm set by the dull rumbling of the projector, and kept by the shake of the cashier's box.
That lobby, plunged into the boredom of late hours like a railway waiting room after the departure of the last train, seemed at times to be the background for the final minutes of existence, something that would remain after all else had passed, after the tumult of life was exhausted. On a large colored poster, Asta Nielsen staggered forever with the black stigma of death on her forehead, her mouth open in a last scream, her eyes supremely beautiful and wide with superhuman effort.
The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade