Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [48]
When we reached the creaking landing, my mother said:
"Wake up, Joseph, you are dropping off; only a few more steps to go-"
But, almost unconscious with drowsiness, I clung closer to her and fell completely asleep.
Afterward, I never could learn from my mother how real were the things that I saw that night through my closed eyelids, overwhelmed as I was by tiredness and falling again and again into dull oblivion, and how much of it was the product of my imagination.
A great debate was taking place between my father, my mother, and Adela, the chief protagonist of that scene—a debate, I now realize, of capital importance. The gaps in my memory must be at fault if I cannot reconstruct its sense, also the blind spots of sleep I am now trying to fill with guesswork, supposition, and hypothesis. Inert and unconscious, I swam away again and again while the breezes of the starry night coming from the open windows swept over my closed eyes. The night's breathing was regular and pure; as if uncovered by removing a transparent curtain, the stars appeared at times to look at my sleep. From under my eyelids I saw a room lighted by a candle, its glow casting a pattern of golden lines and curlicues.
It is possible, of course, that the scene took place at some other time. Many things seem to indicate that I had been its witness much later, when, with my mother and the shop assistants, I returned home late one day, after the shop had been closed.
On entering our apartment, my mother exclaimed in amazement and wonder and the shop assistants stopped still, transfixed. In the middle of the room stood a splendid knight clad in brass, a veritable Saint George, looming large in a cuirass of polished golden tinplate, a sonorous armor complete with golden armlets. With astonishment and pleasure I recognized my father's bristling mustache and beard, which could be seen from under the heavy praetorian helmet. The armor was undulating on his breast, its strips of metal heaving like the scales on the abdomen of some huge insect. Looking tall in that armor, Father, in the glare of golden metal resembled the archstrategist of a heavenly host.
"Alas, Adela," my father was saying, "you have never been able to understand matters of a higher order. Over and over again you have frustrated my activities with outbursts of senseless anger. But encased in armor, I am now impervious to the tickling with which you had driven me to despair when I was bedridden and helpless. An impotent rage has now taken hold of your tongue, and the vulgarity and grossness of your language is only matched by its stupidity. Believe me, I am full of sorrow and pity for you. Unable to experience noble flights of fancy, you bear an unconscious grudge against everything that rises above the commonplace."
Adela directed at my father a look of utter contempt and, turning to my mother, said in an angry voice, while shedding tears of irritation:
"He pinches all our raspberry syrup! He has already taken away from the larder all the bottles of syrup we made last summer! He wants to give it all to these good-for-nothing firemen. And, what is more, he is being rude to me!" Adela sobbed.
"Captain of the fire brigade, captain of some crowd of lay-abouts!" she continued, looking at Father with loathing. "The house is full of them. In the morning, when I want to fetch the rolls, I cannot open the front door. Two of them are lying asleep in the hallway barring it. On the staircase a few more are spread on the steps, asleep in their brass helmets. They force their way into my kitchen; they push in their rabbit faces, lift up two fingers like schoolboys in class, and beg plaintively: 'Sugar, sugar, please . . . ' They snatch the bucket from my hands and run to the pump to get water for me; they dance around me, smile at me, very nearly wag their tails. And all the time they leer at me and odiously lick their lips. If I glance at any one of them, he immediately becomes red in the face