Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [72]
Images raced through my head, each more horrible than the next. The impatience of the monster dog; his fear and despair when he realized that I had cheated him; another attack of fury, another bout of rage breaking out with unchecked force. My father's return to the Sanatorium, his unsuspecting knock at the door, and his confrontation with the terrible beast.
Luckily, in fact, Father was no longer alive; he could not really be reached, I thought with relief, and saw in front of me the black row of railway carriages ready to depart.
I got into one of them, and the train, as if it had been waiting for me, slowly started to move, without a whistle.
Through the window the great valley, filled with dark rustling forests—against which the walls of the Sanatorium seemed white— moved and turned slowly once again. Farewell, Father, Farewell, town that I shall never see again.
Since then, I have travelled continuously. I have made my home in that train, and everybody puts up with me as I wander from coach to coach. The compartments, enormous as rooms, are full of rubbish and straw, and cold drafts pierce them on gray, colorless days.
My suit became torn and ragged. I have been given the shabby uniform of a railwayman. My face is bandaged with a dirty rag, because one of my cheeks is swollen. I sit on the straw, dozing, and when hungry, I stand in the corridor outside a second-class compartment and sing. People throw small coins into my hat: a black railwayman's hat, its visor half torn away.
DODO
HE USUALLY VISITED us on Saturday afternoons wearing a dark suit, a white piqué waistcoat, and a bowler hat that he had to have specially made to fit his head. He would stay for a quarter of an hour or so and sip a drink of raspberry syrup with soda, his chin propped on the bone handle of a walking stick planted between his knees, or else he would quietly contemplate the blue smoke of his cigarette.
Other relatives usually called on us at the same time, and then, as the conversation became general, Dodo withdrew and assumed the passive role of an extra. He would not say a word during these animated meetings, but his expressive eyes under his magnificent eyebrows would rest in turn on each person, while his jaw dropped and his face became elongated, unable to control its muscles in the act of passionate listening.
Dodo spoke only when spoken to—and then he answered in monosyllables, grudgingly, looking away—and only if the questions were easy ones dealing with simple matters. Sometimes he succeeded in keeping the conversation going beyond these elementary questions by resorting to a stock of expressive gestures and grimaces that were most useful because they could be interpreted in many different ways, filling the gaps in articulate talk and creating an impression of sensible response. This, however, was an illusion that was quickly dispelled; the conversation would break down completely; and while the interlocutor's gaze wandered slowly and pensively away from Dodo, he, left to himself, reverted once more to his proper role as an outsider, a passive observer of other people's social intercourse.
How could one talk to him when, to the question whether he had been in the country with his mother, he would answer softly: "I don't know." And this was the sad and embarrassing truth, for Dodo's mind did not register anything but the present.
During his childhood, a long time before, Dodo had suffered a serious brain disease during which he had been unconscious for many months, more dead than alive. When his condition had finally improved, it became obvious that he had been withdrawn from circulation and that he no longer belonged to the community of sensible people. His education had to be private, for the sake of form, and taken in tiny doses. The demands of convention, harsh and unyielding where other people were concerned, lost their sternness and gave way to tolerance