Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [82]
The sawing of wood is a truly sacramental function, symbolic and dignified. I could stand for hours on a late afternoon watching the melodious play of saws, the rhythmical work of axes. Here is a tradition as old as the human race. In that bright gap of the day, in that hiatus of time opened onto a yellow and wilting eternity, beech logs have been sawed since Noah's day, with the same patriarchal and eternal movements, the same strokes and the same bent backs. The workmen stand up to their armpits in the golden shavings and slowly cut into the logs and cords of wood; covered with sawdust, with a tiny spark of light in their eyes, they cut ever deeper into the warm healthy pulp, into the solid mass; with each stroke a reflection sparks in their eyes, as if they were looking for something in the core of the timber: a golden salamander, a screaming fiery creature, that burrows deeper and deeper under their cutting. Perhaps they are simply dividing time into small splinters of wood. They husband time, they fill the cellars with an evenly sawed future for the winter months.
Oh, to endure that critical period, those few weeks, until the morning frosts begin and winter starts in earnest. How I like the prelude to winter, still without snow but with the smell of frost and smoke in the air. I remember Sunday afternoons in the late fall. Let us assume that it has been raining for a whole week, that a long downpour has saturated the earth with water, and that now the surface begins to dry out, exuding a hearty, healthy cold. The week-old sky with a cover of tattered clouds has been raked up, like mud, to one side of the firmament, where it looms dark in a folded compressed heap, while from the west the hale, healthy colors of a fall evening begin to spread and slowly fill the cloudy landscape. And while the sky clears gradually from the west and becomes translucent, servant girls walk out in their Sunday best, in threes, in fours, holding hands. They walk in the empty, Sunday-clean and drying street between the suburban houses bright in the tartness of the air which now turns crimson before dusk; rosy and round-faced from the cold, they walk with elastic steps in their new, too tight shoes. A pleasant, touching memory, brought up from a dark corner of the mind!
Recently, I have been calling almost daily at the office. It sometimes happens that someone is sick and they allow me to work in his place.
Or somebody has something urgent to do in town and lets me deputize for him. Unfortunately, this is not regular work. It is pleasant to have, even for a few hours, a chair of one's own with a leather cushion, one's own rulers, pencils, and pens. It is pleasant to run into or even be rebuked by one's fellow workers. Someone addresses you, makes a joke, pulls your leg, and you blossom forth for a moment. You rub against somebody, attach your homelessness and nothingness to something alive and warm. The other person walks away and does not feel your burden, does not notice that he is carrying you on his shoulders, that like a parasite you cling momentarily to his life. . . .
But since the appointment of a new head of department, even this has come to an end.
Quite often now, if the weather is good, I sit out on a bench in a small square that faces the city school. From the street nearby comes the sound of wood being cut. Girls and young women return from the market. Some have serious and regular eyebrows and walk looking sternly from under them, slim and glum—angels with