Dukla by Andrzej Stasiuk

Author:Andrzej Stasiuk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

So then, the magnifying glass of Dukla, an opening in the earth, in the body, in time. The dark space between the eyepiece and the lens of the telescope. The gloom in which events and objects solidify, then cast their reflection on the polished surfaces of beginning and end.

I pulled myself together and left the bar. The heat-swollen afternoon was splitting in places, and early evening shadows were beginning to appear in the cracks. People were coming out of apartment buildings just like that, with no obligations, simply to chat, have a smoke, and take a look at how their town had changed since the morning or the day before. After-dinner fullness, open windows with music playing on the radio, and the calm stooping figures of winos huddled on street corners in whispered consultations concerning Bieszczadzkie wine with the sideways picture of the black bear on its label. I was drawn to Amalia.

This time I was lucky. There was no one else there. The empty church still smelled of children, but the air had already returned to its place in the recesses of the ceiling, and it abided there like still waters. The wooden pews were the color of ivory.

She was lying there as always. Delicate, small, submerged in frills, sleeping. She could actually have been taken for a little girl, if it weren’t for the slender, adult shape of her shoe. Two large mirrors on the walls of the chapel reflected her as though someone had once taken fright at such a tangible female presence and decided to render her a little less real, more sleepy. For a place of worship, this proliferation of images was decidedly too worldly. It hinted at an error, an illusion, or simply a mild form of madness. I thought to myself that with its patroness, its reflections, its fictions, and its Amalia, this church was more human than it might appear.

Yes indeed. I touched anything that aroused my curiosity. I was alone. The light from the high window, the reflected glimmer in the mirrors, and the fragrant penumbra of the nave deprived my movements of any realness. The black marble of the sarcophagus was warm and smooth.

And then I recalled all the churches I’d ever been in. Clearest of all I saw the ones furthest back, the first ones, those where mystery had been given visible form. Our Lady in blue, with a pink indifferent face, in the church on Szembek in Warsaw: this was the first image of a woman that I remembered as an image. It was also my first image of a supernatural being. In my six-year-old mind those two things became combined in the strangest way, creating a heady mixture that used to numb me during the tedious sixty minutes of Mass. The half-naked alabaster figure of Christ hung there in absolute calm. The few delicate wounds on his sculpted waxen body confirmed my conviction that His death was a gentle, almost elegant act.

Streetcars drove up and down Grochowska.

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