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.Uncle's and Aunt's nightly abode.The whole back wall of the room was covered with a large tapestry, the indistinct woven figures of which loomed through the darkness.When one 's eyes became accustomed to the dark, one could see on it, among bamboos and palms, an enormous lion, powerful and forbidding as a prophet, majestic as a patriarch.Sitting back to back, the lion and Uncle Jerome felt each other's presence and loathed it.Without looking, they growled at each other, bared their evil teeth, and muttered threats.Sometimes the lion in an excess of irritation would rise on his forelegs, his mane bristling, and fill the overcast tapestry sky with his roaring.Sometimes Uncle Jerome would tower over the lion and deliver a prophetic tirade, frowning under the weight of the great words, his beard waving in inspiration.Then the lion would narrow his eyes in pain and, slowly turning his head, cringe under the lash of divine words.The lion and Jerome transformed the dark alcove in my uncle's apartment into a perpetual battlefield.Uncle Jerome and Dodo lived in the small apartment independently from each other, in two different dimensions that never coincided.Their eyes, whenever they met, wandered on without focusing, like the animals of two unrelated and distant species that are incapable of retaining the picture of anything unfamiliar.They never spoke to each other.At table, Aunt Retitia, sitting between her husband and her son, formed a buffer between two worlds, an isthmus between two oceans of madness.Uncle Jerome ate jerkily, his long beard dipping into his plate.When the kitchen door creaked, he half rose from his chair and grabbed his plate of soup, ready to flee with it to the alcove should a stranger enter the room.Aunt Retitia would reassure him, saying: ` Don't be afraid, no one is there; it is only the maid.' Then Dodo would cast an angry and indignant look at his frightened 268 269SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS DODO father and mumble to himself with great displeasure: `He's off his head.' Before Uncle Jerome accepted absolution from the complex and difficult affairs of life and got permission to retreat into his refuge in the alcove, he was a man of quite a different stamp.Those who knew him in his youth said that his reckless temperament knew no restraints, considerations, or scruples.With great satisfaction he spoke to mortally sick people about the death that awaited them.Visits of condolence provided him with an opportunity for sharply criticizing the life of the deceased, still being mourned by his family.About the unpleasant or intimate incidents in people's private lives that they wanted to conceal, he spoke to them loudly and with sarcasm.Then one night he returned from a business trip completely transformed and, shaking with fear, tried to hide under his bed.A few days later news was spread in the family that Uncle Jerome had given up all the complicated, dubious, and risky business affairs that had threatened to submerge him, had abdicated, and had begun a new life, regulated by strict, although to us somewhat obscure, principles.On Sunday afternoons when we were usually invited by Aunt Retitia to a small family tea party, Uncle Jerome did not recognize us.Sitting in the alcove, he looked through the glass door at the company with wild and frightened eyes.Sometimes, however, he unexpectedly left his hermitage, still in his long housecoat, his beard waving round his face, and, spreading his hands as if he wanted to separate us, he would say: `And now, I beg you, all you that are here, disperse, run along, but quietly, stealthily, on tiptoe.Then, waving his finger mysteriously at us, he would add in a low voice: ` Everybody is talking about it: Dee-da.' My aunt would push him gently back to the alcove, but he would turn at the door and grimly, with raised finger, repeat: `Dee-da' Dodo's understanding was a little slow, and he needed a few moments of silence and concentration before a situation became clear to him.When it did, his eyes wandered from one person to another, as if to make sure that something very funny had really happened.He then burst into noisy laughter, and, with great satisfaction, shaking his head in derision, he repeated amid the bursts of laughter: `He's off his head! ' Night fell on Aunt Retitia 's house.The servant girl went to bed in the kitchen; bubbles of night air floated from the garden and burst against the window.Aunt Retitia slept in the depths of her large bed; on the other, Uncle Jerome sat upright among the bedclothes, like a tawny owl, his eyes shining in the darkness, his beard flowing over his knees, which were drawn up to his chin.He slowly climbed down from his bed and walked on tiptoe to my aunt's bed.He stood over the sleeping woman, like a cat ready to leap, eyebrows and beard abristle.The lion on the wall tapestry gave a short yawn and turned his head away.My aunt, awakened, was alarmed by that head with its shining eyes and spitting mouth.`Go back to bed at once,' she said, shooing him away as one would shoo a hen.Jerome retreated spitting and looking back with nervous movements of his head.In the next room Dodo lay on his bed.Dodo never slept.The centre of sleep in his diseased brain did not function correctly, so he wriggled and tossed and turned from side to side all night long.270 271SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS The mattress groaned.Dodo sighed heavily, wheezed, sat up, lay down again.His unlived life worried him, tortured him, turning round and round inside him like an animal in a cage.In Dodo's body, the body of a half-wit, somebody was growing old, although he had not lived; somebody was maturing to a death that had no meaning at all.Then suddenly, he sobbed loudly in the darkness.Aunt Retitia leapt from her bed.` What is it, Dodo, are you in pain?' Dodo turned to her amazed.` Who?' he asked.`Why are you sobbing?' asked my aunt.`It's not I, it's he.`Which he?' `The one inside.' Who is he?' Dodo waved his hand resignedly.`Eh.' he said and turned on his other side.Aunt Retitia returned to bed on tiptoe.As she passed Uncle Jerome's bed, he waved a threatening finger at her.`Everybody is talking about it: Dee-da.' Eddie On the same floor as our family, in a long and narrow wing of the house overlooking the courtyard, Eddie lives with his.Eddie has long ago stopped being a small boy.Eddie is a grown- up man with a full, manly voice who sometimes sings arias from operas.272 273EDDIESANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS Eddie is inclined to obesity, not to its spongelike and flabby form, but rather to the athletic and muscular variety.His shoulders are strong and powerful like a bear's, but what of it? He had no use of his legs, which are completely degenerate and shapeless.Looking at his legs, it is difficult to determine the reason for his strange infirmity.It looks as if his legs had too many joints between the knee and the ankle; at least two more joints than normal legs.No wonder that they bend pitifully at those supernumerary joints, not only to the side but also forward and indeed in all possible directions.Thus, Eddie can move only with the help of two crutches, which are remarkably well made and polished to resemble mahogany.On these he walks downstairs every day to buy a newspaper: this is his only walk and his only diversion.It is painful to look at his progress down the stairs.His legs sway irregularly to one side, then back, bending in unexpected places; and his feet, like horses' hooves, small but thick, knock like sticks on the wooden planks.But having reached street level, Eddie unexpectedly changes.He straightens himself up, pushes out his chest grandly, and makes his body swing.Taking his weight on his crutches as if on parallel bars, he throws his legs far to the front.When they hit the ground with an uneven thud, Eddie moves the crutches forward and with a new impetus swings his body again [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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