STANISLAW BARANCZAK
441
Traugutt explains, "I don't know if there was any sense in it. I do
know that it had to be done," he gives, perhaps, the only answer pos–
sible to those who question the sense of struggling against the Great
Nonsense.
Konwicki inserts two striking episodes in order to stress that the
compulsion to struggle is an unquestionable fact and that one must
not be "ashamed of a fondness for freedom. Even though it was .. .
the freedom which leads to ruin." The first episode is the discovery of
a desperate letter from a friend living in a remote country, which
could well be Bulgaria, Uganda, or Kazakhstan (a country from
which freedom was so completely banished that the question of its
meaning and value no longer troubles anyone). The second episode
is more restrained and ordinary, although, in my opinion, more
astounding- it may be the most alarming scene in the whole book.
Here the narrator incidentally meets his alter ego, a relative from
beyond the eastern border, a Socialist Labor hero, a foreman of a
kolhoz piggery in Soviet Lithuania . When asked, "Are you satisfied
with your life?" he answers, "I never think about it. It could be
worse.... Man is created to work.... The rest is bunk."
Their destiny will be ours, Konwicki seems to say, if we too
stop asking ourselves that very question again and again, if we get
accustomed to the Great Nonsense, if we sink into the wool of silence,
which so far is our only right.
Previously a slave was entitled to cry out, today the slave has
been assured the right of silence, muteness . Crying out brought
relief as it does for a newborn baby. Silence and muteness cause
degeneration, they suffocate, kill. Previously when a captive na–
tion regained its freedom, it was not hindered in joining the
great family of free nations . Today, if by chance it is set free, it
will no longer be fit for life and will perish from the poisons ac–
cumulated during the dark night of captivity.
11.
I'm finally inside the state-owned "delikatesy," and now we
learn that the carp is sold out! The news has the speed and impact of
an explosion. What follows in unison is a moan of disappointment.
So, we will have no carp on our table this Christmas Eve. Once
again we are cheated, fooled, humiliated. No miracle this time.
We leave the shop in silence .
