JERZY PILCH
Other Pleasures
W
HEN, IN THE YEAR
OF OUR LORD '990,
Pawel Kohoutek,
Doctor of Veterinary Science, looked out the window and
beheld his current woman crossing the lawn, with his usual
conceited fatalism he imagined that an adventure had befallen him
which ought to serve as a warning for all. Kohoutek's current woman
was wearing a navy blue overcoat; her divine skull was covered in a skit–
tish little hat, while the colossal suitcase she was dragging behind her
left a dark trail of ultimate de feat in the pale November grass.
Even if she had just dropped by for a chat, even if she were paying
me a chance, unexpected visit, that a lone would be a sufficiently terri–
fying story, thought Kohoutek. That alone would be a story worthy of
a book. But Kohoutek's current woman hadn't just come by to visit. She
was hauling the suitcase along with both hands, while upon her narrow
shoulders she bore a backpack filled to bursting. Though Kohoutek had
known her for a mere seventeen weeks, he knew perfectly well what was
in the suitcase, and what was in the backpack. In the suitcase were
books, and in the backpack all of her other possessions. Kohoutek could
close his eyes and li st the items one by one, with the greatest of ease he
could name all the components of her wardrobe: seven black T-shirts,
two wh ite blouses, two khaki men's shirts, one gray sweat suit with
white trim, three black miniskirts, one pair of jeans, two pairs of low–
heeled sneakers, a pair of thigh-length boots which had belonged to
Kohoutek's current woman's mother, a black turtleneck sweater, a man's
gray tweed jacket in which she looked fabulous, panty hose and several
dozen pairs of exclusively white panties of various shapes and sizes. Yes,
Kohoutek's current woman had packed up all her chattels and had trav–
eled here so that finally, after the fearful torments of seventeen weeks of
brief encounters, she could move in with Kohoutek for good. She had
settled her accoun ts , cleaned out her room, taken down from her book–
case all of Milan Kundera's books in Polish, Broch's
The Tempter,
Tatarkiewicz's
History of Philosophy,
and slim vo lumes of verse by
Stanislaw Baranczak and Ryszard Krynicki. With a perverse solicitude
she had also packed the collected works of the greatest living Polish
writer, whom she adored platonically, as a reader, and about whom
Kohoutek was decidedly unplatonicall y jealous. Kohoutek was brutishly
