JERZY PILCH 73
jealous, and he knew what he was about: the greatest living Polish writer
belonged to the immortal generation of inveterate womanizers. In a
word, Kohoutek's current woman had packed up her things and her
books, handed her keys in to the landlady, gone to the bus station,
bought a ticket and come to Kohoutek 's home town. She had never been
here before, but from what Kohoutek had told her she was intimately
familiar with this community inhabited exclusively by adherents of the
Lutheran faith.
Kohoutek is in the insufferably sentimental habit of recounting sto–
ries of the Cieszyn region to his current women. They fix their gaze
upon him, and attempt, to no avail in his opinion, to suppress their
excessive admiration, while he spins tales about Partecznik,
Dziechcinka, and Jurzykowo; he tells of the house built by his great–
grandfather, the master butcher Emilian Kohoutek, and of the lawn that
was once the courtyard of the great slaughterhouse.
It
goes without say–
ing that Kohoutek is fully aware that telling his current women about
his native land is not merely an insufferable custom. Kohoutek is aware
that it is also a ruinous one. In this case at least, thinks Kohoutek,
watching his current woman crossing the lawn, in the case of this incon–
ceivable story I have good reason to think of my ruin. I was utterly
wrong to have told her about the Cieszyn region; I shouldn't have said
a word about myself, I shouldn't have given her my address, my name,
I shouldn't have agreed to everything, promised her goodness knows
what, shouldn't have spent time in her crazy company.
How futile, how rhetorically empty, and, thank heaven, how short–
lived were Kohoutek's lamentations. He shouldn't have gotten on
express bus A. He shouldn't have traveled a thousand times between one
town and the other. He shouldn't have asked any questions, and he espe–
cially shouldn't have asked the first question. Sorry to disturb you, miss,
but what are you reading? He shouldn't have worn down his central
nervous system with inordinate doses of world. It was that simple.
Kohoutek heard, or perhaps whispered, the first verses of his great
lament: the recollection of the maw of that leviathan of an express bus,
in which he had caught sight of her for the first time, passed through his
mind, but nothing more. There was no time for even the most stylisti–
cally enchanting threnody. Kohoutek watched his current woman cross–
ing the lawn, while at the same time his brain was working with deadly
precision. Kohoutek was wondering if any of the inhabitants of the
house had already spotted her.
Kohoutek's current woman might have been spotted by Kohoutek's
mother. She might have been spotted by Kohoutek's father. She might
