.J
ERZY PILCH
79
terhouse. When they had finished, when all the boxes had been properly
stacked and sorted, they would go downstairs, cross the lawn, boldly
enter the dining room, and Kohoutek would announce emphatically:
"Mother, father, wife, and all you dear members of the household,
this is my current woman, with whom
I
have tidied the attic. God–
dammit, someone had to get around to it."
"Amazing," Oma, Kohourek's grandmother, would reply, her voice
filled with incredulous admiration. "The two of you tidied the attic all
on your own?
It
must have cost you an inhuman effort!"
The other members of the household would in silent approbation
make room for them at the table, and the unexpected arrival of
Kohoutek's current woman would be legalized by means of the ethos of
superhuman exertion in inhuman conditions that had been lovingly cul–
tivated in Kohoutek's family. But this was merely a daydream that
passed through the head of Kohoutek's current woman, which was filled
with the world of books. For he was grubbing around amongst the card–
board boxes not to tidy them up, but in order to construct for her some
kind of shelter or den.
Behold, my man is building a house in which we shall grow old
together, thought Kohoutek's current woman, virtually without a hint of
Irony.
Kohoutek, in the meantime, was indeed laying down foundations and
putting up walls. He worked with astonishing proficiency.
In
all proba–
bility, fear and panic had stirred in him the inspiration characteristic of
great builders.
In
any case he gave the impression of being an experi–
enced constructor of makeshift sleeping-quarters. Once the bed was
ready, he even fashioned over it something like a canopy, which in fact
also had a practical purpose, since over the piles of boxes there was noth–
ing but a crumbling ridge roof. For a moment Kohoutek thought about
covering the provisional awning with plastic bags, but plastic bags were
stored in the laundry room, and an expedition to fetch them entailed
additional perils. Besides, even though the laundry room contained sev–
eral thousand plastic bags at the very least, Kohoutek's mother was
bound to notice if even a handful went missing. These days, now that the
country had liberated itself from the Muscovite yoke and in almost every
store purchases were wrapped in what were once priceless plastic sacks,
Kohoutek's mother dropped by the laundry virtually every day to deposit
a carefully folded new addition, and she was fully cognizant of the size
of her collection. Here, on the other hand, in the loft of the old slaugh–
terhouse, it was safe.
In
any case, no one had looked in here for ages.
It
had been ten years since the last cardboard boxes had been deposited.
