Now he was working on The Book of Urizen, which seemed to me far harder than the earlier ones, Proverbs of Hell and the Songs of Innocence, with which I had devotedly helped him. In fact I hadn’t found it easy, for I couldn’t make head or tail of the beautiful, dramatic images that Blake conjured up in words. Did he really think like that? What was he describing? Where is that? Where is it happening, and when? Is it a fable or a myth? I kept asking Dizzy these questions.
‘It’s happening all the time and everywhere,’ he’d say with a gleam in his eye.
Once he’d finished a passage, he’d solemnly read each line to me and wait for my comments. Sometimes I felt that I was only understanding the individual words, but failing to grasp their meaning. I wasn’t entirely sure how to help him. I didn’t like poetry; all the poems ever written seemed to me unnecessarily complicated and unclear. I couldn’t understand why these revelations weren’t recorded properly – in prose. Then Dizzy would lose patience and become exasperated. I liked teasing him this way.
I don’t think I was particularly helpful to him. He was far better than I was, his intelligence was faster, digital, I’d say; mine remained analogue. He cottoned on quickly and was able to look at a translated sentence from a completely different angle, to leave aside unnecessary attachment to a word, but to bounce off it and come back with something completely new and beautiful. I always passed him the salt cellar, because I have a Theory that salt is very good for the transmission of nerve impulses across the synapses. And he learned to plunge a saliva-coated finger into it, and then lick off the salt. I had forgotten most of my English by now; swallowing the entire Wieliczka salt mine couldn’t have helped me, and besides, I soon found such laborious work boring. I was at a complete loss.
How does one translate a rhyme that small children might use to start a game, instead of constantly reciting ‘Eeny meeny miny moe’:
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born,
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
This is Blake’s most famous verse. It’s impossible to translate it into Polish without losing the rhythm, rhyme and child-like brevity. Dizzy tried many times, and it was like solving a charade.
Now he’d had his soup; it warmed him so much his cheeks were flushed. His hair was full of static electricity from his hat, and he had a funny little halo around his head.
That evening we found it hard to focus on translation. I was tired and feeling very anxious. I couldn’t think.
‘What’s wrong with you? You’re absent-minded today,’ said Dizzy.
I agreed with him. The pains were weaker but hadn’t entirely left me. The weather was awful, windy and rainy. When the foehn wind blows it’s hard to concentrate.
‘What Demon hath form’d this abominable void?’ asked Dizzy.
Blake suited the mood that evening: we felt as if the sky had sunk very low over the Earth, and hadn’t left much space or much air for living Creatures to survive. Low, dark clouds had been scudding across the sky all day, and now, late in the evening, they were rubbing their wet bellies against the hills.
I tried persuading him to stay the Night, as he sometimes did – then I would make up a bed for him on the sofa in my small study, switch on the electric heater and leave the door open to the room where I slept – so that we could hear each other’s breathing. But today he couldn’t. Sleepily rubbing his brow, he explained that the police station was switching to a new computer system; I didn’t really want to know the details, what mattered was that he had a lot of work to do as a result. He had to be on site early in the morning. And there were the slushy roads to negotiate.
‘How will you get there?’ I fretted.
‘Once I reach the asphalt I’ll be fine.’
I didn’t like the idea of him going. I threw on two fleeces and a hat. We both had yellow rubber raincoats, making us look like dwarves. Under his coat, Dizzy wore a flimsy jacket that hung on him loosely; although we had tried to dry his boots on the radiator, they were still soaking wet. I walked with him to the dirt road, and I would have been happy to escort him to his car. But he didn’t want me to. We said goodbye on the dirt road, and I was already heading for home when he shouted after me.
He was pointing towards the Pass. Something was shining over there, feebly. Strange.
I turned back.
‘What can it be?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘Maybe someone’s prowling over there with a torch?’
‘Come on, let’s check.’ He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me along, like a boy scout on the trail of a mystery.
‘Now, at Night? Don’t be silly, it’s wet over there,’ I said, surprised by his obstinacy. ‘Perhaps Oddball lost a torch and it’s lying over there, shining.’
‘That’s not the light of a torch,’ said Dizzy, and headed off.
I tried to stop him. I grabbed his hand, but all that was left in mine was his glove. ‘Dionizy, no, let’s not go there. Please.’
Something must have taken possession of him, because he didn’t react at all.
‘I’m staying here,’ I said, trying to blackmail him.
‘Fine, you go home, I’ll go and check on my own. Maybe something’s happened. Off you go.’
‘Dizzy!’ I shouted angrily.
He didn’t answer.
So I went after him, shining a torch for us, picking out of the darkness clear patches in which every colour had vanished. The clouds were so low that one could hook onto them and let oneself be carried away to a distant land, to the south, to warmer climes. There one could jump down straight into the olive groves, or at least the vineyards in Moravia, where delicious green wine is made. Meanwhile, our feet were getting bogged down in the semi-liquid slush, as the rain tried to push its way under our hoods and slap us in the face.
Finally we saw it.
In the Pass stood a car, a large off-road vehicle. All the doors were open, and a feeble inside light was shining. I remained a few metres away, afraid to approach it; I felt as if I were going to burst into tears at any moment like a child, out of fear and nervous strain. Dizzy took the torch from me and slowly approached the car. He lit up the interior. The car was empty. On the back seat lay a black briefcase, and there were some carrier bags too, maybe full of shopping.
‘You know what,’ said Dizzy quietly, dragging out each syllable, ‘I recognise this car. It’s our Commandant’s Toyota.’
Now he was sweeping the area immediately surrounding the car with the torch beam. It was standing at a point where the road turned left. On the right-hand side there was dense brushwood; before the war there had been a house and a windmill here. Now there were some overgrown ruins and a large walnut tree, to which the Squirrels came running in autumn from all over the neighbourhood.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Look what’s on the snow!’
The torchlight picked out some strange tracks – masses of round spots the size of coins; they were absolutely everywhere, all around the car and on the road. And there were also the prints of men’s boots with thick, ridged soles. They were clearly visible because the snow was melting and dark water was seeping into every footprint.