A Curable Romantic (97 page)

“Careful, Doctor,”
said, as, in step with both of them, I placed my foot cautiously upon the lowest stair. Each angel held me by an arm. “The rain will have made it slippery.”

“One mustn’t fall.”

“Especially from the upper reaches.”

“And Heaven forbid someone should push you off!”
said. Holding me by the shoulder with one arm, he made me shake with the other.

“Brother, stop it!”
said. “You’re scaring him.”

gave out a barking laugh.

AS FOR ME,
I never felt more certain that these angels were, as Dr. Freud had once endeavored to convince me, figments of my imagination, hallucinations brought on by fatigue, stress, and a consequential derangement
of my senses. Thanks to starvation, the freezing temperatures, and the grinding conditions of our life, I assumed I was simply dying in the middle of Tłomackie Place Square. Or perhaps I was already dead, having been unable to endure one more moment of my captivity.

As we climbed the numinous stairway, I felt certain that if I turned my head and looked behind me, I would see my body, a lifeless, forlorn figure, lying in the snow. Surely, the experience of ascending a staircase into the firmament was the last gasp of the neurons in my brain, a vision the dying mind throws up, like a dream, to seal one more firmly inside this new and eternal sleep. Each time I thought to peer below me in order to verify this impression, however,
prevented me from looking back, either with remonstrations or by slyly distracting my attention.

“I wouldn’t do that, Dr. Sammelsohn, oh no!” one of them might say, or: “Hey, hey, watch your step there! It’s slippery.”

I had no idea how long our mad ascent was taking. Indeed, I’d lost all sense of time. The air had begun to thin, and soon we were above the rain line, and the sky-embossed steps beneath our feet became not only less slippery but brighter and warmer in color. With the rains receding, it seemed safe enough to stop and tie my shoes. As I did,
said, “You see, Dr. Sammelsohn, if this
were
an hallucination, I very much doubt your mind would have included as mundane a detail as the need to tie a shoe.”

Only when we’d attained the threshold of the black door did my guides permit me to look down. I could see Warsaw far below us, its cars moving along its streets like toys, the cemetery with its tiny white monuments to the east, the train tracks to the north, the trolleys rumbling down Chłodna. I searched for a glimpse of my corpse, lying in Tłomackie Place Square, where I was sure I’d find it, but at this height, it was impossible to see such a small detail.

“This way, Dr. Sammelsohn, this way.”
pulled me in by the arms. I ducked my head beneath the lintel of the black doorway, and we entered what appeared to be the upside-down bowl of the Heavens.

“Look up, Dr. Sammelsohn,”
commanded me.

I did. The planets seemed to be wheeling directly above our heads. The
stars were so near I could feel their heat upon my face. I was reminded of the Planetarium in the Deutsches Museum, which I had visited in Munich once with Loë. There, the planets traveled on rails, powered by electric motors, and the stars were projected onto the wall by electric bulbs, while here, the friction of their breezing against the stratosphere created the most beautiful music I’d ever heard. It sounded like harps, flutes, and the voices of women and children.

“But this is the real thing, Dr. Sammelsohn,”
said, “and not some German planetarium. Do you have any idea how long it took to build all this?”

“No, how long?”

“One day.” He roared with laughter.

“Oh, yes, well,” I said, somewhat chagrined. “Perhaps I did have some idea.”

“This way.”
took my arm. “There’s still so much to see.”

Together, the brothers went searching for a doorway hidden in the back wall of the cosmos. Searching blindly with their hands — the atmosphere here was particularly dark and cold — they at last found the knob. “Ah, yes. Here it is!” They pulled the door open, and the light from the stairwell flooded the room. I followed them, slightly unnerved by the whiff of urine that greeted us in the stairwell. After we’d opened a door marked with a large numeral 2, the scent was replaced by the smell of baking bread. A pang pierced my heart. Here, exactly as I had been taught as a child, was the Heavenly Bakery, where angelic bakers were busy preparing the manna that will be enjoyed by the righteous at the end of time. Their magnificent ovens were working at full blast. Apprentices in smocks and caps were running with floury wheelbarrows. Master bakers were shouting their orders, opening their oven doors, inspecting their loaves, while their assistants slathered the long work tables with oil and pounded down mountains of dough with giant rolling pins. The scent of coffee filled the air. The music I’d heard below, produced by the circuits of the planets, now blared out of the radios each baker listened to at his station.