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be cut again, then sewn up, the surgeon told me, an old friend of Lena’s, I’ve told Katasia so many times that I’ll cover the costs because, you know, she’s my niece even though she’s a simple peasant from the country, near Grojec, but I’m not one to disown poor relatives, and besides, it’s not aesthetic-looking, it offends one’s sense of the aesthetic, really, it’s just gross, how many times have I told her over the years, because it’s already been five years you know, since the accident, the bus ran into a tree, lucky nothing worse happened, how many times have I told her Kata, don’t be lazy, don’t be afraid, go to the surgeon, have it done, look at yourself, fix your face, but no, well, she’s lazy, scared, days pass, once in a while she’ll say I’ll go, auntie, I’ll go right away, but she doesn’t, and now we’re used to it, until someone reminds us, then it stares us in the face again, and even though I’m sensitive to the aesthetic, imagine the drudgery, cleaning, laundry, do this and that for Leon, then Lena wants something, then do something for Ludwik, from morning ’til night, one thing after another, while the operationwaits, there’s no time for it, when Ludwik and Lena move to their little house, maybe then, but in the meantime, it’s a good thing that at least Lena has found an honest man, well, let him go and make her unhappy, I swear I’d kill him, I’d grab a knife and kill him, but thank God so far it’s not bad, it’s just that they won’t do anything for themselves, neither he, nor she, just like Leon, she’s taken after her father, I have to take care of everything, remember everything, hot water this, coffee that, do the laundry, socks, mend, iron, buttons, handkerchiefs, sandwiches, paper, polish this, glue that, they won’t do a thing, steaks, salads, from morning ’til late into the night, and, on top of it, lodgers, you know yourself how it is, I’m not saying anything, it’s true they pay, they rent rooms, but I still have to remember things for this one and for that one, have it all on time, one thing after another . . . ”
    . . . a multitude of other events filling, absorbing me, and every evening, as unavoidable as the moon, supper, sitting across the table from Lena, Katasia’s mouth circling around. Leon manufacturing his bread pellets and lining them up in a row, with great care—watching them intently—then after a moment’s deliberation impaling a pellet on a toothpick. Sometimes, after reflecting for a while, he would pick up a little salt on the tip of his knife and sprinkle it on the pellet, watching it dubiously through his pince-nez.
    “Ti-ri-ri!
    “Grażyna * mine!” he said, turning to Lena,“why don’t you toss your Daddydaddy some radishy foodie food? Toss it!”
    Which meant that he was asking her to pass him the radishes. Itwas difficult to understand such gibberish. “Oh Grażyna mine, your Daddy’s princess beautiful!” “Roly-Poly my petite, what are you dawdling over, can’t you see I want sucko!” He didn’t always speak in “word-monsters,” sometimes he began crazily and ended quite normally, or vice versa—the shining roundness of his bald dome, his face stuck below it, his pince-nez stuck to that, hovered above the table like a balloon—his mood often turned humorous, and he would crack jokes, mommydear, easy does it, you know the one about the bicycle and the tricycle, when Icyk * sat on a bicyk, what a tricyk, yahoo! . . .While Roly-Poly would smooth out something around his ear or on his collar. He would sink into a reverie and braid the fringe of a napkin, or push a toothpick into the tablecloth—not just anywhere but in certain spots only, to which, after lengthy reflection and with knitted brow, he would return.
    “Ti-ri-ri.”
    This irritated me because of Fuks, I knew it was grist for his Drozdowski mill, the mill that kept grinding him from morning until night, because he could not escape