Assentierung (Part IV)

She got help from one of the prospectives, whose name I knew was Karl, because he stood next to me in the line to the table A-L. We chatted idly then, about what, I had already forgotten, but Karl considered himself my colleague. In conversation Karl and the old woman arrived at the fact that they had come from the same village, or rather the same district, in the east, where they lived until after the war, when they were repatriated. 

He had made himself at home with her. He brought himself a chair from the stage and had at the soup non-stop, joining the old woman in teasing the naive prospectives. Karl had an eccentric look. Protruding from his flat round face was a large nose hugged by crossed eyes. He had fat lips through which silver sometimes shone, his second or third upper tooth. His hair was the color of ripening wheat, cut in a flattop and combed back tightly, having the effect of making his head look like that of a heron. 

Karl was dressed in a short, tight, younger brother’s or smoking jacket, sown at some point from dark blue plimsoll with a breast pocket on the right side, which betrayed the fact that the jacket garment was reversed. Visible from his pocket were two fountain pens, a mechanical pencil and a sharpened number two pencil with a metallic spring clip. 

These identified him as a literate. He wore a lapel pin of the folk sports league. He wore his not too clean ZMP-issued green shirt without a tie but buttoned to the top button anyway, and army-colored wool horse riding pants, held by very used suspenders and strung tight at the bottom, tucked into dirty gray socks that looked home knitted, and worn out black low top shoes, which exhibited quite obvious signs of dried clay mud and remnants of horse manure in its distinctive golden color. 

His frame was short and even though he was thin, it was as if the proportions were somehow off. On his head was a big stiff baker boy cap, bright with a dark blue checkered pattern, the only brand new thing in the fatigued wardrobe of poor Karl. He was a nice guy, amenable and friendly, but from a mile you could tell he was a yokel. Self confident, with a lisp and a laugh that carried, he called out to some other naive villager. “Buddy... buddy... comradette has a question...”

The afternoon was approaching, and the commission’s work was into its fourth hour. Every now and then, from the prospectives waiting at the door, a group of twelve would coagulate and were called inside. After some fifteen minutes they began to come out individually, exhilarated and often still putting their clothes back on. 

Some of them, already processed, milled around in lieu of leaving, talking with colleagues, examining studiously what had been entered in their military booklets, this and that, and right before finally making their way to the exit would entice themselves to one more serving of free soup. 

Others buggered off quickly and were gone. 

And the least of the fearful, the least of the shy, the most world-curious had, on account of being in this big city, planned one more bloodcurdling experience. Very close, much closer than a hundred meters even, at the corner, situated actually right at the market, stood a tall gray building, architecturally trying for a skyscraper in Chicago or New York. It was somewhat difficult to get inside, because the security guards and porters, knowing immediately for what purpose they appeared, bolted away any such suspicious fellows, but if one of these were give a few złoty, then it would be possible to get through smoothly. 

Because of the elevator in the building, this was worth it. It was reminiscent in part of a carousel turned on its side, like from a childhood dream, and even though its position was revolved ninety degrees, it also constantly spun, and in part an arrangement, one on top of the other, of some strange large walk-in cabinet. More, through one of the doors you could see that these cabinets were constantly lifting, and through the other, that they were constantly falling. 

The entire time, creaking and trembling, all of this was in constant motion, during which time you had to quickly get in, and out. It evoked the biggest thrill, however, to ride to the very top in this cabinet, something in any case sourly prohibited, the so called reverse, when in a moment of superculmination, the cabinet, after several throes, most likely resembling some horrible earthquake, turned through the top of the shaft and went back down. 

This was nonetheless a calling for the farthest removed from civilization to the most cultured of adventurers; the rest of course gladly gawked and even amazed, but for nothing, for fear that maybe it would tear their hand off or for example, God forbid, their johnson, for no treasures did they enter the elevator.